Still another time I had an American next to me at luncheon who refused every dish with such increasing haughtiness that it amounted to rudeness. At last, stung by his behavior I expostulated, "I am sorry you do not like our food; but is there anything else I can order you?"
"Considering," he answered, "that I wrote you exactly what I could eat and even sent you a menu of the dishes I washed provided, I am surprised you should ask me such a question!"
"But I never got your letter," I said horrified. And sure enough, as we came out of the dining room he saw his letter lying on the table in the cloisters where our mails were placed, and pounced upon it; it had been delayed because he had misdirected it. Since then he has always telegraphed us about the food he can eat, which makes relations more amicable.
It is pleasanter to recall a more fortunate occasion when, mindful that Hindus could not eat beef, I ordered lobster and chicken for the Maharajah of Kapurthala. He thanked me warmly, saying his aide-de-camp had forgotten to let me know that he could not touch beef, and added ruefully, "I am so often given nothing else, and once as an alternative tongue was served, my hostess not seeming to realize that tongue came from the cow." The Maharajah was a handsome prince. He spoke English and French fluently and was an accomplished diplomat and sportsman. As a young man he had seen me at Marble House in Newport. I was then a girl of sixteen and he had told my mother that he wished to marry me, a wish he was apt to recall on occasions. Ever since, he had brought me mangoes from his Indian gardens with a gentle deference the years had not changed.
In 1938 the Polish Ambassador, Count Chlapowski, was our guest. While discussing Hitler and the possibilities of a war— which was then, and alas is again, an engrossing topic—he told me a revealing anecdote about Göring whom he had met at a reception. Apparently Göring was boasting of his famous shoots. "Alas," commented Count Chlapowski, "in Poland we have so many poachers our preserves of game are sadly diminished." "Poachers!" snorted Göring. "Take it from me, Excellency, you have only to shoot two or three as I have done and you will have no more trouble!" Only one year later, during the invasion of Poland, Count and Countess Chlapowski were dragged away from their castle by Nazi officers and imprisoned. The Countess's description of the scene when I met her again in 1940 is worth recording. She said that the servants had been herded together at the castle's entrance where cars were waiting to take the owners away to imprisonment in Warsaw. In the confusion and terror of the moment an old servant got into a car by mistake. The Countess said that she can never forget how, at the commanding officer's order, the Nazi guard fell on him and dragging him out, beat him unmercifully until he was unable to stand. "It may have been done to intimidate us," she said, "but it was inhuman!" While in prison the Count succumbed to illness and ill treatment; the Countess, after fifteen months of solitary confinement in a cold, unlighted cell was liberated owing to the intervention of the Pope and President Roosevelt. At liberty in Warsaw, she managed through the underground to find her way across the frontier. Reaching Italy, she was again obliged to flee when that country became Germany's ally. Eventually she reached Lisbon where we met, both of us refugees, happily anticipating the hospitable freedom of my generous native land. Countess Chlapowska told me later, when she came as our guest to Florida, that while she was imprisoned by the Gestapo she was not allowed to see her husband. The guard who brought her food daily taunted her, saying, "Your husband is ill and will soon die, but you will not be allowed to see him." Just before the end she was, however, allowed a short interview, when the sight of her tortured husband almost destroyed the magnificent fortitude that had caused the Gestapo to comment, "How can we break down this damned woman?" It was faith and prayer that gave her the strength to withstand and survive all her trials, though she told me that the long hours of darkness of those winter nights were almost unbearable. Her son, like so many Poles, served in the British Air Force during the war, and I am sure lived up to Winston Churchill's encomium when he observed to me, "When we want to be particularly ruthless we send the Poles."
