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She came to Oldfields in 1911 and only because an uncle was paying for her. One didn’t expect a new girl to start throwing her weight around, especially a girl who was a charity case, but on her first day she warned everyone that although her given name was Bessie Wallis, she only answered to Wallis or Wally. I could see her point. Bessie’s more a name for a cow or a mammy.
But more often than not, we called her Minnehaha, because of her cheekbones and the way she braided her hair, and she quite liked it. She reckoned she was descended from Pocahontas, but then so do a lot of people. Pips Waldo and Mary Kirk and I were her main friends. Lucie Mallett was a hanger-on, but she never invited Wally to her home, because Mrs. Mallett knew all the dirt about Wally’s mother taking in boarders and wearing lip rouge, and the Malletts had very closed minds. But we Pattersons were raised differently.
‘Let me not judge my brother,’ Father always said.
Anyway, it was Lucie Mallett’s loss. Wally and I used to have such fun. Inventing pains so we could stay in and read fashion tips instead of playing basketball. Drinking ginger ale and eating butter cookies after lights out. I was always sorry we drifted out of touch. So, now she’s in London. Perhaps I’ll reconsider. It would be nice to see Pips. It might be interesting to pick up the threads with Judson Erlanger. And with Wally around livening things up, I think I could even endure a few weeks of dull old Violet.
15th April 1932
Dead crows nailed to the gate posts this morning and yesterday. I leave for England next week. And if Randolph Putnam is so anxious to be of service to me, he can arrange for the locks to be changed. I don’t want to come back and find Junior has taken possession of Sweet Air.
11th May 1932, Carlton Gardens, London
A whole month since I found the energy for my diary. Can there be anything more prostrating than travel. And my recovery is being made a thousand times harder by the chaos in Violet’s establishment. She and Melhuish had been in the country, so, when I arrived, the house in Carlton Gardens wasn’t properly aired and my bed was distinctly damp. I threatened to move to Claridge’s. Violet eventually asked a rebellious-looking domestic if she might find the time to fill a rubber bottle with hot water and rub it between my sheets, and seemed to think that addressed the problem. Said rubber bottle was finally delivered, with heavy sighs, an hour after I had fallen exhausted into my bed. If this house is anything to go by, England is on the very edge of revolution.
The good news is that the location seems to be the very best. Melhuish is handy for his clubs and the House of Lords, Buckingham Palace is practically in our backyard, so very convenient for Violet, who is thick as thieves with Their Majesties, and the shops of Bond Street are no great distance away. If I can only get my rooms heated, I think I’ll be suited.
Violet has grown stouter and probably hasn’t had her hair attended to since the day she left Baltimore. She clips it up, and she’s no sooner clipped it than it escapes. Melhuish’s hair, on the other hand, is now in the final stages of retreat. One thing I will say for Danforth Brumby, he kept a fine head of hair till the very last.
Of the children I have so far met only Flora. She is eight years old and has occasional lessons from a spinster who comes to the house whenever she can be spared by her sick relations. Otherwise the child seems to tag along with whatever Doopie is doing, which cannot be very much. They take each other for walks in St. James’s Park and make tiny coverlets for a dolls’ house. My arrival caused great excitement, and the child immediately showed signs of wishing to attach herself to me, so today I was forced to establish some rules. She is not to visit my room. She is not to lurk in doorways spying on me. She is not to play her drum within a country mile of me. One must start as one intends to go on.
As for Doopie, she never seems to age. She stared and stared at my face, then smiled and said, “Ids Bayba!” but I’m not convinced anything really registered with her. Violet credits her with understanding, but a person may smile in an aimless way without at all understanding whether there’s anything to smile about. Nora Sedley Cordle springs to mind.
I haven’t yet sighted the two boys. They are normally kept at a school called Pilgrims but are being allowed out tomorrow night for something called an exeat. Not on my account, I hope.
A sweet note of welcome waiting for me from Pips Waldo, now Crosbie. She and her husband, Freddie, are in Halkin Street, just off Belgrave Square. We lunch on Monday.
14th May 1932
Besieged. The house is filled with boys wearing hobnailed boots. They were brought down to the drawing room to meet me last evening. All Violet’s children have Melhuish’s carroty hair and freckled skin. Ulick is tall, I’d say, for twelve; Rory is like a skinned rabbit. According to Violet, he suffers from night terrors. According to one of the housemaids, who offers unsought opinions on everything while dust gathers in drifts inches deep, he sees “imaginings.” Well, all children are prone to imaginings, and the less intelligence they have the more susceptible they are. I remember I used only to have to snake my arm out of bed and set a rocking chair in unexplained motion for Violet to start howling, followed rapidly by Doopie.
