Gone With the Windsors

20th October 1932

I am launched, and to great applause! Just champagne, whiskey, and salted almonds, but Padmore served them very nicely. I believe she’s thrilled with her new livery.

Came: the Crosbies, the Erlangers, George Lightfoot, the Benny Thaws, the Whitlow Trillings, the Crokers, the Fergus Blythes (who brought along with them a sweet creature called Cimmie Mosley, married to a mad revolutionary), Violet and Melhuish, and Wally and Ernest. Thelma sent regrets, as did Philip Sassoon, who was unable to get away from the Ministry, and Leo von Hoesch, who had to give a little reception for some Hohenzollerns.

I omitted to invite Ida. I didn’t want her arriving with a bag full of pamphlets, or worse still, with Mr. Acolyte on her arm.

Much talk about Mr. Mussolini. Ernest has read that he’s a great all-rounder. He plays the violin and governs his country, and yet he’s not above rolling up his sleeves and helping with the corn harvest. A Renaissance man, Ernest called him. Also, he’s electrificating the railroads. Freddie said that will be all very fine for the Italians but not so good for the Welsh miners, whose coal the Italians will stop buying. Well, I’m behind Mr. Mussolini on this. One has to look out for one’s own.

Melhuish allowed Wally to flirt with him wickedly on the subject of trout fishing. He was quite pink by the time he and Violet had to leave for the Londonderries. He said, “Come to Sunday luncheon, Maybell. Bring your Simpson chums with you.”

Violet was on the telephone first thing, putting paid to that.

She said, “I really don’t want Wally here on Sunday. I’m sure her husband is perfectly pleasant, but she’s as raucous as ever. We’ll have the Habberleys and anyway, Wally’s just not the kind of guest we’d want Flora to meet. Melhuish only suggested it because you’d given him far too much whiskey.”

I said, “Don’t worry. Wally and Ernest can’t come anyway. They’re going to a polo tournament. But I don’t see why you have to be so against her. It was you who wrote excitedly to tell me she was in London.”

Violet said, “I did not write excitedly. I mentioned her as one might report the arrival of a new dancing bear at the zoo. But I didn’t mean you should pay to watch it day after day, and I certainly didn’t mean you should bring it home.”

23rd October 1932

Wally’s in a state of great excitement. She and Ernest are invited to the Thelma Furness’s country house for a weekend. Leicestershire. This will undoubtedly involve a long, cold train journey, because everything in this country does. It’s a pity Mr. Mussolini isn’t an Englishman.

I said, “And will the Prince of Wales be there?”

She said, “I don’t know. I could hardly ask. But we’re going to be quite prepared for it.”

Ernest has a book on etiquette, and Wally’s practicing her curtsies, but the main thing on her mind is clothes. She’s talking about empire-line georgette with capped sleeves, but my advice was to buy every item of warm underwear Gamages have on sale, and fur-lined boots, too. Crazy. Wherever Leicestershire is, you may be sure it’s nowhere near the frontiers of fashion.

Hattie Erlanger says Wally and Ernest will be expected to ride. She says it’s inconceivable to go to Leicestershire without a hacking jacket at the very least. Wally says that’s the trouble with people like Hattie. Their minds run along narrow, muddy ruts, and they fail to notice that thousands of civilized people go their whole lives without ever sitting on a horse.

25th October 1932

Yesterday to Fuller’s Tea Rooms with Rory and Flora. If you want to know what’s being said on the back stairs, take your nephews and nieces out to tea. Prince George goes dancing with black girls. The Duke of Westminster shouts at his new wife. And Lady Furness is getting a divorce. Funny Wally never mentioned that.

I brought them back to see my new house before Kettle drove them home. Both chiefly interested in which bedrooms they would have if I were to invite them to stay the night. I don’t know that I would invite them. Tea is one thing, but not the complications of bedtime stories and prayers and night-lights.

