The Mistress of Mayfair E-Book

Lyndsy Spence

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 410

Beschreibung

The plot could have been inspired by Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, but unlike Waugh's novel – which parodies the era of the 'Bright Young Things' – The Mistress of Mayfair is a real-life story of scandal, greed, corruption and promiscuity at the heart of 1920s and '30s high society, focusing on the wily, willful socialite Doris Delevingne and her doomed relationship with the gossip columnist Valentine Browne, Viscount Castlerosse. Marrying each other in pursuit of the finer things in life, their unlikely union was tempestuous from the off, rocked by affairs (with a whole host of society figures, including Cecil Beaton, Diana Mitford and Winston Churchill, amongst others) on both sides, and degenerated into one of London's bitterest, and most talked about, divorce battles. In this compelling new book, Lyndsy Spence follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into some of the mid twentieth century's most prominent figures.

Leseprobe

‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly,

‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

And I’ve a many curious things to show when you are there.’

‘Oh no, no,’ said the little Fly, ‘to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair

can ne’er come down again.’

Mary Howitt, The Spider and the Fly

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

All rights reserved

© Lyndsy Spence, 2016

The right of Lyndsy Spence to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB 978 0 7509 6965 9

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Doris Casts a Spell

2 Castlerosse is Summoned

3 Doris the Demi-mondaine

4 Castlerosse the Court Jester

5 Meeting at a Disadvantage

6 Lady Castlerosse

7 Doris Misbehaves

8 Old Habits

9 Beaten by Beaton

10 A Tangled Web

11 Playing to the Gallery

12 Doris Dreams of Stardom

13 A Last Resort

14 Out of Luck

15 The Jig is Up

Afterword

Notes

Select Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank the following individuals for their help and support during the writing of this book: my agent Robyn Drury at Diane Banks Associates; Mark Beynon at The History Press; Kathryn McKee at the Cambridge University Archives; John Brennan at the Winston Churchill Archives; Richard Ward at the Parliamentary Archives; Sarah Malcolm at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library; Will Cross for his various archived material and for his assistance with the Castlerosse divorce files at The National Archives; Sarah Williams for her help in navigating Ancestry.com; Cameron Leslie for his assistance with archived newspaper articles; Katja Anderson for her research assistance and information on Stephen ‘Laddie’ Sanford; Janet Morgan for her helpful insights on Edwina Mountbatten, Doris Delevingne and Laddie Sanford; Anna Thomasson for her insights on the relationship between Edith Olivier and Doris; Alexandra Eldin-Taylor for kindly looking up references to Lord Beaverbrook and Doris; Helen Tyrell for the information on her Homan relatives; Cameron Bryant for sharing information and archived material on his Delevingne relatives; Andy Brill for sharing information on his relative, Enid Lindeman; Sofka Zinovieff for her permission to reproduce the photograph of Doris at Faringdon; Stephen Kennedy for his photograph of Doris and Paulette Goddard; Andrew Budgell, Meems Ellenberg and Kay Schuckhart for their thoughtful suggestions.

INTRODUCTION

‘It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.’

Tallulah Bankhead

Little is documented about Doris Delevingne’s life. A fleeting presence in the biographies of others, her name is often associated with a scandalous anecdote or a witty aside. In the 1920s and ’30s she was a woman who lived at the centre of things, yet she formed almost no attachments and maintained no ties. What is known about Doris is often misquoted, misconstrued or misreported, and nobody can say for certain where a fact originated, only that it has escalated throughout the years and in the pages of various publications.

Therefore the trail that remains from a life, that was in every way a cautionary tale, is scarce. Unlike other socialites and scandalous figures of the twentieth century, Doris was discreet in print. She made no boasts of her liaisons and she committed herself to no one, not even on paper. Her letters to powerful men (Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook, for example) are locked away in archives, and they tell only one side of the story.

The most important man in her life was, undoubtedly, Valentine Edward Charles Browne, styled Viscount Castlerosse and exclusively known by his courtesy title. Although from different backgrounds, both Doris and Castlerosse found a kindred spirit in one another, and they were each motivated by money: their own and other people’s. To make sense of the connection they shared I have given Castlerosse his own two stand-alone chapters, as this book is very much his story too.

What we can be certain of is that Doris was unique. A nonconformist, she can neither be labelled a bluestocking, a flapper, a Bright Young Thing, or a bohemian. Her liberal attitude towards life, viewed as advanced in any era, was entirely her own. An ordinary girl who created a lifestyle of debauchery in pursuit of riches, she took life by the scruff of the neck and made no apologies for her outlook, or her behaviour.

In the last century her name was scattered like confetti, it appeared in the gossip columns at home and abroad, and it popped up in diaries and in letters – Cecil Beaton, Gerald Berners, Peter Watson and Edith Olivier, for instance, shared differing opinions of this demi-mondaine. She was photographed for Vogue, was painted by Winston Churchill and Sir John Lavery R.A., and she was the muse for Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat.

