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

by Siân Evans

  Hostesses sometimes clashed because they pursued the same quarry. Virginia Woolf recalled one occasion when Sibyl Colefax was visiting her, and a message arrived from Lady Cunard inviting the writer to dinner, despite the two women never having met. Virginia was amused at Sibyl’s outrage, because Lady Colefax had bombarded the writer with unsolicited invitations for months in order to scrape acquaintance. ‘“I’ve never heard of such insolence!” she exclaimed. Her face was contorted with a look that reminded me of the look on a tigress’s face when someone snatches a bone from its paws. She abused Lady Cunard. Nothing she could say was bad enough for her.’5

  Oswald Mosley was much in demand with a number of the Queen Bee hostesses; he had served with distinction in the Royal Flying Corps in the Great War, had been injured and was a wealthy young man with flashing eyes, a slight limp and a rented flat in Grosvenor Square. He was elected the Conservative member for Harrow in the ‘Khaki Election’ of 1918. Nancy Astor, Lady Colefax, Lady Cunard, Lady Londonderry and Mrs Greville vied to attract him to their receptions and dinner parties. Lady Cunard, in his opinion, was the most effective of the hostesses; as Oswald Mosley said, she understood that society should consist of ‘conversation by brilliant men against a background of lovely and appreciative women, a process well calculated continually to increase the supply of such men’6. Naturally, he saw himself as one of the brilliant men. Another young would-be politician who benefitted from the hostesses’ benign influence was Bob Boothby MP. He was taken up by all the hostesses, but his particular favourite was Mrs Ronnie Greville. He described her as ‘a bit of an old bag, but very good to me […] she regarded me as a boy from her native city who was making good; and we had an agreeable relationship on this basis. She had the shrewdness of a typical lowland Scot, and as far as patronage was concerned, she was extremely powerful.’7

  The hostesses used their desks like those of captains of industry, planning and working. Sibyl Colefax had a fold-down writing flap installed in the back of her chauffeur-driven Rolls so that she could deal with her correspondence between appointments. Securing guests required organisation and planning. Weekend parties and formal dinners were arranged well in advance. The Big Six hostesses would pore over their lists of names to achieve the right mix; they were aided in this organisational task by filing systems and planners, often devised for them by their personal secretaries. Some devised helpful systems allowing the dedicated hostess to compile categories of guests according to their status and interests. Margot Asquith maintained a mysterious code, which was eventually cracked by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, who found herself described on Margot’s list as ‘B.T. and G.’, which it turned out meant bridge, tennis and golf.

  Having drawn up a shortlist of targets, they would write to them with an invitation and an instruction to RSVP, and a prompt acceptance or a swift ‘with regrets’ note was expected by return. Having secured their quarry, they would expect the guest to keep the date; ‘Put it in your book’ was the command from formidable society mavens such as Mrs Greville, Lady Cunard and Mrs Vanderbilt. A last-minute cancellation was, of course, always a possibility, and a presentable substitute was often scrambled for at the last minute.

  There were fixed events: Mrs Corrigan gave an annual cabaret party, and by the late 1920s Lady Cunard was regularly arranging suppers for the Prince of Wales and his latest mistress. There were frequent and lavish house parties and dinner parties all over Mayfair and Belgravia, and royal visitors were welcomed with red carpets on the pavements outside the houses. ‘One uses up so many red carpets in a season’, sighed that veteran hostess Mrs Greville. The prospect of famous faces and glamorous gowns always attracted crowds of bystanders, the public and journalists, who were marshalled by police. Typical of the excitement was the ball in aid of the Italian hospital held at Mrs Ronnie’s house, 16 Charles Street, in May 1924. So well attended was the event and so immense the crush that many lovely evening frocks were damaged. The hostess herself, who had been dining elsewhere, had to convince the police of her identity before she was allowed to drive up to her own front door. Even the guests of honour, the King and Queen of Italy, had to sit waiting in their car while their footmen cleared a path through the throng. Inside the house, the Prince of Wales, unnoticed in the crowd, tried for ten minutes to climb the wide staircase to the first-floor ballroom, but was wedged half-way. A commanding voice behind him boomed, ‘Make way for the Duke and Duchess of York’. The heir to the British throne complained huffily, in the manner of Eeyore, ‘Don’t bother about me.’

