Other dances blur in the memory. Most debs – though not all – remember their own dance; the rest have merged into a composite patchwork of flowers, dance cards, chaperones on hired gilt chairs surrounding the dance floor, and lavish quantities of food and champagne. The three dances, however, that stand out clearly as the epitome of that extravagant summer – the last and wildest waltz of an élite that took its pre-eminence for granted – were those at Sutton Place, Holland House and Blenheim Palace. Coincidence decreed that they should all take place within the span of a week; nothing quite like them would ever be seen again. Some girls sensed it, even then. One was Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, now the Countess of Sutherland:
I think I felt life like that couldn’t and perhaps shouldn’t go on – this tremendously rich life; these extreme privileges. One knew that the ability of people to give these beautiful dances in great houses with wonderful gardens and lovely flood-lighting – one knew that must change. Perhaps one didn’t enjoy them quite so much at the time – in any case, the grand dances weren’t in fact as much fun as the smaller ones – but I knew that one would look back on it all with great nostalgia. It was obvious that something was going to happen, and I just felt it couldn’t… it must finish.
For Rosalind Cubitt herself, the dance should have been the climax of a brilliant Season. In fact, as she says, ‘I remember very little about it, as I had very bad ‘flu and was doped to the hilt!’ This may be why Rosalind did not accompany her parents to the dinner-party given beforehand by the Earl and Countess of Ilchester (who had lent Holland House for the dance), which was attended by the King and Queen. The presence of royalty, the brilliance of the dinner, she herself the focus of the evening – all this would have presented an ordeal even to a girl as poised as Rosalind. But when the girl was half-dead with ‘flu and only kept on her feet with large doses of medicine to control the fever, it was clearly an impossibility. So Rosalind dined instead with her best friend Sonia Denison, at an intimate and undemanding dinner-party given by Sonia’s mother and Brigadier-General Beale-Browne, and arrived at Holland House just before ten o’clock, as the dance was beginning. Sonia stayed next to her throughout the evening, as Lady Chichester remembers: ‘I can still see the big staircase, and Ros standing with Sonia at the bottom of the stairs. It was a lovely party, but I have a sort of memory of it being very, very crowded. I don’t know how many they invited, but it was more I think than the house should have had.’ Lord Cromer, who was also there, says the same: ‘It was most beautifully done – it was magnificent – but my chief recollection is that it was enormously crowded. It was a goliath sort of dance – there must have been over a thousand people present – enormous. And that didn’t necessarily make dances more fun; on the contrary.
Of all the dances given that summer, Holland House was the only one that Lord Cathcart attended, and the sight of the house as he arrived made a lasting impression upon him: ‘I remember coming away from a dinner-party and turning in at those magnificent gates off Kensington High Street and going down the drive to Holland House which stood there, splendidly floodlit.’
Any dance at which the King and Queen were present was always glittering. Women had to wear tiaras, for example, men wore decorations, everyone was on their best behaviour. There was an extra frisson given by their presence at this particular ball, for Rosalind was the daughter of Sonia Cubitt, who was herself the younger daughter of Mrs Keppel, the celebrated last mistress of Edwarci VII. Mrs Keppel had understood perfectly the conventions of behaviour in her role, and had been careful never to embarrass Queen Alexandra. All the same, it was regarded as a striking act of tolerance on the part of George vi to attend a dance given by the daughter of his grandfather’s mistress. Christian Grant certainly remembers people talking about it:
It was rather special, because there was that slight aura of naughtiness about it – Mrs Keppel having been Edward VII’s mistress and the Royal Family being there. We all thought it was rather broad-minded and nice of them to accept the situation, but it did make it a bit conspiratorial and glamorous.