Among the many interesting guests we had the pleasure of receiving at Eze, no one contributed more to the diversion of a party than Serge Voronoff, Russian surgeon and physiologist, who was widely known for his experiments in gland grafting. He had been educated in Paris and had risen to the important post of Director of the Biological Laboratory at the École des Hautes Études and later to the directorship of Experimental Surgery of the Station Physiologique du College de France. He had bought a château in Grimaldi on the frontier of Italy and France. His gates were just opposite the Customs and the gardens looked out on the sea. Here in the rocks and grottos he had built large cages for the monkeys he brought from Africa for his operations. He was a brilliant raconteur, and knew how to tell a risqué story without undue stress. His descriptions of some of his experiments in gland grafting and their results, as well as of the astonishing "types" who came to be operated on, were extremely amusing, but only Voronoff or my husband are capable of doing them justice.
A delightful and honored guest was Lord Curzon, who came to spend a fortnight with us in 1925, a few weeks before his death. He had written that he was in much need of a rest, and added that he would prefer to be alone with us, since he would be busy editing three books he had just completed. In the interval that preceded his arrival we suffered the qualms every host experiences, for our guest was not only a man of distinction and taste—he was also sensitive and high-strung, and his infirmity necessitated the observance of more than ordinary hospitality. I knew, for instance, that he could not sleep if a crack of daylight entered his room, so a blackout material had to double-line his curtains. I knew that he spent his nights writing and provided an assortment of Chippendale tables whereon to lay his literary paraphernalia and the more prosaic food of physical sustenance. I attempted to provide every material comfort, leaving to Jacques the more difficult task of conversation, and when the time came he proved equal to it, producing a fund of anecdotes every whit as good in French as Lord Curzon's were in English.
During the two weeks he was with us he wore himself out editing his books. With the meticulous attention to detail so characteristic of him, he insisted on making in his own hand all the tiresome corrections and notations editing entails; and when I remonstrated, "Why not have a secretary?" he replied, "Do you think anyone but myself could master the intricacies of my Indian administration or the spelling of those Indian names?" He did that work at night and it must have meant toil, sweat and tears, and agonizing pain, yet in the morning he would appear gay, debonair and smiling, delighting us with amusing stories of his Viceroyalty which he told with inimitable humor and rollicking laughter.
A characteristic that I found most endearing was his love of beauty, especially of an architectural nature. "A house," he recorded but a few days before his death, "has to my mind a history as enthralling as that of an individual."* [* Harold Nicolson, Curzon (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1939).] He had restored Tattershall and given it to the nation; Bodiam was to follow. On his death, Harold Nicolson further recalls, "Six vast kit-bags were discovered packed to overflowing with the material, the notes and many complete chapters, of six separate monographs dealing with Kedleston, Hackwood, Montacute, Walmer Castle, Tattershall and Bodiam."
To those who loved him it is comforting to realize that in such lasting monuments he found consolation for the bitter disappointments he suffered, first in 1923 when Baldwin was chosen Prime Minister over him, and again in the following year when Baldwin formed his second Cabinet and passed over Lord Curzon's claim to return to the Foreign Office in favor of Austen Chamberlain. He had, I thought, never quite recovered from these griefs, although he loyally continued to serve as Lord President of the Council and Leader in the House of Lords.
There were times when, overwrought with political responsibilities and physical pain, he succumbed to the weakness of tears. I remember finding him thus one day in his house in Carlton House Terrace. It was in the summer
of 1916 when he was a member of Asquith's Coalition Cabinet. He had expressed the wish to see me and, arriving early, I waited until the departure of Lord Lansdowne who was with him at the time. Going up to his room, I found him in bed against a mound of pillows looking like a recumbent proconsul. He had evidently had a trying interview and seemed worried and weary. Nevertheless during the short space of my visit the telephone on his bed rang incessantly. First it was an inquiry from the chef—next a message from the chauffeur—then one from the butler—all of which could have been easily dealt with by a secretary. There was something rather ridiculous and altogether pathetic in the manner in which, interrupting his talk, he would answer the most trivial questions in grandiloquent language and a strong North Country accent, while all the while large tears were rolling down his cheeks. He was, I remember, discussing certain difficulties that loomed in the way of his second marriage.