  Mrs Greville specialised in attracting the grand, the powerful and the well-connected; when Lady Strathmore, mother of the Duchess of York, remarked that ‘Some people need to be fed with royalty on a frequent basis, like sea-lions with fish’, she may well have been thinking of Mrs Greville. She certainly had few aspirations to cultivating the creative or artistic types favoured by other hostesses, and tended to view a grand piano as a suitable surface on which to display signed silver-framed photos of European nobility, rather than as a musical instrument. However, she encouraged some of her younger friends, such as the Sitwells, in their various literary and theatrical ventures, and proved to be a particularly loyal friend to Osbert. Beverley Nichols waspishly remarked that this was because the aristocratic Sitwells were ‘Chelsea de luxe’ rather than genuinely creative.

  By contrast, dark-haired, sharp-featured and relentless Sybil Colefax was known to be a ‘snob for brains’, and her exquisite eighteenth-century home on the King’s Road was known as the ‘Lions Corner House’, a pun on the name of a chain of tea-shops run by the firm of Lyons, because of her hunting abilities. By the late 1920s she had really hit her stride; she was so widely known for her insatiable desire to attract the most prominent guests that she was cruelly satirised in a short story written by Mary Borden, published in Four O’Clock and Other Stories in 1926. ‘To Meet Jesus Christ’ is an account of a desperately ambitious society hostess who cracks under the strain and invites her guests to meet Christ, talking animatedly to an empty chair.

  Sibyl was hurt by such mockery; she did hunt celebrities and royals, but she also cultivated genuine artistic or creative talent, whether musical, theatrical or literary. She was very loyal and did not drop any friend whose star was on the wane. However, she was the butt of many a joke: Lord Berners sent her a card inviting her to dinner ‘to meet the P of W’; she was disappointed when his guest turned out to be the Provost of Worcester, rather than the Prince of Wales. On another occasion he complained of insomnia, claiming that Sibyl had been staying in the room next to his ‘and she hadn’t stopped climbing all night’.

  Sibyl continued to travel in Europe, but after her son Peter went to work in New York, she was increasingly drawn to America and Americans. In France in 1926 Sibyl stayed in a château at Gourdon that belonged to an American interior designer, Miss Norris, a friend of Cole Porter. Sibyl was fascinated to learn that her hostess had earned the money to transform the château through her career in interior design, and this was a valuable object lesson to her. There were also a number of interesting expat Americans enjoying life in 1920s France; Elsie de Wolfe and the Cole Porters, and Edith Wharton at Hyères. America began to seem very appealing to Sibyl and her contemporaries.

  The 1920s and ’30s were particularly fruitful decades for the relationship between Britain and America, who had been allies during the First World War. Elite citizens – as well as young hopefuls – from both countries crossed the Atlantic on the new luxury liners: everyone from Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Vanderbilt and Charles Lindbergh to Randolph Hearst, Douglas Fairbanks and Noel Coward.

  Although principally based in London, all six hostesses were inveterate travellers, combining extensive knowledge of Europe with frequent visits to the USA. They deliberately cultivated the ‘great and good’ of American society between the wars, from the established families of Fifth Avenue and Long Island to the industrial entrepreneurs, philanthropists and Hollywood stars. In their salons
they skilfully blended visiting American actors and actresses, songwriters and composers, millionaires and art collectors with European aristocrats, international royalty and creative mavens. The cultural influence of the USA on British society in this era was immense – from musical theatre and popular song to the appeal of Hollywood films, the British public took to its heart the American-inspired cult of celebrity. The Americans also liked the Prince of Wales, who had visited the States in 1919 and 1924 and irritated his father by adopting a faintly transatlantic mode of speech. On his first trip he met President Wilson in Washington; on the second he travelled largely incognito, remaining on Long Island. However, the American public were wildly enthusiastic. As Sir John Foster Fraser wrote in 1926, ‘the Americans really must get a King and Queen of their own. They will never be happy until they do.’8

