He said, “I’m sure he will. As an opening arises.”
Violet said, “Can’t France use him? What about worker housing and pit head baths? Has he lost interest?”
As I reminded her, when he made a study of such things, he got nothing but criticism.
Melhuish is all for Chamberlain. He says British politics can always be relied upon to produce the right man for the moment.
He said, “Baldwin managed the Abdication satisfactorily, but only Chamberlain could have pulled off Munich.”
Rory is home tomorrow. He has his heart set on going to Dartmouth next year as a cadet officer, and Melhuish is resigned to him choosing the Navy instead of the Army. He said, “Could be worse. At least he’s not going to end up in the corps de bloody ballet!” A sly dig at the Belchesters’ middle boy.
13th December 1938
Rory and Flora came to tea, looking quite the young lady and gentleman.
Flora said, “I wish Aunt Doopie and Uncle Lightfoot would have a baby. I like babies.”
Rory said, “They can’t have babies now, you noodlehead. Uncle Lightfoot only has one arm.”
So adorable. He gave me a fake camellia that squirts water.
Tomorrow, home.
16th December 1938, Meurice Hotel, Paris
The station wagons leave for La Croe in the morning with the luggage. Johnnie MacMullen is going ahead, too, to supervise the dressing of the tree. The Crokers are coming and the Erlangers. Herman and Kath will motor over on Christmas Day.
22nd December 1938, La Croe
Arrived just before dark. MacMullen had had the shutters left open, and every window glowed with light. Pinecones dipped in colored wax burning in the drawing-room fireplace, the foyer tree dressed with snowberries and white velvet bows, glasses of eggnog waiting for us. Just as everything looked set for a perfect holiday, Kath Rogers telephoned bearing the glad tidings that Thelma Furness and her sister Gloria are spending Christmas at La Belle Garoupe, not half a mile away.
Wally completely unperturbed. She said, “Half a mile geographically, Kath, but light-years in every other respect.”
I think the news has slightly unsettled HRH though. He’s asked me to go with him to Cartier tomorrow, to help him pick out a few extra little douceurs for Wally, just in case there are any “tricky encounters.”
26th December 1938
Wally got a blue diamond pin. She gave HRH a pair of ship’s decanters for The Bridge and me a set of ivory elephants that are supposed to bring good luck. I believe I remember them from Bryanston Court.
A strained moment after dinner last evening, when Hattie suggested a game of charades, and HRH clapped his hands for joy. He said, “Oh yes! I haven’t done that in years.”
Wally said, “We are not playing charades. This is La Croe, not Sandringham. We’re going to the casino.”
Fortunately, that little Maharaja friend of the Bajavidas was there and staked her very generously.
2nd January 1939
New Year’s Eve at Willy Maugham’s. A bad start, when a spiteful little cluster of guests stood in Wally’s path and absolutely would not curtsy. HRH went right up to Isabel Carteret and asked her if she’d forgotten her manners. He was in a fury, and so was she. She said, “No, sir. In our family, we only curtsy to Royal Highnesses.”
HRH is still simmering over it, but Wally hasn’t said a word. Hattie says the Carterets don’t give a damn. Their people have been around since 1066, so they don’t feel the Windsors have anything to teach them.
6th January 1939
Johnnie MacMullen has gone back to Paris to make sure everything is perfect for the move to Boulevard Suchet. He says Wally’s the most exacting person he’s ever done a house for and he always feels he’s only one misplaced pillow away from appearing in her Grumble Book. I’d say it’s unavoidable. One needs four paws and an annoying little yippy bark to be spared that fate.
10th January 1939, Meurice Hotel, Paris
Boulevard Suchet is truly fit for a king. The livery looks especially magnificent. Black and scarlet for daywear, scarlet trimmed with gold for formals. The buttons have a coronet and a W intertwined with an E, which the valet seems to think stands for Edward Windsor but Wally says it stands for Wallis and Edward.
HRH insists it simply spells “we.”
“Einum Meinum and her boy,” he keeps saying, “against the rest of the world.”
I do wish he wouldn’t. And I wish he wouldn’t kiss her in the drawing room. It’s so juvenile, and I know Wally hates it, because of smudges.
12th January 1939
Wally and I now have a routine. We meet every morning in her little Louis Quinze sitting room, as soon as she’s given the secretaries the letters for the day. We make telephone calls, find out who’s doing what, decide on clothes, juggle guest lists. We lunch, usually with Didi Grimaldi or Fern Bedaux, or, if Wally’s having a shopping lunch with Kenny Opdyke, I see Kitty Rothschild or Winnie Gulliver.
The hairdresser comes at five. If people are invited, I come back to the Meurice to change. Otherwise, I just have a sundowner with HRH while Wally’s dressing, and then leave them to dine alone. If I’m not invited anywhere, I’m very happy to have a quiet night in with my magazines and something light served in my suite.
The Charles Lindberghs are going to be in town at the end of the month, and Wally’s determined to get them for dinner. I believe she may still have a crush on him.
