A few years later, his rekindled energy was divided when, in 1963, his father handed over Glen, the family estate in the Scottish Borders, deciding he wanted to live on Corfu where he pursued his passion for painting. Glen was a baronial masterpiece built of gray stone that appears round the bend of the long drive like a fairy-tale castle, sitting in a beautiful valley with Loch Eddy at the top, surrounded by heather. I was thrilled by the idea of living in the Scottish Borders. I had loved my time with Great-aunt Bridget, Uncle Joe, and my Ogilvy cousins, and had longed to live in Scotland again. I was as excited about Glen as Colin had been about Mustique.
As the new custodian, Colin darted from Mustique to Glen, modernizing one and restoring the other. Glen had been “Georgianized” by Colin’s stepmother: seeking advice from a leading interior designer, Syrie Maugham, she had ripped out the original fireplaces and squared off the rooms, hiding the towers. We set about undoing all the changes, reinstating the William Morris wallpapers, uncovering the original molded ceilings to reveal the beautiful cornices and plasterwork, and installing the Tennant tartan carpet in the drawing room.
There were a great many rooms—twenty-six bedrooms and sixteen bathrooms—yet even though it was enormous, it felt very relaxed and comfortable. The staff stayed on, including Mrs. Walker, the best country-house cook for miles. At the end of each week she would come and find me somewhere in the house and give me a list of menu options for the following week. I would go through them and simply choose. Those were the days. I only wish I had spent more time in the kitchen because now I do all my own cooking and I am sure I would have learned a lot of useful things from her.
Colin and I had fun transforming Glen together and he was glad I embraced life in Scotland so fully. He admired my resilience on Mustique too. By 1964 life had settled into a routine: after Christmas we would go to Mustique, and we spent the summers at Glen. The rest of the year Colin would come and go, and I would stay in London. Charlie and Henry, who were four and six by then, would come with their nanny up to Glen, and Colin would take them fishing in the “wee burns”—the little streams that ran from Loch Eddy.
August was always very busy because friends and relations would come and stay on their way up to the Highlands. In fact, so many people came, it was as if I was running a hotel. “I think I could go down to London and get a job at the Ritz,” I told Colin one summer. “I’d run it frightfully well.” I was reminded of Great-aunt Bridget, who ran Cortachy Castle and Downie Park with ease. She always wore a neat kilt and a good cashmere twin set, and she would walk quickly around the house giving instructions.
One of the things I looked forward to most was my school friend Sarah Henderson coming up with her son, my godson, Shamus, whom she would take up the glen with my boys to shoot rabbits, which they all loved. She’d help me with the flowers, which took two days to do. Every single dressing room, bedroom, and bathroom had Wemyss Ware vases, which Colin collected, full of flowers of one sort or another. All the flowers were picked for us by the gardeners, who were very keen on gladioli—“glads,” they used to call them. I’d take the pale green and the pale pink ones and give the brightly colored ones back to the gardeners, which delighted them. The hall and the drawing room were so big, rather like those at Holkham, that a small arrangement would have disappeared. Instead Sarah and I would fill huge vases—and the house smelled wonderful.
All the food came from the estate—grouse, pheasant, and venison, all kinds of vegetables from the kitchen garden and the huge greenhouses, in which we grew peaches and nectarines. I never went shopping for food because if anything was needed that the estate couldn’t provide Mrs. Walker ordered it and it would be delivered by the butcher, the baker… the candlestick-maker. They all used to come right to the kitchen door and would give Mrs. Walker something extra for herself to encourage her to go on ordering from them.
Glen was beautiful all year round: in August the hillside was brushed with the purple of the heather but when Uncle Stephen got out of bed one summer and came to visit, it appeared the heather was not to his liking. “Oh, darling boy,” he remarked to Colin, “what a pity the valley is such a vulgar shade of purple.” Not wanting to see Uncle Stephen disappointed, Colin rushed off and somehow managed to buy hundreds and hundreds of blue paper flowers, dashed off over the valley, and distributed them among the heather so that, from the house, the view was full of blue. “Oh, darling! That’s much better, isn’t it?” said Uncle Stephen, before turning his attention to other things.
