It made my spirits soar to know I was not socially ostracized in the States because of my marriage separation, and that even among some of my London friends, few seemed perturbed. Of course, I knew that going through with a divorce might be a different situation altogether.
In London, my godmother Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, had invited me to one of her popular literary circle soirees. Oh, how I loved this sort of gathering, where, rather than social tittle-tattle, ideas and books and plays were spoken of and argued and often by the very men who had written them.
I was especially excited that I was sought out by many of the guests. Grinning, but shaking a finger at me, H. G. Wells said, “One more good deed from you among the so-called underclasses, my dear Mrs. Marlborough, and your former friends will have to brand you a socialist, and welcome to that club!”
He took a good gulp of wine, then raised his goblet as if he were toasting me, for he was a bit radical with all his criticism of the government—in fiction, at least. I had read his books The Time Machine and War of the Worlds and thought him terribly clever, however much I read a threat of doomsday beneath his stories.
“Do not threaten this lovely lady,” John Galsworthy, standing on my other side, insisted.
I thought Mr. Galsworthy rather a nervous sort. He spoke quietly, unlike the others who raised their voices over the buzz in the room, so I had to strain to hear him. I had thought at first he had gravitated to my side to pump me for inside information about the aristocracy, since he had begun a series of novels about a fictional Forsythe family, but he usually said hardly a word. He was, I thought, an observer, not a talker. He had, however, asked me if I had ever thought of authoring something like The Marlborough Saga, to which I answered, “I dare not, for truth is stranger than fiction.”
The most interesting man today—not counting Winston who was here for once and had been kind enough to bring Clemmie to accompany me—was the very handsome, dark-haired and mustached Bernard Shaw, not to be called George, I had heard. His Irish accent was charming, though the tenor of his thoughts was not. It seemed he liked to criticize everything English, but then, I suppose, that was natural for a theater and music critic.
“The duchess is not a socialist, Wells,” Bernard told his fellow writer, “but a fine example of my independent-thinking ‘New Woman.’ I will have to write a play called The Duchess of Destruction, for I believe she is out to declare war on slum landlords and even champion ‘women of the night,’ to get them out of that profession.”
I was taken aback by that comment but not insulted. His drama Mrs. Warren’s Profession was about a prostitute, and the author Henry James, who was not here this time, championed independent career women in what he considered an unfair male-dominated society. I took this banter seriously, for Henry James had told me once at such a gathering as this that I was the bravest of the new women. He had said that I had “plucked myself from the sinking mud of the aristocracy then jumped in with both feet to pull disadvantaged women up after me.”
“So, Consuelo,” Winston said, appearing suddenly as if to rescue me, “I imagine the heroine of the next British plays and novels will be a rebel from the upper crust, standing up for everyone’s rights—and authored by this creative British brain trust.”
Bernard laughed, Mr. Wells smiled, and Galsworthy beat a quick retreat, evidently when he saw the outspoken guest Nancy Astor stroll over to our growing group. She, too, was an American, one who had made an important marriage to Waldorf Astor, the American-born millionaire, now a British citizen. She was, as people put it, “frightfully outspoken” with a sharp wit. Winston usually liked that in a person, but the two of them got on like oil and water—or more like fire and turpentine.
It was a brave or careless hostess who invited Winston and Nancy Astor to the same event. I could see they were in the midst of some sort of contretemps even now. Nancy, trying to catch up with him, who must have snubbed her, was saying—and I could hear her from here over the background chatter—“I tell you, Winston Churchill, I do not know how that sweet lady Clementine puts up with you. If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee!”
“And if I were your husband,” Winston shot back, “I would drink it!”
The chatter of our little circle stopped. My godmother must have sensed disaster and came rushing over. Bernard smiled, but Mr. Wells bellowed a guffaw.
I admit I grew wide-eyed at that rejoinder but I had to laugh with the men. My godmother fanned her face. Nancy Astor, evidently unable to top that, harrumphed and hurried off.
“I swear, Winston,” Wells said, “you may be wishy-washy between Conservative and Labour, but I like your style! And I like your American duchess, so better get her out of here before that Astor harpy tries to take it out on her.”
“She dare not!” my dear godmother insisted, still fanning her face. “This younger duchess Consuelo stands up for herself, even as this older duchess Consuelo has learned to do!”
I hugged her while our little circle, especially Winston, applauded.
At that moment I decided, wherever I lived, I would be bold to mix such dynamic, fascinating personalities—however outspoken—at my gatherings, too.
LIVING APART FROM the duke but keeping tabs on my growing boys, with all my other interests, kept me busy. I must admit that I was often exhausted, but that helped me to sleep. I was able to obtain one of the first Akouphone carbon transmitters, an electric one, to help with my hearing. When I visited Papa and Anne at their home in Poissy about twenty miles from Paris and went to the races with them, I could more clearly hear Papa’s recital of the order of the horses, despite the cheers all about us. I suppose it was pure nonsense, but I came to believe I could hear better in France.
But while there at their château, more than once I dreamed I was flying, looking down at the ground passing under me. I soared with the birds, hearing the lovesick songs of a canary named Golden who perched on the rim of the woven basket of the balloon. Below me I saw children on the playgrounds I had promoted in the slums of cities and saw Grace waving good-bye to me. I was looking for a country house, a place away from London, a retreat, but where was it in the fields and forests below? And I was trying to plan the Sunderland House Conference to help protect the poor working women, where they bent over dim tables making lace or matchboxes or chains all day with so little pay.
