Queen Bees: Six Brilliant and Extraordinary Society Hostesses Between the Wars – a Spectacle of Celebrity, Talent, and Burning Ambition

by Siân Evans

  After the fall of France in the summer of 1940 and the evacuation of Dunkirk, the invasion of Britain was expected imminently. During the Blitz, from September 1940, London was bombed from the air night after night. As the warning sirens began, the populace would take cover wherever they could, hiding in basements or Underground stations from screaming bombs and murderous incendiaries. The blackout made any nocturnal journey a hazardous procedure for pedestrians and motorists, but moonlit nights revealed the distinctive twists and turns of the Thames and provided a map to the Luftwaffe pilots. The bombers were met with anti-aircraft guns defending the capital, and the noise was ferocious. Charles Ritchie wrote:

  Dined at the Dorchester Hotel which is like a luxury liner on which the remnants of London Society have embarked in the midst of this storm. Through the thick walls and above the music of the band one could hear the noise of the barrage and at intervals the building shook like a vibrating ship with the shock of an exploding bomb falling nearby.3

  After virtually sleepless nights Londoners would emerge to assess the latest devastation. Mrs Greville, Sibyl Colefax and Emerald Cunard continued entertaining their guests on the upper floors of the Dorchester, studiously ignoring the crump of bombs and artillery fire outside. Many floors below, down in the basement a sixteen-year-old trainee chef was preparing their meals. Clement Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, and in 1940 he started working in the Dorchester kitchens, peeling vegetables. Freud and some fellow workers rented a vacant eighteenth-century house in nearby Charles Street, where Mrs Greville had her grand house. It was a calculated risk, because their house was wooden-framed, and a risky place to be during air raids.

  The kitchen staff were inventive in making up for the paucity of their wages; Freud paid his rent by smuggling out two cooked chickens a week for consumption by his flatmates. By 1941 he had been promoted to be a waiter, and due to the paper shortage, the New Year’s Eve dinner menu was patriotically printed on a single tiny piece of card, shared between each table of ten diners. The champagne flowed, the lights were dim; Lew Stone’s famous band lifted the atmosphere. Freud served his table with the turtle soup, then the fillets of sole bonne femme, but he omitted the intervening course. At midnight, while the revellers sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Freud retired to a storeroom with ten portions of Beluga caviar, a freshly baked baguette and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Almost sixty years later he fondly remembered the occasion as the best New Year’s Eve meal he had ever consumed.

  Nancy Astor had believed that conflict with Germany was avoidable until the eleventh hour, but once it was declared she and Waldorf threw their considerable energies into the war effort. She had been ridiculed by one fellow MP as ‘The Member for Berlin’; now the couple focused on her constituency of Plymouth, a vital port for the British war effort. In 1939 the Astors became mayor and mayoress, devoting themselves to helping the inhabitants of the city throughout the long and dangerous years of bombardment and attack. Based at their combined home and constituency office at Elliott Terrace, they worked together organising the relief effort following terrible bombing. Nancy provided practical help and raised morale. ‘I stuck to Plymouth. Plymouth stuck to me,’ she said in later years.

  Nancy divided her time between her constituency, Cliveden and the House of Commons. At the age of sixty-one she acquired a motorbike and learned to ride it to cover the miles between Cliveden and London quickly and independently. She had developed a taste for motorcycling, having ridden pillion with T. E. Lawrence on the Brough machine that led to his death. She was a fast, impatient and reckless rider, so it was some relief to her family when she started to spend more time in Plymouth, which she travelled to by sleeper train or chauffeur-driven car.

  Most of the house at Cliveden was mothballed, and precious items from the London house, such as tapestries, art and furniture, were stored there in anticipation of bombing raids on the capital. Some of the staff left to join up, and the grounds were turned over to the production of vegetables. Mr Lee, a housekeeper and a few dailies kept Cliveden ticking over, and the chef used the garden produce, but it became difficult to entertain on any scale as the war progressed. In addition, the Red Cross hospital for Canadian wounded soldiers was reopened, and evacuees from London were housed all over the estate. The four Astor sons served in the armed forces. Nancy’s first son, Bobbie Shaw, served in a barrage balloon unit, being unfit for active service because of his medical history.