In today’s world, where past socialites and old-world aristocrats have been brought to life as subjects in numerous biographies, Doris has lain dormant. By examining the limited sources that exist and the company that she kept, I hope I have, in some way, brought her to life.

A note on the formal titles used: to avoid confusion between Doris’s friends who shared the same first names I have used formal titles to distinguish between the two: e.g. Lady Diana Cooper and Diana Guinness (later Mosley). Individuals such as Winston Churchill, Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) and Cecil Beaton are referred to by their last names, including several others who were otherwise more recognisable by their last name rather than their first.

A note on the values: I have used the Bank of England inflation calculator to give the value of money in today’s terms. Please see Notes for more information.

DORIS CASTS A SPELL

‘There’s nothing so dangerous as a headstrong girl who knows her own mind.’

Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

Nobody could have predicted the type of woman Doris Delevingne would become. A temptress who stirred up high society between the wars, she was as notorious for her love affairs as she was for her charm and gaiety. Her nondescript life began in October 1900 in Streatham, the south London borough of Lambeth, where she was born Jessie Doris Delevingne, the eldest child and only daughter of Edward Charles Delevingne and Jessie Marian née Homan. To avoid confusion with her mother, she would be known by her middle name, Doris. However, as she grew older, and bolder, she often listed her first name as the more elegant Jessica.

As the family’s prospects advanced so did their living arrangements, and the Delevingnes left their rented home on Streatham High Street for Copers Cope House, a former farmhouse built in the seventeenth century, in the affluent area of Beckenham which had once been farmland. A thriving middle-class suburb in south-east London, it was an employment hub for craftsmen, gardeners and servants, who were engaged as staff in the nearby Victorian townhouses. With its uninterrupted greenery and a view of the river, it was a refuge from the bustling city centre. The seaside donkeys from Southend were housed in empty fields and cattle grazed on the Yokohama field, a floodplain in winter used by the locals as a lake for boating. It was a comfortable lifestyle and one that Edward and Jessie had aspired to, and through his job as co-owner of a haberdashery1 shop which also dealt in fancy French goods, he was proud of his ability to provide for his family.

As Doris grew older, it was apparent that she was a clever child who was not only a competent conversationalist but had an ear for classical music, and such skills were encouraged by her parents. In an age when children were to be ‘seen and not heard’, and intelligence was considered unattractive in a woman, Edward and Jessie would have been viewed as forward-thinking by their encouragement of academic pursuits. Unlike her mother, who did not have the opportunity to complete her education, Doris attended a day school close to the family’s home on Southend Road. And, by her parents’ estimation, she would have gone on to higher education, but not university – for owing to the rules of the period, it was rare for a woman to sit exams and therefore they could not obtain the degree for the course they had studied. With the exception of the University of London, which, in 1880, boasted that four women were given degrees, women generally did not advance to degree status until the 1940s.

With this in mind, while Doris was given opportunities that were out of reach to many girls, it was marriage that her parents wished for her. A good marriage would have meant settling down with a middle-class young man, preferably with the means to support a wife and children, and perhaps a maid or a housekeeper. After all, through hard work and a principled life, Edward and Jessie had done well for themselves.

Social mobility and self-improvement were values which Edward held in esteem, so long as they were achieved through an honest day’s work. Born Edward Charles Delevingne in France in 1875, he was a British subject said to be descended from Belgian aristocracy. Tales of nobility were a distant myth – and one which Doris was particularly keen to propagate, and in later years it would attach itself to the family name – however, the French blood was authentic. After the untimely death of his mother, Camille (née Rubay), Edward had come to London with his father, Edward Sugden Delevingne, and his two younger brothers, George and Robert, where they lived in various tenements in and around Camberwell. His father established a haberdashery shop at 4 Hamsell Street in the East End, where he and his brothers would work in the future.2 Adapting to his new home, Edward became passionate about extolling the virtues of British life: he worked hard, he worshipped at the Church of England and, a frugal man in both his finances and recreation, his one and only hobby was chess; he was later appointed secretary of the London Chess Club.

When Edward met Jessie, she was living with her widowed mother and eldest brother, Arthur, in Lewisham. Since the death of their father, James Homan, at the age of 31, Arthur had abandoned his education to work as a woollen warehouseman to support the family. As the youngest of six children whose household was supported by James’s work as a successful carver and a dealer in fancy French goods, Jessie had known hardship and, as such, she believed in the virtues of leading a frugal life. The prospect of marriage to the 25-year-old Edward, now a self-made man heading his father’s business, was appealing and she accepted his proposal. His salary afforded them two servants and a lease on a Victorian townhouse on Fairmile Avenue, just off Streatham High Street, where Doris was born. Six years later, a son, Edward Dudley,3 completed the small family and, like Doris, his middle name was used to avoid confusion with his father.

