Inevitably, Rosemary also thought about what might have been. After she was greeted at one of her new husband’s family estates by his tenants carrying hundreds of torchlights to welcome her, in her first letter to her mother following the wedding Rosemary wrote that it was a good thing that she had never seriously considered marrying the prince purely for the sake of glamour because she had now got that and the man she loved too.5
Like the prince, who had dived headlong into his love affair with Freda Dudley Ward immediately after the end of their relationship, Rosemary had not waited long to find new love; she was soon involved with William, Viscount Ednam, heir to the Earl of Dudley. Twenty-five years old, dark haired and very good looking, William, known to his friends as Eric, was considered a catch. He worked hard and played hard and, as one gossip columnist euphemistically explained, he had already been ‘a good deal about in the world’.6 Another added that he ‘is something of a “lad”’.7 At Oxford University he ended up in court for playing polo riding a bicycle in Merton Street with Lord Cranborne and Prince Paul of Serbia. The over-exuberant undergraduates were each fined 2s 6d and costs.8 Eric loved sport, particularly if it had an element of danger. He was a keen horseman who relished the thrill of steeplechasing. His family owned land in Staffordshire and Worcestershire and some of the most valuable collieries and iron- and steel works in the country. During the war, he had served as a lieutenant in the 10th Hussars; he had been wounded once and awarded the Military Cross.
By May 1918 Eric was showing an interest in Rosemary. They had known each other since they were children but after meeting again in the heightened wartime atmosphere they began writing to each other. He had seen three photographs of her in The Tatler and wanted her to send him a picture of her to keep. As well as being attracted to her, like the prince, he was impressed with her war work. In one of his first letters to her he wrote with admiration about what she was doing. He told her that he thought it was ‘wonderful’ of her. As the battles intensified in the spring of 1918 Millicent’s hospital moved to a château near St-Omer. Once all the huts and equipment had been transported it become a casualty clearing station. Eric wrote to Rosemary: ‘Although you say you live in the lap of luxury at your chateau and have plenty to eat yet I expect you are having a pretty rough time really and everything must be very uncertain and then very noisy what with guns and bombing!!’9 He was right: Rosemary had underplayed the danger she faced; a neighbouring hospital in the town had been hit and patients suffered fractured skulls and limbs. When Rosemary, Millicent and their team arrived at St-Omer there were no dugouts or trenches. While they were being constructed the nurses were given orders that if there was an attack those on duty were to remain in the wards, while those off duty should scatter into the surrounding woods and get under the trees where they were less likely to be hit by shrapnel.
While Rosemary assisted in the operating theatre at her mother’s hospital, Eric was at the British General Headquarters in Italy. He promised to visit her when he returned to France. By the end of the war in November 1918 their feelings for each other had intensified. Unlike in her previous relationships, this time Rosemary was deeply in love. When Rosemary went to France with her mother and aunt, Tommy Rosslyn, to see the British troops’ official entry into Lille, Tommy wrote to Eric telling him how Rosemary was counting the days until she would see him again. She added that her niece would go home tomorrow if Millie would let her, but the duchess wanted her by her side to share in the victory as she had been her second-in-command throughout the war. As they stood with Winston Churchill and Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Montgomery to watch the soldiers march past, it seems that Rosemary’s thoughts were elsewhere. Tommy wrote to Eric: ‘She could not be more in love, it’s quite painful. The only happy moment in the day is the early morning when your letter arrives – after that complete gloom.’10 In this relationship it seems Eric had the upper hand and Rosemary feared that he was not missing her as much as she missed him. She visualised him having the time of his life in London and not giving her a second thought. Tommy added: ‘My dear!! You have no idea how the child loves you – Perhaps it’s not good for you to know all this!’11