In autumn, the light changed to a yellowish tinge, which lit up the house magnificently, and Christmases at Glen were spectacular: outside, the landscape would be covered with thick, glistening snow, while inside, an enormous tree cut from the estate would stand magnificently in the hallway, covered with beautiful pre–First World War decorations I had found tucked away, lit with real candles.
Even in such an isolated place, Colin managed to strike up new friendships and meet new people, often inviting them to have a look round or even stay, so I wasn’t surprised when we acquired some unexpected tenants. One afternoon, Colin was walking down the road to the local town when he met a group of people coming up the drive dressed in hippie clothes. Intrigued, he greeted them and asked them what they were doing there. “Well,” replied one of the girls, heather in her hair, “we’re looking for somewhere to live and we thought you might have something.”
Colin offered them some terraced cottages on the estate called “The Row,” which were in terrible disrepair. The long and the short of it was they said yes and moved in. It turned out they were musicians so, just like that, we had our own resident band, marvelously called the Incredible String Band. In return for their accommodation, whenever people were staying, they would play—at dinners, in the gardens, on picnics—all over the glen.
On another occasion, Colin, who was on his way to Glen from New York, rang up. “I’ve met an actress called Brooke Shields and she is on her way to Glen to stay with us for a few days.”
I had never heard of her but when she came she was delightful, staying with us for several days. She was very, very pretty although she had extraordinary bushy eyebrows, which weren’t very fashionable in those days. She entered into everything we did—coming on picnics, rowing the boat on the lake, and playing with the children.
Some of the other guests were rather more difficult. Colin was not by any means the only demanding person I knew. He would arrange certain things and invite certain people and then leave me to sort them all out, often complaining that I wasn’t enthusiastic enough. Once he told me he had invited Raine Dartmouth, who later became Princess Diana’s stepmother Countess Spencer, Clarissa Avon, and Bianca Jagger at the same time. I said, “You’ve asked three of the most demanding women I know. They’re lovely by themselves, but all together? This is going to be a nightmare!”
The evening they all arrived I was going up the passage when I heard this very loud banging coming from Raine Dartmouth’s room. I rang for the housekeeper, Mrs. Sanderson, who explained what was happening: “Didn’t Lady Dartmouth tell you? She said the cupboard was not suitable for her evening dresses because the rail wasn’t high enough up. She asked for the house carpenter.”
While that was going on, Clarissa Avon, former Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s wife, arrived. She was a great friend of Colin’s and I suspected had had a fling with him, which seemed to make her more confident when staying with us. I was in my bath, having two minutes of rest, when I heard bang bang bang on the bedroom door.
“Who is it?” I called out. “Can it wait a moment?”
“It’s Clarissa here,” came a voice. “You said you would lend me some of your diamonds.”
“Yes, I will,” I replied, “but I’m in the bath at the moment.”
“Well, get out of the bath,” she commanded.
I didn’t really have a choice, so I got out of the bath and, in my towel, handed her the diamonds.
Meanwhile, Bianca Jagger was in her bed
room. All the bedrooms had a bell so that guests could let the maid or housekeeper know they were needed. When in her room, Bianca seemed to spend most of her time ringing the bell, demanding hot coffee. So Mrs. Sanderson would traipse up and down the stairs with a constant supply: Tring tring tring went Bianca and up and down went the coffee.
It was full-on. I had to work out all the place settings for dinner and lunch, which often needed to be considered very carefully, and then, when these three ladies were still there, Princess Margaret arrived. Fortunately, she was by far the easiest: she brought her own maid and was always polite.
