17th November 1932
To the Paradise Club for Hattie Erlanger’s birthday. She and Judson are going to Jessie Woolworth’s for Christmas, in Palm Beach. Wally and Ernest are going to Landgravine Lily’s, Pips and Freddie are going to the Prosper Friths in Kent. Everyone seems fixed up except me, but no matter. Solitude holds no fears for me. I shall have delicious little meals served on a tray and immerse myself in the great thinkers of the day. I’ve been meaning to take up reading for quite some time. Wally swears that an informed mind improves the face.
More fog.
18th November 1932
Violet’s smell has been run to earth. George Lightfoot called me with the news this morning. Seven pieces of kippered herring tucked into pillow covers and down the arms of chairs. The finger has been pointed at Flora, but she maintains a “purgler” must have done it.
Lunch with Wally. Connie Thaw told her that Thelma’s divorce won’t mean the Prince of Wales can marry her. Some day he’ll be king, and there are rules about who he can marry. Well, surely the answer to that is for them to continue as they are until he becomes king. Then, once he’s in charge, he’ll be able to unmake inconvenient rules. I shall ask Violet.
20th November 1932
Violet says the Prince of Wales can never marry Thelma Furness, or any other divorced person. Neither can he change the rules when he becomes king. Only Parliament can do that. I begin to wonder if there are any advantages at all to being king.
I said, “Well, it seems hard cheese for Thelma when her husband has gone off on tiger shoots and left the door very obviously ajar.”
Violet said Melhuish enjoys a good duck-hunt when he can get it, but they’ve never allowed his absences to lead to moral laxity.
Flora is to be tried at Hope House School as a weekly boarder after Christmas, to see if she’s suited. She’s not supposed to know till nearer the time, but she does know. It was the first thing she told me when I went up to the nursery.
She said, “I won’t be suited. I’ll kick someone and then they’ll send me home.”
Doopie trying to explain to me about the business with the smell in the drawing room. She kept saying, “Vora but a gibba unna share.”
That’s the thing about the deaf. Insist as Violet may that Doopie isn’t backward, she certainly can’t get the difference between “kipper” and “gibba,” and, I’m afraid to say, it has rubbed off seriously on Flora.
School can only be a good idea.
Melhuish said, “Peculiar thing to do. Waste of a fine smokie, too. Damned if I understand it. Never had any of that kind of carry-on with the boys.”
23rd November 1932
I am invited to Philip Sassoon’s birthday luncheon at Trent Park. The question is, what to buy the man who has everything.
25th November 1932
George Lightfoot is also going to the Trent Park party. He always tries to find a bottle of some unusual and undrinkable liqueur by way of a gift, but he says Philip is very keen on ducks and suggests I think along those lines. No help at all. What does he propose I do? Go to St. James’s Park and capture a pair?
28th November 1932
Lunch with Wally, Hattie Erlanger, and Gladys Trilling. When Gladys heard about my invitation to Trent Park, she said, “Oh, Sassoon! The Court Jew! They say he’s fabulously generous, and if you admire something in one of his houses, he’s more than likely to give it to you. They say Her Majesty’s done terribly well out of him.”
Wally said, “Then I think Maybell had better introduce us all.”
I shall do no such thing.
To the Army & Navy. Bought a doorstop fashioned from a mallard duck decoy, very pretty.
5th December 1932
Trent Park is a dream. Acres of parkland, lakes, tree-lined avenues, and dozens of dusky servants who glide around silently and appear the very moment they’re needed. His sister, Sybil, attended, minus husband who was away at a tennis tournament. She looks haughty, very straight-backed, with iron-gray hair and rather hooded eyes, but she’s really very agreeable.
“Violet’s sister!” she said. “Of course! How very naughty of Violet not to have brought you to tea.”
The other guests were Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, a Polish piano player called Rubinstein plus wife, a Sassoon cousin from Paris, and two Italian airmen, with whom one could only gesticulate and offer the occasional “olé.”
