Marriages are Made in Bond Street

by Penrose Halson

  Phyllis’s sympathetic sister, now married to another of the Bureau’s clients, had taken her into her new home and wrapped her in loving-kindness until she revived, got a job as an art teacher, and felt able to go in quest of a future.

  In 1949 Heather introduced Phyllis to some pleasant, untraumatized men who aided the revivifying process. When she started to correspond with Austin, she was almost back to her former happy self. Austin’s letters were refreshingly straightforward and lively, and when he came over to London to do some business deals Phyllis felt she already knew and almost loved him. The day before he returned to New York, Phyllis stretched out her left hand to show the jubilant match-makers her sparkling sapphire and diamond engagement ring, while Austin thanked them for ‘the best goddam deal I ever did!’

  Being so often in the news, the Marriage Bureau inevitably inspired imitators, more and less scrupulous, giving the press a new storyline: ‘WOMEN BEWARE! These Friendship Clubs can snare the lonely’. Undercover reporters investigated agencies which refused to reveal their fees, assessed a client’s wealth and charged the maximum they could extract, made totally unsuitable introductions, or were even – a Sunday Pictorial reporter asserted – ‘thinly veiled adjuncts to the vice trade’.

  Such reports stirred public anxiety and indignation. The Marriage Guidance Council weighed in. Meetings were held with the three most reputable bureaux, two run by ex-army officers who wanted to establish a Marriage Agents Association. They proposed a code of conduct, one committee to settle disputes and another to decide the principles on which bureaux should operate, together with their policy in relation to new social trends. The colonels also sought a confidential blacklist of ‘undesirables and moral perverts, who might seek to use a marriage bureau for improper purposes’.

  ‘Good lord!’ groaned Heather, ‘there’ll be no time to run the Bureau. We’ll spend all day in blasted committees! And those high-minded but hidebound colonels won’t let us bend a single rule – everything will conform to some sacred article in the holy Code of Conduct. We’ll have solemn pow-wows about social trends, as if we’re all earnest do-gooders, which I most certainly am not! And we’ll be banned from taking on any moral perverts, who are much the most interesting of all the clients. I do so love a cosy little conflab with a nice moral pervert after a morning of melancholy moral high-grounders. Moral perverts have such an unusual take on life, so different from one’s own dear family and friends!’

  ‘Come now, Heather,’ tut-tutted Dorothy, shocked even though she rather agreed with Heather’s flippant views. ‘The colonels mean very well, and it would certainly benefit us to stand out from the dubious agencies that are giving everybody a bad name.’

  Despite the worthiness of the cause and the insistence of the colonels, the Marriage Agents Association never materialized. Before it foundered completely Heather pulled out, disagreeing with the recommended fee structure. The Bureau had always charged a modest registration fee, so that everybody could have a chance, and an After Marriage Fee payable only by those who were successful. Both Heather and Humphrey the solicitor thought this ‘payment by results’ structure much fairer than a flat fee for a number of introductions. It also gave the Bureau a strong incentive to find good matches, rather than dish out only superficially suitable introductions. Once again the press reported Heather’s opinion:

  I am in complete agreement with the idea that a control of the undesirables is fundamentally sound, but I do not consider the proposed association is going the right way about it.

  Simply stated, my view is that essentially it should be to the advantage of a bureau to get people married rather than to benefit by merely introducing men to women. Disagreement on that point led to my withdrawal from the proposed association, but I wish them every success so long as they do not claim a monopoly of respectability.

  Outside the association there will be one bureau which for over ten years has employed ‘methods and principles of the highest possible level’ and provided for the public a bureau ‘to which they can go without fear of embarrassment or exploitation’.

  A project which did come to fruition was a play, Marriage Playground, produced in London’s Q Theatre. It had been conceived in 1944 by Picot’s friends, playwrights Simon Wardell and Kieran Tunney. While working at the Bureau, Picot had written to Heather in Scotland:

  29 May 1944

  Darling Heather

  Simon and Kieran, the Boys who are writing ‘our’ play, have just left, and I think their idea is quite good. One set and eleven characters, tentative title It Started in Bond Street (mine. If you can think of a better one let us have it.)

