Peter Stanford - Bronwen Astor - Her Life and Times

HER LIFE AND TIMES

Peter Stanford

To Mary Catherine Stanford

1921–1998

whose love and nurturing is behind

everything in my life and whose loss

will always be unbearable

Cover

Title Page Bronwen Astor HER LIFE AND TIMES Peter Stanford

Dedication Dedication Dedication Plan of Cliveden The Astrors Prelude: Cliveden, Berkshire, 1999 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Postscript: Tuesley Manor, Surrey, 1999 Source Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Praise Copyright About the Publisher To Mary Catherine Stanford 1921–1998 whose love and nurturing is behind everything in my life and whose loss will always be unbearable

Plan of Cliveden Plan of Cliveden Plan of Cliveden The Astrors Prelude: Cliveden, Berkshire, 1999 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Postscript: Tuesley Manor, Surrey, 1999 Source Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Praise Copyright About the Publisher

The Astrors The Astrors The Astrors Prelude: Cliveden, Berkshire, 1999 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Postscript: Tuesley Manor, Surrey, 1999 Source Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Praise Copyright About the Publisher

Prelude: Cliveden, Berkshire, 1999

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Postscript: Tuesley Manor, Surrey, 1999

Source Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Lady Astor’s back.’ In the silence of the main hall at Cliveden, now a hotel, this snippet of understairs gossip hangs for just a second in the air, then disappears before I can catch the intonation. Excited? Nervous? Indifferent? Puzzled? Simply reading the guest list for lunch? Does the cleaner, waitress or under-manager responsible for this sotto-voce broadcast even know which Lady Astor she is talking about?

Cliveden, this most famous – and twice this century notorious – of English stately homes, is today a shrine to its most celebrated inhabitant, Nancy, Lady Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the British Parliament. That was back in 1919, but in the timeless opulence of the wood-panelled hall decades and even centuries merge. In such a self-consciously impressive place, it is hardly a challenge to imagine the redoubtable Nancy sweeping in, all long skirts, fur collars and button boots, barking at her servants in the Virginian drawl that she never lost after almost a lifetime on the British side of the Atlantic, and greeting the houseguests assembled for one of the gatherings of what was mistakenly labelled the ‘Cliveden set’ of Nazi appeasers in the late 1930s.

Yet the Cliveden visitors’ book was far more eclectic than that. In the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s kings, prime ministers, world leaders and Hollywood stars came for the weekend to Cliveden to be entertained by this witty, sharp and unfailingly direct woman. Edward VII, Franklin Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin all fielded Nancy Astor’s barbs and bouquets over feasts in the ornate French dining room which once graced Madame de Pompadour’s chateau near Paris. Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to London in the 1930s, brought his brood to stay at Cliveden, linking across decades and thousands of miles one Camelot with another.

As if on cue, Lady Astor arrives. Not Nancy but Bronwen, her successor as mistress of this Palladian mansion which peers down imperiously from its hilltop over the Thames. As she comes through the main doors, she hesitates for a beat before she meets my eyes and walks over to the plush but anonymous hotel settee near the open fire. Later, when more relaxed, she admits that she had stopped in a lay-by near the main entrance to collect her thoughts and pray so that she could walk calmly into her old home. ‘I always used to do it before I lived here and was visiting – as a preparation to face my future mother-in-law.’

Nancy and Bronwen, both Lady Astors, overlapped for less than four years. Bronwen arrived in October 1960 as the third wife of Nancy’s son and heir, Bill. Nancy died in May 1964. Theirs was neither a long-lived nor a close friendship. They could hardly even be described as friends. Bronwen sought to placate her mother-in-law, who was unfailingly critical of everything she did. In her declining years Nancy was not the force she had once been, her wit extinguished and replaced by a certain brutality. Living mainly in London in exile from Cliveden, which she only visited by invitation, she grew bitter and resentful.

Bronwen’s treatment was not unique. Nancy had never been keen on any of her daughters-in-law: she resented them for usurping her place in the lives of her five sons. Strangely, for one whom history acclaims as a female pioneer, she took a perverse delight in making the lives of the women close to her a misery and virtually driving many of them to divorce. And she was particularly cruel to the women Bill, the third Viscount Astor, chose as her successors as chatelaines of Cliveden – though she did once grudgingly admit to her biographer Maurice Collis that Bronwen was ‘the best of the bunch’.

None of the other guests lounging in deep armchairs and sofas scattered around near the carved stone fireplace could have guessed from Bronwen’s demeanour that Cliveden had once been her home. Yet for all her self-effacement in the simple navy blue trouser suit she is wearing, there is an undeniable something about Bronwen Astor. Even in her late sixties, she still turns heads just as surely as she did when, in the 1950s, after a spell as a BB C television presenter, she became the public face of one of the most distinguished Parisian fashion houses.