Cosmo and Lucile greeted guests for the reception they had arranged for Elinor’s latest book, called Three Weeks, when Mrs. Severton, their cook, hovered in the hall, frowning, motioning to Lucile. The woman hardly ever came upstairs, so something must be very wrong.
Their London home in Lennox Gardens would soon be filled with more than family, including their childhood inspiration, Lillie Langtry. Elinor’s publisher was here; even Clayton, who had promised to be on good behavior, was here. He liked Cosmo tremendously so Lucile hoped he was telling the truth. But he’d arrived in his cups early, and without Elinor. Lucile just hoped he wouldn’t make a scene.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Lucile whispered to Cosmo. “I hope Mrs. Severton’s soufflés have not fallen—just jesting.” She gave his arm an intimate squeeze.
After nearly seven years, their marriage was still a delight to them. Granted, she didn’t get to Scotland as much as she knew he would like, but she had redecorated grand old Maryculter House and had even gone out tramping the estate with him each visit.
“What’s amiss, Mrs. Severton?” she whispered as the plump woman kept motioning her farther back into the hall. At least Lucile smelled nothing burning.
They stopped before the closed door of Cosmo’s study, which Lucile had decorated with tartan curtains, leather chairs, and prints of Scottish scenes. He’d been ecstatic. Even now, as intrigued and perturbed as she was, she pictured how they had made love on the maroon, brass-tacked leather couch in celebration of his “Scotland in London room.”
“It’s your sister, milady. She come to the back downstairs door, she did. Insisted I fetch you to this room before she—I think she said before she made her entrance out front.”
“Good heavens, is she ill?”
“Looked a bit peaked and shaky, she did, but—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Severton. I’ll let you return to your duties now. We are looking forward to your excellent meal.”
Lucile turned the knob and pushed the door inward. Elinor’s plumed and ribboned hat was tossed on the ottoman. She wore the most recent gown Lucile had designed for her and for which she had not yet paid. But that, amazingly, was the way of the world right now. Even fine families seemed to be deep in debt, trying to keep up with King Edward’s grandiose expectations of hospitality to him and others of his set.
“Elinor, what—”
“Just sit down, and I’ll tell you. Three Weeks, my dear book, my dream novel has all gone wrong!” She burst into tears and sank onto the couch with her face in her hands.
Lucile perched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “It isn’t doing well? It’s only been on sale for a few days. I’ve barely had time to start reading my copy. But you said it was the best thing you’ve ever done, better even than Beyond the Rocks, which was so well received. Did the publisher mention your weak spelling and grammar again, so—”
“It’s been called immoral in a review” came muffled from behind her hands. “Immoral! I’m going to be attacked on all sides. No one grasps the nobility of the book. They all harp on the breaking of morality in the story. After all, everyone sins. Wait till you get your newspaper tomorrow. And let me recite a piece of doggerel being bandied about that Daisy Warwick warned me of. You see, in the novel, main characters make love on a tiger-skin rug,” she said and took her hands from her face. Her expression was one of hurt and contempt as she recited,
“Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer To err
With her
On some other fur?”
“Oh my! That will spread like wildfire. But it is promotion.”
“Promotion! That’s my Lucile! Thank God, Clayton’s leaving for the Mediterranean on his own, because I can’t stand his drunken lectures on money, let alone this. I’ve had hate mail from several early readers, actually nonreaders. I can tell that the worst of the critics, so far at least, have not even read it. They make mistakes in their comments.”
“Slow down. Tell me the story in the novel.”
“All right,” she said, blotting at her tear-streaked face with a wadded handkerchief. “I know I said it’s the book of my heart and it is. I know I told you I didn’t want to talk about Three Weeks even to you before it came out. The story is of a foreign queen traveling incognito in Switzerland who seduces a younger Englishman she, obviously, is not wed to.”
“Oh, I see,” Lucile told her, recalling vividly the night on their honeymoon—and some since—where she had taken the lead with Cosmo.