We had oysters, flown up from Kent, and roast Guinea fowl dressed with home-grown oranges. In Hertfordshire! Then a blue cheese made on Sibyl’s estate in Norfolk and a plum pudding carried flaming and aloft by a six-foot Ethiopian in silk livery. Everything was perfect.
Lightfoot said, “Now will you please set the record straight. Maybell doesn’t believe you have stags with gilded antlers.”
Philip said, “Oh but I do, and if only it weren’t such a gray day, you’d see for yourself. I’ve trained them to note the position of the sun and waggle their heads accordingly. Syb believes animals should be left au naturel, but my stags are all trrragedians manqué. They’d have been deeply unhappy left naked on a moor.”
I’m sure he’s right. And I may not have seen the stags this time, but I did see his black swans. Very chic! I asked him how they were kept still long enough to dye their feathers, but he refused to say.
He loved his mallard doorstop and intends to place it at the entrance to his dressing room. Lightfoot took him a bottle of something made from roasted melon seeds.
7th December 1932
To Harrold’s Lending Library to select my Christmas reading: Ethelda Bedford, Maysie Grieg, George Bertram Shaw, Alma Sioux Scarberry. Kettle had just carried them into the house when Violet telephoned. She said, “What is this nonsense I hear about you spending Christmas alone?”
I believe George Lightfoot may have said something. He didn’t at all like my plans for a solitary Christmas, I could tell. He’s so attentive. I think he may have a little pash for me.
I said, “I shall be perfectly fine. I was alone last year, except for being frog-marched to church by Randolph Putnam and receiving an unsolicited visit from Junior, and no doubt I shall be alone in the future.”
“Not as long as I draw breath,” she said. “You’ll come to Carlton Gardens and be taken out of yourself.”
12th December 1932
The whole day in and out of the car and up and down in elevators, searching for gifts. I’m beginning to agree with Penelope Blythe: Christmas takes all the joy out of shopping and should really just be left to the lower classes.
For Ulick, a Tri-ang fort, for Rory an Erector Set, which I’m assured is the gift of choice for boys aged twelve, and for Flora, a Betty Boop tea service. Whisky for Melhuish, a gay jacquard scarf for Violet, to help modernize her look, and for Doopie, a copy of 301 Things for a Bright Girl to Do. She needs to be stretched.
To Bryanston Court for dinner. Came: Pips and Freddie Crosbie and the decorator Johnnie MacMullen, with a woman I took to be his mother, but who turned out to be the very unusual Lady Elsie Mendl. She was an actress but now does rooms for people like the Vanderbilts and the Fricks and is apparently ruthlessly strict with her clients. If Elsie Mendl dictates you must have tobacco-brown walls, there is no gainsaying her.
Also came friends of Ernest, the Rickatson Hatts. He runs a news agency, of all things. Wally certainly keeps her pledge to seat interesting mixes around her table.
Pips says Elsie Mendl is an invert and only married Charlie Mendl for his title. If it’s true, I must say she hides her tendencies very well. She even paints her nails.
There were no hackney cabs to be had, so I gave Mr. and Mrs. Hatt a lift to Westbourne Terrace. They were shy about accepting, but as I told them, I’m aware of the punishing hours people in their business are obliged to keep. Melhuish’s Times is always on the breakfast table by eight o’clock.
14th December 1932
Johnnie MacMullen is going to advise Wally on the remodeling of her apartment after Christmas. She says he’s h
ugely talented and has done Elsie Mendl’s homes from A to Z. Well, he’ll need to be hugely talented to make anything of Bryanston Court. I’d love to see her move somewhere with scope, but Ernest is such a stick in the mud.
She agrees with me that Mrs. Hatt is dull, but says she endures her because the husband is always good for whiling away an evening with Ernest. They often have macaroni cheese and peruse the Greek ancients, leaving her free to come dancing. The Hatts’ little shop is called Reuters, but Wally has no idea where it is.
17th December 1932
A festive evening at the Benny Thaws. They had an adorable little chorale of children to sing us carols around the Christmas tree, American children from the compound, with proud deportment and straight teeth. It caused me a flicker of nostalgia for Sweet Air. Just a flicker.
