While Thelma was in California the Prince telephoned to her or cabled, in a code they had concocted, with great regularity. At New York on her way back she met Aly Khan at a dinner party. He was extremely attentive, asked her to delay her return to England so that he could travel with her, and when she refused he expedited his own departure, filled her cabin with red roses and suddenly announced his presence on the same boat. During the journey his attentions became rather more alert than she wished, and somehow the Prince got to hear of what had happened, because when they met his manner seemed a trifle rigid and he mentioned the cause. She could not understand his new attitude, but the revelation was at hand. She spent a weekend at Belvedere, where he showed little desire for her company. Greatly worried, she appealed to Wallis Simpson, who assured her that “the little man” had felt lost in her absence. While they were together Mrs. Simpson was called to the telephone to speak to “His Royal Highness,” but on her return said nothing of the conversation. Thelma was again at Belvedere the following weekend, and during dinner became conscious that the Prince and Mrs. Simpson were on terms of easy familiarity. At one moment she “playfully slapped his hand.” Thelma, knowing his objection to such unconstrained behavior in public, gave her friend Wallis a look of reproof, which was returned with a “cold, defiant glance.” Thelma now understood the Prince’s new attitude to herself. She had a cold and he visited her bedroom that night to inquire if she wanted anything for it. She asked point-blank: “Darling, is it Wallis?” He became glacial and left the room.
Not long after this, in a mood of bravado, she spent an exciting holiday with Aly Khan, first in Spain, then in Paris, Deauville and other places. She enjoyed his lively company but her deeper emotions were not aroused. The war came, Duke’s son was killed, his daughter died, and at last Thelma heard that Duke himself was dead. In a changed world the twins, Gloria and Thelma, settled down in New York and started to sell perfumes, traveling about the States for the company they had formed: Parfums Jumelles. It was perhaps a pleasant change from the aroma of aristocracy and plutocracy in which they had lived between the wars.
CHAPTER 14—Professorial and Parliamentary
Caroline Slemmer and Sir Richard Jebb
Nancy Shaw and Lord Astor
It would not be easy to picture two careers with less resemblance to those of the four women sketched in the last chapter than the ones we now propose to outline. The subjects of this chapter exercised considerable influence in their spheres, became part of the professional fabric of their adopted countries, and were more remarkable as personalities than the men they married. Both were attractive, sprightly, and had a wide choice of husbands, but each married an essentially serious man, the first wishing to make a mark on the scholarship, the second on the politics, of his time.
Caroline Lane Reynolds, born at the end of 1840, was the daughter of a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, whose first wife had died, leaving him with six children, and whose second wife, Eleanor Evans, presented him with four, the last of whom was Caroline. Her parents were at Evansburg in Pennsylvania at the time of her birth, the clerical father being an amusing eccentric solely interested in himself; the mother a serious sympathetic person mostly interested in other people. The children were taught well by their parents, who must have been fairly strict because when Caroline damaged her arm while out sledding contrary to her mother’s wish, she maintained silence about the injury, which resulted in a slightly shortened limb.{34} As a result of their father’s early tuition, all the children did well at school, and Caroline did particularly well out of school, being surrounded by adorers while still in her early teens. One of them wanted to marry her when she was fourteen, and all of them were disappointed when at the age of sixteen she married Lieutenant Adam Jacoby Slemmer, aged twenty-seven, who after some active service was teaching at West Point. Following the birth of a boy within a year of their marriage, Addy, as she called him, was sent to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, and she began writing letters to her eldest sister Ellen, who had married a civil engineer in Philadelphia named Charles M. DuPuy. At first Caroline was quite contented with her lot, especially while they were in Charleston, but the constant moves were rather a nuisance, one of them being necessitated by the admiration of an officer and corresponding emotions in the breast of Caroline, which she honestly confessed to her husband.
