Country House Society

by Pamela Horn

  By the 1920s, only Lady Londonderry, of the old aristocratic families, was still entertaining on a lavish pre-war scale, arranging large receptions at Londonderry House and allowing her home to become the social headquarters of the Conservative Party. Regular celebrations were held to mark the opening of Parliament, and on those occasions she would stand, a statuesque figure, at the top of the impressive staircase, to receive her guests. By her side stood the Prime Minister of the day, if he were a Conservative or, in the case of David Lloyd George, because he headed the post-1918 coalition government. On these occasions she was resplendent in the magnificent Londonderry jewels, and exuded an impressive aura of power, wealth, glamour and high status. At the first of the receptions held after the war, on 18 November 1919, 2,500 guests were reported to have attended.86

  But Edith Londonderry exercised influence in smaller and more intimate ways, too, through the charities she patronised and, in particular, through the weekly meetings of the Ark Club. This had continued from its wartime inception, with each member having the name of an animal, bird, insect or other creature, including mythological beings. She herself retained the name of Circe, while her husband was called ‘Charley the Cheetah’. Some said he had earned the label through his well-justified reputation as a notorious womaniser.87 But there were new recruits as well, including Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister. His close friendship with Lady Londonderry angered many members of his Party and of the trade union movement. They saw it as fraternising with the enemy, since most of the Londonderry fortune was derived from their Durham coalfields and Lord Londonderry was in no way noted for his enlightened attitude towards the miners. As one Labour MP caustically commented, a few months ago ‘we sang the Red Flag. Now he whistles the Londonderry Air.’88

  The friendship between MacDonald and Edith Londonderry had first arisen in 1924, shortly after he became Prime Minister. It developed as a result of their mutual love of the Scottish Highlands, with MacDonald addressing her in his letters as ‘My dearest Ladye’ or ‘My dearest Friend of all’.89 However, as one of Lady Londonderry’s biographers has suggested, her letters to him also revealed a desperate need for affection, which may have been linked to the loneliness and unhappiness she felt at her husband’s serial infidelities.90 By the end of the 1920s they were meeting frequently, and MacDonald found relief from the pressures of office in her sympathetic and intelligent company and in the cultured world she gathered round herself.91

  Other aristocratic ladies, of course, continued to offer hospitality to their friends, and for those participating in the London Season, regular attendance at dinner parties, balls, the theatre and other events remained very much what was expected of them. Yet the relentless round of activities could prove irksome, as the diary of Lady Jean Hamilton reveals. Thus in late February 1927 she was dining with Lord and Lady Middleton and noted gloomily that her fellow guests had been ‘a lot of dull grand people – terribly cold house … We shivered over a dying fire together until St John came and dragged me off.’92

  But this kind of traditional aristocratic hospitality was overshadowed in the 1920s by the emergence of a new kind of hostess for whom the need to entertain in order to secure impressive social connections became the prime motivating influence of life. As John Lehmann commented, a ‘great hostess and creator of a salon needs an unflagging curiosity about other people, a flair for making them feel at home, or at least stimulated in her circle, almost unlimited time to organize her entertainments … and plenty of money’.93

  During the 1920s four of these new-style hostesses became particularly prominent in the eyes of their contemporaries. They were the Hon. Mrs Greville and Lady Colefax, who were both British, and Lady Cunard and Mrs Corrigan, who had been born in the United States, though in Lady Cunard’s case she had lived in England from the mid-1890s.

  Although the social circles they wished to cultivate differed considerably from each other, all four shared a desire to shine and to be able to boast of their wide range of impressive friends and acquaintances. As such, they became recognised as important figures on the London social scene. Lady Cunard, indeed, became something of a celebrity herself, not only for her gaiety and wit, but for her determined promotion of the arts, particularly of opera and the theatre. According to her friend Daphne Fielding (the former Daphne Weymouth) it was chiefly through her efforts that the Old Vic theatre was saved.94 She spent enormous sums of her own fortune to launch further seasons of opera, and according to Cecil Beaton, who much admired her, she ‘tirelessly bludgeoned her rich but vandalistic friends into subscribing for boxes at Covent Garden’.95 It was said that she lived for ‘music, literature, conversation and romantic attachments probably in that order.’96 As regards romantic attachments, although she had a number of male friends and admirers, her one great love was the conductor Thomas Beecham, later Sir Thomas, whom she had first got to know in 1911. She remained devoted to him for the rest of her life, despite his blatant infidelities and the fact that when they met both were married to other people.

