CHAPTER 8
WITH DAVID I got to know quite a few kings, ex-kings, and almost-kings. This family network of royalty was a useful thread running through Europe and I learnt from my encounters the advantages of being close to royalty, now a fast vanishing breed. In their houses, one tends to eat superior meals; in their company one meets amusing and talented people (who have gathered, perhaps, for the food and the company); and, from being with them, one becomes immune ever after to the influence of those trying to impress socially. On the whole, real royals don’t try to impress (with the possible exception of Princess Michael of Kent, but then she isn’t a real royal).
But one of them whom I met with David late in 1946 was to influence my life from the moment of our meeting. On one Cornish weekend the officers of the naval station at St Merryn held a dinner dance, and there I was introduced to His Royal Highness, Prince Chula of Thailand, and his English wife, Lisba. They had met David the previous week and had asked to meet me when next I came down. I was invited to dinner the following night before catching the midnight train back to London, a night in the winter of 1947—the famous winter of frozen trains, lost passengers, stranded farm houses and wintry legend. We set off for dinner and I was snowed in for five days in the course of which a lasting friendship was formed.
Apart from Chula and Lisba, their Cornish ménage consisted of Bira, a then-famous motor-racing driver, and Chula’s first cousin once removed: removed by one generation upwards but, because of the complicated incidence of several wives in various stages of child bearing, younger by a few years. Bira was not quite so royal, being descended not from a king and queen, as was Chula, but from a ‘small’ wife—as, indeed, is the present King of Thailand. He was also more purely Thai, as Chula’s mother had been Russian, thereby, along with Lisba, losing him the throne, his rightful heritage: a heritage he was subsequently to be offered by the government after the death of an uncle. He wisely refused unless a referendum was held; he had no wish to be a puppet king and feared unrest from within. There was Ceril, Bira’s English first wife, many dogs, and many devoted courtiers and retainers, secretaries and old friends—Russian, English and Thai. And through the first six years of constant and close friendship and involvement in the household I came to have a sympathy and affection for the Thai people I met there.
Bira was a leading member of the international motor-racing community, and I, who now loathe fast cars and noise, became an honorary member of his White Mouse racing stable. David and I went with Chula and Lisba, and Bira and his wife Ceril, to most of the Grand Prix of Europe, helping to wave the flags and log the laps, climbing into the back of parked cars at the back of the pits for snatched moments of sleep, celebrating the races at all the Gala Balls—Bern, Monte Carlo, Belfast, Jersey, Rapallo, Reims, San Remo—sometimes in Bira’s private plane.
In those days, unlike today, I was not frightened of flying. Bira’s twin-engined Gemini was kept in a field near the house, so a taxi to take off involved careful avoidance of startled wandering sheep. I was prone to travel sickness. On one occasion, when Bira came to London to collect both me and David’s dog, Simon, I viewed the gusting winds with apprehension. Bira gave me two large pills. I slept happily in the rear seat of the plane. Simon sat happily untethered in the front seat. Later I discovered the vet had given Bira the pills to sedate Simon.
Chula was one of the few very rich men I have known who enjoyed his wealth to the full. He spent copiously, wisely and well, and took care to see that his friends enjoyed it too. There were none of the apparent stirrings of guilt at spending or apprehension of losing it with which money curses some of the rich, nor was he dubious of the motives of those less fortunate than himself in professing friendship and affection. He and Lisba travelled constantly and in enormous style and comfort, but never alone, and they derived equal pleasure from the enjoyment of their guests. These treats were short jaunts such as David and I had to a week of lavish entertainment at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947—then sparkling new and exciting in concept—or longer trips on the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth to America, always with a guest or two. Shorter ones to various European countries, or even longer ones to Thailand—and even once, many years later, to visit me for three days in Australia where I was on a short stay—were meticulously planned and lovingly bestowed. At Tredethy, their Cornish house, equerries and secretaries saw to it that this ugly Edwardian house was still run on royal lines.
A typed itinerary of the weekend’s events lay on one’s dressing table, with the manner of dress and hour of one’s required presence; a short biography of other guests was provided and punctuality demanded. Many of Chula’s little quirks of behaviour strike me still as eminently sensible and thought out so as to give him the maximum enjoyment. He owned several cars but did not drive himself so that his attention was never distracted from his surroundings or company. He always sat at the head of his own table with his wife by his side, saying that as he had married her and as they seldom had the chance to dine à deux it was reasonable to suppose that he would prefer her company to anyone else’s.
