Queen Bees: Six Brilliant and Extraordinary Society Hostesses Between the Wars – a Spectacle of Celebrity, Talent, and Burning Ambition

by Siân Evans

  Maud seized any opportunity to travel; she made frequent trips to London to attend the opera, sometimes taking her daughter with her, and in 1906 they travelled to America in some style on a Cunard liner to see Horace Carpentier, who was now living in Saratoga. In the summer of 1910, as soon as Sir Bache returned from a trip to Scotland, Maud went to Munich with George Moore to hear Wagner. It was evident that Maud was keen to avoid Sir Bache at any cost.

  Travel for its own sake also captivated the Colefaxes. During the Edwardian era Sibyl and Arthur took advantage of the long Bar vacations to explore Europe. They travelled en famille throughout the Low Countries, Germany, the Italian Alps, northern Italy, Tuscany, Umbria and the Balkans. They also rented houses in the country, once their two sons had been born: Peter in March 1903 and Michael in June 1906. Through a very distant cousin of Sibyl’s, Eliza Wedgwood, and her neighbour Lady Elcho the Colefaxes met notable writers and intellectuals, such as H. G. Wells, James Barrie and the Webbs. Sibyl also cultivated Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote, whom she first met in 1906; he was a reclusive man obsessed with creating his astonishing garden, and he shunned company, except for those who shared his passion for horticulture. Sibyl tackled him like a project, reading extensively on the subject and visiting other exceptional gardens. She conversed with Johnston from a position of genuine knowledge, and they remained friends for life.

  In contrast to Sibyl’s rather lonely, isolated and tense childhood, she and Arthur were keen for their children to have an idyllic upbringing, and they were allowed more liberty than most children of the era. The Colefaxes liked country house life and often stayed with wealthier friends such as the diamond millionaire and philanthropist Alfred Beit, and his brother Sir Otto Beit, who in 1906 inherited Alfred’s lovely house called Tewin Water in Hertfordshire. Through Arthur’s work, the family were becoming well connected. Molly Harmsworth, later Lady Northcliffe, was one of Michael Colefax’s godmothers, and Sibyl and Arthur often stayed with the Northcliffes at Sutton Place in Surrey. When Lord Northcliffe bought the Observer in 1905, it was the Colefaxes who introduced him to the man he subsequently appointed as the paper’s editor, J. L. Garvin, at an intimate little dinner at their home. Sibyl wanted to establish for herself a virtual colony of intelligent, entertaining friends, much as she had found by accident that spring in Florence.

  The Colefaxes continued to explore Europe, visiting Spain in 1908 and Greece and Turkey in 1909. In 1911 they sailed from Liverpool to Canada, where Sybil was struck by the number of upper-class women who did their own cooking and cleaning, servants being a rarity. They stayed at the Canadian home of their friends the Northcliffes. In her diary Sibyl noted the financial success of entrepreneurs of all stripes in the New World – her nascent business skills were burgeoning.

  Edward VII died in 1910, and the widowed Margaret Greville attended his funeral, as she had his coronation. The new King, George V, had disapproved of his father’s infidelities and was scrupulously faithful to his own wife, Queen Mary. George was aware that Mrs Greville had facilitated the King’s affair with Mrs Keppel. While Alice tactfully left for a lengthy tour of the Far East, Mrs Greville met and struck up a friendship with Queen Mary that was to have far-reaching repercussions for the royal family. The two women shared a love of beautiful objects, paintings and furniture, and their knowledge of the fine and decorative arts was largely self-taught. In addition, Mrs Greville continued to take an interest in politics; both her husband and her father had been MPs. In fact, in the early twentieth century, four of the husbands of the six Queen Bees were or became Members of Parliament.

