Gone With the Windsors. Laurie Graham

of civilized people go their whole lives without ever sitting on a horse.

      25th October 1932

      Yesterday to Fuller’s Tea Rooms with Rory and Flora. If you want to know what’s being said on the back stairs, take your nephews and nieces out to tea. Prince George goes dancing with black girls. The Duke of Westminster shouts at his new wife. And Lady Furness is getting a divorce. Funny Wally never mentioned that.

      I brought them back to see my new house before Kettle drove them home. Both chiefly interested in which bedrooms they would have if I were to invite them to stay the night. I don’t know that I would invite them. Tea is one thing, but not the complications of bedtime stories and prayers and night-lights.

      3rd November 1932

      Found a dear little cashmere cardigan for Wally, edge-to-edge with a braid trim. If she follows my advice, that’s what she’ll wear to dinner in Leicestershire. As a matter of fact, I think she should avoid décolletage whenever possible. She has no bosom to speak of, and the skin on her back is poor.

      Dinner at the Crosbies. Anne Belchester says she’s heard Thelma Furness keeps her country house ruinously hot for good paintings. Prosper Frith said he didn’t realize the Furnesses had any good paintings.

      4th November 1932

      To George Lightfoot’s for a small supper party. Came: Penelope and Fergus Blythe, a House of Commons man called Bob Boothby, and old Lady Ribblesdale. She’s the one who paid lawyers to get her a good divorce settlement from John Astor, when had she but known it, she could have waited a little longer, waved him aboard the Titanic, and inherited everything. They say it would be a curse to see into the future, but I don’t imagine Ava Ribblesdale thinks so.

      Mr. Boothby was just back from a visit with Mr. Hitler in Germany, and said the man is quite insane and we’d better start building battleships while we still have time. Fergus Blythe said Boothby was squawking like a parlor maid who’d seen a mouse. I do agree with Fergus that Mr. Hitler is Germany’s business and no one else’s.

      Much talk, too, about whether Roosevelt is going to beat Hoover.

      Penelope said, “He should. He seems full of bright ideas for getting men back to work.”

      Indeed. Full of ideas that people like me will have to pay for.

      Lightfoot ran things rather effortlessly, for a single man. Duck terrine, tenderloin of pork, damson tart.

      All evening my mind kept drifting to Wally and Ernest. I wonder whether they had dinner with the Prince of Wales.

      8th November 1932

      Wally is back from Leicestershire with bronchitis. She said she felt too ill to see anyone, but what are friends for if not comforting the sick? I hurried round with a bottle of Dr. Collis Browne’s soothing chlorodyne and a jar of chicken essence.

      She did meet the Prince of Wales. Also his brother, Prince George, the one who’s reported to dance with black girls. The two princes were staying at a nearby house but motored over each day in time for luncheon and stayed till late.

      She said Wales is short, boyish, and trim, and he calls Thelma “darling.” He didn’t hunt. No one did. Mainly they played old maid and watched Tom Mix movies on Thelma’s personal projection screen.

      The big question no one dared ask is whether things will change after Thelma’s divorce. Connie Thaw told Wally the Prince leads a dog’s life, bullied by the King, chastized by the Queen. She said his weekends with Thelma are the only thing he has to look forward to. It seems to me it’s quite straightforward. Thelma will get her divorce, the Prince will marry her, and they’ll live happily ever after.

      I thought Wally seemed rather flat; aside from a hacking cough, she doesn’t have anything to show for her trouble. All that fussing at the beauty parlor and studying newspapers for topical subjects of conversation. So she met a couple of princes? I doubt she exchanged more than two words with either of them. I think Wally’s gone about as far as she can go. Perhaps I should offer to introduce her to Ena Spain. Better to be properly acquainted with an ex-queen than to have one’s nose pressed hopelessly against the gates of Buckingham Palace.

      10th November 1932

      Franklin Roosevelt is the new President. Well, I’m glad Brumby didn’t live to see it. He never cared for him. Brumby was a Hoover man, through and through.

      “Never vote for a lawyer, Maybell,” he advised me. “They’ll have their hands in your pocket before you can say ‘dollar.’”

      Tea at Carlton Gardens. There was an unpleasant odor in Violet’s drawing room. I do hope it wasn’t dear Ena Spain. She was perspiring as usual, in spite of freezing fog. Went up to the nursery and found Flora playing Divorces with her dolls. She’s such a stitch.

      “Let me smell your scent, Aunt Bayba,” she said. “You always smell nice. Like talgum bowder and jim tonics.”

      I’m going to have fun when it’s her deb year. I’ll just take charge. If it’s left to Violet, the poor girl will come out smelling of Coal Tar soap.

      15th November 1932

      Lunch with Lightfoot. He dined at Carlton Gardens last evening and says there was an unaccountably awful smell in the drawing room. He said, “I thought you might bring it up with Violet. It would be better coming from you.”

      Ena Spain wasn’t present, apparently, so at least she’s not to blame.

      16th November 1932

      Carlton Gardens is in uproar. The smell is now so bad it greets you before you reach the drawing room. When I arrived, a housemaid was flicking the pelmets with a feather duster—as though something like that could be dusted away!

      Melhuish was pacing the floor, and Violet had even canceled her meetings.

      The exterminator hadn’t been sent for, however. I’d have thought that was the very first thing to do.

      Violet said, “To exterminate what? We don’t have rats.”

      Trotman said, “Oh yes we do, Your Ladyship. I’ve seen ’em the size of cats outside the scullery.”

      Thank heavens I’ve moved out. Melhuish took umbrage at my suggestion that the prime suspects must be the dogs. He said, “My dogs do not smell.”

      Well, they most certainly do, but I didn’t particularly mean the dogs themselves, rather some little gift-offering one of them might have left behind. My advice to them was to have the room stripped out, ceiling to floor. Dollars to doughnuts they’ll find a doggie woops.

      Violet says it couldn’t be more inconvenient. They have the Yugoslavias coming for the weekend. Crown Prince Paul and his wife, Olga.

      17th November 1932

      To the Paradise Club for Hattie Erlanger’s birthday. She and Judson are going to Jessie Woolworth’s for Christmas, in Palm Beach. Wally and Ernest are going to Landgravine Lily’s, Pips and Freddie are going to the Prosper Friths in Kent. Everyone seems fixed up except me, but no matter. Solitude holds no fears for me. I shall have delicious little meals served on a tray and immerse myself in the great thinkers of the day. I’ve been meaning to take up reading for quite some time. Wally swears that an informed mind improves the face.

      More fog.

      18th November 1932

      Violet’s smell has been run to earth. George Lightfoot called me with the news this morning. Seven pieces of kippered herring tucked into pillow