  Nancy was indefatigable after the fall of Dunkirk, touring the Plymouth hospitals, raising the morale of the exhausted soldiers who had been brought back. She also contacted her dear friend Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian, now British Ambassador to Washington, offering to help persuade the Americans of the threat to Britain from Germany. He returned to Britain briefly in October 1940, and stayed at Cliveden; but within two months she received the devastating news that he was dead. He had died of kidney failure, having refused medical treatment that might have saved him because of his Christian Scientist beliefs. Nancy was devastated at the loss of her great friend and ally. She hoped that Waldorf might be appointed British Ambassador to Washington in his place, but Winston Churchill dismissed the idea. Nancy’s pro-appeasement stance in the past and her abrasive personality made her unsuitable for such a sensitive diplomatic role as the ambassador’s wife, just as Britain was fighting for its very survival and was desperate for American assistance.

  The Astors’ London house in St James’s Square was damaged in October 1940 by incendiary bombs. It was larger than they needed as a family home, so they turned it over to the Free French forces to use as their HQ. The family retreated to a small self-contained flat at the back of the house, with a front door giving onto Babmaes Street, a cul-de-sac where streetwalkers plied their trade. One night Nancy spotted a young, drunk American serviceman lying on the pavement. She helped him to his feet and told him he was coming home with her. ‘Oh no I’m not, my mother warned me about women like you!’ he protested, misunderstanding her intentions. Nevertheless she managed to get him into the flat, and he was allowed to sleep it off. The next morning he was given a lecture on the evils of alcohol and a £5 note, and shown the door. Nancy took a particular delight in showing drunks the errors of their ways.

  The Astors sat out the Blitz in reduced circumstances, but, like many London households, they were suddenly overrun by rats ejected from their regular habitats by the bombing. The rodents invaded St James’s Square and the adjacent flat in Babmaes Street, getting under the floorboards, infesting the gutters, scouring the dustbins. Largely nocturnal, they made a racket throughout the small hours. It was all very different from life before the war.

  The Blitz in Plymouth was terrifying. The city was a vital strategic naval port and was ruthlessly targeted by the Luftwaffe. On the night of 20 March 1941 a massive air raid devastated the city. Earlier that day Nancy and Waldorf had hosted a visit by the King and Queen. The royal party’s train left the station as the air-raid sirens sounded, and two hours later German bombers dropped thousands of incendiaries onto the city. They hit the maternity ward of the hospital, the commercial sector, department stores, boarding houses, churches, pubs, warehouses, factories and houses, and fires raged all over the city. Nancy had a narrow escape – she had been standing in the open in Elliott Street watching the aircraft when she was ordered to take cover by an air-raid warden. No sooner had she stepped inside her hall and closed the front door than a bomb landed outside the house, blowing in the windows. With her household she took refuge in the basement, where Rose picked fragments of glass out of her hair.

  The Queen sent a heartfelt telegram to Nancy, anxiously asking what had become of the places and people the royal couple had visited just hours before the first raid. ‘Oh, curse the Germans’, she wrote. Nancy delivered an impassioned radio broadcast to the States, describing the devastation delivered by Hitler’s New Order. She also addressed the shell-shocked inhabitants of her adopted city: ‘Today Plymouth knows t
he meaning of total war. Mercifully we have suffered only half of what Hitler’s other victims have suffered. At least we have not been driven out of our country. Our sailors, soldiers and airmen will see that we never are.’4

  Plymouth was targetted the following night, and again intermittently for months. As in many wartime cities, life for the inhabitants was grim, with unpredictable raids, power cuts, odd explosions, damaged sewerage systems and burned-out streets full of rubble, under which were dead bodies. Communications during wartime were often fractured and difficult. The Astors alleviated the situation by organising temporary housing, clothing and food distribution, and setting up canteens. They also sent impassioned letters to The Times, pleading for help in dealing with the devastation caused by the bombing.