3rd November 1932

Found a dear little cashmere cardigan for Wally, edge-to-edge with a braid trim. If she follows my advice, that’s what she’ll wear to dinner in Leicestershire. As a matter of fact, I think she should avoid décolletage whenever possible. She has no bosom to speak of, and the skin on her back is poor.

Dinner at the Crosbies. Anne Belchester says she’s heard Thelma Furness keeps her country house ruinously hot for good paintings. Prosper Frith said he didn’t realize the Furnesses had any good paintings.

4th November 1932

To George Lightfoot’s for a small supper party. Came: Penelope and Fergus Blythe, a House of Commons man called Bob Boothby, and old Lady Ribblesdale. She’s the one who paid lawyers to get her a good divorce settlement from John Astor, when had she but known it, she could have waited a little longer, waved him aboard the Titanic, and inherited everything. They say it would be a curse to see into the future, but I don’t imagine Ava Ribblesdale thinks so.

Mr. Boothby was just back from a visit with Mr. Hitler in Germany, and said the man is quite insane and we’d better start building battleships while we still have time. Fergus Blythe said Boothby was squawking like a parlor maid who’d seen a mouse. I do agree with Fergus that Mr. Hitler is Germany’s business and no one else’s.

Much talk, too, about whether Roosevelt is going to beat Hoover.

Penelope said, “He should. He seems full of bright ideas for getting men back to work.”

Indeed. Full of ideas that people like me will have to pay for.

Lightfoot ran things rather effortlessly, for a single man. Duck terrine, tenderloin of pork, damson tart.

All evening my mind kept drifting to Wally and Ernest. I wonder whether they had dinner with the Prince of Wales.

8th November 1932

Wally is back from Leicestershire with bronchitis. She said she felt too ill to see anyone, but what are friends for if not comforting the sick? I hurried round with a bottle of Dr. Collis Browne’s soothing chlorodyne and a jar of chicken essence.

She did meet the Prince of Wales. Also his brother, Prince George, the one who’s reported to dance with black girls. The two princes were staying at a nearby house but motored over each day in time for luncheon and stayed till late.

She said Wales is short, boyish, and trim, and he calls Thelma “darling.” He didn’t hunt. No one did. Mainly they played old maid and watched Tom Mix movies on Thelma’s personal projection screen.

The big question no one dared ask is whether things will change after Thelma’s divorce. Connie Thaw told Wally the Prince leads a dog’s life, bullied by the King, chastized by the Queen. She said his weekends with Thelma are the only thing he has to look forward to. It seems to me it’s quite straightforward. Thelma will get her divorce, the Prince will marry her, and they’ll live happily ever after.

I thought Wally seemed rather flat; aside from a hacking cough, she doesn’t have anything to show for her trouble. All that fussing at the beauty parlor and studying newspapers for topical subjects of conversation. So she met a couple of princes? I doubt she exchanged more than two words with either of them. I think Wally’s gone about as far as she can go. Perhaps I should offer to introduce her to Ena Spain. Better to be properly acquainted with an ex-queen than to have one’s nose pressed hopelessly against the gates of Buckingham Palace.

10th November 1932

Franklin Roosevelt is the new President. Well, I’m glad Brumby didn’t live to see it. He never cared for him. Brumby was a Hoover man, through and through.

“Never vote for a lawyer, Maybell,” he advised me. “They’ll have their hands in your pocket before you can say ‘dollar.’”

Tea at Carlton Gardens. There was an unpleasant odor in Violet’s drawing room. I do hope it wasn’t dear Ena Spain. She was perspiring as usual, in spite of freezing fog. Went up to the nursery and found Flora playing Divorces with her dolls. She’s such a stitch.

“Let me smell your scent, Aunt Bayba,” she said. “You always smell nice. Like talgum bowder and jim tonics.”

I’m going to have fun when it’s her deb year. I’ll just take charge. If it’s left to Violet, the poor girl will come out smelling of Coal Tar soap.

15th November 1932

Lunch with Lightfoot. He dined at Carlton Gardens last evening and says there was an unaccountably awful smell in the drawing room. He said, “I thought you might bring it up with Violet. It would be better coming from you.”

