On November 2, after six separate legs over thirteen days, Sheila and Poppy finally stepped off the plane in Sydney, to be greeted by another phalanx of media, eager to hear about the experiences and plans of a woman they regarded as Australian royalty. Despite the disjointed journey it had been an uneventful “boring” trip, she said, hankering for the old days when a six-week ship trip was an adventure in itself.
Still, there had already been two important reunions. The plane had first touched down on Australian soil in the tropical heat of Darwin where her brother Roy had ventured out from the isolation of Roper River Station to greet her, and then again at Longreach in the central west of Queensland, where Jack Chisholm had been waiting to see his sister for the first time since 1923.
Her travelling suit of “tailored linen slacks of coolie blue, hair bound in a neat linen filet and stocking-less feet thrust into open canvas sandals”, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, was perfect until she reached Sydney. Here the driving rain and the puddled airport asphalt ruined her outfit and threatened to dissolve her papier-mâché travel cases (emblazoned with yellow letters spelling out Lady Milbanke’s name) and reduce her satchels and hat boxes to mush. Mollee Little, now her sister-in-law, was there as they made their way to the Australia Hotel, where her great adventure had begun one March afternoon twenty-three years before.
But she was here to see her mother and rushed to the hospital only to find that she had been discharged and was now home recovering. The crisis, the details of which she never revealed, was over and she could spend time with Ag planning for the future rather than fearing the worst.
Sydney had changed significantly since Sheila was last “home”. The Depression had struck hard, as it had in Europe and the United States, but the city was still growing and evolving at a rapid rate. The population had jumped by almost 40 per cent to more than 1.3 million; the Harbour Bridge, the first sod of which had been turned as she sailed back to London in 1923, was now connecting the city’s north and south; and the CBD had grown sufficiently to require its first set of traffic lights, located not far from where her great-great-grandfather, James Chisholm, had built his property empire. Forever handicapped by its forbidding size and isolation, the country was being drawn together by new technology: the Australian Broadcasting Commission had been created to build a national radio network and Qantas Empire Airways, which had brought Sheila and Poppy on the leg from Singapore to Darwin, was beginning to expand its international commercial flights.
Lady Milbanke’s reputation had preceded her. Within a day of her arrival The Sydney Morning Herald had created a headline out of the frock she wore as she lunched with Poppy and a male friend in the Wintergarden restaurant: “LADY MILBANKE WEARS INDIGO”, it screamed.
The same paper then published a feature written by Norman Hartnell, the favourite designer of the new king’s wife, Queen Elizabeth; he wrote about his fondness for social formality: “To me dinner is a formal affair, and I designed frocks that I believe were poetic. And they sold and after a while they began being identified with me. I made dresses for Lady Louis Mountbatten, Lady Weymouth, Lady Brougham, Lady Dufferin, Lady Plunket, Lady Melchett and Lady Milbanke. I dressed great beauties. It was glorious to create, to accomplish.”
Sheila got caught up in a debate about alcohol and nicotine, when the Victorian Health Minister John Harris suggested that young women were smoking and drinking to excess, and without displaying good manners. Lady Milbanke was among those asked for their opinion. She replied:
Australian women smoke less than Continental women. Most of the women one meets drink a little, but rarely to excess. I see no reason why they should not drink and smoke. Smoking in restaurants is so universal both here and abroad and is so harmless, really, that I think the protests of non-smokers will meet with little response. Some women smoke in public in an objectionable manner, but in that case the smoker rather than the habit is to be condemned.
The media was fascinated, not just by the clothes Sheila wore and the company she kept, but even the home where she had spent her childhood. When she announced her intention to go back to see the old homestead, a magazine wrote a feature about her birthplace, which had been turned into a bird sanctuary.
Sheila was torn, longing to see Wollogorang and yet dreading what she might find and the memories it might hold for her. Eventually, she borrowed a car and drove out with Poppy: “To my delight, the animal burial ground was intact but everything seemed much smaller than I had remembered. There were no black swans on the lagoon, but it wasn’t sunset. I couldn’t express my emotions at that moment, even to Poppy, but although she had never known Lionel . . . I believe she understood.”