  In 1926, recognising the new, more vibrant spirit of the age, Lady Cunard changed her Christian name from prosaic Maud to Emerald, declaring that emeralds were her favourite jewels. Thereafter almost all her friends referred to her by her new name.97 The interesting people she gathered round her dinner table and her own ability to maintain the flow of conversation along witty and light-hearted lines attracted, among others, the Prince of Wales, much to the disapproval of his mother, Queen Mary. According to Kenneth Clark, who became Director of the National Gallery in London while still in his twenties, her luncheon and dinner parties ‘were a curious mixture of handsome young men, accepted wits like Lord Berners, a few writers … and clever, spiteful women’, with a leavening of more serious people, such as ambassadors.98

  Yet, not all of her guests appreciated Lady Cunard’s conversational style. Even Kenneth Clark felt that because everyone was afraid of being labelled a bore, it was impossible to stick to a point long enough to develop a train of thought. Virginia Woolf described her dismissively as ‘a ridiculous little parrokeet-faced woman’, while to Lady Cynthia Asquith she was like ‘an inebriate canary’. The sharp-tongued Margot Asquith considered her ‘a crucial supervisor of Fun’, but then added, ‘I don’t know how good a brain she really has because she has never used it. Massage in the mornings, music in the evenings, talk, telephone all day. She is a little pagan.’ However, Margot admitted that despite her faults she was loved by most people because she was ‘a really kind woman – never wants any thing as much for herself as for you.’99

  Crucially, though, it was Margot, now Lady Oxford, who in 1930 caused the final breach between Lady Cunard and her wayward daughter, Nancy. Nancy spent most of her time in the 1920s in France, merely coming to London from time to time. She had long resented her mother’s breach with her country-loving father, Sir Bache Cunard, and the relationship with Sir Thomas Beecham. Nancy herself, however, had become involved with a black musician, Henry Crowder, while living in France. The two came to London on a visit in 1930, despite the racial prejudice that still existed, and it was this that provoked Margot’s intervention. On arrival for lunch one day at Lady Cunard’s she shouted, ‘Well, Maud, what’s Nancy up to now? Is it dope, drink, or niggers?’ The remark was offensive and to compound it Margot insisted on calling her hostess Maud rather than Emerald, as she preferred.100 The information about her daughter’s new friendship came as a great shock to Lady Cunard. After telephoning other friends to confirm the veracity of the story, she had her daughter and her black lover followed by detectives, to Nancy’s fury. As a consequence, in 1931 Nancy published privately a bitter pamphlet, which appalled her High Society friends and acquaintances by its relentless denunciation of her mother, whom she had long referred to with contempt as ‘Her Ladyship’. In it she claimed that while her mother could be as ‘hard and as buoyant as a dreadnought … one touch of ridicule goes straight to her heart’. She called her mother’s mode
of entertaining pure ‘hypocrisy’ combined as it was with snobbery and gossip. ‘Her Ladyship’s … snobbery is quite simple. If a thing is done she will, with a few negligible exceptions, do it too.’101

  Emerald, for her part, maintained a stoic dignity, treating the whole affair as a sign of her daughter’s mental instability.102 The two were never to be reconciled. For the rest, Lady Cunard continued her active social life and her devotion to music and literature. Daphne Fielding, who first got to know her in 1926, remembered her with affection. She recalled that she would ‘always appear slightly late at her own parties, poking her head round the door to peer with an expression of pleased surprise at her assembled guests. Then she would enter the room “like a jewelled bird uncaged” … The young men I met at her house were far more entertaining than any of the Guards officers, budding stockbrokers and sporting characters who had hitherto been my lot at debutante dances and hunt balls.’103 Nor did her ‘conversational alacrity and versatility’ desert her when she grew older.