  Action takes place at the country house of Chichi Templeton who runs the Bureau, and who invites the clients for the weekend when things have gone well with them.

  Characters: (This may not be quite accurate as it was told me over dinner and I did not make notes but the Boys are going to discuss it with me all the time.)

  – A friend of Chichi’s just back from America

  – A glamour deb, based on Amelia Hutton

  – An Irish girl who has come into a little money and wants to ‘better’ herself

  – A Russian (based on your Princess Poppy who is a great friend of the Boys. For your ear alone she isn’t and never has been a princess!)

  – Chichi’s housekeeper

  – A South American who is rich and wants to marry a society girl and finally marries the housekeeper

  – An American based on a man they know

  – An intellectual (ditto)

  I can’t remember the other two.

  The final curtain is Chichi’s American friend saying he had no idea what a grand job she is doing, he would like to come on the books, and she having been vague and gay during the play suddenly becomes very official and says, ‘Well, we give you a form to fill up,’ etc!

  I think it might work out quite well, and they will get it done in two months, and Bill Linnet has promised to read it and Peter Danbery has asked for first refusal of the Boys’ next play (which is this one) and Binkie is interested to read it, so if it is good it should get taken, and they are setting out to write an amusing play, but to stress that the Bureau is of social value, so I do hope it will come off. It should be done in time for a birthday treat for your son and heir!

  I wish you were here to help.

  All love, Picot

  Marriage Playground was not performed until September 1948, and only after a legal dispute. Always ferociously protective of her Bureau’s reputation, Heather objected to some scenes in the chirpy little comedy, and to the name of the fictitious bureau: she took action to prevent production unless New Bond-Street Marriage Bureau was changed to Mayfair Marriage Bureau. Recognizing that Heather was far too redoubtable to fight, Kieran Tunney and Simon Wardell yielded to her demands and made her requested alterations. Peace was declared, and Heather attended the first night accompanied by fifty of the married couples she had introduced.

  The play was, wrote one critic, ‘written in a vein of bright banter and youthful cynicism’, and was remarkable only for some excellent performances, principally by Irene Handl, whose ‘raucously overacted lady of uncouth mind and utterance reduced the rest of the company to dim helplessness whenever she appeared’. It rapidly vanished from the theatrical repertoire; but the Bureau’s name had appeared yet again in the press, together with photographs of Heather, elegant as ever, pictured laughing as she dispensed advice to an actress at rehearsal.

  Heather was further pleased by the publicity attracted to the Bureau by a film first shown in 1949. Marry Me!, produced by Betty E. Box, frolicked merrily through the adventures of four couples matched by two elderly spinsters running an eccentric but ethical marriage bureau.

  When planning the Marriage Bureau in 1939, neither Heather nor Mary had had much idea of what making introductions would entail, and never imagined that they would be constantly called on for guidance. But the clients had soon disabused them of this fond
ignorance: they regarded the match-makers as founts of wisdom and knowledge on how to assist their courtship. They telephoned and wrote letters, or even turned up in person in search of help. In her book Marriage is my Business Heather cast her mind back to those early days:

  In private life I am a coward. If I am asked to praise a new hat, I will rave about it even if I think it hideous. In my office, securely behind my desk and having heard from Mr X that he likes Miss Z but thinks that she is overdressed, I will look Miss Z straight in the eye and tell her to wear one less brooch, no flowers, and no eye-veil, if she is going to wear a flowered dress, fur, choker necklace and long earrings. I will also tell Mr A that none of our clients like him because his manners are gauche, and suggest that he takes off his hat at the proper times and lets the lady through doors first, even holding them open for her rather than letting them swing back in her face. And when Miss A comes in to ask why she has heard no more from Mr Z, she can’t understand it, she liked him so much and it was the same thing with Messrs U, V & W, what can the matter be? – then I have to tell her, because we have had similar reports of her from all the men she met, yes, they liked her, but she chases them up too hard. She frightens them to death.

