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

by Siân Evans

  As had been the case after the Great War, there was a great pent-up desire to travel once peace was restored. Alice Keppel, the last and best-loved mistress of Edward VII, returned to her Italian home L’Ombrellino, outside Florence, after the war, but she died on 11 September 1947, five years after her great friend and fellow Edwardian hostess Mrs Greville. She was buried under the cypress trees in the Protestant cemetery in Florence. A memorial service for ‘La Favorita’ was held in St Mark’s, Audley Square, where Mrs Ronnie had been both married and commemorated. It was the end of an era, and Lady Colefax was among the notables who attended.

  The return of peace meant that people who had successfully avoided each other no longer had excuses. Sir Thomas Beecham and his wife, Betty, had spent the war years in the States. They returned to Britain on 2 June 1945, and bought a house near Petworth in Surrey. The American journalist Virgil Thomson arranged to interview the Beechams, but first he went to visit his old friend Emerald Cunard. She asked him to bring her news of her old lover, but Thomson spared Emerald his true impressions, which were that Beecham was perfectly happy with his new life. The famous conductor was now sixty-six, and Betty was thirty-seven, a wife-secretary-housekeeper-companion who, like him, was a musician and devoted to his career. He no longer had to spend his evenings with cabinet ministers, money men and aristocrats to satiate the socially acquisitive instincts of Lady Cunard, now aged seventy-three. Bob Boothby was sympathetic:

  He took most of her money for his operas, and then married Betty Humby without telling her. She never recovered from the shock. Few people who knew her would regard her as a pathetic figure but, in her final years, she was. Whenever I saw her she came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘Have you seen Thomas lately? Tell me how he is.’ She loved him.1

  Cecil Beaton described Beecham’s marriage as the ‘bombshell that shattered her’, but she was adept at hiding her feelings. She also did not talk about her estranged daughter Nancy. Emerald caught a brief glimpse of Nancy one evening in London shortly after the end of the war as she was being driven through London in a car. The vehicle swerved suddenly to avoid a woman who had stepped out into the road; the headlights picked out the distinctive, whippet-thin figure of Nancy, and Emerald gasped, but said nothing. It was the last time Emerald saw her daughter.

  Lady Cunard threw herself into post-war London social life with gusto, though it was uncertain what was keeping her afloat beyond her natural buoyancy. According to Cecil Beaton, she claimed to be in love with a charming young man called Nicholas Lawford, and he went along with the conceit, leaving bunches of flowers on the handle of her bedroom door before setting out for the Foreign Office every morning. But the romance was not serious, merely a diversion that allowed her gamely to hoist her tattered flag once again over the ruins of her love life.

  Not all her contemporaries were keen on Emerald. Max Beerbohm was staying with Lord Berners shortly after the Second World War. Beerbohm had known Lady Cunard in the Edwardian era: ‘I haven’t seen her for years, has she changed at all?’2 he asked his host. Berners replied, ‘No, it’s wonderful, she’s exactly the same.’ There was a measured pause, then Beerbohm said, ‘I am very sorry to hear that.’

  She subsumed her passions into her social life; Evelyn Waugh complained about her relentless pursuit of him throughout the summer of 1945. Tiny, pastel-hued and over-painted, Lady Cunard was instantly recognisable, and much in demand. In January 1946 Emerald was a guest at a ball at the Argentinian Embassy; ‘Chips’ Channon surveyed the glamorous throng, which recalled the pre-war era, and announced portentously, ‘This is what we have been fighting for.’ Emerald acerbically replied, ‘Why, dear, are they all Poles?’ She was still capable of startling her listeners; aged seventy-four, she scandalised conventional Lord Esher by telling him how she had spontaneously taken off her shoes to show her still beautiful feet to a young admirer.

  In February 1948 she was a guest at Georgia Sitwell’s party in honour of the wise-cracking Hollywood actress Mae West. The Duchesses of Kent and Buccleuch were there, as was the ubiquitous ‘Chips’ Channon, resplendent with his ruby and diamond shirt studs. The party didn’t end until 5 a.m.; it was almost like the old days. But one element had changed; Emerald’s famous vivacity and energy were fading at last. At one dinner party she unexpectedly proposed a macabre toast, ‘To death!’ She had started to suffer from a persistent sore throat, and an attack of pneumonia and pleurisy left her weak. She consulted her doctors and received a terminal diagnosis, of cancer of the throat. It was time to get in touch with her daughter, Nancy, and her old friend Tony Gandarillas, Chilean playboy and opium addict, was the go-between.

