Mrs Guinness

by Lyndsy Spence

  The preparation was rigorous, and before the debutante could be presented at Court, she had to observe strict instructions issued by Buckingham Palace. The rules of dress informed the debutantes that trains were to hang at a regulation 2½ yards from the shoulder and three ostrich feathers (black in the case of a widow) had to be attached to the head, worn slightly to the side. Voluminous crinolines were forbidden, but the dresses did not have to be white (the customary colour), although most were.

  The cost of being presented at Court tallied up to a small fortune and Sydney tediously kept a record of the expenditures in her household accounts book. Other costly essentials included shoes, purchased from Dolcis on Oxford Street, which were decent to look at but uncomfortable and tended to pinch after several laps around the dance floor. A wash and set by Phyllis Earle, located on Dover Street, cost 3s 6d, and was reached by the No. 9 bus, getting off at the Ritz. Bus fares were also an expense for Diana, as she did not have the luxury of a private chauffeur. The elbow-length kid gloves, as worn by Nancy and Pamela before her, were given by Sydney along with a strict warning to keep them clean, for they had to be sent up to Scotland by train to be laundered.13

  As with the dress code, strict rules also applied to the appearance of the motorcar. A ‘man on the box’ was required to sit next to the chauffeur, but for David and Sydney, who did not employ male household staff, a gatekeeper probably stepped into the part.

  The presentation at Court took place in groups, and when it was time for Diana to be presented to the king and queen at the end of the Throne Room, she passed through the State Room, bright with pink and white flowers. Hydrangeas, lilies and Dorothy Perkins roses formed a floral background against the glittering uniforms, Orders and decorations of foreign diplomats and the soft tints of the ladies dresses. The bodyguard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms were on duty in the State Room under the captain, the Earl of Plymouth. The King’s Bodyguard of Yeoman of the Guard in their scarlet uniforms were also on duty under Captain Lord Desborough.

  The Throne Room, in contrast to the beauty of the State Room, was ‘filthy, the white walls were so grimy they had turned a shade of dark khaki’.14 Diana perched on a gilt chair, careful not to crease her dress or become tangled in her train, where she watched the Court’s arrival, followed by Their Majesties procession. As the royals walked to the Throne Room, the Irish Guards orchestra struck up the national anthem, and three men in uniform appeared, walking backwards and bowing as the Court entered.

  The parade of gowns were a fleeting distraction in the otherwise boring day. Diana observed Queen Mary, who wore an impressive gown of cream and gold lamé, hand embroidered in cut crystal and diamanté, with a train of Irish point lace, lined in gold chiffon with a golden leaf design. She wore a gold crown with the Lesser Star of Africa, her jewels included the Koh-i-Noor, and a blue sash of the Garter and family orders were draped across her gown. The Duchess of York appeared in a white fleur-de-lis gown decorated with diamantés and an embroidered satin train. Disappointment was not far off when Diana noticed that the tiaras worn by the regal ladies were dirty and hardly sparkled, having been kept away in a bank vault – ‘nobody had bothered to clean them’ – and all of the marvellous jewels looked as though ‘they’d been painted in charcoal’. The outfits of choice for the royal men did not hold the same level of interest for Diana, though she agreed they cut a dashing figure in their military costume. King George V wore the uniform of a field marshal, the Prince of Wales that of colonel of the Welsh Guards and Prince George was in naval dress.

  By contrast, Sydney was not in the least interested in the spectacle of pomp and grandeur, and she patiently whiled away the hours until they could leave. By now, she was accustomed to the familiar and predictable ritual. Finally, the lengthy wait came to an end and Diana handed a gilt-edged card to the Deputy Lord Chamberlain, who announced her name. Two lackeys spread the train behind her and, ready for the grand entrance, she was accompanied by Sydney. The presentation lasted no longer than a minute and Diana, consumed by nerves and hunger, performed her graceful dip without a mere hint of a wobble.

  Having been forbidden the pleasure of food and drink prior to Court, Diana headed to the buffet, where the champagne glasses resembled tooth mugs and the food was limited to Windsor pies. The catering was not carried out by the royal household but was provided by Lyons, the famous teashop chain.