As the years passed, Doris’s feelings towards her family became somewhat aloof: she was not close to her mother or father, but she had a good relationship with her brother, Dudley. The siblings shared a similar nature and aspired to a lifestyle greater than that of their parents and, as the years progressed, they would form friendships that afforded them entrée to high society. Such lack of familial ties might have been attributed to the break-up of her mother’s family – Doris did not know her maternal uncles, for Jessie’s three brothers, Charles, Walter and Sidney, had emigrated to Australia in their teens. Three of her grandparents were dead before she was born, and her maternal grandmother Edith Homan (née Hibberdine) had died when she was an infant, thus she did not have the opportunity to form a relationship with her. As well as having little in common with her parents, she could not relate to her extended family and their puritan outlook; her uncle, Walter Homan, in particular, was a religious man and an active member of the Anglican Church in Australia.4 Their ordinary lives, founded on their strong working-class origins and traditional views on family life – her maternal grandparents had married aged 15 and 18 – did not appeal to her. Perhaps it was the estrangement between Doris and her relatives, due to death and distance, that instilled in her a self-sufficient nature.

As she was descended from a long line of tradesmen, Doris thought it only natural that she would follow in their footsteps. This outlook did not endear her to society’s rules and, although it was not uncommon for a woman to pursue a career, it was frowned upon for a girl like Doris to possess the determination to do so. With her background and upbringing, any notions of wanting a job would have been quelled by marriage. It was the solution for many women, who had to work for a living out of necessity, and not because of fanciful ambition, as was the case with Doris.

Post-war attitudes towards working women had regressed and, after four years of running the country while men were fighting in the First World War, women were expected to surrender their jobs to returning soldiers. It was viewed as unpatriotic for a woman to take a job, even if she was qualified for it, and although unemployment benefits had been introduced through the National Insurance Act of 1911, women were not eligible for this benefit if they refused to take an available job in domestic service. There were jobs for women, in factories and in dressmaking – all considered ‘women’s work’ – but the hours were long and the pay was low. The Sex Disqualification Act of 1919 made it somewhat easier for girls like Doris to pursue higher education, and many became qualified teachers and nurses, or sought clerical work, but they were expected to resign from those jobs when they married.

Inspired by her father’s work ethic and ability to earn a living as a self-employed man, Doris chose to set up business in the rag trade.5 Drawing on her love of clothes and her dream of earning enough money to be independent, she began working from Edward’s premises on Hamsell Street. The area itself was popular with manufacturers, tradesmen and shopkeepers, but in the past it had been a controversial address given that it connected with Jewin Street, formerly known as Jews’ Garden because in the medieval period it was the only place in England where Jews could be buried. The rag trade itself was predominantly Jewish and it provoked a feeling of anti-Semitism. The trade thrived in the East End, Spitalfields in particular; Jewish immigrants turned their hand to sewing garments in cramped basements, and buying and selling clothing from the deceased, or the discarded seasonal wardrobes of rich people. When fever epidemics broke out, Jews from the rag trade were blamed for spreading disease through used clothing, and unflattering rumours of stealing clothes from hospitals and workhouses were rife.

But Doris overlooked where the clothing came from and the stigma it carried. She never cared much for scorn – could this have been an early lesson for her? – and she quickly realised there was a market for chic, second-hand clothing among women who longed to look sophisticated but lacked the funds to do so. Buying second-hand evening dresses became her niche, and she turned the West End into her business domain with a clientele made up of theatrical actresses and chorus girls. She would source the dresses and travel from Hamsell Street to whichever establishment her clients asked her to meet them at, and at her father’s haberdashery she could easily alter and mend the dresses to suit their tastes.

It was during this venture that Doris met Gertrude Lawrence, known as Gertie, a theatrical actress since childhood who had enjoyed minor success on the West End stage. The two women encountered one another during a period when Gertie was suffering a bout of lumbago which saw her out of work and, to make ends meet, she took any job she could find in the chorus. However, word got around that she was temperamental and difficult to manage, and the work never lasted long. Still, she was determined to look the part of a starlet, and she spent the little money she had on clothing, often getting into debt for the sake of vanity. And, given the circumstances in which they met, presumably it was Doris who provided the clothes.

Doris had never met anyone quite like Gertie before, and during her respectable upbringing in Beckenham it is doubtful that she would have come into contact with such a vibrant personality. With her dyed red hair, heavy make-up and bawdy language, Gertie had the artificial appearance of what those outside of her profession referred to as a tart.6 To the young Doris, however, this vision of artificial femininity was intoxicating, and Gertie, on her part, embodied the sort of woman she longed to be. She gave Doris a piece of advice that would stay with her all her life. It was very bad form to ask questions, she warned her. Of course, one might know certain facts about a person but, for the sake of nurturing a pretence, it was important that one should not act on what one assumed. In other words: it was all right to judge a person privately, but one should never speak of those judgements.

Doris was attracted by this philosophy; her own childhood7 had been a long, drawn-out age of boredom, and her parents, acutely aware of their own background, were desperate to make good and had obeyed society’s rules in the hope they came across as middle-class: a step up from their original, lowly origins. The two women were, in many ways, alike in spirit, and they found common ground in their striving for independence, whether it was obtained through one’s own merits or not. Despite their personalities being similar, from the beginning Gertie was much more open about her past whereas Doris appeared more enigmatic. This element of mystery may have been cultivated from Gertie’s original advice. For, despite the lifestyle Doris would come to lead and the scandal it evoked, she would always maintain an air of discretion.