Both he and Lisba were intensely musical, his preference being for chamber music, and, so, four times a year, leading chamber trios and quartets were brought to Tredethy and about a hundred guests were invited, not for the intimacy of their acquaintance or the necessity of proffering hospitality, but for their enthusiasm for the musical programme.
There was a vast library, and music, fun, games, and fascinating conversation were abundantly supplied. There were always unusual incidental amusements. One of these was the dressing up in what had once been the Thai crown jewels, these having been left directly to Chula by his grandmother, the widow of an absolute monarch and thus able to dispose of her possessions as she chose. ‘Granny’s Belt’ was a particular, and rather hideous, favourite: a solid wide corselet affair made of gold links and diamonds clasped by a huge buckle of yet more enormous diamonds. The jewels were only removed from the safe for State, or similarly grand, occasions requiring that medals should be worn, and whilst they were ‘out’ we would spread them around us on the drawing room floor and prance about in Granny’s belt and the odd tiara.
There were other privileges to be gained from intimacy with Chula. We were escorted privately around Scotland Yard’s Black Museum by the Commissioner for Police. I didn’t look at the grisly bits. On our many luncheons together at Claridge’s when Chula came up for the night, he would persuade me, ‘Have lots of caviar. I know you like it and I’m very rich so we can afford it.’ I seldom needed persuasion. Chula would fondly watch as he sipped his consommé.
I don’t expect I would ever have had, or wished for, such an extensive and intimate tour of Cambridge if Chula had not arranged it one glorious summer’s day, proud as he was of his own years there. I would not have had wonderful and concrete memories of the historical events of those years and of the people who shaped them if I did not now have copies of the home movies, called Tredethy News, which were religiously recorded by Shura Rahm, Chula’s Swiss/Russian major-domo, friend, and secretary. These would not qualify for film festivals but they are of abiding interest. I was living through history—we all live it—we are it—but I seem to have been lucky enough to have often been close to key moments of it, and stupid enough never to have appreciated it.
I owe to Chula my most enriching and abiding friendship, my nearest to family in my heart excepting my children. One weekend at Tredethy a fellow guest was Chula’s old-time friend and one-time youthful Cambridge Don, Steven Runciman. Steven performed his party piece—the reading of palms—on all the other guests but steadfastly refused mine. His gift was genuine, and later frightened him. Then, when we were younger, it was the centre of entertainment.
On the last night of our long weekend, Chula cornered Steven and forced him into a room with me. He was not to be bullied. He took my hand in a peremptory fashion, gave it a glance and dismissed it with the chilling phrase, and a chuckle: ‘I can see nothing ahead of you except long years of frustration and misery.’
A few years later, when again all other house guests had had their fortunes told by Steven and I was left out, I tried bullying him once more. This time he dismissed me with: ‘You have a very good mind. I wonder why it is you never use it?’
More years were to go by until he foretold in all seriousness my husband’s fate in his palm and I think I understood then why he was reluctant to look into a tragedy awaiting me.
At Tredethy, perhaps the only slight sign of displeasure to crease the royal countenance occurred if a guest showed a disinclination to strip. All guests were required to participate in the nude sunbathing in the fenced-in bathing enclosure. There was nothing prurient about these gatherings, although I am sure the good locals of Bodmin viewed them with suspicion. And they speeded up easy comradeship. When one is introduced to a stranger, be they local vet or cabinet minister, totally naked, it somehow aids the consciousness to discount social defences. Acquaintances become friends more quickly—the phrase ‘down to bare essentials’ takes on a fresh meaning.
I first met Henry Maxwell, Chula’s oldest and dearest friend, harking back to Harrow and Cambridge, when we were both naked, although Henry, playing ping-pong at the time, wore shoes and socks. He was Chula’s most favoured and most frequent travelling companion and became a dear friend to me. Henry’s own stories of trips with Chula added to the store of Chula’s own. He once visited Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhardt in their vast palace in Holland as just such a companion. On being shown to his room on arrival, told the hour for dinner, he changed into the appropriate dress and sat and waited for someone to escort him back to a gathering point. Dinner time drew near—so near that Henry was obliged to venture forth into the maze of corridors in the hopes of finding a friendly face. Eventually he fell among familiars and found himself seated at dinner next to a distinguished looking man of around his own age. Conversation was in French. Henry kicked off by asking his neighbour his occupation. ‘Moi?’ replied the astonished man, ‘Mais moi—je suis l’ami du famille royale.’ This label afforded Henry endless pleasure: from now on, on all his jaunts with Chula he was able to identify himself by this appropriated, and appropriate, title.
