Mrs Guinness

by Lyndsy Spence

  Realising how serious Bryan was about the marriage, and perhaps discovering the restraints that would soon be fixed upon her, Diana asked Bryan if he would mind her going out with other men after they were married. He immediately rejected her request ‘because you might think I didn’t love you so much if I did’. The couple had been secretly engaged for four months and if Diana had any reservations about continuing with their wedding plans, she did not say.

  With a swift change of heart, Colonel Guinness firmly implanted his loyalties towards Bryan and Diana, and a man of his word, he followed through with his plan to write to David. Knowing of David’s protectiveness of Diana and the ‘damn sewers’ who came to Swinbrook, Bryan correctly sensed that any form of contact should come from him.

  Bryan wrote to David to arrange a meeting the next time he was in London. David’s reply, though amusing, was predictable, ‘I never come to London if I can avoid it and as I can avoid it at the moment I am not likely to be there for some time. I understand you are likely to be at Swinbrook within the next fortnight and, if what you want to say will keep till then, well and good.’ Sydney’s opposition had begun to waver and all that stood in Bryan and Diana’s way was David.

  A meeting was held at the Marlborough Club and Bryan, consumed by nerves, managed to emote the speech he had memorised. He was not going to let anything stand in the way of marrying Diana. Inside the billiard room, Bryan was left speechless when David, in his no nonsense style, consented to their marriage and an Easter wedding was swiftly agreed upon.

  Various elements conspired to sway David’s decision. Diana and Bryan’s secret engagement was the subject of much gossip amongst their contemporaries and David detested his daughters being the subject of any form of gossip. Pamela’s engagement to Oliver ‘Togo’ Watney had been called off, and the whispers of an impending marriage between Diana and Bryan were becoming louder and would soon catch the attention of the press.

  A month later, David and Colonel Guinness discussed the matter at length over the telephone, a rare gesture on David’s behalf, for he loathed telephone calls. David confided, ‘Don’t tell the young people, but between you and me I don’t think the end of January or the beginning of February would be altogether impossible.’ Bryan was seated next to Lady Evelyn on the sofa, listening in on the conversation. Certain that David had been won over, he raced to his bedroom and dashed off a letter to Diana: ‘I think your father is the most kind and considerate and delightful man with far more imagination than any of us, and he hides it under a bushel of ferocity.’19 In his usual sentimental way, Bryan vowed to love Diana forever and he anticipated a similar response. ‘Well, for a long time, anyway,’ she nonchalantly replied. The response, by his own admission, shook him to the core.

  James Lees-Milne received the news of Diana’s engagement with little enthusiasm. It came like a ‘cruel blow’ which upset his emotional state. Diana tried to console him with a short, but sweet, letter: ‘I know you will like him [Bryan] because he is too angelic and not rough and loathes shooting and loves travelling and all the things I love.’ Diana was preoccupied with a glamorous, materialistic world and, given Bryan’s wealth, it served to make Jim feel worthless. ‘When we are married and live in London, you must often come and see us,’ she gently coaxed him. He sent Diana a wedding present of books and, apart from a customary thank you note, he did not set eyes on her for the next twenty-five years.

  As soon as the engagement appeared in The Times, vast amounts of wedding presents were delivered daily to the Guinness’s London residence, Grosvenor Place. Upon viewing the presents, Lady Evelyn gave a disapproving moan. ‘The glass will be the easiest,’ she said as she cast her eye over the endless tokens sent by friends, family and the vaguest of acquaintances. ‘It only needs a good kick.’ Diana responded with laughter and was quickly brought down to earth when David gently reminded her that people were very kind to send her gifts.

  Diana had been spending more time at Grosvenor Place, a Victorian imitation of a French chateau made up of Nos 10 and 11, and as such it had duplicate features on either side of the house. It was quite unlike anything she had experienced, beginning with her arrival, when the front door would automatically open as she approached the steps. This phantom working was carried out by George, the doorman, who sat all day, watching from a tiny window in the porch. He was known for his clumsiness, and the first greeting Lady Evelyn bestowed on her guest was ‘Did George knock you down?’