Although only two years older than Doris, Gertie had already experienced struggles that were, at the time, foreign to her new friend. She was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen in 1898 in Newington, close to Elephant and Castle, and her early life was marred by her Danish father’s alcoholism and his inability to hold down a job as a bass singer. Her parents were to separate shortly after her birth, and she claimed she was sent to work at an early age; her first job was gnawing kippers’ heads in the gutter, and in her teens she earned money by dancing barefoot to a barrel organ on street corners. By the age of 17, she was working as an understudy in a West End revue, where she met her first husband, Francis Gordon Howley, a Blackpool dance director twenty years her senior. Prior to their swift marriage, she had been engaged to Philip Bateman, a young man serving in the barrage balloon corps. Gertie herself was never certain whether her only child, Pamela, was fathered by the barrage balloon boy or her husband. However, the marriage was short-lived and she returned to her mother’s home in Clapham with her baby in tow.

As their friendship developed, Doris and Gertie shared the mutual belief that their lives were in a slump. Doris, on her part, was beginning to find her career in the rag trade a bore, and she suffered the commute from Beckenham to Piccadilly every morning for a long day of selling clothes because she thought it would lead to greater things. Part of her resilience was formed from an unswerving self-belief, and throughout her life she would take charge of her life, and be mistress of her own fate. This would prove especially poignant in years to come. However, in the meantime, it was Gertie who took Doris under her wing and, as she negotiated this new lifestyle, she was content to live in her new friend’s shadow. For the time being, at least.

The more impulsive of the two, Gertie acted on their plans and, leaving her baby with her mother in Clapham, she found work performing in a cabaret at Murray’s, a new London nightclub on the banks of the Thames at Maidenhead. Owned by the impresario Jack May, the nightclub’s reputation was bolstered by its celebrity and royal patrons, though it was also renowned for its seedier attributes. Cocaine, it was said, was the main attraction. ‘It was slipped to you in packets, very quickly, when you coughed up the loot.’8 It was at Murray’s that Gertie caught the eye of the Duke of Kent and the Prince of Wales, but the royal brothers were nothing more than a passing flirtation. It was a former war hero and Household Cavalry officer named Captain Philip Astley, MC, who took the bait. Although it was Gertie whom he was interested in, Doris would inadvertently benefit from the affair, too.

The son of a wealthy clergyman, Philip Astley was born at Chequers, his family’s country house in Buckinghamshire, which was later given to the serving British Prime Minister as a weekend residence. His upbringing was a world away from Gertie’s and Doris’s: he was christened in the robes of Oliver Cromwell, and educated at Eton and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. And although his family knew of his preference for young women who were not of his class, his mother hoped he would not marry one. He had romanced an actress prior to meeting Gertie, and when he approached his mother to tell her of a predicament, she simply reached under her pillow and retrieved an envelope of pound notes. ‘I think you’ll find that will solve it,’ she told her son.

Although she did not realise it at the time, Doris’s life would change forever. Having taken a lease on a flat, paid for by Philip Astley, Gertie invited Doris to live with her. Given her friend’s dubious profession, her marital status and the fact she had abandoned her baby, Doris was hesitant about telling her parents the truth about Gertie. Their disapproval would not have been unfounded: it was an era when young women were expected to stay at home until they were married and, furthermore, her parents’ generation believed it was bad form for a young woman to kiss a man unless she intended to marry him.9 Naturally, she would not have told her parents that a rich man was funding Gertie’s lifestyle, and that she, too, would be taking advantage of his generosity. They were reluctant for Doris to leave home, and to her everlasting frustration they continued to keep a strict eye on her. Puritan in their outlook, they believed tennis parties were an exciting enough pastime for their 19-year-old daughter.

Leaving her parents’ home in sleepy Beckenham, Doris headed west of the Thames to begin her new life. The two-bedroom flat exceeded her expectations and, although small, it was located on Park Lane in the affluent area of Mayfair. The location, Gertie explained, was chosen for its close proximity to Hyde Park Barracks, where Philip Astley was stationed, and he could therefore organise their clandestine meetings at his own convenience. It was agreed that Doris would make herself scarce during his visits, but this hardly inconvenienced her, for the address was a spectator sport in itself and she spent such times observing her new neighbours. Surrounded by private mansions belonging to millionaires, dukes and princes, it was a world away from her Beckenham neighbours who prided themselves on being pillars of the community, and who ‘served the town in every possible way’. Around the corner, at 18 Clifford Street, was the Buck’s Club, a newly established gentleman’s club with a modern American bar where the Buck’s Fizz cocktail was said to have been invented. It attracted officers from the Household Cavalry and high-ranking politicians, including Winston Churchill, who, in years to come, would be a significant presence in her life.