  Some clients were skilfully deflected from unrealistic aspirations. Heather’s book again:

  Although I never attempt to tell a client what I think would be the right kind of person for him, a little toning down or some good sound commonsense remarks may be necessary sometimes. One young man who had a salary of six hundred a year told me that he wanted to meet a girl who looked and dressed like Betty Grable. As in her last film she had worn little but a raffia skirt, I asked him to be more explicit, and also pointed out that it might be somewhat difficult to look like any film-star on his salary. We had a long talk and I told him I thought that it had better be Betty Grable or nobody for him at the moment, and a few months later he came back and said he’d be happy if he could meet a girl with a good skin and complexion and shapely legs.

  And when another young man described his preference for ‘a very sophisticated, much-travelled, elegantly dressed kind of woman,’ I had to point out that she might not fit into his life as a clerk in an office in Worthing. He said, ‘Perhaps you are right,’ and married a very pleasant, if less spectacular, girl working in a bank in Brighton.

  Dorothy too developed her innate knack for dealing with clients’ problems and impossible ideals. Looking after her ageing parents had kept Dorothy at home, so she had never married; but her heart and soul were in marrying off others. Heather disliked Dorothy’s chain-smoking, and worried about her hacking, bronchial cough; but she greatly admired her beautiful manners and her astuteness. Dorothy was cheerful and sympathetic without being sentimental, and if she thought that a client was asking for too much she would tell them so, kindly but insistently.

  One day a woman came in who had divorced her husband after he ran off with his secretary. She was full of self-pity and had obviously let herself go, putting on weight which made her clothes – which needed a good brush – too tight. She had decided that the world was against her and become a thorough misery. Dorothy gave her a good ticking-off. Other people’s husbands had left them, she admonished, and anyway who would want to marry her, looking as she did now? Before the Bureau would take her on she must pull herself together. The woman took the advice to heart and did just that.

  Dorothy was exceptionally conscientious. Calling into the office one day just before going on holiday Heather found her sneezing and wheezing like a grampus. She waved a letter at Heather, looking anguished. ‘Oh, Miss Jenner, I do hope I’m not going to have flu – and just while you’re away too! What shall I do with this letter – it’s from a man who’s impotent and wants to join?’

  ‘Tell him to come in for an interview. Then you’ll find out if he’s just trying to shock us. If he really is impotent, maybe he’ll suit Miss Burton: she’s got hardly a female bone in her body.’

  ‘All right,’ snuffled Dorothy. ‘And how shall I reply to this woman?’ She handed Heather another letter.

  Miss Jenner seemed bored when I told her about my holiday in Wales. This disappointed me, as I had an hour to spare before I caught my train, and I came in to the Bureau simply to have a cosy chat, nothing to do with business. Next time I would like to talk to Miss Harbottle.

  ‘I am spared! Thank the Lord!’ hooted Heather. ‘I remember her maundering on and on about Wales – she extolled its virtues as if it were paradise. She even told me how much she loves leeks, and how to cook that insipid veg – you can imagine how that went down with me! You have a cosy chat with her, dear Bottle, and find her an excruciatingly dull Welshman who adores leek soup. So sorry to leave you with impotents and dullards, but I know you’ll do beautifully, you always do. So over to you – I’m off! Toodle pip!’

  20

  Thanks to Uncle George

  ‘CUPID’S FRIEND HAS BIRTHDAY’ headlined the Evening Standard, above the information that ‘The most deliberate client took very nearly the ten years’ existence of Marriage Bureau to make up his mind, the quickest decided in two months.’

  ‘Not true!’ exclaimed Heather. ‘Far more than one couple took far less than two months. The quickest decided the very first time they met, and one of the speediest sent us a telegram: ‘MET AT LUNCH STOP ENGAGED AT DINNER STOP THANK YOU’.

