After lunch, Wally took us to see an adorable gramophone she’d found in Wigmore Street, completely portable, in a lizard-skin case. I couldn’t resist. But I’ve entrusted it to Wally, because if I bring it to Carlton Gardens, Flora will expect to play with it and it will soon be broken.
Pips was on the telephone the instant I got home. She said, “Minnehaha’s as slow as ever to pick up a check, I see. And I hope you’re not going to buy her every toy in the store. You’re too generous, Maybell. Always were.”
Well, what’s a little money between friends? And I’m only lending her my gramophone.
2nd June 1932
Shopping with Wally. Ernest seems to keep her on a very strict allowance and goes through the account books at the end of each month. Thank heavens Brumby was never so particular.
Flora sitting on the stairs watching for my return. She announced that she’d been making “gakes” and had one saved for me up in the nursery, but I was too exhausted to climb more stairs. I said, “I’ll come tomorrow.”
A hammering on my door five minutes later, and there she stood, with a lump of warm gray dough in a paper case.
Tonight dinner with Violet and Melhuish’s friends, the Belchesters, who can’t wait to know me.
3rd June 1932
Anne Belchester’s busybodying and charitable works make Violet look like a positive lady of leisure. She wanted to know about my Baltimore committees, but I told her, it isn’t everyone who’s suited to committees. There are talkers and there are doers, and I’m a doer. All that time spent shuffling papers and drinking tea. I’d sooner sign a check.
Billy Belchester said, “Careful now, Maybell. You’ll have writer’s cramp by the time Anne’s finished with you!”
Melhuish said, “Violet gives her time, that’s the thing, and her expertise. All the money in the world is no use if it’s not wisely marshaled, and the thing about Vee is, she’s terribly good with lists.”
Anne Belchester said, “She is. She sometimes mislays them, but when they come to hand, they’re absolutely first-rate.”
Oh well, glory in the highest to Violet and her lists. I do my bit. I sort through my closets every fall and give to Christmas Goodwill. Quality woolens, shoes hardly worn, hats that aren’t keepers. I just don’t make a fuss about it.
Pips is getting up a party to go to Ciro’s tomorrow night. So far the Judson Erlangers and Wally and Ernest. Ida is an unknown.
5th June 1932
We closed Ciro’s last night. There was a wonderfully droll ensemble playing with homemade banjos. The Moses Jackson Coon Band! Judson and Hattie brought along the press attaché, Whitlow Trilling, and his wife, Gladys. Ida turned up with an Argentine who smelled of brilliantine. Ernest had business papers to peruse, so cried off at the last minute. No great loss. He’s so serious. People don’t always want to be discussing Pluto’s Republic.
According to Whitlow, a new First Secretary just arrived, and it’s someone Wally knows from her Navy days in San Diego. Benny Thaw.
Pips said, “Is he an old flame?”
Wally says absolutely not, but she’s going to look him up.
The birds were singing as I arrived home, so I looked forward to a restful day in bed, but Wally was on the telephone at ten, slave-driving me to go shopping for lingerie, and then a military parade started up. Violet says it was the Major General’s Review. Men and horses tramping across Horse Guards’ Parade. Drums, bugles, shouting, all bad enough in themselves, but Doopie and Flora came back from watching and proceeded to reenact it in the corridor outside my room. Doopie always did get overexcited by military bands.
Violet is walking around with a furrowed brow, because the Rutlands are dining tonight, all the way from their castle in the country, also the terrifically von Bismarcks, but someone has chucked, leaving her with thirteen, and I’m far too tired to make up the numbers. I don’t have the strength to lift a soup spoon.
Caught my heel in the hem of my charcoal silk getting out of the car this morning, and there is apparently no girl among the overfed rabble of servants in this house who knows how to mend. Not one.
Light rain.
6th June 1932
I am completely recovered. Dr. Collis Browne’s soothing nerve linctus certainly lives up to its promises.
Now I’ve tried it I shall never be without it. And while I slept, Doopie has quite expertly repaired my ripped hem. I shall buy her a box of candy.