On December 7 there was a dinner party in her honour on the HMAS Canberra and two nights later, on the eve of her departure, she was entertained at Romano’s nightclub in Kings Cross by Theo Marks, a prominent architect and former colleague of her father’s from their time together on the board of the Australian Jockey Club.
Sheila was leaving Sydney with some misgivings, although not enough for her to stay for Christmas. Instead, she promised to return with her husband and children, and cried when Ag gave her a silver boomerang as a parting gift. It was inscribed: “I go out to return”.
She was also concerned about her brother and Mollee: “I did not feel happy about Mollee and Roy,” she would write. “I wondered if their romantic marriage was really going so well. I felt apprehensive. I loved Roy and Mollee deeply.”
Sheila wasn’t going back to London, at least not straight away. Her plans had changed because she’d had enough of air travel and could not face another disjointed trip home. There was no hope of returning by Christmas so she and Poppy decided to revert to sea travel and head back to Europe via the United States. They boarded the liner Montrey on December 10, bound for Honolulu.
It was a fortuitous decision because the plane on which they had booked to fly one of the legs across Europe crashed and killed all on board: “Better late than never,” she wrote to Buffles to explain the delay.
They spent Christmas in Honolulu as guests of the American heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke before sailing for San Francisco on New Year’s Eve and finally back to New York, where friends like Laura Corrigan and Serge Obolensky were waiting.
Stuart Symington was also there—“he happened to be in California on business”—accompanying her to Salt Lake City and back to New York, all the while talking about marriage.
Sheila resisted the talk: “We were both already married and both had sons almost grown up. We had not the courage to break our lives and I am not sure that either of us really wanted to do so. I remember telling him that I could never leave Buffles. I said if I did it would kill him. Laughingly, he asked: ‘Are you slightly conceited or do I imagine it?’”
25
THE SHADOW OF WAR
Perhaps the most curious document in Sheila Chisholm’s personal papers, preserved among thousands held by the Scottish Archives on behalf of the Rosslyn estate, is an invitation to attend an event at the German embassy at 9 Carlton House Terrace on March 10, 1938, a few weeks after she finally returned from her Australian/US trip. The large white card, embossed with the Nazi swastika, said the event would be held between 5 and 8 p.m., hosted by the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife, Anna.
Sheila joined a crush of politicians and dignitaries, including the new US ambassador Joseph Kennedy, to farewell the arrogant and tactless diplomat who had been recalled to Berlin by Adolf Hitler to be his new foreign minister. He would subsequently be convicted of war crimes at the post-war Nuremberg Trials and be the first of the Nazi hierarchy to be hanged.
Von Ribbentrop had arrived in London 18 months before, just as the English monarchy was about to face the crisis of Edward VIII’s abdication. Hitler had given him the task of bolstering Anglo-German relations, by reminding the British of their shared mistrust of communism, and he sought to do this by targeting a select group of aristocr
ats, dubbed “The Two Hundred Families”, whom he naively believed were the “secret” powerbrokers of government behind the royal throne.
He eventually managed to convince a number of prominent people to visit Hitler, but most of English society turned its back on the notion of appeasement with the German Chancellor, even though it was becoming more obvious that war was inevitable. Lady Milbanke’s invitation indicated that she was considered a society leader of some importance, probably because of her friendship with the royals and in particular Edward, now the Duke of Windsor, and George, the Duke of Kent.
Sheila had also met the Ribbentrops on a number of occasions, including a shooting weekend on the country estate of newspaper proprietor Baron Kemsley: “I didn’t like him but thought, at first, his wife was rather nice and, in a way, pathetic. We talked vaguely of war. I said I dreaded it because we had two sons growing up. She replied: ‘What more could a woman want than to have several sons and have them die for their country?’ I didn’t like her at all after that.”
