Gone With the Windsors. Laurie Graham
would be a good thing or bad. I may drop a line to Randolph Putnam.
Gladys Trilling said blizzards are forecast for tomorrow. Pips said, “Friends of ours are going to Fort Belvedere for the weekend. I hope they’ll be able to get through.”
Prosper said, “Fort Belvedere! They’d be better off staying at home. Wales invites all kinds of nonentities. Get snowed in there, one could be sorry. Mediocre little house, too. The kind of place someone who’d done well in trade might go for.”
Birkenhead said, “Well, that’s Wales really. Small and mediocre.”
12th January 1933
Wally has borrowed a ruby choker from Pips. I’m not supposed to know. Cold, but no snow.
13th January 1933
To the Fergus Blythes. George Lightfoot came with a girl with a jutting jaw called Belinda, not at all pretty. Penelope Blythe says the Prince of Wales generally wears a kilt in the evening and keeps his cigarette case in his sporran. Lightfoot says he likes to embroider after dinner and could bore for England. Well, I’m sure that after a week of ceremonial splendor, all he craves is the quiet life. I just hope Wally remembers not to try too hard. She does so love to outshine everyone.
16th January 1933
Kettle had instructions to bring Wally and Ernest back here so I could hear all about their weekend, but he returned with an empty car, Ernest having business papers to attend to and Wally being in pain from her ulcers. That’s what comes of starving yourself into new dinner gowns.
I caught Ernest on the telephone. Wally was in bed and not to be disturbed.
He said, “We’ve had a thoroughly enjoyable time, but it would be indiscreet of me to say more.”
Pompous ass.
17th January 1933
Wally recovered enough to be lunching with Thelma Furness and Connie Thaw, but not to have called me, and not a word of thanks for the use of my car and driver. She said, “Well, of course we’re grateful, Maybell, but we didn’t ask for your car. You almost insisted on our taking it. But do stop sulking. I want to tell you all about our weekend.”
Tea tomorrow.
18th January 1933
Wally says Fort Belvedere is comfortable, full of good furniture, and generously hung with Canalettos, but lacking a woman’s touch, except in the love nest itself, where Thelma had been allowed a free hand with pink silk. Also that the Prince did wear a kilt to dinner and has good legs.
She said, “David’s very informal. He even mixes his own drinks.”
So already it’s “David.” She says she only refers to him as David. When she addresses him, she calls him “sir.”
She said, “He is the future king, Maybell. Never forget that.”
20th January 1933
Freddie Crosbie, Judson Erlanger, Fergus Blythe, and Whitlow Trilling have gone to Klosters, so Pips is giving a ski-widows lunch party. Do I think she should also invite Wally Simpson and Ida Coote? Well, ordinarily I’d say no, because Wally demands opinions of people and tries to belittle them with her grasp of current affairs, and the only thing Ida brings to the table is a love life peopled by freaks, but on this occasion, I think the case for two extra Americans is strong. Hattie Erlanger and Gladys Trilling can be so overbearing, braying on about people one neither knows nor cares about, ancient British families who’ve been lords of the manor since the Stone Age.
26th January 1933
Penelope Blythe and Ida Coote got along famously yesterday. They both have men on the brain. I ought to have thought of introducing them sooner. Wally sparred with Gladys, each trying to outdo the other with inside information about the domestic arrangements of royalties.
Gladys says it’s a well-known fact that Prince George is a drug fiend and Wales is only interested in clothes, so it would be as well for the country if Bertie York is the next king, being a family man and practically a saint. Wally says Bertie York is reputed to snap like a rabid dog.
What a pity Violet was too busy to attend. I’m sure she could have given us character references on all of them.
5th February 1933
Tea at Carlton Gardens, where I was most surprised to find Flora, sent home from Hope House. She had apparently taken to lying on the floor and holding her breath until blue in the face, so the school nurse advised withdrawing her before she damaged her brain. Too late for that, I fear. The situation is to be reviewed after Easter.
Mr. Adolf Hitler has been hired as the new Chancellor of Germany. Melhuish says this can only be a good thing, because a properly run Germany is all that stands between us and world Communism. How worrying.
A delicious new cranberry nail polish from Elizabeth Arden.
6th February 1933
Lunch with Pips. She thinks getting in with Thelma and the Prince has turned Wally’s head. She said, “I can hear that brain of hers whirring away. I reckon she’s out to scalp herself a duke at the very least.”
I said, “What about Ernest?”
“Ernest?” she said. “Oh please!”
But Pips doesn’t know Wally like I do. All she ever wanted was to rise above that awful mother of hers, to settle down, and have nice things, and in his modest way, Ernest has made that possible. Now she’s making her contribution, using her wits and vivacity to carry them into higher circles. I find them a very well-suited couple. And as for snagging a duke! Wally has certain talents, but I feel entitled to say, as a friend who knows her better than any, beneath all that careful grooming she’s still far too coarse to be a duchess.
8th February 1933
A crisis at Bryanston Court. Ernest has gone to New York on business and left Wally seriously short. She says it’s all a silly mix-up, but her cook is threatening to quit and anyway, there’s the humiliation of it. She’s meant to be giving a dinner for Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof and her friends the Eugene Rothschilds, and what’s she supposed to do? Offer them bread and water? If she didn’t have me to turn to, she’d be in an impossible position. I’ve advanced her enough to pay the help and cover the butcher’s bill.
Randolph Putnam writes that I have nothing to fear from Franklin Roosevelt. He says Brumby Steel and Chemical has weathered the worst of things and is in good health, thanks to our Burma operations. He says my adventurous attitude to life has made him think of visiting London himself sometime. I do hope not.
I haven’t come all this way to see his shiny face beaming at me across a crowded Grill Room. I’ve written back immediately to warn him that London is wet and sooty.
Ten to dinner tonight. Philip Sassoon, Wally, Pips and Freddie Crosbie, Anne and Billy Belchester, Fergus and Penelope Blythe, George Lightfoot. As Wally will discover, she isn’t the only Baltimore belle who can fill a good table in London.
9th February 1933
My dining room looked superb last evening. Ivory candles, Brussels lace laid over a gold undercloth. Mushrooms on toast, saddle of lamb, nougat parfait. I could see Wally noting every detail. Wore my moss-green crepe de chine and amber beads. Wally gave her russet shantung another airing.
All the talk was of Mr. Hitler. Freddie says he’s the man to destroy the Communists, root and branch. George Lightfoot predicts