The de Casa Maurys’ London home became a byword in sophisticated, modern elegance. All the corridors were painted pure white, while the door fittings and curtain rails were chromium plated. In Bobby’s study, a small cocktail bar was concealed behind a sliding panel in the mahogany wall. The bedroom was mirrored while the bathroom had greeny-silver walls and two black baths. The drawing room mixed many shades of blue: the walls and ceiling were painted a ‘heaven blue’, the chairs were covered with aquamarine velvet and the curtains were sapphire.41 Adding to the exotic atmosphere, they kept a mongoose as well as a Siamese kitten and an Airedale dog.42
Bobby and Paula had been friends of Freda and Michael for many years. The two couples had often socialised together. However, the dynamics changed in 1932 after Michael died and the de Casa Maurys divorced. Shortly after the divorce, Paula married the former Unionist MP Bill Allen. As they were both now free, Freda and Bobby started seeing each other. Knowing her ex-husband’s playboy tendencies, Paula wished Freda good luck. The two women were to remain great friends for the rest of their lives.
In March 1934, Bobby opened the Curzon Cinema in Mayfair, London’s leading art-house cinema. It was a new type of cinema with ‘no plush, no palms’, no orchestra or organ.43 With its simple, austere lines and stylish decoration it was described as a ‘temple to movie art’.44 The audience was encouraged to feel that they were the guests of the management and if they had paid for their ticket it was ‘a mere formality which gentlemen will wish to hush up’.45 Bobby took his new role very seriously and travelled all over Europe in search of the latest continental films to show at the Curzon. The Bystander wrote that the marquis was inspired by a ‘realisation of the importance of intellectually satisfying films’. However, the journalist wondered if there was a large enough ‘moneyed intelligentsia’ to appreciate what he was trying to do. The article concluded: ‘The Curzon is a “snob” cinema, and we want our “snob” public to show that they can understand and can lead public taste.’46
On the opening night, cars filled Curzon Street as the audience arrived. The men were in white tie and tails, the women in furs and long dresses.47 Although Freda was at the premiere the marquis was photographed with Pempie, wearing a trademark red carnation in his buttonhole. At first it was hard to tell from the society pages whether he was courting Pempie or Freda as he appeared in photos with both mother and daughter at different events. The Dudley Wards’ interests now overlapped with the marquis’s, because Pempie had become an actress. After a successful screen test, she began appearing in films. In 1935, her first screen role was in Escape Me Never, which was filmed in Venice and London. One newspaper described her as having ‘an ethereal look’ and giving ‘the impression of being ultra-sensitive and aloof’.48 Another paper tipped her as the next Greta Garbo.49
The same year she appeared in Anthony Asquith’s film Moscow Nights. She played the heroine, a war nurse, opposite Laurence Olivier, who played a Russian officer in the First World War. Critics wrote that she gave ‘an excellent performance’.50 At the premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre, her mother’s old friend the Duke of Kent appeared in the audience as a surprise visitor.51 It was evident that although the Prince of Wales had abandoned the Dudley Wards, his family had not.