  As well as offering their practical and organisational skills, the Astors attempted to boost the morale of the battered populace of Plymouth. Nancy would cajole and encourage, and had a talent to amuse small children. Despite her age of sixty-two, she would even turn cartwheels, to the astonishment of onlookers. By contrast, Waldorf was a quiet, thoughtful tactician; to provide entertainment and as a relief from stress he arranged for military bands to play on Plymouth Hoe in the afternoons and early evenings, so that the citizens could dance. Day after day, hundreds people of all ages and backgrounds waltzed or foxtrotted in the open air, with a view over the English Channel, their worries temporarily suspended.

  Winston and Clementine Churchill visited Plymouth in May 1941 to inspect the damage. A photograph of the time reflects the tension between Nancy and her former Parliamentary sparring partner, now the nation’s personification of hope for victory. Picking their way through mountains of rubble, Winston and Clemmie were resoundingly cheered by the citizens of Plymouth, and tears ran down the Prime Minister’s face. Nancy, wearing a fur coat and a fixed smile, followed in their wake.

  Waldorf was now in his sixties, and his health was poor. He had a suspected stroke, brought on by a fierce row with Nancy, who insisted he give her some American sweets that were intended for the children of the city. He refused, and she threw a fearful tantrum in front of their lunch guests. He became ill, his breathing was erratic and his colour high, alarming symptoms in a man with a heart condition. Waldorf spent six weeks recuperating in Cornwall without Nancy, and this was the beginning of a growing estrangement between them. Nancy was irritated by his incapacity, her conviction in the precepts of Christian Science leading her to believe that with enough faith he could overcome any ailment. In August 1941 she reluctantly accompanied him to their house on the island of Jura. Travel was immensely difficult during wartime, and 10 days of enforced relaxation on a Scottish island with her ailing husband was now Nancy’s idea of hell.

  While Nancy barely tolerated her afflicted but adoring husband, Emerald Cunard’s relationship with her fickle lover of three decades finally foundered. When war broke out in 1939, Emerald Cunard was in Mexico selling some silver mines that had been left to her by her mother decades before; she was gradually liquidating all her assets to support her lifestyle. She was still out of favour with the royal family – it was exactly three years since the abdication, but in a letter to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in December 1939, Queen Elizabeth wondered whether von Ribbentrop’s erroneous impression of the British spirit had been Lady Cunard’s fault.

  Emerald was keen to escape London, and in January 1940 she closed up her exquisite house in Grosvenor Square, sold many of her belongings, leaving others in storage, and moved into a suite at the Ritz. She helped to organise the Sunday Club for Officers in the ballroom at the Dorchester, offering young officers tea and sandwiches, and a chance to dance with well-bred young ladies. Later that year came a welcome opportunity to travel. Sir Thomas Beecham had long-standing conducting commitments in America. Emerald was at a loose end, and she could afford to travel with him. She still resented his relationship with Dora Labbette, and their young son Paul, but this was a chance to get him to herself.

  In the autumn of 1940 Emerald and Sir Thomas moved into a suite in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. He was sixty-one and she was sixty-eight; they had been involved for three decades, though Sir Thomas later insisted that for they had been ‘just friends’ for ten years, and Lady Cunard believed that he was impotent, an implausible story as his son, Paul, had been born in 1933. Together they set out in mid-December for a leisurely rail journey to St Louis, where he conducted two concerts, before spending Christmas in Tucson, Arizona. In Los Angeles they took tea with the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, and dined with the film star Gary Cooper. Emerald was determined to keep Beecham amused and away from Dora and Paul, back in war-torn London, through the winter of 1940 to 1941. What she could not foresee was that her serially unfaithful lover would fall in love yet again – but this time in America.

  Beecham first met the gifted British pianist Betty Humby in London in 1938. She was unhappily married to a London vicar, and she went to America in May 1940 with her young son Jeremy, in order to obtain a divorce. In 1941 she joined Sir Thomas’s musical entourage, and their friendship developed. Emerald began to hear hints about the conductor and his pianist, both away on tour. She tackled Sir Thomas, but he laughingly dismissed her concerns, saying that Betty was ‘descended from a long line of dentists’, implying such mundane origins barred her from consorting with a grandee like himself.

