Rosemary also had flirtations, but they seem to have been more retaliatory reactions to Eric’s behaviour rather than meaningful relationships. In her papers, there is ‘Eulogic or Romantic Notes on “Rose”’ written to her from White’s Club in November 1926. The handwriting is neither Eric’s nor the prince’s. Her secret admirer wrote:
Dearest and most lovely and adorable and fascinating, charming and alluring Rose.
You are one in a million.
I love you.
YOU (nobody else).36
There were also rumours that Rosemary had resumed her relationship with the Prince of Wales. In the mid 1920s Cecil Beaton was told that the prince dined with her frequently and she was believed to be his mistress.37 As Edward’s relationship with Freda became less all-consuming and she turned her attentions to Michael Herbert, there are photographs of Rosemary at social events with her former royal boyfriend. In March 1924 newspapers noted that the prince danced with her at Sir Philip Sassoon’s house.38 A few months later in July, Rosemary was again one of his dance partners at a charity ball at the Ritz.39 In November 1925 they attended the Armistice Ball at the Albert Hall together; Eric was not there but Rosemary’s sister-in-law Eileen, Duchess of Sutherland, was with them. Since their time together in France in the First World War, Edward had been attracted to both Eileen and Rosemary and at the ball he danced a great deal with both attractive married women. Edward and Rosemary were spending time together when they were both having problems in their respective relationships with Freda and Eric. It is possible that they rekindled their affair, although Audrey Dudley Coats was the prince’s main substitute for Freda at this time. We cannot know the extent of Rosemary and Edward’s continuing relationship. Certainly, in the free and easy attitude to adultery in the prince’s circle it is possible that they had an affair. However, as Lord Ednam’s second wife Laura wrote, Eric could be a very jealous, possessive man and as the prince remained a lifelong friend perhaps it is unlikely that he was sleeping with his wife. Rosemary was also considered by her contemporaries to be more virtuous than many of her friends so an affair with the prince seems unlikely. Whether their relationship was sexual or not, it was important to them both. Rosemary was one of the few of his ex-girlfriends he never denigrated, and she remained a trusted, discreet confidante throughout his turbulent love life in the 1920s.
Whatever the nature of their relationship, the prince was a regular visitor to the Ednams’ country house, Himley Hall in the Midlands. Rosemary and Eric inherited the house when his father Lord Dudley decided to spend more time abroad with his second wife. Himley is an E-shaped house without the centre bar which dates mainly from the eighteenth century. It had not been occupied for years when Lord Dudley gave it to his son and daughter-in-law. They intended to spend most of the year there as Eric wanted to live among his tenants and the workers at his family colliery.40
A natural homemaker, Rosemary used her interior design skills to turn Himley into the perfect country house, mixing modern innovations with traditional charm. She was an excellent needlewoman and good at carpentry and painting. As a girl, she had painted much of the furniture for her bedroom at Dunrobin. She had never lost her love of using her hands, and so she now used her skills in upholstery to give her country home a personal stamp.41 She found rolled up in the attic some period chintzes left by Eric’s grandmother, which she used for the curtains and loose covers. Each bedroom had a large bathroom in a different colour scheme to complement the shades in the chintzes. Walls were painted oyster colour or in pastel tones of peach, green and parchment, while large bunches of flowers, placed in white bowls or big vases, finished the rooms. One gossip columnist described it as ‘one of the jolliest houses I have ever been in’, adding that Rosemary was ‘all that is English and lovely – like birch trees and apple blossom’.42 As well as expressing her understated good taste, Rosemary also had fun with the interior design at Himley. When the servants’ wing was demolished, an indoor swimming pool was built in its place. Rosemary employed the interior designer Guy Elwes to decorate the room. He painted a Venetian loggia scene on one wall and a Regency bathing party on the other.43 Special lighting was put in which gave bathers a phosphorescent appearance. In the gallery of the swimming pool wing a fashionable cocktail bar was built.
