And so the summer sped its uneventful days. There were agricultural and horticultural shows and the giving away of prizes that claimed my presence. There were school treats for the various villages to arrange. There were cricket matches, which I never learned to appreciate. There were mothers' meetings, and women's organizations to address. I even wrote a sermon for a young curate who was shy and pressed for time. In spite of endless duties, I never missed my daily ride, weather permitting. I remember an ignominious toss in full view of a concourse of people I had previously addressed. The hunter I rode was fresh and as I dug my heel into his side I lost my stirrup. A series of buck jumps sent me flying—sufficiently damaged to be driven home in the hastily summoned electric car. The press made a great to-do. It was midsummer, which newspapers dubbed the "silly season," so that minor events became welcome diversions. I was amused by the telegrams Marlborough received from various mamas whose daughters were ready to fill my place. Their professed anxiety contained a note of hope, but not for my recovery.
The electric car to which I referred was a present sent by my mother from America. It was my only escape from the household and from an irksome form of surveillance. In the house I was followed by a black boy Marlborough had brought from Egypt to be my page. In his Oriental costume and turban he looked picturesque, but he was a perpetual cause of irritation, for his garbled messages in broken English caused endless misunderstandings. When he threatened an old lady who sold toys in the village, brandishing a knife and shouting that he would kill her if she did not reimburse him for the objects he had broken and wished to return, I was glad of an excuse to send him back to his native land. Indeed, with a page in the house, a coachman or a postilion to take me for drives and a groom to accompany my rides, my freedom was quite successfully restricted. Even driving a pair of spirited cobs lost its charm when Marlborough, galloping past on a dangerously narrow road, caused the horses to take fright; only my presence of mind in throwing the end of the reins to the groom behind and our combined strength avoided a serious accident.
The electric car, which I was allowed to drive unaccompanied, and the long solitary walks I took in the High Park provided welcome respites from household cares and personal problems.
The royal forest of Woodstock was rich in legend, and I loved to wander through the bracken among the great oaks with the lake shimmering below and to daydream of past centuries and of the persons who then had haunted those green glades.
In January, 1901, Queen Victoria died. We were invited to attend the state funeral in St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. We were all in deep mourning and the ladies wore crepe veils like widows. Going down in the special train Marlborough paid me one of his rare compliments when he said, "If I die I see you will not remain a widow long." I remember how impressive the service was. The stalls of the Knights of the Garter where each had his escutcheon emblazoned and his standard overhead were occupied by the German Emperor, by foreign kings, heads of state and ambassadors extraordinary. Indian princes. Colonial dignitaries, ministers of state. Court officials, generals and admirals with their ladies filled the benches on either side facing the procession as it moved in silence up the aisle. Looking at the brilliant assemblage, I thought that no country had ever possessed so fine an aristocracy or a civil service so dedicated. As the great doors were thrown open one saw the royal cortege slowly mounting the steps; only the boom of distant guns and the clangor of swords were heard above the muffled notes of the funeral march. But I was shocked to hear the voice of Margot Asquith who even at that moment was unable to resist a quip.
Once the service was over we went up to the Waterloo Chamber where a collation had been laid, and I found myself so sought after by many public men—Arthur Balfour, George Wyndham, a man of great personal charm who was then Secretary of State for Ireland, St. John Brodrick, George Curzon, Mr. Asquith and others—that I felt that Marlborough's compliment had perhaps been deserved. I was having a wonderful time. The only fly in the ointment was that Lady Dudley, who seemed preoccupied, interrupted all my conversations and never left me a moment alone with those who wished to speak to me. I discovered later that she was anxious to have her husband appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and, knowing that Marlborough was spoken of as a candidate, she feared that I was pleading his cause with the political personages present. It was, on the contrary, a relief to me when Lord Dudley became Viceroy and Marlborough was given the Garter, for any political aspirations I might have had were more gratified when my husband became Under Secretary for the Colonies with Alfred Lyttleton as the Secretary of State. After the Queen's death a period of mourning was proclaimed. Wearing black depressed me, and I had an insane desire to don bright colors during that spring in Paris. Discipline, however, prevailed, and my only departure from the prescribed black was to wear white gloves. How well I remember those white gloves and the lecture they cost me, for, as ill luck would have it, the first person I met at Longchamp where I had gone with my father to see one of his horses run was the old Duchess of Devonshire, in the deepest mourning. A renowned character and virtually dictator of what was known as the fast set as opposed to the Victorian, Her Grace was a German aristocrat by birth. She had first been married to the impoverished Duke of Manchester, and when he died, had improved her status by marriage to the rich Duke of Devonshire, who waged an undisputed influence in politics. Rumor had her beautiful, but when I knew her she was a raddled old woman, covering her wrinkles with paint and her pate with a brown wig. Her mouth was a red gash and from it, when she saw me, issued a stream of abuse. How could I, she complained, pointing to my white gloves, show so little respect to the memory of a great Queen? What a carefree world we must have lived in that etiquette even in such small matters could assume so much importance!