The involvement of Sheila and Buffles in the Barbara Hutton saga had not ended. In March 1938 Barbara had again called on the Milbankes for help; this time, however, it was about money and not interior decorating. The skills of Sir John as an investment banker and financial adviser would become critical as her marriage to Court Haugwitz-Reventlow collapsed.
In the intervening year since moving into the vast yet cold Winfield House, the controlling Court had managed to convince his wife to renounce her US citizenship, in order to avoid tax bills and future inheritance tax obligations that would suck most of the money into the government’s coffers.
Although reluctant, Barbara had agreed and travelled to the United States alone in December 1937. During a lunchtime lull at the federal courthouse in New York, she nervously read the short Oath of Renunciation before fleeing back to the ship, aptly named the Europa, which left port a few hours later and before the press caught wind of what would be seen as a scandal.
Barbara now regretted her actions and was already making inquiries about reversing the decision, which only fuelled Court’s anger. He exploded in fury at Buffles’ presence, accusing the banker of taking advantage of his wife.
The influence of the Milbankes on the heiress’s financial matters was also commented upon across the Atlantic where Barbara’s exploits and excesses continued to make front-page news in papers across the country, many of which shared the same wire copy. For example, The San Antonio Light reported: “Today, the Milbankes are reported to have more influence than anyone with the Woolworth’s heiress, which has brought about a difference of opinion. For there are those who feel Barbara is being well advised and those who think the ‘poor little rich girl’ is listening to the wrong people.”
The confrontation lit the fuse of a split that came to a head a few months later when Court, who had gone to Paris, was accused of threatening his wife. An arrest warrant was issued and the press reported the spectacular row of wealth and privilege gone wrong as an international stand-off developed. The count broke the deadlock when he returned to London and was arrested and charged with threatening his now-estranged wife. A photograph of Barbara leaving Winfield House, accompanied by a protective and grim-faced Sheila Milbanke, flashed around the world.
The count was bailed and a few days later more than 200 reporters crammed into the grimy Bow Street court—a place normally reserved for violent street crime committed by the dregs of society—to watch the high society theatre.
Barbara claimed, through her lawyer, William Mitchell, that her life was under threat from a pistol-carrying madman and the count’s lawyer, Norman Birkett, countered with allegations that Barbara was cheating and sleeping around with Prince Friedrich of Prussia, a student living in London and grandson of the former German Kaiser Wilhelm II.
“Sleeping around, Mr Birkett, is not an appropriate term in this instance,” Mitchell replied. “According to the Countess, her husband is a wife-beater, a sexual deviate and a sadomasochist. Under such conditions adultery is hardly a luxury; it is a necessity.”
Fearing she would have to take the stand and give evidence about her private life, Barbara withdrew her claim and the case was dropped. The marriage was over and so was the heiress’s flirtation with European society. Within a year, and as war approached, Barbara packed up and moved back to the United States as she found a pathway to patriotic redemption by making donations to the war effort.
It would be seven years before Barbara returned to London. In the meantime Winfield House was used by the Royal Air Force during the war for its balloon squad and later as a convalescent home for wounded Canadian soldiers. When she visited it on her return, she was shocked the find the house in disarray, with buckled floorboards and broken windows, the wallpaper peeled off in reams and chunks of plaster rubble covering the floor in Lance’s old nursery. The next day she offered the house to the US Government for US$1—an act which prompted a letter from Harry S Truman describing it as “a most generous and patriotic offer” and finally mended the rift that had been caused by her 1937 renunciation.
The mansion would eventually be renovated and turned into the home of the US ambassador. But Barbara declined to attend its opening in 1955, remarking to the media: “Winfield House represents a closed chapter in my life, and while I am grateful that the residence now has a new existence, there are too many memories in its walls—both good and bad—that I don’t wish to rekindle.”