Anyway, both boys shook me nicely by the hand and Ulick asked me how many acres I have at Sweet Air. Rory was gazing at me with his mouth open, Ulick nudged him in the ribs, and when he still stood catching flies, Ulick said, “And how was the crossing? Agreeable, I hope.”
Rory said, “You beast! I was going to ask that. You know I was. Now what shall I ask?” Quite droll.
But they’ve all been tramping overhead since the crack of nine and now, just as I thought I’d found peace in the morning room, Violet has appeared with her book of lists, and the child Flora has bounded in, draped in a tartan traveling rug. She says they’re playing Highland Clearances and she is It.
This evening, Violet and Melhuish are dining with the Bertie Yorks. He’s a brother of the Prince of Wales. Violet said, “I’ll have cook prepare you a tray. I hope you understand. It’s not the kind of dinner where one can arrive with an extra.”
Extra indeed! As if I’ve come to London to beg dinners from junior Royalties! I shall go to a movie theater with a box of candy.
15th May 1932
The boys Ulick and Rory were driven back to their school after luncheon, Rory sobbing pitifully when the moment came to leave, begging to be allowed to have lessons at home like Flora. Ulick was in a fury with him. He kept saying, “Stop it at once. Melhuishes don’t blub.”
Violet busied herself in the library with committee papers while he was being bundled into the car. She says he always cries, but once he’s back with his friends he soon cheers up. She said, “He’ll toughen up. And someday he’ll thank us for it. Imagine if a boy went into Officer Training still soft from home life.”
16th May 1932
Lunch with Pips Crosbie. She now has a red tint and bangs and looks adorably modern. She goes to Monsieur Jules in Bruton Street and is going to introduce me. Her husband, whom she can’t wait for me to meet, is in Parliament, a kind of congressman, I gather, but not in the same House as Melhuish. Freddie Crosbie had to get elected to his seat, whereas Melhuish has one simply because he’s Lord Melhuish. It has been warmed by Melhuish b-t-ms through the centuries.
Pips and Freddie seem to see quite a bit of Judson Erlanger.
She said, “As I recall, you had quite a pash for him.”
Pips is misremembering. Judson was the one who pursued me.
Another name from the past. Ida Coote is in town, living some kind of artistic life in a rooming house full of White Russians. Extraordinary. I hadn’t realized Russians came in any other color.
I don’t believe I’ve seen Ida since Gunpowder River Summer Camp. It must be twenty years. She was another unusual girl. I can’t wait.
Wally is now married to someone called Simpson, and I have her address from Pips. George Street. All I’ve been able to discover is that it’s in some kind of backwater north of Marble Arch and absolutely nobody lives there. Poor Wally.
Pips says they’ve seen each other in passing at several receptions, but so far they haven’t managed to get together for lunch. I sense Pips dragging her heels. She said, “I don’t know. Maybe the years have improved her, but didn’t you always find her rather mouthy?”
Actually, I liked that in her. I had the face and the figure, but Wally had the patter. We’d take a slow walk down to the Chesapeake tea rooms on a Sunday and collect ourselves quite an escort of good-looking Navy boys, in from Annapolis for the afternoon. We made a good team. Perhaps we will again. Me, Wally, Pips, Ida. At this rate, we belles of Baltimore will be taking over London.
Violet says Ida’s address is in West Kensington, which hardly counts as London. Also that she’d hesitate to classify Wally Warfield as a belle.
Tomorrow to Swan & Edgar for woolen camisoles.
18th May 1932
Swan & Edgar’s store knows nothing of customer service. They told me there was no demand for woolen camisoles at this time of year, when only two minutes earlier I had demanded them. They advised me that their next supply will arrive toward the end of August and asked would I care to leave my name and number. I said, “I see no point. I shall be dead of the cold.”
A long wait while Ida was fetched to the telephone by one of her Russians. She screamed for joy when she heard my voice. Lunch tomorrow.
19th May 1932
Treated Ida to the Dorchester. She has dyed her hair black and wears costume jewelry, having lost everything in the Crash, but seems very gay. She said, “Money’s a curse, Maybell. I’m a free spirit these days.”
Of course, I don’t know that Ida ever had that much money.
She’s taking me to the Argentine Embassy on Monday. She says attendance at one cocktail party begets invitations to ten more, so there’s no faster way to meet people and canapés also solve the question of dinner.
No call from Wally.
21st May 1932
To the Crosbies. Freddie Crosbie is very sweet in that dithering English way. He has no chin and makes only four hundred a year as Member of Parliament, but Pips obviously adores him. They must be very glad of her money.
