Gone With the Windsors

“Please don’t,” she said.

Another note under my door. HULO ARNT.

30th May 1932

Lunched with Pips and Wally at the Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly. I do feel a light touch is called for with mosaics, unless you’re decorating a temple of worship.

The girls were a little stiff with each other at first, but a bottle of hock wine soon got them talking about past times. Pips remembered something I’d quite forgotten: how Wally talked Homer Chute into masquerading as her cousin and picking her up from Oldfields in his Lagonda one Sunday. They were gone all day at the pleasure beach and Wally came back with a tintype portrait of herself sitting on Homer’s knee. Not that Pips was backward with the boys. She had more fraternity pins than any of us.

Wally says she doesn’t know how long she and Ernest will be in London but she’d really like to liven things up while she’s here, and leave her mark. Pips suggested costume parties, but she hasn’t seen Bryanston Court. It’s far too small for a crush. Anyway, Wally says unlimited drink is death to conversation. She prefers elegant little dinners where she can draw people out.

Wally believes the secret of success as a hostess is to mix important people with a sprinkling of interesting types from lower levels. Also, in the matter of food and presentation and entertainment to have the courage to season the expected with the unexpected. She says the King of England would be happy to come to dinner if he thought he might meet Mahatma Gandhi and be served a good, tasty hamburger on a Minton plate. Pips says Mahatma Gandhi doesn’t eat hamburger.

After lunch, Wally took us to see an adorable gramophone she’d found in Wigmore Street, completely portable, in a lizard-skin case. I couldn’t resist. But I’ve entrusted it to Wally, because if I bring it to Carlton Gardens, Flora will expect to play with it and it will soon be broken.

Pips was on the telephone the instant I got home. She said, “Minnehaha’s as slow as ever to pick up a check, I see. And I hope you’re not going to buy her every toy in the store. You’re too generous, Maybell. Always were.”

Well, what’s a little money between friends? And I’m only lending her my gramophone.

2nd June 1932

Shopping with Wally. Ernest seems to keep her on a very strict allowance and goes through the account books at the end of each month. Thank heavens Brumby was never so particular.

Flora sitting on the stairs watching for my return. She announced that she’d been making “gakes” and had one saved for me up in the nursery, but I was too exhausted to climb more stairs. I said, “I’ll come tomorrow.”

A hammering on my door five minutes later, and there she stood, with a lump of warm gray dough in a paper case.

Tonight dinner with Violet and Melhuish’s friends, the Belchesters, who can’t wait to know me.

3rd June 1932

Anne Belchester’s busybodying and charitable works make Violet look like a positive lady of leisure. She wanted to know about my Baltimore committees, but I told her, it isn’t everyone who’s suited to committees. There are talkers and there are doers, and I’m a doer. All that time spent shuffling papers and drinking tea. I’d sooner sign a check.

Billy Belchester said, “Careful now, Maybell. You’ll have writer’s cramp by the time Anne’s finished with you!”

Melhuish said, “Violet gives her time, that’s the thing, and her expertise. All the money in the world is no use if it’s not wisely marshaled, and the thing about Vee is, she’s terribly good with lists.”

Anne Belchester said, “She is. She sometimes mislays them, but when they come to hand, they’re absolutely first-rate.”

Oh well, glory in the highest to Violet and her lists. I do my bit. I sort through my closets every fall and give to Christmas Goodwill. Quality woolens, shoes hardly worn, hats that aren’t keepers. I just don’t make a fuss about it.

Pips is getting up a party to go to Ciro’s tomorrow night. So far the Judson Erlangers and Wally and Ernest. Ida is an unknown.

5th June 1932

We closed Ciro’s last night. There was a wonderfully droll ensemble playing with homemade banjos. The Moses Jackson Coon Band! Judson and Hattie brought along the press attaché, Whitlow Trilling, and his wife, Gladys. Ida turned up with an Argentine who smelled of brilliantine. Ernest had business papers to peruse, so cried off at the last minute. No great loss. He’s so serious. People don’t always want to be discussing Pluto’s Republic.

According to Whitlow, a new First Secretary just arrived, and it’s someone Wally knows from her Navy days in San Diego. Benny Thaw.

Pips said, “Is he an old flame?”

Wally says absolutely not, but she’s going to look him up.

The birds were singing as I arrived home, so I looked forward to a restful day in bed, but Wally was on the telephone at ten, slave-driving me to go shopping for lingerie, and then a military parade started up. Violet says it was the Major General’s Review. Men and horses tramping across Horse Guards’ Parade. Drums, bugles, shouting, all bad enough in themselves, but Doopie and Flora came back from watching and proceeded to reenact it in the corridor outside my room. Doopie always did get overexcited by military bands.

Violet is walking around with a furrowed brow, because the Rutlands are dining tonight, all the way from their castle in the country, also the terrifically von Bismarcks, but someone has chucked, leaving her with thirteen, and I’m far too tired to make up the numbers. I don’t have the strength to lift a soup spoon.

Caught my heel in the hem of my charcoal silk getting out of the car this morning, and there is apparently no girl among the overfed rabble of servants in this house who knows how to mend. Not one.

Light rain.

6th June 1932

I am completely recovered. Dr. Collis Browne’s soothing nerve linctus certainly lives up to its promises.

Now I’ve tried it I shall never be without it. And while I slept, Doopie has quite expertly repaired my ripped hem. I shall buy her a box of candy.

Wally on the phone first thing. She sent a message of welcome to Benny Thaw and he replied immediately with an invitation for drinks. She seemed particularly excited about his being married to Connie Morgan.

I said, “Do you know her?”

“No,” she said, “but I soon will. This should get the American scene here fizzing. Those Morgan girls all have money and style.”

Lunched with Pips, who says she doesn’t know anything about Connie Morgan, but what her sisters have is money and reputations. Gloria Morgan was married to Reggie Vanderbilt until he drank himself to death, and Thelma Morgan was Mrs. Bell Telephone but is now Lady Furness.

She said, “And we all know about her!” Then Ida turned up, raving about a miraculous new oxygenated face cream, and we somehow never got back to the subject of Thelma Furness and what it is we’re all supposed to know.

Took a tray of fruit fondants for Doopie.

Violet was out at her Distressed Pit. Flora knows the days of the week by her mother’s committees.

“Bunday, Pit Ponies, Doosday, Blood, Wesday, Falling Women and Not Forgottens.”

She was stuck for a minute with Thursday but Doopie helped her out. Something called “Lebbers.”

They seem to be great friends and have a most amusing sign-language they use from time to time. How simple their lives are! I have to dine with Lord and Lady Anglesey and Violet’s gruesome in-laws, while they can play with their dolls and have sugar sandwiches for tea. There is something enviable about the life of an imbecile.

Of course, Flora will never learn to speak clearly listening to Doopie’s version of things. I may take her in hand.

Violet finally came home at six.

I said, “Don’t you think Flora’s rather backward with her speaking? She just copies Doopie, you know?”

“Oh,” she said, “they’ll sort that out when she goes to school. They did Rory.”

I said, “Well I feel sorry for her. She never goes anywhere.”

Violet said, “What nonsense. Doopie takes her across to St. James’s Park. They walk to Duck Island almost every day. And she was invited to the Yorks for tea yesterday but would she get dressed?”