Sheila

by Robert Wainwright

  The signs had been there some time. The previous year he had travelled, alone, to India and Iceland, attracting some publicity back in London by bringing back a salmon he’d caught and smoked before having it cooked in a West End restaurant. Sheila went to Cannes to spend time with Laura Corrigan, after which she partied at the Cowes Regatta with Poppy Thursby and then took the train to Scotland in September to spend time with her sons at the Rosslyn estate.

  She had agreed to the New York trip with some reluctance, “although it seemed an opportunity to get away for a complete change”—a clear reference to the tension between her and Buffles. And now there was another handsome American giving her the rush.

  Symington persisted, even when she went on a cruise through the West Indies aboard the Astor yacht Nourmahal, sending radiograms each day and turning up at Palm Beach when they landed a few weeks later: “We all went back to New York and he saw me off when I sailed for England a few weeks later. He gave me his book of [Robert] Browning’s poems, which he’d had at school. Marked in red ink was:

  “Love among the Ruins”

  With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

  Love is best.

  Sheila travelled back to England confused and hoping to forget about Stuart Symington but the reunion with Buffles back in London didn’t help matters. During her absence Tony had almost bled to death from an accident at Oxford, Peter had been in hospital for a week after being knocked out in the boxing ring and the house had been damaged in a storm: “I decided I could never go away and leave them again,” she wrote, a vow she did not keep.

  Despite her misgivings about their marriage they had a happy summer, frequently travelling to the country to stay with friends including the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle where Sheila delighted in watching Buffles and the duke fishing one evening after dinner still in tail-coats and white ties, and ignored what she would describe as “the ever-increasing rhythm of marching feet and the menace of war machines”.

  At a time when US society was exuberantly exploring the possibility of new social mountains to climb, London was moving in the opposite direction. The coronation in May 1937 of a second monarch in as many years would spark an array of old-fashioned grand social events on a scale unseen since the beginning of the century, and unlikely to be witnessed again. The Kings and Queens of the Commonwealth and Europe flocked to London for the celebration, and the finery of royalty—originally made obsolete by war, and then by the social freedom of the twenties and the frugality of the Depression—had once again returned to fashion.

  Vogue magazine reported breathlessly on the seeming revival of a long-gone age:

  No-one dreams of going to less than three places a night. We entertain and are entertained royally, officially and privately. The parties in private houses during this Coronation season are unique in our time, gay and romantic, with the fine old plate, the family livery and the supper cooked in the house. We watched the duchesses moving with their tiaras and trains up the green onyx staircase to dance again the old Strauss waltzes, under floodlit ceilings and a Congress-of-Vienna gaiety.

  The French are giving the most overpowering parties with powdered footmen dressed as in Thackeray’s time . . . the Poles are concentrating on smaller, more numerous and choice dinner parties . . . the Spaniards are keeping the flag flying at Belgrave Square and giving large luncheons . . . the Japanese, the Scandinavians, the Brazilians, the Argentinians and the Greeks and countless others are all three-party deep. At least two charity balls are scheduled for each night until late July. There are hardy annuals like Lady Milbanke’s very smart Derby Ball where there is always a strong contingent of well-known Americans . . .

  In Edward’s place came a younger king, who accepted not only his brother’s crown but his coronation ceremony that had been delayed for a year—a day neither really wanted. But reluctance was all that they had in common. Where Edward was single and gregarious, Albert was a husband and father of two young daughters; a hesitant and shy man, he signalled his more conservative approach by adopting his father’s royal name—George—rather than his own. He then judged his brother to have relinquished all rights to a royal title and refused to acknowledge his future wife, Wallis Simpson.

  This new turn of events put Sheila Milbanke, daughter of a New South Wales grazier, in a unique position with two Kings of England. She knew both brothers intimately, having had an affair with one of them and having forged an enduring friendship with the other. She would remain a fierce supporter of Edward’s rights once he became the Duke of Windsor, and this would later affect her relationship with the new king.

