When you tell me you had to find £1,500 and you cannot continue to do so, ought we not to retrench in other ways, like others are forced to do? [Irene suggested in August 1920]. We never go near Broadstairs and is not our [his daughters’] share of these and other houses very remote? Montacute we never go inside, Baba occasionally lives at Carlton House Terrace and Hackwood is only lived in for about two months. I know it is a sore point but I benefit little by these shares and can scarcely feel the places are homes. If things are so bad—forgive me for saying all this—ought not both sides to pull in?
As for the £545 and the £2,000 which was given for my dressing, hair, travel and charity, you know that £1,150 has gone on horses. You ask what has become of the other two thirds of my income, £1,332 approx. About £400 has gone on charity, as with that income I feel one ought to help others. £300 has gone on maids, travelling, hunting, stabling and all the extras in life. I spent over £100 on car and garage which ought not to be. My dressing this year comes to £400 as things are frightfully dear. I can meet these demands by so planning out my remaining moneys coming in but I cannot if I do not refund myself what I am owed.
If Grace had been at home, she might have persuaded Curzon that his daughter’s pleas were understandable. She frequently mediated between the girls and their father and, an inveterate spender herself, would have sympathized with Irene’s requests.
But Grace was again away, this time taking a mud-bath cure at Langenschwalbach in the Rhineland, on the advice of the Queen of the Belgians, as it was supposed to promote fertility. The cycle of pregnancy and miscarriage had continued for five years; Grace was now in her mid-forties and this was a last great effort to conceive an Earl of Kedleston. Her response to her husband’s complaints was to say that she did not presume to advise him—“I am full of confidence in my Boy”—and to ask him to find her a French maid who was a good hairdresser and a valet who “understood” hunting clothes for her son.
The cumulative effect of constant efforts to make her father disburse what was really hers had the effect that the lawyers had foreseen: Irene finally decided she had to take complete charge of her own money—and terminated the “allowance” arrangement.
By the beginning of 1921 Curzon’s lawyers, Taylor and Humbert, had received a letter from Irene’s solicitor explaining that Curzon still owed her nearly three thousand pounds. Though this was backed up with statements from the Leiter Trust, it drew forth a letter of rebuttal from Curzon, written with such emotion that it was almost indecipherable. In March, Irene’s solicitor replied crisply that Irene was fully within her rights to end the agreement and that the words “repudiated” and “violated” were therefore unjustified.
The fact remains [continued the lawyer] that for the first half of the current financial year Lord Curzon has received either £5,990 or £5,400—let us say the latter—out of his daughter’s income and out of it has paid her £1,000, leaving £4,000 clear in his hands.
Even after providing for the taxes on the £5,400, amounting in round figures on the rate of the whole year’s income to £2,700, there would still be a clear credit left in his hands for the six months only of £1,700.
Lady Irene states therefore that upon every ground, whether legal, equitable or moral, she cannot believe that her father will not carry out his agreement and obligation and pay to her the sum necessary to pay the taxes from the money received and retained by him between April and October 1920, for which taxes the Inland Revenue look to her primarily.
In that connection she would like me to point out that for the year for which the arrangement existed, the total remittances which her father received are as follows, from the Leiter estate, a total of £11,698 17s 6d, out of which his Lordship says he gave back £589 16s 3d.
Thus the total received by Lord Curzon amounts as you will see to a very large sum indeed—much larger than was ever contemplated when Lady Irene made the arrangement in October 1919.
Irene hoped that there would be an opportunity for reconciliation when her father was created a marquess (an expensive honor at £630 2s in fees and stamp duties, payable to the Home Office) in the King’s Birthday Honors on May 26, 1921. This elevation had first been mooted six months earlier when Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative opposition, told Curzon that Prime Minister David Lloyd George had proposed it as recognition of Curzon’s four years as leader of the House of Lords, member of the war cabinet and then foreign secretary. Telegrams and letters poured in, from Indian maharajas, from Belgium, from friends, from the Foreign Office—and from Irene, who wrote almost as a timid stranger.
