by Siân Evans
Lord Londonderry plunged headlong into bringing about a better understanding between Germany and Britain, seeing himself now as a private statesman with a worthy mission and excellent connections. Charley and Edith, with their youngest daughter, Mairi, visited Germany in December 1935 and February 1936. He went stag-hunting with the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering (who bagged a bison), and they stayed for a week at his luxurious mountain retreat before going on to the Winter Olympics. Charley also had a two-hour audience with Hitler, who declared that he was most concerned about the world growth of Bolshevism. Charles found him ‘forthcoming and agreeable’12, especially when assured by the Führer that ‘Germany wants to live in close friendly alliance with England’. Londonderry described the Führer as ‘a kindly man with a receding chin and an impressive face’.
Edith also wrote about Hitler as a ‘man of arresting personality – a man with wonderful far-seeing eyes’13, and told Dr Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter, that ‘to live in the upper levels of National Socialism may be quite pleasant, but woe to the poor folk who do not belong to the upper orders’. She was careful in what she said, but Unity Mitford, a Hitler devotee, wrote to her sister Diana: ‘Lady Londonderry [will] simply go back and say just as nasty things as before.’14
After their first two visits Charley wrote to von Ribbentrop expressing the hope that Britain and Germany could unite to combat Communism. Von Ribbentrop became known as ‘The Londonderry Herr’ as a result of his apparent closeness to the Londonderrys, and Charley’s enthusiasm for the Third Reich went down badly in British political circles – ‘Londonderry just back from hobnobbing with Hitler,’15 recorded Harold Nicolson in a letter to his wife. ‘I do deeply disapprove of ex-Cabinet Ministers trotting across to Germany at this moment.’
In May 1936 the von Ribbentrops and Laura Corrigan flew to Mount Stewart to spend Whitsun as the guests of the Londonderrys. The Londonderrys did not personally like von Ribbentrop, but they invited him to stay with them in order to influence the views he relayed back to Berlin. Lord Londonderry became a fully-fledged supporter of Anglo-German ‘understanding’. When von Ribbentrop was formally appointed German Ambassador to London, in October 1936 he spent a weekend at Wynyard, Lord Londonderry’s estate near Durham. During this visit von Ribbentrop attended divine service at Durham Cathedral, during which he leaped to his feet at the opening notes of ‘Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken’, the tune of which is also that of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles’, and gave a rigid ‘Heil Hitler’ salute.
Having conquered London, Laura Corrigan struck out for Paris. This time she knew to go straight to the professionals in order to get established. Another American expat, the legendary Elsa Maxwell, was the route to what Laura regarded as the crème de la crème (although she pronounced it to rhyme with ‘dream’.)
Elsa, the party planner extraordinaire, had grown up in obscurity in California. She described herself as ‘a fat, unattractive woman who was born in Keokuk, Iowa, and was reared in San Francisco without money, family position or even a grammar school diploma’16. Having been told as a child that she wasn’t invited to a friend’s party because her family were too poor, Elsa spent her adult life persuading the wealthy to let her run their social lives for them, so that she need never miss another party. She was spectacularly successful at devising novelty themes, such as treasure hunts or scavenger hunts, and lived on ‘gifts’ from grateful clients and commissions from party venues.
Witty and inventive, Elsa spent fifty years in a lesbian relationship with Dorothy ‘Dickie’ Fellowes-Gordon, who was Scottish – they had met in 1912. She was so celebrated that Cole Porter wrote a song for Ethel Merman entitled ‘I’m Dining with Elsa (and her ninety-nine most intimate friends)’. Her mantra to wealthy clients was ‘Money doesn’t make a good party. You do.’ In return for substantial ‘gifts’, she launched Laura Corrigan in Paris, and Laura adopted many of her innovative ideas for her London parties.
Laura Corrigan had met and befriended Princess Marina of Greece some years earlier in Paris, when she and her exiled family were living in some austerity. She was delighted when Marina captured the heart of the Duke of Kent. Laura was one of the few people who could boast neither a title nor royal antecedents at the Kents’ grand wedding, where virtually all of the guests were linked through the complex network of European royalty and strategic marriages. Laura took Marina shopping beforehand for her wedding present, a mink coat, which cost £6,000. It was a gift of great luxury, but also a practical present for a cash-strapped young woman suddenly marrying a prince.