  But all that was yet to come. After staying on in the United States in the wake of Elsa Maxwell’s party, she renewed old acquaintances and then spent a month cruising the Caribbean aboard Vincent Astor’s luxury yacht with a select group from the party, including Laura Corrigan. She finally arrived back in London in March, just as the social events began to swirl in the lead-up to the May 12 coronation.

  In 1923 she’d missed Bertie’s wedding, arriving a week too late from her failed attempt to save her first marriage in Australia; but now she was on the official coronation guest list, as another new round of Pond’s advertisements proudly declared. She also had to finish arrangements for the Derby Ball, which would be held just a fortnight after the coronation.

  But there would be more disappointment as Sheila was once again squeezed out of a front-row seat for a royal event. She did not get inside Westminster Abbey, blaming the omission on her husband’s middle–ranking title although probably feeling it was due more to the new queen’s understandable misgivings about inviting the king’s former mistress.

  Instead, she and Poppy sat outside Buckingham Palace waiting for the procession. “There was a long wait between processions so we decided to go and have a drink at the Ritz bar,” she wrote. “We were still sitting there at the exact moment the new King and Queen were crowned.”

  London’s “magic carpet ride” continued after the coronation, with Loughie’s aunt Millicent hosting the main reception for the newly crowned King and Queen, as Vogue reported:

  One of the great balls was the Duchess of Sutherland’s at Hampden House for the new King and Queen, preceded by a dinner at Londonderry House where the great crowd gathered in Green Street, held back by bobbies. Entertaining monarchs at a private house introduces certain challenges, as the King and Queen were conducted by their hosts to special seats in the ballroom, all the women encountered on their way curtseying. A very pretty scene like a wheat-field in a wind as down they bend. With 40 tables of 12 in two dining rooms—the King sat in one and the Queen in another—each table had its own complete set of gold plate and red roses, the royal servants in blue livery and the enormous chandeliers completed the fairytale scene. The colourful scene looked exactly like a Sert fresco: orientally-jewelled Indian princes, Sultanas in saris and sables, foreign rulers and royalties, the black Prince of Ashanti, visitors in native dress or uniforms . . .

  In spite of her reservations about Wallis Simpson, Sheila would almost certainly have been invited to the controversial wedding in France between Edward and Wallis on June 3, just three weeks after George VI’s coronation, although, like all but a handful of the proposed guest list, she did not attend. After all, it clashed with her Derby Ball, this year held at Grosvenor House, at which Prince Henry (the Duke of Gloucester and later Governor-General of Australia) deputised for his older brother Edward and so maintained the event’s royal patronage.

  There were other social expectations in the days that followed the ball. She returned to Grosvenor House to attend a reception for the Maharaja of Kashmir and was then noticed at Ascot for the Derby on the same day as the Windsor wedding: “Lady Milbanke’s navy blue dress and coat were worn with a black straw hat in a coolie style tied under the chin with a narrow ribbon,” The Times reported.

  But the snub—if that’s what it was—was overlooked by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who invi
ted Sheila and Buffles to stay as guests during their two-month honeymoon, mostly spent at Wasserleonburg, a 14th-century castle in southern Austria, owned by a cousin of Lord Dudley’s—“a pleasant and peaceful summer . . . of mountain-climbing, fishing, golf, tennis, and sun-bathing by the swimming pool,” as the duke later reported to a friend.

  By mid-September Sheila had returned to London, unaware that Edward had controversially accepted an invitation to go to Germany and meet with Adolf Hitler, in an attempt to negotiate an appeasement deal that would avoid the coming war.

  Sheila would recall her apprehension: “We were most of us so interested in the events at home that we didn’t hear, or perhaps didn’t want to hear, the ever-increasing menace of the war machines that were being built up so blatantly abroad.”