5th February 1939
Dinner at Boulevard Suchet last evening in honor of the Charles Lindberghs. Also came: the Ambassador Bullitts, Charlie and Fern, Lucien Ecornifleur, and the Lazslo Melchiors. I don’t know what Wally sees in Lindbergh. All the man talks about is inventions. I don’t believe he notices women at all. I had the impression he couldn’t wait to escape from the table and go home and calculate velocities or whatever it is he does. Mrs. L. must welcome the opportunity to be in company. I find her rather sweet, but Wally doesn’t see any point to her.
King Bertie York and his Queen are to visit the United States and Canada in the spring. I’ll bet they’re only going to rub David and Wally’s noses in Charlie Bedaux’s fiasco.
Freddie Crosbie has decided there isn’t going to be a war, after all, so he and Pips are venturing to Paris for a weekend. They make it sound like trekking through darkest Africa. Pips has lost all her pluck. Whatever happened to the Pips who flew her drawers from the Oldfields flagpole on Founders’ Day?
12th February 1939
Pips has a new short haircut. She got it in anticipation of wartime austerity and has decided to keep it. Freddie says a war grows less likely by the day, because Hitler is very unpopular with the German military and so can’t depend on them at all. Meanwhile, Britain is rearming at such a clip Germany must think twice before embarking on any future adventures.
Wally told Pips off for slouching. Pips said, “Better a relaxed womanly posture than looking like someone put a broom handle up your gown.”
Nervous laughter from HRH. Wally is fierce about deportment. Always has been.
Freddie thinks Maxi Finto sounds like a big fake. He says I should have gotten something on paper.
15th February 1939
Freddie went with HRH to the English church. Wally was cross. She says he’d meet a much better class of people at the Madeleine.
1st March 1939
I do wish Maxi would get in touch. It’s not the money. I’d just like to know how things stand.
The Lazslo Melchiors are giving a costume party to welcome the spring. We all have to dress as rustics.
2nd March 1939
Wally says she’s not dressing as a rustic for anyone. She may ask Main Bocher to make her a little cotton milkmaid gown and just add seed pearls. It’s at times like this it would be so handy to have Doopie around the corner. I may just have my Bo-Peep revamped.
8th March 1939
I’ve written to Violet, suggesting Rory and Flora visit me as soon as Rory is released from scho
ol in July. That would give us three clear weeks for jaunts and much-needed shopping. Flora seems to own nothing but ragged woolens suitable for Drumcanna. She has practically nothing smart for town. What fun we’ll have.
16th March 1939
After all those promises he made at Munich, Hitler has upped and marched into Czechoslovakia. People are saying Poland will be next. It’s becoming very hard to keep a good opinion of Adolf Hitler. HRH says the average German is a jolly, sociable chap, and the last thing he wants is a war. He says the only conclusion he can reach is that Hitler now has a screw loose.
Tonight to the Lazslo Melchiors. Kenny Opdyke has it from a reliable source that Lucien Ecornifleur intends wearing nothing but a vine leaf.
18th March 1939
A fabulous party, and how we all needed it in these grim times. A Kentucky Jug Band and a strolling minstrel in thigh boots. Wore my Bo-Peep gown minus the muslin, with a silk lace fichu and a wreath of bay leaves in my hair. The Dimitri Shapaleffs came as vulgar boatmen, Sylvie Vieille-Soiffarde came as Circe with Johnnie MacMullen as an enchanted swine, and the Pistons-LeRupins came as themselves, but the scene was stolen by the Esterhazys, who arrived on hired donkeys. Wally wore her Tyrolean dirndl and carried a wooden pail, and HRH wore his old gardening hat and carried a basket of nosegays. A cheap effort, I thought.
1st April 1939
Wally’s ordering shorter skirts for the fall and big, square shoulders. In my opinion, her shoulders are already quite square enough.
Another month and nothing from Maxi. Sylvie Vieille-Soiffarde says he’s one of those people who never write or telephone. He just materializes.
With my oilseed dividends, I hope.
2nd April 1939
Mr. Chamberlain has put his foot down. If Hitler makes the slightest move, Britain will go to Poland’s aid. All very well, but if, as people like Winnie Gulliver believe, he has his eye on half a dozen other territories, too, then what? One can’t rush around the world helping every little country out of difficulties.
Wally has had the idea of HRH making a broadcast to the American people. As she says, if Britain gets into another war, before too long she’ll be looking to America for assistance, so the American public must be made to stop and think. They are the ones who’ll be asked to pay the price, after all. And who better to make them think than a British Prince with an American wife. HRH is very keen and has Dudley Forwood looking into it.
8th April 1939
The world has gone mad. Italy has now invaded Albania, and poor Queen Geraldine has had to get out of her childbed and flee. If she has any sense, she’ll get herself straight to a good American hospital.
Rory and Flora must visit me at the very first opportunity, before anyone else invades anywhere else.
9th April 1939
A letter from Violet. She says July is out of the question for Flora and Rory to come to Paris. She’s convinced we’ll be at war by then. Of course, what she doesn’t know is HRH is going to broadcast to America and pull us all back from the brink.
Forwood is discovering great enthusiasm for the project. Replied by return. I said, then let them come sooner. Rory’s Long Leave in June would be perfect. I know Elsie Mendl would adore to throw a little party for them.