Lord Hood was another who went to Holland House that night. 1939 was the seventh Season that he had taken part in; and by this time, although he received dozens of invitations, he went to very few dances:
I was working quite hard by then, so I never stayed very late, and probably went more to the kind of dance where not just the very young were present, but also the middle-aged, which I found more amusing. I remember particularly going to Holland House, because I’d never been there before: and of course, never went there again, because it was blitzed. It stretched right down to Kensington High Street and I don’t know how far north. It had a big park in those days, and a red brick Jacobean house full of a lot of very lovely things. The best way I can describe it is by saying that it was just like a country house in London. Before the war, when the monarch dined out, the men might well have been asked to wear knee breeches; though I’m sure we didn’t wear breeches for the Holland House dance. The card would have said, ‘To have the honour of meeting their Majesties the King and Queen’ – or something like that – and then, ‘Dancing, 10p.m. Decorations.’
The Ilchesters had invited the King and Queen to dine, so they were already there before the rest came, and then the hostess – in this case Mrs Cubitt – would ask friends to give dinner parties. I dined, I remember quite well, with a strange lady called Mrs Corrigan. She had taken Lady Ward’s house, Dudley House. Why Lady Ward let it I can’t think; she didn’t need to; but anyway Mrs Corrigan paid some huge sum for the house for the Season, and I remember dining there. I remember driving in her car to the party, and there was the most terrible queue of traffic, as you can imagine, trying to get there.
The same traffic delayed the Queen of Spain, who had not been invited to dine, and so she arrived very late. Lady Ilchester had given up waiting by the entrance to receive her, and when word came that the Queen of Spain was at the door, she had to struggle through the crowd of guests to try and get there in time to meet her. In the end they met in a passage, and there was a flurry of mutual apologies, with Lady Ilchester going, ‘I’m so sorry Ma’am that I wasn’t at the door to meet you’ and the Queen of Spain saying, ‘I shouldn’t worry about that… it’s all the fault of the traffic …’ I remember the scene very well.
That was not the only faux pas of the evening. Another occurred when Lindsey Furneaux, in the crush of people on the dance floor, somehow collided with the Queen: ‘I was being whirled around by some chap and I knocked her over! I think it was me that was responsible – in fact I’m sure it was.’ Lord Haig describes the relaxed atmosphere of these parties: ‘The King and Queen were both very unstiff about everything. King George vi enjoyed his social life and he wasn’t at all rigid about things. Formality had broken down a lot since King George v and they – the King and Queen – had encouraged everyone to let go in order to adjust to the realities of the time. They knew that all this stiffness and stuffiness wasn’t really what mattered. They started out in a very democratic sort of way to change it.’ The royal couple made a great impression on Lord Savile:
I remember the Queen coming down the staircase at Holland House looking like a Winterhalter – perfectly wonderful. That was at one o’clock when they were leaving to go home.
I also remember for some reason that it was the last ball that Mrs Ronnie Greville ever attended. She’d been very ill, but the Queen said to her, ‘You can come – you can!’ and so she did. John Fox-Strangways wheeled her into dinner, but then she went home afterwards.
They had Ambrose and his band of fourteen musicians playing that night, all the best dance tunes of that year – Cole Porter and so on. And there was a Sir Roger de Coverley, led by Lady Ilchester. The ladies wore tiaras, and I, because I didn’t have any orders or decorations, wore a carnation. But then, I was only twenty. We don’t belong to the same world today….
Finally, here is a contrasting description from someone who, despite her fragile beauty
and aristocratic background, found that crowded, competitive evening an ordeal – Lady Elizabeth Scott, now the Duchess of Northumberland: ‘My recollection is of a nightmare – finding myself swept along in a milling mass of strangers – separated even from my parents. As soon as I found them (by which time I was nearly in tears) I begged to be taken home!’
Everyone agrees that dance tunes were much better than they are today: easier to dance to, more romantic and with ‘much nicer words’. Naturally, different tunes have special significance for different people, but the ones that were named over and over again include ‘Deep Purple’, ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, ‘You’re the Tops’, ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek’, ‘Tiger Rag’, ‘I Like New York in June’, ‘The Lady is a Tramp’, ‘Change Partners’, ‘The Umbrella Man’, ‘Night and Day’, ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, ‘Hold Tight’, ‘Three Little Fishes’, ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, ‘A Foggy Day’, ‘Oh Play to Me’, ‘Gipsy’, ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’, ‘One Night of Love’, ‘Remember Me’, ‘Popcorn Man’, ‘Begin the Beguine’ . .. and so on and on and swirling, twirling, spinning, swooping on. ‘The Big Apple’ was a jazz number of the day, and many dances ended with that or with a mad gallop before the National Anthem, so that the younger guests could let their hair down for the last dance before being rounded up by the chaperones and taken home to bed.