  With the reserved swiftness of a curtsey, Diana had symbolically moved from a child to a society woman – for the duration of the season anyway. The stress of perfecting a curtsey was minute compared to the importance of having a successful season, for its success was determined by one thing – a marriage proposal.

  Although David and Sydney did not wish to see Diana, or any of their daughters, married at the age of 18 (the ideal age for marriage was considered to be 21), Diana was conscious that receiving a proposal from an eligible young man formally ensured they would be married when she came of age.

  A month later, as the debutante season was in full swing, Amelia Earhart made headlines around the world when she achieved the impossible in being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. The press and public were in a frenzy of excitement when she touched down in England. After the First World War, when women proved to men they could run the country whilst they fought at the Front, the 1920s seemed an age of progress. Even though the death of British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst that same month blighted the celebratory spirit, hope still reigned when women over the age of 21 were finally given the vote.

  This progressiveness was lost on Diana as, despite her nonconformist outlook, the only way she could see a life of independence was through marriage. If she was going to follow convention and find a husband, Diana was calculating enough to realise that it ought to be a good husband. She would not be content in a stifling arrangement with little opportunity for fun. It did not occur to her that she could achieve all of those things through her own merit.

  NOTES

  12 In Another Self, James Lees-Milne wrote that Unity, Jessica and Deborah looked at him and chanted: ‘We don’t want to lose you/ But we think you ought to go.’ The accuracy of his account was questioned by his biographer, Michael Bloch. I have chosen to accept Nancy’s version of the visit by drawing on her letters in Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, Charlotte Mosley (ed.).

  13 As explained by Deborah Devonshire in Wait for Me.

  14 As told to Anne de Courcy in Debs at War.

  7

  A DEB’S DELIGHT

  The summer of 1928 was dominated by a whirlwind of social engagements, endless supper parties, tea dances and balls. Although Diana was officially out and moving at the centre of things, her new status did not mean freedom. Being unmarried, she still required a chaperone. Diana Churchill was also doing the season and, much to the other Diana’s relief, Clementine offered to chaperone her cousin. The family’s London base, Rutland Gate, was let to ease David’s never-ending financial problems, and the Churchills saved the day when they kindly offered to host Diana at their flat at 11 Downing Street. This, of course, gave Randolph the perfect opportunity to pick up where he had left off.

  All of Diana’s male friends knew one another, as they had boarded at Eton together and attended Oxford. They were either friends with Nancy or had been schoolmates with Tom, and that also meant they knew Randolph, who wasted no time in using their mutual friends to keep tabs on Diana. ‘The poor boy told me that he was so carried away by the radiance of your beauty (my heart goes out to him) …’ Randolph wrote Diana from Eton, having learned of her meeting with a nameless acquaintance at a debutante ball. He recalled Diana’s beauty from his memories of her at Chartwell the previous summer, where she looked ‘too radiant and beautiful to describe’. He confided to her, much to her exasperation, ‘I think I am still within the limits that I am allowed by you’ (that of a loving cousin and childhood companion), but he was clever enough to realise that his ‘love is one-sided and u
nreciprocated’. Diana preferred the company of older, worldlier men, for they not only appreciated her beauty, but also served as an intellectual outlet. Randolph, although he worshipped her physical beauty, was no match for her mentally.

  The social circle surrounding Diana had grown since Tom’s arrival at Swinbrook. It was a relief when he offered to chaperone her at dances, and through her brother she became acquainted with his friend Edward James, the artist and poet, who was also a contemporary of Randolph. It was a small, tight-knit group of young men and James Lees-Milne had been part of this group prior to his impromptu departure from Diana’s life.

  She was instantly drawn to Edward, whose stutter and uncertainty regarding his sexuality contributed to a lack of confidence, but this hardly mattered to Diana, for she was aware of Tom’s brief fling with Jim at Eton. Like Diana, Edward had several older sisters, his mother Evie was described as ‘a nightmare’ and his father William was distant and dead by the time he was 5 years old. Drawing on his upbringing, brought up fatherless and in the company of dominant women, he was hesitant to pursue the opposite sex. And the traits which Diana had admired in Helleu were also apparent in Edward. They were, perhaps, all the more appealing given he was the right age for her. But unlike her previous admirers, he did not possess any romantic feelings for her, although being a great aesthete he admired her beauty. She adored him, but he made it clear that he wanted a platonic friendship, not love.