I might make a start on jewelry for Flora, too. Another year or two, and she’ll be out, and apart from a very dull tiara and an ugly cameo brooch, I don’t believe she stands to inherit anything from the Melhuish side.
15th April 1939
HRH’s peacekeeping message to America is to be broadcast in early May from the town of Verdun. Wally will accompany him.
17th April 1939
Freddie Crosbie got wind of HRH’s broadcast. He said, “Tell him, Maybell, when you’re out walking those bloody pooches, he’s not going to help himself or world peace by asking America to wink at Germany’s ambitions. He’s going to come across as Hitler’s friend, which, I may say, a lot of people already believe him to be.”
I’m not going to tell him any such thing. He’s so enjoying preparing his speech.
19th April 1939
Humphrey Butler wants to know if HRH has cleared his speech with the New Bunch. Wally told him to mind his own business. I agree with her. You can’t throw someone out of house and home and then expect to be kept informed of their every movement.
Lunch with Winnie Gulliver. She said she hoped I didn’t give Maxi Finto a lot of money. I wonder what she means by “a lot.”
25th April 1939
Beaverbrook has now added his voice to the dissenters. He says he’s concerned about the timing of the broadcast, because it will coincide with the New Bunch visiting with the Roosevelts and there may be confusion as to who speaks for Great Britain: the new and untested King or the seasoned older brother?
When one looks at it that way, perhaps he has a point. I think David should speak before Bertie York has time to open his mouth, but Forwood says the dates can’t be changed.
7th May 1939
Walter Monckton called to try and persuade HRH to postpone his speech, but he and Wally had already left for Verdun. Anyway, their minds were quite made up. As Wally said, this could be a turning point, the moment when the world wakes up to David’s value as a statesman. And it’s a very fine speech. I’ve heard him practicing it.
I speak as a soldier who served in the Great War, all too conscious here in Verdun of the presence of that great company of the dead. It is my earnest prayer that such cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind. And so it goes on. Who could possibly object?
10th May 1939
Forwood says HRH’s broadcast appears to have sunk without a trace in England. As does Maxi Finto. Winnie Gulliver saw the paperweight he gave me. She said, “Oh, you got one of those, too. He must have had dozens made. He must have dug up half of Uruguay.”
I said, “Paraguay.”
“Paraguay, Uruguay,” she said. “I’m sure the stuff in our paperweights came from no farther away than the Bois de Vincennes.”
I don’t know what to think.
Elsie Mendl is going to give a birthday party for Wally at Villa Trianon. Wally has given me the job of pointing HRH in the direction of a diamond pendant she’s seen at Cartier. It would do either for her birthday or for their anniversary.
12th May 1939
Violet continues to be obstructive. She claims Rory has to go to Felicity Massingham’s ball during June Leave, and Flora has three teeth to be filled. Just because she’s never been to Paris is really no reason to prevent her children broadening their horizons.
18th May 1939
Sacks of mail have started arriving for HRH, applauding his Verdun speech. Letter after letter makes the same point. No one wants another war. HRH has spoken to the ordinary little people of America and the Dominions and struck a chord, and if they’re not prepared to fight, there can’t be a war. QDE, as Danforth Brumby used to say.
23rd May 1939
Wally and HRH are going to Candé for their second anniversary. Returning, as Dudley Forwood puts it, to the scene of the crime.
4th June 1939
Such sad news from London. Philip Sassoon is dead. Violet telephoned to tell me. He had an infected throat, and instead of taking his doctor’s advice and resting in bed, he went out in the rain and developed pneumonia. I can hardly believe it. Circumstances may have made us drift apart, but I shall always remember him as the most darling host. That tall glass of ice-cold mimosa that would appear at the very moment one’s evening bath had been run. Those perfect chocolate truffles he’d have placed on one’s night table. How he’d sit cross-legged in his cashmere socks and say, “Now! Whom shall we rrrip to shrrreds next?” The way he’d give you anything, anything you admired.
Violet says Sybil is devastated. Well, so am I, and Violet seemed in low spirits herself. They’re calling up all twenty-year-olds for military training. She says Ulick is raring to go, but at times like these she begins to wish she’d had all daught
ers.
I said, “But Melhuish knows so many useful people in the Guards. If it should come to anything serious, I’m sure it could be arranged that the boy doesn’t get sent into anything too dangerous.”
She said, “Melhuish would never ask any such thing. Melhuishes do their duty.”
I was only trying to cheer her up. Anyway, Ulick’s very handy with a gun.
6th June 1939
Wally and HRH are back from Candé. She got a gold cobra bangle with sapphire eyes, so now she’s fretting as to whether she’ll get the desired diamond for her birthday. I said, “Well, I delivered the suggestion. I can do no more. I have more serious things on my mind.”
“Such as?” she said.
I said, “Such as the death of an old friend and before his time.”
She said, “I don’t recall Sassoon being all that much of a friend. He dropped you soon enough. You should follow my rule, Maybell. Never forgive, never forget.”
Well, I have some very happy memories of Philip.
Gone With the Windsors Page 43
