Wait for Me!

by Deborah Devonshire

  The one thing that really delighted little D[ecca] was the gramophone. She talked of it the whole time, how wonderful it would be to have it to play. It is a very nice one, it is supposed to be a ‘club’ from you and Bobo. It cost about £7 or a little less and there is a nice case for the records. I think they are leaving here tomorrow & going to Dieppe for a week or a fortnight. It will be very nice for them to have a change. They are evidently very happy together and I feel much happier about them . . .

  All love darling,

  Muv

  The letter illustrates Muv’s selflessness and the effort she made to give her blessing to ‘Little D’ and Esmond. She travelled to Bayonne (third class no doubt) laden not just with a dress for Decca, but with Unity’s and my present of a gramophone and heavy records as well.

  After the wedding Muv joined Margaret and me in Florence, and we went on from there to Venice. After a few days Margaret had to go back to Florence to finish the term. I was sad to see her go. Had she been allowed to stay with us, she would have had some unforgettable experiences instead of stumping round picture galleries with a well-meaning but dull Italian hostess who had done it thousands of times before.

  Muv and I set off through Austria, taking the train to the Burgenland to stay at Kohfidisch with Countesses Jimmy (confusingly, a woman – Joanna) and Baby (Francesca) Erdödy. Tom had fallen under Baby’s spell when he was living in Austria and they had been fond of each other for some time. The sisters collected us at the station in the local version of a shooting brake drawn by a pair of horses, and we drove along the tracks through endless woods to their house. It gave us a taste of the size of some of the great Central European estates – those that had managed to survive the fall of Austria-Hungary and the First World War. Jimmy said something surprising, but in such a matter-of-fact voice that it sounded as if it happened all over the place, ‘My father was also the father of a number of the people who work here.’ I suppose the droit de seigneur lasted in those parts of Europe longer than elsewhere and she took it absolutely for granted. I looked at the farm workers and stable staff with renewed interest.

  After two nights with the Erdödys we went on to Schloss Bernstein, where Tom had spent contented months with the Almásys. I had never seen such beautiful country: from the terrace of the ancient castle we had a view across half of Europe and I understood why Tom was so enchanted by the place. The morning of our arrival, our host, János Almásy, was arrested for being a suspected Nazi sympathizer. He did not return until 10.30 p.m. that night and was told to report to the police the next morning, so I barely saw him.

  From Bernstein, our lightning tour took us to Vienna for a night and on to Salzburg, where Unity met us in her little car and drove us to Munich. On the way we stopped at Königssee, where Unity telephoned to see if Hitler was in his house at Berchtesgaden. The answer came back that he was in Munich, which we reached the following day. I described our arrival in my diary:

  7 June 1937

  We went straight to Hitler’s flat to see if he was there & as there were two soldiers outside we knew that he was, so we rushed to the Osteria Bavaria where they said that he had left 5 minutes before, so we rushed back to his flat & saw his cars all being prepared for him to go to Berchtesgaden. We left our car down a side street & Bobo & I rushed across the square to his house. One of the guards said ‘Wait in the hall’ so we went in & after a bit someone came down & said ‘Hitler would like you to come up’ so Bobo & I went up & she was shaking all over & the door of his room was opened & there he was standing there. He seemed very pleased to see Bobo & she introduced me & we all three went & sat on some chairs by the window. He isn’t very like his photos, not nearly so hard looking. Soon Muv came up & tea was brought in & we all went to wash in his bathroom & he had some brushes there with ‘AH’ on them. The flat was all in brown and white, really rather ugly & quite plain. He talked quite a lot about the Spanish war & the bombing of the Deutschland. He said we must all go to the Parteitag. We sat there for about 2 hours & then he got up & we all said goodbye & he shook hands twice with each of us. When we got down stairs there was quite a crowd waiting to see him go.

  Neither Muv nor I could speak German, so Unity interpreted. There was no formality. Noticing that we were grubby and travel-stained when we arrived, Hitler showed us to the bathroom himself. He and Unity were at ease with each other and the tea party went on as it would have done with anyone anywhere in the world. Our host rang the bell on the tea table. No one came. He rang again, shook his head and gave up. No one else was present at tea and that a small domestic nuisance like a broken bell could happen even to a head of state made us feel at home. I wrote to Decca: ‘We have had quite a nice time here & we’ve had tea with Hitler & seen all the other sights.’ Looking back, what is surprising is that he postponed his departure for two hours so as to be able to sit and chat to Unity and, through her, to us.