  On 9 February 1942 Sir Thomas and his musicians left Emerald in New York for a conducting engagement in Seattle. The same day, the gossip columnist Maury Paul, whose pen name was Cholly Knickerbocker, published a story that was automatically syndicated to the sixty Hearst-owned papers throughout the United States:

  Excitement is i-n-t-e-n-s-e over the manner in which comely Betty Humby, a young and very talented English pianist, reportedly has injected herself, and a bit of a crescendo, into the never-too-tantalizing Cunard-Beecham symphony. That Sir Thomas appreciates Betty – musically – is borne out by his statement that she can ‘play Beethoven better than I can direct it.’ […] naturally, all this has sent ‘Dear Emerald’s’ blood pressure up like Vesuvius in an angry mood.5

  Sir Thomas was cornered by a clutch of reporters on the train shortly before he arrived at his destination. He would not be drawn, saying ‘My dear fellow, there are two ladies’ names mentioned here. It’s a private matter. It’s not the sort of thing the people of Seattle are interested in.’ However, they were very interested, and not only in Seattle. While Emerald fumed in her New York hotel, Beecham conducted Betty’s performance at Carnegie Hall. Beecham returned with her to Sun Valley, Idaho, and Betty’s divorce was granted on 3 July 1942. Utica, Sir Thomas’s wife of nearly forty years, still refused to divorce him through the British courts; this time Beecham sought a legal solution in America.

  Emerald remained in New York throughout the autumn of 1942, hoping that her lover’s latest romance would founder. While she was staying with Mona Harrison Williams, the wife of a Wall Street financier, her hostess invited some friends for lunch. One of them, an English film actress, Leonora Corbett, blithely mentioned that she had just received a letter from an old schoolfriend, Betty Humby, containing the startling news that Betty was about to marry Sir Thomas Beecham, the famous conductor. Emerald struggled through lunch, but confided to her hostess afterwards that she wanted to die.

  Emerald booked the first available ticket back to Europe, sailing from Baltimore to Lisbon on a Portuguese ship, the Serpa Pinto. It was hazardous to cross the Atlantic, even in a supposedly neutral ship, and they picked up survivors from another vessel, which had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. After a tense three-week delay in Lisbon, Emerald flew back to London. Her close friends were aware of her humiliation, despite her resolute determination to pretend that all was well. Chips Channon wrote: ‘Emerald was gay, exquisite, full of life and fun and we sat enthralled for three hours […] She kissed me affectionately goodnight, and I admired her courage, for I know her heart is broken over Thomas Beecham’s desertion. She loved him for 34
years.’6

  In December 1942 Sir Thomas finally divorced the wife he had wed in 1903, and he married Betty Humby in January 1943 in New York. Betty was twenty-nine years younger than him. Emerald, six years older than him, was broken-hearted by his betrayal after more than three decades of devotion. Dora Labbette was also stricken by Beecham’s desertion. She first heard of his marriage through a notification from his lawyer in London. Making a huge bonfire in the garden of everything that reminded her of Sir Thomas, Dora put a match to it.

  Back in London, Emerald moved into a compact seventh-floor suite at the Dorchester. Her new home comprised a sitting room with a small dining table, eight dining chairs, a bedroom, maid’s room and bathroom. She stuffed the suite with oversized buhl cabinets, looming ormolu furniture, marble statues and fine porcelain from her former London home, creating an obstacle course for the staff. With great determination Emerald returned to what she knew best, surrounding herself with chatter and glitter, and intimate little dinner parties with creative tyros, such as Ernest Hemingway, Cecil Beaton and Isaiah Berlin.

  A lifelong insomniac, she now re-read Balzac novels through her sleepless nights as bombs fell on London, telephoning her patient friends in the small hours to discuss plot details or fictional characters’ motivations. Her devoted maid Mary Gordon asked her if it was wise to telephone a friend so late; Emerald replied, ‘At two o’clock? Do you think he goes to roost with the chickens?’