In the early hours of the morning Mrs Sweeney, wife of the stable foreman, who was sleeping, with her two-year-old son, in a bungalow next door to the stables, was woken by the noise and the glare. As she recounted a few days later to a reporter from The Sydney Morning Herald:
I saw flames leap through my bedroom window and the curtains catch alight. I screamed “Fire!” to my husband, who was sleeping in another room, and took my son out to the back yard. The fire had got a hold on the side of the house. The window panes cracked with the heat, and some of the furniture in my bedroom and the living room was charred. My husband dashed buckets of water onto the flames, and threw burning cushions and other articles out of the windows. The wind was blowing the fire from the stables straight on to our house at first, but afterwards, fortunately for us, its direction changed. The heat in the house was terrible.
The timber sale ring, plus the adjoining offices and dining room, were a sheet of flames when the first fire truck pulled up thirty minutes later; the night sky was lit up for miles around. A group of apprentice jockeys and stable hands in another part of the complex were woken by the desperate whinnying of the fear-maddened horses in the stables alongside them. Fifteen-year-old Cyril Heath roused his colleagues and the staff, and then watched as stable manager Bob May and two firemen dashed along the narrow passage between the yearling stables and the sale ring. Half choked by smoke and scorched by the intense heat from the flames alongside and above them, they wrenched open the stable doors and began dragging the young horses out into the open.
One horse was dragged out of its burning stall into the passageway, only to break away and run madly back into the burning sale ring. Its body was found the next day. Two other yearlings were roasted to death in their stalls, the men unable to reach them as they and a growing band of staff and volunteers pulled the other horses to safety. Among them was Chatham, who would go on to win the Doncaster Handicap a week later.
Two city fire brigades joined their colleagues from Randwick. A change in the wind’s direction saved other businesses and horses that flanked the Chisholm yards, but even so it took more than three hours for the three brigades to bring the blaze under control. By then it was too late to save Roy’s establishment: dawn revealed the blackened, charred remains of the sale ring and stables. The remains of his dead horses were a horrific sight. Six months later the land and its still-blackened buildings were sold at auction, raising barely £2500. A family dynasty lay in ruins.
Life had changed suddenly and irrevocably for the Chisholms, and Roy’s young family in particular. They were far from destitute but Roy had to find work, a psychological struggle for a man now aged in his mid-forties. Or perhaps it provided an excuse to get back to the land, which he now must have wished he’d never left. It came as no surprise when he went bush “looking for country” with a cousin as the Randwick land was being sold.
At first Roy looked for pastoral land in central Queensland, near where Jack had settled after the war, before travelling across to the Northern Territory where he found a promising station at Roper River, 450 kilometres south of Darwin.
Roy returned to Sydney and approached another pastoralist, named Tom Holt, who had several properties on the Liverpool Plains, to see if he was interested in buying the Roper River lease in a 50/50 partnership. Roy would run the place as part of the bargain, and so Holt agreed. Roy wanted Mollee and the boys to go with him but she was concerned about schooling in the remote central desert and decided to remain in Sydney until Tony and Bruce had finished their education. They would go to a preparatory school in Edgecliff and then enrol at Scots College in Bellevue Hill.
For Roy, outback station life could not have been more different from his previous existence in Sydney—it was located in harsh and isolated terrain, the nearest humanity being a tiny settlement called Mataranka. But Roy’s entrepreneurial spirit had not dulled despite his misfortune and within a year, having travelled to Singapore to establish contacts, he was negotiating live cattle shipments through the port of Darwin to Asia. He later tried to create an abattoir industry.
The Chisholm Arms, as the Roper River station was dubbed by a Royal Flying Doctor pilot, quickly became a haven of domesticity in the wilderness, with flower-laden gardens, kerosene refrigerators and two wireless telephones. For Roy, it had everything but his wife.