  7

  Debutante

  I

  N MARCH 1938 I was eighteen, the age to ‘come out’, which meant being a debutante. Those who took part in this curious and artificial way of life considered it as normal as the summer sporting calendar on which the London Season hung: Royal Ascot, the Epsom Derby, Lords and Henley. Dance bands, dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, caterers, hotels, restaurants, florists, hire car firms and photographers all benefited from the trade whipped up by the frenzy of the Season. It was a vintage year for beautiful girls. Two Sylvias (Lloyd Thomas and Muir); Ursula (Jane) Kenyon-Slaney, tall, blonde and willowy; June Capel, unbeatable for looks and charm; Gina Wernher, of unmistakable Russian descent, with high cheekbones and slanting eyes; Pat Douglas, striking, with veritable violet eyes; Sally Norton, whose perfect figure in Victor Stiebel was made for jealousy; Clarissa Churchill, with more than a whiff of Garbo in a dress by Maggy Rouff of Paris. Pamela Digby – whose famous career was to culminate in the American ambassadorship to Paris – was rather fat, fast and the butt of many teases; and there was Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy, not strictly a beauty but by far the most popular of all.

  Joseph P. Kennedy had arrived as US Ambassador to the Court of St James’s at the beginning of March and nothing like the Kennedy family had been seen before in the rarefied atmosphere of London diplomatic circles. For the next seventeen months they enlivened the scene. Vital, intelligent and outgoing, Kick was able to talk to anyone with ease and her shining niceness somehow ruled out any jealousy. Suitors appeared instantly but I noticed from the start that none of the other girls was annoyed by her success and I never heard a catty remark made behind her back. She was five weeks older than me and we soon made friends.

  My other great friends were my cousins, Jean and Margaret Ogilvy, whose father, Joe Airlie, we all loved, though we were not so fond of their mother, Bridget. She was narrowly conventional to a ridiculous degree and her daughters had to be dressed just so before they were allowed out: shoes, stockings, gloves, hats, all had to be approved. When we were young Decca and I feared that if our parents were killed in an accident we might be left to Bridget in their wills, and what misery that would be (misery for Bridget too now I come to think of it).

  The Ogilvy girls, Gina Wernher, Kick and I met for lunch at each other’s houses time and again in the heady atmosphere of that summer. Gina lived at Someries House, which stood in its own big garden in Regent’s Park. (It was demolished after the war and is now the site of the Royal College of Physicians, an unimaginable change in the landscape of pre-war London.) Our afternoon diversions included the Pathé newsreel cinema in Piccadilly, ‘the eyes and ears of the world’, a one-hour programme that included news, a Walt Disney film and an inferior imitation. If there was talk of war to come we did not believe it and continued to live for the present.

  Royal Ascot in mid-June was the social highlight of the Season. I had first been in 1936 when I persuaded Muv to take me to see the Gold Cup. We went on to the Heath where you could go ‘for nothing’ and get close to the winning po
st. No reason to dress up, you just joined the crowd. Muv would have been far happier staying at home but did it to please me, which was typical of her. The race turned out to be the epic struggle between Lord Derby’s mare Quashed and the American Triple Crown winner Omaha, belonging to the New York banker William Woodward, and Muv and I saw the final strides of this British triumph close to. It fired my interest in flat racing (I already followed National Hunt steeplechasing because of being so keen on Derek) and I still follow it with interest today. In 1937, Muv took me to Aintree by train for the day and we saw Royal Mail win the Grand National. It was a long day and I cannot believe she enjoyed it, but she knew I passionately wanted to go so booked some seats and off we went.