Copers Cope House, Doris’s childhood home. Courtesy of Copers Cope Residents Association

In the summer of 1919, Gertie introduced Doris to Noel Coward, her childhood friend whom she had met when they both performed in The Goldfish, a children’s play staged at the Crystal Palace. Having been invalided out of the Artists Rifles because of headaches, vertigo and general nervous debility, Coward had reinvented himself as a playwright the year before. His new coterie included not only his show business friends from his days as an actor, but a literary set who were on the fringes of celebrity. One such friend was Michael Arlen, the Armenian author whose future novel, The Green Hat, was said to have been inspired by Doris. Aside from his connections which Doris thought useful, they were to become lifelong friends.

Sharing a similar background, they had both grown up in the London suburbs (Coward’s childhood had been spent in Teddington), and from an early age their talent had been encouraged by their mothers. But unlike Doris, he was brought up in genteel poverty due to his father’s lack of success as a piano salesman, and his mother was forced to take in lodgers to pay for his acting lessons. Their personalities were alike: capricious, witty and with an eye for imitation, they were entirely at home in the frivolous world of the upper classes as the 1920s began. On the eve of this new era, there would be room for charismatic individuals, regardless of their class, among the aristocracy. And, like Coward, Doris was determined to be the centre of attention.

In years to come, both Doris and Gertie would romanticise this period of their lives and, perhaps for her parents’ benefit, Doris claimed they lived a hand-to-mouth existence and that they shared one evening dress between them. Nothing could have been further from the truth, for Philip Astley was fixated on reinventing Gertie as a society lady, and he bought her an expensive wardrobe to ensure she would look the part.10 Doris, too, benefited from this new wardrobe and, dressed in their smart clothes, the two women would travel around London in Astley’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. It would inspire Doris to want more from her current situation. To Gertie, however, it fostered an inferiority complex which reminded her of her humble background, a source of shame, and she was eager to forget her mother and daughter, whom she had left behind in Clapham.

Far from ashamed of her own background, Doris would never hide the fact she had climbed the social ladder from the bottom rung, even if she did exploit the false story that she was descended from a noble branch of Belgian Delevingnes. She would downplay her family’s origins in trade and draw attention to her paternal grandmother, Camille Delevingne, who was born and raised in Paris. This, she thought, provided her with an element of chic which she felt was otherwise lacking in her ordinary family.

Having obscured the facts of her lineage, Doris then turned her attention to her physical appearance. Pale with flaxen hair, her face was set off by high cheekbones, deep-set blue eyes and a straight nose with flaring nostrils. She had thin lips which quivered when she spoke, revealing prominent white teeth with a small gap between the front ones. ‘I wouldn’t have them changed for anything, darling,’ she said of this aesthetic flaw, which the French called dents de la chance. ‘It shows I’m lucky and sexy … and how!’11

Settling any qualms Doris might have had about her looks, Gertie told her that a woman’s legs, and not her face, were her fortune. Believing Gertie entirely, Doris began to imitate her behaviour, and she too punctuated her conversation with expletives. Her voice, shrill in her youth, was described as ‘penetrating’, and it often took on a masculine pitch when she used what friends called her Thames bargee language. Although she had the appearance of an English rose, she appeared to be ‘a wild rose with considerate temperament and thorns which could draw blood’.12

The immediate aftermath of the First World War was, to many, a dangerous age. City centres were filled with rioting ex-servicemen who felt short-changed by the country whose freedom they had fought for; crime and unrest had increased due to striking police officers; and the British government was in turmoil over Irish Home Rule and the nation’s war debt. Established families harboured an uneasy feeling, prompted by the realisation that their position was not as secure as it had been before the war. It was this sense of upheaval that came to dominate society. The rise of the Labour Party was bringing the working classes and unemployed to the forefront of daily life, and the Liberal government’s imposed taxation on landed families swooped in and disturbed the privilege the aristocracy had once enjoyed. Society matrons clung to a dying sense of entitlement, appearing bejewelled during the season, but they sensed their power was dwindling. But, as with any form of disease and despair, society learned to live with the affliction it could not cure, and the ruling classes, even if they refused to conform, learned to adapt.

Post-war London came to be dominated by an influx of American millionaires who were attracted by cheap property and vacant business premises, which they saw as an easy investment. Viewed as vulgar by the old world aristocracy, American millionaires and trust-fund offspring were generous with their money and, given that they were not entirely welcomed by the old guard,13 they were open to mixing with women from lower classes. Doris, it would seem, was the sort of young woman rebellious aristocrats and playboys were attracted to. She was outspoken, opinionated and, as her confidence grew, badly behaved.

In an age when young debutantes were launched on the social scene as prey for gentlemen seeking a wife, Doris took on the role of predator. Her hunting ground became the parties which she attended with Gertie and Philip Astley, though in the early days of her social career she was still negotiating the rules of the game. As a result of these far-reaching connections, it was inevitable that her path would cross with the 25-year-old Prince of Wales, known by his intimates as P.W., for he was a good friend of Astley’s. At his parties, held at his apartment at St James’s Palace, she mingled with the prince’s pleasure-loving friends, made up of millionaires and celebrities from the stage and screen. It was an adulterous set, but nobody was shocked by this behaviour for the prince himself was having an affair with Freda Dudley-Ward, the wife of William Dudley-Ward, a Liberal MP for Southampton.