So many people came and went that I spent a great deal of time helping Mrs. Sanderson change the bedding and get the house in order for the next lot of friends or family. When everybody was there, I was always making sure they had what they wanted and trying to make it a success. Sometimes it would all get to be a bit too much. If I felt I had had enough I would go for a walk, simply to get away from everybody. In the woods I would pass one of the members of the Incredible String Band, who used to buy and sell gypsy caravans. One day I was on a walk and as I passed by his latest acquisition, on impulse, I asked him, “Any chance you would like to sell me that caravan? I need somewhere to escape!”
He looked rather puzzled but sold it to me and helpfully moved it so that it was far enough away from the house to give me some undisturbed peace. I loved it: it became my own private space and I did it up with red and white knitted cushions and made red and white curtains. Before I had my bolt-hole, I would be followed round the house by the guests and the housekeeper alike. Everybody was always asking me questions. The little gypsy caravan made it all so much easier because I would go there to read, knowing no one could bother me because no one knew where I was.
Colin never wanted to get away—he was a ringmaster in Paradise once everybody had arrived. He built a stage in the drawing room and all the guests, including Princess Margaret, who loved Colin’s idea of entertainment, would perform, and he would ask people from the village to be the captive audience. I have no idea what they made of it all. It reminded me of when I was a child, performing plays for the Polish soldiers at Cortachy. At Glen we would all change in the library, come out of the French windows and into the drawing room so that we suddenly appeared all at once.
One summer we put on a production of Swan Lake. Colin had bought all the swan outfits in America when we were on a family holiday earlier that summer. He had decided to hire a Winnebago and we drove around the States in that ghastly monstrosity. When Colin saw a shop he wanted to go into, he would simply park anywhere and get out. While he was in one such shop, a pair of overweight policemen on motorbikes pulled up, got off their bikes, and said, “Ma’am, you can’t park there, it’s a violation. You need to move.”
“I don’t know how to drive it, Officer,” I replied. “My husband’s just in the shop. He won’t be long.”
Sure enough, Colin soon appeared, dressed in a bright pink tutu, wearing plastic boobs and a tiara, and carrying a wand. “So sorry, Officers!” Colin said. “I won’t be a minute.” The policemen’s jaws dropped to the ground and, without saying a word, they got back on their motorbikes and drove away.
Another summer, Princess Margaret dressed up as Mae West and sang “Come Up and See Me Sometime,” and always the Incredible String Band would play late into the night. As long as I could get away when I needed some peace and quiet, I absolutely loved being there. Glen was a constant, somewhere I came to rely on, especially since our London address was always changing.
At last our marriage had got into its stride, and I could turn my focus to trying to adapt to moving between running Glen, with its staff and over fifty rooms, a smart London town house and being marooned on Mustique, showering with a bucket and catching lobster with my bare hands.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Princess in Pajamas
WHILE MOST OF our friends stayed put as custodians to a stately home, Colin was always on the lookout for something new and liked nothing better than to try out houses around London, continuing to move us from one to the next. We’d gone from his mother’s to Patrick Plunket’s brother’s house in Kent to Rutland Gate Mews—a house I hated on account of its linoleum floors.
Then, in 1963, Colin declared he had bought another house. This time it was the former home of the famous nineteenth-century American painter James Whistler in Tite Street, Chelsea. Tite Street had been a popular destination for people from the arts, racking up an impressive list of occupants in the past, such as writers including Oscar Wilde, other painters such as John Singer Sargent as well as composers, film critics, and novelists.
This creative part of London appealed to Colin and the house was impressive. The problem was that over the years it had sloped so drastically into the mud that it needed to be pulled down and rebuilt. Naturally, Colin threw a demolition party, asking guests to come wielding hammers and wearing hard hats. In return for a donation to one of the charities that we supported, guests were invited to smash the walls down, his mother being one of the last to leave.
After it had been demolished, it was rebuilt and decorated. It took a couple of years to finish, which meant we continued to move in and out of other houses in the meantime. When we finally moved in, we stayed put for several years.