Addy obtained a transfer to Pensacola in Florida, where time began to hang heavily on Caroline’s hands; so she started to have parties once a week, at which she provided wine and cake. After four years of married life she recognized that she and her husband had scarcely a taste in common and that they could never be really happy together. She would have liked a settled home, and going from one place to another was boring, particularly as the people at each new post were mere replicas of the people at the last post. But she cheered herself with the thought that her father was too far off to visit her. The Civil War was brewing, but for Caroline the Christmas of 1860 passed in gaiety, and it delighted her when she received more attentions from the officers at the dances than women she described as better-looking, more smartly dressed and more skilful than herself. Already disillusioned with life, she intended to make the most of whatever comfort came her way.
The officers at Pensacola knew that in the event of war the Southern forces intended to capture the naval yard. But they had received no clear instructions, and fighting had not yet started. So they held a council of war at Slemmer’s house to decide whether they should surrender the yard or defend it. They talked interminably, and Caroline listened patiently, no doubt supplying refreshments at intervals. At last her patience broke down and she stood up. “If you men won’t fire the first shot for our country’s flag, I will!” she proclaimed. This cut short their deliberations, and as they did not wish to be led by a modern Joan of Arc they agreed to hold Fort Pickens in the harbor, which proved of immense value in the future operations. They acted in the nick of time, for a few hours later a Southern party arrived to occupy the Fort and was received with bullets. Caroline did more than her share in the removal of stores, furniture, etc. to Fort Pickens, her “gallantry” receiving mention in Harper’s Weekly, and then left with her child for New York, where she read in a paper that she was “worthy to be the wife of an American soldier.”
She determined to earn this praise, and journeyed to Washington for a short talk with President Lincoln. Quantities of civilians had recently been enrolled and turned into officers without any military experience, and she thought that the least she could do for Addy was to see that he gained promotion in view of the military services he had already rendered, and the fact that as an officer in the regular army he ought not to have civilians promoted over his head. Consoling herself with the reflection that the President was, after all, merely a man, she entered his presence in the company of her brother-in-law. He was sitting at his desk and she took up a position near his chair. Wishing to put her case in the easiest and most friendly manner, she placed her hand on Abraham’s shoulder. Not displeased by an appeal from an attractive woman, he covered her hand with his own and listened to her appeal, which caused him to note down: List of officers I wish to remember when I make appointments for Officers of the Regular Army, the list including Lieut. Slemmer—his pretty wife says a Major or First Captain.
Slemmer became a major, but soon nearly died from typhoid. While he was getting over that disease his small boy died from another, diphtheria, and Caroline lost “the only thing in the world I had learned to love infinitely.” A little later Addy was wounded in the leg, declined to have it amputated, and recovered, becoming a Brigadier-General in March ‘63. True to her belief that one should make the most of life, Caroline moved from place to place increasing her number of admirers, seldom giving her husband a thought, and chiefly conscious of Herrick’s counsel:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying.
A dozen or more officers called to see her one evening in Cincin
nati, but whatever their intentions her relationship with these followers remained what is commonly called “innocent,” and she was horrified by the wartime immorality of society in Columbus, which she likened to the profligate Court of Louis XIV. For some months she did not feel well, but managed to attend plenty of parties. Clearly the conversation of officers left her unsatisfied, because at a dinner for ladies only she surrendered to the joys of singing, recitations of English and German poetry, and talk of a less restricted nature than would have been understood by “the weak minds of men.”
With the end of the war she rejoined her husband, and when Addy was given the command of a fort in Dakota she felt completely cut off from the civilized world, with sinister Indians lurking in the background. She attended a meeting to arrange a treaty with the Indians, at the conclusion of which she was expected to smoke a pipe of peace, but she managed to evade the difficulty by blowing the smoke out instead of drawing it in. Addy, a conscientious officer, traveled considerable distances for conferences with the Indians, and after one of them he was prostrated with fatigue. His heart gave out, and he died in his sleep aged thirty-nine.