Unlike in her previous relationships with John Manners and the prince, this time it was the real thing for Rosemary. She admitted her feelings in a letter to Eric written from Inver Lodge, Galway, where she was on a fishing trip. She complained that she had not received a letter from him and asked whether this was due to ‘laziness, stinginess […] or what!!’ She rebuked him: ‘You may be sure I could not be more annoyed.’ She told him that she had been fishing on the lakes and caught mackerel, but although it was ‘very peaceful and delicious’ she was finding it hard to be apart from him. She wrote that she was ‘getting through the day fairly well but it is very lonely without you my angel. And I want you to come back to your Rose so much and quick too please for I believe I must be in love.’12
In the post-war era, after so many young men had been killed in the conflict, the younger generation realised that life could be short. The moment had to be seized. When Duff Cooper, Rosemary’s former admirer, met Eric and Rosemary at Lady Desborough’s house party in January 1919 he suspected they were about to get engaged. They married just two months later; Duff and Diana followed them by marrying later that same year. Rosemary and Eric’s alliance pleased the Sutherlands and the Dudleys: the Illustrated London News noted that it ‘gives great satisfaction to the families on each side’.13 Like Millicent, Eric’s mother, the Countess of Dudley, had run a hospital in France during the war. Reflecting the interwoven circles in which the prince and his friends socialised, Rosemary’s new husband was the cousin of Freda’s husband William Dudley Ward. The prince had known Lord Ednam at Oxford but had not been impressed with him, describing him as ‘coshy’, meaning ‘stuck up’.14 At first, Edward was concerned about whether Eric was good enough for Rosemary. He wrote to Freda: ‘I really only know Eric by sight though I’m sure he’s nice and they’ll be very happy; I only hope so for her sake as she’s such a darling and I guess he’s a very lucky man!!’15 However, over the next few years Edward got to know Eric better and they became good friends.
In the first years of their marriage Rosemary and Eric were very happy. When their first son, Billy, was born in January 1920 Eric wrote with pride to his wife: ‘All my admiring love to you my queen – I think of you the whole time and miss you so much that it just isn’t worth a damn thing without you.’16 When he had to leave his wife and his baby son to return to his cavalry barracks in Canterbury he wrote that ‘it gave me a proper pang to leave you last night – looking so sweet and lovely with the little teardrops in your eyes – it gave me the sobs hot and strong. Quite a “movie scene”!’17
Unlike with many of his other ex-girlfriends, the prince remained close to Rosemary. He stood as sponsor to her eldest son and, shortly after the birth, he wrote to her sending a present for his godson. He explained that he would like to see her again before he sailed for Australia on his seven-month tour. Showing how their relationship had adapted to the new circumstances, he also sent his ‘best love to you and Eric’.18
With their growing family, the Ednams needed a London home where they could settle permanently. In 1921 they bought a house in Cheyne Walk overlooking the river for £14,000. It was a fine Queen Anne building; most of the reception rooms were panelled and the drawing room led out into a delightful garden.19 It had been the home of the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Eric wrote to Rosemary: ‘If you feel you’d never live anywhere else we’d better buy,’ then he added a comment that was to prove all too prescient: ‘tho’ I feel we shall regret it!’20 Like Freda, Rosemary was a talented amateur interior designer, and she enjoyed doing the house up. In the dining room, Rosemary had the walls painted with scenes of the River Thames and Chelsea Bridge in the era when picturesque sailing boats plied up and down.21
In the early 1920s, the first major sadness which was to marr the Ednams’ life together happen
ed; Rosemary lost a baby daughter late in her pregnancy. Naming her after her mother as Mary Rose, Eric poignantly described their sense of loss:
Poor darling little Mary Rose – it makes me so terribly sad to think of her lying stiff and stark in her little piece of paper awaiting the doctor’s inspection instead of warm and snug inside my Rosie! And she too so lovely and sad and weak in her bed – would to feel I was in it with you to comfort her.
Rosemary was very ill after the stillbirth, but Eric had to leave her to go with the army to Italy. He wrote an anguished letter to her explaining how he felt:
My angel – I am in a terrible stew today – firstly worried about you – I hated leaving you in that state yesterday when I wanted to be with you more than at any time before – secondly because I am so terribly bored and depressed and have such an overwhelming fit of the blues. I feel I can’t possibly live through the day […] Was ever a man more highly tried? My life away from you is impossible and worse than death.