  The other leading American-born hostess of the 1920s was the exuberant Mrs Laura Corrigan. She was very different from Lady Cunard in her lack of education – her malapropisms were notorious – and her unabashed neglect of intellectual issues. She derived her great wealth from her American steel magnate husband, who seems to have played little part in her determined assault on London’s social scene. Cecil Beaton considered she conquered London society through the ‘calculated spontaneity’ of her parties at which ‘the most eminent or fashionable guests somehow were generally those fortunate enough to win the tombola prizes of gold cigarette cases’.104 Humbler guests would find that their prizes were more modest. Her extravagance was such that when she hired an all-star cabaret to entertain her guests, they were paid more for their brief appearance at her party than they received for a week in the theatre.105 She even won over her rival hostess, Lady Cunard, by taking an expensive box at Covent Garden Opera House and making a large donation to Sir Thomas Beecham’s pet project, the Imperial League of Opera.106

  Despite the fact that many of Laura Corrigan’s aristocratic guests secretly mocked her for her ignorance and the fact that she always wore a wig, apparently because she had lost her hair early in life, they came to appreciate her for her personal qualities of kindness and absence of malice. They were also amused at her unconventional behaviour. Loelia Ponsonby remembered seeing her stand on her head at a party (having previously tied a scarf round her skirt for modesty’s sake) while assuring everyone that it was both ‘delightfully comfortable and good for the health’. On another occasion, when she had persuaded some of her guests to perform cabaret turns for the benefit of the rest, she ended proceedings by performing the Charleston as an exhibition dance, while wearing a top hat and red-heeled shoes.107

  On her first arrival in London Mrs Corrigan had been unable to penetrate the exclusive world of the social elite. Then she learned that Mrs Keppel, who had been King Edward VII’s close friend, was planning to live abroad. She was seeking a tenant for her large Grosvenor Street house in consequence and Laura’s immense wealth ensured that cash was no impediment to a successful transaction. The price was to include the services of the experienced butler, Mr Rolfe, his wife, who was the cook, and the full complement of twenty indoor servants. For an extra sum Mrs Corrigan gained access to Mrs Keppel’s visitors’ book.

  Mr Rolfe proved a particular asset. He not only sought to attract former friends of Mrs Keppel so that they paid a call on his new mistress but he advised her to contact Charlie Stirling, who was a nephew of Lord Rossmore. He had family connections with many other aristocratic families and was employed as social secretary by the Marchioness of Londonderry, who had her own impressive personal connections. Stirling agreed to help Mrs Corrigan for a generous fee and Lady Londonderry, too, assisted her career by accepting an early invitation to her house. The fact that the Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry were prepared to accept her hospitality soon led others to follow suit. Lady Londonderry was even able to open the doors of Buckingham Palace for her. As Brian Masters comments: ‘George V and Queen Mary would have nothing to do with her until Lady Londonderry persuaded them.’108

  Through her relentless pursuit of royalty and members of the aristocracy, Mrs Corrigan’s social circle gradually became more exclusive. But, as Patrick Balfour drily noted, she did not entertain people because she liked them nor, unlike the pre-war great hostesses, did she invite them ‘from a sense of responsibility or duty or habit’. She had no interest in what they might tell her concerning politics or art or intellectual matters. Instead she made Society itself her object in life. She entertained because ‘she [was] ambitious – to entertain’.109 Her philosophy was perhaps best summed up by a remark she made shortly before she died in 1948, when she declared, ‘as a little girl I often dreamed of knowing all the kings and queens in the world. And I’ve had my wish.’110

  The Hon. Mrs Greville, too, used her personal wealth and determined character to force her way to the top of society, although she was initially aided by the well-established connections of her husband, a younger son of Lord Greville, and a friend of King Edward VII. Mrs Greville, known to her friends as Maggie, was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy self-made Scottish brewer, William McEwan. She had a good education and was eventually to inherit her father’s fortune. Following the deaths of her husband and father, she devoted her organising ability and intelligence to the running of the firm of McEwan & Co. and to becoming a leading member of High Society. Like Mrs Corrigan, she particularly favoured royalty and the upper ranks of the aristocracy. In this connection sly comments were made that she never failed to have cinnamon-flavoured scones available at teatime in case Queen Mary should call.111

