by Pamela Horn
101. Steinhart, Black Poachers, p. 133.
102. The Field, 7 July 1927.
103. Steinhart, Black Poachers, pp. 114 and 161.
104. ‘Introduction’ in Hoyle ed., Our Hunting Fathers, p. 23.
105. Country Life, 1 January 1921.
106. Country Life, 16 July 1921. The Field, 27 December 1928.
107. Country Life, 16 and 23 July 1921.
108. William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (Basingstoke and London, 2009), p. 220.
109. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 241.
110. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 225.
111. Shawcross, Queen Elisabeth, pp. 226–27.
112. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 231.
113. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, pp. 234–35.
114. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 242.
115. R. W. Hoyle, ‘Royalty and the diversity of Field Sports, c. 1840–c. 1981’ in Hoyle ed., Our Hunting Fathers, pp. 56 and 58.
116. Steinhart, Black Poachers, p. 126. Ziegler, King Edward VIII, p. 191.
117. Letter from C. W. Paine in The Field, 13 September 1928.
118. Steinhart, Black Poachers, pp. 126–27. Ziegler, King Edward VIII, pp. 190–91.
4 Social Rituals
1. Patrick Balfour, Society Racket. A Critical Survey of Modern Social Life (London, 1933), pp. 59–60.
2. Angela Lambert, 1939: The Last Season of Peace (London, 1989), p. 6.
3. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny (London, 1972), p. 237.
4. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (London, 1979), p. 237.
5. Daphne Fielding, Mercury Presides (London, 1954), p. 133.
6. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, p. 207.
7. Janet Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten. A Life of Her Own (London, 1992 edn), pp. 161, 165–69 and 185–86.
8. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 209 and 213.
9. John Grigg, Nancy Astor. Portrait of a Pioneer (London, 1980), p. 69.
10. Rosina Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen. My Friends in Service (London, 1976), p. 114.
11. Merlin Waterson ed., The Country House Remembered. Recollections of Life Between the Wars (London, 1985), p. 205. Soames, Clementine Churchill, pp. 236 and 238.
12. Waterson ed., The Country House Remembered, p. 208.
13. Selina Hastings, Nancy Mitford (London, 2002 edn), pp. 21–22.
14. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, p. 21.
15. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, p. 21. Jonathan Guinness with Catherine Guinness, The House of Mitford (London, 2004 edn), pp. 236 and 239–40. Unlike many other nurses, ‘Blor’, the Mitford nanny always supported the governesses and encouraged the children to do their work.
16. Lambert, 1939, pp. 37–38.
17. Loelia Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour (London, 1961), pp. 74–76.
18. Loelia Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 79.
19. Prospectus of North Foreland School for Girls in the Astor MSS. at MERL 1416/1/2/33.
20. Lady Astor to Miss Mary Wolseley-Lewis, 16 August 1922, in Astor MSS.1416/1/2/33.
21. Phyllis Astor’s School Report from North Foreland School, St Peter’s-in-Thanet, Summer Term 1924 in Astor MSS. at MERL, 1416/1/3/25. Mary Wolseley-Lewis to Lady Astor, 14 August 1922 in Astor MSS.1416/1/2/33.
22. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, pp. 35–36.
23. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, pp. 35–36. Guinness with Guinness, The House of Mitford, pp. 257–58.
24. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, pp. 37–38.
25. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, pp. 38–39.
26. Lambert, 1939, p. 43.
27. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, p. 39.
28. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 73–74.
29. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 74–82.
30. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 199. In a letter to Country Life, 22 March 1930, the Marquess of Tavistock also condemned ‘fagging’, not so much for its effect on the young fag, but because it taught a youth of seventeen or so, ‘already, perhaps, inclined to suffer from swelled head by reason of his athletic prowess,’ to regard privilege and power over younger and weaker people as a way of increasing his personal comfort and convenience, rather than ‘as a challenge to service and usefulness’.
31. Selina Hastings, Evelyn Waugh (London, 1995 edn), pp. 69–71.
32. Hastings, Evelyn Waugh, p. 81.
33. Hastings, Evelyn Waugh, p. 88.
34. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 105–106.
35. John Fothergill, An Innkeeper’s Diary (London, 1987 edn), pp. 49–51.
36. Waterson, ed., The Country House Remembered, p. 213.
37. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, pp. 96–97.