  But her thoughts soon turned to a threat of a different kind. Ag was ill and had been taken to a private Sydney hospital. She was not in immediate danger and had been unwell for some time; the previous year she’d cancelled “indefinitely” what had become a semi-regular trip to London to spend time with her daughter and grandsons.

  The message to Sheila was clear. Memories of Harry Chisholm’s death a decade before, when his wife and daughter were on the other side of the world, came flooding back. Her mother was now seventy-two years old, widowed and alone, with her two sons on remote cattle stations in the far-flung north of the continent and her daughter on the other side of the world. Sheila’s life was now in London, but it was time to make a trip home.

  24

  A JOURNEY HOME

  The journalist waited patiently for her subject, Lady Sheila Milbanke, who was quietening her Yorkshire terrier Sara Wara, the “morsel of silvery grey hair” who often became over-excited by visitors and guarded her mistress jealously. Like all good journalists, she used the extra time to take in her surroundings: the carefully constructed decor and style of its creator. It was October 1937 and the street trees outside were shedding in layers of yellow, orange and red. The effect was as beautiful in its own way as the spring blaze or the summer greens. Changing, always changing:

  The mercurial temperament of this outstanding Australian is best mirrored in the atmosphere of her home. The Milbankes formerly had a country home in Ireland, but have now given it up. No. 82 Hamilton Terrace [St Johns Wood] is a solid mansion standing back from the road, unlike so many London houses. Through a little green door you walk to the front door, through a narrow glassed-in tunnel, roofed picturesquely with the spreading branches of a huge, spreading vine laden with fruit and green leaves. As you enter, the subtle scent of potpourri drifts out from the sitting-room with its family portraits on the walls, for bowls of it are placed at intervals to give off sweet perfume, constantly renewed. There is a collection of rose quartz, lovely things from China collected piece by piece. The dining room, looking out over serene green lawns and trees shedding autumn leaves, is remarkable for its huge, plate-glass window, occupying almost an entire wall, which gives an almost theatrical effect to the room. Lady Milbanke is evidently fond of mirror glass, for I noted several small articles of furniture constructed in this material. Flexible, joined mats of mirror glass for the dining table were also both practical and novel.

  Nell Murray had been a keen observer of London society as a journalist for almost a decade, reporting for Australian newspapers from the late 1920s. Most of her chat-style columns focussed on fashion and the arts, but she occasionally strayed into social observations and commentary, particularly when her hackles were raised by what she regarded as “vulgar attacks” on Australians from a steadfastly pretentious and superior English view of the world. She frequently wrote about the changing way in which women were perceived and in a recent article she had marvelled at the “power of fascination” held by women over the age of forty in London society: “The famous beauty, Lady Diana Cooper, still ethereally lovely at the age of 45 or so, is another member of this exclusive coterie which also includes Lady Cunard, Mrs Evelyn Fitzgerald, Lady Adrian Baillie, Lady Louis Mountbatten and Lady Milbanke (formerly Lady Loughborough, an Australian.)”

  And now she was interviewing the said Lady Milbanke, this time for a group of papers including The Mercury which reckoned its readers would lap up the inside detail of a lady’s home. The occasion was the socialite’s imminent return to Australia—her first trip home in fourteen years—but it was also a rare chance to peek inside the world of one of the most prominent members of the Mayfair smart set, an Australian who had somehow bypassed the prejudice and slipped almost seamlessly into society. Her origins were well known and at times she was celebrated for her individuality.

  The journalist informed her readers that Lady Milbanke was a close friend of the royal family—the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Duke and Duchess of Kent in particular. She was a woman with perfect manners and impeccable taste but also someone who often dared to challenge society’s norms—she was among the first to go hatless or to change into a bathing costume to go swimming during a dinner party.