The Prince of Wales, his brother and sister-in-law the Duke and Duchess of York and Rosemary’s old friend the Queen of Spain were among the guests who enjoyed the Ednams’ relaxed hospitality. The prince wrote to Freda Dudley Ward about one visit after he had spent the afternoon ‘princing’ in Dudley. Hinting at his continuing affection for Rosemary he wrote: ‘I’ve loved our visit here but not as much as I love you.’ He added: ‘Rosie is very sweet and Eric has been nice and not too pompous and he certainly is very efficient.’44 The prince told Freda that he hoped they might one day stay at Himley together.
In the first years of their relationship, Freda had been a little jealous when the prince visited Rosemary, but the two woman soon became firm friends. At first they met frequently at the homes of Rosemary’s brother and sister-in-law Eileen and Geordie, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland. In the early 1920s the two women and the prince socialised together at Dunrobin Castle, Scotland, and Sutton Place, the Sutherland’s Tudor mansion in Surrey. In 1921, when the Duke of Sutherland was Colonial Office spokesman for the government, the Imperial Conference met in London to consider the foreign policy of the empire and the idea of establishing the League of Nations. Geordie and Eileen invited some of the international delegates to lunch at Sutton Place and among the guests were Freda and Rosemary, their husbands and the prince. In one photograph Edward is sitting cross-legged in the front row, looking tanned and boyish, between his former and present love.
Edward found the Sutherlands were relaxed hosts and he often invited himself to stay. Writing to Geordie that he hoped he would not regard him as ‘cadging’, he asked his friend not to make it too formal as he loathed that sort of thing. At Sutton Place there would usually be dancing or a film show to entertain the guests. When the duke and duchess were in Los Angeles with some of their friends, including William Dudley Ward, they all appeared in a short comedy film with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They screened their celebrity home movie at one of their house parties.45
The Sutherlands also hosted some memorable parties at their London home, Hampden House. On these occasions the tennis court was converted into a ballroom, a special floor was put down and the room was lined with tapestries. The Sutherlands, like many of their contemporaries, loved fancy dress. The Prince of Wales enjoyed it so much that he suggested to Eileen Sutherland that guests should change their costumes several times during the evening to keep their companions guessing their true identity. As he was so often the centre of attention, he relished even a brief interlude which allowed him to mingle with his fellow guests unrecognised. At one ball he arrived as Bonnie Prince Charlie then transformed himself into a Chinese coolie.46
The most memorable Hampden House fancy dress ball was in 1926 when the King and Queen of Spain were visiting England. It epitomised the close-knit and incestuous circle which had formed around the prince. That night the Prince of Wales and his brother Prince Henry came dressed as Arab sheiks, unrecognisable in their black beards. There was much laughter and fun during the evening. In honour of the Spanish guests, there was a mock bull-fight in which Prince Obolensky impersonated the bull and Freda’s lover Michael Herbert was the matador. As another ‘diversion’, Duff Cooper ‘coxed’ the Eton eight – a crew of eight society women including Rosemary, Freda and Bridget Paget – across the ballroom in an imaginary boat race. Wearing a blue blazer that was far too tight for him and a straw boater, Duff directed his harem, who were skimpily dressed in white shorts with blue ribbons, tiny blue caps and vests with sweaters draped around their shoulders. As they ‘rowed’ vigorously across the room the rest of the guests started singing the Eton Boating Song.47
As the ‘Eton’ crew indicated, Freda
and Rosemary formed a type of exclusive club of the prince’s girlfriends who had been deemed unsuitable to be royal brides. Their camaraderie extended to girlfriends of Edward’s brothers too. When in 1927 Prince George told his parents that he wanted to marry Poppy Baring, a friend of Freda and Rosemary, Freda said that if he stuck to his guns firmly they would not be able to stop him. Poppy was the daughter of the wealthy banker and MP Sir Godfrey Baring. Exotic, with huge dark eyes and a wide mouth, she was one of society’s ‘Bright Young Things’.48 Rosemary joked that should Poppy lengthen her skirts and stop wearing lipstick, then she would win over the king but lose Prince George. Inevitably, Poppy, like her two friends, was soon rejected as an unsuitable bride by Queen Mary and King George. Rosemary and Freda were rather amused.49