  Guided by George, Diana was led along a darkened hall with stripped pine panelling to a lift which she thought resembled a medieval closet. The doors were opened by a nursery maid and tea was laid out in Grania’s nursery, the centre of Lady Evelyn’s world. So devoted to nursery life, she opted to sleep in one of the night nurseries and, transferring her extravagant tastes onto her children, she ensured it was bright and brimming with toys, books and a collection of sofas covered in chintz.

  By contrast, the rest of the house was almost pitch-dark. The downstairs rooms were lined with rough, blackened wood. The furniture, besides refectory tables blackened with age, consisted of dozens of Spanish chairs of various sizes upholstered in dark, hard leather for the back and seat with ‘many a rusty nail to catch a stocking here and there in the crumbling wooden frame’. The lamps were made of bent pieces of iron holding faux yellow candles with yellow bulbs of about five watts shaded in thick, old parchment – tallow, not wax, was the note. There were polished pewter plates and dishes crafted by Day, the head chauffeur, who had given up driving to devote his time to making plates because Colonel Guinness liked them so much. Colonel Guinness also enjoyed entertaining over 100 guests at a time, which Lady Evelyn found tiresome, but she did it for his sake. She requested only one thing: there must be more than enough pewter dishes for everyone to fall back on, silver or china would have spoiled the theme.

  In spite of the eccentric décor, Diana was more amused and surprised to see a beautiful wooden slide propped on one of the staircases. It belonged to Murtogh, who had admired an exact copy at a funfair and it soon became a popular attraction for those who visited the house. Guests, young and old, rushed up and down the stairs, whizzing down on the slide, watched by Lady Evelyn, who relished the laughter of her guests. Diana was certain of one thing: Grosvenor Place indicated that life, as she knew it, would be very different once she became Mrs Bryan Guinness.

  NOTES

  17 Murtogh D. Guinness (1913–2002) spent his life travelling the globe, collecting and preserving antique mechanical instruments and automata. His collection spanned to some 750 items and were awarded to the Morris Museum in New Jersey, USA.

  18 The full letter is printed in Diana Mosley, Anne de Courcy.

  19 Potpourri from the Thirties, Bryan Guinness.

  9

  A SOCIETY WEDDING

  All expectations for an Easter wedding were dashed. Recalling Lady Evelyn’s advice that ‘people who are in doubt tend to wait for ages’, Bryan and Diana agreed that a date should be fixed as soon as possible. Just two months after David and Colonel Guinness conferred, the preparations for a January wedding were underway. Diana did not have to worry about a thing, as with the meticulous planning of her Christmas shopping, Lady Evelyn oversaw the minutest details.

  Although they were not of the meddling sort, David and Sydney had one objection to Lady Evelyn’s ostentatious plans. Since the age of 11, Diana had denounced Christianity – she leaned towards atheism – and getting married in a church seemed not only a pointless venture, but one which Sydney felt verged on hypocrisy. Siding with Diana, Sydney spoke to Bryan about her concerns. Far from understanding, Bryan found their objection to a church wedding ‘most astonishing’ and he was troubled by Diana’s lack of Christian faith. ‘Christian kindness,’ he argued, ‘was beauty of deed.’ And he compared such beauty to the physical attractiveness of Diana – ‘the most perfect manifestation’ of God’s creation. Furthermore, Bryan protested that he wanted to marry Diana in a building ‘dedicated
to beauty’, which he believed to represent ‘goodness, which is truth’. There was no alternative. It would have to be a church wedding, otherwise, as Bryan warned, ‘it might be the death of my whole family.’

  Listening to the plea and seeing no substance in Bryan’s argument, David and Sydney decided to go along with his preference for a church wedding. They felt his entire reasoning was histrionic, a reaction influenced by his mother’s extravagant ways, which Sydney privately thought were ridiculous. This extravagance manifested itself when St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, was chosen, not for its Godly presence, but because of Lady Evelyn’s preference for Gothic. Bryan, too, was attracted by its perpendicular architecture. It also happened to be the most stylish venue of the day.

  Everything was going according to plan when, the day before the wedding, Jessica and Deborah contracted whooping cough and were ordered to say in bed. Sydney asked if the little girls could leave their sickbeds long enough to take part in the ceremony, but one look at Jessica and Deborah’s bright-red faces destroyed any glimmer of hope and Bryan’s family protested that the girls were too ill to attend – not everyone understood Sydney’s carefree attitude towards illness. It was a bitter disappointment for Diana, who adored her little sisters. ‘I could have spared anyone else more easily than them,’ she said.

