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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?”

I said, “That’s because no one has taught her properly. She sees you running out to committee meetings, hair uncombed, egg yolk on your blouse. It’s no wonder she thinks she can go to tea parties in bloomers and a liberty bodice.”

“Maybell,” she said, “Will you please go and bathe. Salty and Elspeth are coming at seven.”

I said, “First tell me if you ever heard of Thelma Furness and if so, what’s her scandalous story?”

She made a great business of closing the door to the drawing room, then said,

“Lady Furness is a friend of the Prince of Wales, but not the kind we mention in front of the children. Why do you ask?”

I said, “No reason. Wally knows the husband of one of her sisters. She probably thinks this is going to be her entrée to royal circles. She’s as ambitious as ever. She keeps quizzing me about our connections with the throne.”

“Well,” she said, “first of all, you have no connections. Secondly, those who do have them never speak of them. And thirdly, I would say it’s a very steep climb from acquaintance with the husband of a certain person’s sister to meeting Royalties, too steep even for Minnehaha.”

Violet has always taken herself far too seriously.

She said, “I hope it goes without saying, Lady F. is never to be mentioned in this house. And Maybell, hot water costs money. Please don’t have your bath too deep.”

Chance would be a fine thing.

7th June 1932

Flora has renamed one of her dolls “Lady Furness” and has banished it to the back stairs. I grow fonder of the child.

9th June 1932

All the talk is of Race Week. Violet said someone called Lightfoot might be willing to escort me to the Guards’ luncheon tent, but I recognize crumbs when I see them falling from my sister’s table. Three times today she’s asked, “Are you sure you won’t let Ettie Desborough squeeze you in?” Guilt.

Wally says, without a white badge, Royal Ascot isn’t royal at all, so why bother? The white badge is the Open Sesame to the inner sanctum, the Royal Enclosure, but seemingly impossible to get unless one is on intimate terms with the Prince of Wales. So we may just ignore Ascot. We’ll borrow Ernest’s driver and go shopping for bibelots in forgotten backwaters.

12th June 1932

Wally and Ernest went to drinks with the Benny Thaws and met the unmentionable Thelma F. Wally says Connie and Thelma are both adorable and she’s meeting them for lunch on Monday. Pips says if they’re lunching with Wally, someone had better warn them to take along a fistful of their Morgan dollars.

Violet and Melhuish’s luggage has been taken to Windsor, not a great amount of it for three days of banquets and royal carriage rides. Wally says fashion is everything at Ascot, but I’m certain Violet hasn’t bought a single new gown. We might have had such fun shopping together, but no. She didn’t even ask my advice about hats. Wally would have been much more fun as a sister.

13th June 1932

Violet and Melhuish left after lunch for Windsor. Ida Coote has been angling to stay with me while they’re out of town. She seems to have become some kind of nomad since she lost her money, always offering to air people’s villas or walk their dogs. She said, “You won’t want to be alone in that great big house, all those empty rooms, all those portraits with eyes that follow you.” But I’m not going to be alone. I shall have Violet’s staff to lick into shape. Anyway, Ida has only two topics of conversation: Ida and men. It’s all right for the occasional lunch, but a slumber party would be unendurable.

More rain. To Gamages for overshoes, then home for a nursery tea. Jello, grilled cheese, and gingerbread. Afterwards, we played at Royal Ascot, with dolls strapped to Ulick’s spaniel and Melhuish’s little ratting dog.

Gave Flora an almost, almost empty scent bottle. She wanted to know if I was going to live with them forever!

14th June 1932

I’m a great hit with my niece, not least because I’ve decreed no fish will be served as long as I’m in command. I told her she could choose her favorite dinner, and she came down in her nightgown to deliver her demands: LAB SHOPS. SIRUB TART. GUSTARD.

I said, “Flora, wouldn’t you like to go to school?”

“No thank you,” she said.

I said, “Other little girls do.”

She said, “Lilibet York doesn’t.”

But Lilibet York is a princess. She’ll never need to use her brain the way we ordinary girls have to. At the very most, she might get called upon to be Queen, but only if they ran out of Kings. All highly unlikely.