When Doris was not attending parties at royal residences, she frequented Rules, London’s oldest restaurant on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden, famous for its game dishes and opulent décor of red-plush, gilt chairs, china-globed chandeliers and marble busts of William Shakespeare and Sir Beerbohm Tree. It had changed little from the days when Edward VII gave supper parties for his mistress Lillie Langtry in the private room upstairs, and the services of certain women were recruited for exclusive parties. But, as Doris was to discover, it was a crowded market and her chances of attracting a millionaire in such settings were slim. The majority of men whom she came into contact with were either middle-aged or too young to have been in the war, and for every man there were half a dozen women vying for his attention. A valuable lesson for Doris, it became clear that she would have to stand out from her peers.

Doris’s foul language and penchant for speaking her mind did not deter this set, and she found herself attracted to becoming an American man’s mistress – for they were known to flaunt their wealth – but not his wife, as marriage had not crossed her mind. As Gertie could attest, certain precautions had to be taken if Doris was to act on this, and a useful source of information would have been in the form of Marie Stopes’s Married Love, the 1918 manual on sex and contraception. There were also Hardy’s Woman’s Friend and Madame Drunette’s Lunar Pills,14 two of the more popular brands of ‘female monthly pills’ which, despite their euphemistic names, acted as an abortion aid.

Far from ashamed of this new hedonistic lifestyle, Doris aspired to more. She looked to her mother, Jessie, who had lived in a household with one domestic servant and two brothers boarding at Lucton School, and whose life had been thrown into disarray following her father’s death. Although her mother had obtained financial security through the means of marriage, Doris longed for the same privileges without the long-term commitment.

At home on Park Lane the incentives for this lifestyle – the beautiful clothes and expensive jewellery – were flaunted before her on a daily basis. Standing before the mirror in her bedroom, she envisioned a similar life for herself, and touching her head, her neck and each side of her collarbone, she chanted: ‘Tiara, brooch, clip, clip.’ It would become known as her magic spell. And, believing entirely in the laws of attraction, Doris was prepared to repeat this idiosyncrasy every evening until she got what she desired.

But, as her naiveté gave way to cynicism, she would discover that such offerings come at a price.

CASTLEROSSE IS SUMMONED

‘We are all failures – at least the best of us are.’

J.M. Barrie

The square mile of Mayfair was an exclusive sphere around which the upper-class world revolved. But unlike Doris who sought glamour and excitement, the man who would become and remain an influence over her life was brought to Mayfair against his will. Castlerosse, as he was simply called, was the victim of an unscrupulous plot orchestrated by his parents, Lord and Lady Kenmare, which, at their request, also involved their friend Winston Churchill, then the Secretary of State for War, and his secretary, Eddie Marsh.

Over the course of several weeks, on the same nondescript evenings when Doris would gaze into the future and chant ‘tiara, brooch, clip, clip’, the fate of Castlerosse had been decided. Believing that their son was ‘doing no good in Paris, gambling and keeping women’,1 the Kenmares enlisted the influence of Churchill, who ordered Lord Derby, the Ambassador in Paris, to telephone the War Office to say Castlerosse’s services were no longer required. Bowing to Churchill’s demands, the War Office dismissed him.

A year before his arrival in London, Castlerosse had been engaged by the Minister of Information and newspaper proprietor Sir Max Aitken, soon to be Lord Beaverbrook, in a role which entailed welcoming American firemen who were visiting Paris. Although he was a man with a frivolous nature, he thought the scheme an idiotic one. ‘What nonsense is this?’ Castlerosse said. ‘Trying to win the war by acting as nursemaid to a lot of marked dog-collars! Bloody Tomfoolery!’2 But he was efficient in collecting the men, delivering them to their hotels, feeding them, lecturing them, finding souvenirs, stamping their postcards and letters, and taking them to the theatres and concerts.

When peace came, in November 1918, Beaverbrook then appointed Castlerosse as liaison officer between the British Peace Delegation and the American correspondents coming to Paris to report on the post-war state of the city. He proved to be an invaluable asset to the correspondents and, with his contacts, they could rely on him to pass a message on to Lloyd George, reserve tables in smart restaurants, recommend a cocette, and respond to telegrams when they were in no condition to do so themselves. The New York Herald reported: ‘Nearly all American correspondents who have now left Paris will carry away with them grateful memories of Viscount Castlerosse, whom they called “The Man Who Owns the Lakes of Killarney.”’

It was in the New Year of 1919 that Castlerosse learned that his services in Paris were no longer required. He was given a farewell dinner, after which he was carried by a dozen cheering Americans to the Meurice Hotel, where he was put to bed by a beautiful American nurse. As he was oblivious to the reasons behind his dismissal, Castlerosse appealed to Beaverbrook to hire him as a correspondent for his Sunday Express newspaper. Beaverbrook knew of the parental influences at work, and he refused to co-operate. So, with no options and little money, Castlerosse returned to London under a cloud of gloom.