12
THE TRAGIC HEROINE
Although Rosemary was at the centre of the set which surrounded the Prince of Wales, she was never just a decadent socialite. She had an integrity which many of the other women in her circle lacked. She was great fun, but she also had a serious side. Like Freda, she was interested in politics; when Eric decided that he wanted a political career and ran for parliament in the Hornsey by-election in 1921, Rosemary was one of his greatest assets. Although he stood as a Conservative many coalition Liberals, including his mother-in-law, Millicent, spoke for him. Eric and Rosemary recognised the importance of winning the support of recently enfranchised women. In the constituency women voters made up 21,000 of the 46,000 electors on the register. Eric’s team arranged women-only meetings each afternoon which proved to be a great success. About a dozen women decided to parade the streets as ‘sandwich-men’ supporting Lord Ednam.1
During the election Rosemary was constantly by Eric’s side, canvassing in his Hornsey constituency and providing moral support. She won him many votes with her persuasive arguments.2 Her early training at her mother’s charity events had made her ready with a quick retort and she was skilful at talking to all sorts of people.3 Once Eric was in parliament she used her charm to woo senior politicians who could help advance her husband’s career. In one letter to Eric she mentioned dining with Winston Churchill, who at this time was secretary of state for the colonies. She promised to ‘get all I can out of him perhaps another job’.4 Eric was praised by journalists for having ideas and the eloquence to express them.5 Rosemary’s charm offensive and his obvious ability were a powerful combination. In 1922 Eric was made parliamentary private secretary to Lord Winterton, the under-secretary of state for India.
However, Rosemary was not just a supportive political wife. Although for the three years her husband was MP for Hornsey she left all the politics to him, saying only a few words that she considered appropriate to the candidate’s wife, during the 1924 general election she came out in her true colours. The 1924 election was held in October after the defeat of the first ever Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald. The Labour minority government had lasted only a few months. During the campaign, Rosemary gave a very carefully thought-out speech to Worcestershire Conservatives which set out her firmly held political beliefs. She described herself as ‘an ardent, enthusiastic and lifelong conservative’ who felt what she was saying ‘intensely’. Appealing to women, she told her audience that this general election was the most important in the country’s history as it was a fight between Labour and Conservative which would be decided by the women’s vote: ‘On us women lies a grave and great responsibility; in our hands are the welfare and the future of this small, but historic island and of all its great dominions overseas.’
Her speech showed what an asset Rosemary would have been if she had married the Prince of Wales. She was a stalwart supporter of the monarchy and everything it stood for in the modern era. In her speech Rosemary said that people needed to vote Conservative because otherwise a socialist government might threaten the king, the constitution and the empire. Speaking in terms that show that she shared many of the prince’s beliefs and could have helped him modernise the monarchy for the post-war world, she explained:
I have the greatest respect for the genuine British labour man, I see no reason why he should not help to govern the country, he is out to help his own people, which is perfectly natural. I only wish he belonged to our party and not the Socialist party, for will he have the strength of character to predominate among the extremists and to get what he wants, for what he wants, we want, that is to say to get in a perfectly orthodox and sensible way better conditions for the working people of this country.
She added that the Conservatives’ aim was that ‘every man and woman in this country should be well-educated, well-housed and above all employed’.
Like the Prince of Wales, she made plain in her speech the effect the war had had on her. She explained:
In the Great War thousands of men, rich and poor, comrades together, side by side, died for their country. It is up to all of you to live for your country and vote for whatever government you think is going to keep these great principles of loyalty and patriotism and is going to do the best for the people of Great Britain as a whole.