“You don’t see,” Elinor insisted. “She doesn’t only want his body—and even that for a noble purpose to have an heir to save her kingdom. He’s culturally an ignoramus in art, music, history, and she wanted to change that. His character was inspired by an admirer of mine Clayton sent away—not Seymour Finch but Lord Alistair Innes Ker.”
“What? The young man who went to Paris with you and Clayton? I—I didn’t know he and you . . .”
“Well, obviously nothing came of it. I’m still faithful to my husband at least that way. Alistair was only the inspiration for this book, what I was yearning for, not what happened. But never mind all that. It’s over, but the aftermath from this story is not. The point is that the critics and early readers of Three Weeks are scandalized, absolutely in a frenzy, so how can I face the others out there today, let alone later in public?” she demanded with a new flow of tears and a nod at the door through which they could hear the growing buzz of voices.
“Well, welcome to the Sutherland sisters’ society,” Lucile told her, “and I don’t mean having young admirers.”
“You have all those young men you call acolytes about the shop, who adore you.”
“Who want to learn from me. About designing clothes, dear sister, not about love.”
“And what sisters’ society? You don’t write more than letters and names of those emotional, personality titles you give your frocks. Whatever is Mother going to think? I don’t give a flying leap about Clayton’s opinions, but she’s still of Victoria’s times, through and through.”
“Don’t underestimate her. As for Clayton, he came drunk to the door a bit ago, and Cosmo stashed him upstairs to sleep it off for now. But don’t you see? Some have accused me of indecency for years, for creating clothes that were immoral, that showed a flash of leg and offered small, silky lingerie instead of bustles and break-back corsets. Some blue-blooded snobs snub me for ‘keeping a shop,’ especially since I’m now Lady Duff-Gordon. And yet the orders for more and the happy and assured women who wear them, including Princess Alexandra and the Duchess of York, keep coming. The right people will surely admire the uplifting and noble parts of your novel.”
Elinor blew her nose and shook her head. “As I get older, I can’t continue to write just fun and frippery. But you mean the book might be popular anyway, despite the so-called scandalous parts?”
“Your publisher, Mr. Duckworth, evidently believed in the book and its author, and he should be here any minute. I say, dry your tears, square your shoulders, and bluff it through. Defy them all. If it’s the book of your heart, I am certain I will love it and recommend it to my clients and friends.”
“Oh, as much as we don’t get on sometimes, old girl, as much as you pooh-pooh my literary allusions, I am so grateful for you. But then—that’s right. Now that you write fashion advice for the Royal Magazine, perhaps you understand my literary aspirations more.”
“Women must have aspirations beyond their families—passionate goals. I’ve agreed to design for the theater here in London, and I intend to take on French fashion in the heart of Paris, to open a shop there someday. Even your frivolous friend Daisy Warwick has turned to socialism in her struggles to help the poor.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Hide out more than you do writing in rural Essex and mope about, I suppose. Wait here, I said, and I’ll order some wash water from the kitchen for your face. Cosmo said just the other day—and I agree—that you are at the height of your beauty. And aren’t we at the height then of our creative goals and dreams, but with better yet to come?”
“Just a moment then,” Elinor said and grasped her wrist. “One other thing before I face family and friends. You recall Lord Curzon, whom I’ve mentioned?”
“Yes, of course. Former viceroy of India, now the Right Honorable Lord Curzon serving as a civil servant with parliamentary ambitions. So sad his wife died last year and left him with those three little girls to rear alone. I suppose like all ambitious men, he wanted a son.”
“The thing is, I met him at a—a function again. So kind and dashing. Terribly witty. Well, through another friend, Alfred, Lord Milner, I sent Lord Curzon an early copy of the book. He read it and wrote that he understood the true purpose and passion of it.”
“Understood the passion of it?” Lucile said with a knowing laugh.
