by Siân Evans
In 1958 Edith wrote a thoughtful biography of one of her predecessors, Frances Anne Londonderry, who had been an influential political hostess in the nineteenth century. She expressed the view that, had the earlier Lady Londonderry been born a man, she would certainly have been a statesman, perhaps even Prime Minister. Perhaps Edith secretly thought the same about her own career; she had been an astute and able political hostess with considerable influence, and she had exerted ‘soft power’ for decades.
Like Edith, all the Queen Bees were past the first flush of youth by the time they were best able to exercise their influence, in the decades between the wars. They were middle-aged, established figures who used their status to achieve their aims. In 1918 Mrs Margaret Greville was fifty-five years old, and one of the wealthiest and best-connected women in the country, before she was able to vote for the first time. As a consummate businesswoman she exerted considerable power in the running of the brewery left to her by her father, but she also used her funds to bankroll a luxurious lifestyle that brought her proximity to political power, in Britain and overseas. She was an éminence grise behind the scenes of British society in the 1920s and 1930s, an intimate of men such as Sir John Simon, Austen and Neville Chamberlain, and keen to advance her protégés Oswald Mosley and Bob Boothby. She recognised the extraordinary potential of Winston Churchill, and even though they often disagreed politically, he was always welcome at her table, even throughout his ‘wilderness years’. Many of the alliances and friendships on which he came to rely during the Second World War were with people he had met through the auspices of Mrs Greville.
Proximity to power was Mrs Greville’s prime motivation, but she was also adept at spotting potential in young people and helping them get established through her contacts. She was dismissed by Harold Nicolson as a ‘common, waspish woman who got where she did through persistence and money.’ Although she revelled in being rich, she also donated a great deal of her wealth to charity. Naturally, she also used her fortune to manipulate people and draw them to her. Her friend Beverley Nichols described her accurately as: ‘A social Napoleon. They don’t make women like that nowadays. She wasn’t beautiful, she was brilliant, she was a fabulous snob. And yet, one had been genuinely fond of her.’3
Perhaps Mrs Greville’s greatest influence, however, was in acting as ‘fairy godmother’ in the personal relationships of the British royal family. Her role as potential benefactor to Prince Albert in offering to leave him her estate developed into genuine friendship, and she played a crucial part in advancing his courtship of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who had twice turned down his proposals of marriage, when it seemed hopeless. If Bertie had not married Elizabeth, who was to be such a rock to him when he was forced onto the throne after his brother’s abdication, it is debatable whether he would have made such a success of consolidating the Crown at a critical time in the nation’s history. In addition, if George VI had not married Elizabeth, the key personnel of the British royal family would now be very different; there would be no Queen Elizabeth II, for example, and no Prince Charles as the next in line to the throne.
By contrast, Lady Cunard’s ambitions to shape the future of the royal family by furthering the romance of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson eventually brought her vilification from the establishment and a degree of social ostracism, taking some of the lustre off her previous reputation as a cultural salonnière of brilliant wit and conversation. A happier legacy lies in the way in which she wholeheartedly championed the cause of opera, ballet and classical music in Britain between the wars, to the great benefit of the national cultural scene.
Without her loyalty, her own considerable financial support and her ability to wheedle substantial funds out of the wealthy it is unlikely that her faithless lover, Sir Thomas Beecham, would have achieved the many international accolades he won as impresario, conductor and leader of world-class orchestras. Emerald richly deserved the title of ‘the Queen of Covent Garden’, if only for her fundraising acumen and her genuine commitment to the arts in an era long before government subsidies or corporate sponsorship.
Money and its procurement in pursuit of one’s aims were to be the driving factor in the later life of Emerald’s great rival, Lady Colefax. It was in order to maintain her relentless performance as the ringmaster of her own cultural circus that Sibyl bravely tackled the financial shortfall between her income and her expenditure and set up her innovative and successful decorating firm eventually known as Colefax & Fowler. It was to become so influential on 1930s and 1940s interior design that some have likened it to the instantly recognisable appeal of the interior decoration firm of Laura Ashley in the 1980s. The firm provided employment and practical expertise for many, and inspired young people to take up interior design as a viable profession.
Sibyl was the most driven ‘tuft-hunter’ of all of the hostesses, but she also had a knack of blending the traditional upper classes, those whose status had traditionally come from the ownership of land, with a more open and eclectic elite. Around her table could be found members of the new, creative meritocracy, such as Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as well as leading writers and academics, such as John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf. She made it her life’s work to bring together people she thought should know each other – writers and intellectuals, actors and art experts – to their mutual enjoyment.
It was clever, curious and well-connected Sibyl who first championed the integration of Anglo-American elites, thanks to her transatlantic contacts, and the other hostesses quickly followed suit. These informal connections ‘across the pond’ were to pay dividends when the Second World War came, with the hostesses bringing influential Americans to their tables and under their influence as part of their ‘war effort’.