I shall always recall that last visit to us at Eze, so perilously near his end, with feelings of emotion, and I well remember the day of his arrival and his request to view the house and grounds. Leaning on his stick, encased in his steel corset, he insisted upon walking down and then up our mountain. No one could have been more appreciative, and when finally we rested, looking down on the glorious view that from Toulon to Italy spread before us, he turned round to me and said, "Then it has been worth the sacrifice?"
"Sacrifice?" I inquired, somewhat startled.
"Yes—to give up being the beautiful Duchess of Marlborough and all it meant?"
I could not help smiling. "But of course, George, I willingly gave up and have never regretted no longer being a Duchess— but if as you so kindly suggest I should have had to give up whatever beauty I may possess—that would have been another problem!" He looked at me wonderingly.
Lord Curzon's detractors have stressed his pompous manner and innate snobbishness. That he was so evidently pleased with his rank and privilege amused me. It added a comic touch to a personality that without it might have been priggish. Every afternoon I took him motoring through the lovely country, and on one of these expeditions we came across an ancient château that looked deserted. Ever interested in historical research, he wished to visit it; so we rang the bell, which, after a long wait, was answered by an elderly woman shabbily dressed, but with a dignity of bearing that made me surmise she was the owner. Lord Curzon, taking her for the housekeeper, handed her his card, and as he passed it to her he remarked to me, "It looks very grand does it not?" He was just like a child showing a new toy, for he had by then become Marquess Curzon of Kedleston. During our visit it gradually became obvious that the lady was a White Russian of noble birth and as we thanked her for her courtesy. Lord Curzon, with magnificent condescension, introduced me, adding, "She used to be Duchess of Marlborough in England—that is how I knew her." On our way home he expressed surprise that a Russian princess should have answered her own doorbell. Alas, had he lived, he would have had many worse shocks. During that drive he spoke to me of the hereafter, and with a touching faith, perhaps inspired by that of his father, Lord Scarsdale, who had been a clergyman, said, "I know that Mary will be the first to greet me in Heaven." A few weeks later he went to join her.
Our only social venture during his visit, and one I deeply regretted, was a dinner at the Palace of Monaco. The Prince of Monaco was a simple man who delighted in recalling his years spent in the French Army, but Monaco was an ancient principality, and boasted one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. My evening was rendered anxious by Lord Curzon's discomfort; for he was evidently suffering intense pain as we stood about waiting on the pompous protocol the Court insisted upon maintaining. Our quiet evenings at Lou Sueil lightened by reminiscences of his Viceregal career were evidently more to his taste and I was glad afterward to remember that we never imposed another party.
The nearest approach to Lord Curzon in French politics it was my good fortune to meet was Andre Tardieu. His attachment to the policy of Clemenceau with whom he was closely associated caused him three times between 1919-1924 to refuse to enter the French government. His career marked him as a man of brilliant intellect, and trenchant and cutting it certainly could be, to the terror of enemies and friends alike.
He had bought a villa on a hill behind Menton where we went one day to lunch with him. Opposition to existing regimes had no doubt engendered an acerbity which his ill health accentuated. Having heard echoes of his bon mots, which were anything but "bon" to the recipient, I was surprised by the urbanity of his greeting, though this could, I knew, in a measure be accounted for by his friendship with my husband and his sympathy with Americans and admiration for my country, which dated from 1917 when he acted as Special Commissioner in the United States. We were a small party of eight or ten and luncheon progressed happily, enlivened by anecdotes our host and my them, being proud both of her taste and of her horticultural knowledge, for she had the faculty of remembering the name of every plant, however rare. A tour of gardens with an amateur is apt to be tiring because of the maddening habit they have of loitering over unique specimens, explaining their characteristics in detail. It is tedious to listen to long dissertations on the habitat of rock plants, often buried under stones which have to be removed to permit one to view their diminutive blooms. But Edith Wharton was a passionate lover of flowers and would dissect their mutations with the same ruthless precision she practiced in analyzing the characters she portrayed.