The house is all beige and cream, what Pips calls “neutrals,” and is run in the modern style. There’s no withdrawing after dinner, which I very much applaud. I’ve never liked all that sitting around drinking tea, waiting for the men to finish their cigars.
The great shock of the evening was seeing Judson Erlanger after all these years. He never had what one could call chiseled features, but he did once have a certain amount of dash. Now he looks like a big, pink man in the moon and is married to Hattie, formerly Chandos, who has crooked teeth and a permanent wave and dukes in the family. Pips says Hattie’s people go back years. But surely everybody’s people go back years?
Still nothing from Wally. I begin to wonder whether Pips copied down the address correctly.
24th May 1932
How I missed Danforth Brumby last evening. Ida and I had no sooner arrived at the Argentines than she set off across the room in search of potato chips and left me at the mercy of a Latin with shiny hair and built-up shoes. What is one supposed to say to these people? Brumby would have struck up a conversation about silver mines or the price of beef, but I felt quite at a loss. Was finally rescued by an American press attaché called Whitlow Trilling, also married to an English girl. He knows Judson and Pips, but Wally’s name meant nothing to him. Perhaps this whole Wally business is a red herring.
Violet came in before I was dressed, wanting to discuss something called Royal Ascot. Ascot is a race track, and there’s a week of races there next month. I wouldn’t mind going. Brumby and I went to Saratoga once and it was quite fun.
Violet said, “Oh I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Maybell. Melhuish and I will be in the Royal party, you see? And I’m just not sure what best to do with you.”
I said, “You make me sound like a surplus chair. It’s very simple. I’ll join the Royal party, too.”
But she says that’s out of the question. That one cannot invite oneself along, nor even propose that one’s dearest sister, recently bereaved and newly arrived in a foreign land, be added to the invitation list.
She said, “Let me have a word with Lady Desborough. She’s always very sweet about accommodating an extra.”
That word “extra” again.
I said, “As a matter of fact, now I reconsider. I expect to be rather busy that week, so don’t give it another thought.”
She said, “Will you? Nobody’ll be in town, you know? But it’ll be a great weight off my mind. Their Majesties absolutely depend on us for Ascot, you see. Well, Melhuish has known them all his life.”
Violet never tires of displaying her tired old stock of claims to grandeur. How she met Melhuish when he was traveling with the Prince of Wales. How Melhuish’s father was equerry to two Kings, which as I understand it amounts to nothing more than being a royal errand boy. How Melhuish has known the Duchess of York since she was a baby in her bassinet.
She forgets how differently things might have turned out. If I hadn’t stayed home to represent us at Lucie Mallett’s wedding shower, I’d have been at Sulphur Springs myself. Who knows, I might have caught the Royal eye, never mind Donald Melhuish’s. Not that I’d have wanted either of them. They say that crowns are unbearably heavy to wear.
I notice anyway that the Prince of Wales seems to have dropped Melhuish. Violet says it’s not a question of “dropping.” She says friends grow apart when one of them becomes a family man and the other continues to run with a fast set.
I said, “I assume you’ll leave me with a cook at least, and a maid while you’re being indispensable to Their Majesties?”
She said, “I’ll leave you with everything but a driver. And you’ll have Flora and Doopie for company.”
So there it is. It doesn’t bother me. I’m sure Royalties must be death to the natural gaiety of friendship. Better to stay at home and be one’s true self, even if it does mean being left with a child to supervise, and an imbecile, and a staff of Bolshevik insurgents.
25th May 1932
Minnehaha at last! She said, “Maybell, you must think me such a slouch, but I’ve been sick. This is my first good day for a week.”
Stomach ulcers, apparently. I didn’t think she looked too bad, though. Still skinny, still parting her hair in the middle, still as tidy as a tinker. Little gray suit, white shirtwaist, good shoes. Her skin isn’t brilliant but then it never was.
Lunch was a riot, we had so much to talk about. She’s been married to Simpson for four years, his name is Ernest, and she’s never been happier. Of course, she said that when she married the aviator, but it was all far too hasty.
The first summer we were “out,” 1915, she got an invitation to visit a cousin who was stationed at Pensacola, Florida, and she was off like a shot. Wally always adored a uniform. The next thing we knew, she was back with a diamond on her finger, engaged to a lieutenant in the Aviation Corps. That was Win Spencer.
The wedding was at Christ Church, and I was supposed to be a bridesmaid, along with Mary Kirk, but then Grandma Patterson died and I had to go to the burying, so Lucie Mallett stepped in at short notice. I wasn’t altogether sorry. The gowns were yellow, which has never been my color, and our bouquets were snapdragons. Somehow whenever I see a snapdragon, I think of Wally.
We lost touch after that. I said, “You could have written.”
“Well,” she said, “it wouldn’t have made an edifying read. I knew the first week I’d made a mistake.”
