The Bolter
Page 28
4 Sunday Times, 7 November 1982.
5 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
6 New York Times, 25 June 1929.
7 Interview with Frank Giles, Corfu, August 2007.
8 The Times, 10 November 1955.
9 Interview, 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
10 In particular, Lady Eileen Scott, who also lived in Kenya.
11 Forbes, Rosita, Appointment in the Sun (Cassell & Co., London 1949), p. 274.
12 Ibid., p. 278.
13 Ibid., pp. 274–9.
14 Fox, James, White Mischief (Penguin, London 1984), p. 30.
15 Forbes, Rosita, Appointment in the Sun (Cassell & Co., London 1949), p. 274.
16 Mitford, Nancy, Don’t Tell Alfred (Penguin Books, London 1963), p. 17.
17 Mitford, Nancy, The Pursuit of Love (Penguin Books, London 1945), p. 176.
18 Forbes, Rosita, Appointment in the Sun (Cassell & Co., London 1949), p. 278.
19 Interview with Ann Douglas, a later wife of his, London, 2004.
20 A Woman of Affairs, directed by Clarence Brown, 1928.
21 For example, Nevada State Journal, 18 April 1934.
22 Errol Trzebinski interview with David Fielden, Kilifi, Kenya, 1996.
23 Forbes, Rosita, Appointment in the Sun (Cassell & Co., London 1949).
24 Interview, Nairobi, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
25 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 23.
26 Interview with Molly Hoare, Surrey, UK, 2004.
27 Interview with Paul Spicer, London, 2005.
28 Interview with Patsy Chilton, London, 2004.
29 Interview, Kenya, 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
30 Interview with Molly Hoare, Surrey, UK, 2004.
31 Letter, Idina to Pru de Winton (then Mrs David Wallace), 13 September 1944.
CHAPTER 2
1 Elliott, Geoffrey, The Mystery of Overend and Gurney (Methuen, London 2006), p. 186.
2 Brassey, Annie Allnut, A Voyage in the Sunbeam (Longmans, Green & Co., London 1878).
3 Republished November 2007 as A Voyage in the Sunbeam by Anna Brassey (Trotamundas Press Ltd, England 2007).
4 King George V, reigned 1910–36.
5 Royal Archives, Z449/80, Windsor Castle.
6 The Times, 20 March 1902.
7 Lansbury, George, Looking Backwards and Forwards (Blackie, London 1935).
8 Besant, Annie, The Law of Population (Freethought Publishing Co., 1884).
9 Interview with Lady Kitty Giles, Corfu, August 2007, and evidenced in Idina’s letters to her daughter, 1950.
10 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 52.
11 Daily Express, January 1929.
12 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 52.
13 Errol Trzebinski interview with David Fielden, Kilifi, Kenya, 1996.
14 As she then did.
15 Pugh, Martin, ‘Conservative Recruits to Labour 1900–30’, English Historical Review, Vol. 113, No. 450 (Feb. 1998), pp. 38–64.
16 The Times, 6 January 1911.
17 The Times, 29 April 1911.
18 Letter, David Wallace to his wife Pru, 1942.
19 Oakland Tribune, 16 February 1913.
20 Ibid.
21 New York Times, 6 September 1911.
22 Ibid.
23 New York Times, 27 April 1917.
24 New York Times, 24 December 1908.
25 According to the New York Times, 11 January 1991, this is 840 Madison Avenue but in the edition of 23 December 1991 it is given as 850 Madison Avenue.
26 New York Times, 24 December 1908.
27 New York Times, 11 January 1911.
28 New York Times, 23 December 1911.
29 Washington Post, 26 March 1919.
30 Ibid.
31 East Grinstead Observer, 26 July 1913.
CHAPTER 3
1 As evidenced by his diaries.
2 Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Scotland (John Murray, London 1875).
3 ‘The younger generation [of Bairds] born in the purple, eschew trade.’ John Guthrie Smith and John Oswald Mitchell, The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry (James Maclehose, Glasgow 1878), Chapter 48.
4 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
5 Lansbury, George, Looking Backwards and Forwards (Blackie, London 1935).
6 As evidenced by her later actions.
7 The Times, 25 November 1913, the day before the wedding.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 The bra had been invented in 1910, by a New York socialite, Mary Phelps Jacob (she would later become Peabody then Crosby by marriage). Jacob had used a pair of handkerchiefs and made brassieres for her friends. Eventually somebody paid her for one and she decided to patent it in 1914. Idina would almost certainly have met Mary in New York and, given her fascination with fashion, have been a wearer of one of these early, makeshift bras.
11 The Times, 11 February 1908.
12 Interview with Errol Trzebinski, Kilifi, Kenya, June 2004.
13 Having absented himself from their childhood, Gilbert Sackville would join the Navy at the outbreak of the Great War and died of fever at Messina in Sicily at the end of 1915.