  Contemporary reports of the 1920s confirm Mrs Greville’s royal successes. In 1922 she entertained the Prince of Wales; two years later she gave a huge ball ‘at which the crowd was so dense that the King and Queen of Italy had to sit in their car outside while … footmen cleared a way through the assembled guests’. The Queen of Spain was a particular friend, and it was maliciously claimed that Mrs Greville allowed scarcely a day to go by ‘without some royal name-dropping’. However, she achieved her greatest triumph in 1923 when the Duke and Duchess of York chose her luxurious country house, Polesden Lacey, for their honeymoon. Thereafter she and the Yorks remained close friends and the latter were often entertained at Polesden Lacey.112

  In appearance, Maggie Greville was short and fat, but despite her plebeian appearance she took great pride in the social influence she wielded and in her own status, stating firmly that she would ‘rather be a beeress than a peeress’. But the grand dinners she gave for statesmen, diplomats and members of the royal families of Europe, as well as the excellent food she provided, were balanced by other, much less attractive, characteristics. She was an expert in spreading malicious and cruel gossip, and she delighted in the reverses suffered by her rivals. On one occasion she crushingly observed of Emerald Cunard: ‘You mustn’t think that I dislike little Lady Cunard,’ adding ‘I’m always telling Queen Mary that she isn’t half as bad as she is painted.’113 Emerald’s response was to mock the oversized quail that Mrs Greville served at dinner, claiming they had been ‘blown up with a bicycle pump’. To the former diplomat, politician and author, Harold Nicolson, Maggie Greville was ‘nothing more than a fat slug filled with venom’, while the Duke of Portland considered her ‘poisonous; if she heard a nasty story about some one, she would embellish it and make it even nastier’.114 Only the Royal Family were exempt from her vitriol. Cecil Beaton, then a leading society photographer and theatre designer, described her bitterly as ‘a galumphing, greedy, snobbish old toad who watered her chops at the sight of royalty and the Prince of Wales’s set’.115

  Yet, despite her malevolence, many accepted her hospitality. She was a shrewd judge of those likely to rise in the world and it is significant that Kenneth Clark, who became Director of the National Gallery before he was thirty, was a
regular dinner-party guest, together with his wife. His recollection of those gatherings was unflattering. He considered them ‘the dullest I can remember, stuffy members of government and their mem-sahib wives, ambassadors and royalty’.116 Yet her connections with the social elite were apparently sufficiently attractive to encourage him to continue to accept her invitations.

  The fourth of these leading new-style hostesses of the 1920s, Lady Colefax, differed from the others in that she came from a solidly middle-class background and was of relatively modest means. Her husband had been a very successful patents lawyer before 1914, but by the 1920s his increasing deafness and the depressed state of trade meant that his opportunities to practise were much curtailed and their income reduced. At the end of the decade, indeed, it was Sibyl Colefax herself who sought to overcome their financial problems by going into business. Nevertheless, throughout the 1920s she continued to entertain regularly at her attractive, though not particularly large, family home, Argyll House, in Chelsea. Despite the limitations on her income she was determined to attract to her table the leading figures of the day, particularly those whom Loelia Ponsonby has labelled ‘the intelligentsia’. They included people prominent in the worlds of literature, art and music, as well as some leading politicians. Kenneth Clark called her need to attract celebrities ‘an addiction as strong as alcohol or drugs’.117 She issued hundreds of invitations and even her younger son, Michael, admitted she could not be described as ‘an effortless hostess; in fact the force which she generated in organizing her parties was hydro-electric’.118 Only when her guests had arrived did the dynamos cease to hum and there was an atmosphere of repose. ‘If, sometimes, she attempted to manage her friends,’ declared Michael, ‘they accepted the discipline gladly, knowing that she gave them in return her passionate and sometimes combative, loyalty.’