  I went to Ascot again as a debutante, this time to the Royal Enclosure with friends. You wear a badge with your name pinned on your coat (I have often wished this happened at other social events when I am stumped as to who is who) and dress up in your best. I persuaded Madame Rita – who displayed her hats on sticks with padded tops in her cheerful showroom on the first floor of a house in Berkeley Square – to make a copy in spotted muslin of a ‘fore and aft’, the traditional tweed cap worn by deer stalkers, the ear flaps tied with a white satin ribbon on top of my head. It was ridiculous, but lots of Ascot hats are ridiculous. It was the racing I loved more than the social side, but both were all they were cracked up to be. We rattled down from London in one of the many special trains that took you to the racecourse. The sight of a crowd of overdressed women and top-hatted, tail-coated men assembled on one of our dirty old stations is somehow incongruous, like women in evening dress and men in black tie leaving for Glyndebourne in the middle of the afternoon.

  I was as fascinated by the carriage horses in the King and Queen’s procession – the famous Windsor Greys and Cleveland Bays – as I was by the thoroughbreds. There was something moving about the King and Queen’s carriage appearing on the racecourse as a tiny dot a mile away and getting slowly bigger as it drew nearer; it was thrilling to see the skill of the postillions as they swung the carriage round to enter the paddock, judging to perfection the width of the entrance, and to hear the cheer of the crowd and the band playing the National Anthem. When the King had a winner, it was hats off all round and it was wonderful to see the tumultuous reception given to the horse and its owner. The feel of the crowd was much the same on the smart side of the course as it was on the Heath, an interest in horses bringing them together.

  My allowance of £100 a year had to pay for the clothes I needed for the Season. My two or three evening dresses were run up by Gladys at £1 a time and the stuff came, as usual, from John Lewis. I never remember a failure and although I envied girls with dresses by Victor Stiebel, mine were always unique. A coat and skirt from Mr Nissen, tailor of Conduit Street – a major item but one that lasted – cost 8½ guineas. We were never without Madame Rita’s hats. Our hairdresser, Phyllis Earle in Dover Street (reached by a number 9 bus, getting off at the Ritz), charged 3/6 for a wash and set. My shoes, which came from Dolcis in Oxford Street, were cheap and decent to look at but painful after a few nights of round and round the dance floor. Muv gave me some of her elbow-length evening gloves made of doeskin, so gleaming white and smart they set off the dullest dress. They had to be cleaned each time they were worn and were posted to a firm in Scotland, so famous that ‘Pullars of Perth’ on the printed labels was enough of an address. The gloves were returned, pristine, in no time. I also had some white cotton pairs (which were looked down on) as reserves.

  The shops in Brompton Road were reached through the Hole in the Wall at the bottom of Rutland Gate. Dangerously tempting were the two furriers who sold skins from the whole gamut of the animal kingdom, from rabbit to sable, including now-banned species such as baby seal, ocelot and leopard. Red fox was frowned upon by hunting people. Silver, blue and white Arctic fox were all right, but priced miles out of reach. Wool shops selling a kaleidoscope of coloured skeins from Sirdar and Paton & Baldwin were a feature of every London street; there were patterns and wool for rug-making and darning, and for knitting everything under the sun, including dogs’ coats, which I knitted for my whippet Studley.

  There were balls on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and often two on the same night. From time to time there was a Friday dance in the country (but not on a Saturday as it was not thought seemly to dance into Sunday morning). The hostess asked friends to give dinner parties before the ball and sent a list of prospective guests. At dinner, which was given in a private house or hotel restaurant, a debutante was seated between two young men who were expected to dance the first two dances with her on arrival at the ball since she might not know anyone early in the Season. Some obeyed this rule, but others often spied a more attractive friend and abandoned their dinner partners. Popular girls were booked up at once but the ladies’ cloakroom was a refuge for those who had no partners. ‘Can I borrow your powder?’ ‘Yes, but no crevice work please.’ Chat about last night’s dance, who was doing what, and the rest of the talk common to girls of our age in ladies’ cloakrooms all over the world (seemingly idiotic now but very real then), filled the gap till the next dance when, with luck, a partner was booked. The dances were numbered so you somehow found who you were supposed to meet and took to the floor, stepping on each other’s feet and exchanging banalities.