Through her daughter and lover, Freda had a new circle of friends that included film stars. In 1935 Freda, Pempie and Bobby stayed at Carlyon Bay in Cornwall with Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Gertrude Lawrence. They all travelled down to St Austell together on the sleeper train from Paddington. Carlyon Bay was described as having a ‘Riviera-ish atmosphere’. There was an elegant hotel with bungalows scattered around it. Pempie and Freda stayed in one bungalow while the actress Gertrude Lawrence and her daughter took another. The atmosphere was very relaxed; guests wore shorts or swimming costumes all day long, played tennis or squash or swam in the open-air seawater pool. Pempie wore brick-coloured pyjamas to lunch at the hotel and then put on an aquamarine swimsuit to bathe in the pool. On the occasional rainy day there were excursions to unspoilt fishing villages. The party went out in the lifeboat at Fowey and got soaked but thoroughly enjoyed it. The locals were fascinated; by the time the boat returned there were dozens of autograph hunters waving their books at the stars. According to The Bystander, the holiday was a great success and all the guests had ‘a divine time altogether’.52
Freda’s younger daughter Angie was also leading her own life. In 1935 she married Captain Robert Laycock, of the Royal Horse Guards at St Margaret’s Westminster. Bob, as he was known, was also from a well-known Nottinghamshire family. The young couple had met during the hunting season. Angie did not ride but she was staying at the house of her late grandmother, Mrs Birkin, when she met the up-and-coming young officer. Angie had just had her first season. Although she was attracted to Bob, she did not immediately succumb to his charms. He was nine years older than her and on one occasion she accused him of being a ‘cradle snatcher’. Shortly after they met, she went to America to visit some of Freda’s relatives. Her aunt, Vera, told Bob that Angie was having such a good time she might not come back. When she did finally return, he proposed at Doncaster racecourse in November 1934.53
Angie was the first of her season’s debutantes to marry. At only 18 she was such a young bride that one gossip columnist joked: ‘We’ve always wondered how she’s escaped matrimony so long.’54 The wedding, at St Margaret’s Westminster on 24 January 1935, reflected Freda’s classless attitude. It was a stylish event with the bride dressed in a medieval-style brocade gown created by one of her sister’s costume designers and a military guard of honour from the bridegroom’s regiment awaiting her as she walked down the aisle. However, it was not all film-star glamour; Freda’s social conscience was also emphasised as unemployed men and women who were members of the Feathers Clubs had seats reserved for them.55 Angie’s father William Dudley Ward had come from Canada to give her away; the only guest who was missing was the Prince of Wales.
As Angie had been so close to the prince, she begged her mother to send him an invitation to her wedding. She was very hurt when there was no reply. She received nothing from the man who had been in her life since she was a toddler, not even a card. According to Wallis Simpson, when she heard of the engagement she had said to Edward that she supposed he must be very pleased as it was an excellent match, but he had just brushed her remark aside, saying he no longer saw the family and would not be going to the wedding. When Wallis asked if he was sending a present he just said: ‘No.’ His new mistress was quite shocked; it was the first time she had seen the side of him which could permanently exclude people who had been important in his life.56
After Edward had abdicated at the end of 1936, he married Wallis Simpson in June 1937 at the Château de Cande in the Loire region of France. Their host was the controversial self-made millionaire, Charles Bedaux, who had extensive business and political connections in Nazi Germany. Until it actually happened, even Mrs Simpson did not know exactly what the outcome of her affair with the prince would be. In February 1936 she had written to her aunt that Edward was lonely as king without a consort. The English wanted him to marry a duke’s daughter rather than a ‘mangy’ foreign princess but he would not marry without being in love.57 Like Freda before her, at one point Wallis wrote to Edward breaking off their affair, explaining that they could only ‘create disaster together’. However, like her predecessor, she also discovered that it was almost impossible to end her relationship with Edward.58
With Edward (now Duke of Windsor) married, Freda finally felt free to move on with her own life. A few months after Edward and Wallis’s wedding, in October 1937, Freda married Bobby de Casa Maury at Marylebone Registry Office. Crowds encircled the bride’s car and some people climbed on walls to see her arrive. Freda walked up the registry office steps with her brother Charles and sister Vera. Her outfit was understated; she wore a blue felt hat with a velvet bow and a ‘smoke blue’ suit with a stripe down the sleeves and a fur collar.59 After the m
arriage, the bride and groom entertained a few friends and then left for honeymoon in Paris.60 Freda’s family believe that sex had a great deal to do with the suave marquis’s attraction. He was known to take lovemaking very seriously. For him it was almost an art form; he collected erotic books and even had a Japanese model of a solid gold penis as a paperweight.61
As Freda began her new life, in the same month Edward and Wallis made their infamous trip to Germany. Knowing that it would provide the regime with a propaganda coup, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s Nazi hosts welcomed them enthusiastically. Referred to as ‘Her Royal Highness’, Wallis was treated like a queen and shown the respect her besotted husband believed she deserved. When they arrived, Union Jacks alternating with Swastikas decorated the station as the crowd cheered ‘Heil Edward’.62 During the visit they met Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels, but the highlight of their trip was tea with Hitler. Wallis grinned like an infatuated teenager as the Führer shook her hand. She later noted that he had ‘great inner force’. 63
Before the Second World War, Freda and Bobby led a stylish life in London. They were frequently seen at film premieres at the Curzon. However, there was always a more serious side to Freda and she was soon using her new husband’s business to help her charity. Many of the premieres were in aid of the Feathers Clubs. Relishing everything modern, in 1937–38 Freda and her husband had a state-of-the-art house built in Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood. It was commissioned from the fashionable Scottish architects Burnet, Tait and Lorne, who had already built the Curzon Cinema using the design of their architect Francis Lorne.