Like most who had lived through the Great War, Sheila feared that the “war to end all wars” would, instead, be the precursor to something far worse. As 1938 dragged on her fears grew: “Hitler never stopped making speeches. Everyone was talking about war again. I couldn’t let myself think about it, with Tony and Peter and Buffie and all the people one loved. Luckily, I had the gift of dismissing any unpleasant thoughts that came into my head. I did so now. I had a special imaginary ‘thought-whisk’ which removed unpleasant thoughts.”
Despite the increasing talk of war, or more likely because of it, Sheila continued to be prominent in society circles. The Derby Ball was its usual success, this year with Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, representing the royal family. She attended the celebrations at the Café de Paris when it was announced that Henry’s brother George, the Duke of Kent, would become the next Australian Governor-General, photographed dancing with the prince and quoted in the accompanying, gushing article published back in Australia by the Women’s Weekly: “Lady Milbanke has been a great favourite of the Duke of Kent for many years and doubtless there is very little she hasn’t told him about the country to which he is going as representative of his brother, the King.”
She and Buffles had parlayed their experiences with Barbara Hutton into an interior design business based in Mayfair. It was an immediate success, winning a contract for the city home of the Earl of Ranfurly and, more spectacularly, designing and building one of the largest dining tables made in Britain. At 20 metres long, the table, inlaid with silver, would seat 74 people on chairs upholstered in silk and velvet. It had been made for an Indian Maharaja and would be the centrepiece for his banquet hall. Despite their early success, the war would lay waste to the venture.
And she continued to travel, much to the concern of Buffles in September when she and a friend went to Vichy, in France, to bathe in the famous healing spas: “In the midst of the cure, our husbands telephoned, saying we must return to England immediately as they thought war was about to be declared. We were annoyed because we wanted to finish the cure. Couldn’t we stay a few more days? They were adamant, and home we came.”
America beckoned once more in January 1939. The cold winter seemed to have dulled war fears, at least until spring, so she decided to take Tony to New York. It would be her third trip in as many years: “I adored New York, with its air like champagne” and Palm Beach “where the sunshine seemed like a miracle if one has lived long in England”.
Stuart Symington tried once more to woo her away from Buffles
. She listened: “We had many long talks and we both decided there was nothing we could do about the future. I repeated that Buffles could not live without me! He again teased me and told me I was conceited.”
After three months in the US, Sheila left Tony, who had taken a summer job as a runner at a Wall Street brokerage firm and, reluctantly, headed back to London: “I always disliked leaving New York but also enjoyed the thought of getting home. I seemed to be torn continually between two worlds, the old and the new.”
Sheila landed at Southampton on Good Friday, April 7, to be greeted by a white-faced Buffles. He looked ill as they drove to a friend’s house to spend Easter and she finally asked if there was anything wrong: “He told me he was involved with another woman,” she would reflect. “I offered Buffie a divorce but he said he didn’t want one. He also said ‘I won’t see her again if that makes you unhappy.’ This did make me unhappy but, of course, I never admitted it.”
It seemed astonishing that Buffles did not want a divorce but was, in effect, asking his wife to sanction a continuing affair with another woman. Then again, she had been contemplating an affair of her own with Stuart Symington. Sheila was tempted to cable Stuart and tell him that the situation had changed, but she didn’t: “I’m glad I resisted the temptation,” she would write.
Instead, she settled into the summer season, enjoying the seemingly endless round of events—the “eve of Waterloo” summer as it was dubbed, as the inevitable war against Hitler got closer and closer.
Buffles was “on the Continent” in mid-August 1939 when Sheila flew to Italy to join Barbara Hutton on the island of Capri where she had rented a villa with a group of friends. A week earlier Sheila had attended the funeral of her former father-in-law, the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, who had died suddenly after returning from a holiday exploring the Amazon River at the age of seventy. The death meant that her elder son, Tony, who was now back from New York and studying at the British Army officers’ school, the Royal Military College at Camberley, automatically assumed the hereditary title.
Sheila Page 26