  Rutland Gate was once again leased and Lord and Lady Dulverton, to whom Batsford Park had been sold, gave Diana the use of their London house at Wilton Crescent. It was in this unfamiliar house that Diana dressed in her ivory duchesse satin wedding gown, designed by Norman Hartnell. The veil, crafted from the Brussels lace that Lady Evelyn had given her, was attached to a crystal and flower wreath. The elaborate veil and wreath proved irksome and it would test Diana’s patience throughout the day. ‘Oh Nanny, this is impossible!’ she snapped, in a fit of bad temper as she tore off the veil. The veil was only part of the problem, but it represented her suppressed tension bubbling to the surface. The absence of Jessica and Deborah, and Bryan’s simpering ways leading up to the wedding day, contributed to her highly strung state. Sensing she was on the verge of tears, Nanny Blor put her arms around Diana and reassured her with an old, familiar phrase: ‘Don’t worry, darling, nobody’s going to be looking at you.’ Diana sensed she was hearing those comforting words for the last time.

  David was hovering close by, anxiously keeping an eye on the time. Fixated with punctuality, he had been implored by everyone not to get Diana to St Margaret’s ahead of schedule. ‘We won’t get there ahead of the game,’ he told her. In a state of nervousness and despair, Diana departed the Dulvertons’ house with her veil awry.

  Diana’s memories of her wedding day were very vague. She recalled walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, followed by a flock of eleven bridesmaids, each in tulle Sylphide dresses with a long pearl and crystal cross necklace, a gift from Bryan, draped around their necks. Seeing Bryan and his best man, Michael Rosse, waiting at the altar, she instantly thought how ‘neat and handsome’ he looked. Her brother Tom managed to engage a trumpeter who filled the church with a triumphant sound when the choir sang Handel’s ‘Let the Bright Seraphim in Burning Row’. The final recollection of the day, from Diana’s point of view, was when the clergyman firmly pressed his hand on her forehead, causing the wreath from the dreaded veil to fall over her eyes. The irritation and discomfort in the final moments of the marriage ceremony was perhaps a symbol for what was yet to come.

  In contrast to his bride’s irascibility, Bryan remembered the church as being ‘gay with flowers and guests’. However, for a fleeting moment, as they stood at the altar, Bryan began to feel something was amiss. The ceremony seemed theatrical, the guests – many of whom he did not know – and the grandeur surrounding what he knew to be of religious significance (Diana cared little for such things) struck him with an unsettling feeling. This feeling of intrusiveness was not unfounded and the strangers inside the church were just as curious as the people waiting outside. The society columns reported every detail. ‘The Wedding of the Year’, the headlines rang, and photographs of Diana in her finery failed to capture her loveliness. The disenchantment was clear on her face and it obscured any testimonial of her beauty.

  Guests, too, voiced their private thoughts on the day. According to their mutual friend, Robert Byron, the wedding itself was ‘quite fun’, though he noticed that Lady Evelyn seemed ‘frankly bored’. Sydney’s views were well known; she felt Diana was too young to be in charge of such an enormous fortune – an allowance believed to be £20,000 a year. However, as much as Sydney disapproved of rich people, she understood that in some cases it could not be helped.

  As soon as Bryan conquered his feelings of uneasiness, brought on by his overactive imaginings of the guests with their eyes staring at his back, and penetrating his soul as he made his promise to God, he settled into a sense of elation. It was, at that moment, to remain the happiest day of his young life.

  Bryan’s beautiful teenage bride, once so eager to leave home, felt sullen and irritated by the religious ceremony and his sentimental preferences for hymns and sermons. Perhaps to take her mind off it, Diana silently observed that Michael Rosse resembled Bryan’s butler rather than an earl. And she remembered the letters of advice that he dispatched to Bryan which she had read, finding them comical and pompous.

  During the wedding reception at Grosvenor House, a group of Bryan’s Oxford friends suggested they all meet in Cappadocia later in the year. ‘Oh, yes!’ Diana jubilantly cried, ‘we will. Let’s all meet in Cappadocia soon.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want to go to Cappadocia,’ Bryan mumbled in the whispery voice he used when irritated.