At the ball to celebrate the Kents’ marriage in November 1934, the royal fiancée wore a beautifully cut simple white evening dress that showed off her excellent figure. By contrast, Mrs Wallis Simpson, who was making her first appearance as a guest in front of the King and Queen, had chosen a dress in violet lamé, with a contrasting green sash, and a tiara borrowed from Cartier. The King and Queen were aware of the rumours that the twice-married American was romantically involved with the Prince of Wales. Her name had already been removed from the guest list, but reluctantly reinstated when the Prince insisted to his father that they were ‘just friends’. Now the senior royals watched icily as this chic, rather metallic, whippet-thin interloper curtsied to them and to their small daughter-in-law the Duchess of York, who was decked out in traditional soft pink. At the wedding itself the Simpsons occupied good seats; the Prince’s ‘special friend’ was starting to become a fixture in court circles.
Laura Corrigan did not take to Wallis Simpson, a fellow American divorcée, although Wallis was a guest at one of her dances in July 1935. The Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson also avoided Laura’s company after just one dinner party at Emerald Cunard’s. It is also possible that Wallis was sensitive to any suggestion of similarities that might be drawn between her and Laura, both ambitious and rather hard-edged Americans from humble origins.
No such misgivings applied in the case of another American-born hostess. Emerald Cunard, aware of the growing attraction between the Prince and Mrs Simpson, had actively started to cultivate their relationship by 1935. In June, Wallis and Emerald stayed at Fort Belvedere for a week to attend Ascot. Emerald joined a house party at the Fort on 20 July 1935, and by midsummer Wallis was toying with the idea of going to Venice with Emerald, after her holiday in Cannes in a villa rented by the Prince. After returning to London in autumn 1935 there were regular dinner engagements, and Emerald was a constant feature in Wallis’s life.
Wallis’s growing importance to the Prince of Wales elicited varying responses from the Queen Bees. Emerald and Sibyl competed to cultivate her, though for different reasons; Lady Cunard enjoyed the excitement of fostering a royal romance, and entertained hopes of becoming the Mistress of the Robes, the trusted confidante of the queen. Sibyl seems to have had a more romantic view of the whole affair, though she was convinced Wallis had no intention of divorcing Ernest in order to marry the Prince. Lady Londonderry had some sympathy with her situation but disapproved on principle of the heir to the throne having a relationship with a married woman; even if Wallis were to divorce for a second time, there were serious constitutional issues for a monarch wanting to marry a woman with two former husbands still alive. Lady Astor was always sensitive to competition from other American women, seeing her own Virginian origins as vastly superior. She felt that Wallis’s humble antecedents should bar her from any contact with royalty. Laura Corrigan and Mrs Greville had both been dropped by the Prince, and Margaret Greville, who had long held a low opinion of him, was furious about his behaviour on behalf of her protégés the Yorks, and her friends King George and Queen Mary.
In February 1935 Mrs Simpson returned to London following a skiing holiday in Kitzbühel with the Prince of Wales. She was now much in demand at the tables of those hostesses who wished to attract the Prince, especially Emerald and Sibyl. Her social life was extremely busy; even Lady Londonderry invited her to dinner. She described h
er new popularity in a letter to her Aunt Bessie as ‘Wallis in Wonderland’.
She was not popular everywhere, though. Wallis was aware that Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, disapproved, and the relationship between them deteriorated when Elizabeth caught Wallis impersonating her to a giggling crowd of sycophants at Fort Belvedere. ‘Chips’ Channon invited Wallis to lunch in April 1935 following a hint from the Prince and found her to be a ‘jolly, plain, intelligent, quiet, unpretentious and unprepossessing little woman’17, though he noted that ‘she has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she expects to be curtsied to […] she has complete power over the Prince of Wales, who is trying to launch her socially’.