  Nancy Cunard had become increasingly troubled and eccentric. In February 1945 she had returned to newly liberated France to find her house in Normandy had been comprehensively looted by both German troops and local people. Horrified, she salvaged what she could and put the house on the market. For the next few years she flitted restlessly around the world, finally returning to Paris in 1948. Nancy had always been highly strung, and now she was prone to bouts of paranoia. She feared police surveillance, and her behaviour became increasingly irrational, veering from alcohol-fuelled reckless promiscuity to assaulting hotel porters. Skeletally thin, she was once discovered attempting to wash all her clothes at the same time as herself in the bath at the London flat of her bohemian friend, Viva King, and she would rip up hundreds of pounds worth of banknotes if left in charge of them.

  During June 1948 Nancy Cunard was in Giverny when she was told that her mother was dangerously ill. Their old friend Diana Cooper tried to persuade Nancy to go to London to be reconciled with her mother. Nancy asked if Emerald had specifically asked for her, and because she hadn’t, Nancy refused to go. On 6 July, Tony Gandarillas warned Nancy that her mother was sinking fast, but still she still refused to make the trip to London.

  Emerald had been drifting in and out of consciousness for days, but inexplicably she rallied. She kept whispering a word that sounded like ‘pain.’ Her maid, Mary Gordon, gave her a pencil and she scrawled the word ‘champagne’. When the bottle arrived, Emerald indicated that Mary, the nurse and the doctor should each have a glass; she was determined to be hospitable till the very end.

  Emerald died on 10 July in her suite at the Dorchester, aged seventy-five. Tony broke the news to Nancy, who cried, predominantly out of pity for her mother’s loss of Sir Thomas to a younger woman, but she would not go to London for Emerald’s cremation. Emerald had said she wanted no memorial service, but had left no instructions as to the disposal of her ashes. Sir Robert Abdy, the art connoisseur, and a great friend, organised the ad hoc ceremony, dispersing Emerald’s mortal remains to the elements in Grosvenor Square, scene of so many of her social triumphs. This solemn gesture did not go entirely to plan; it was a breezy day, and Sir Robert found himself liberally sprinkled with the appropriately tenacious ashes of Lady Cunard.

  In her will Emerald left Mary Gordon her wardrobe, furs, monogrammed silk sheets, linens, silver plate and cash of £1,500, worth about £35,000 in today’s values. The rest of her possessions were divided equally between her friends Lady Diana Cooper, Sir Robert Abdy and Nancy. Nancy justified accepting Emerald’s bequest because she believed her mother had attempted to curb her behaviour by controlling her allowance in the 1930s. Nancy tried to meet Mary Gordon, the maid, but the latter wanted nothing to do with her mistress’s rogue daughter. In fact, Lady Cunard had left far less than anyone expected. It appeared that during Emerald’s last year she had come close to the end of her financial resources. In addition, the Inland Revenue claimed arrears of income tax and super tax against her estate. Her possessions, including antique furniture and pictures from the Dorchester suite, were held in store while the tax issue was resolved. With impeccable timing, she had died not long before she would have run out of money.

  The remaining American capital brought Nancy Cunard a useful £350 income a year, and by selling most of the paintings and fu
rniture she was able to buy an old house in the Dordogne. But Emerald’s famous gems and pearls, left to Diana Cooper, turned out to be false – at some point Lady Cunard had quietly sold her real jewellery and had exact replicas made, in order to continue funding her lifestyle.

  The Daily Mail obituary described her as ‘an extraordinary and dynamic woman. She was among the last – and the equal of the grandest of the social hostesses of the Great Capital at its peak.’3 Interestingly, the newspapers reported that she was seventy-one at death; born in 1872, and dying in 1948, she was in fact a month away from her seventy-sixth birthday. Like her rival Mrs Ronnie, Emerald shaved a few years off her age for cosmetic purposes.