38. Frances Donaldson, Child of the Twenties (London, 1986 edn), pp. 79–80.
39. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 60.
40. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 98.
41. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 99–100. Hastings, Nancy Mitford, pp. 46 and 51–52.
42. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, p. 173.
43. Donaldson, Child of the Twenties, p. 80.
44. Waterson, ed., The Country House Remembered, pp. 58–59.
45. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, pp. 82 and 87.
46. Angela Lambert, 1939, pp. 159 and 203.
47. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 92–93 and 96.
48. Lambert, 1939, p. 154.
49. Anne de Courcy, 1939. The Last Season (London, 2003 edn), p. 25.
50. William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth: The Queen Mother (London, 2009). The duke had first proposed in February 1921. He did so again in March 1922. He was finally accepted in January 1923.
51. Lady Joan Verney to Lady Airlie, 18 January 1923 in Airlie MSS. at the British Library, Add.MSS.82763, f.42.
52. Lady Joan Verney to Lady Airlie, 24 January 1923 in Airlie MSS. Add.MSS.82763, f.50.
53. Helen Hardinge, Loyal to Three Kings. A Memoir of Alec Hardinge, Private Secretary to the Sovereign 1920–1943 (London, 1967), p. 30.
54. Hardinge, Loyal to Three Kings, pp. 32–33.
55. Hardinge, Loyal to Three Kings, pp. 39–40.
56. Helen Hardinge to her mother, Lady Milner, 5 September 1923 in Violet Milner MSS. VM.28 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
57. Lesley Lewis, The Private Life of a Country House 1912–39 (London & Sydney, 1982 edn), p. 12.
58. Lewis, The Private Life of a Country House, pp. 111–112.
59. Lewis, The Private Life of a Country House, pp. 114–115.
60. The Bystander, 24 April 1929.
61. Balfour, Society Racket, pp. 127–128.
62. Lambert, 1939, p. 203.
63. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 84–85.
64. Fielding, Mercury Presides, p. 86.
65. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 87–89.
66. Fielding, Mercury Presides, pp. 109 and 113–115.
67. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth: The Queen Mother, p. 101.
68. The Bystander, 28 May 1919. See also The Tatler, 4 June 1919.
69. The Bystander, 2 June 1926.
70. The Bystander, 29 May 1929.
71. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 89. Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation. Evelyn Waugh and His Friends (London and Boston, 1990 edn), p. 200.
72. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 98.
73. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth: The Queen Mother, p. 101. The Bystander, 28 April 1920.
74. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, pp. 105–106.
75. Hugo Vickers, Gladys Duchess of Marlborough (London, 1987 edn), pp. 187–188.
76. Astor MSS, 1416/1/2/42 at MERL, concerning the presentation of Lady Astor’s own daughter, Phyllis, and also that of a Miss D. Hart Davies and a Mrs Mitchell Graham.
77. Letters from Lady Astor’s private secretary to Molyneux, 29 and 30 March 1928, and from Molyneux to Lady Astor, 27 March and 5 April 1928. Also details of the expenditur
e with P. Louiseboulanger S. A., 18 April and 21 April 1928 in Astor MSS. 1416/1/2/43.
78. Lady Astor to Lord Irwin, 3 April 1928, in Astor MSS. 1416/1/2/46.
79. Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 244.
80. Richard Hough, Edwina Countess Mountbatten of Burma (London, 1985 edn), p. 106.
81. Morgan, Edwina Mountbatten, pp. 190, 196–7, 200 and 204.
82. Hough, Edwina Countess Mountbatten, p. 107.
83. Margerita Lady Howard de Walden, Pages from My Life (London, 1965), 208–211. Lambert, 1939, pp. 88–89.
84. Lambert, 1939, p. 89.
85. Balfour, Society Racket, pp. 57 and 134.
86. Anne de Courcy, Circe. The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry (London, 1992), pp. 143 and 146.
87. Susan Williams, Ladies of Influence. Women of the Elite in Interwar Britain (London, 2000), pp. 18–19.
88. Brian Masters, Great Hostesses (London, 1982), p. 50.
89. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 49.
90. Williams, Ladies of Influence, p. 20.
91. de Courcy, Circe, pp. 200 and 209–210.
92. Hamilton Diaries, Microfilm 20/1/5, entry for 23 February 1927, f.7, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Studies, King’s College Archives, London.
93. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 1.