The same bands played night after night. Ambrose was the smartest name to secure for a coming-out dance, but Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Orpheans were also popular, and after these two came Jack Jackson, Tommy Kinsman, Tubby Clayton, Henry Hall, Geoffrey Howard, Geraldo, Harry Roy, and others forgotten now but much loved then. In addition, nightclub bands could sometimes be coaxed out for the evening to play at a deb dance: men like Tiny Tim Clayton and his Whispering 400 Band, Roy Fox and his band from the Monsignor, and Ken (Snakehips) Johnson, the black bandleader who played at the Café de Paris (and was killed there when a bomb fell on it in 1941). They were kindly, even fatherly figures, who knew many of the debs and their escorts by name and would sometimes be deputed by the mothers to ensure that a daughter did not stay out too long. Ann Schuster (now Mrs Archie Mackenzie) recalls visiting one favourite night spot when she was only just seventeen and still very new to the Season:
My mother had allowed me to go to the Berkeley on my own as a very great treat with a young man who was only just eighteen: in fact I think the occasion might have been his birthday. He was a neighbour and I’d known him ever since I was a child. However, behind my back she’d gone to see the maître d’hôtel – an Italian called Ferraro who knew all the mothers, and took a fatherly interest in everybody – and she had asked him to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t stay too late. So, to my dismay and shame, at midnight he came over and tapped my boyfriend on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m sorry, Sir, but it’s time now’ – and he actually saw us into the taxi and made sure everything was all right.
Nice men – great dance bands – memorable tunes, as is proved by the fact that their titles, fifty years later, still set off a hum in the mind.
There was one final, crowning dance to come: an event which, like the last spectacular setpiece at a firework display, illuminates the dark sky and creates magic and wonder for even the most jaded spectators. It was the great ball given on 7 July by the Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace for her daughter, Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill. The Blenheim Ball still has the power to make people’s eyes light up, fifty years later. It was huge, it was floodlit, it was Society’s last great extravagance before the coming of war. Invitations to this ball were avidly – desperately – sought after. Girls would fake illness rather than admit they had not been asked. ‘Everyone who was anyone’ – in that phrase riddled with elitism, the more so because it is unconscious – came to the Blenheim Ball. Exaggeration is impossible; hyperbole pales beside the ancestral splendour of this, the greatest social event of the summer of 1939.
Lady Sarah was a magnificent-looking young woman, as her photograph from that time shows: magnificent, rather than pretty. She was very tall and slim, with long slender legs; not a bit embarrassed by her height, she was high-spirited, energetic and bold. She had a typically Churchillian face, with large blue eyes and a pursed mouth: and she too was, she says, a complete innocent:
We had not been brought up like children are today. We literally never saw other children. We lived in a house called Lodesby House in Leicestershire and in those days it was sort of frowned on for us to see other children – it wasn’t for snobbish reasons, but in case we caught measles or any other disease. So we never saw anyone except maybe our own relations, a few cousins: nobody else.
She had been ‘finished’ in Paris, at a small and very exclusive establishment run by a Madame d’Aunay, which she attended with her friend Lady Elizabeth Scott. Because of this they had missed the ‘little Season’ – the chatty lunches at which girls got to know one another, made friends and found a niche among the bewildering variety of strange faces. Lady Sarah arrived in London from Paris in mid-May and was catapulted straight into the Astorian splendour of Dinah Brand’s dance at 6 St James’s Square. The veneer of sophistication which Paris had given her, helped by a wardrobe of magnificent ball dresses chosen for her at Worth by her grandmother, Mme Jacques Balsan (Consuelo, the American heiress whose first husband had been the ninth Duke of Marlborough), made her seem outwardly formidable.