A lot of huffing and puffing from the housekeeper over my menus. Flora’s choice tonight, then tomorrow a rib roast and ice cream.

She said, “I don’t know, madam. Her Ladyship didn’t say anything about specials. This kind of thing isn’t customary.”

I said, “I know it isn’t customary. That’s precisely why I’m ordering it.”

Such a fuss. All she has to do is telephone Harrold’s. They have everything.

“Carry on like this,” she said, half out of the door, “Her Ladyship won’t know the place when she gets back. We shall be all upside down with bilious attacks and overspending.”

I’ll deem it a failure if Violet doesn’t see a difference. I’ve already put a stop to the maid Trotman’s discussions. She now understands that if I say the tea is too strong I’m not inviting her to pour herself a cup to see whether she agrees. Give me a little longer and I’ll break that footman of breathing through his mouth.

Tomorrow with Wally to the rolling hills of Cotswoldshire and all those darling cottages with hairy roofs.

15th June 1932

A profitable day in Chipping Norton, a most characteristic town, pretty little stone row houses with windows you can look right into from the sidewalk, ancient hostelries, all haunted, I’m sure, and such sweet, simple country folk. They seemed to find us quite fascinating.

We got Wally a set of silver-plated vanity boxes, quite good enough for a guest room. Also a bone china compote dish, with the tiniest hairline crack, and a very pretty set of Victorian creamers. Bryanston Court is the kind of apartment that needs all the help it can get. It has no features. Wally’s done the best she can with her Chinese pieces, but the place still looks half-dressed. I suppose when Ernest got his divorce, the invalid wife was awarded all his good things.

Wally’s going to give a dinner for the Benny Thaws and invite Thelma Furness, too.

I can’t wait.

Doopie was in good form last evening, chatting away in that funny, snuffly style of hers. Flora seems to understand all of it. We looked through Doopie’s albums, pictures I’d quite forgotten. Mother and Father with baby Violet, posed beside a potted palm. Me in a little cotton pinafore, with Doopie in her crib. That would have been before she lost her mind. Several photographs of our Season, too. Pips and Violet setting off for Mary Kirk’s tea dance. Me, Pips, Violet, and Wally in our finery before the Bachelors’ Cotillion. What a production that was. Wally and I used to practice our one-step together. “I’ll be the man,” she’d say. Homer Chute had taught her the tango, too, but that was far too racy for the Baltimore Bachelors’.

It looked at first as though Wally wouldn’t be able to attend, because her uncle refused to help her out. He said it wasn’t seemly to be giving balls when young men were laying down their lives in Flanders. But then he relented and gave her a gown allowance, and she spent it all on one fabulous white satin. She reckoned she’d rather star at one important ball than blend with the masses at half a dozen.

Flora wanted to know why there were no pictures of Doopie going to a ball. I told her there was a war, and left it at that. I supposed having been cooped up with Doopie in that nursery all her life, she thinks of her as normal. I must say though, they both sat up so nicely and ate so daintily I’ve ordered dinner served in the dining room tonight.

16th June 1932

Unexpected company last evening. We were about to go into dinner when Melhuish’s friend, George Lightfoot, called in on his way back from Windsor.

He said, “I thought I’d look in on my favorite girls.” Flora clambered onto his knee immediately, so I offered him a sherry wine and he stayed to carve the beef. He’s a tall drink of water, rosy cheeks, tangled hair. He had a brother who was in the Grenadiers with Melhuish, lost at Passchendaele.

He said, “I would never have taken you and Violet for sisters, but you and Doopie, yes. I see a definite resemblance.” I don’t think so.

He said it was a criminal waste to eat such a fine-looking roast without a drop of wine, raced off to his cellars in South Audley Street, and came back with a bottle he described as “toothsome but sincere.” I don’t know that it was advisable to allow Doopie a glass, but afterwards she kept us quite entertained with her impersonations of Theda Bara and poor Fatty Arbuckle.

