Soon after, I found the country home of my dreams. A friend told me of a Tudor-era farmhouse for sale in the gentle hills of Surrey, a two-hour motorcar ride from London. I contacted the family who owned the house but hardly used it. And so, on a sweet summer day, I met with the Reverend Mr. Gainsforth to look at the property that had been in his family for four hundred years, quite outdoing the lease the Marlborough dukes held on Blenheim.
“We truly do not want to sell, Your Grace, but when I heard it was you, well.”
“Because you think I will pay a pretty penny for it?” I asked him with a little laugh.
“Why, no,” the portly man said, as he drove me in a carriage toward the property. “I mean . . . the duchess connection. You did not know that the first duchess, Sarah, briefly owned Crowhurst? Well, that is, she leased it to house some veterans of the first duke’s campaigns.”
“No, I did not. How wonderful,” I said, craning to look down the lane for the first glimpse of the house and barn, but I was remembering what surely was Sarah’s ghost at Blenheim, and I had wondered if she missed me there. I had a feeling she had not wanted me to leave.
The night I was overseeing the packing of my things in my bedroom, items had kept falling on the floor, and my maid had not known why. Twice the door to the hall had opened of its own accord to bring in a chill draft, and someone had turned down the covers on the bed when the maid was downstairs and I was undressing in the next room.
“Duchess?” Mr. Gainsforth broke into my reverie. “Are you quite all right? Crowhurst is its original name and bad luck to change it, family lore says. You can see the tall yews up ahead,” he said pointing. “The lane just beyond that.”
“Oh, it is just lovely!” I cried as we turned down a curving lane. I realized that was no way to get a reasonable price for a place, but I did not care. Charming, secluded—everything I had wanted, and, no doubt, Jacques had wanted for me.
The old barn was ready to fall down, but the ancient, half-timbered manor house looked sturdy and welcoming. It had a steep, slanted roof with stone chimneys. Thick windowpanes sealed with lead glinted in the sun. And the frame for the house was terraces of flowers in wild bloom, honeysuckle and roses, phlox, lavender Canterbury bells and purple iris. Around the back, lay a sunken herb garden, and beyond, a pond with four swans swimming!
The housemaid who lived in a room at the back, Hatherly, came out to greet us, a charming young, blond woman with rosy cheeks and none of that worried, gaunt look so many London girls wore now.
“Just cutting flowers for the table, Your—your Duchess!” she said and bobbed a curtsy after we briefly chatted. She went about her business in the herb garden as Mr. Gainsforth took me inside.
Clean flagstone floors and creamy white, unadorned plastered walls greeted me. The great hall reached upward to the raftered roof, and an oak staircase led to a great chamber upstairs with smaller bedrooms, too. A large oriel window threw light inside. I could instantly picture where an oriental rug would go, my French paintings, velvet draperies, and my chintz-covered easy chairs.
I knew I must have this place. I not only pictured escaping here on weekends and longer visits, but also inviting my London friends and my sons, but especially Jacques when this wretched war was over. I did not even fret that Duchess Sarah might haunt Crowhurst, the first property, at age thirty-eight, I could really call my own, here in my new home.
CROWHURST BECAME MY salvation. I loved being there, entertaining or just alone. Hatherly stayed on, and I needed only two local gardeners beyond that, even when I entertained, for things seemed so much simpler and safer here. I paid some local men to tear down the rickety barn and extended the stone patio. I spent much time in London at my war work, but fled to Surrey whenever I could manage.
Besides my literary and family friends, two of my favorite weekend or Sunday guests, not counting Winston and Clemmie, were Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The duke was now in the House of Lords, an aristocrat to his toe tips, the very group that Asquith was attacking to lessen their power. I suppose the duke knew Asquith was a friend of mine since I now leaned closer to the Liberal left. Getting along with the duke no longer mattered to me except for our not upsetting our sons.
I only hoped that when this dreadful war ended everyone would be so relieved that, if I asked for a divorce, the duke, who seemed ever swayed by his longtime lover Gladys, would be happy to oblige. I had realized far too late that her goal from the first was to be Duchess of Marlborough, and she was quite welcome to the duke and the title, though that would mean going through the grueling steps for a divorce.
I regretted that this September Sunday, H. H. Asquith had brought his wife Margot with him, not because I had designs on him, but because that woman completely annoyed me. She had nasty opinions of everyone, so I wondered what she said of me behind my back. She was the most skilled woman I had ever known at subtle or blatant digs.
“Those wretched little owls are back up there in the very tiptop of your ceiling,” she told me, covering her wineglass with her hand as if their droppings would plop into her martini when they stayed way over in their little niche. “Really, Consuelo, how can you live out here like this? You had best have those creatures caught and tell that country girl of yours to bring in a man and a ladder to toss them out.”