Her social pre-eminence ensured that she was in demand for every dance, and at dinner-parties would always be given the best seat at the best table, according to strict rules of placement.
The dinners before dances were rather boring because one always sat next to practically the same people. Being a duke’s daughter, it was done in order of precedence, so usually whoever was on either side of me had a girlfriend below the salt and I had a boyfriend below the salt, so one was never sitting with anybody one wanted to be with. I used to vary between Prince Frederick of Prussia (who’s now dead); the present Lord Salisbury, who was the Hon. Robert Cecil; Billy Hartington (who’s dead); and Rowley Errington – Lord Cromer. I used to guess my seat, and most times I wasn’t very far out. I got switched around sometimes, it changed a little – but very little.
It was hard for her dinner and dancing partners to realize that this tall, aristocratic, wealthy girl was, underneath, much like any other seventeen-year-old. Her childhood had been even more sheltered than most of her contemporaries’ for she had never been to school and emotionally she was still completely immature. ‘We weren’t like seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds at all – more like today’s twelve-year-olds. Our relationships were very innocent, absolutely. Totally innocent relationships: like you might find between a boy and a girl aged twelve and thirteen today – or even probably younger, because they’re so sophisticated. My granddaughter aged seven knows much more than I did at seventeen.’ In the course of the Season she developed a warm affection for Mark Howard. Four years older and very good-looking, he had already left Trinity College, Cambridge, and was serving in the Coldstream Guards. The eldest of three sons, he would, had he lived, have inherited Castle Howard. He was killed in action in 1944. He was at her dance on 7 July, but Lady Sarah cannot have been able to spare him much attention for she was the focus and the raison d’être of the great Blenheim Ball.
Preparations for it had lasted throughout the preceding week:
I remember the preamble to it … the work by the electricians because the house was going to be floodlit; all the work with the tent going up in the garden – there were all sorts of things going on, and all that took about a week.
On the night of the dance we had a band playing outside on the lawn, y’see. And I remember the arcade rooms all being emptied of their furniture because we had a supper-party down there. And I remember also the gardeners were told to grow malmaisons – great masses of pink malmaisons were all over the house. I don’t thi
nk they grow malmaisons any more, I don’t think there’s a market for them, they’re too expensive. Great big pink carnations: they were huge. So apart from the electricians and the workmen there were all the gardeners as well running about getting the flowers arranged….
Blenheim Palace was filled with relatives and some of the more privileged guests who were staying the night. Vast as it is, the house was so crowded that Elizabeth Leveson-Gower remembers having to share a room with Lady Mairi Stewart. House-parties were held at all the neighbouring houses as well, and few if any of the hundreds of guests who thronged the great house and its park would have returned to London that night. The ball was not only – not even mainly – for the younger generation. Politicians, diplomats, members of the far-flung Marlborough family down to the remotest cousins were all there. Lady Sarah’s grandmother travelled from France to attend.
In 1939 I went to Blenheim with anxious forebodings, for the international horizon was dark. At dinner, sitting next to Monsieur Corbin, the popular French Ambassador, I found it difficult to share the diplomatic detachment his conversation maintained. Yet at that same dinner, at my grand-daughter’s table, was one of the sons of the German Crown Prince, whom, I was told, Winston had suggested using as a perfect counterfoil to Nazism under Hitler. Monsieur Corbin, the perfect diplomat, avoided such issues, preferring a personal topic. … I suffered the same unease that had afflicted me once in Russia when, surrounded by the glittering splendour of the Czar’s Court, I sensed impending disaster. For again, in this brilliant scene at Blenheim, I sensed the end of an era. … But on that evening, the scene was still gay, and my pleasure great in meeting so many old friends. I supped with Winston and Anthony Eden and wandered out to the lovely terraces Marlborough had built before his death. With their formal lines and classic ornaments, they were the right setting for so imposing a monument as Blenheim Palace.2
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