14 Interview with Mr Young, Barrhill, UK, June 2007.
CHAPTER 4
1 Diana Manners would later marry Duff Cooper and is better known as Diana Cooper, under which name she wrote her autobiography, The Rainbow Comes and Goes (Penguin, London 1961).
2 Holmes, Richard, Tommy (HarperCollins, London 2004), p. 438.
3 Having been unable to give her first son, born imminently, anything other than a Wallace family name, a year later she called her second son Gerard.
4 Interview with John Julius Norwich, Hay-on-Wye, UK, May 2006.
5 Roynon, Gavin, Massacre of the Innocents: The Crofton Diaries, Ypres 1914–1915 (Sutton Publishing, Stroud 2004), p. 22.
CHAPTER 5
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 ‘Here even motor cars look out of date.’ Apollinaire, Guillaume, ‘Zone’, first published in Alcools, Paris 1913.
3 As clearly evidenced in Euan’s diaries and below.
4 Idina’s own words written by her in Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
5 She then started writing the diary for him.
6 Ibid.
7 Baedeker, Karl, Paris and its Environs, 1913.
CHAPTER 6
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 Now known as ‘bring a bottle parties’.
3 Idina’s own words written by her in Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
4 Lutyens, Mary, Edwin Lutyens (John Murray, London 1980), p. 148.
5 Illustrated London News, 17 December 1917.
CHAPTER 7
1 Telephone interview with Sarah Graham, 2004, who was struck by Idina’s dressing table when she saw it. When Idina died, these pots and jars would form the bulk of the possessions she left behind.
2 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
3 As he did that morning, without Idina. Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
4 Interview with Pru de Winton, Minnie Wallace’s daughter-in-law and author’s grandmother.
5 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
6 A servant would have packed his bag for him, driven it to him and taken him on to the station.
7 Lady Sackville was the mother of Vita Sackville-West and had married her cousin, Lionel. Both Lionel and Victoria were cousins of Idina’s father, Gilbert.
8 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
CHAPTER 8
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 As the way he refers to them in the diary makes clear, see below.
CHAPTER 9
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 Idina�
��s own words written by her in Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
3 The Times, 8 May 1918.
4 Ibid.
CHAPTER 10
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 As evidenced by her actions that followed.
3 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
4 As evidenced at length in Euan’s diaries over the following twelve months.
CHAPTER 11
1 Norwich, John Julius, The Duff Cooper Diaries (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2005), p. 5.
2 Ibid.
3 Interviews with Marybelle Drummond, Charles Gordon’s daughter from a later marriage, London, 2004–7.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Frampton, Peggy, Seven Candles for My Life (Pentland Press, Durham 1994).
7 Fox, James, White Mischief (Penguin, London 1984), p. 30.
8 Interviews with Marybelle Drummond, Charles Gordon’s daughter from a later marriage, London, 2004–7.
9 As evidenced by what they later did.
10 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
11 Wallace, Euan, personal diary clearly states: ‘Important discussion with D after tea.’
12 As what she then did demonstrates.
13 As is clear from the fact that the matter was not settled. Instead of going to see his lawyers the following morning, Euan continued the conversation the next day. Only after that did he go to his lawyers.
14 Ibid. They resumed talking the next night.
15 And would continue to do so, dying with a photograph of him by her bed.
16 Papers found on a trip to Kildonan House, Barrhill, Scotland, and interviews with Davina Howell, Idina’s granddaughter, state that Euan Wallace gave Idina an ultimatum to leave Charles Gordon.
17 As evidenced by the timing of his following actions, set out in his own diary.
18 As pictured in the Illustrated London News, 17 December 1917, as Idina’s own.
19 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
CHAPTER 12
1 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
2 The Times, 29 November 1918.
3 As, from Euan’s diaries, clearly happened.
4 Washington Post, 26 March 1919.
Book Two: Kenya – Happy Valley
CHAPTER 13
1 The Times, 10 November 1955.
2 ‘The Watchman’, Times Almanac, 10 November 1955.
3 Interviews with Marybelle Drummond, Charles Gordon’s daughter from a later marriage, London, 2004–7.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Wallace, Euan, personal diaries 1917–41.
7 Mary Lutyens in conversation with one of Idina’s great-granddaughters, Sophy Skeet.
8 As later referred to in Daily Express, January 1929.
9 New York Times, 31 August 1922.
10 But only her first. The following year she would marry a South American polo player.
CHAPTER 14
1 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 15.
2 De Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land (Duckworth, London 1928), p. 128.
3 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 66.
4 Ibid., p. 98.
5 Ibid., p.111.
6 Ibid., p. 34.
7 Ibid., p. 16.
8 Ibid., p. 31.
9 Ibid., p. 32.
10 Ibid., p. 35.
11 Ibid., p. 23.
12 Ibid., p. 13.
13 Sitwell, Georgia, personal diary.
14 Errol Trzebinski interview with Kath Biggs, Kimpton, UK, August 1995.
15 Faulks, Sebastian, The Fatal Englishman (Vintage, London 1997), p. 13.
16 Interview with Patsy Chilton, London, June 2004.
17 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 28.