Wally on the phone first thing. She sent a message of welcome to Benny Thaw and he replied immediately with an invitation for drinks. She seemed particularly excited about his being married to Connie Morgan.
I said, “Do you know her?”
“No,” she said, “but I soon will. This should get the American scene here fizzing. Those Morgan girls all have money and style.”
Lunched with Pips, who says she doesn’t know anything about Connie Morgan, but what her sisters have is money and reputations. Gloria Morgan was married to Reggie Vanderbilt until he drank himself to death, and Thelma Morgan was Mrs. Bell Telephone but is now Lady Furness.
She said, “And we all know about her!” Then Ida turned up, raving about a miraculous new oxygenated face cream, and we somehow never got back to the subject of Thelma Furness and what it is we’re all supposed to know.
Took a tray of fruit fondants for Doopie.
Violet was out at her Distressed Pit. Flora knows the days of the week by her mother’s committees.
“Bunday, Pit Ponies, Doosday, Blood, Wesday, Falling Women and Not Forgottens.”
She was stuck for a minute with Thursday but Doopie helped her out. Something called “Lebbers.”
They seem to be great friends and have a most amusing sign-language they use from time to time. How simple their lives are! I have to dine with Lord and Lady Anglesey and Violet’s gruesome in-laws, while they can play with their dolls and have sugar sandwiches for tea. There is something enviable about the life of an imbecile.
Of course, Flora will never learn to speak clearly listening to Doopie’s version of things. I may take her in hand.
Violet finally came home at six.
I said, “Don’t you think Flora’s rather backward with her speaking? She just copies Doopie, you know?”
“Oh,” she said, “they’ll sort that out when she goes to school. They did Rory.”
I said, “Well I feel sorry for her. She never goes anywhere.”
Violet said, “What nonsense. Doopie takes her across to St. James’s Park. They walk to Duck Island almost every day. And she was invited to the Yorks for tea yesterday but would she get dressed?”
I said, “That’s because no one has taught her properly. She sees you running out to committee meetings, hair uncombed, egg yolk on your blouse. It’s no wonder she thinks she can go to tea parties in bloomers and a liberty bodice.”
“Maybell,” she said, “Will you please go and bathe. Salty and Elspeth are coming at seven.”
I said, “First tell me if you ever heard of Thelma Furness and if so, what’s her scandalous story?”
She made a great business of closing the door to the drawing room, then said,
“Lady Furness is a friend of the Prince of Wales, but not the kind we mention in front of the children. Why do you ask?”
I said, “No reason. Wally knows the husband of one of her sisters. She probably thinks this is going to be her entrée to royal circles. She’s as ambitious as ever. She keeps quizzing me about our connections with the throne.”
“Well,” she said, “first of all, you have no connections. Secondly, those who do have them never speak of them. And thirdly, I would say it’s a very steep climb from acquaintance with the husband of a certain person’s sister to meeting Royalties, too steep even for Minnehaha.”
Violet has always taken herself far too seriously.
She said, “I hope it goes without saying, Lady F. is never to be mentioned in this house. And Maybell, hot water costs money. Please don’t have your bat
h too deep.”
Chance would be a fine thing.
7th June 1932
Flora has renamed one of her dolls “Lady Furness” and has banished it to the back stairs. I grow fonder of the child.
9th June 1932
All the talk is of Race Week. Violet said someone called Lightfoot might be willing to escort me to the Guards’ luncheon tent, but I recognize crumbs when I see them falling from my sister’s table. Three times today she’s asked, “Are you sure you won’t let Ettie Desborough squeeze you in?” Guilt.
Wally says, without a white badge, Royal Ascot isn’t royal at all, so why bother? The white badge is the Open Sesame to the inner sanctum, the Royal Enclosure, but seemingly impossible to get unless one is on intimate terms with the Prince of Wales. So we may just ignore Ascot. We’ll borrow Ernest’s driver and go shopping for bibelots in forgotten backwaters.