  Rejection from the opposite sex was an entirely new experience for Diana. The rival for Edward’s affection was Tilly Losch, the Austrian-born actress, dancer and choreographer. Although not as beautiful as Diana, Tilly had an advantage in that she was seven years older than Diana, four years older than Edward and experienced with men. Concealing an unhealthy fixation for Tilly, Edward had been following her career, and his obsession deepened when she came to London for her West End debut in Noel Coward’s This Year of Grace.

  Not only was Edward bewitched by Tilly, but Tom and Randolph also fell instantly in love with her. Diana watched the bizarre love triangle unfold and, observing Tilly’s treatment of the three men, the beginnings of an intense hatred brewed beneath her aloof exterior. Diana had become an expert in toying with her admirers’ feelings, stringing them along and then abandoning them whenever the topic of love entered the equation. Tilly, however, knew how to play men off one another – it made them want her more and, having slept with all three men, she entered into a game of sexual blackmail with the poor, unsuspecting Edward. Unlike Tom and Randolph, Edward’s appeal lay in his fortune. And, for the gold-digging Tilly who loathed the idea of love, money made Edward all the more attractive. Diana’s resentment of Tilly would later develop into a bitter feud.

  On an evening in May, Diana accepted an invitation to a supper party at Carlton House Terrace, hosted by Lady Violet Astor in honour of her debutante daughter, Margaret Mercer-Nairne. As she turned sideways to make polite small talk with the guest seated next to her, Diana met the acquaintance of a tall, handsome young man with bright blue eyes and fair hair. His name was Bryan Guinness.

  In person, Diana did not exude overt vanity – as she had done in letters to Jim – but her confidence in social gatherings was beyond her years and she effortlessly conversed with the opposite sex. She had not met Bryan before, though he remembered her from a costume party Nancy had thrown at Swinbrook. At the time, they were not formally introduced, and Bryan had spied the 16-year-old Diana from afar, smiling and silently dancing with his friend, Brian Howard. The image of the teenage beauty stayed with Bryan long after the party ended. Two years had passed since this first sighting, and when he met her in person, Bryan fell in love with her.

  Bryan was considered a deb’s delight – he was rich, handsome, generous to a fault and, given his background, surprisingly unspoilt. At 22, he was unmarried and had never been engaged, but not for lack of trying. Debutantes saw him as a catch, though with his romantic nature, he could not bring himself to follow the familiar pattern that the men and women of his class adopted. Marriage, to Bryan, was not something he could enter into lightly. He had not fallen in love with anyone before and, as such, he could not take a wife for the sake of bloodlines and inheritance. This sentimentality endeared him all the more to the debutantes who fixed their steely gaze upon him.

  Bryan was the eldest child of Lady Evelyn (née Erskine) and Colonel Walter Guinness, the rich Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds and Minister of Agriculture. The family’s wealth came from the family brewery, founded in Dublin in 1759, but brewing did not interest Colonel Guinness in the slightest, as his mind was drawn to scientific matters and philanthropy. When he was not engrossed in his political work, Colonel Guinness set off on a lengthy voyage to the South Sea Islands with one of his many mistresses in tow. Lady Evelyn was unlike her shrewd, serious-minded husband in every way imaginable. Dressed in Paquin, she was petite with pale-blonde hair and a china doll-like beauty, and her quiet, shrill voice resembled a loud whisper. Her interests were focused on an obsession with the chivalric medieval world ‘where nature combined with art in a kind of Gothic fantasy land’. And, given the Guinness millions, both Lady Evelyn and Colonel Guinness could indulge in the type of elaborate lifestyle they desired.

  The Guinnesses owned two palatial homes in London: 10 Grosvenor Place and Heath House, and both were decorated in Lady Evelyn’s idealistic view of the Middle Ages. Grosvenor Place was converted from an ugly Victorian house into a medieval fortress complete with smoke-blackened beams to reflect the pre-chimney days. The Victorian plate glass had been replaced with leaded windows, and two-pronged forks and pewter dishes substituted for china and silver. And, dedicated to authenticity, Lady Evelyn ordered the ceilings to be lowered to reflect the period.

