Laurie Graham - Gone With the Windsors

Doopie trying to explain to me about the business with the smell in the drawing room. She kept saying, “Vora but a gibba unna share.”

That’s the thing about the deaf. Insist as Violet may that Doopie isn’t backward, she certainly can’t get the difference between “kipper” and “gibba,” and, I’m afraid to say, it has rubbed off seriously on Flora.

School can only be a good idea.

Melhuish said, “Peculiar thing to do. Waste of a fine smokie, too. Damned if I understand it. Never had any of that kind of carry-on with the boys.”

I am invited to Philip Sassoon’s birthday luncheon at Trent Park. The question is, what to buy the man who has everything.

George Lightfoot is also going to the Trent Park party. He always tries to find a bottle of some unusual and undrinkable liqueur by way of a gift, but he says Philip is very keen on ducks and suggests I think along those lines. No help at all. What does he propose I do? Go to St. James’s Park and capture a pair?

Lunch with Wally, Hattie Erlanger, and Gladys Trilling. When Gladys heard about my invitation to Trent Park, she said, “Oh, Sassoon! The Court Jew! They say he’s fabulously generous, and if you admire something in one of his houses, he’s more than likely to give it to you. They say Her Majesty’s done terribly well out of him.”

Wally said, “Then I think Maybell had better introduce us all.”

I shall do no such thing.

To the Army & Navy. Bought a doorstop fashioned from a mallard duck decoy, very pretty.

Trent Park is a dream. Acres of parkland, lakes, tree-lined avenues, and dozens of dusky servants who glide around silently and appear the very moment they’re needed. His sister, Sybil, attended, minus husband who was away at a tennis tournament. She looks haughty, very straight-backed, with iron-gray hair and rather hooded eyes, but she’s really very agreeable.

“Violet’s sister!” she said. “Of course! How very naughty of Violet not to have brought you to tea.”

The other guests were Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, a Polish piano player called Rubinstein plus wife, a Sassoon cousin from Paris, and two Italian airmen, with whom one could only gesticulate and offer the occasional “olé.”

We had oysters, flown up from Kent, and roast Guinea fowl dressed with home-grown oranges. In Hertfordshire! Then a blue cheese made on Sibyl’s estate in Norfolk and a plum pudding carried flaming and aloft by a six-foot Ethiopian in silk livery. Everything was perfect.

Lightfoot said, “Now will you please set the record straight. Maybell doesn’t believe you have stags with gilded antlers.”

Philip said, “Oh but I do, and if only it weren’t such a gray day, you’d see for yourself. I’ve trained them to note the position of the sun and waggle their heads accordingly. Syb believes animals should be left au naturel , but my stags are all trrragedians manqué . They’d have been deeply unhappy left naked on a moor.”

I’m sure he’s right. And I may not have seen the stags this time, but I did see his black swans. Very chic! I asked him how they were kept still long enough to dye their feathers, but he refused to say.

He loved his mallard doorstop and intends to place it at the entrance to his dressing room. Lightfoot took him a bottle of something made from roasted melon seeds.

To Harrold’s Lending Library to select my Christmas reading: Ethelda Bedford, Maysie Grieg, George Bertram Shaw, Alma Sioux Scarberry. Kettle had just carried them into the house when Violet telephoned. She said, “What is this nonsense I hear about you spending Christmas alone?”

I believe George Lightfoot may have said something. He didn’t at all like my plans for a solitary Christmas, I could tell. He’s so attentive. I think he may have a little pash for me.

I said, “I shall be perfectly fine. I was alone last year, except for being frog-marched to church by Randolph Putnam and receiving an unsolicited visit from Junior, and no doubt I shall be alone in the future.”

“Not as long as I draw breath,” she said. “You’ll come to Carlton Gardens and be taken out of yourself.”

The whole day in and out of the car and up and down in elevators, searching for gifts. I’m beginning to agree with Penelope Blythe: Christmas takes all the joy out of shopping and should really just be left to the lower classes.

For Ulick, a Tri-ang fort, for Rory an Erector Set, which I’m assured is the gift of choice for boys aged twelve, and for Flora, a Betty Boop tea service. Whisky for Melhuish, a gay jacquard scarf for Violet, to help modernize her look, and for Doopie, a copy of 301 Things for a Bright Girl to Do . She needs to be stretched.

To Bryanston Court for dinner. Came: Pips and Freddie Crosbie and the decorator Johnnie MacMullen, with a woman I took to be his mother, but who turned out to be the very unusual Lady Elsie Mendl. She was an actress but now does rooms for people like the Vanderbilts and the Fricks and is apparently ruthlessly strict with her clients. If Elsie Mendl dictates you must have tobacco-brown walls, there is no gainsaying her.

Also came friends of Ernest, the Rickatson Hatts. He runs a news agency, of all things. Wally certainly keeps her pledge to seat interesting mixes around her table.

Pips says Elsie Mendl is an invert and only married Charlie Mendl for his title. If it’s true, I must say she hides her tendencies very well. She even paints her nails.

There were no hackney cabs to be had, so I gave Mr. and Mrs. Hatt a lift to Westbourne Terrace. They were shy about accepting, but as I told them, I’m aware of the punishing hours people in their business are obliged to keep. Melhuish’s Times is always on the breakfast table by eight o’clock.

Johnnie MacMullen is going to advise Wally on the remodeling of her apartment after Christmas. She says he’s hugely talented and has done Elsie Mendl’s homes from A to Z. Well, he’ll need to be hugely talented to make anything of Bryanston Court. I’d love to see her move somewhere with scope, but Ernest is such a stick in the mud.

She agrees with me that Mrs. Hatt is dull, but says she endures her because the husband is always good for whiling away an evening with Ernest. They often have macaroni cheese and peruse the Greek ancients, leaving her free to come dancing. The Hatts’ little shop is called Reuters, but Wally has no idea where it is.

A festive evening at the Benny Thaws. They had an adorable little chorale of children to sing us carols around the Christmas tree, American children from the compound, with proud deportment and straight teeth. It caused me a flicker of nostalgia for Sweet Air. Just a flicker.

Rory and Ulick are home from school.

Violet says luncheon will be served at twelve-thirty sharp on Christmas Day so the kitchen maids can get away to visit their mothers. It’s going to make for a very long afternoon, unless, of course, we’re expected to take our tea at three so the rest of the help can go gallivanting to Essex. I don’t know why I don’t just take us all to Claridge’s.

Violet says they always do things this way, it suits them very well and this is how children learn about their responsibilities to servants. Before the family meal is served, Melhuish goes below stairs to say a few words and carve the first slice of the servants’ goose, and this year Ulick will go with him, to see how it’s done. She says we can have tea whenever we choose, because Doopie will have charge of it, so as to allow Smith the rest of the day off.