During the sixties, when Colin and I were in England, we had a social engagement almost every night, and every weekend we were invited to stay at friends’ houses, all around the country. Often there would be thirty or forty other people invited for big dances, and to allow big guest lists, we would often stay with neighbors, getting to know people by proxy. We went to Boughton, Hatfield, Chatsworth, and once we went to shoot at Wentworth Woodhouse, which happens to be the biggest house in Britain. Built on a coal mine, it smelled dreadfully of coke and the heather was black. We also stayed with Jane, Duchess of Buccleuch, at Drumlanrig Castle with Princess Margaret, although when Jane decided it was time for bed, she announced, “I’m turning all the lights off—here’s a flashlight.” We were left to grapple through the pitch-black corridors to our bedrooms with a tiny flashlight in a fit of giggles.
We were invited to Blenheim quite often. The first time we went, I was anxious about the Duke of Marlborough, Bert, who had a reputation for being frightening, with a quick wit and a quicker temper. I excused myself as soon as we had arrived to adjust my wig: at that time all the ladies wore wigs. I only wish we wore wigs now because when we did I never needed to go to the hairdresser. I had a curly wig, which made me look quite like Harpo Marx, who, rather unusually for a man, had a peroxide blond perm.
Reappearing with my wig secure, I prayed I would not have to play bridge with Bert because he had a fearsome reputation for being unpleasant to his bridge partners if they did not play to his exacting standards. But, of course, Bert said, “I’ll play with Anne.”
“I’m terrified of playing with you,” I replied, rather bravely, I felt, “because you’re very, very good and you don’t suffer fools gladly.”
Thankfully, we had very good cards and I somehow engineered it so he always played the hand and he was charming—far nicer to me than Colin would have been.
Like everyone else I knew, we left our children in the care of a nanny or governess when we went away for weekends. As well as a nanny, I had a nursery maid and, with the butler, housekeeper, and two cleaners, the house was run whether we were there or not. The first nanny Charlie had was Nanny White, who doted on him. Each time she wheeled him out in the pram, if he saw a cake shop he would point, and in Nanny White went to buy a huge iced bun for him. No wonder he liked her so much. When Henry was born, I took him off to Holkham with a maternity nurse. When I arrived back, Colin greeted me with the news that he’d sacked Nanny White over something very small. The truth was, she wasn’t very easy to get on with and one remark or scowl from her had pushed Colin over the edge. I hadn’t sacked her because Charlie loved her so much.
Charlie was devastated and seemed to blame Henry: f
rom a three-year-old’s perspective, Henry had come along, taken Mummy off, and somehow, as a result, his beloved nanny had gone away too. Poor Charlie had a mini nervous breakdown and ran away into a cornfield. His hair was blond, like the corn, and the field was so big, and he so small, it took a long time to find him. We went backwards and forwards shouting for him until, in the end, I found him crouched like a rabbit. It broke my heart.
We got a new nanny, but it turned out she wasn’t very kind and I didn’t find out very quickly, which I bitterly regret. After her, there was another nanny and a few lovely au pairs, including a brilliant Swiss girl called Helen, who stayed until the boys went to boarding school.
I would see Charlie and Henry in the nursery before leaving them to play and be put to bed by the nanny because I normally had an evening engagement. I was always busy with fundraising events, the most memorable being the 500 Ball at Claridge’s, in London, for which I organized a headdress competition. Being quietly competitive and not wanting to be accused of not trying, I went to the hairdresser John Olofson, who had created an impressive two-and-a-half-foot headdress of gilded grapes and vine leaves for me. It was so big, I had to sit on the floor of the taxi so it could fit in.
Mostly, these events wouldn’t finish until the early hours of the next morning, so I had a routine with the children: already bathed and dressed, they’d climb onto my bed while I ate breakfast and we would talk. If I was at home during the day, I would take them out to play and in the evenings I would read them books, their favorite being Where The Wild Things Are.
While the children’s lives were in London, Colin spent most of his time on Mustique, which for many years wasn’t a good place for the children to be. They were left behind until they were older. I felt torn, leaving my children, but so much was happening on Mustique and Colin was desperate to have me there in support.
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