  Waldorf Astor’s decision to go into politics was initially due to his indifferent health. Having been advised in 1908 to abandon all strenuous physical exercise, his social conscience led him to a new career. In 1910 he was elected Conservative MP for the Sutton division of Plymouth, and he subsequently concentrated on promoting Anglo-American relations, agriculture and health. Nancy and Waldorf were an effective working partnership; she would campaign on his behalf in Plymouth by the simple method of knocking on doors and appealing to the startled householders: ‘My husband is standing for Parliament. Will you vote for him?’ As well as having a large family, Nancy threw herself into entertaining the wealthy and the influential, both at Cliveden and at their London base, 4 St James’s Square.

  Despite her apparent joie de vivre, Nancy suffered from bouts of ill-health during the early years of her marriage. Child-bearing was a considerable strain on women of the era, even well-off ones. Regardless of how many staff and servants they might employ once the child was born, antenatal care was still fairly rudimentary, and obstetrical procedures were primitive; in addition, in an age before antiseptics and antibiotics, the process of giving birth carried the risk of puerperal fever, which killed many otherwise healthy women. Nancy and Waldorf had a large family of five children together. William Waldorf was born in 1907, (Nancy) Phyllis Louise in 1909 and (Francis) David Langhorne in 1912, but after the births of these three children Lady Astor lacked all vitality and was prescribed bed rest by her doctors, which left her depressed and restless. However, in 1913 she discovered the writings of Mary Baker Eddy; the American founder of Christian Science had published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1875. With the zeal of the convert Nancy Astor read an extract from this book every day for the rest of her life. She was convinced that all sickness was mere ‘error’, and that people could cure themselves through willpower alone. She saw infirmity of any sort as due to a lack of faith, an attitude that was later to alienate her own ailing husband and family. Christian Science was a philosophy that suited Nancy Astor’s natural self-belief and innate determination. She was unstoppable in her energies, and unshakeable in her beliefs.

  As Waldorf’s Parliamentary career developed, they entertained on an impressive scale, giving several balls a year for five hundred guests at a time and dinner parties for sixty. Most weekends they would have twenty or thirty house guests staying at Cliveden, the elite of London society or the upper circles of the political world. Like Nancy, Waldorf was teetotal, even though his father William stoutly declared that he had drunk wine every day of his life since the age of seven, and insisted that his robust health was due to his reliance on stimulants. Nevertheless the Astors provided excellent wines for their visitors, but canny guests could ensure preferential treatment, thanks to the ministrations of the expert butler, Mr Lee, who was happy to provide alcoholic refreshments for house guests in their rooms, and was well-rewarded with tips.

  Lavish hospitality was also on offer at the Londonderrys’ luxurious homes, where political entertaining was in their blood. Despite being handsome and charming, their eldest son, Charley, was not considered especially intelligent or politically astute by his contemporaries. He never forgot that he was a direct descendant of Robert Castlereagh, the architect of the settlement at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which brought a negotiated peace to Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Along with his spectacular wealth, Charley had inherited a belief that, like his illustrious ancestor, he was a natural statesman and diplomat, born to lead. He entered Parliament as the Tory MP for Maidstone in 1906, a post he held till he inherited his father’s title in 1915, gaining nine years’ valuable experience of Parliament.

  Meanwhile Edith devoted herself to raising a family, producing five children over two decades: Maureen was born in 1900, Edward (known as Robin) in 1902, Margaret in 1910, Helen in 1911 and Mairi in 1921. She also supported her husband’s career, learning the social duties expected of her as a grand Tory lady, by observing Lady Theresa, doyenne of massive political receptions at Londonderry House. However, Edith was not a natural conservative; she was developing a robust political consciousness of her own, and she clashed with her intimidating mother-in-law. Edith supported the Suffragists, led by Millicent Fawcett, who believed that they should use legal and constitutional means to achieve votes for women. (The Suffragettes, on the other hand, stated they would use any means pos
sible to achieve the same end.) Edith had written a letter to The Times in April 1912, in reply to a seething diatribe against women’s suffrage, and Edith’s mother-in-law, Theresa, was appalled at what she called ‘a young hound running riot’. As Edith recorded afterwards, ‘henceforth my attitude in home circles was regarded with grave misgivings7’2.