Built on the site of two Victorian houses, the new art deco house was featured in the Ideal Home Magazine of September 1938. Over six pages the magazine showed photographs of the house and analysed how the de Casa Maurys had created the simple, elegant style. Outside, blue-tinted bricks and white finish stonework and door and window frames complemented the clean lines of the house. Inside, light colours were used throughout. The hall was painted the palest yellow with a yellowish grey marble floor. In the sitting room the scheme was composed of pinkish-white walls and ceiling, the chair covers were blue and white with cushions and ruching of deep wine-coloured ottoman silk. One bedroom had blue satin covers and a buttoned bedhead; another used pink satin quilting. To make a bold statement, much of the furniture was designed by Doris Howard Robertson in satin-finished steel. The de Casa Maurys had all the latest technology; there was a television set in their second sitting room and they had the most modern heating and lighting. Mirrors were used throughout to reflect the light and make rooms look larger. The curved staircase was lit by portholes; during the day, natural light came through while at night artificial light from lamps in the thickness of the wall between the inner and outer glass lit the stairs.64
Freda had always enjoyed interior design and between the wars she was very successful at buying properties, doing them up, and then moving on. Her daughter Angie recalled that she had rarely lived anywhere more than two years. During the 1930s Freda built six houses in Wells Rise, Regent’s Park which she then let out. She found the whole process very rewarding, describing the townhouses as ‘so nice and my own creation’.65
As always in Freda’s life, family was a priority and although they were now grown up, she remained close to both her daughters. When Angie gave birth to her first daughter Edwina Ottillie Jane (always called ‘Tilly’) in 1936, Freda became a youthful grandmother. Gossip columnists commented that she was ‘the slimmest as well as the smartest grandmother in London’.66 Two years later, in July 1938, the Laycocks had a son, Joseph William Peter.
In 1939 Bobby de Casa Maury opened a second cinema, the Paris, in Lower Regent Street. It could seat 500 people and like the Curzon it was decorated in the latest fashion. Its crinkled walls and ceilings were painted matt white, while the chairs and carpets were in pillar-box red and the dim lighting in the corridor was turquoise blue. The first film shown at the Paris was La Bête Humaine, a thriller based on Emile Zola’s novel but directed by Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter. The gala premiere raised funds for Freda’s Feathers Clubs. Noël Coward and Pempie were among the celebrity guests.67
By the late 1930s Pempie’s acting career had taken off. She was in the pages of magazines more often than her mother and Freda was now referred to as ‘the mother of Penelope Dudley Ward’. In 1938 Pempie made her debut on the American stage, appearing in Noël Coward’s revue Set to Music in New York. While appearing in the show she fell in love with fellow actor Anthony Pelissier, son of the popular composer Harry Pelissier and the actress Fay Compton. Anthony composed music, painted, wrote and acted. After a short courtship, Pempie and Anthony married in December 1939. He was very well read, but he was a mercurial character and difficult to live with. A year after their wedding, the couple had a daughter, Tracy, but by that time their marriage was not working out.68
During the war Pempie appeared in some high-profile films, acting opposite Laurence Olivier and David Niven. While filming a short film, called A Letter from Home, made under the auspices of the British Ministry of Information, she met the film-maker Carol Reed. Carol was a tall, dark, restless man. The attraction between Pempie and Carol was very powerful. At the time Pempie was still married to Anthony Pelissier and Carol was about to marry another woman, Diana Wynyard. Carol married Diana, although he knew he was more in love with Pempie. Although she was deeply in love too, Pempie tried to do the honourable thing. She did not wish to break up someone else’s marriage, so she left England to appear in Lady Windermere’s Fan on Broadway. It was a great success and Pempie’s career flourished in America.69
14
THE CHARITY WORKER