Chains . . . were my balloon and basket still chained to the ground, or was I lost? My fantasy turned to nightmare for I was all alone, and the balloon was drifting I do not know where, and Jacques was not there to save me.
I sat up in bed, sweating, my heart pounding. “Oh, a dream, good and bad!” I said in the silent guest room. It was already daylight. I remembered that Jacques had telephoned my father to say he would try to visit me here before I went back to England tomorrow. He and other pilots were preparing for war if worse came to worst with the terrible Kaiser and the Huns, but I was certain that could not be.
If Jacques did not come today, I would be gone. I had to leave, for I had scheduled the conference organized by two trade union charities, both headed by women, this time to convince people to protect women in the sweated trades. I was going to be daring in my methods. If the attenders accepted my invitations either to just see the inside of my London home or to hear some pretty speech from me while my helpers passed a basket for donations, they were in for a surprise.
“Surprise, madame!” a housemaid called out after she knocked on my door and opened it, carrying a breakfast tray. “Your papa, he says you have a visitor downstairs, Monsieur Jacques, the airman, yes, did land his aeroplane in a field near here, only can stay a little while.”
I threw the covers off and scooted out of bed. “Leave the tray, please, and call my maid at once,” I told her in French. “Time, you know, flies too!”
“I AM SO proud of you!” Jacques told me the moment we were alone after spending a few minutes downstairs with Papa and Anne. He had already praised me for how well I was doing with my new hearing aid. “You are making a life for yourself, stepping away from a man who did not deserve you!”
He had borrowed Papa’s motorcar to take me to the nearby field to see his aeroplane. The rural road was bumpy, and I bounced against him. “Much smoother in the air,” he told me as my hip seemed to stick to his, “but this has its advantages! And there she is, my other passion.”
Did he mean other than me? I dare not ask as he stopped the motorcar, and we got out in the rutted entry to the field. “At least the people who gathered have gone away for now,” he told me, taking my hand and pulling me after him into the grassy meadow with bobbing daisies, though there was a mown path he must have landed on that stopped at the very edge of the uncut area.
“But is . . . is it dangerous for you?” I asked as we approached the silver aeroplane, glinting in the midmorning sun.
It had double wings, two front wheels and one small back one and a large rotor kind of thing on its nose. The pilot had no covered place to sit, so I could see his head must be out in the air behind a short windscreen. Still holding my hand, Jacques turned and looked at me, his gaze so intense.
“Everything worth having—and possibly losing—makes flying and other things in life precious. Consuelo, I did not trust this thought to writing in my letters in case you were, well, being watched, but I am hoping you are considering the final step to end your unhappy marriage. Granted, my strict Catholic family would never want me to wed a divorced woman and a Protestant, but I would risk all that if, well, if I could court you, see you. If you would allow me to come to England—or wherever—I do not care, to see you.”
“But I thought you are married to . . . I mean . . . to this metal lady here,” I said, with a gesture at the silver creature sitting so solemnly alone in this French field.
“So,” he said, lifting my hand and kissing the back of my fingers, “you will never have to be jealous of her. My dear, that first night we met and danced so briefly, long ago, I went home and told my mother I had met the girl I would like to marry. Yes, I swear I did!”
He put an arm around my waist, kept my hand in his and tried to turn us as if on a dance floor. But a few steps away from the aeroplane, the grass snagged our feet and a clump of daisies nearly toppled us. Laughing, he took me closer to the aeroplane, and we leaned against its metal skin in the shade of one wing. He held me to him. How famished I had been for the intense attention of a man, all those years of marriage when I was duchess indeed but the duke was so cold. And since then, too, as busy as I had kept myself. But this man, when he looked at me, listened to me, spoke to me—I swear time stood still and I felt all that clear down to the pit of my belly. If Jacques had proposed it, I would have lain down with him in the meadow and loved him forever.
“So,” he said, “the bold crusader who speaks out for downtrodden people’s rights I have heard about and read about has nothing to say for now?”
“I am cherishing each moment. I do not want this—us—to end.”
“Then I believe that is a yes that when I can I shall visit you, court you. I swear I shall win you!”
I almost told him he already had, but this was too quick, too brief, as had been all of our encounters. Was this even real? For I had dreamed of him, wanted something like this. And if war with Germany became a reality, that would mean Jacques would be gone to fight to protect France, or that I could even lose him before he was really mine.
We kissed and caressed until some farmer’s boys shouted that the “pilot man” was back and everyone should come see.
“I must take you back before I go,” he told me, frowning at the growing crowd we had not noticed along the fence of the field.
“I can drive back. I know how. I want to see you fly your other lady.”
Despite the cheers and a few hoots from the farm boys, Jacques kissed me hard again and climbed up into the well that must hold his seat and the controls.
“Oh!” he said down at me. “I forgot the key to the motorcar!” He tossed it down to me. “Consider it the key to my heart!”
He put on a leather cap, goggles, and a scarf. The rotor on the nose started to turn, and the engine hummed. I moved away and stood in the staring crowd of rural French folk as the aeroplane rolled away onto the cut strip and rolled faster, faster, then took to the blue sky, sailing over an orchard.
“Long live love, yes?” one of the farm women said in French with a wink at me.
I just nodded and kept shading my eyes to look up toward the sun. Jacques made one pass above, a circle with a dip of both wings, then disappeared into the heavens. The little crowd cheered. I did too, but when would I see him again? And if war came to this lovely, peaceful land, would I ever?