Rory and Ulick are home from school.
23rd December 1932
Violet says luncheon will be served at twelve-thirty sharp on Christmas Day so the kitchen maids can get away to visit their mothers. It’s going to make for a very long afternoon, unless, of course, we’re expected to take our tea at three so the rest of the help can go gallivanting to Essex. I don’t know why I don’t just take us all to Claridge’s.
24th December 1932
Violet says they always do things this way, it suits them very well and this is how children learn about their responsibilities to servants. Before the family meal is served, Melhuish goes below stairs to say a few words and carve the first slice of the servants’ goose, and this year Ulick will go with him, to see how it’s done. She says we can have tea whenever we choose, because Doopie will have charge of it, so as to allow Smith the rest of the day off.
All the more reason to go to Claridge’s.
A greeting card from Randolph Putnam. His mother passed away. And I am missed in Baltimore. Of course.
26th December 1932
The best-laid plans. Rory claimed Flora’s tea service and performed a very clever trick with overturned cups and disappearing sugar lumps, Flora was only interested in Rory’s Erector Set, and Ulick remained disappointingly aloof from his fort. It would have remained in its box if Lightfoot and Doopie hadn’t begun playing with it.
Violet gave me a calendar.
“So you can organize your time,” she said. “You’ll see the weeks laid out before you and be able to think how best to fill your days productively.”
Rory gave me a rough-hewn letter rack made in his handicrafts’ class, Lightfoot gave me a coffret of candy, and Flora gave me a pink satin letter M, stitched quite nicely and filled with padding.
Violet said, “How clever. Is it a scented sachet?”
“No,” said Flora, “it’s an em. We made it out of old ploomers.”
Melhuish’s sister Elspeth and the Rear Admiral Salty Laird looked in during the afternoon. Elspeth said, “Now Flora, are ye looking forward to being a big girl and going to Hope House?”
Flora closed her eyes. She does that when you say something she doesn’t want to hear. She gets that from Doopie.
Rory said, “You’ll like it when you get there, Flora. You’ll make friends. And have cocoa every night. I used not to want to go to school, but you get used to it, you see, and then it’s really good fun.”
She said, “Then I’ll come to your school.”
Ulick said, “You can’t. You’re a girl.”
She said, “Well I shan’t stay at Hope House. I shall run away.”
Elspeth said, “Do ye know what happens to girls who run away, Flora? The bogeyman comes after them and they’re never seen again.”
Doopie and Lightfoot both got her with the peashooter cannons.
Ulick said, “I really wonder why we’re bothering with all this. Why not have her taught at home until it’s time for her to be finished? That’s what they did with Pentlow’s sister and she’s now out and practically engaged to Gore-Cummings. Education seems to me to be quite wasted on girls.”
1st January 1933
Gala night at the Savoy last night. Wore my aquamarine chiffon with the beaded shrug. Pips and Freddie came, also the Prosper Friths and Ida with an old Venezuelan flaneur. She said, “Oh Maybell, no date?” I said, “Oh Ida, no taste?” She was putting away Manhattans all night, so I guess she has tired of Mr. Acolyte and chamomile tea.
I may not have had a date but I danced Prosper Frith off his feet, not to mention a foxtrot with Billy Belchester and two rumbas with Benny Thaw whose party was at the next table, minus Connie. Apparently, she and Lady Thelma are at Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof’s, so won’t Wally be thrilled. I bet she’ll have been cultivating Thelma Furness like crazy.
Freddie stood us all champagne for midnight, which I’m sure he couldn’t really afford. I’d happily have paid for it.
7th January 1933
Wally and Ernest are back from the Alps. She’s wearing a plummier lip color, in imitation of Lady Thelma, no doubt. Landgravine Lily’s house party had been quiet. Canasta, a treasure hunt, a little light shopping. Just Connie and Lady Thelma, a couple called Rothschild, and Crown Princess Cecilie, a sad remnant of German royalty.