It had been a tumultuous time for Mollee, losing not only the business but her parents, who had died within two months of one another later in 1934. She moved into a big apartment in Elizabeth Bay and took a job at the David Jones department store in the city, where she found a niche as floor manager of the dress department, a position that made the best use of her society contacts. She was later poached by businessman Sam McMahon (whose brother William would become Australian Prime Minister) to run his society dress shop.
While Mollee’s husband made headlines in the north of Australia as a man attempting single-handedly to rejuvenate the cattle industry, she was back in the social pages as a fashion leader. The story of her friendship with the Prince of Wales got a re-run later that year when Edward’s younger brother Prince George, the Duke of Kent, toured Australia. It happened again in 1936, when “David” became King Edward VIII and The Australian Women’s Weekly ran a feature on the only child in Australia with a royal godparent. Tony Chisholm was almost thirteen years old when the story appeared, photographed sitting in the backyard of their home, his arm protectively around nine-year-old Bruce.
The accompanying story repeated the details of the prince’s visit: his meeting Mollee at the suggestion of Sheila, and their subsequent informal and private meetings at Brooksby. The most compelling detail, however, was not in the words but in the accompanying pictures: Tony Chisholm was the spitting image of his royal godfather. He had blond hair, whereas his mother, father and brother were dark, and his head had a gentle tilt with a lop-sided, self-effacing smile. Could he actually be the bastard child of the new King of England? The question was not so much stated as implied. It was clearly not the case, given that Tony Chisholm had been born three years after the prince had left Sydney, but the story would fester for years.
Wallis Simpson was a divisive presence in London society from the moment in 1934 when she won the undivided attention of the Prince of Wales. Until then, Edward had maintained a detached relationship with Freda Dudley Ward which had also allowed a string of other brief affairs. His private secretary Alan Lascelles would later describe the prince as being “continuously in the throes of one shattering and absorbing love affair after another (not to mention a number of street-corner affairs)”.
In 1930 Edward accepted Sheila’s invitation to the Derby Ball but only if Freda also attended—“that’s a condition”, he wrote—and as late as 1931 he was declaring his love for Freda in letters. But it overlapped an affair with Lady Thelma Furness, an American-born actress and young, bored wife of shipping magnate Viscount Marmaduke Furness, whom he had met in 1929 while handing out ribbons at an agricultural show in Leicester. A few weeks later she attended an ice carnival and dance with the prince and Sheila Milbanke. The affair would last until 1934 when, in January, Lady Furness had to travel to New York to visit her sick sister, Gloria Vanderbilt.
In her memoir, Lady Furness described how she asked her close friend, another American, Wallis Simpson, to “look after him while I’m away. See that he doesn’t get into any mischief.” Lady Furness had already introduced Edward to Wallis (and her husband Ernest) several years before and had been unaware that her friend had already been flirting with the prince. Thelma’s trust was misplaced and by the time she returned a few weeks later, her disloyal friend and secret rival had swooped.
On reflection, the basis of Edward’s attraction to the spare American divorcee was obvious. Wallis was not unlike Freda Dudley Ward in appearance—slim and severe—and, more importantly, was almost maternal in her command over him. He had set down his emotional needs quite plainly in an early letter he wrote to Freda in 1918, in which he
said in part: “I think I’m the kind of man who needs a certain amount of cruelty without which he gets abominably spoiled and soft!! I feel that is what the matter is with me.”
Wallis Simpson took the same, scolding approach with Edward as Freda had done on occasion. This was something many saw as domineering, but it had been a frequent ingredient in the prince’s earlier attraction to older women, unlike the much younger and demure Lady Furness.
It was Wallis’s overt influence over Edward that polarised those in society who knew of the affair in the three years before it became public and ended in his abdication and exile. And yet most of those in the know were politic enough to keep their feelings hidden from Edward. Chips Channon was one who played both sides, commenting in his diaries after hosting a 1935 luncheon “to do a politesse” to Mrs Simpson: “She is a jolly, plain, intelligent, quiet, unpretentious and unprepossessing little woman, but as I wrote to Paul of Yugoslavia today, she has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she almost expected to be curtsied to . . . She has complete power over the Prince of Wales.”