Her speech demonstrates how different Rosemary was from the more controversial members of her mother’s family. It shows how fundamentally she disagreed with her aunt, Daisy Warwick. The year before, in the December 1923 general election, the Countess of Warwick had stood as a Labour candidate for Warwick and Leamington. While Rosemary defended capitalism, arguing that only the Conservatives could deal effectively with unemployment by reviving trade rather than giving subsidies, Daisy had fought for more egalitarian principles. Her views were so radical that The Times correspondent had even wondered whether the red flag would be raised over Warwick Castle. With characteristic verve Lady Warwick, who was now in her 60s, drove a phaeton with a team of white ponies in red and gold Labour colours through the constituency. Supported by her ‘comrades’, the day before the poll she addressed nine meetings before her car was pulled by supporters through the streets of Warwick. Despite her valiant effort, Daisy lost to the Tory high-flier and future prime minister Anthony Eden.6
In her speech, Rosemary made a vicious attack on Daisy’s type of upper-class socialists. She ridiculed them as ‘that fanatical intelligentsia, those so-called gentlemen who have been brought up in the lap of luxury, except when they step out of their limousines, pull on an old cap and go the last mile of their road into their constituency in the tram’. Rosemary’s vitriol against these political opponents is shown by her initial use of the word ‘lunatics’ to describe them. She then crossed it out to add: ‘I only hope these fanatical visionaries make their colleagues in their own party as sick as they make us.’7 This uncharacteristic outburst makes a reader wonder whether Rosemary had ever forgiven her aunt for the embarrassment she had caused her and for perhaps being one of the reasons she was rejected as a royal bride.
Rosemary evidently enjoyed campaigning because during the 1924 election she went to Oldham to canvass for her old friend and admirer Duff Cooper. During the campaign, Rosemary and a group of friends including Duff’s wife Lady Diana Cooper, Juliet Duff, Diana Westmorland and Maurice Baring moved into the Midland Hotel in Manchester. Early each morning they reported to the party’s headquarters in Oldham where they were given their canvassing orders for the day. At lunchtime they would meet up and exchange stories about their experiences that morning. At one of the mills the girls mobbed Diana and kissed her; in return, she promised them a clog dance if they voted for Duff. Their campaigning was successful, and Duff won.8 As his friends, including Freda, heard the news at Mr Selfridge’s election night party, Duff got the longest and loudest cheer of the night.9
Reading Rosemary’s passionately argued speech and hearing about her love of campaigning makes one wonder if she had political aspirations of her own. It raises the question of whether she might have, like Lady Astor, followed her husband into parliament. It also makes us think about what a different political path the Prince of Wales might have followed if he had married Rosemary instead of Wal
lis. Although the prince had earlier admired Lloyd George, by the mid 1920s, like Rosemary, he was very supportive of the new Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. He disapproved of social injustice but was to the right politically and he was delighted with the Conservatives’ victory in 1924. The Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin won 412 seats to Labour’s 151. As always, the prince’s political views were complicated and not clear cut. He was still concerned about the threat of communism, but he respected some Labour party leaders for understanding working people better than any Conservatives did.10 With her carefully thought-out Conservative politics and firm moral compass, it seems far less likely that with Rosemary by his side Edward would have flirted with fascism in the 1930s.
Instead of pursuing a political career herself, Rosemary chose a less controversial path by continuing her mother’s tradition of charity work. Her wartime experiences had affected her deeply. Determined to do her bit for those injured in the war, she replaced her mother Millicent as president of the North Staffordshire Cripples’ Aid Society. She became a very popular figure as she worked tirelessly organising fundraising activities. Her aim was to modernise the Hartshill Hospital and make it better for people with disabilities. She was particularly concerned about improving conditions for disabled children. She told her fellow fundraisers that it ‘left her cold’ when she thought of the mothers with disabled children who were unable to secure treatment owing to lack of accommodation. She believed the need for more beds was urgent. She argued that they should not rest until every disabled child was given the medical help to be turned into a strong and healthy citizen.11
Before Wallis Page 21