12th June 1932
Wally and Ernest went to drinks with the Benny Thaws and met the unmentionable Thelma F. Wally says Connie and Thelma are both adorable and she’s meeting them for lunch on Monday. Pips says if they’re lunching with Wally, someone had better warn them to take along a fistful of their Morgan dollars.
Violet and Melhuish’s luggage has been taken to Windsor, not a great amount of it for three days of banquets and royal carriage rides. Wally says fashion is everything at Ascot, but I’m certain Violet hasn’t bought a single new gown. We might have had such fun shopping together, but no. She didn’t even ask my advice about hats. Wally would have been much more fun as a sister.
13th June 1932
Violet and Melhuish left after lunch for Windsor. Ida Coote has been angling to stay with me while they’re out of town. She seems to have become some kind of nomad since she lost her money, always offering to air people’s villas or walk their dogs. She said, “You won’t want to be alone in that great big house, all those empty rooms, all those portraits with eyes that follow you.” But I’m not going to be alone. I shall have Violet’s staff to lick into shape. Anyway, Ida has only two topics of conversation: Ida and men. It’s all right for the occasional lunch, but a slumber party would be unendurable.
More rain. To Gamages for overshoes, then home for a nursery tea. Jello, grilled cheese, and gingerbread. Afterwards, we played at Royal Ascot, with dolls strapped to Ulick’s spaniel and Melhuish’s little ratting dog.
Gave Flora an almost, almost empty scent bottle. She wanted to know if I was going to live with them forever!
14th June 1932
I’m a great hit with my niece, not least because I’ve decreed no fish will be served as long as I’m in command. I told her she could choose her favorite dinner, and she came down in her nightgown to deliver her demands: LAB SHOPS. SIRUB TART. GUSTARD.
I said, “Flora, wouldn’t you like to go to school?”
“No thank you,” she said.
I said, “Other little girls do.”
She said, “Lilibet York doesn’t.”
But Lilibet York is a princess. She’ll never need to use her brain the way we ordinary girls have to. At the very most, she might get called upon to be Queen, but only if they ran out of Kings. All highly unlikely.
A lot of huffing and puffing from the housekeeper over my menus. Flora’s choice tonight, then tomorrow a rib roast and ice cream.
She said, “I don’t know, madam. Her Ladyship didn’t say anything about specials. This kind of thing isn’t customary.”
I said, “I know it isn’t customary. That’s precisely why I’m ordering it.”
Such a fuss. All she has to do is telephone Harrold’s. They have everything.
“Carry on like this,” she said, half out of the door, “Her Ladyship won’t know the place when she gets back. We shall be all upside down with bilious attacks and overspending.”
I’ll deem it a failure if Violet doesn’t see a difference. I’ve already put a stop to the maid Trotman’s discussions. She now understands that if I say the tea is too strong I’m not inviting her to pour herself a cup to see whether she agrees. Give me a little longer and I’ll break that footman of breathing through his mouth.
Tomorrow with Wally to the rolling hills of Cotswoldshire and all those darling cottages with hairy roofs.
15th June 1932
A profitable day in Chipping Norton, a most characteristic town, pretty little stone row houses with windows you can look right into from the sidewalk, ancient hostelries, all haunted, I’m sure, and such sweet, simple country folk. They seemed to find us quite fascinating.
We got Wally a set of silver-plated vanity boxes, quite good enough for a guest room. Also a bone china compote dish, with the tiniest hairline crack, and a very pretty set of Victorian creamers. Bryanston Court is the kind of apartment that needs all the help it can get. It has no features. Wally’s done the best she can with her Chinese pieces, but the place still looks half-dressed. I suppose when Ernest got his divorce, the invalid wife was awarded all his good things.
Wally’s going to give a dinner for the Benny Thaws and invite Thelma Furness, too.
I can’t wait.