I think the honeymoon comes as a shock to every bride. It was years before I felt able to enjoy the Pocono Mountains again. But with Win Spencer, there was the additional problem of drink. They went to a resort in West Virginia, which was dry, but apparently he’d thought to bring along his own supplies.
She said it was the stress of flying that had turned him to alcohol. It was the usual thing to toast the flag before anyone went up in one of those crates, but Win would always have a couple more shots, to settle the first one.
She sounds to have had a pretty good war though. He was posted to California and they say the beaches at Coronado are divine. Then he was sent to China, and she thought it’d be more fun to tag along than sit it out on Soapsuds Row with all the other Navy wives, so she followed him. There was never any stopping Wally. In fact, advising her against something only made her all the more set on doing it. Like the time she borrowed Nugent Wilson’s suit and crashed a Bachelors’ Club ball dressed as a buck.
She says China was a real adventure. Hong Kong, Shanghai. There was a war going on, people getting shot in the streets, heads appearing on pikes, and there was typhoid. She ended up in Peking, had an affair that didn’t work out, and then decided to call it a day with Win. He was drinking more than ever. She went back to the States, got a divorce, and was staying with Mary Kirk for a while, getting back on her feet, when she met Ernest, who has business interests in London. So here she is.
I said, “You never looked up Violet? She’s Lady Melhuish, you know, in Carlton Gardens?”
“Yes,” she said, “I know. But I don’t think Violet ever really approved of me, and these days she’s so grand. Frankly, I’m looking to create a livelier circle. I’m more interested in what people are than who their grandfathers were.”
I’m invited for Saturday. She says I’ll find Ernest very knowledgeable on wine and literature.
Loelia and Bendor Westminster to dinner at Carlton Gardens. She’s his third duchess and very young. They say she married him for his money. Poached salmon again. Violet might take time off from her committees one of these days to review her recipe book.
26th May 1932
Flora fell crossing the Mall, and came in crying. Even Doopie couldn’t soothe her. “Mummy, I crazed my knee,” she kept sobbing, but there was cold comfort to be had from Violet.
“Did you, darling?” she said. “Jolly good. Now off you skip. I have Fishermen’s Orphans this afternoon.”
Every day there’s something. Consumptives, Highland Crafts, Unmarried Mothers.
A note pushed under my door when I woke from my nap. HULO written in wax crayon. The poor child spends too much time around Doopie.
28th May 1932
Wally’s apartment is in Bryanston Court. A dull building in a dull street. Wally’s on the second floor with a cook, one live-in maid, a daily, and a driver for Ernest. A claustrophobic entrance hall filled with white flowers and ivory elephants. A modest drawing room, mahogany and striped silk mainly, but one glorious lacquered Chinese screen and a table full of gorgeous little jade doodads. All bought for a song, I’m sure. Her China years may be glossed over whenever Ernest is around, but she doesn’t make any effort to hide the booty.
Ernest came home at seven and presided over the drinks’ tray. He’s pleasant enough, dapper, a little too fat in the face to be handsome and he almost certainly dyes his mustache. To hear him speak, you’d take him for an Englishman. He showed me some of his first editions while Wally interfered in the kitchen. She always did love to cook. After her mother remarried, she’d often come home with me during vacation, and one time she took over our kitchen and made terrapin stew, because she heard Father saying it was his favorite dish in the whole world and nobody ever cooked it for him.
I reminded her about that. She laughed.
“Nineteen-twelve,” she said. “I can tell you exactly. After Mama moved to Atlantic City with that four-flusher.”
Her stepfather was a drinker and an idler called Rasin. Goodness knows what Mrs. Warfield saw in him. Wally used to say she prayed he was a seedless Rasin, because she was in no mood for any baby sisters and brothers. He was dead within two years anyway.
Ernest said, “You two certainly do go back a long way.”
Indeed we do. Back as far as her mother’s sad little boardinghouse, though I’d never dream of bringing up that kind of embarrassment now.
29th May 1932
Decided it was time to pick the brains of someone from the old crowd, so I placed a call to Lucie Mallett. Violet fretting in the background about expense, quite unable to understand why a letter wouldn’t do just as well. She knows I always pay my way. I just wanted to find out if Lucie knew anything about Ernest.
She said, “All I know is, Wally came back from China with her insides in some kind of disarray, crossed the state line to get a divorce, and wasted no time in helping herself to someone else’s husband. She met him at Mary Kirk’s.”
I said, “I know that. But who is he?”
“A nobody,” she said. “And he left a child and an invalid wife, just because Wally Warfield snapped her fingers. Scandalous.”
I said, “I’ll tell her you said hello.”