  The previous year—“just for a bet”—Lady Milbanke and her friend, Mrs Peter Thursby (the former Poppy Baring) had taken over the management of the Soho nightclub Ciro’s, where the White Lady cocktail had been famously created, by mixing gin, Cointreau and lemon juice. They had wanted to prove they could turn a struggling venue into a thriving business. Just as with Chez Victor the decade before, Sheila had called in her society friends and made a few improvements to the club. “Someone bet us we couldn’t make a success of it. We took on the bet—I think it was £100. We engaged the cabarets, bullied the waiters and the band and changed the decorations. It was enjoyable and we quickly spent the money we made in entertaining there.” A few months later, having won their bet, Sheila and Poppy withdrew and looked for another challenge.

  The two of them were among a group of women who instigated “pay parties”, charity fundraisers in private homes, without the costs of the grander balls that had become a permanent fixture on the social calendar. The idea had caught on and was now sweeping the city.

  Poppy was accompanying Lady Milbanke on the trip to Australia. The pair looked and acted like sisters, “both petite and dark and vivacious, pioneers of many a fashion that has eventually encircled the world”, but there was also a quiet, domestic side to Lady Milbanke’s character. She was flying home to see her ill mother but she wanted to be back for Christmas to be with her husband and “two tall sons”—Tony, the elder, was studying at Oxford University and Peter, the younger, was at Cranwell College training to be a Royal Air Force pilot.

  “Had it not been for the air service I could not possibly have spared the time to make it,” Lady Milbanke said, adding that she was travelling light with “only one tailored suit, two day dresses, two evening dresses and a fur coat” alongside her knitting and a roll of tapestry for her embroidery.

  But there was one last social event for Sheila to attend before she left for Australia. Freda Dudley Ward, who had finally divorced her husband in 1931, was about to wed a former Cuban-Castilian racing car driver named Pedro Jose Isidro Manuel Ricardo Mones, who carried the title Marques de Casa Maury. Peter de Casa Maury, as he would become known, had previously been married to socialite Paula Gellibrand, one of Cecil Beaton’s favourite photographic models who had given Sheila early advice about her dress sense. The marques’s financial affairs were rather up and down: a Bugatti-driving Grand Prix ace, he had owned the first Bermuda-rigged schooner in Europe before losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash and then remaking it by opening the Curzon cinema chain, London’s first art-house theatres, during the 1930s.

  Like Sheila’s marriage to John Milbanke, the ceremony on October 25 caused traffic chaos in Central London as people stopped and even climbed on parked cars to get a glimpse of a society wedding. Sir John himself gave the bride away and the newlyweds would later move into a house a few doors down from the Milbankes’ in Hamilton Terrace.

  It had been a hectic time. The day before the wedding, the Earl of Dudl
ey had hosted a send-off party at the Savoy for Sheila and Poppy, as well as for the Duchess of Westminster, who was leaving for the United States. Freda was among the guests, as were the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the Mountbattens and the Duchess of Marlborough.

  They spent the night at Southampton and boarded a seaplane for the first leg of their marathon journey. It must have been a hair-raising experience for Sheila, now aged 42, who was used to the slow comforts of first-class sea travel and naturally nervous of the new and seemingly daring mode of transport. Her fears were exacerbated when they were delayed by weather and then forced to take off in thick fog: “It was agony,” she wrote later of the experience.

  They changed flights in Alexandria, into a four-engine biplane called a Hannibal: “It looked as if it were tied up with string,” she recalled with horror. “It only did 40 mile per hour and the cars on the road beneath looked as if they went much faster. All along the route were strewn wrecks of crashed planes, which wasn’t encouraging although the sunsets and sunrises were magnificent.”

  At Karachi, they changed planes again. After a detour over the Taj Mahal—“which looked like a pepper pot”—they headed for Singapore “over bright green jungles where the thick trees looked like pin cushions. One didn’t like to think what one’s fate would be if the plane came down there.”

  At Singapore they boarded a de Havilland “Diana” and flew across the Timor Sea at just 120 metres above the water: “I was too bored to be frightened anymore. We looked down into the blue water and saw a school of enormous sharks swimming in formation.”