Ena Spain wasn’t present, apparently, so at least she’s not to blame.

16th November 1932

Carlton Gardens is in uproar. The smell is now so bad it greets you before you reach the drawing room. When I arrived, a housemaid was flicking the pelmets with a feather duster—as though something like that could be dusted away!

Melhuish was pacing the floor, and Violet had even canceled her meetings.

The exterminator hadn’t been sent for, however. I’d have thought that was the very first thing to do.

Violet said, “To exterminate what? We don’t have rats.”

Trotman said, “Oh yes we do, Your Ladyship. I’ve seen ’em the size of cats outside the scullery.”

Thank heavens I’ve moved out. Melhuish took umbrage at my suggestion that the prime suspects must be the dogs. He said, “My dogs do not smell.”

Well, they most certainly do, but I didn’t particularly mean the dogs themselves, rather some little gift-offering one of them might have left behind. My advice to them was to have the room stripped out, ceiling to floor. Dollars to doughnuts they’ll find a doggie woops.

Violet says it couldn’t be more inconvenient. They have the Yugoslavias coming for the weekend. Crown Prince Paul and his wife, Olga.

17th November 1932

To the Paradise Club for Hattie Erlanger’s birthday. She and Judson are going to Jessie Woolworth’s for Christmas, in Palm Beach. Wally and Ernest are going to Landgravine Lily’s, Pips and Freddie are going to the Prosper Friths in Kent. Everyone seems fixed up except me, but no matter. Solitude holds no fears for me. I shall have delicious little meals served on a tray and immerse myself in the great thinkers of the day. I’ve been meaning to take up reading for quite some time. Wally swears that an informed mind improves the face.

More fog.

18th November 1932

Violet’s smell has been run to earth. George Lightfoot called me with the news this morning. Seven pieces of kippered herring tucked into pillow covers and down the arms of chairs. The finger has been pointed at Flora, but she maintains a “purgler” must have done it.

Lunch with Wally. Connie Thaw told her that Thelma’s divorce won’t mean the Prince of Wales can marry her. Some day he’ll be king, and there are rules about who he can marry. Well, surely the answer to that is for them to continue as they are until he becomes king. Then, once he’s in charge, he’ll be able to unmake inconvenient rules. I shall ask Violet.

20th November 1932

Violet says the Prince of Wales can never marry Thelma Furness, or any other divorced person. Neither can he change the rules when he becomes king. Only Parliament can do that. I begin to wonder if there are any advantages at all to being king.

I said, “Well, it seems hard cheese for Thelma when her husband has gone off on tiger shoots and left the door very obviously ajar.”

Violet said Melhuish enjoys a good duck-hunt when he can get it, but they’ve never allowed his absences to lead to moral laxity.

Flora is to be tried at Hope House School as a weekly boarder after Christmas, to see if she’s suited. She’s not supposed to know till nearer the time, but she does know. It was the first thing she told me when I went up to the nursery.

She said, “I won’t be suited. I’ll kick someone and then they’ll send me home.”

Doopie trying to explain to me about the business with the smell in the drawing room. She kept saying, “Vora but a gibba unna share.”

That’s the thing about the deaf. Insist as Violet may that Doopie isn’t backward, she certainly can’t get the difference between “kipper” and “gibba,” and, I’m afraid to say, it has rubbed off seriously on Flora.

School can only be a good idea.

Melhuish said, “Peculiar thing to do. Waste of a fine smokie, too. Damned if I understand it. Never had any of that kind of carry-on with the boys.”

23rd November 1932

I am invited to Philip Sassoon’s birthday luncheon at Trent Park. The question is, what to buy the man who has everything.

25th November 1932

George Lightfoot is also going to the Trent Park party. He always tries to find a bottle of some unusual and undrinkable liqueur by way of a gift, but he says Philip is very keen on ducks and suggests I think along those lines. No help at all. What does he propose I do? Go to St. James’s Park and capture a pair?

