The Glitter and the Gold Read online

  These varied activities in London, to me novel and interesting, but also somewhat of an effort, since I was always meeting strangers who had to be identified and classified, were followed by immense house parties at Blenheim for the week ends. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I was able to unravel the relationships of the families I was coming to know. I found her anecdotes at times more amusing than helpful. Once, for instance, when I consulted her about the best cheese to serve with port wine she told me of a dinner party at which she had had small bits of soap placed among real pieces of cheese. With tears of laughter still rolling down her cheeks she said, "Poor Mr. Hope was too polite to spit his out so he swallowed the soap and was violently sick, and, fancy, he never forgave me!" She was very fond of practical jokes—an ink pot tied over a door had at one time dropped its contents on my father-in-law's head as he opened it. There were other such exploits which, however, I was never tempted to follow in dealings with my husband.

  There were always from twenty-five to thirty guests at our week-end parties and they were all considerably older than myself, since it was judged advisable to invite members of the family and people of importance for our debut as hosts and for my introduction to English society. Although delighting in the companionship of brilliant men and agreeable women, the sustained effort of a perpetual round of entertaining was considerable. Marlborough had given me the supervision together with the financing of everything pertaining to the house, while reserving the administration of the estate for himself. Unfortunately he was more inclined to criticize than to instruct and I had to trust to observation to ensure the continuity established by past generations of English women.

  We would return to Blenheim Saturday mornings and our guests would follow in the late afternoon. By then I was inclined to resent the amount of trouble their impending visits had given me; for my round of the thirty guest rooms, accompanied by the housekeeper, was apt to reveal some overlooked contingency too late to be repaired; a talk with the chef more often disclosed an underling's minor delinquency; orders to the butler invariably revealed a spiteful desire to undermine the chef—a desire that, if realized, I knew would jeopardize the culinary success of my party. Menus had to be approved and rooms allotted to the various guests. I had, moreover, spent hours placing my guests for the three ceremonial meals they would partake with us, for the rules of precedence were then strictly adhered to, not only in seating arrangements but also for the procession into dinner. Since it was then considered ill-bred not to answer all letters oneself, I had no secretary. There was therefore a considerable amount of purely mechanical work to be done—dealing with correspondence, answering invitations, writing the dinner cards and other instructions which appear necessary to ensure the smooth progression of social amenities—which took up a great deal of my time.

  It was, I think, at my first big party that I carefully listed in their order of precedence the four earls who were to be our guests, and I believed I had given to each the status due to him. It was therefore a considerable surprise when one of them informed me that on the second evening I had not given him precedence over Lord B. as I should have done.

  I recall a visit to Althorp, the beautiful family seat of the Earl and Countess Spencer, when for four days, I sat next to my host at every meal and had as my other neighbor the Brazilian Minister, so strictly were the rules of precedence still adhered to in certain circles. Fortunately this custom gradually gave way to an arrangement permitting a discreet observance of the tastes and personal predilections of one's guests as more likely to stimulate conversation. On our visit to Althorp I was fortunate, for my host talked entertainingly of the politics and affairs of his day, and re-created a picture of a bygone generation. Lord Spencer, with his great red beard, his fine head and tall frame, looked even' inch a Saxon. He was descended from the Earl of Sunderland who had married the daughter of the first Duke of Marlborough, through whom the Churchills for generations were Spencers.

  As our guests arrived, on fine days I would receive them in the Italian garden where tea tables had been laid, and we would ramble through the pleasure grounds until time to dress for dinner. In the sumptuous splendor of the state bedrooms, where the walls were draped with beautiful tapestries depicting the battles of the Great Duke, it was strangely incongruous to see a washstand with its pitchers and basins prominently displayed against the heroic form of a dying horse or a fallen combatant. The round bathtub placed before the fire with its accompanying impedimenta of hot and cold water jugs, soap and sponge bowls, towels and mats always made me shudder as I ushered in my guests. It was not only their ugly intimacy that offended me. It was also the lack of bathrooms, which troubled my American sense of comfort and awakened stricken feelings toward my housemaids whose business it was to prepare something like thirty baths a day. But owing to my husband's dislike of innovations, it was not until my son succeeded to the dukedom that sufficient bathrooms were built.

  Dinner was an elaborate function. The seating arrangements, to which I have referred as causing me such endless research, were greatly facilitated when I discovered a Table of Precedence, and against the name of every Peer the number of his rank. I was glad to know my own number, for, after waiting at the door of the dining room for older women to pass through, I one day received a furious push from an irate Marchioness who loudly claimed that it was just as vulgar to hang back as to leave before one's turn.