Chula was a rich fund of royal stories, many told to him by his two uncles who in turn had been kings of Thailand, both of them childless, or one boasting only a daughter. When the first, Vajiravudh, was king and the Athlones came to Bangkok on a State visit, the monarch met the yacht which had brought them in full military regalia accompanied by his younger brother, splendidly bedecked and beribboned as Admiral in Chief of the Royal Fleet. As the Athlones stepped ashore and the band struck up a ceremonial march, the king indicated his bowing brother with a flourish: ‘May I have the honour to present—my Sister!’
He was proud of his English, but there is no word in the Thai language to denote the sex of a younger or older sibling—they are identified by age.
This brother, who in turn inherited the throne, was the last absolute ruler of Thailand. In 1932, democratic ambitions were beginning to stir in the country. King Prajadhipok’s advisors pleaded with him to leave the country on a grand world tour, in the hope that the dissidents and protesters would lose heart and that when he returned, any threats to his person or his position would have been removed. He took this opportunity to visit, not only fellow monarchs around the world, but leaders of state in those countries who had managed to dispose of their monarch. In particular, Mussolini.
They spoke in French. Over dinner, Mussolini enquired into the domestic situation in his guest’s country. King Prajadhipok demurred at first, saying that it was a complicated story—would take long in the telling—but adding that if his host was truly interested, he would attempt to explain, and would sincerely welcome Mussolini’s advice from the benefit of his vast experience, he himself being quite unaccustomed to dissent in any form.
They settled over coffee. Prajadhipok outlined, at some length, the problems facing him on his return. He looked hopefully at his mentor for comment. After a long pause, in a sad voice pregnant with thought, came Mussolini’s reply.
‘Majeste, c’est mauvais.’
Since hearing this tale, I have always nurtured a rather soft spot for Mussolini, who did not waste words.
His response must have struck a fatalistic chord in his guest, for Prajadhipok promptly returned to Thailand, to be welcomed by the first of the country’s many bloodless coups d’etat and became, as a result, the first democratically deposed king and the last absolute one.
The most charming king—or ex-king—I met with Chula was Umberto of Italy, of whom I don’t remember much except an amusing dinner at Claridge’s. Although all David’s cousins, however distant, were past or present royalty, charm did not rate high on the agenda, but they must have been interesting if only because they met a lot of interesting people and therefore had lives rich in anecdote, as did Chula. But I only remember most of them because of what we were doing at the time. King Leopold of Belgium meant a summer spent on the Italian coast in 1947—or was it 1948?—water-skiing from his boat: Prince Bertil of Sweden lived just along the coast in France from where I stayed a long, hot summer on Bira’s yacht, and we dropped anchor often on his foreshore, and swam ashore clamouring to be fed. I helped pull the needles of a sea urchin from the foot of Prince Alessandro Torlonia, whilst his wife, David’s cousin, the Infanta Beatriz of Spain, held his hand. I would bet he only remembers the sea urchin whilst I remember him yelping. I had never heard a grown man make so much fuss. I never bothered to keep in touch or follow up the proffered invitations, although I did strike up, and keep up until her death, a desultory friendship with his amusing sister, Marina. Marina had been married to the U.S. tennis player Frank Shields, who later was to achieve more fame as the grandfather of the actress, Brooke Shields. Once we dined in Paris with the young ex-king Peter of Yugoslavia and his wife who, on that occasion, threw her powder compact at him. I cannot remember the provocation, but I can remember the restaurant, the early great days of ‘San Francisco’ and what we had to eat—crêpes stuffed with seafood. Great restaurants were beginning to emerge from the austerity of the war; every new taste similar to the adventure of a child’s first post-war banana or orange. The crêpes had far greater impact on me than either the king or the compact.
I only met the Windsors twice. The first time was in Monte Carlo at a Gala at the Casino in the late 1940s, where David and I had joined them. They were gay then—in the old meaning of that word—her eyes electric blue and sparkling, he smiling and genial. The second time, thirty years later, was in Paris at a private party in semi-darkness in an apartment on the Rive Gauche. I was taken on after a dinner with the Alain Berheims so cannot remember the name of our host, if ever I caught it. Flamenco dancers performed for the fifteen or so of us gathered in the salon—the duchess’s eyes no longer seemed blue or sparkling; they were darker and sharper—her voice snappier and querulous. He was a shambling, pathetic figure. Two sleek young men danced attendance, to one of whom Wallis Windsor exclaimed loudly as the dancing began, ‘Take David home!’ and, turning to the Duke, as to one of her pet pugs, ‘Go home, David, go home!’ He was led meekly out.
