“I can see why Sheila and Dimitri fell in together,” Penny told me. “They were both irreverent and had a sense of humour. They enjoyed each other’s company and must have had a gas. Sheila was a great organiser and my grandfather, whom I call Apapa, was a man who needed to be organised. He was probably not the easiest person to live with. He was very set in his ways, a bit stubborn and someone who either had lots of money or no money at all. He had great schemes, most of which came to nothing, and great connections. It was an all-or-nothing existence.
“Sheila was always dressed immaculately, usually in pearls and earrings; quite discreet and nothing flashy. Understated. She was a great socialite and they had a huge number of friends. They both loved going out to dinner or to Apapa’s club, usually in their car which had tiny gold crowns above the door handles inscribed with a “D”, like a cipher.”
When they weren’t travelling, they would entertain old friends, many of them ageing society hostesses, including Diana Cooper, widowed after the death of Duff in 1954 and dismissive of the title Viscountess of Norwich, which she announced in The Times she wouldn’t answer to, because it “sounded like porridge”.
“The house always smelled like French cigarettes. They were just over the top—all these glamorous people behaving not like old women but like girls, as if time had stood still and they were still in the 1920s and ’30s. Diana was notorious for driving her Mini Cooper and parking it anywhere she damn well pleased. I don’t think she ever got a ticket. She would arrive, usually wearing a big hat and long gloves, which would never come off during lunch. Apparently ladies who lunched always kept their gloves on.”
By 1968, however, Sheila was in poor health. She would often remain in her room on the third floor and Dimitri would explain this away by saying she was indisposed.
“She was always immaculate, but there was a frailty about her. She loved my sister Marina, who was very pretty. I was more of a tomboy. They would sit at Sheila’s dressing table and paint each other’s faces, trying nail polish and scents and make-up or trying on her jewellery. Maybe she missed not having a daughter.”
But there were also times when Sheila would descend the stairs and delight in taking the sisters to St James’s Park to feed the ducks. Sometimes they would visit the Brompton Oratory, a 19th-century Catholic church in Kensington: “I have this strong memory of her lighting candles in the cathedral, and that each one represented a person. She lit a lot of candles.”
Sheila Chisholm was an Australian woman who lived through one of the most interesting, if turbulent, periods of the 20th century. The story of her life, and loves, suggests she embraced—and embodied—a particular kind of ‘Australianness’ and a spirit that defied and perhaps helped loosen the strictures and mores of Anglo-English relationships of the time.
SELECTED READING
Amory, M. (ed.), The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980
Bradford, S., Clerk, H., Fryer, J. and Gibson, R., The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, Austin. TX: University of Texas Press, 1996
Chisholm, A. and Davie, M., Beaverbrook: A Life, London: Hutchinson, 1992
Cooper, A. (ed.), Mr. Wu and Mrs. Stitch: The letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991
— A Durable Fire: The letters of Duff and Diana Cooper 1913–1950, London: Collins, 1983
Cooper, D., The rainbow comes and goes the lights of common day trumpets from the steep, London: Hart-Davis, 1959
— Old Men Forget: The autobiography of Duff Cooper, London: Readers Union Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955
Davy, M. (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, London: Little, Brown, 1976
Day, B. (ed.), The Letters of Nöel Coward, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
Driberg, T., Ruling Passions, London: Jonathan Cape, 1977 Earl of Rosslyn, My Gamble With Life, London: Cassell, 1928 Ellenberger, R., The Valentino Mystique: The death and the afterlife of the silent film idol, Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland & Company, 2005
Giles, S., Fred Astaire: His friends talk, New York: Doubleday, 1988
Godfrey, R. (ed.), Letters from a Prince: Edward, Prince of Wales to Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward, London: Little, Brown, 1998
Greig, G., Louis and the Prince: A story of politics, intrigue and royal friendship, London: Hodder & Stoughton Educational, 1999
Heymann, C.D., Poor Little Rich Girl: The life and legend of Barbara Hutton, Fort Lee, NJ: Lyle Stuart Inc, 1984
Jenkins, A., The Twenties, London: William Heinemann, 1974
Jennings, D., Barbara Hutton: A candid biography of the richest woman in the world, London: WH Allen, 1968
Leider, E., Dark Lover: The life and death of Rudolph Valentino, London: Faber & Faber, 2003
Marr, A., The Making of Modern Britain, London: Macmillan, 2009
Meyrick, K., Secrets of the 43: Reminiscences, London: John Long, 1933
Morgan, J., Edwina Mountbatten: A life of her own, London: Harper Collins, 1991
Nobbs, A., Kambala: The first 100 years 1887–1987, Sydney: Kambala Centenary History Committee, 1987
Obolensky, S., One Man in His Time: The memories of Serge Obolensky, New York: McDowell, 1958
Osborne, F., The Bolter: The story of Idina Sackville, New York: Vintage, 2008
Pine, L.G. (ed.), Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, London: Burke’s Peerage Ltd, 1959
Shawcross, W., Queen Elizabeth: The Queen Mother, London: Macmillan, 2009
Spicer, P., The Temptress: The scandalous life of Alice, Countess de Janzé: Passion and Murder in Kenya’s Happy Valley, London: Simon & Schuster, 2010
St. Clair-Erskine, P. (Earl of Rosslyn), Rosslyn Chapel, Rosslyn Chapel Trust (Roslin, Scotland), Edinburgh: Lothian and Edinburgh Enterprise Limited, 1997
Sykes, C., Evelyn Waugh: A biography, London: Little, Brown, 1975
Taylor, D.J., Bright Young People: The rise and fall of a generation 1918–1940, London: Vintage, 2008
Tucker, S., Some of These Days: An autobiography, London: Hammond, Hammond & Co, 1948
Vickers, H., Elizabeth: The Queen Mother, London: Hutchinson, 2005
Wheeler-Bennett, J.W., King George VI: His life and reign, London: Macmillan, 1958
Wilson, J.H., Evelyn Waugh, a Literary Biography, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001
Ziegler, P., King Edward VIII: The Official Biography, London: Collins, 1990
— Diana Cooper, the biography of Lady Diana Cooper, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981
Ziegler, P. (ed.) The Diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten 1920–1922, London: Collins, 1987
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