“A timely line of congratulation and pleasure at your great honour. I would like you to think that as your daughter I was delighted for your sake and that you deserved it for all the work you do for England.” She signed it simply “Irene.”
This did not diminish Curzon’s hostility toward his eldest daughter. He now did his best to denude Irene of her share of the settlement income. He still had Cimmie’s; on her majority she had received her Leiter Trust money and when she married she had left her share of the settlement income with her father because she did not want to deprive him too suddenly of what he had been used to.
In June a long letter from Curzon’s lawyers went to the leading King’s Counsel, Dighton Pollock. After setting out the position, it said: “Lord Curzon considers that Lady Irene has behaved badly to him and in the exercise of the power given in the Settlement he has directed that the income of the Trust Funds over which he has power of appointment shall be applied to Lady Cynthia and Lady Alexandra. The effect of this direction is to increase the incomes of Lady Cynthia and Lady Alexandra and, according to the arrangements made, incidentally that of Lord Curzon.”
Cimmie had no intention of benefiting at the expense of her sister. Instead, at the urging of her husband, she too asked for the share of the settlement income that was rightfully hers—Tom had bought a newspaper in his constituency, Harrow, to publicize his speeches on Ireland (he deplored the use of the Black and Tans) and it had failed, incurring debts.
On September 21, 1921, Curzon reported to Grace that he had received an extraordinarily offensive letter from Cimmie:
She described my attitude, heaven knows why, as mean, petty, unwarrantable, unaccountable and incomprehensible. My daughters seem to go mad when a question of money is concerned and Cim is heading straight towards the same result as Irene, which indeed I suppose she desires.
That any daughter of mine should have written in such a vein I should have deemed incredible were it not that I have previously had the same from Irene. Humbert tells me they are hard up. They paid £8,000 for their Guildford home taking it out of settlement. I do not think there is any force in her legal claim but am going to take the lawyers’ advice, also whether I can make another redistribution to her detriment. I certainly would if I could.
Curzon was so anxious to do this that he requested his lawyers that same day to ask for Counsel’s immediate opinion on whether he could redirect his elder daughters’ share of the settlement income in favor of Baba—which would, of course, leave it in her father’s hands.
Counsel’s opinion was that he could not. Curzon’s reaction was immediate, and icy. “My dear Irene,” he wrote on September 21, 1921. “I will deal just as you did over the unjust bargain. You will then see what you deserve and be able to devote whatever sums you please to your pleasures, your charities and your hunting. Above all, you will be free from any interference from your father.”
A week later he received a letter from Irene written straight from the heart:
I wish to God the faults on both sides had not inevitably come to this ending but I want to try and hold on to the hope that now the cause of all our unhappiness has been removed the better things and the links we have between us may be able to appear and the love which I know at the bottom is there may cover up all the hurts and pains that have gone before.
I loathe quarrels and rows and their horrid consequ
ences and my actions may seem to you those of one who does not care and that I have none of the feelings of what home and my father are and ought to be. Deep down no one realises them more than me and I desperately want peace and friendship to reign between us in the future. May we forget all the things that have been said and my prayer is that out of this action of mine good may come and you will not feel that it is the severance of two people who can never get on together. No one wants that less than your Irene.
There was no reply. For a young woman of twenty-five to realize that she would never see her father again was a devastating psychological blow, especially in an era when single young women living on their own were virtually unknown. Irene was effectively orphaned, at an age when most of her contemporaries were either married or still had the secure emotional background of home.
Cim was to receive the same treatment. “The thing is certain,” wrote Curzon to Grace in October 1921. “The excellent Tom Mosley has been to see Humbert and in the same breath talks about the value he and Cim attach to paternal and filial relations. They mean to take the whole money and I think the best thing to do is to say Take it. I cannot stand the perpetual torrent of threats and abuse and insinuation.