  She was much missed by her friends. Lady Diana Cooper mourned her for years, and thought of her every time she visited the Dorchester. James Lees-Milne also admired her for her dazzling wit and brilliant repartee. Sachie Sitwell eloquently wrote in The Times: ‘Those who loved her will miss her wit and subtlety and nuance and will mourn her company, and think of her at concerts, in theatres, above all at the opera. This was what she loved most, and perhaps it took the place, for her, of religion.’4 Tellingly, for years afterwards, her maid Mary Gordon would return to Grosvenor Square to leave flowers on the anniversary of Emerald’s death. Ticked off by an officious jobsworth on one occasion, in later years she would cross the square bearing a bouquet, and let drop a single bloom, as if by accident.

  Sibyl Colefax had dreamed throughout the war of returning to her beloved Italy, but the years of peace were hard, and she was dogged by both money worries and ill-health. Although in straitened circumstances, she continued to entertain at her home, regularly attracting guests of the calibre of Harold Macmillan, T. S. Eliot, Cyril Connolly, the Mountbattens and the Kenneth Clarks. But in August 1946 she slipped and fell getting out of a taxi, and was taken to hospital with a broken thigh and hip. Her accident ruined her long-cherished plans; she had been on the point of going to Florence to stay with Bernard Berenson when she was incapacitated. She spent frustrating months in a hospital bed, visited by friends such as Noel Coward. In May 1947 her old friends the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were in London, and while they seemed more reconciled to their titles, others were still uncertain how to address them. Nigel Nicolson, the son of Harold and Vita, visited Sibyl in her nursing home:

  When I arrived, Somerset Maugham and Peter Quennell were already there. [Sibyl] told us that she was expecting a fourth guest, the Duchess of Windsor, and that she had warned the nurse to meet the Duchess and escort her upstairs. She must not announce her as Mrs Simpson, but as the Duchess. The girl met her as instructed, and as she guided her along the corridors, she muttered to herself, like the White Rabbit in Alice, ‘I mustn’t say Mrs Simpson. I must say the Duchess. Not Mrs Simpson.’ She opened the door of the room where we were sitting, and announced with a flourish, ‘Mrs Simpson, m’lady.’5

  Despite her slow recovery, Sibyl still enjoyed the company of actors and performers such as John Gielgud and Noel Coward; in the middle of a heatwave in July 1948 she held a first-night party for the cast and friends celebrating the opening of The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams. James Lees-Milne had become a good friend, and he was very grateful for Sibyl’s influence in persuading reclusive eccentric Lawrence Johnston to give his remarkable garden Hidcote to the National Trust in August 1948, in order to ensure its preservation after his death. She had cultivated ‘Laurie J’ for four decades, immersing herself in the study of horticulture, and Sibyl was one of the few people he trusted. Lees-Milne recorded an interesting remark of Sibyl’s in September 1948. She stated, ‘No, I am not happy. Old people are never happy. But I was happy. Now I am only interested in the young.’6

  Sibyl certainly liked the company of the young. In June 1948 Nigel Nicolson took her to the cinema to watch the newsreel coverage of the departure of the Mountbattens from Delhi at the end of his Viceroyalty. London had been alive with gossip that Edwina had been having a passionate affair with Nehru. As Sibyl and Nigel sat in the dark watching the flickering screen, Sibyl said: ‘What they didn’t show was Edwina kissing goodbye to Nehru at the airport. That deeply shocked Indian opinion and undid all the good that Dickie had done.’ The woman in the seat in front of them turned round and said coolly: ‘Hello, Sibyl. I thought I recognised your voice.’ It was Edwina Mountbatten, and sitting next to her was her husband, the former Viceroy. It was an awkward moment. When the lights went down for the feature film, Nigel and Sibyl crept out quietly.

  By January 1949 it was apparent that Sibyl was ill, painfully thin with curvature of the spine and a racking cough. Diana Cooper saw her at a wedding and described her as ‘poor little Coalbox, bent double in silver fox. She can only see now a dreary circle of ground beneath her eyes.’7 Nevertheless she was full of plans for the future and rarely complained. She continued to entertain at home and at the Dorchester, and still sent her guests discreet bills afterwards. This was the only way she could fund civilised parties, and the participants appreciated this pragmatic arrangement.