28th November 1932

Lunch with Wally, Hattie Erlanger, and Gladys Trilling. When Gladys heard about my invitation to Trent Park, she said, “Oh, Sassoon! The Court Jew! They say he’s fabulously generous, and if you admire something in one of his houses, he’s more than likely to give it to you. They say Her Majesty’s done terribly well out of him.”

Wally said, “Then I think Maybell had better introduce us all.”

I shall do no such thing.

To the Army & Navy. Bought a doorstop fashioned from a mallard duck decoy, very pretty.

5th December 1932

Trent Park is a dream. Acres of parkland, lakes, tree-lined avenues, and dozens of dusky servants who glide around silently and appear the very moment they’re needed. His sister, Sybil, attended, minus husband who was away at a tennis tournament. She looks haughty, very straight-backed, with iron-gray hair and rather hooded eyes, but she’s really very agreeable.

“Violet’s sister!” she said. “Of course! How very naughty of Violet not to have brought you to tea.”

The other guests were Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, a Polish piano player called Rubinstein plus wife, a Sassoon cousin from Paris, and two Italian airmen, with whom one could only gesticulate and offer the occasional “olé.”

We had oysters, flown up from Kent, and roast Guinea fowl dressed with home-grown oranges. In Hertfordshire! Then a blue cheese made on Sibyl’s estate in Norfolk and a plum pudding carried flaming and aloft by a six-foot Ethiopian in silk livery. Everything was perfect.

Lightfoot said, “Now will you please set the record straight. Maybell doesn’t believe you have stags with gilded antlers.”

Philip said, “Oh but I do, and if only it weren’t such a gray day, you’d see for yourself. I’ve trained them to note the position of the sun and waggle their heads accordingly. Syb believes animals should be left au naturel, but my stags are all trrragedians manqué. They’d have been deeply unhappy left naked on a moor.”

I’m sure he’s right. And I may not have seen the stags this time, but I did see his black swans. Very chic! I asked him how they were kept still long enough to dye their feathers, but he refused to say.

He loved his mallard doorstop and intends to place it at the entrance to his dressing room. Lightfoot took him a bottle of something made from roasted melon seeds.

7th December 1932

To Harrold’s Lending Library to select my Christmas reading: Ethelda Bedford, Maysie Grieg, George Bertram Shaw, Alma Sioux Scarberry. Kettle had just carried them into the house when Violet telephoned. She said, “What is this nonsense I hear about you spending Christmas alone?”

I believe George Lightfoot may have said something. He didn’t at all like my plans for a solitary Christmas, I could tell. He’s so attentive. I think he may have a little pash for me.

I said, “I shall be perfectly fine. I was alone last year, except for being frog-marched to church by Randolph Putnam and receiving an unsolicited visit from Junior, and no doubt I shall be alone in the future.”

“Not as long as I draw breath,” she said. “You’ll come to Carlton Gardens and be taken out of yourself.”

12th December 1932

The whole day in and out of the car and up and down in elevators, searching for gifts. I’m beginning to agree with Penelope Blythe: Christmas takes all the joy out of shopping and should really just be left to the lower classes.

For Ulick, a Tri-ang fort, for Rory an Erector Set, which I’m assured is the gift of choice for boys aged twelve, and for Flora, a Betty Boop tea service. Whisky for Melhuish, a gay jacquard scarf for Violet, to help modernize her look, and for Doopie, a copy of 301 Things for a Bright Girl to Do. She needs to be stretched.

To Bryanston Court for dinner. Came: Pips and Freddie Crosbie and the decorator Johnnie MacMullen, with a woman I took to be his mother, but who turned out to be the very unusual Lady Elsie Mendl. She was an actress but now does rooms for people like the Vanderbilts and the Fricks and is apparently ruthlessly strict with her clients. If Elsie Mendl dictates you must have tobacco-brown walls, there is no gainsaying her.

Also came friends of Ernest, the Rickatson Hatts. He runs a news agency, of all things. Wally certainly keeps her pledge to seat interesting mixes around her table.