“Don’t look at me that way. He meant that there was a beauty in the love of my characters Paul and the mysterious lady and the child that came from their union. And that my ending was moral because she paid the price for her adultery with her life, but that their son would go on to rule, to be a noble man. Lord Curzon saw good parts in it, of her teaching a young Englishman to appreciate not just love but the arts and travel. And since I have the lady in the novel seduce the young man Paul while she is lying on a tiger skin, he sent me one he brought back from a hunt in India. I—I have two of them now, and I cherish both.”
“Oh.”
“Do say more than ‘oh.’”
“I’ve heard you speak of Lord Curzon, but you’ve spoken of other admirers too. So he has become special. I’d best read the book, but if you wrote it and it came from your heart, Cosmo and I will support you with all we have. Now let me get that wash water, and it looks as if you’ve been tearing at your hair. Then we’ll face first the lambs here tonight and you can face down the lions of literature another day.”
Elinor managed to get herself together, put back on her cloak and hat, and walked round to the front door. At her entry, everyone applauded, but then, she thought, they hadn’t seen tomorrow’s newspapers or heard the scuttlebutt.
Her publisher, Gerald Duckworth, seemed to think early sales were good and whispered, “Buck up, Elinor. Scandal can be a boon to sales.”
“Before it goes on sale in the States, I will write an explanatory introduction to my American readers. Perhaps they will grasp what our countrymen seem not to, that the one motive that makes a union moral in ethics is love.”
“I’ll second that,” Lillie Langtry said and gave Elinor a hug. She recognized at once Lillie’s frock, a Lucile gown of emotion—that was her specialty. This one, if she recalled correctly, was Do You Love Me? Lillie had been a scandal to many and loved by many—too many—yet she held her head high and radiated the sort of passion for life that Lucile had just preached to her. The three of them, Elinor realized, were somehow all sisters under the skin.
“Auntie,” Lucile’s daughter, Esme, said, and gave her a kiss on the cheek, “I think it’s so terribly exciting that you have American readers, and Anthony agrees and Grandmama, too!”
Elinor gave her niece a hug. At age twenty-two—though much too young, Lucile thought—Esme was engaged to Anthony Giffard, Viscount Tiverton, a good catch. They were so in love, holding hands even now. Her fiancé was from a fine family, for his father was an earl who was Lord Chancellor and had written a book on English law. The young couple’s insistence on their short betrothal and coming marriage next month reminded her and Lucile of their own mother’s loyal love for her first husband, so passion obviously ran in the Sutherland family. Yes, whatever slings and arrows assailed her, Elinor decided right then she would hold her head high.
Even Clayton came downstairs to join them for the toast to the release of Three Weeks. Of course he wouldn’t miss a chance to raise a glass, even to his own wife he’d emotionally abandoned long ago, even if it was champagne and not his favorite steady slugs of expensive, imported brandy.
“To Elinor Glyn’s continued literary success,” Cosmo said and everyone agreed with a chant of, “Here! Here!”
“To a long and fruitful writing career,” Gerald Duckworth added.
“Good luck, Mummy!” her daughters, Margot, age fourteen, and Juliet, age nine, cried in unison and lifted their glasses of pink punch.
“To my very talented sister!” Lucile said and clinked her glass to Elinor’s.
Their mother said, “I am so proud of both my girls, but I don’t know if I’ll read this book at my age, dear. But a good love story, well, perhaps.”
Lillie Langtry said, “I love America, and I think you would too. I hear Three Weeks goes on sale there soon, just the time for you to pop over for a visit. Mr. Duckworth, can you not send her there on a sort of tour? I say, ‘Go west, young woman!’ and that means to new places, new people. You’ll adore it there—you would too, Lucile. New horizons for all of us ‘just Jersey girls’!”
Elinor’s gaze connected with Lucile’s. New worlds to conquer. Why, dear Lord Curzon had done that, and she admired him so. Now that he was back and had looked kindly on her—in his own aloof way, of course—she wasn’t set on a foreign jaunt, but she could do without Clayton’s grim face and penny-pinching ways for a while.
Go west, young woman? Maybe so.