17th June 1932

Violet and Melhuish got back just as I was leaving to meet Pips for lunch. Flora came thundering down the stairs to greet them. “Mummy!” she said, “I’ve had a splendid time with Aunt Bayba. We had lab shops and ice cream and Doopie had red drink. Cook says she’s never seen such garryings-on in her life.”

“Not now, darling,” Violet said. “I have to talk to Lady Habberley about raffle tickets.”

Pips thinks Wally’s only inviting Thelma Furness to dinner in the hope she’ll bring the Prince of Wales, but I’m sure Wally knows that’s out of the question. Theirs is a very private affair.

Pips said, “I suppose having the Prince’s sweetie to dinner is still more than a little Cinderella like Wally ever dreamed of.”

Poor Wally, tarred for life, even by a friend like Pips. It’s not that there was anything particularly inferior about the Warfields. Her Uncle Sol had a very good house on Preston Street, and her Aunt Bessie is still well thought of. It was her mother who lowered the tone of things with one foolish marriage after another. Too many husbands and too much rouge. No wonder Wally’s so determined to start over and make something of herself.

Tonight to the Embassy Club with the Benny Thaws.

18th June 1932

Violet says what I had Smith spend on meat for two days would feed an African for a year. Ridiculous. I don’t believe Violet knows any Africans.

Interesting people at the Benny Thaws’ party last night. Boss and Ethel Croker from Michigan. Ethel was a Navy wife before she met Boss. She knew Wally from China. Somehow Ethel seemed more pleased to see Wally than Wally did to see Ethel.

20th June 1932

Wally’s birthday. I gave her a calfskin guest book and lunch at the Dorch. Ernest gave her a fountain pen. What a dull old stick he is.

We’ve been worked off our feet all afternoon planning her dinner party. There’s so much to do. The menu to be decided and the placement, new table linens and stemware to be purchased, conversational topics to be studied. Wally reads the newspapers cover to cover every day, and she’s skimmed through centuries of history and philosophy while having her hair done. She says one hardly ever needs to plod through an entire book.

21st June 1932

Lunch with Pips, who had invited along Ethel Croker, as she put it, “to help us join up a few more dots in Minnehaha’s Chinese period.”

Ethel’s nice. Overdressed and hair an unhappy shade of brass, but very sweet and chatty. Ethel was in Panama, waiting for a transport to Hong Kong. When she joined the ship, they berthed her with Wally, and they became friends.

She said, “God knows, you needed a friend. It was hell in a sardine can. Heat and storms and doughboys fighting with knives. Five weeks of it.”

She and Wally both got Navy quarters on Kowloon when they arrived.

She said, “She did try with Win Spencer, you know? She really did. I don’t know why, because he was a bastard. If I’d been her, I’d have left him. But then he left her, added insult to injury. She went off the deep end a bit after that. Man crazy. And travel crazy. I went with her on a trip to Shanghai, to take her mind off Win, but I couldn’t keep pace with her. I was a married woman, you know? There was a lot of talk about Wally. Still, it’s all a long time ago now.”

Ethel’s made a good marriage with Boss Croker. They say he’s Mr. Frozen Fish.

She said, “It’d be nice to catch up with Wally again. He seems all right, the new husband? A bit serious, but he doesn’t look like a drinker. I’ll bet he doesn’t hit her.”

Poor Wally. No wonder she grabbed Ernest when he came along.

She’s still a man short for Tuesday’s dinner. Pips says the obvious solution is to drop a lone woman, the prime candidate being me. She predicts Wally will ask me to fall on my sword, but I shall absolutely refuse. Given my outlay on guest towels from Liberty, the very least I’m owed is dinner with the fabled Lady Furness. If the situation is desperate, I’ll suggest George Lightfoot. He seemed to me the kind of man who could fit in anywhere.

23rd June 1932

Pips was quite wrong. Wally couldn’t care less about odd numbers.

She said, “This may be London, but aren’t we Americans, Maybell? Don’t we do things our own way? More women than men, so what? Anyhow, Nada Milford Haven is coming, and to all intents and purposes, she’s a man. It’s going to give my table a rather avant-garde complexion.”