  Sibyl Colefax’s first visit to the States was in November 1926, when she was fifty-two, and she went primed with letters of introduction and a list of contacts provided by Walter Page, the former American Ambassador. She was struck by the vibrancy and frenetic commerce of New York, where even grand nineteenth-century mansions were being replaced by soaring modern apartment blocks. The crazy pace, the booming property market and the constant talk of money were stimulating, but she had a feeling that this hyper-consumption couldn’t last. She met the millionaire owners of private art collections such as Mrs Otto Kahn and Miss Frick. She socialised extensively, visited the opera and theatre and lunched with Noel Coward. Sibyl and her son Peter spent Thanksgiving with the Cole Porters, and Sibyl renewed her acquaintance with Elsie de Wolfe, society decorator, now in her sixties. The two women had met in the summer in Paris. Sibyl admired Elsie’s taste, her ‘wonderful shop full of beautiful things’ and the way she had transformed her clients’ houses. Elsie was a woman running a successful, creative business within the upper echelons of society, by exercising her own aesthetic judgement and style.

  Sibyl made new friends in the booming film industry, from Gloria Swanson to Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. She was very taken with British-born Charlie Chaplin, and the two expats seemed to find a great deal to talk about. ‘He is a wonder – there is no doubt about it,’ she wrote. The Chaplins gave a private dinner party for Sibyl, which thrilled her, and she was also taken to the film première of Don Juan, a star-studded evening where immense crowds of fans were controlled by police.

  Sibyl returned to a snowbound New York with some relief, and embarked on a programme of visiting private collectors’ art treasures, which had been arranged for her by Joseph Duveen, an associate of Bernard Berenson, her old friend from her first visit to Florence. Duveen was an exceptional art dealer and consummate salesman specialising in Old Masters (paintings created before 1800). He was adept at brokering art sales from Europe to American collectors, a lucrative but sensitive business. Joe Duveen helped the very wealthy of the New World augment their collections of art from the Old World, relying on authoritative attributions from the respected art historian Berenson, and he profited enormously from their enthusiasm. Duveen respected Sibyl’s genuine interest in fine art. Every summer he took a suite at Claridge’s in order to court millionaires and to visit the London galleries, and she would hold a dinner for him at Argyll House, where he could meet interesting people and expand his range of contacts. She admired his business acumen, and he liked her ability to charm his clients.

  In 1928, as Sibyl was planning another trip to the States, the Royal Academy was preparing a major exhibition on the great Italian master painters, including loans from big American collectors. Major Longden of the RA asked Sibyl if she could approach any of the American owners on the curators’ wish list whom she knew, and persuade them to lend their precious paintings. She had made a number of friends among museum curators and private collectors in the States, from the East Coast to Chicago, from Long Island to Hearst’s castle.

  In New York, Sibyl’s personality and charm secured the required paintings, and she also suggested other art works she had seen in the States of which the curators were previously unaware. Her knowledge of this field was impressive; by December 1929 the ‘American contribution’ was being hailed by Major Longden as ‘splendid’. Sibyl was beginning to think she could make a career in the American manner, using her taste, her knowledge and her contacts.

  In 1926 Lady Cunard, sensing the altered atmosphere, changed her name to Emerald. Soon she will have few guests old enough to remember her as Maud. This transition to the Emerald Age was an event of profound significance.9 (Patrick Balfour, Society Racket)

  In 1926 Lady Cunard’s life changed completely. After living alone since 1914, Sir Bache Cunard fell ill. His daughter visited him in his final weeks. He died on 4 November 1925 with Nancy at his bedside, and was buried, in line with his wishes, with minimal ceremony. Sir Bache was seventy-four and had always hoped that his wife would return to him in the end, but he was disappointed. Maud was not mentioned in his will, and he left most of his estate to Nancy, who spent some of the £14,408 bequest on a house in the Normandy countryside. He also left her a life-size statue of a fox in silver, a token of the other two passions that had dominated his life, metalwork and hunting.