  Heather and Dorothy decided to give a party to celebrate the Bureau’s tenth birthday. Since opening day, 17 April 1939, Great Britain had undergone startling changes, beginning with the war. A decade later, the demoralizing shortages of food, housing, money, petrol, jobs and gaiety were diminishing. The NHS was established, self-service stores appeared on the high street, the first West Indians trailblazed into London. The Kinsey Report exposed the country’s buried sex life, the first Motor Show since the war pulled in thousands, and women were entranced by the full-skirted, feminine New Look, a sensational contrast to utility clothing.

  In this atmosphere of burgeoning optimism, Heather and Dorothy revelled in planning their party. They conferred at length about the invitation list. They omitted various difficult or unpleasant clients, including the Reverend Hogg, who had done his unchristian best to withhold the After Marriage Fee, and the critical MP, a very early client whom girls had greatly disliked for his arrogance and coldness. They also blacklisted the thrice-engaged Miss Jenkins, who had foolishly ignored Heather’s strictures about having affairs and talking about them, and had embarked on a torrid liaison with a well-known married man. Others with a black mark were the Sheikh, from whom they had heard, blessedly, nothing since throwing him out, together with Mrs Dale-Pratt who, despite being splenetic about the Sheikh, still plagued the Bureau with incessant telephone calls pleading for an introduction.

  They invited some clients whom they would dearly have loved to see, but who were too far away. Fred Adams, now married to Nancy, sister of his childhood sweetheart Elsie, whom she closely resembled, was back in Australia. John Parker and his wife Ada had left London as soon as the war ended, to set up a cabinet-making business in Cornwall. Myrtle and Rory seldom crossed the Irish Sea, but sent still-glowing letters telling of Myrtle’s skill at singing and dancing, and enclosing snapshots from which it was impossible to judge the colour of her hair.

  Airletters sent to Mary Oliver in America had not been answered since soon after the end of the war, so Heather did not know what had become of her friend. She posted an invitation to the party, but sadly, no reply came.

  As they wrote in and crossed out names on the party list, Heather and Dorothy fell to reminiscing about some of the strange and wonderful clients who had walked up the Bureau’s stairs.

  ‘Do you remember that American, quite out of his depth in London, who never met the girl we introduced him to?’

  ‘Oh yes, I didn’t meet him, but Picot wrote to me about him when I was in Scotland. Picot wasn’t particularly fond of Americans, I really can’t imagine why, and she was very scathing, said he was comp
letely humourless, the girl had told him he would recognize her because she would be carrying a penguin. He complained to Picot, said he was baffled, was this some goddam British custom? Did the girl have a zoo? What did Picot mean, a penguin was a book?’

  ‘Yes,’ reflected Dorothy, ‘he did make rather a song and dance of it, and Picot was a bit crisp – but I think she had been very fond of an American actor who didn’t reciprocate, that was the problem.’

  ‘Ah, that would explain it. I remember some really funny ones: that trapeze artist who needed a woman to be both wife and partner in his act. I told him that if I were to ask a young woman if she would be prepared to wear scanty satin knickers and two stars on her nipples, and swing on a little bar from the top of a circus tent, she would probably walk straight out. Luckily, my reservations filled him with such indignation that he walked straight out! And almost immediately a very ordinary-looking suburban girl sidled in and announced that she was set on marrying a gypsy and going a-roaming with the Romanies. She hadn’t told her parents, she explained with great seriousness, because she thought they might not like the idea: they wanted her to marry a nice solicitor from Surbiton. I told her the nearest thing to a gypsy we might have had on the books was the trapeze artist, but he hadn’t registered. She looked glum and wandered out, so that was two impossible clients in succession!’

  Once they got going, Heather and Dorothy spent an hour capping each other’s stories. Dorothy described in dramatic detail the young man who flung into the office announcing that he would shoot himself unless the Bureau found him a wife, but who did not stay to find out whether such a life-saver could be found, turning abruptly to dive back down the stairs.