Pips says Elsie Mendl is an invert and only married Charlie Mendl for his title. If it’s true, I must say she hides her tendencies very well. She even paints her nails.

There were no hackney cabs to be had, so I gave Mr. and Mrs. Hatt a lift to Westbourne Terrace. They were shy about accepting, but as I told them, I’m aware of the punishing hours people in their business are obliged to keep. Melhuish’s Times is always on the breakfast table by eight o’clock.

14th December 1932

Johnnie MacMullen is going to advise Wally on the remodeling of her apartment after Christmas. She says he’s hugely talented and has done Elsie Mendl’s homes from A to Z. Well, he’ll need to be hugely talented to make anything of Bryanston Court. I’d love to see her move somewhere with scope, but Ernest is such a stick in the mud.

She agrees with me that Mrs. Hatt is dull, but says she endures her because the husband is always good for whiling away an evening with Ernest. They often have macaroni cheese and peruse the Greek ancients, leaving her free to come dancing. The Hatts’ little shop is called Reuters, but Wally has no idea where it is.

17th December 1932

A festive evening at the Benny Thaws. They had an adorable little chorale of children to sing us carols around the Christmas tree, American children from the compound, with proud deportment and straight teeth. It caused me a flicker of nostalgia for Sweet Air. Just a flicker.

Rory and Ulick are home from school.

23rd December 1932

Violet says luncheon will be served at twelve-thirty sharp on Christmas Day so the kitchen maids can get away to visit their mothers. It’s going to make for a very long afternoon, unless, of course, we’re expected to take our tea at three so the rest of the help can go gallivanting to Essex. I don’t know why I don’t just take us all to Claridge’s.

24th December 1932

Violet says they always do things this way, it suits them very well and this is how children learn about their responsibilities to servants. Before the family meal is served, Melhuish goes below stairs to say a few words and carve the first slice of the servants’ goose, and this year Ulick will go with him, to see how it’s done. She says we can have tea whenever we choose, because Doopie will have charge of it, so as to allow Smith the rest of the day off.

All the more reason to go to Claridge’s.

A greeting card from Randolph Putnam. His mother passed away. And I am missed in Baltimore. Of course.

26th December 1932

The best-laid plans. Rory claimed Flora’s tea service and performed a very clever trick with overturned cups and disappearing sugar lumps, Flora was only interested in Rory’s Erector Set, and Ulick remained disappointingly aloof from his fort. It would have remained in its box if Lightfoot and Doopie hadn’t begun playing with it.

Violet gave me a calendar.

“So you can organize your time,” she said. “You’ll see the weeks laid out before you and be able to think how best to fill your days productively.”

Rory gave me a rough-hewn letter rack made in his handicrafts’ class, Lightfoot gave me a coffret of candy, and Flora gave me a pink satin letter M, stitched quite nicely and filled with padding.

Violet said, “How clever. Is it a scented sachet?”

“No,” said Flora, “it’s an em. We made it out of old ploomers.”

Melhuish’s sister Elspeth and the Rear Admiral Salty Laird looked in during the afternoon. Elspeth said, “Now Flora, are ye looking forward to being a big girl and going to Hope House?”

Flora closed her eyes. She does that when you say something she doesn’t want to hear. She gets that from Doopie.

Rory said, “You’ll like it when you get there, Flora. You’ll make friends. And have cocoa every night. I used not to want to go to school, but you get used to it, you see, and then it’s really good fun.”

She said, “Then I’ll come to your school.”

Ulick said, “You can’t. You’re a girl.”

She said, “Well I shan’t stay at Hope House. I shall run away.”

Elspeth said, “Do ye know what happens to girls who run away, Flora? The bogeyman comes after them and they’re never seen again.”

Doopie and Lightfoot both got her with the peashooter cannons.

Ulick said, “I really wonder why we’re bothering with all this. Why not have her taught at home until it’s time for her to be finished? That’s what they did with Pentlow’s sister and she’s now out and practically engaged to Gore-Cummings. Education seems to me to be quite wasted on girls.”