Describing his ‘volcanic state of mind’, he explained that it was because ‘I love you so much, you divine sweet and my love grows daily so much stronger that I simply can’t concentrate on anything else, or bear to be parted from you’. He ended the letter by writing: ‘I love you to death always, and I’ll never be away from you again as long as we live.’22
The couple went on to have two more sons, John Jeremy in 1922 and Peter four years later, but they never had another daughter. Rosemary reconciled herself to the situation and was very proud of her boys. Writing to Duff Cooper to congratulate him on the birth of his son, John Julius, she confessed: ‘I like boys much better.’23 Like Freda with her daughters, Rosemary was a devoted mother who was adored by her three little boys. Her love was reciprocated; in her papers, there is a letter written in French to her by her eldest son Billy when she was away sending ‘mes meilleurs baisers’ (lots of kisses).24
Although to begin with they were deeply in love, as the years went by Rosemary and Eric’s marriage came under strain. They began to spend increasingly long periods of time away from each other. Both had parents to visit abroad; Rosemary often stayed with her mother in France while Eric’s father also settled across the Channel. Partly vindicating the royal qualms about Rosemary marrying the prince, Millicent’s love life had turned out to be messy. By 1919 her marriage to Major Fitzgerald was over. He had remained a womaniser and allegedly had fathered several illegitimate children. As he was a Roman Catholic Millicent obtained an annulment.25
A few months later, Millicent married for a third time. Showing her individuality, she wore a black wedding dress and sables.26 Her latest husband was another professional soldier called George Hawes. He was a small man with a moustache who bore a striking resemblance to Charlie Chaplin. George had an eye for art and beauty and, at first, he appeared to worship Millicent, admiring her clothes and appearance. However, this relationship turned out to be another disaster because her new husband was homosexual. He often unleashed his cruel tongue and bad temper on her. Unwilling to be undermined further, she divorced him.27 Acknowledging her matrimonial mistakes, Millicent charted her unhappy love life in an aptly named novel she wrote called That Fool of a Woman, published in 1925. With no wish to return to the censorious circles of England, Millicent made her permanent home in France. She bought a former monastery in Juigne, a village near Angers. The house had been derelict for years but Millicent brought it back to life, creating a charming home which her friends and family loved to visit. Rosemary came often, and the Prince of Wales visited once.28
In the early 1920s, Eric’s father Lord Dudley was also behaving like a lovestruck teenager. After being widowed, he married the musical comedy star Gertie Millar. They moved abroad, and Eric often stayed with them in their villa in the Pas-de-Calais, France.
Separation was not good for the Ednams’ marriage. At first, Rosemary and Eric just playfully complained to each other when they were apart. Each moaned that the other did not write often enough. When Rosemary was visiting her mother in France, Eric wrote: ‘I really want you back more than I care to admit – tho’ I could not loathe you more tonight for not writing to me. I am making this letter completely illegible out of spite.’29 Rosemary wrote in a similar vein to him when he was away, telling him: ‘You don’t deserve a long letter as you never write to me or post the letters with any sense if you do. I love you all the same.’30
Although these comments were just light-hearted banter, there was a more serious side to their separations; too much time apart left them open to temptation. The Ednams’ love life became as complicated as Freda and the prince’s tangled affairs. Just a few years into their marriage, Eric had an affair with Venetia Montagu, who as Venetia Stanley had been the great love of the wartime prime minister, Herbert Henry Asquith. She had married the politician Edwin Montagu during the war but by 1918 she was mixing regularly with Eric as they were both part of the Diana and Duff Cooper set. Once Rosemary and Eric were married the three couples often socialised together. Evidence suggests that Venetia’s only daughter Judith, born in 1923, was fathered by Eric. It seems likely that Venetia’s husband Edwin knew the truth, but it was kept a secret from most of their family and friends.31
Although Eric was unfaithful to Rosemary he still loved her, writing to her while he was staying with her family in Dunrobin in March 1923: ‘Sweetheart […] I miss you like hell and am terribly lonely and lost without you with all these stiffs […] I enjoy it all 100% less when you are not here.’32 The Ednams moved in overlapping circles with the prince and Freda. In the hedonistic atmosphere of the post-war era infidelity was acceptable provided that everyone behaved with discretion and did not create too many embarrassing scenes. Reflecting this tolerant attitude, when Edwin Montagu died in November 1924 both Eric and Rosemary attended his funeral. After his death Rosemary and Eric continued to attend Venetia’s house parties at Breccles Hall, Norfolk.