One thing about Wally, she’s always made necessity the mother of invention.

The menu is now decided. We’re to have caviar, followed by grilled squab, iced camembert, and then strawberry sherbet. It remains to be seen though whether Ernest will cough up for caviar. He seems to keep Wally very short.

I said, “Well, if it doesn’t run to caviar, you can always serve soup.”

“Never,” she said. “Take it from me, Maybell, soup is the ruin of a good dinner.”

I’m quite agog to meet this Milford Haven person. I wonder whether she wears pants!

26th June 1932

Violet’s put out because she assumed I’d be free on Tuesday evening and now finds I’m engaged. The Nicholases of Greece and the Harewoods are dining. She said, “Now who am I going to pair with Lightfoot? I was depending on you. Surely, if it’s only Minnehaha, you can chuck?”

I have agreed to stay for one drink, provided Melhuish has his driver at the ready, engine ticking over, to whisk me to Bryanston Court. It’s like Baltimore all over again. Everyone wants me.

27th June 1932

A working lunch with Wally, putting the final touches. We’ll be eleven. An interesting number. She’s placing me between a decorator called MacMullen and a German commercial attaché. She promises me he speaks English.

Ernest telephone while I was there. I heard her say, “Of course we must. First impressions! There’s nothing worse than being offered caviar and then needing a magnifying glass to see it on your plate.”

I must say, when it came to paying, I was rather shocked at her lavishness. Beluga, sevruga, and ossetra! She calls it an overture of caviars, but I could hear Ernest worrying away at the other end.

“Ernest,” she barked, “Think of it as an investment in our future. Do you want to meet the Prince of Wales or not?”

Pips says she doesn’t eat caviar anyway, so there’s one economy that could have been made.

29th June 1932

Flora came hammering on my door at some unearthly hour, found me prostrated by migraine, and fetched Doopie to minister to me. Cold compresses and a draught of something pleasantly medicinal. Flora said it’s called Dog Hair.

Whatever it was, it made me sleep, and I woke restored. I think my headache must have been brought on by an unhappy mixture of beverages. A whiskey and soda with Violet and her guests, and then two deceptively strong Russian cocktails at Wally’s.

The dinner was a qualified success. I found the squab a little dry, but the sherbet was delicious and my linens and crystal looked superb. The German did speak English but seemed to find Thelma Furness so fascinating he omitted to turn between courses, and Freddie Crosbie became engrossed in conversation with Benny Thaw, which left me easy prey for Nada Milford Haven who was seated across the table. Wally says she’s not only a marchioness but also a Romanov. I can well believe it. She may have been wearing a gown but that didn’t prevent her foot from romanoving up and down between my knees.

Thelma Furness and her sister both have pale, pale complexions and wild black eyebrows. They’re exotic rather than pretty. The Prince of Wales can surely take his pick of the most beautiful women in the world, so he obviously has a taste for the unusual. They’re both very sweet though, and Thelma doesn’t at all trade on her special position. She has a child apparently. I wonder whose it is? Pips says Lord Furness stays in the south of France with a tootsie, so as to leave the field clear for the Prince.

Flora has been tiptoeing in and out, waiting for me to be awake enough to inspect a little story she wrote this morning. It was about a good aunt who buys candy and ice cream but then gets sent away by the bad aunts.

She said, “Daddy said you were a loose cannon. Why did he?”

That’s because I uttered the forbidden F word in the drawing room last evening.

Henry Harewood asked where I was off to in such a hurry, and I told him I was dining with Lady Furness. I only said it to provoke Violet. How was I to know Mary Harewood is the Prince of Wales’s sister? The Royalties can be so confusing with their multitude of names. She, being the daughter, the one and only, of the King and Queen, is the Princess Royal, but she married Lord Harewood and likes to use his name. Odd. I’m sure if I were the Princess Royal, nothing would part me from my title. She’s a homely little creature, too. Not my idea of a princess at all.

Rory and Ulick will be home from school on Friday.