  With no partners to seek them out, some of the debutantes hated every minute of this nightly routine, yet it was an admission of failure to go home before 1 a.m. At dances in the country you were given a programme with a tiny pencil attached by a silk thread, and a space to write the name of your partner next to the number of the dance. Men would say, ‘May I see your programme?’ All very well, but what if it was blank? I learned to put ‘John’, ‘George’, ‘William’, ‘James’ – none of whom existed but it looked better. Sometimes you got caught by an unwanted fellow, sometimes the one you wanted did his best to get away. It was a kind of game and a lesson in how to struggle through as best you can.

  Meanwhile the unlucky chaperone – in my case Muv, who had already been through this charade five times with my sisters – changed into evening dress and, eyeing her turned-down bed with longing, telephoned for a taxi to take her to the ball. Mothers, aunts, or anyone who fitted the chaperone bill, sat on the caterers’ gold chairs that surrounded the dance floor and waited until their charge had had enough. Occasionally Farve gave Muv a night off. He refused to take part in the festivities and never penetrated as far as the ballroom, but sat on one of those rickety hall chairs common to all big London houses, still in his evening cloak. One distraught hostess approached him and asked, ‘Lord Redesdale, would you take the French Ambassadress into supper?’ (a sumptuous meal that appeared between dinner and breakfast for the greedy or for those who had not yet dined). ‘NO,’ he said furiously, ‘I’m waiting for Stubby.’ The poor woman had no idea who Stubby was but wisely retreated and left him alone.

  The sprinkling of older men who might take one of the patient mothers to supper were mostly unknown to Muv, so she often spent the late-night hours chatting to her neighbours. She watched the dancing and enjoyed seeing the wild gyrations of the Big Apple and the more staid Lambeth Walk. The bands – Joe Loss, Carroll Gibbons, Roy Fox, Nat Gonella, Ambrose and sometimes even the great Harry Roy – were indefatigable. Tunes and lyrics by Cole Porter, Noël Coward and Irving Berlin, which have never been bettered, went through our heads night after night. Robert Cecil and Hugh Fraser were the two most energetic dancers: coats off, pouring with sweat, stumping and thumping with no real steps, just enjoying themselves madly. Muv said, ‘If young men all go on like this there will be a war.’

  At a ball given by Lady Louis Mountbatten for Sally Norton I danced with Jack Kennedy. ‘Rather boring but nice,’ I wrote in my diary. We danced again the next evening: ‘I don’t think he was enjoying the party much,’ I recorded. Muv who, like everyone else, was intrigued by the Kennedys and full of admiration for Mrs Kennedy (who had easily outdone her i
n the childbearing line) observed the goings-on at one of these dances from her usual place with the other chaperones. She noticed Jack and, after watching him for a while, turned and said to a friend of mine (who later repeated it to me): ‘Mark my words, I would not be surprised if that young man becomes President of the United States.’ I do not know what made her say it, but she sometimes had that sort of premonition. I had none whatsoever and did not get to know Jack well until after he became President.

  Gina Wernher was six months older than me and came out in 1937. Because we were friends I was allowed to go to her dance, even though it was a year before my official coming out. Her mother, Lady Zia, was related to many of the royal houses of Europe and these were represented in strength at the party. Our own recently crowned King and Queen were also there which lent glamour to the assembly. I dined with the Wernhers at Someries House, terrified of all the unknown bejewelled ladies, and found myself next to a girl who was obviously put out by the absence of the man who should have been sitting between us. She was Ann de Trafford, later the wife of a great friend, Derek Parker Bowles. We got through dinner somehow. Luckily Tom was at the dance and, realizing how nervous I was, rescued me when I needed him.

  A change from dancing was the night when, among a crowd of other girls, I was presented at Court. This was the formal confirmation of having arrived – grown up at last. Before the days of television, the queue of hired cars lining up in the Mall to drop their passengers at Buckingham Palace was a free show for Londoners – like watching film stars arriving at a Leicester Square première. The cars could be stationary for some time, so the occupants were sitting ducks for any critical onlookers and their outspoken opinions. Gossip columnists sharpened their pencils, but for nothing worse than a description of the debutantes’ clothes. The girls all wore white, with three white ostrich feathers in their hair and no jewellery. Their mothers, or whoever was presenting them (it was rumoured that two peeresses were paid to bring out debutantes by the mothers of girls who would not otherwise have been eligible), wore diamonds and every brooch they could lay their hands on.