  Our dinner table decked with a profusion of huge pink malmaisons was an impressive sight. We had adopted the French custom, also observed in the royal family, of sitting at the center of the table instead of at its ends, and a massive silver replica of the Duke of Marlborough on his horse after the Battle of Blenheim writing out the dispatch announcing his victory hid me from my husband. On the second evening a gilt service would adorn the table and it blended well with the soft mauve and white of a magnificent display of orchids from the hothouses built by Marlborough's father. We had a good chef but there had to be perfect co-operation with the butler in order to serve an eight-course dinner within the hour we had prescribed as the time limit. This was not an easy matter, since the kitchen was at least three hundred yards from the dining room. We had imposed this limit to prevent the prolonged delays that occur between courses. It also appeared to us sufficient time to linger over dinner, since the men spent an additional half hour over coffee and liqueurs. But such a schedule had at times its drawbacks and, at Lady Londonderry's, where the rule was most rigorously enforced, I once watched with amusement the silent but no less furious battle between a reputed gourmet who wished to eat every morsel of his large helping and a footman equally determined to remove his plate.

  Hostesses are prone to vagueness; this consideration rendered me no exception to the rule. When seated between two elderly noblemen who owed their rank to their ancestors rather than to any personal merit I found dinner interminably long and boring.

  Two soups, one hot and one cold, were served simultaneously. Then came two fish, again one hot and one cold, with accompanying sauces. I still remember my intense annoyance with a very greedy man who complained bitterly that both his favorite fish were being served and that he wished to eat both, so that I had to keep the service waiting while he consumed first the hot and then the cold, quite unperturbed at the delay he was causing. An entree was succeeded by a meat dish. Sometimes a sorbet preceded the game, which in the shooting season was varied, comprising grouse, partridge, pheasant, duck, woodcock and snipe. In the summer, when there was no game, we had quails from Egypt, fattened in Europe, and ortolans from France, which cost a fortune. An elaborate sweet followed, succeeded by a hot savory with which was drunk the port so comforting to English palates. The dinner ended with a succulent array of peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, strawberries, raspberries, pears and grapes, all grouped in generous pyramids among the flowers that adorned the table.

  At the end of the prescribed hour I rose to lead the ladies to the Long Library where Mr. Perkins, an organist of repute
, was playing Bach or Wagner. If our guests were younger an Austrian orchestra summoned from London played the Viennese waltzes which were then the rage. There were, however, evenings when a guest would dally over the fruit she had piled on her plate-impossible to make her hurry. At one of my first dinner parties, to my surprise I tound the ladies rising at a signal given by my husband's aunt, who was sitting next to him. Immediately aware of a concerted plan to establish her dominance, and warned by my neighbor Lord Chesterfield's exclamation, "Never have I seen anything so rude; don't move!" I nevertheless went to the door and meeting her, inquired in dulcet tones, "Are you ill, S.?" "111?" she shrilled; "no, certainly not, why should I be ill?" "There surely was no other excuse for your hasty exit," I said calmly. She had the grace to blush; the other women hid their smiles, and never again was I thus challenged!

  Sundays were interminably long for a hostess who had no games wherewith to entertain her guests. Golf and tennis had not yet become the vogue, nor would they have been played on the Lord's Day. Instead we trooped to Divine Service at Woodstock, and in the afternoon to evensong in the Chapel. Promenades were the fashionable pastime, and the number of tete-a-tete walks she could crowd into an afternoon became the criterion of a woman's social success. I have known some unattractive women, who, unfortunately for their peace of mind, were as vain as they were self-conscious, to prefer to spend an afternoon in their rooms, pleading a headache, than to acknowledge that they had not been invited to go for a walk. Sometimes I had to find a recalcitrant swain to accompany a fair lady. One never knew

  where one's duties as hostess would end. It was not astonishing that at the close of my first London season, ongoing to the seaside to recuperate, I slept for twenty-four hours without waking. We took a small house for the Ascot race meeting. Marlborough invited five of his friends to stay with us, which, with the thirty we had entertained at Blenheim the previous week end and the thirty more expected for the following Sunday, implied a terrific amount of work for the staff and a considerable strain for the hostess. The chef quite rightly claimed that he was overworked and he certainly made us pay for it by ordering quails at five shillings each and ortolans, which were even more expensive, and then serving them for breakfast, an extravagance so nouveau riche that I blushed with shame as well as with annoyance. But this was not the only blatant display that shocked me. The racecourse lay only fifty yards across the road from our house, but Marlborough had our coach and four sent on to Ascot simply so that he could drive onto the course. It was, moreover, a drive fraught with danger, since there was a sharp turn out of a narrow gate onto a main thoroughfare. A groom had to be sent ahead to hold up the traffic, and fresh horses over crowded roads provided a daily and unpleasant emotional experience.