  In many ways, Bryan was suited to Diana’s tastes; he loved books, music and art, he enjoyed jokes and was a good conversationalist. And he impressed her with his knowledge of the theatre, a world he offered to introduce her to. The more Bryan saw of Diana, the more he fell in love with her. Although she did not feel as strongly as him, she agreed he was handsome and possessed the same gentle nature as Edward James, both of which she found to be attractive attributes.

  On a warm evening in July, the Guinnesses held a ball at Grosvenor Place. Before the guests arrived, the housekeeper noticed that two of the young maids, Dorothy Martin and Elizabeth Tipping, both aged 17, were exhausted after a day of preparing the house for the evening’s festivities and she sent them upstairs. The maids were curious to catch a glimpse of the guests in their finery, and shirking their orders to go to bed, they climbed over the balustrading round the servants’ floor and onto the glass ceiling. The weight of the two girls was too much for the glass ceiling to bear and it shattered, sending them crashing to the marble floor.

  Inside the ballroom, Lady Evelyn was entertaining Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles, the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn, the Duchess of Devonshire and Sir Phillip Sassoon. Bryan’s mind was on Diana, who was absent from the ball, and he politely danced with the daughters of his parents’ friends. Suddenly, the gaiety halted when a member of staff burst through the doors to alert Lady Evelyn of the incident in the hallway. A footman was immediately dispatched to St George’s hospital and two doctors appeared at the scene. Caught up in the frenzy of guests spilling from the ballroom and staff rushing to and fro, Frank, the night watchman fell down the stairs and sprained his ankle.

  One of the maids, Dorothy Martin, was pronounced dead, having fractured her skull, the impact killing her immediately. The other maid barely managed to survive by clutching onto a chain from which hung a lamp. She was taken to hospital by ambulance and the party, cloaked in a solemn mood, began to disperse from the ballroom. The marble floor was covered in blood and Bryan was deeply disturbed by the dead body of the young maid and the guests gathering around to watch. The dead body, now a spectacle, struck him with a sense of irony, when only moments before, it was those very guests the maids had risked their lives to see. Brya
n fled to Grania’s bedroom, where he read aloud from Hugh Walpole’s Jeremy to distract her from the harrowing scene downstairs.15

  The tragedy of the night before still haunted Bryan, and to take his mind off the incident, he travelled to the Albert Hall for a matinee performance of Hiawatha. As he sat in the back of his chauffeur driven car, he spied two young women, one with black hair and the other with blonde, stepping onto a bus. The sight of the blonde woman convinced him it was Diana, the thought of which lifted his spirits and almost diminished his sadness.

  When Bryan reached the Albert Hall, he scanned the auditorium feverishly and was certain he could see Diana’s golden hair in the front row of the stalls. As the music struck up, Bryan’s suspicions were confirmed when she turned around. It was Diana, and he acknowledged this overwhelming pang of happiness as a sign that she was the girl he was destined to marry.

  Diana had only met Bryan a few times, always in the formal atmosphere of a ball or a supper party. They were never alone, except for when they danced, and their conversation remained polite and light-hearted. Despite being certain of his feelings for Diana, Bryan could not gauge whether she felt the same way. But he was determined to find out, and at a ball given by his Uncle Ernest at 17 Grosvenor Place, he invited her to sit outside on the balcony. They missed most of the ball, and as they watched the sun rise over Chapel Street, Bryan found himself in a state of baffled adoration. It later inspired him to write the poem ‘Sunrise in Belgrave Square’, as a dedication to Diana’s cool self-possession: ‘You sit politely in your body’s box/ I wonder at the wonder hidden there …’16 True to form, he was too shy to act on his impulses and, failing to take the initiative with her, the moment was lost.

  Bryan left for Holland on a sightseeing tour with close friends, but the few days spent in the picture galleries and country houses could not keep his mind off Diana. His friends teased him about his reputation with beautiful debutantes and he let them think what they liked, for only he knew the true object of his affection. Bryan sent Diana a letter, explaining that he had previously held back from pursuing her because she was ‘so terribly young’, but he warned her they would have to ‘face it together and decide’ what to do.