Some of my first theatre friendships, too, were made with David. With him I first met Bea Lillie in 1947. I seldom drive down Park Lane on a misty autumn evening without remembering a pea soup fog—David at the wheel of our car and Bea walking in front with one hand on the radiator and the other waving a white flag. It was Bea who took us both to a party at Noel Coward’s in Gerald Row. Years later, another life later, Noel and I were to become friends, but on that night I only remember him taking me and David up to his galleried bedroom to see his paintings on the walls. I think he had just started to paint.
On that night, too, I was to meet one of the people who graced my later life with abiding friendship—the beautiful and buoyant and endearingly funny Dorothy Hammerstein, that night at Noel’s with her husband, Oscar, and her daughter, Susan Blanchard. Later, Dorothy came to mean New York to me. Her exquisite houses became my New York base, where I visited her once a year as she grew older. Older but never less funny or less beautiful.
That first night was simply one of a thousand nights: of names plopping in and out of my life—now, I fear, of no significance unless brief memories throw a chink of light on to the players. A chill thought—who remembers the players?
If David was indirectly responsible for me knowing so many kings, chance and upbringing had been responsible for having met a fair smattering of heads of state. Australian prime ministers came naturally into our orbit, given the restricted circle of Sydney society. Robert Menzies was an acquaintance of my parents: I met him whilst growing up. The gaps in our prime ministerial acquaintance were the Labor PMs—anyone other than a member of the Liberal Party, Australia’s conservative representatives and about as far from liberal ethos as is possible to achieve without right-wing extremism, never swam into our little pond. One heard about them actually having private lives, but these lives did not intertwine with ours. But Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt was a friend. He was drowned whilst surfing, his body never recovered or even partly washed up inside a sick shark: he was the subject of many subsequent rumours about espionage, CIA activities and various cloak- and-dagger explanations. Personally I always found him far too jolly a chap to ever suspect any cause other than an imprudent swim. Two other heads of state, however, convinced me long before the media began to inform the world that there need be no connection between a responsible position in world affairs and a relaxed and uninhibited private life—Bill McMahon and Jack Kennedy—both of them in my life as my bridegroom’s best friend and best man at two of my weddings: one to John Spencer, achieved, and the other, to Torbert Macdonald, aborted.
Billy had been a romantic ‘escort’ in my teenage years. No more than bruised and swollen lips and late nights between us but enough for me to think of him forever after as simply a good dancer, and an entertaining companion—certainly not a future prime minister. When it transpired that he was also John Spencer’s best friend, I added ‘best man’ to his tags in my memory.
For my proposed second marriage, until the priests and the family managed to extricate Torbert from his impending mortal sin, Jack was to be our witness and ally.
Jack and Torbert had been roommates at Harvard and inseparable for years; they were in P.T. boats together in the Pacific, although Jack was shipped home before I was to meet Torbert, when he was on leave in Sydney. Our engagement lasted only long enough for Jack to be appointed best man for the wedding which was to take place as soon as I could be got out of wartime Australia to the U.S. But the Church got there first, and I did not actually meet Jack until some four years later.
In 1948 David and I were in France—he staying with his mother at her house in the hills above Cannes, I at the Hotel du Cap at Eden Roc. At the bar by the sea on my first day I ran into Torbert. He was on holiday with the entire Kennedy clan—and we joyfully joined forces. He was by now married, but insisted, naturally, as is usually the case with husbands alone on holiday, unwillingly and unhappily. I was not married to David, but, smarting under the indignity of his mother’s growing disapproval and remembering the fervour and fun of my time with Torbert, it took little more than enthusiasm on Torbert’s part to resume our relationship. Some nights, when David was not with his mother, I spent with him, but the rest of my time was spent with Torbert, Jack and those Kennedy sisters and brothers who were there. Individually I only remember Bobby, in his teens I think, and the baby, Teddy, and the noise they all made in the pool.
The night after we met Jack took Torbert and me to a memorable party—memorable for many reasons. The host was Argentinian Alberto Dodero, said to be the power and the money behind Juan Perón. By his side, acting as hostess, was a cute blonde young American of about nineteen.
The locale was a magnificent house by the beach at Cap d’Antibes, gardens and terraces going down to the sea, which Dodero was said to use only for parties. He and his guests slept in an equally magnificent house up the road. Fountains played champagne. Two dance bands played different rhythms in different parts of the gardens. At each guest’s place was a small token—small in size but not in value. At our table I have always believed that I watched the first meeting between Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan. Elsa Maxwell was beaming beside them and it has been reported many times that they had met earlier with her, but it seems in my memory that they met that night. Jack drank too much and fell into one of the fountains. I lost my temper with him and demanded to be taken home.