  Despite her declining health, she was still bright-eyed and alert almost to the end. On her last night alive Sibyl Colefax was convinced that her husband Arthur was outside in the street and was waiting to be let in. She died in her sleep early on the morning of 22 September 1950, aged seventy-five. By chance, Harold Nicholson was in Florence and arrived at Bernard Berenson’s home shortly after the telegram that announced her death. By a strange irony, he was in the very place where his old friend had so wanted to return, but had been denied by the war and bad luck. Sibyl was mourned by the many who had benefited from her passion for collecting and mixing together those she thought would enjoy each other’s stimulating company. As one of her former ‘young people’, Kenneth Clark, remarked: ‘Sibyl genuinely loved people and bringing them together was her life’s work. One should have loved her more than one did.’8

  It was following her return to America for Christmas 1948–9 that Laura Mae Corrigan died. She had arrived in New York from Paris on Christmas Eve, to spend the holiday with her sister Mrs David Armstrong-Taylor, of San Francisco. The two women were staying in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan when Laura was taken ill and rushed to hospital, where she died the following day, 22 January 1948, exactly twenty years after the death of her husband. The New York Times obituary (24 January 1948) noted uncensoriously that she had once been a waitress in Chicago, that her father had been an ‘odd jobs’ man and that she had never been accepted by Cleveland society after her marriage to the heir to the Corrigan-McKinney Steel Company. The paper frankly stated that New York was similarly unwelcoming, though she subsequently achieved great success in London society, and had her revenge by excluding the ‘Knickerbocker crowd’, the American Astors and Vanderbilts, from her parties. In addition, the Cleveland set played no part in the Corrigans’ social life, although Laura donated $5,000 annually to the Cleveland Fund for the benefit of the city. She also gave $25,000 to the Cleveland Museum of Art to purchase great works by Cézanne and others, and paid for the care and feeding of the animals she had personally provided for the Cleveland Zoo. Her body was returned to the city that had snubbed her; she was interred in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, where a simple but massive polished monument marks the joint grave of James and Laura with the single name ‘Corrigan’.

  In London a memorial service was held in her name at that favourite church of the Mayfair hostesses, St Mark’s, North Audley Street. Laura would have been gratified to know that it was attended by so many of her old friends, including the Duchess of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and her great rival Lady Cunard.

  Although she gamely attended the first state opening of Parliament after the war, on 26 October 1945, Edith Londonderry’s priorities had now changed. In the years after the Second World War Lady Londonderry largely dropped out of public life, concentrating on caring for her family and restoring Mount Stewart. Mrs Keppel stayed there in 1946 and was horrified that Edith
dined in trousers, managed with no maid and had placed children in bedrooms adjacent to her own. As ‘La Favorita’ snorted at the time of the abdication, ‘Things were done differently in my day.’

  On 20 June 1946 it was reported that the Royal Aero Club would take over Londonderry House in Park Lane, which had been damaged by wartime bombs. As part of the lease, the Londonderrys retained the use of a twenty-two-room flat in the house. They also rented the house out for high-end receptions, such as followed the wedding of Raine McCorquodale, the daughter of novelist Barbara Cartland, and Gerald Legge, on 21 July 1948. On 25 May 1950 there was a dance in honour of seventeen-year-old Lady Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Edith’s grand-daughter, but such grand occasions were rare for the Londonderry family in an era of national austerity.

  Edith’s beloved husband, Charley, had become an increasing cause for concern. His passion for flying had led him to take up gliding, and in November 1945 he had a bad accident when the towing cable snapped. Although he broke no bones, it was the start of a period of ill-health, and in 1947 he began to have small strokes, which rendered him incapable of movement and speech. He died at Mount Stewart on 10 February 1949, aged seventy, and was buried at Tír-n’an Óg (Gaelic for ‘Land of the Ever Young’), the Vane-Tempest-Stewarts’ burial ground. Edith was bereft after fifty years of marriage.