My father had an apartment on the Avenue des Champs Élysées where I frequently visited him, and together we raced at Longchamp and at the more intimate meetings of St. Cloud and Maisons-Lafitte which combine the pleasures of the country with those of sport. He was in the initial stage of a successful racing career which culminated in his owning the finest stable in France, a position he maintained for many years. He looked so young no one could have taken him for my father and on one occasion when we were, owing to my grandmother's death, lunching in a private room at Voisin's, Marlborough was refused admission by a discreet maître d’hôtel. In those days not so long past mourning required that one eat in private; had one been seen in a restaurant it would have been considered bad taste. What would then have been thought of the widows who now with a graceful gesture throw back their veils as they follow their husband's coffin down the aisle?
How gay were those years at the turn of the century when in Paris there gathered a cosmopolitan society come from Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London, with the sole object of spending money and finding amusement! There were parties every night, and the days were crowded with sightseeing, racing and shopping.
It was then I met the artist Paul Helleu, who has made so many gracefully alluring etchings of American women. He asked me to sit for him, which I did until I discovered he was doing a thriving trade on the side with the numerous pastels, etchings and drawings he refused to let me pay for. Helleu was a nervous, sensitive man with a capacity for the intense suffering that artistic temperaments are prone to. He thought himself something of a Don Juan, and with his black beard, his mobile lips and sad eyes he had the requisite looks, but he was too sensitive for the role. Seeing his tall thin wiry frame cramped and bent over a dry point, one realized that he would be more at ease on the deck of the yacht he loved to sail. He had wanted to be a sailor almost as fiercely as to be an artist, and at the end of his life spent most of his days on a chair in the Avenue du Bois, his melancholy eyes eager for the sight of the beauty he could not live without.
It was through Helleu that I met Boldini who was in every respect so different from him, but for whose talent he had the highest regard. Boldini was short and squat and square. Sem's
caricature in which he looks like an elderly Silenus gives an indication of his moral as well as of his physical nature. Helleu took me to his studio and Boldini expressed the wish to paint me. Such a compliment could not be easily refused and I agreed to sit for him provided his behavior remained exemplary, for he had a salacious reputation with women. In the sittings that followed it was difficult for him to restrain the sallies that his Bohemian nature inspired. When the temptation became too strong he would look at me with a humorous smile and, wagging his monstrous head, ejaculate, "Ah, La Divina, La Divina!" As the portrait was a good likeness we decided to acquire it and to have the canvas enlarged to include my younger son so that it might hang in a space allotted for it in the dining room at Sunderland House. Boldini came to London to finish it. He had difficulty in getting my left arm on which my weight rests in the proper position, and at one time I resembled a Hindu goddess, with no less than three left arms protruding at different angles. The portrait is considered one of his best, and now is in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum.
I often saw Helleu, Boldini and the caricaturist Sem, but the caricature Sem did of me dining in a café with the three of them was not founded on fact. Their conversation was witty, often caustic, and they were no respecters of persons. In the midst of the Dreyfus case Sem published a brilliant but cruel caricature of the Baron and Baroness de Rothschild walking on the beach at Deauville shunned by the crowd of elegants while even the tide was leaving them high and dry.
On one of my visits to Paris I was delighted to find my cousin Adele Sloane, then married to James A. Burden. Her sympathy, humor and understanding had always made her my favorite cousin, and lost as I was among foreign in-laws it was pleasant to relive childish scenes and to resume family ties. The accident of one's birth has always appeared to me no adequate reason for personal pride; though it is pleasant to realize that cause for shame in one's forebears is nonexistent, still the achievements of others lend one no special glory. Nevertheless, to search for the facts, fortuitous or otherwise, that confer distinction on one's name is interesting, and Adele and I, while indulging in this pursuit, brought to light the feud that had caused a rift between our grandfather and his sisters. It appeared that our great-grandfather, the Commodore, had left the major part of his considerable fortune to my grandfather, each of his daughters receiving legacies that, as I remarked to Adele, would have been considered colossal as well as unnecessary in England. However, the Commodore's daughters, having already in the mid-nineteenth century acquired a decidedly American conception of women's rights, thought otherwise. Visiting their rancor on their more fortunate brother they became estranged from him, and so formidable was their reputation that not one of his progeny had ventured a reconciliation.
One of these daughters, married to Mr. Meredith Howland, lived in Paris. She was a widow—very handsome—very arrogant—very headstrong. She had, I was told, a circle of distinguished friends and was herself considered "une femme très distinguee." We wondered, Adele and I, what she was like, for since neither of us had known our great-grandfather, we felt a natural curiosity about his daughter. "Let's go and see her," I suggested, and with one of those unpremeditated acts young people indulge in we told the chauffeur to drive to her apartment. A dignified maître d’hôtel opened the door. He seemed surprised to see two young and elegant women instead of Mrs. Rowland's usual old beaux. She had three with whom she played bridge daily. Raising his eyebrows and showing us into a salon he said, "And who am I to announce?" "Tell Mrs. Howland her great-nieces, Mrs. James Burden and the Duchess of Marlborough, have called to see her." We waited a long time but the salon was beautifully furnished and we found much to admire. Suddenly the double doors were thrown open by the butler and in its portal stood our great-aunt. She was immensely tall and straight in spite of her fourscore years. Her iron-gray hair was piled in curls on her proud head. She had on a lovely silk dress, a fichu of lawn crossed over her breast. "And to what do I owe this pleasure?" she said, fixing her large eyes upon us. For a moment Adele and I felt like intruders, but recovering our composure we managed to state the reasons that had brought us, adding the flattering comments that our aunts who lived in Paris had made. We were happy to see her relax and become gracious and charming. As we left the beaux trooped up the stairs, and I recognized three of the older members of the French Jockey Club known for their wit and gallantry.