Breccles was a Tudor manor house which had kept many of its original features. It had an oak-panelled great hall, doors which were fitted with latches and stained-glass windows. In the bedrooms there was no wallpaper, beams in the wall and ceiling being exposed instead.33 However, charming though these features were, the lack of modern soundproofing was to prove a problem at Venetia’s house parties as sometimes private conversations became public. The underlying tensions broke through the polished veneer one weekend at the end of July 1926. Duff Cooper recorded the denouement in a letter to his wife, Diana. The Ednams had both been invited to stay at Breccles but on the first evening it was just Rosemary, Venetia and Duff as Diana was away and Eric was arriving the next day. It was a low-key gathering; the trio played bezique and then went to bed early. The next morning Duff played golf with Rosemary before more guests arrived including Eric, Violet, Duchess of Westminster, and Sir Matthew ‘Scatters’ Wilson. Although on the surface Rosemary and Eric put on a united front, behind the scenes there were arguments. Duff wrote to Diana that he heard them having ‘a royal row’ in their bedroom. Rosemary had lent money to a dressmaker, but she had not told Eric about it, and Violet Westminster had given her secret away. Violet had been married to Bendor, Duke of Westminster, for only a few years, but the marriage was now over and by the time of the house party she was looking for a new love. Violet had arrived at Breccles with Eric, which made Rosemary suspicious that something was going on between them.
In her jealousy, Rosemary turned to her old admirer Duff, and spent much of the weekend with him. They played golf, tennis and bezique together. The simmering passions between the guests began to erupt as the weekend went on. The hostess, Venetia, made several scenes. It seems her affair with Eric was now over and she was sleeping with her long-term on/off married lover Scatters Wilson, but his attitude to her was far from gallant. Late on the Monday night the other guests tried to persuade Scatters to play cards for longer, but Venetia was not amused and hovered by the door. Eventually, Scatters said he would not play, saying instead that he thought ‘he’d go to
bed with old Venetia’. After this rude comment, she left the room, slamming the door in fury. The next morning, Rosemary told Duff that she had heard a row going on in Venetia’s room far into the night. There was another scene when Violet Westminster said that she needed to motor back to London late on the Tuesday night with Eric. It seems that this idea made Venetia as jealous as Rosemary. Venetia said that she was sorry, but it would be quite impossible for her staff to pack their clothes that quickly. Determined to escape, her guests said they could pack their own cases, so Venetia had to let them go. No doubt to the relief of both Venetia and Rosemary, Duff decided to go back to London with Eric and Violet in her Rolls-Royce. Despite Eric’s attempts to prolong the evening the duchess was dropped off first and he was left with Duff.34
As the Breccles encounter suggests, Venetia was not Eric’s only lover. In the Dudley papers, there is a letter to Eric from Berlin in March 1926 from a woman called Enid which suggests another affair. Complaining that once Eric had left there was ‘no more joy or party spirit’, Enid asked if he was happy and whether he ever gave her ‘an occasional thought’. She added: ‘if you can persuade yourself to put anything in writing – I’d love to hear from you! In the mean-time you may know I don’t forget you.’ It seems Enid may have been an actress, as she mentions being in a show in first Paris and then London. She asked Eric: ‘Will you be there? I hope so. After five months in Berlin – I think I deserve a little attention – don’t you think so?’35
Before Wallis Page 20