From early 1935 onwards, the Simpsons were under surveillance by Special Branch, the undercover division of the Metropolitan police, because of the couple’s friendship with the Prince. The surveillance was authorised by the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, a former beau of Mrs Greville. Visitors to Bryanston Court were recorded by Inspector Canning and his team of detectives. They noted Oswald Mosley, now leader of the British Union of Fascists, Alice ‘Kiki’ Preston, one-time girlfriend of the Duke of Kent, who was known as ‘the girl with the silver syringe’, and society hostess Emerald Cunard, who was sensationally ‘reputed to be a drug addict’. It was noted disapprovingly that her daughter, ‘the notorious Nancy […] was very partial to coloured men and created a sensation some years ago by taking residence in the Negro quarter of New York’. Detectives also recorded that Mrs Simpson and the Prince called each other ‘darling’ while visiting an antique shop in South Kensington; the shopkeeper remarking that the lady seemed to have the gentleman ‘completely under her thumb’. The information collected by Special Branch was lurid and often incorrect; it was thought that Ernest Simpson was Jewish, and he was described as ‘the bounder type’, who was expecting to be given high honours. It was also alleged that Wallis Simpson, the veteran of many affairs, was having a relationship with a married car salesman called Guy Marcus Trundle at the same time as she was involved with the heir to the throne.
While Special Branch were keeping a beady eye on Wallis, the rest of the royal family were keen to avoid her. By the summer of 1935 battle lines had been drawn between the traditionalists (King George V and Queen Mary, the Duke and Duchess of York, Princess Marina, Mrs Greville, Lady Astor and Mrs Corrigan) and the pro-Wallis camp (the Prince of Wales, his brother the Duke of Kent, Emerald Cunard, Sibyl Colefax, ‘Chips’ Channon, the Duff Coopers, Cecil Beaton and Winston Churchill.) Demoralised, the old King avoided attending Ascot that year, leaving the Yorks to represent the formal royal presence, while the Prince of Wales strolled around the Royal Enclosure with Wallis on his arm. At the end of the summer, the Yorks and their two young daughters joined the King and Queen at Balmoral to shoot, fish, battle midges and dress up in tartan in the Ruritanian castle created by Queen Victoria. Meanwhile the thoroughly modern Prince, his best friend Mrs Simpson and his band of cosmopolitan socialites were soaking up the sun on the French Riviera. Once again, Ernest Simpson pleaded that the pressure of business made him unable to join them; those in the know remarked that he was ‘laying down his wife for his king’.
Emerald Cunard was still supporting Sir Thomas Beecham’s musical career, which was going from strength to strength. In May 1932 he conducted Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and the guests of honour were King George V and Queen Mary, who received him and congratulated him on the performance. Lady Cunard was in her usual box with her well-heeled friends to witness his triumph. However, all was not plain sailing between Emerald and Sir Thomas. Since 1926 he had been conducting a passionate affair with the gifted opera soprano Dora Labbette, who adopted the stage name of Lisa Perli (a tribute to her home town of Purley). Dora gave birth to their son in a Marylebone nursing home on 25 March 1933. The baby, Paul, was the third child of Sir Thomas, but his two older boys, born in 1904 and 1909, had grown up without him. This was a belated chance to be a father. The day after the baby’s birth, a Sunday, was a rest-day for his orchestra. The great conductor took the train to London from Newcastle, where they had been performing, to see mother and baby, returning in time for rehearsals on Monday morning. Dora had managed to extricate herself from her marriage, and Beecham had proposed to her, even offering to get a quick ‘Reno’-style divorce from Utica in an American court. But Dora was concerned that such an arrangement might not be valid in Britain. She urged him to persuade Utica to agree to a divorce through the British courts, but Utica refused to countenance it.