Caroline was soon besieged with wooers, among them our old acquaintance “Commodore” Vanderbilt, who took her for several drives at Saratoga and made it clear that he wanted to marry someone much younger than his lately deceased wife. But his grandfatherly years were against him, and she abandoned him to a girl of suitable juvenility. Cornelius was followed by General Negley, another wealthy suitor, whose earlier relationships with women had been of a scandalous order, and Caroline turned him down because he had passed the age when a man might be expected to reform his habits. Next came a doctor, who destroyed his chances by speculating with a part of her money, and losing it.
Feeling in need of a change, she left for Europe in 1870 for a visit to her cousins, taking with her a letter of introduction written by General William Sherman to influential Americans in England, including J. L. Motley, the United States Minister. She suffered badly from seasickness on the way and wondered why anyone could voluntarily brave the ocean with the prospect of such a horrible visitation. Having taken a look at London, Switzerland and France, she stayed for some time at Cambridge with her Cousin Jeanette who had married Robert Potts, a well-known private tutor, solely for the purpose of giving her brothers a university education. Caroline soon got to know the scholastic bigwigs and came to the conclusion that they lacked robustness, living in a remote world of their own, divorced from reality, full of knowledge but empty of sense. Still, many were charming and she did not lack admirers, both young and old, who flocked round her and flattered her vanity with courtly attentions. One of the younger men, Arnold Morley, appealed to her, but when he proposed marriage she felt compelled to tell him that, though she might look twenty, she was really eight years his senior, and further that the state of her health prevented her from having children. She had become so fond of him that it hurt her to say this, and she wanted to leave Cambridge because it reminded her of him.
Back in London for the early part of 1871, she came to a definite decision never to marry anyone, however rich or famous, except for love. At the age of thirty she knew her own mind and was not likely to be swept off her feet. Also she noticed that old men were more attracted to her than those of her own age. At all the parties in London she seemed to be the center of interest, partly because she was an American, but largely because she could talk vivaciously, and no doubt her striking personal appearance helped to keep the males hovering in her neighborhood. Presentation to the Queen failed to thrill her, and aristocratic society left her cold.
Returning to Cambridge for May Week, she had a warm welcome and several offers of marriage. Many years later someone asked her if it was true that she had received three proposals of marriage one evening in a particular house. “No,” she said, “two of them were in the garden.” Late in life she did her best to remember the number of offers she had received, and arrived at a total of 37, the last being made when she had reached the age of seventy-seven. But though she rejected several during this visit to Cambridge, which lasted three months, she kept her eyes open for possible matrimonial candidates and noted that not a few of the younger females were pursuing the Vice-Chancellor, who, however, contrived to remain single.
One day her Cousin Jeanette received a note from a Fellow of Trinity College named Richard Claverhouse Jebb, who wanted to know whether Caroline would consider a proposal from him. He recognized that he hardly had a chance, but was anxious to feel certain on the point. Jeanette did not think it a hopeless case, and he wrote to Caroline, who much preferred the fifty-three-year-old Vice-Chancellor, John Power, to the thirty-year-old classical scholar Richard Jebb, and gave him short shrift. Actually it was an instance of love at first sight on his part and antipathy at first sight on hers. Though what he offered was agreeable enough, she stated positively that “I couldn’t have married him if he had been a King.” He persevered in his suit and she persevered in her refusals, telling him that the idea of love was repugnant to her and strongly advising him to forget all about it. She then left for America, where she was followed by his letters. He was not allowed to write about love, so he wrote on subjects more suitable to his position as Public Orator, though occasionally the banned subject received indirect reference, as when he reported a question put to him at dinner by an exuberant female with a hearty appetite: “Mr. Jebb, do you think that women ever die of a broken heart?” Gulping, he replied: “Perhaps other organs may have something to do with it.”