However, to understand the fate of this wayward young man and how it brought him to Doris, it is essential to start at the beginning.

He was the failure of the family, the bane of his father’s existence and a thorn in his mother’s side. Born Valentine Edward Charles Browne in 1891, the namesake of his father, the Anglo-Irish Earl of Kenmare1, he was a poor product of his parents. Both tall, slender and extremely good-looking, they viewed their son’s physical appearance with contempt. He was short and fat with small feet and stumpy legs, and had what they thought to be a ‘Jewish caste’ (inherited from a maternal great-grandmother), which in the Catholic Kenmare family was perceived as another flaw, or weakness, in the boy. According to his mother, he ‘showed all the characteristics of a garden heap. If you turned him over and dug him up there was a certain amount of steam and smoke but not so much as a spark of fire.’3

He was rejected by his mother, formerly the Hon. Elizabeth Baring of the merchant banking family; she found Castlerosse ‘hard to talk to and hard to understand’, and claimed that engaging with her son was like ‘trying to deal with a deaf mute’.4 Had it not been for his birthright as the heir-apparent of the 5th Earl of Kenmare, perhaps she would have neglected him entirely. She had five children: two older girls, Dorothy and Cecilia, born ten months apart in 1888, and two younger sons, Dermot and Gerald, born in 1895 and 1896 respectively. After the birth of each child, Lady Kenmare sent them to Killarney, the family’s estate in Ireland, to be wet-nursed while she resumed her life in London. When Castlerosse was born, she observed the confinement period after which she immediately left for Cairo with a female companion. Though, as her children aged, it was her second son Dermot whom she came to favour, and she thought him a more suitable heir than Castlerosse.

As he grew older, Castlerosse became more detached from his parents and from nursery life. Left to his own devices, his solitary days were spent on the lakes of Killarney with estate workers, who taught him to fish. To remedy what Lord and Lady Kenmare viewed as a shortcoming in his character, Castlerosse was sent to St Anthony’s school at Eastbourne, where his mother hoped the ‘democratic atmosphere’ of an English school would correct his behaviour. Harbouring a strong sense of his own inferiority, Castlerosse’s academic career proved disastrous, for his schoolmasters declared him stupid and he was mocked by his peers for his poor sportsmanship.

But he was not entirely starved of family affection; his maternal uncle, Lord Revelstoke, would arrive at St Anthony’s in a motor car flanked by two beautiful women. Head of Barings and a director of the Bank of England, the flamboyant bachelor’s visits were spent regaling his unhappy nephew with tales of his London adventures. One particular anecdote stood out for Castlerosse; his uncle told him of the Duke of Devonshire’s mistress, Miss Catherine Walters, who was known as Skittles. The leading courtesan of her day, Skittles exercised thoroughbreds on Hyde Park’s Rotten Row where she commanded attention in her skin-tight riding habits, tailored by Henry Pool & Co., which she wore without underwear. Accumulating a legion of wealthy benefactors, she was asked by a former lover, Lord Clanricarde, what the duke was like. ‘More balls than brains, my dear,’ she answered frankly. Concluding the risqué visit, Lord Revelstoke placed a five-pound note in Castlerosse’s hand, and departed with his two beauties in tow, leaving him to face the contempt of his schoolfellows.

As Castlerosse appeared to be an unsatisfactory student, both of his parents agreed that school was a waste of time, and Lord Kenmare thought a career in the navy would make a man of him. It was a curious choice for a boy who had never shown an interest in the sea, and barely passing the examination, he was dispatched to Osborne Naval College on the Isle of Wight. Life as a sea cadet was as uncomfortable as he imagined it to be: the hammocks in the Rodney dormitory were not suited to his bulk and the motion of the ship at sea made him sick. The tutors, hoping to instil discipline and respect, kicked him mercilessly and whipped him with the end of a rope. Fortunately for Castlerosse, his health deteriorated – congestion of the lungs was the problem – and he was sent home.

The realisation that he had once again failed his parents reinforced his belief that he was an unworthy heir to his father. Thus it became his ambition to make his mother proud, and he dreamed of sailing into Bantry Bay on an HMS cruiser, which he would command from the bridge as she looked on. As this could never be, he came to the realisation that he did not like his mother, and his diary became filled with comments such as ‘my mother hates me’.5

Once again parental influence was not far off, and Lady Kenmare, under the guidance of Lord Revelstoke, began to think of a career in stockbroking for Castlerosse. Though she knew he did not have a head for figures, she hoped for the best and sent him to the University of Cambridge. ‘His habits are beastly, and his manners are none,’ observed a tutor. Failing to complete his BA, Castlerosse would say: ‘I came away from Cambridge poorer financially, morally and intellectually than when I arrived.’6 Surprisingly, given his lack of academic ability, a professor thought he would make a good barrister and had encouraged him to read for the Bar. ‘The man must be a fool,’ said Lady Kenmare. ‘Everyone knows you have no facility as a speaker or conversationalist.’7