94. Daphne Fielding, Emerald and Nancy. Lady Cunard and Her Daughter (London, 1968), p. 70.
95. Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (London, 1954), p. 317.
96. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 127.
97. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 119, 120–121 and 122. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 138.
98. Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood (London, 1976 edn), p. 193.
99. Diary of Margot Asquith 1917–1923, Microfilm X 15/7, entry for 11 November 1918, f.247 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Clark, Another Part, p. 193. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 125.
100. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 144–146.
101. Nancy Cunard, Black Man and White Ladyship, an Anniversary (privately published, 1931; a copy is in the British Library K.520.220), pp. 1–6.
102. Fielding, Emerald and Nancy, p. 108. According to Daphne Fielding, Emerald behaved ‘with the greatest dignity. “One can always forgive anyone who is ill,” was all she said.’ But she was naturally deeply wounded.
103. Fielding, Emerald and Nancy, pp. 85–86.
104. Beaton, The Glass of Fashion, p. 300. See also Georgina Howell, Vogue. Six Decades of Fashion (London, 1975), p. 66.
105. Beaton, The Glass of Fashion, p. 300 and Howell, Vogue, p. 66.
106. Fielding, Emerald and Nancy, p. 101.
107. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 115.
108. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 201–204 and 212.
109. Balfour, Society Racket, p. 136.
110. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 241.
111. Kirsty McLeod, A Passion for Friendship. Sibyl Colefax and Her Circle (London, 1991), p. 85.
112. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 86–87.
113. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 87.
114. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 95 and 97. Apparently the Countess of Pembroke disliked Maggie Greville so much and with such passion that she refused to have her at Wilton.
115. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 88.
116. Clark, Another Part of the Wood, p. 236.
117. Clark, Another Part of the Wood, p. 188. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 113.
118. See Michael Colefax’s account of his mother’s life, ‘Sibyl Colefax, 1874–1950’ in MS.Eng.c.3188, f. 2, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
119. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 153.
120. Fielding, Emerald and Nancy, pp. 101–102.
121. Masters, Great Hostesses, pp. 154 and 156.
122. McLeod, A Passion for Friendship, p. 27.
123. Michael Colefax, ‘Sibyl Colefax. A Human Catalyst’ in MS.Eng.c.3188, f.15 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
124. Lady Colefax to Bernard Berenson, 1918–45, letter undated, c. 1920 in Colefax MSS., MS.Eng.c.3176, f.7 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
125. Virginia Woolf to Grace Raverat, 1 May 1925 in Nigel Nicolson ed., A Change of Perspective. The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. III 1923–1928 (London, 1977), p. 181.
126. Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, 7 June 1926 in Nicolson ed., A Change of Perspective, p. 272.
127. McLeod, A Passion for Friendship, p. 93.
128. McLeod, A Passion for Friendship, p. 93.
129. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 166.
130. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 167.
131. Masters, Great Hostesses, p. 163.
132. Harold Nicolson to Lady Colefax, 12 April 1929, in Colefax MSS, MS.Eng.3166, f.76 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
133. Michael Colefax, ‘Sibyl Colefax. A Human Catalyst’, f.25.
134. Michael Colefax, ‘Sibyl Colefax, 1874–1950’, f.2.
5 Domestic Affairs and Breaking the Mould
1. Antiques Info, May/June 2012 and Bevis Hillier, Art Deco. A Design Handbook of the 20s and 30s (London, 1985 edn), pp. 13 and 82.
2. Stanley Jackson, The Savoy (London, 1964), pp. 70, 77 and 113.
3. Philip Ziegler, Diana Cooper (Harmondsworth, 1985 edn), pp. 141–142.
4. Mark Pottle, ed., Champion Redoubtable. The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter 1914–45 (London, 1998), p. 173. Lord Oxford’s cash problems led to some friends presenting him with a gift ‘in the form of financial provision for his future’. See The Times, 30 July 1927. His daughter found this deeply humiliating. Patrick Balfour, Society Racket. A Critical Survey of Modern Social Life (London, 1933), p. 138.
5. Lady Troubridge, The Book of Etiquette (London, 1926), pp. 2–3.
6. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour (London, 1961), p. 94.
7. Samuel Mullins and Gareth Griffiths, Cap and Apron. An Oral History of Domestic Service in the Shires, 1880–1950 (Leicester, 1986), p. 4.