Yet the impersonal themes with which he dealt must have increased her interest in Cambridge, for three years later she was back again, and soon after her return Jebb asked her to marry him. She intended to reject him and leave for America before he could write or see her again. But the night preceding her departure she dreamt that her guardian angel warned her of the error she was about to commit and said that she would never regret seizing this opportunity. Taking no risks, the guardian angel must have made her oversleep, because she rose too late for her journey, and when the Public Orator appeared she said “Yes” or intimated with Victorian periphrasis that the answer was in the affirmative.
On August 18, 1874, they were married at Ellesmere in Shropshire, and she sent her sister a glowing account of her wedding dress, which was “of two very delicate and closely approaching shades of grey silk and anything lovelier than the result you never saw.” Dick, as she called him and we may follow her example, at once settled his life insurance of £2,000 on Cara, as he called her and we may do the same. He also abandoned his right to her property. Their honeymoon was spent at Llandudno and Killarney, where some of his relations lived, and whence she admitted in a letter to her sister that the marriage had perhaps been too hasty and that the thought of separation from her family made her heavyhearted.
Having settled down at Cambridge, she found that Dick drank a pint of sherry a day, to which she attributed his rheumatism and indigestion, and that he had no sense of money, spending it without remembering how it was spent. She decided to cure him of both defects, and did so without his being wholly conscious of her influence. She had humor as well as tact and was much amused by his amour propre, but careful to keep the diversion to herself. He possessed wit but no humor, and his quick temper irritated some of the other professors who disliked his sarcasms. One of them greatly enjoyed seeing him ride into the river on his tricycle; another remarked that “What time he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.” Shy by nature, he did not care for company, but was scrupulously well-dressed and would have liked to be an officer in the cavalry; instead of which he was a master of the classics and the leading Greek scholar of his time. Marriage greatly improved him, made him more genial and companionable, his devotion to Cara enabling her to develop his social qualities. Under her guidance economy was enforced and solvency achieved, prudence dictating all their expenditure.
Their first home was at 3 Pet
er’s Terrace, where she managed to get rid of her husband, who hated discomfort, while the house was being made habitable. Her description of a dinner to their friends gives us a good idea of Victorian appetites: soup, fillets of sole with lobster sauce, entrees (first timbales de foie gras, then sweetbreads stewed with mushrooms and truffles), leg of mutton, boiled turkey with oyster sauce, accompanied by potatoes, cauliflower and celery, roast duck with sauce, plum pudding, Charlotte Russe, cheese, dessert. While admitting the presence of red glasses for hock, and four small sherry decanters, she does not mention the names of the various wines, possibly because she did not care to think of Dick lapsing under their influence. She took great trouble over the decoration of the table, placing laurel leaves and artificial roses in the center of the épergne, blooming primulas in china pots on each side of it, the whole set off by dessert dishes filled with oranges, apples, grapes and candies. The success of the party was proved by the fact that the cabmen outside, weary of waiting, started to quarrel among themselves.
While Dick appeared at his best as a host, Cara made an admirable hostess, and she was soon the most popular woman in the social life of the university. She took an interest in all the movements and all the sports, even attending the spiritualistic séances which were held by Henry Sidgwick and Fred Myers, though she remained skeptical. Her vitality and vivacity were appreciated in the somnolent atmosphere generated by scholasticism, and she enlivened the place. But not for long. Scarcely had they made themselves at home when Dick was offered the Greek Chair at Glasgow University. He hated the thought of leaving Cambridge, where he had been for seventeen years, and took a long, mournful time to reach a decision. Having accepted the offer, he was miserable and wished to retract, but at last resolved to face it; and after his election they left Cambridge for Glasgow. At first they felt wretched and pined for the place where they had been content; but Cara kept encouraging Dick by saying that they would only be in Scotland for a short while, as he would obtain the Greek Professorship at Cambridge as soon as the then Professor, Dr. Kennedy, died or resigned. Had Dick known that Kennedy would remain in healthy occupation of the Chair for another fourteen years, he might have absorbed more than a pint of sherry a day.
Hesketh Pearson Page 23