“But I am going to write an account of my adumbration of what they call their money since their mother died and of what they have done to me. And there I will leave it.” Curzon, given to setting every aspect of his life down on paper, now wrote a note justifying his conduct, which he put among his papers, sending a copy to Cim. It is dated November 1, 1921.
When Irene took away the whole of her fortune I made no concealment of the fact that I intended to take advantage of a change in the Marriage Settlement which permitted of my altering the distribution of a portion of the income. This clause had been in the settlement the day before I married in 1895 on the intercession of my first wife in order to provide for the exact situation that has now arisen. Viz, the contingency of one or more of my future children of the marriage acting in the event of her death in a manner that would injuriously affect the position of the interests of their father.
When Cynthia married, I consulted my lawyer as to the propriety of asking her to leave a portion of the entire fortune now hers to assist her father, already embarrassed by the sudden withdrawal of the entire income of his eldest daughter. We made these arrangements with Cynthia and her lawyer that she should leave with me that portion of her income which had accrued from the Marriage Settlement, which was expected to amount to about £3,000 a year.
She even hinted at legal proceedings to be instituted by her sister or herself while protesting at any suspension of the affectionate relations that ought to reign between father and daughter. At the same time, although declaring her intention to carry out the obligations which she had accepted upon marriage, she indicated that circumstances might compel her to modify or terminate it, as in the present situation.
I am unwilling to continue any controversy on the matter. I would not willingly be again addressed in the language which Cynthia employed to me in her last letter and which I cannot forget. She must do as she pleases. A father does not with pleasure in any circumstance accept “an allowance”—the phrase she habitually employs—from his daughter, but he would sooner not accept it at all than know it is found grudgingly and with obvious regret.
It was the end of his relationship with his two eldest daughters.
8
Baba Comes Out
The year Baba came out, 1922, saw Curzon suffer one of his bitterest blows. On May 1 the new prime minister, Bonar Law, a sick man, set off on a sea voyage, leaving Curzon to deputize for him. It soon became clear that Bonar Law would not recover (cancer of the throat was diagnosed) and on Whit Sunday, May 20, he resigned.
Curzon appeared the obvious choice as successor. He was foreign secretary, an international figure and a much-respected statesman of superb intellect, with a bottomless capacity for work and flawless public integrity. Stanley Baldwin, although chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House, appeared to have little chance against Curzon. But Bonar Law gave no advice on his successor and the king turned to a former prime minister, Arthur (now Lord) Balfour.
Just as he had done fourteen years earlier when Curzon was seeking support for his election to a parliamentary constituency,* Balfour refused to support his old friend. This time he went further still, actively advising the king not to send for Curzon. For the first time, Labour was now the largest opposition party and there were no Labour peers. Balfour added that his uncle, Lord Salisbury, had found the greatest difficulty in governing from the House of Lords even though in his time the opposition party of Liberals had just as many peers as the Conservatives.
While the debating was going on, Curzon and Grace were spending the holiday weekend at Montacute (still without a telephone). It was one of their rare moments together: Grace had just returned from another of her numerous Paris visits. Late on the evening of Whit Monday the village policeman bicycled to the house with a telegram from the king’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, saying that he wanted to see Curzon the following day.
Curzon, like almost everyone, including the press, was convinced that Stamfordham’s summons was to tell him that he would be sent for by the king to form the next government. But when Lord Stamfordham entered the drawing room at Carlton House Terrace, where Curzon and Grace were waiting amid the tapestries and tigers’ heads, it was to say that the king had sent for Stanley Baldwin.
For Curzon it was the final crushing of his lifelong ambition. He could not restrain his sobs, and he felt unable to dine with Lord Farquhar the following night to meet the king. He wanted Grace to refuse too, but she told him they could not appear to sulk or seem resentful. The king sent for her to talk to after dinner and said at once: “I suppose Curzon wouldn’t come tonight because he didn’t want to meet me?” Grace answered truthfully that while Curzon was very hurt and disappointed, he was genuinely unwell. The king said he would send for him and tell him personally the reasons for the decision. This thoughtful gesture so mollified Curzon that within two days he had agreed to continue as foreign secretary and made a generous speech pledging loyalty to Baldwin.