Doopie was in good form last evening, chatting away in that funny, snuffly style of hers. Flora seems to understand all of it. We looked through Doopie’s albums, pictures I’d quite forgotten. Mother and Father with baby Violet, posed beside a potted palm. Me in a little cotton pinafore, with Doopie in her crib. That would have been before she lost her mind. Several photographs of our Season, too. Pips and Violet setting off for Mary Kirk’s tea dance. Me, Pips, Violet, and Wally in our finery before the Bachelors’ Cotillion. What a production that was. Wally and I used to practice our one-step together. “I’ll be the man,” she’d say. Homer Chute had taught her the tango, too, but that was far too racy for the Baltimore Bachelors’.
It looked at first as though Wally wouldn’t be able to attend, because her uncle refused to help her out. He said it wasn’t seemly to be giving balls when young men were laying down their lives in Flanders. But then he relented and gave her a gown allowance, and she spent it all on one fabulous white satin. She reckoned she’d rather star at one important ball than blend with the masses at half a dozen.
Flora wanted to know why there were no pictures of Doopie going to a ball. I told her there was a war, and left it at that. I supposed having been cooped up with Doopie in that nursery all her life, she thinks of her as normal. I must say though, they both sat up so nicely and ate so daintily I’ve ordered dinner served in the dining room tonight.
16th June 1932
Unexpected company last evening. We were about to go into dinner when Melhuish’s friend, George Lightfoot, called in on his way back from Windsor.
He said, “I thought I’d look in on my favorite girls.” Flora clambered onto his knee immediately, so I offered him a sherry wine and he stayed to carve the beef. He’s a tall drink of water, rosy cheeks, tangled hair. He had a brother who was in the Grenadiers with Melhuish, lost at Passchendaele.
He said, “I would never have taken you and Violet for sisters, but you and Doopie, yes. I see a definite resemblance.” I don’t think so.
He said it was a criminal waste to eat such a fine-looking roast without a drop of wine, raced off to his cellars in South Audley Street, and came back with a bottle he described as “toothsome but sincere.” I don’t know that it was advisable to allow Doopie a glass, but afterwards she kept us quite entertained with her impersonations of Theda Bara and poor Fatty Arbuckle.
17th June 1932
Violet and Melhuish got back just as I was leaving to meet Pips for lunch. Flora came thundering down the stairs to greet them. “Mummy!” she said, “I’ve had a splendid time with Aunt Bayba. We had lab shops and ice cream and Doopie had red drink. Cook says she’s never seen such garryings-on in her life.”
“Not now, darling,” Violet said. “I have to talk to Lady Habberley about raffle tickets.”
Pips thinks Wally’s only inviting Thelma Furness to dinner in the hope she’ll brin
g the Prince of Wales, but I’m sure Wally knows that’s out of the question. Theirs is a very private affair.
Pips said, “I suppose having the Prince’s sweetie to dinner is still more than a little Cinderella like Wally ever dreamed of.”
Poor Wally, tarred for life, even by a friend like Pips. It’s not that there was anything particularly inferior about the Warfields. Her Uncle Sol had a very good house on Preston Street, and her Aunt Bessie is still well thought of. It was her mother who lowered the tone of things with one foolish marriage after another. Too many husbands and too much rouge. No wonder Wally’s so determined to start over and make something of herself.
Tonight to the Embassy Club with the Benny Thaws.
18th June 1932
Violet says what I had Smith spend on meat for two days would feed an African for a year. Ridiculous. I don’t believe Violet knows any Africans.
Interesting people at the Benny Thaws’ party last night. Boss and Ethel Croker from Michigan. Ethel was a Navy wife before she met Boss. She knew Wally from China. Somehow Ethel seemed more pleased to see Wally than Wally did to see Ethel.
20th June 1932
Wally’s birthday. I gave her a calfskin guest book and lunch at the Dorch. Ernest gave her a fountain pen. What a dull old stick he is.
We’ve been worked off our feet all afternoon planning her dinner party. There’s so much to do. The menu to be decided and the placement, new table linens and stemware to be purchased, conversational topics to be studied. Wally reads the newspapers cover to cover every day, and she’s skimmed through centuries of history and philosophy while having her hair done. She says one hardly ever needs to plod through an entire book.
Gone With the Windsors Page 3