  Maud was finally free of the husband who had provided her with a prestigious title and status, a daughter, a substantial fortune, which she spent on supporting her lover and entertaining her social circle, and a position in British society. After a period of mourning, as was expected of a widow, even a semi-detached one, she moved from Carlton House Terrace to 7 Grosvenor Square and resumed her life as one of London’s most active hostesses.

  Her old admirer George Moore wrote to her just after the death of her husband in November 1925; his brief note reads, ‘I loved you in the beginning and shall love you to the end.’ The following year he told her he was planning to sell some valuable paintings (two Manets, two Morisots, one Monet and a Degas pastel) to invest in American government securities known as Liberty Bonds, for her to inherit on his death. He also begged her not to travel to Venice, as she was planning that summer, because if anything happened to her he would die of grief. Needless to say, she took no notice; Sir Thomas Beecham and Lady Cunard spent a large part of the summer of 1926 travelling round the Continent together. When Cole Porter installed a floating night club complete with jazz band under their windows, they left Venice and travelled to Switzerland. It was from here that Lady Cunard sent a letter to George Moore, signing it, ‘Maud Emerald (a new name)’. She had decided to adopt the more glamorous alternative name, to mark her emancipation. The elderly writer assumed she had married a Mr Emerald; the only person he could find in the London telephone directory with that surname was a paint manufacturer, but anything was possible with Maud. Distraught, he sent her a telegram: ‘Who is Emerald are you married? GM’. He followed it up with a letter: ‘You cannot fail to understand that it is unfair to leave a man who has loved you dearly for more than thirty years in doubt.’ Her blithe response was that she had adopted her nickname because of her fondness for the gem. Certainly it was an appropriate name; emeralds were very much in vogue in the 1920s, admired for their multi-faceted, polished and glittering charms, though they were known to be brittle and full of flaws.

  In fact, she had always disliked her first name. She resented the associations with the famous poem ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’, which Alfred, Lord Tennyson had written in 1857, and which was a somewhat hackneyed favourite of Edwardian singers. However, there may have been another reason. Sir Bache had had an eccentric streak; he had an absorbing passion for creating decorative metalwork, for which he had genuine talent. It was perhaps unfortunate that he had made his wife shudder by surprising her on her return from London with an extravagant piece of ornamental metalwork bearing the legend ‘Come into the garden, Maud’. It was made from welded horseshoes, and he had placed it over the entrance to the topiary garden. Literary Lady Cunard probably knew this romantic poem in its entirety, and perhaps her conscience was piqued by the last verse. The p
oet eagerly anticipates the return of his love, and declares he would respond even if he was in his grave:

  She is coming, my own, my sweet,

  Were it ever so airy a tread,

  My heart would hear her and beat,

  Were it earth in an earthy bed;

  My dust would hear her and beat,

  Had I lain for a century dead;

  Would start and tremble under her feet,

  And blossom in purple and red.10

  Sir Bache, cuckolded, neglected and left behind long ago in Leicestershire, had chosen the opening line of this poem to recreate in wrought metalwork, a misguided attempt to surprise and delight his much younger wife when she returned to Nevill Holt from one of her many absences. Decades later, now that he was dead, it is perhaps understandable that Maud wished to discard the first name, which had such resonant associations. As Emerald, she was now free of her marital bonds, but what she did not know was that Beecham had fallen in love yet again. This time the object of his affections was a talented brunette soprano called Dora Labbette, the daughter of a railway porter. When they met, Dora was twenty-eight, Thomas Beecham was forty-seven and Lady Cunard was fifty-three. When she found out, Emerald boycotted any performance that featured Dora Labbette. Bob Boothby, who was a friend of both Lady Cunard and Sir Thomas and socialised with them in Venice that summer, recalled: ‘He was generally accepted as Emerald Cunard’s lover; but if so he was certainly not a faithful one.’11