Lady Nancy Astor, a fellow American socialite, was less charitable. In a series of entries in her diary, Britain’s first woman MP, who was famed for her verbal clashes with Winston Churchill, wrote:
June 5, 1934
Dining at Chips & Honor’s was fun—everyone in tiaras and on to the Derby Ball charity—It is Sheila Milbanke’s last “go” as chairwoman—she had been at it for seven years—The Prince of Wales let her down by not attending . . . Guess he was busy with his new “bit” Mrs Simpson—it’s all so funny as she was Thelma’s best girl friend, and now she steals the Prince away from Thelma—Mrs S is a very déclassé American married to a 4th rate Englishman—the Prince is sinking lower and lower in his taste in women.
June 8
At Portia’s for weekend at Holwood—Prince George, Marina, Sheila Milbanke and Seymour Berry make up our party. Prince George seems very restless—she is most attractive and sweet (with child). They simply loathe the Prince of Wales’ attitude, the world in general and his “pushing” of Mrs. Simpson about. It was a pleasant weekend and I enjoyed the arguments. Wales refused point blank to go to the Court Balls unless Mrs. Simpson was given an invitation. That did make London’s older crowd indignant. Wales made a statement several years ago that he hated and was bored by the English nobility—& he certainly shows it—by cutting most of his old friends and “hanging out” with whatever friends happen to be his mistress’s at the time.
Lady Astor also predicted that Mrs Simpson would not last long as Edward’s mistress and lamented the attitudes of her social contemporaries: “Everyone seems to have a new disease ‘Simpsonitis’ & ‘sucking up’ to dear Wally is the thing to do. Emerald Cunard heads the list as the biggest horse’s ass, then Duff Cooper—it really strikes me as being ludicrous, all this toadying it is all so temporary.”
But by mid-1936, with Edward settling into Buckingham Palace as the new king, she realised that “temporary” had been the wrong word. Although still a secret publicly, there was a growing sense among the royal court that Edward might try to marry the American divorcee, as Lady Astor conceded:
If I ever made a mistake in my life, I did when I said that “Queenie” Simpson would be “out” & a new one in—I’m afraid when a man reaches 42 (as our monarch is) & if he loves a plain woman his own age—it is a thing that will last—(also for the country). Mrs Simpson is lucky & benefits where all the others have lost—She has over 100,000 pounds worth of jewels from him! To say nothing of clothes & furs & things she never had before.
Sheila Milbanke had been ambivalent about Wallis until the eve of the 1934 Derby Ball, an event which she regarded as a personal achievement and which had raised tens of thousands of pounds for the hospital over the years, the equivalent of several million dollars in modern terms. She would joke about it being like delivering a baby because it took nine months to arrange from planning and sending out requests, to organising the ticketing, guests and entertainment.
The appearance of the Prince of Wales was a critical element of its success each year, and he had again promised to attend so his presence was advertised as sales boomed. A few days before the event a friend issued Sheila a warning: “If you want the prince this year then you’d better write and ask Mrs Simpson.”
“I was surprised because he had never failed me yet, and come to the ball every year since the Lindbergh occasion,” she recalled thinking before replying, testily:
“Why should I write to Mrs Simpson whom I have never met?”
Her friend sighed: “Well, I have warned you.”
The morning before the event she rang the prince and asked him about rumours that he would not be attending: “He assured me the rumour was unfounded.” But at a pre-ball dinner that night she sat next to Prince George, who passed her a note under the table. She read, discreetly. “It was from the Prince of Wales and was to this effect: Cannot be at the ball tonight as I am going to the country. Enclose cheque for £100, which I am sure will be more useful to the hospital than my company.
“I was disappointed to say the least of it. Hundreds of tickets had been sold, mostly because people adored the Prince of Wales and knew he would be there. It was fooling the public. I was not very happy. What should I do?