Laura Mae Corrigan’s wartime career was perhaps the most surprising, because it appeared to be in complete contrast to the lifestyle that had made her famous. She had left behind her humble origins in rural Wisconsin to throw perpetual parties in London and Paris, peopled by the acquisitive and the curious. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s she deliberately cultivated the Bright Young Things, the more decorative aristocrats and selected European royalty. Those who had patronised her as ‘rich but dim’ were forced to reappraise their opinions when she showed her real mettle, staying in Paris under the noses of the Nazi high command, selling her jewellery to Goering and helping those caught up in the hostilities in Vichy, playing a dangerous game of double-bluff in occupied France. She spent all her available fortune on assisting the war effort in dangerous circumstances, only returning to Britain when she ran out of money in 1942. Her great friend and mentor Elsa Maxwell wrote, ‘Laura was a parvenu[sic] all right, but she had more character and social conscience in her little finger than all the phony patricians who sneered at her.’4
Like most of their contemporaries, the great hostesses had been anxious to avoid another European war and used personal contacts, visits to Germany and arguments for greater harmony between opposing nations in their common cause. The Astors were accused of colluding with the Germans through their clique, the ‘Cliveden set’. Mrs Greville was an early enthusiast for Hitler, and the Londonderrys made several trips to the Third Reich in the hopes of avoiding war. They believed that Germany’s representatives were sincere, and so did not comprehend Hitler’s aims until it was almost too late. But when war became inevitable, each of them demonstrated her inherent patriotism in the desperate fight against Fascism, and the Allies eventually triumphed after six long years of conflict. Although the late 1940s and 1950s brought austerity, financial hardship and ill-health, which curtailed the great hostesses’ activities, they had a considerable benign influence on many aspects of Western society during a critical period of world history.
The six great hostesses had succeeded in overcoming, variously, the stigma of illegitimacy, the taint of having grown up in poverty, the sadness of an unloved childhood, the deaths of much-loved parents, discrimination on the
grounds of class and gender, the humiliation of divorce, the sting of a husband’s infidelities, the numbing loneliness of widowhood and the estrangement or loss of one’s own children. In place of these personal tragedies, each one had devoted considerable energy to embarking on a career and creating a social circle of her own, using charm and ingenuity to attract those whom she wished to court, and nurturing those she wished to foster. Shortly before her death, Laura Corrigan remarked, ‘As a little girl I often dreamed of knowing all the kings and queens in the world. And I have had my wish.’5 It was an achievement shared by all the Queen Bees.
Source notes and acknowledgements
Introduction
1. it was enormous fun … Oswald Mosley, My Life, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1968, p75-6
Chapter one
1. Mr Mackay struck … Lewiston Daily Sun, 20 January 1891
2. a sort of honeyed poison … Patrick Balfour, Society’s Racket, John Long Ltd, 1933
3. In any generation … Sonia Keppel, Edwardian Daughter, Hamish Hamilton, 1958, p170
4. my father worked … Sibyl Colefax, unpublished autobiography, quoted in Kirsty MacLeod, A Passion for Friendship: Sibyl Colefax and her circle, Michael Joseph, 1991, p17. Reproduced by kind permission of Penguin Random House, UK.
5. as the train moved out … ibid. p21-22
6. Once I had fallen in … ibid. p28
7. Myself, I don’t care … Lady Londonderry, from Anne De Courcy, Society’s Queen: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, Phonix, 1992
8. You might send the enclosed … ibid.
9. I don’t blame you … ibid.
10. I suppose you’ve come over … Edith Cunard and Nancy Astor quoted in Adrian Forth, Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor, Vintage, 2013, p55-6
11. she had a course … George Moore, from Rupert Hart-Davis, George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd
12. You have come into this life … ibid.
13. dearest Maud … ibid.
14. When my husband came back … Lady Cunard, from Lois Gordon, Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist, Columbia University Press, 2007, p14
15. one of the finest streets … Mark Twain, letter to the San Francisco Alta California, 15 November 1868
Chapter two
1. Throughout most of Kingy’s … Sonia Keppel, Edwardian Daughter, Hamish Hamilton, 1958, p170
2. henceforth my attitude … The Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect, Frederick Muller Ltd, 1938, p97
3. Why you should wish to hear … George Moore, from Rupert Hart-Davis, George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd
4. I thought you might be coming to dine with me … ibid.
5. the fact is that I am alone … Letter from Mrs Margaret Greville to King George V, 25 May 1914. Reproduced by kind permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
6. Mrs Ronny … from the diary of King George V, 14 June 1914. Reproduced by kind permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
Chapter three
1. The whole of London … Osbert Sitwell, Great Morning, Macmillan and Company Ltd, 1948, p282
2. The effect of regular work … The Marchioness of Londonderry, Retrospect, Frederick Muller Ltd, 1938, p118
3. Women cooks … ibid. p109
4. took a house in London … Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold, Heinemann Ltd, 1953, p160
5. as numb as an old piano … Margot Asquith, Autobiography, Penguin, 1920 (second ed. 1936), p224-5