I used to wonder whether the warmth of her nature had found its only blossoming in her garden, for to me her novels lacked the glow of humanity, and the hard, ambitious types of American womanhood she depicted were particularly unpleasant. She gave the impression of intellectually controlling her emotional contacts and lacked the spontaneity which to me is the keynote of friendship. In appearance she had the precise primness of an old maid-there was something puritanical about her in spite of the cosmopolitan, rather Bohemian, life she affected. Her features were neat, her chin determined and a rare smile showed good teeth. She took infinite pains with her dress, and what is now called a tailored woman would be an apt description of her. In the country she wore a suit, a small hat and neat workmanlike shoes with square heels. A veil kept every hair in place.
She seemed terribly disillusioned and her successful and useful life (for she was always helping a good cause) had evidently not erased some secret sorrow. It was to Walter Berry, her cousin, that those who knew her best attributed this sorrow. Her brilliant intellect no doubt found unending inspiration in his no less accomplished companionship, but he was a cruel master who, as was said, delighted in perverting the minds of young and pretty women. "What a pity he does not leave them in an interesting condition," Frank Crowninshield once retorted.
Edith Wharton, neither young nor pretty, may have been too self-centered to waste pity or time in unprofitable thoughts; nevertheless, she may have suffered more intensely than her reserved and frigid character gave one reason to suppose. She was invariably accompanied by a male friend, and gave the impression of disliking, if not actually despising women, although to me she was always kind.
My mother had been to school with Edith Jones, as she then was, and I gathered they had disliked each other. Indeed, whether from intellectual arrogance or because of her cold disdain, Edith Wharton repelled rather than attracted sympathy. Since reading her memoirs I realize that it was perhaps shyness that made her so inaccessible.
The first time I saw her she was still a young woman and was accompanied by her husband who somehow, when in England, seemed more of an equerry than an equal, walking behind her and carrying whatever paraphernalia she happened to discard. She wore an ostrich boa she had a habit of dropping. Indeed, Edward Wharton could not hope to do more than fetch and carry for a personality so far removed from his orbit.
We met in an English country house where I had arrived rather late. My hostess, the beautiful Daisy White, first wife of Harry White, then attached to the American Embassy, took me to the window, and pointing to two
distant figures walking on the lawn, said, "Do you know those famous compatriots of ours?" They were Edith Wharton and Henry James in deep conversation.
This was, I think the only time I met Henry James, and I have but a vague memory of his dominating personality. I believe I was more impressed by the reverence with which my fellow guests treated him than by anything he himself said. Meeting Americans in England in the gay nineties—I am referring to men, and more especially to those who considered themselves important—always caused me a slight embarrassment as I became conscious of their slow and weighty phrases. It seemed to me that even when discussing the weather, that prevalent subject for conversation, they indulged in superfluous ponderous preambles, and when recounting a story took hours to reach the point—a point that, alas, was so often lost on English listeners! It was easy to acquire a British sense of humor, but I always found it difficult to make my English friends appreciate our American jests. Fortunately for the Atlantic Pact, a wider and more sympathetic understanding has since succeeded in eliminating such minor irritations and in emphasizing our points of contact.
Winston Churchill and his beautiful wife were among our favorite guests during the seventeen winters we spent at Lou Sueil. Although I had known him some thirty years he always seemed as young to me as he had ever been. Even in his sixtieth year he was playing polo, and his interests instead of waning were growing. He used to spend his mornings dictating to his secretary and the afternoons painting either in our garden or in some other site that pleased him. His departure on these expeditions was invariably accompanied by a general upheaval of the household. The painting paraphernalia with its easel, parasol and stool had to be assembled; the brushes, freshly cleaned, to be found; the canvases chosen, the right hat sorted out, the cigar box replenished. At last, driven by our chauffeur, accompanied by a detective the British government insisted upon providing, he would depart with the genial wave and rubicund smile we have learned to associate with his robust optimism. On his return he would amuse us by repeating the comments of those self-sufficient critics who congregate round easels. An old Frenchman one day told him, "With a few more lessons you will become quite good!"—a verdict connoisseurs have already endorsed.
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