8. Winterton Diary No. 23, entry for 30 November 1919. On the previous 17 February he noted that another servant, McGitheray, had given notice that morning, ‘I think probably in consequence of a sharp word that I used to him yesterday, but I am really rather glad of it as he is unsuited for my work.’
9. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 94.
10. Mrs Lily Milgate, ‘Memories of a Housemaid 1922–1930’, manuscript at Market Harborough Museum, O.R.37, written in 1983.
11. Mullins and Griffiths, Cap and Apron, p. 46.
12. Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Grace and Favour, p. 94.
13. Merlin Waterson ed., The Country House Remembered. Recollections of Life Between the Wars (London, Melbourne and Henley, 1985), pp. 197–198.
14. Rosina Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen. My Friends in Service (London, 1976), pp. 31–32 and 81.
15. Georgina Howell, Vogue. Six Decades of Fashion (London, 1975), p. 66. ‘Hutch’ was Leslie Hutchinson, a leading black cabaret star of the 1920s who had many female admirers among the social elite.
16. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, pp. 120–121.
17. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, pp. 122–123.
18. Kirsty McLeod, A Passion for Friendship. Sibyl Colefax and Her Circle (London, 1991), pp. 79–80.
19. Hugo Vickers, Gladys Duchess of Marlborough (London, 1987 edn), pp. 183, 185, 196, 204 and 223–4.
20. Vickers, Gladys Duchess of Marlborough, p. 223.
21. Helen Hardinge, Loyal to Three Kings. A Memoir of Alec Hardinge, Private Secretary to the Sovereign 1920–1943 (London, 1967), pp. 29 and 34.
22. Helen Hardinge to Lady Milner in Violet Milner MSS. at the Bodleian Library, MS.28, letter dated 11 September 1924.
23. Waterson, ed., The Country House Remembered, pp. 190–191.
24. Waterson, ed., The Country House Remembered, pp. 184–187.
25. Waterson, ed., The Country House Remembered, pp. 194–196.
26. Miss Irvine
to Mrs E. Ford in Astor MSS. 1416/1/2/168, 21 June 1937, at MERL.
27. Miss Irvine to William Camm in Astor MSS. 1416/1/2/42, 10 September 1928.
28. Lady Astor to William Camm in Astor MSS. 1416/1/2/42, 15 November 1928.
29. Michael Astor, Tribal Feeling (London, 1963), p. 63.
30. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (London, 1979), p. 232.
31. Soames, Clementine Churchill, pp. 230–231.
32. Deborah Devonshire, Wait for Me! Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister (London, 2010), pp. 27–28 and 63–64. Jessica Mitford, who was slightly older, remembered that when the family moved up to their Rutland Gate home in London, it resembled ‘the evacuation of a small army’, including the servants and ‘mountains of suitcases’. Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels (London, 1960 edn), pp. 49–50.
33. Lesley Lewis, The Private Life of a Country House (1912–1939) (London, 1982 edn), pp. 55 and 130.
34. Waterson ed., The Country House Remembered, p. 208
35. Quoted in Pamela Horn, My Ancestor was in Service (London, 2009), p. 6.
36. Mrs Lily Milgate, ‘Memories of a Housemaid 1922–1930’, manuscript at Market Harborough Museum.
37. ‘Recollections of a Kitchenmaid at Shugborough’, R.87.005 at Shugborough Hall Oral History Transcripts Archive, Staffordshire County Council.
38. ‘Recollections of an Under Stillroom Maid’, R.87.008 at Shugborough Hall Oral History Transcripts Archive.
39. Pamela Sambrook, The Country House Servant (Stroud, 1999), pp. 78–81.
40. Information from an Exhibition ‘From Parlourmaid to Peer: Life on Local Country Estates’ at St. Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, Lymington, 2012, and from Sarah Newman at the Museum, to whom my thanks are due.
41. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, p. 32.
42. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, pp. 56–57 and 61.
43. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, pp. 67–68 for Gordon Grimmett. Ernest King, The Green Baize Door (Bath, 1963), p. 42. King’s decision to be employed by Mrs de Wichfeld was taken because he wished to earn higher pay: ‘I wanted to break out into something entirely new to me, the world of the rich. Not the old rich but the new rich’.
44. Harrison, Gentlemen’s Gentlemen, pp. 79–81.
45. Diary of Lady Jean Hamilton, Microfilm 20/1/5 at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College Archives, London, entry for 5 April 1927.