  While the Suffragists attempted to engage in reasoned political debate and won some sympathy among the elite, the more militant Suffragettes were deplored by the establishment because of their strident demands for votes for women. They were willing to confront politicians face to face, which was considered unseemly, and Winston Churchill was a particular target. On two occasions, when he was staying at Rest Harrow, the seaside holiday home owned by the Astors at Sandwich in Kent, protesting Suffragettes attempted to block the road to deny him access, but he managed to avoid them. It was ironic that this should happen at one of Nancy’s houses, since she was later to become the first female MP to take her seat in Parliament.

  Arthur Colefax was briefly the Conservative MP for a Manchester constituency in 1910 but lost the seat in 1911, when the Liberals triumphed in a general election. He was considered as a candidate for the seat of Hythe in 1912 but was passed over in favour of Philip Sassoon, who later befriended a number of the hostesses. Meanwhile Arthur ‘took silk’, becoming a KC in 1912; his career was thriving, and he joined the Athenaeum and Garrick clubs. With their new-found prosperity Sibyl fulfilled a long-held ambition to buy a comfortable and roomy house in the country, where she could entertain their theatrical and musical friends for weekends. In 1912 they acquired Old Buckhurst, in Kent, a Tudor property that had been converted into an attractive, idiosyncratic house. Sibyl decorated and furnished the place with imagination and natural taste, and also tackled the garden, relying on the advice of Lawrie Johnston of Hidcote. The Colefaxes’ income was still unreliable as they were largely dependent on Arthur’s legal fees, so Sibyl always budgeted carefully for the improvements she made to their houses and the copious entertaining of their ever-growing coterie of friends.

  No such financial restrictions curbed Mrs Greville’s plans. She became one of the wealthiest women in the country, but sadly it was through the death of her father. Frail and elderly, William McEwan had been knocked down by a horse-drawn carriage while crossing the road near Hyde Park, and on 12 May 1913 he passed away at his London home. Maggie was with him at the end, and mourned him sincerely. The relationship between McEwan and his supposed stepdaughter was extremely close, and it is significant that he left her an estate worth £1.5 million, the equivalent of about £65 million today. He also included two-thirds of the voting shares in McEwan’s brewery, a significant bequest as he had two nephews working in the business, sons of his sister Janet Younger, and might have left the shares to them. Maggie also inherited his grand Mayfair home, 16 Charles Street, formerly the home of the Earls of Craven.

  Margaret Greville was now fifty years old; she was extremely rich, but she had no husband or children, no close relatives, and both her parents were dead. In that era widows were expected to live quietly, perhaps retiring to the country with deferential staff, employing a sedate paid companion, indulging their pets, socialising a little with the local gentry – perhaps an occasional supper party or a game of bridge. However, Margaret Greville was made of sterner stuff, and she was resolved that once her year-long period of mourning was over, she would return to the fray and re-establish herself as one of London’s leading society hostesses. She invested in pearls and diamonds (jewels deemed suitable to be worn with mourning by Queen Victoria, the acknowledged authority on the subject) and threw herself into cultivating the political elite of London. She also commissioned extensive improvements at her father’s former home, 16 Charles Street, once again employing her favourite architects, Mewès and Davis.

  While Mrs Greville was targeting the establishment, Lady Cunard was planning her escape from the squirearchy. At the Munich music festival in 1910, Maud and George Moore were both injured and narrowly escaped death under the wheels of a runaway car that ploughed into the crowd, killing two and injuring many. Perhaps this event made Maud consider her life to date, and her future. Despite the social status and financial security it provided, her sixteen-year marriage to Sir Bache had become unbearable, and in August 1911 scandal erupted. Early one morning some estate workmen using ladders to repair the stable block’s clock tower at Nevill Holt spotted Lady Cunard through her open bedroom window, and she was not alone. One of the house guests, the conductor Thomas Beecham, was with her. For a married woman of any class, being caught in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband transgressed every social taboo. Even worse, the witnesses were Sir Bache’s employees. Like Caesar’s wife, the squire’s lady had not only to be above reproach but also to be seen to be so, to command the respect of the lower classes for the upper crust. Maud could no longer continue her old life, even if she wanted to. Once more Lady Cunard set out for London, taking Nancy with her, but this time she had no intention of returning.