This same cousin Adele, some years after the death of James Burden, married the Honorable Richard Tobin, for long our distinguished and popular Minister at The Hague. I was then married to Jacques and when she told me of her intended marriage I was overjoyed, realizing that with her hterary and artistic tastes she would find an ideal companion in such a cultured and charming man. He is indeed in every sense an example of the perfect diplomat who, with flair and tact, knows how to skirt an almost unavoidable pitfall. A voracious reader, he ranges through the centuries from which he culls romances and episodes that please him, and when he speaks of them one experiences the delight of an intimate acquaintance with characters long since dead. No wonder, I thought, when first I succumbed to the charm of his wittily told tales, that Queen Mary should have said, "That is the type of American I like to have as a neighbor at a dinner party!" Many others less exalted have thought the same.
On another visit to Paris I was tempted to consult a fortune teller who blended science and psychic phenomena to a strangely convincing degree. Ledot lived on the top floor of one of those old houses on the left bank of the Seine and one had to toil up endless flights to reach him. I was impressed when I saw him for he seemed almost from another world, so frail, ethereal, did he appear. But when he summoned me to sit opposite him and when his eyes looked into mine I felt an emanation of surprising strength. It seemed as if time were standing still, or rather as if time no longer existed, and that past, present and future were one. He told me that misfortune threatened me; he prophesied that for many years I should be thrown on my own resources but that eventually I would reach happiness. I was taken to see him by Sir Edgar Vincent whose own past Ledot had correctly interpreted, also prophesying an important and successful future for him.
Sir Edgar Vincent, when first I knew him, was a strikingly handsome man. His presence carried with it a suggestion of larger than life. With the head of a Greek statue he had the beard, the wide eyes and fine forehead of the type. An amateur of the arts, a great reader, a sardonic and at times brilliant talker, he combined all the attributes needed for social success. His mind was logical, his views definite, his wit pointed—he had, I thought, the balanced judgment we associate with the Greeks— and was in fact the author of a modem Greek grammar.
The picturesque sans gene of the artist appealed to him—in the country his collar was always open, his huge flannel trousers were perpetually being tucked into a belt, his tousled hair stood on end in ruffled curls. After a particularly grueling tennis match he would wind a scarf around his throat and throw a sweater about his shoulders, and someone would rush at him with a big white coat and a towel or two. At such moments there was something about him irresistibly challenging. He was like a large St. Bernard that puppies delight to badger.
With his love of beauty it was not surprising that he should have married the most beautiful woman of her day, and if their union had been childless it had been productive in many other ways. They were outstanding figures in the social world—invariably to be pointed out—Lady Helen for her beauty. Sir Edgar for that indescribable quality that attracts others. Much simpler and kinder than his hard and polished surface indicated, he radiated vitality—the temperature of his environment was invariably ten degrees higher than anyone else's. He had made his considerable fortune while still young, and was busy spending it on works of art and good living. They had a beautiful home at Esher Place, a short drive from London. Built on a hill with England's park-like countryside to view, it had a short golf course, a perfect grass tennis court, and in the house a court tennis, where Sir Edgar, in spite o
f increasing corpulence, challenged younger and better players.
Weekends there were invariably busy and gay. The set known as The Souls predominated, with the Marquis de Soveral and Count Mensdorff as the foreign element. The Souls were a select group in which a high degree of intelligence was to be found happily allied to aristocratic birth. Their intellectual tastes, their aesthetic manner and their exclusive aura tended to render them ridiculous to those whose feet were firmly planted in the prosaic walks of life, and also proved a source of irritation to others who were not admitted to their circle. It was at a big dinner given by their friends in honor of Lord and Lady Curzon of Kedleston on his appointment as Viceroy of India in 1898 that I first floated on to their Olympian heights. In a photograph I possess I see myself with a sad and pensive air sitting next to the hero of the evening. Looking at the assembled company, I think there is some justification for the name of Souls, since many have since become immortal. There are present two future prime ministers —Asquith and Balfour—John Morley, the future Lord Haldane, Minister for War, and countless other cabinet ministers. It is a brilliant company assembled to do homage to one of their own. I felt even then the prevalent spirit of patriotic dedication. It could be sensed in their optimism and in that joyous fraternity bred in public schools and universities which echoed in their speeches. At Esher there was usually a sprinkling of rising young men or lovely women so to speak on trial. Sometimes they became initiates—more often they disappeared.
The Glitter and the Gold Page 14