  I found Ascot Week very tiring. After a long afternoon spent greeting acquaintances in the Royal Enclosure there were evening rides in Windsor Forest, which meant changing from diaphanous organdies into a habit and braiding one's hair into a tight bun.

  Fortunes were yearly spent on dresses selected as appropriate to a graduated scale of elegance which reached its climax on Thursday; for fashion decreed that one should reserve one's most sumptuous toilette for Gold Cup Day. Of course there was always the danger that it might rain that day. Meteorological prognostics were not at everyone's disposal and the English climate is proverbially as fickle as a woman's moods, and would sometimes provide an icy wind in midsummer. We spent our mornings donning various dresses in accordance with the vagaries of the weather, and by noon we were apt to be not only cross and tired but also probably attired in the wrong dress.

  Sometimes we were invited to lunch in the royal pavilion with the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Guards also provided an excellent meal in their Regimental Tent. The Royal Enclosure was so crowded one could hardly move about, but we walked to the paddock to see the horses saddled and then to our waiting coach better to view the races from its heights.

  It was during that summer of 1896 that I had the honor of being presented to Queen Victoria. The Lord Steward's invitation to dine and sleep at Windsor Castle arrived casually on a large printed card without an envelope. On the back of the card I read the following instruction:

  Should the Ladies or Gentlemen to whom Invitations are sent be out of Town, and not expected to return in time to obey the Queen's commands on the day the Invitations are for, the Cards are to be brought back.

  The reply to this Invitation to be addressed to the Master of the Household.

  One was barely given twenty-four hours' notice. As Queen Victoria was nearly eighty and had for years been a recluse, this honor was viewed as something of an ordeal. We traveled to Windsor by train, where we were met by a royal carriage and conducted to our apartment. Lady Edward Churchill, one of the Queen's ladies in waiting and a great-aunt of Marlborough, kindly came to instruct me on what I should have to do. She said that there would be but a few guests, and gave me strict injunctions only to speak when spoken to by the Queen and to limit my remarks to answers to hers, for only the Queen had the right to initiate a subject. On being presented I was to kiss the Queen's hand. Her Majesty would in turn imprint a kiss on my brow, which was the protocol for a peeress.

  Having heard so much about the Queen's terrifying personality, it was with some trepidation that I awaited her appearance before dinner. When eventually she came in, a little figure in somber black, I discovered to my dismay that she was so small that I almost had to kneel to touch her outstretched hand with my lips. My balance was precariously held as I curtsied low to receive her kiss upon my forehead, and a diamond crescent in my hair caused me anxiety lest I scratch out a royal eye.

  At dinner. Princess Henry of Battenberg, the Queen's youngest daughter, sat on her right; Lord Salisbury, her Prime Minister, with members of the household and ourselves made up the rest of the party. I had evidence during the evening of the happy relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister. His admiration for her character and her affection for him were seen in the deference and esteem their manner to each other indicated. The dinner itself was a most depressing function. Conversation was carried on in whispers, for the Queen's stern personality imposed restraint. After dinner we returned to the narrow and somber corridor where we had assembled, and I wondered why, with all the rooms the Castle possessed, we should be confined to this small passage. We were, in turn, conducted to where the Queen sat and she addressed a few words to each of us. I found it most embarrassing to stand in front of her while everyone listened to her kind inquiries about my reactions to my adopted country, which I answered as best I could. I was, moreover, haunted by the fear that I might not notice the little nod with which it was her habit to end an audience, having heard of an unfortunate person who, not knowing the protocol, had remained glued to the spot until ignominiously removed by a lord in waiting. It was only twice my privilege to meet Queen Victoria—for again in the following summer we were honored with a "dine and sleep" command. I confess to a feeling of discomfort on each occasion, her appearance was so severe and somber. It seemed to me that it was her deliberate intention to emphasize the dignity of her rank and person, and I felt that any warmth she might have possessed must have been buried with the Prince Consort.

  Marlborough was a staunch Conservative, and that summer of 1896 he staged a political demonstration at Blenheim to celebrate the union of the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives. Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain were the guests of honor. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Unionists, was at that time Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord Salisbury's government. I may remind my readers that, at the end of the eighties, he had broken away from Mr. Gladstone over the Home Rule for Ireland Bill and, with Lord Hartington and ninety-four Radical and Whig members, had joined the Conservative party as Liberal Unionists. It was chiefly due to Mr. Chamberlain's vigorous, ceaseless and unsparing opposition that Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill was defeated and it was Mr. Chamberlain's influence in the Unionist cabinet that broug
ht about such measures of social reform as the Workmen's Compensation Act. His tenure of the office of Colonial Secretary between 1895 and 1900 proved a turning point in the history of relations between the British Colonies and the mother country, for in spirit he was an imperial federationist.