6. It was a wonderful sight … ibid.
Chapter four
1. The older aristocracy … Patrick Balfour, Society’s Racket, John Long Ltd, 1933, p77
2. I feel you realise … Letter from Lady Astor to Lady Londonderry, quoted in Anne De Courcy, Society’s Queen: The life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry, Phoenix, 1992, p164
3. I was vaguely aware … Michael Astor, Tribal Feeling, John Murray Press, 1963, p92
4. My dear Viceroy … letter from Mrs Margaret Greville to the Marquess of Reading, circa 20 February 1922, held in the British Library
5. to listen to clever talk … Virginia Woolf, ‘Am I a Snob’?, reproduced in Jeanne Shulkind, Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being, Pimlico, 2002
6. Dear Gerald Berners … Beverley Nichols, The Sweet and Twenties, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958, p156
7. In the world of opera … Osbert Sitwell, Great Morning, Macmillan and Company Ltd, 1948, 249-50
8. You brought into the world … George Moore, from Rupert Hart-Davis, George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd
9. Nittie Vandercrump … E. F. Benson, Freaks of Mayfair, originally published 1916 by T.N. Foulis, republished 2001 by Prion Books Ltd, p125
10. Acrobats, jugglers … Barbara Cartland, The Isthmus Years: 1919-1939, Hutchinson and Co, 1942, p94
11. Europe in the 1920s … Elsa Maxwell, RSVP: Elsa Maxwell’s Own Story, Little, Brown and Company, p21. Reproduced by kind permission of the Permissions Company Inc.
Chapter five
1. The dark shadows … The Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961, p.123. Reproduced by kind permission of the Orion Publishing Group.
2. Those were the days … Lord Bob Boothby, Recollections of a Rebel, Hutchinson, 1978, p67
3. The hostesses of the twenties … Beverley Nichols, The Sweet and Twenties, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958, p79
4. short, five foot two … Rosina Harrison, Rose: My Life in Service, Cassell, 1975, p142
5. I’ve never heard … Virginia Woolf, ‘Am I a Snob?’, from Jeanne Schulkin (ed.), Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being, Pimlico, 2002, p70
6. conversation by brilliant men … Oswald Mosley, My Life, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1968, p75-6
7. a bit of an old bag … Lord Bob Boothby, Recollections of a Rebel, Hutchinson, 1978, p67
8. the Americans … John Foster Fraser, quoted in Stanley Walker, Mrs Astor’s Horse, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1935, p44
9. In 1926 Lady Cunard … Patrick Balfour, Society’s Racket, John Lang Ltd, p139
10. She is coming … Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Come into the garden, Maud’ from Maud and other poems, 1850
11. He was generally … Lord Bob Boothby, Recollections of a Rebel, Hutchinson, 1978, p67
12. Her natural milieu … Beverley Nichols, All I Could Never Be, Jonathan Cape, 1949, p188
13. She appeared to dispense … Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold, Heinemann Ltd 1953, p160
14. When her husband died … Stanley Walker, Mrs Astor’s Horse, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1935, p11-2
15. She was once rebuffed … ibid., p12
16. to provide boxing matches … Daily Mirror, 29 November, 1929
17. Mrs Greville is rich … Daily Express, 13 July, 1927
Chapter six
1. I think I should leave … Mrs Greville, quoted in Beverley Nichols, Sweet and Twenties, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1958, p82-3
2. as pretty as … Beverley Nichols, All I Could Never Be, Jonathan Cape, 1949, p50
3. To go from … Mary Borden, ‘To Meet Jesus Christ’ from Four O’Clock and other stories, Heinemann, 1926, p273
4. if it had not been … Beverley Nichols, The Unforgiving Minute, WH Allen, 1978, p152-3
5. Lunch with Sibyl … letter from Harold Nicolson, 1 October, 1931, printed in Nigel Nicolson, Harold Nicolson: Diaries & Letters 1930-39, Fontana Books, 1969, p95-6. Reproduced with the permission of the Harold Nicolson Estate.
6. It has fallen out … George Moore, Heloise and Abelard, Cumann Sean-eolais na héireann, 1921, republished 2003 by Kessinger Publishing
7. Now, Mr Taylor … Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, John Murray Press, p194
8. A few only … E. F. Benson, As We Are: A modern review, Longmans, Green and Co, 1932, republished by Hogarth Press, 1
985, p191-2
9. Cliveden struck me … Beverley Nichols, The Unforgiving Minute, WH Allen, 1978, p198
10. Entertaining for the Astors … Rosina Harrison, Rose: My Life in Service, Cassell, 1975, p142
Chapter seven
1. International society is not … Stanley Walker, Mrs Astor’s Horse, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1935, p11-2
2. a handsome young … Barbara Cartland, The Isthmus Years, 1919-1939, Hutchinson and Co, 1942, p13
3. The 1914-1918 … Noel Coward, ‘Past Conditional’, compiled in Autobiography, Methuen, 1986, p277. © The Estate of Noel Coward, ‘Past Conditional’, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