During the Second World War, Freda’s connections kept her close to the centre of power; her friendships with Winston Churchill and Brendan Bracken deepened. In 1940 Winston nominated her charity, the Feathers Club Association, to receive the royalties on the records of his speeches which were being distributed by His Master’s Voice Gramophone Company. He also sent her £500 from a fund sent to him by the Mutual Fire Underwriters Association of Ontario. Freda wrote to him saying how touched she was by his gesture. She explained: ‘Any money that I get is so badly needed, and so inexpressibly welcome at the present time. We have much work to do and so little money available.’1 The press baron Lord Beaverbrook also donated £200 to the clubs.2
Responding to wartime needs, the charity’s role expanded. It was supplying food to thousands of homeless people and men and women doing war work. It got so busy that the Feathers Club Association called in a communal feeding expert to advise them. The clubs gained a reputation for giving a nourishing meal at low prices at lunchtime and in the evening. They also provided food to take home for people who had no cooking facilities. Feathers Clubs set up emergency nurseries to look after babies and children whose mothers had to go out to work to supplement the family income while their husbands were in the forces. In the evenings, the clubs were full of people of all ages from the overcrowded districts of London. They put on cookery demonstrations, first aid classes and knitting parties. To provide some light relief there were whist drives and dances. Many of the women who came were very lonely because their children had been evacuated and their husbands were abroad fighting.
Activities were still put on for boys and girls aged 14 to 18. It was felt that it was particularly important to care for teenagers. Without the clubs they would have had nowhere to go and nothing to do except hang around in the blacked-out streets. If they got bored it was feared they would turn to hooliganism. Instead, the clubs provided a warm cheerful place where, under the supervision of supportive adults, they could spend their evenings playing games or pursuing their hobbies. In an era when gender stereotyping was the norm, in one club the boys were making model aeroplanes to be judged by Bobby de Casa Maury, while the girls were making Christmas cards and redecorating dolls’ houses.
The club activities continued until t
he night bombing became intense. Due to the Blitz, some of the clubs had to shut in the evenings but at the Kensal Road club an air-raid shelter was built adjoining the building so that the boys could come straight from work, have their supper and then continue with club activities. They slept in bunks in the shelter and then had breakfast before leaving for work the next morning.
Nightly attendance had been high, but it dropped when club members were called up or started war work. Some women and children members were evacuated to the country, and many said that they wished there was a Feathers Club near them. When soldiers returned on leave they would pop into the clubs. To provide a respite from the bombing in London, the Feathers Club opened a workers’ rest camp at Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, where members and their families could go for a quiet weekend.3
Freda enjoyed her work for the charity. After staying with Vera in Nottingham she wrote humorously to Duff Cooper that her visit to her sister’s house on top of ‘a coal black bleak hill with all her children and their Nottingham accents […] will gradually get me ready to go back to the slums without suffering too much hardship from a sudden change’.4
In January 1941 Freda was invited to Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire by Winston and Clementine Churchill for a weekend house party. Ditchley was the elegant eighteenth-century home of the Conservative MP Ronald Tree and his American wife Nancy; the couple were well known for their lavish hospitality. The niece of Nancy Astor, Mrs Tree was the owner of ‘Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler’, the well-known British decorating firm. She was credited with creating the ‘English country-house look’ which was based on understatement and comfort. She believed that a house should never look ‘decorated’ and that a designer should not stick slavishly to one period or a room would be turned into a lifeless museum. Her special touches were open fires, candlelight and masses of flowers.
Before Wallis Page 24
