Laurie Graham - Gone With the Windsors

Tea tomorrow.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 the working man will rise up, but as Freddie says, with six million unemployed, the working man will do well to keep his nose to the grindstone. Wally said England has nothing to fear from German rearmament. It was the French and the Poles who appropriated all that German soil, so they’re the ones who’d better watch out. I noticed a little twitch in dear Philip’s cheek. He has tribes of French cousins. He said nothing, but I don’t think he took to Wally. I must make sure not to mix them in the future.

Belchester said if Adolf Hitler wants to reduce the number of men out of work, he can advise him exactly how to do it. One million can be set to paint the Black Forest white, one million can be sent to lay linoleum along the Polish corridor, and another million can busy themselves building a one-way railroad to Jerusalem. Much hilarity over this, but by my reckoning, that would still leave three million.

Philip was very quiet all evening. He pleaded a sore throat and left early. I believe he may be the kind of man who only sparkles in his own milieu.

Flora’s birthday. Her ninth. Gave her a silver-mounted hairbrush with her initials. Now someone needs to get her into the habit of using it. To a matinee performance of Giselle with Lightfoot, Doopie, and Flora. He’s Flora’s godfather, and Doopie is one of her godmothers, so he takes them to a ballet every year. Of course, if Doopie’s as deaf as they say she is, it seems rather a waste. Flora was in a very cheery mood and properly dressed, too, for a change, in a good wool dress and Mary Janes. There’s talk of a day school after Easter, but it’s to be sprung on her at the last moment. She quite stuck to my side all afternoon, one hand in mine, the other clutching her hairbrush. She said, “I wish you could be my other gobmother instead of Aunt Elsbeth.”

Have loaned Wally my sable. She’s going to Leicestershire, to Thelma Furness’s, and will surely freeze without a decent fur.

To the Florida Club with Judson and Hattie Erlanger and Pips and Freddie. Pips is wearing her hair and her skirts noticeably shorter. Freddie has told her she has the best legs in London. Who am I to rain on her parade. I do like her bob, however.

She said, “This Leicestershire jaunt is so typically Wally. She hates the countryside, she hates horses, but she’ll go and endure it because she just might meet someone useful. I’m telling you, she’s on the prowl for someone with a title.”