18 Ibid., p. 28.
19 A Woman of Affairs, directed by Clarence Brown, 1928.
20 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 215.
21 Ibid., p. 112.
CHAPTER 15
1 Interview with Lady Kitty Giles, London, 2005.
2 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 51.
3 De Janzé, Frédéric, poem giving the key to the romans à clef, Vertical Land and Tarred with the Same Brush.
4 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 51.
5 Idina to Lord and Lady Kilmarnock, 11 May 1926.
6 Errol Trzebinski interview with the late Bettine Anderson, Aldeburgh, UK, 1996.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 The Tatler, 12 September 1923.
14 The Times, 23 September 1923.
15 Idina to Lord and Lady Kilmarnock, 11 May 1926.
16 Errol Trzebinski interview with the late Bettine Anderson, Aldeburgh, UK, 1996.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Josslyn Hay to Lady Kilmarnock, 11 June 1924.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Josslyn Hay to Lady Kilmarnock, 23 June 1924.
23 Interview, Nairobi, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
24 Josslyn Hay to Lady Kilmarnock, 11 June 1924.
25 Ibid.: ‘to grade with Friesian bulls’ means to breed with.
26 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 72.
27 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 98.
28 Frampton, Peggy, Seven Candles for My Life (Pentland Press, Durham 1994), p. 36.
29 Interview, Nairobi, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
30 De Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land (Duckworth, London 1928).
31 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 75.
32 De Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land (Duckworth, London 1928), pp. 141–2.
33 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 74.
CHAPTER 16
1 Wheeler, Sara, Too Close to the Sun (Jonathan Cape, London 2006), p. 173.
2 Huxley, Elspeth, Out in the Midday Sun (Chatto & Windus, London 1987), p. 67.
3 Diary of Lady Eileen Scott.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Arlen, Michael, The Green Hat (Robin Clark, London 1991), p. 15.
7 Fox, James, White Mischief (Penguin, London 1984), p. 42.
8 Letter, Josslyn Hay to Lady Kilmarnock, 27 December 1925.
9 Dinesen, Isak, Letters from Africa, 1914–1931 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1981), p. 300.
10 De Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land (Duckworth, London 1928), p. 155.
11 Ibid.
12 Letter, Idina to Lord and Lady Kilmarnock, 11 May 1926.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
CHAPTER 17
1 As events would show.
2 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 89.
3 Interview, Nairobi, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
4 Frampton, Peggy, Seven Candles for My Life (Pentland Press, Durham 1994), p. 36.
5 Huxley, Elspeth, Out in the Midday Sun (Penguin, London 1987), pp. 77–8.
6 Interview, London, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
7 De Janzé, Frédéric, Vertical Land (Duckworth, London 1928), p. 148.
8 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), p. 208.
9 Fox, James, White Mischief (Penguin, London 1984), p. 70.
10 De Janzé, Frédéric, Tarred with the Same Brush (Duckworth, London 1929), pp. 119–23.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
CHAPTER 18
1 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), pp. 199–200.
2 De Janzé, Frédéric, Tarred with the Same Brush (Duckworth, London 1929), p. 98.
3 Ibid.
4 Fox, James, White Mischief (Penguin, London 1984), p. 44.
5 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 86.
6 New York Times, 9 April 1927.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 New York Times, 28 March 1927.
11 New York Times, 27 March 1927.
12 New York Times, 20 May 1927.
13 Ibid.
14 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), p. 203.
15 Ibid.
16 New York Times, 24 December 1927.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Dinesen, Isak, Letters from Africa, 1914–1931 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1981), p. 300.
21 Ibid., pp. 343–4.
22 Ibid.
23 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), p. 208.
24 New York Times, 29 January 1929.
25 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), p. 208.
26 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 90.
27 These events included, among others, the wedding of their old friend Michael Lafone in January.
28 Hayes, Charles, Oserian (Rima Books, Nairobi 1997), p. 209.
29 Trzebinski, Errol, The Life and Death of Lord Erroll (Fourth Estate, London 2001), p. 91.
30 Ibid.
31 Interview, Nairobi, June 2004 (source wishes to remain anonymous).
CHAPTER 19
1 Since Joss had become the Earl of Erroll, Idina had become the Countess of Erroll, known as Lady Erroll. Although separated, they were still married.
2 And quotations to and including ‘went through their stunts’: Sitwell, Georgia, diary, unpublished.
3 Daily Express, January 1929.
4 Ibid.
CHAPTER 20
1 Will of Muriel Brassey, September 1929.
2 Nevada State Journal, 29 December 1930, and others.
3 Forbes, Rosita, Appointment in the Sun (Cassell & Co., London 1949), p. 275.
4 Frampton, Peggy, Seven Candles for My Life (Pentland Press, Durham 1994), p. 36.
5 Ibid., p. 37.
6 Huxley, Elspeth, Nellie: Letters from Africa (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1973), p. 101.
7 From now on she did live alone at Clouds – in between husbands and boyfriends.