“I do get an urge to toss people out sometimes,” I told her, straight-faced. “But the owls are wise little things and only observe and do not give a hoot.”
“Oh, well, that reminds me of a comedy routine I saw the other day in London at a theater, the same one your eldest attended with that sort of chorus girl. My, your Blandford does have a good eye for beauty, skin deep at least, and he looked so fine in his uniform. I heard Sunny said simply—about Blandford chasing chorus girls—‘It’s his common American blood.’”
I chose to ignore that jab, for it was her bread and butter, though I would have much liked to have forced it down her throat.
“Bert is home for a brief leave,” I told her, keeping calm, “and you are right about his appreciation of beauty. His good taste is why he likes Crowhurst so much—owls and all. He suggested I change the name to Owlhurst, but Ivor enjoys it here, too, just the way it is. I do think there is something so clean and pure here, unsullied by critics or all sorts, at least until recently.”
The moment that was out of my mouth I regretted it, but the woman irked me to no end. Oh dear, now I might lose H.H., too, and he was such a brilliant conversationalist, especially with brandy in his hand and a week of fighting the House of Lords behind him. I imagined he rather liked being with people he did not have to argue with—except for Margot, that is.
“Well!” she huffed. “Do let me know if you ever take another suggestion from me, let it be that you rid yourself of Sunny. You do not even feign to be married anymore, and he has that other American on the string. I would give the heave-ho to H.H., lord of all wartime parliaments of the world, if he did that.”
“I thank you so much again for your advice,” I told her, my voice dripping honey. At least I kept from splashing my glass of wine in her face. “I shall remember that next time the owls call out Who, who, and I shall tell them, Margot Asquith, that is who needs your wise words.”
“Really!”
“Time to head back, Margot,” H.H. said, coming up and putting his arm around my shoulder instead of hers, but he still had brandy in his right hand.
“Margot does not like my pet owls, or a few others either.”
“Ah. News to me,” he said rolling his eyes. “I thank you, Consuelo, for this respite from the war. I fear we are going to have rationing soon, probably of sugar, even bread, maybe after that meat, but your food and drink has been excellent today. The conversation, too, most of it,” he added with a quick glance at Margot behind her back. I nearly burst out laughing but bit my tongue.
“I just bet your government never rations brandy,” Margot said.
He ignored that, but I had to laugh at last. I accompanied him to the door, and Margot followed, scooping up her purse and another drink.
What would I do without my friends during these war years, these years of separation from the duke and from Jacques, waiting for the right time to say I wanted a divorce, despite all the shenanigans we must go through with the damned newspapers on two continents all looking our way. But like a wise owl at the ripe old age of nearly forty, as soon as this dreadful war ended, I was ready.
IT HELPED SO much when my American countrymen finally entered the war in April of 1917. Mother had been predicting they would, but then, she had also predicted American women would get the vote. She was the perfect rabble-rouser for that, marching, giving speeches, and making a general ruckus in the American press, something she had been skilled at for years.
I spent some of my beautiful days at Crowhurst fretting for the safety of my loved ones: Bert, who was now in France; Ivor’s health; and certainly for Jacques. Despite not being fit for service, Ivor had been taken onto the staff of the Quartermaster-General at his headquarters at the War Office—so the duke finally got his wish that a son of his served there safely. Also, Winston was kind to take Ivor with him on one of his tours to inspect the front in France, and he wrote to me—perhaps to the duke also—how well Ivor had acquitted himself in the war zone.
I seldom attended social functions now and had closed and vacated vast Sunderland House, taking a small place near Regent’s Park where Ivor lived with me. I was so busy with war work that it was a rare delight to snag more than one or two days at Crowhurst.
King George declared the royal family would no longer be designated by its string of German names but henceforth be known as the House of Windsor. I imagined old Queen Victoria was rolling in her tomb at that, but it was best to cut all ties with the demented Kaiser.
The dreadful Spanish flu that was sweeping the civilized world hit both America and England hard, and, once again, Crowhurst was my refuge. With the “Yanks’” help, armistice was declared and the Treaty of Versailles was signed June 28, 1919. And later that year, when autumn turned the deciduous trees around Crowhurst glorious colors, Jacques was sent on a mission to England, and Papa telephoned to say my long-lost love would call on me at Crowhurst.
I did not know the exact time he would appear. Waiting, pacing, I looked out my windows toward my swans huddled together in the chill wind at the edge of the pond. With my pair of owls cuddled in the ceiling boards far overhead, I made two decisions: I wanted Jacques in my life forever; and despite the legal hoops we both must jump through, after nearly fifteen years of separation, I would ask the Duke of Marlborough for a divorce.