He had hired for the holiday a tiny ‘Deux Cheveux’—the baby Citroen whose headlamps were so close together that we had christened it ‘Stewart Granger’. (Many years later Jimmy Granger became a friend; he was very beautiful but his eyes were rather close together.) I waited, fuming, in the huge circular hall, Torbert sulking beside me, whilst Jack went to fetch the car. A footman in knee britches waited behind every one of the six marble pillars soaring to the domed ceiling.
With horn blaring and headlights full on, up the shallow marble steps came a bouncing ‘Stewart Granger’. The footmen chased Jack round the pillars as he weaved between them; Torby and I jumped in and we bumped down the steps into the night, tempers and sulks forgotten.
The night never was. I read subsequently in a newspaper diary that Jack’s son, aged twenty-four, pedalled up the steps of a hotel and into the foyer on his bicycle, so perhaps Jack remembered it, too, and had told the story.
We spent the next two weeks together. Jack and Torbert were sharing a suite at the Hotel du Cap. I had a cupboard in the ‘combles’—normally one of the servants’ rooms. So most days, for an hour or two, I sat at the desk in Jack’s sitting room writing, at his dictation, to the potential voters back in the States whom he hoped would get him re-elected to Congress.
‘Dear Mrs Blank,’ I wrote on one of the postcards with which he supplied me each day, ‘I want to thank you for all your support. I’m enjoying a much needed vacation and I do hope your husband’s back trouble has cleared up/daughter’s baby has arrived/mother’s angina is better. Kind regards, Sincerely, John F. Kennedy.’
I often wonder if the recipients kept the cards, now have them framed, or have tried to sell them only to be told they are forgeries.
I threw away all Jack’s subsequent letters to me—a few casual enough notes to London announcing his arrival, messages from Torbert, amicable details of I do not remember what—but certainly not forged. The night he became President I could hardly believe it. The night he was assassinated it seemed to be happening to someone quite other than my youthful friend. And the myths now building up around him have that same quality of unreality.
I saw no evidence then of the sexual appetite and obsession now emerging from accounts. I don’t even remember any female companion. He was Torbert’s friend and we were a threesome. The sexual encounters, if happening in those early days, were kept hidden from me.
His letters to me were real enough and could since have been put to good commercial use. If I could be born again and granted one material wish it would be to live and die in the house in which I was born, a house boasting a vast attic, stored with relics and memories from the past. In those attics would be the concrete reminders of my ancestors’ lives, the mysteries surrounding my parents’ emotions, my own changing person, and, above all, the letters. I need not have destroyed Jack’s—nor T.S. Eliot’s, infinitely more interesting. I had crossed paths with Eliot briefly during my stint as ‘London representative’ of Swedish impresario, Lars Schmidt. This was a sinecure, rather than an arduous job, dreamt up by Lars as a means of contact and it was regarding the performance of Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party, in Scandinavia that we corresponded. I wish I had his letters, Jack’s letters, the couture clothes I bought on our Paris trips, the lost or given-away family treasures, the proffered and never accepted presents. One letter I have kept which gave me pleasure and a frisson of pride was by Noel Coward on reading Aunts up the Cross. It is so typical of him that I find that sufficient excuse to quote it here: I feel, too, that the ‘aunts’ may have been tickled had they known that Noel Coward ‘loved’ them. ‘My dear Robin, How sweet of you to remember to send me “The Aunts”. I dearly love them and enjoyed every word…’
My worst recollected carelessness was the occasion on which, in 1947, I was taken to tea in his cottage in Cookham with the painter, Stanley Spencer, who on that and on a subsequent visit offered me any of the paintings stacked on the floor, in the sink and in the bath. We sat on packing cases while he boiled a kettle, an uncapped milk bottle at our feet. He was a strange little man, and I politely looked at the paintings, and just as politely declined. If I had taken some of the paintings, I may have been able to afford the house in which to store everything discarded.
Perhaps the worst missed—or thrown away—opportunity was my failure to celebrate the anniversary of the victory over Japan with Winston Churchill on the roof of the Admiralty. David’s uncle, Louis Mountbatten, had invited David and me to join the party of VIPs gathering there. We dined first at Ciro’s, and set off much too late on foot towards Whitehall, struggling against the crowd through Leicester Square and into Trafalgar Square. My subsequent horror of crowds had not manifested itself and so we joined the jostling throng, the mounted police, fainting revellers swaying under the fireworks with great good humour. Halfway there, we decided it was just too much trouble, turned back, and collapsed thankfully into the doorway of the ‘400’. I never met Churchill.