  It was the first disagreement of their marriage. A day later they caught the train to Paris to begin their honeymoon and she consoled herself with the assurance that a glamorous life awaited her. The last time Diana undertook such a journey she had been chaperoned by Winston and Randolph Churchill, a child sent hither and thither at the will of the grown-ups. Now she was considered a grown-up, and in the short space of two years she had acquired a wealthy husband, her own maid and access to the Guinness fortune.

  One last reminder of her country childhood lingered and, true to form, Sydney had Diana’s going away outfit made at Swinbrook. It was a dress of blue printed velvet and a blue cloth coat, its plainness saved by Lady Evelyn’s gift of a mink collar and cuffs. It would be the last homemade outfit Diana would wear.

  The newlyweds spent the first part of their honeymoon in Paris at Bryan’s parents’ apartment at 12 Rue de Poitiers, its interior spanning two floors, with large windows overlooking the River Seine. Lacking Lady Evelyn’s medieval tastes, the apartment’s décor was the embodiment of modern chic. The bedroom had grey satin curtains, a grey satin bed canopy wreathed with three-dimensional pink roses, a wood-burning fire and a daybed strewn with lace cushions. The butler and cook, with little else to do, devoted their time to looking after the couple. But Diana’s requests were simple and she asked for one thing: the cook’s speciality, a pudding called tête de chocolat, which she consumed every day.

  In Paris, Diana traded in her trunks of homemade clothing and, encouraged by Bryan, she spent her afternoons shopping at couture houses where she was fitted for custom-made clothing. It was an extravagant indulgence for the girl who once thought the department stores of the Galeries Lafayette were beyond her reach. Half-filled with guilt and pleasure, Diana imagined her mother’s reaction to a wildly expensive gown made by Louise Boulanger, which she purchased simply because she could afford it. The dress was daring for its time: short, tight, white faille embellished with a blue sash, tied at the back in a large bow so long it almost skimmed the floor.

  Wearing her new dress, Diana dazzled Bryan’s maternal grandfather, Lord Buchan, when he paid a visit to their Paris apartment. Upon noticing that she towered over his diminutive frame, he turned to his grandson and said, ‘Pretty little woman you’ve married, Bryan.’

  Sicily was the next stop o
n their extensive honeymoon and it provided Diana with her first glimpse of the beautiful Mediterranean, then unspoiled by commercial tourism. The scenery enchanted her with its ruins and temples, reminiscent of her childhood fantasy, where she and James Lees-Milne dreamed of living on a Greek island in perfect seclusion. From her suite at the San Domenico Palace Hotel in Taormina, Diana wrote a letter to a friend: ‘Oh it is so lovely being married. This is a heavenly island, we have been here nearly a week and are going on to Syracuse fairly soon, then Palermo and then perhaps Rome, or Athens or London I am not sure.’ Her tone had changed from a besotted young debutante, to that of a worldly, society woman.

  10

  MRS BRYAN GUINNESS

  Bryan’s Bar exam loomed nearer and the newlyweds returned to London to the bracing chill of late winter. Colonel Guinness, rich as he was, had made it clear to Bryan that he ought to adopt a profession. Bryan contemplated a career in diplomacy, but the apprehension of exile made him change his mind. When he was younger, his father had presented him with information on a military school for engineering, but Bryan had no interest and he explained: ‘I knew my limitations better than he did.’ He had no wish to enter the family’s brewing business, for he lacked the scientific qualifications to do so. He therefore made up his mind to read for the Bar, though in his heart he would consider himself first and foremost a writer.

  Bryan bought his and Diana’s marital home at 10 Buckingham Street, a pretty townhouse designed by Lutyens. The rates bill was a staggering £910 per annum, a sum greater than most of their friends’ annual incomes. Many young women in Diana’s position would have been thrilled with such a house, but she was less than impressed by the home’s interior. The furniture was to Lady Evelyn’s taste, with refectory tables riddled by wormholes, and although two rooms brimmed with wedding presents, she did not overly care for them. In her absence, Diana’s bedroom had been decorated in pink, with a blue brocade bed on a dark-blue velvet dais and fixed to the back were lamps set in silver iron work. Discarding any form of tact, Diana cast a disapproving eye over the garish décor and firmly announced it as ‘hideous’.