Inspired by his uncle Maurice Baring’s anecdote, ‘I got up in the middle of lunch once, and went to Moscow without luggage, an overcoat, money or passport – just because I could speak languages,’ Castlerosse was delighted when his parents sent him to Compiègne to learn French. The following summer he went to Heuter, a small town on the Weser River north of Hanover, to learn German. Lodging with Herr Morsch, a former music teacher at Eton, Castlerosse’s bedroom overlooked the local parade ground where he watched the most powerful military machine in the world being trained. For what? he wondered. He then left for a tour of Holland, where he met a young woman with whom he thought he was in love. Having taken her rowing on a canal, he attempted to sail through a narrow bridge but, owing to his large size, he became stuck. Humiliated, he abandoned his tour and returned home.

Castlerosse spent the summer of 1914 in London, where the threat of a war with Germany had become a reality. On 4 August, he noticed that the streets of London were empty except for hordes of young men singing songs as they moved along. Taking a hansom cab to his father’s house in Cadogan Square, the driver told him: ‘There’s going to be a war. My son will go. My father was wounded in the Crimea. Those were the days.’ It still had not occurred to him that war was imminent.

Letting himself into the house with his latchkey, Castlerosse spied a strip of light beneath the drawing-room door. ‘Oh, old boy, there you are,’ said Lord Kenmare. ‘I saw George Morris today. He will take you over with the first lot.’ George Morris, formerly the colonel of the Rifle Brigade, was chosen by King George V to command the Irish Guards. He then told his son: ‘In an hour we shall be at war.’ The hour had passed and his estimation was correct: Britain was at war with Germany.

Calling on Lord Revelstoke, Castlerosse was given forty gold sovereigns, and going to a less wealthy uncle he was given an aged revolver. He made his way to Wellington Barracks and was posted to No. 3 Company of the Irish Guards. Waiting for him at the gates was his friend, the Russian-born Countess Anastasia de Torby, in her motor car, and Castlerosse was alarmed to see that she was crying. Before they left in her car, he was told to be back at midnight as the battalion was leaving before dawn.

‘Where shall I sleep?’ asked Castlerosse.

‘On your bloody arse,’ replied the adjutant, Lord Desmond FitzGerald.

Finally, it dawned on Castlerosse that war had begun. Before the sun had risen over London, the regiment marched off via Vauxhall Bridge Road to Nine Elms Station in Battersea, and he was touched to see that his parents had come to see him off as he departed for France.

However, his prowess on the battlefield was cut short when, having been ambushed by Germans in the Villers-Cotterets Woods, a bullet struck him as he raised his right arm to swat a wasp. He collapsed from the pain and loss of blood, and when he regained consciousness he thought he had lost his elbow. And, glancing at the pool of blood next to him, he likened it to the shape of the lower lake of Killarney. A passing German from the Red Cross spied him and pulled him to his feet. ‘If ever a German should fall into your hands be kind to him as I have been to you,’ he said. He was hurled into a passing cart, whereupon two corpses were dragged out to make room for him. Spending the night at a church at Vivierres, Castlerosse was certain he would be dead by morning. He lived, but discovered that ninety wounded men had died over the course of the evening.

Killarney House, Co. Kerry, Ireland. Home of the Earls of Kenmare until it was destroyed by a fire in 1913.

Two days later, a motor car arrived to ferry Castlerosse to the American hospital at Neuilly, which was managed by Mrs W.K. Vanderbilt. It was a disagreeable journey and, overcome by sickness, he vomited six times to the displeasure of a French officer who was travelling alongside him. Adding a degree of pathos to the ordeal, Castlerosse, whose uniform was destroyed, was dressed in a woman’s skirt, sweater, cape and bedroom slippers. Upon his arrival he broke down in tears and was given an injection of heroin.

A few days later, Castlerosse boarded a train for La Havre with his brother, Dermot, who had been lightly wounded while serving as a lieutenant with the Coldstream Guards. Their brother Gerald, the youngest son of Lord and Lady Kenmare, would leave for the Western Front in 1916, aged 19. A deeply unhappy man, who preferred animals to people, Gerald stood still as the Germans fired. ‘I can never decide,’ he said, ‘whether the possibility of heaven in the next world is preferable to the certainty of hell in this.’8 On the cross-Channel ferry to England, an elderly woman eyed the two invalids with disapproval. ‘I hope you have come back to get into uniform,’ she hissed. Their companion, Fred Hoey, an American diplomatic courier, who was taking his fiancée’s jewels to London, told her: ‘Madam, you have been guilty of the gravest impertinence. Pray go away.’

It was an emotional homecoming for Lord and Lady Kenmare,9 who were more concerned about Dermot’s recovery as he was determined to return to the Front. Castlerosse, as a result of his injury, was invalided out of the Irish Guards. He was sent to convalesce at Sister Agnes’s nursing home at 9 Grosvenor Gardens, named after its founder Agnes Keyser, a former courtesan and long-time mistress of King Edward VII, who invested £80,000 of her own allowance into the yearly running of the place.