Although it is uncertain exactly when Lady Cunard learned the truth about Dora and baby Paul, in 1935 there was a furious row between Emerald and Sir Thomas. The diplomat and spy Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart recorded his somewhat terse version of events in his diary:
Story goes back to last winter when Emerald discovered that Beecham had another girl around the corner. There was a row. Emerald threatened never to lift a finger for opera again unless Beecham gave up his fairy. Beecham agreed. Emerald discovered recently that he had not given her up. Hence these tears.18
Lady Cunard recognised that Dora Labbette, twenty-five years younger than her, was a real threat to her relationship with Sir Thomas, especially now they had a son. He would not relinquish Dora, and arranged a provision to give her an income when she was no longer able to work. Thomas also formally agreed to provide an education for Paul ‘as befits the son of a baronet’. Dora and Paul now had a comfortable home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and Beecham was a frequent visitor, encouraging young Paul to play the piano. At the end of 1935 Sir Thomas took up his prestigious role as conductor with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. He was accompanied by Dora Labbette, and Emerald was left behind in London. Consequently Emerald sought distraction, and concentrated on fostering the relationship between the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson.
Emerald gave intimate little dinner parties, where the Prince and Mrs Simpson could meet in the company of others. The Prince liked the company of American women, their high standards of grooming, their charming informality, their sense of fun. With Emerald and Wallis he could dance, laugh, smoke, drink cocktails, voice his opinions; it was a contrast to the aura of palpable disapproval exuded by his Victorian parents.
By the mid-1930s Emerald was nearly sixty years old, though she always claimed to be five years younger, but she retained the conversational charms and personal chic that had first attracted Edward VII and now amused his grandson. She was tiny, wrinkled and heavily made up, very well dressed and often wore silver powder brushed through her hair. Harold Nicolson described her appearance as like ‘a third-dynasty mummy painted by an amateur’. ‘Chips’ Channon commented on Emerald’s intelligence and culture, her ambition to be at the heart of a kaleidoscopic circle of interesting people; as he wrote, ‘The crown always frowned on so brilliant a salon; indeed Emerald’s only failures were the two Queens [Queen Mary and, later, Queen Elizabeth] and Lady Astor and Lady Derby.’19
The motivations of the two most politically committed Queen Bees, Lady Astor and Lady Londonderry, went beyond socialising for its own sake. Nancy Astor had long championed the causes of women and children. However, in 1936, when Lucy Baldwin, the wife of the Conservative Prime Minister, launched a campaign to improve the standards of midwifery, Lady Astor was critical, perhaps from jealousy. She mimicked Mrs Baldwin’s voice, and made a double entendre of the campaigner’s slightly naive appeal to her audience to ‘make it your business to be responsible for one expectant mother’. In addition, Nancy Astor told Lucy Baldwin, ‘When I see the sort of children we’re all having, I’m for letting the mothers die!’ Outrageous remarks of this kind damaged Nancy’s reputation in an era when the mortality rates for mothers and babies were very high.
Edith Londonderry, by contrast, had been a founder member with Lucy Baldwin in 1928 of the National Birthday Trust Fund, providing anaesthesia for women in labour. In 1934, the NBTF set up the Joint Council of Midwifery, r
adically reforming the training and employment of midwives, who were so important in delivering babies in poor and urban areas. Neville Chamberlain, whose own mother had died in childbirth, supported this initiative. In July 1936 the Midwives Act was passed, thanks to Lucy Baldwin and Edith Londonderry. For the first time the national midwives service was funded by local government, and a new principle of medical treatment free to the needy was established. Families who could afford it were charged 30 shillings for the services of a midwife, but those who had no money would also be treated. The treatment and care of mothers and babies began to improve, and death rates came down. In these measures can be seen the origin of the National Health Service, the principle of care available at the point of need, and it is an example of the practical benefits for women of all classes achieved by the direct involvement of ladies of influence.
8
1936: The Year of Three Kings
1936 was a momentous year for British society, and the hostesses had ringside seats for the constitutional crisis, the fast-moving international developments and political and social upheavals that swept through the year. Some of them also endured personal tragedies.
As the year dawned, King George’s health deteriorated. He was worried about the succession and his son’s infatuation with Mrs Simpson. He predicted that the Prince would ruin himself within twelve months of inheriting the throne (in fact it took a mere 325 days). On 20 January he lapsed into a coma at Sandringham, surrounded by his family. His doctor, Lord Dawson, euphemistically stated: ‘The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close.’ The monarch’s demise was actually hastened by an injection of morphine and cocaine, administered by Dawson to ensure that his death would be announced in the morning papers, notably The Times, rather than the less ‘dignified’ evening papers.