Nevertheless, it was a deep and grievous wound that may well have contributed to his illness that spring—and which meant that he played no part in the coming out of his youngest and favorite daughter. He felt wretched and wrote pathetically to Gracie on May 15:
Went to your room and slept with my head at the foot of the bed so as to escape the early morning light through the shutter chinks, awake 11:30–2:30, took a mild chloral then for about two hours light sleep, the first for ten days.
Poor me. I have had a miserable morning. Leg spinning, back aching, involuntary bursts of tears. The chef gets worse daily and I will give him notice before the end of week. He has given us one ice three times in five days and chicken five days running . . . the doctor came this morning and I inquired eagerly what I had in my leg and the reply was thrombosis, phlebitis and lymphangitis! The right leg is more than two inches longer than the left. I have seen nobody so far as I have not felt up to it.
That season saw the return of the full-scale evening court for the first time since before the war. A ruling from Buckingham Palace stated that the trains of gowns were to be no more than two yards long instead of three so that they would trail at most eighteen inches along the ground. But the Prince of Wales feathers, the embroideries, the veils, the deep curtseys in front of a king and queen blazing with orders and diamonds, were back with a flourish.
At court balls men still wore knee breeches and black silk stockings (with thick black cotton ones underneath to hide their hairy legs) and left their swords in a pile outside the ballroom; at formal dinner parties they took women in to dinner, offering their right arms to do so. At the Curzons’ enormous dinner parties their butler stood just inside the drawing room door holding a silver tray on which were little folded cards bearing the names of the male guests: inside each w
as the name of the lady to be escorted to the table.
Grace took charge of her stepdaughter’s season with enthusiasm and skill. She suggested that Curzon should give Baba a sum of £200–250 to cover her clothes, and she offered to take her to buy them in Paris (where Baba had been at school for the previous year). It was the perfect pretext for one of Grace’s increasingly frequent visits to the French capital. For what Curzon did not know was that she had taken a lover, General Sir Matthew “Scatters” Wilson, and would often meet him at the Paris Ritz.
Scatters Wilson was a brave, genial, philandering Yorkshire baronet for whom any pretty woman was automatically a challenge. Robust, energetic, clubbable and fond of a joke, he was a sportsman who enjoyed hunting, big-game shooting, cricket and, especially, racing. When Gracie met him he was the Unionist MP for Bethnal Green—a seat he held, ironically, until the change of government that so shattered the man he had cuckolded. He himself was married to the eldest daughter of Lord Ribblesdale, the husband of Margot Asquith’s younger sister Charlotte (Charty) Tennant.
Scatters, born in 1875, had been educated at Harrow and served with the 10th Royal Hussars. In the Boer War of 1899 he won the King’s Medal with three clasps and the Queen’s Medal, also with three clasps, before being invalided home with enteric fever just before the war ended in 1902, after which his service continued first in India and then in England. He was exactly the sort of gallant, dashing, free-spending scamp who appealed to Gracie and he soon established a strong and ultimately disastrous influence over her.
Baba was presented by Grace at an evening court on June 7 to a king in the uniform of colonel in chief of the Life Guards and a queen in silver brocade, in a ceremony which began when the royal family entered the throne room at 9:30 p.m. precisely. A few weeks later, on Tuesday, July 18, Grace gave a dance for Baba at 1 Carlton House Terrace. It was a grand ball, with powdered, liveried footmen in attendance, lilies, roses, carnations and azaleas sent up from Hackwood and arranged in gilt baskets, women in tiaras and men in white waistcoats and black tailcoats—many of the more energetic dancers with a spare collar or two in their pocket.
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 8