“It was too late to ask anyone’s advice so I decided to make an announcement on arrival. I explained that the Prince of Wales had been unavoidably detained, which was a great disappointment to us all, but that I had a pleasant surprise—his cheque for £100, which I waved in the air. Would anyone care to follow suit? Who else would give the hospital £100? I soon had many cheques.”
Although she had rescued the situation from an embarrassing snub, the incident highlighted the change in the relationship between Edward and Sheila, the prince so smitten by Wallis Simpson that he was prepared to end, or at least distance himself from friendships that had once been the centre of his world. It was little wonder that Mrs Simpson was despised by much of London society, and Sheila would be one of the few who, in later years, would forgive.
22
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL
Sheila Milbanke and Barbara Hutton holidayed together on the French Riviera in August of 1935, as persistent rain further north threatened to ruin the European summer and forced a larger-than-usual flock of holidaymakers south, filling hotels and casinos and crowding beaches from Cannes to Monte Carlo. They met again a month later, this time in Versailles, where they both attended a lavish dinner of oysters and lemon sole at the fabulous Villa Trianon where the hostess Lady Elsie Mendl, better known as the American actress and heiress Elsie de Wolfe, often played gin rummy and drank cocktails in a lake-size bath surrounded by leopard-skin-upholstered banquettes.
Sheila and Barbara had been introduced in June, when the young American attended the Derby Ball and promptly made a scene by accusing others of being stingy during the charity auction. Sheila quickly forgave her this faux pas and perhaps even enjoyed her audacious behaviour. After all, both women were colonial interlopers and uninhibited by an establishment European society that accepted few from outside their comfort zone.
Barbara Hutton, or rather Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow as she had become earlier in the year by marrying a Danish aristocrat, was one of the world’s wealthiest women, having inherited the US$42 million supermarket five-and-ten-cent Woolworth fortune on her twenty-first birthday in 1933. This wealth had so far not brought happiness to a life already marred by the suicide of her mother when she was aged just five. She’d been dubbed the “Poor Little Rich Girl” by the US media; they were disdainful of the way in which her wealth was being flaunted at the height of the Depression, including her $60,000 twenty-first birthday party when the average worker earned $1500 a year, a car cost $600 and a house little more than $3000.
Barbara was now twenty-three years old and pregnant to her second husband, the controlling and ultimately abusive Count Court von Haugwitz-Reventlow. The m
orning after the Mendl dinner party, she visited the fashion queen Coco Chanel, whose salon at 31 Rue Cambon was across the road from the Ritz Hotel in the heart of Paris, where she was fitted for maternity wear.
By contrast, Sheila was about to turn forty, with two teenage sons and an established second marriage. Both women were beautiful, vivacious and opinionated, but it was Barbara’s vulnerability that helped them click. Sheila recognised the psychological frailty of the young heiress and the countess sensed the strength and independence of a woman who had emerged successfully from an abusive relationship. A friendship was cemented and it would prove to be among the strangest in Sheila’s life.
The media was infatuated by the countess’s life. She had been forced to flee her native country the year before, because of the almost daily running commentary on the cost of her lifestyle amid the continuing economic hardship there, but there would be no respite for her in Europe, where journalists leaned over fences to photograph her playing tennis and followed her to daytime hairdressing appointments or shopping sprees on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré before she went off to lunch at Maxim’s. Likewise at night, she would be snapped as she arrived at the opera or the ballet, before dining and dancing at Le Pré Catelan.
By September, Barbara’s physicians had become concerned about her health, which suffered from the combination of her hectic social calendar and the stress of all the media attention; they suggested she seek sanctuary elsewhere. She then turned to her new friend, who suggested London as a place where she could feel safe and secluded; Sheila arranged for the count and countess to move into a house in Hyde Park Gardens owned by a friend of hers, Mrs Wakefield-Saunders, until the baby was born..
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