Ernest has a carbuncle on his neck. Wally needs dental work. She said, “Don’t you hate January? Nothing ever happens.”
Lunch tomorrow.
9th January 1933
I’d given up on Wally and was about to order, when she sauntered into the Fountain Room in that skimpy little mink of hers smiling like the cat that’s had the cream. She said she was sorry to be late but had been delayed by an important telephone call from Connie Thaw. “You see,” she said, taking forever to sit down and then starting to nibble on a celery stick in the most annoying way, “you see, Ernest and I are invited to Fort Belvedere for the weekend. By the Prince of Wales.”
I’m very happy for her, of course. This is something she’s worked for tirelessly. I just hope she understands that the invitation doesn’t spring from any desire on the part of the Prince of Wales. I’m sure he doesn’t even remember who they are. But I expect he allows Thelma a certain number of her own friends, and she and Wally seem to have hit it off. They’re always screaming with laughter about something.
I said, “But Ernest always seems to spend his weekends shuffling business papers. Are you sure he’ll be allowed to take time off?”
She said, “Of course he can. Ernest’s a director, not an employee.”
If that’s the case, I wonder he doesn’t open the safe and bring home a little more money. There are things she’s going to need, but she said she’d better wait till tomorrow, till Ernest has agreed to a budget. It only leaves her Wednesday and Thursday for all that shopping, not to mention hair, facials, and nails. What an impossible way to live. I offered her Kettle, to take them down to Windsor and bring them back on Sunday. It seemed the least I could do.
She said, “Maybell, you’re such a treasure. The thing about Ernest’s car is, his driver doesn’t like to work on Sundays.”
The thing about Ernest’s car is it isn’t a Bentley.
11th January 1933
Dinner at the Crosbies. Whitlow and Gladys Trilling, Prosper and Daphne Frith, and young Freddie Birkenhead, who’s an earl. Everyone very exercised about what Roosevelt may be planning to do with the gold standard. When I asked Earl Birkenhead if I had any cause for concern, he said, “It rather depends how many double eagles you have under your mattress,” but gave no clue as to whether having them would be a good thing or bad. I may drop a line to Randolph Putnam.
Gladys Trilling said blizzards are forecast for tomorrow. Pips said, “Friends of ours are going to Fort Belvedere for the weekend. I hope they’ll be able to get through.”
Prosper said, “Fort Belvedere! They’d be better off staying at home. Wales invites all kinds of nonentities. Get snowed in there, one could be sorry. Mediocre little house, too. The kind of place someone who’d done well in trade might go for.”
Birkenhead said, “Well, that’s Wales really. Small and mediocre.”
12th
January 1933
Wally has borrowed a ruby choker from Pips. I’m not supposed to know. Cold, but no snow.
13th January 1933
To the Fergus Blythes. George Lightfoot came with a girl with a jutting jaw called Belinda, not at all pretty. Penelope Blythe says the Prince of Wales generally wears a kilt in the evening and keeps his cigarette case in his sporran. Lightfoot says he likes to embroider after dinner and could bore for England. Well, I’m sure that after a week of ceremonial splendor, all he craves is the quiet life. I just hope Wally remembers not to try too hard. She does so love to outshine everyone.
16th January 1933
Kettle had instructions to bring Wally and Ernest back here so I could hear all about their weekend, but he returned with an empty car, Ernest having business papers to attend to and Wally being in pain from her ulcers. That’s what comes of starving yourself into new dinner gowns.
I caught Ernest on the telephone. Wally was in bed and not to be disturbed.
He said, “We’ve had a thoroughly enjoyable time, but it would be indiscreet of me to say more.”
Pompous ass.
17th January 1933
Wally recovered enough to be lunching with Thelma Furness and Connie Thaw, but not to have called me, and not a word of thanks for the use of my car and driver. She said, “Well, of course we’re grateful, Maybell, but we didn’t ask for your car. You almost insisted on our taking it. But do stop sulking. I want to tell you all about our weekend.”
Gone With the Windsors Page 8