  Maud had fallen in love with Thomas Beecham; now she created a new home in London near him. Because the Asquiths were in residence at 10 Downing Street, 20 Cavendish Square was vacant. Lady Cunard rented it from her friends and had it redecorated at extravagant expense. The drawing room was littered with rare books, bibelots and antiques, and the interior was redecorated in fashionable Ballets Russes style; Beecham’s orchestra had played for Diaghilev’s dance company when they took London by storm in 1911. Lady Cunard adopted the strong colours and exotic finishes used to such great effect by the ballet’s designer, Léon Bakst. She acquired a dining table with an inlaid lapis lazuli top, and elegant Louis Quinze furniture, whose gilded frames shone against the walls of emerald green. Lady Cunard created a remarkable interior, like a theatrical set, against which to set her players. Here she could entertain to her heart’s content the pretty, the smart, the intelligent, the powerful and the risqué. It was an eclectic mix of people, and, unlike more traditional hostesses of that era, she found it most stimulating to mix people from diverse walks of life. Lord Berners, Winston Churchill, Mrs Patrick Campbell, the Londonderrys and Somerset Maugham might find themselves rubbing shoulders with the Prince of Wales and, of course, Thomas Beecham.

  Beecham’s grandfather had founded the company manufacturing the eponymous liver pills, and established the family fortune. However, Thomas Beecham, born in 1879, had fallen out with his father, Joseph, because he had confined Thomas’s mother to an asylum. The resulting family rift meant that for a number of years father and son were estranged, and Thomas struggled financially while establishing himself as a conductor. Wealthy Lady Cunard had considerable charms for him, including her financial generosity.

  Thomas Beecham had married a resonantly named American, Utica Celestia Welles, in 1903 and they had two sons, born in 1904 and 1909. Thomas first encountered Lady Cunard at a dinner party in London in late 1909. She was six years older than him, but they shared a passion for music and their friendship developed. She invited him to stay at Nevill Holt; his first visit there was 16 August 1910, and during the following year he stayed there on seven further occasions, the last visit being on 14 August 1911. Beecham ended the love affair he was currently conducting with a married woman called Maud Foster in order to embark on the burgeoning love affair with Lady Cunard; as all three of them were married, discretion was essential.

  But within three months of the revelations at Nevill Holt there was a further scandal. In October 1911 Beecham was named as co-respondent in a divorce case. While he and Mrs Foster were still having an affair, Thomas had written her an exuberant letter describing a reconciliation with his father. The letter was hidden in a stocking, where it was discovered by the housekeeper, who handed it to Mr Foster. A second letter came to light, and Mr Foster petitioned to have their marriage dissolved on the grounds of adultery. Even legal representation from Charles Dickens’s son, Henry Dickens KC, could not convince the judge that Thomas and Mau
d had been just good friends. Beecham’s handsome appearance was probably against him; the News of the World enthusiastically described him as looking like ‘a smart French army officer, being tall and slim, with neatly trimmed, glistening black hair, a thick black moustache and chin-beard, and large, dark expressive eyes’. The judge agreed to a decree nisi, and Beecham was left with a hefty bill for the costs, a sum of £695 (more than £45,000 in today’s values) as well as his own expenses.

  Beecham separated from his wife, Utica, in February 1912, moving into his club, but she refused to divorce him. However, his professional career went from strength to strength; in May 1912 he was named as one of the conductors for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He conducted the thrillingly modern Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov seven times, with the astonishing dancer Nijinsky as its star. It was the sensation of musical London. Following this triumph, he and Lady Cunard holidayed together in Venice. She had comprehensively ‘burned her boats’ in leaving her husband to live in London near her lover. The events of 1911 and 1912 had proved that she would not be the exclusive recipient of Beecham’s affections, but that did not deter her.