various antics of the brood. Ulick won a trophy for shooting. Flora wet her drawers at Lady Londonderry’s. Rory fell off his new pony and knocked out two teeth. On and on it went without at all getting to the point. Violet’s meanderings are so fatiguing. I had to turn two pages before I learned who it was who had so extraordinarily appeared on the scene. Minnehaha, no less. Wally Warfield! Well!
I ran into Pips Waldo, she writes, who told me all she knew. Apparently, she’s married to someone who was in the Guards but is now in business. They have a little place somewhere north of Marble Arch, and from what Pips has heard, she’s quite on the make.
I can imagine. Her mother didn’t have a dime, but Wally never allowed that to hold her back. She had sharp elbows and a calculating mind, and she didn’t miss a trick. Great fun though. School was much more interesting once Wally was around.
She came to Oldfields in 1911 and only because an uncle was paying for her. One didn’t expect a new girl to start throwing her weight around, especially a girl who was a charity case, but on her first day she warned everyone that although her given name was Bessie Wallis, she only answered to Wallis or Wally. I could see her point. Bessie’s more a name for a cow or a mammy.
But more often than not, we called her Minnehaha, because of her cheekbones and the way she braided her hair, and she quite liked it. She reckoned she was descended from Pocahontas, but then so do a lot of people. Pips Waldo and Mary Kirk and I were her main friends. Lucie Mallett was a hanger-on, but she never invited Wally to her home, because Mrs. Mallett knew all the dirt about Wally’s mother taking in boarders and wearing lip rouge, and the Malletts had very closed minds. But we Pattersons were raised differently.
‘Let me not judge my brother,’ Father always said.
Anyway, it was Lucie Mallett’s loss. Wally and I used to have such fun. Inventing pains so we could stay in and read fashion tips instead of playing basketball. Drinking ginger ale and eating butter cookies after lights out. I was always sorry we drifted out of touch. So, now she’s in London. Perhaps I’ll reconsider. It would be nice to see Pips. It might be interesting to pick up the threads with Judson Erlanger. And with Wally around livening things up, I think I could even endure a few weeks of dull old Violet.
15th April 1932
Dead crows nailed to the gate posts this morning and yesterday. I leave for England next week. And if Randolph Putnam is so anxious to be of service to me, he can arrange for the locks to be changed. I don’t want to come back and find Junior has taken possession of Sweet Air.
11th May 1932, Carlton Gardens, London
A whole month since I found the energy for my diary. Can there be anything more prostrating than travel. And my recovery is being made a thousand times harder by the chaos in Violet’s establishment. She and Melhuish had been in the country, so, when I arrived, the house in Carlton Gardens wasn’t properly aired and my bed was distinctly damp. I threatened to move to Claridge’s. Violet eventually asked a rebellious-looking domestic if she might find the time to fill a rubber bottle with hot water and rub it between my sheets, and seemed to think that addressed the problem. Said rubber bottle was finally delivered, with heavy sighs, an hour after I had fallen exhausted into my bed. If this house is anything to go by, England is on the very edge of revolution.
The good news is that the location seems to be the very best. Melhuish is handy for his clubs and the House of Lords, Buckingham Palace is practically in our backyard, so very convenient for Violet, who is thick as thieves with Their Majesties, and the shops of Bond Street are no great distance away. If I can only get my rooms heated, I think I’ll be suited.
Violet has grown stouter and probably hasn’t had her hair attended to since the day she left Baltimore. She clips it up, and she’s no sooner clipped it than it escapes. Melhuish’s hair, on the other hand, is now in the final stages of retreat. One thing I will say for Danforth Brumby, he kept a fine head of hair till the very last.
Of the children I have so far met only Flora. She is eight years old and has occasional lessons from a spinster who comes to the house whenever she can be spared by her sick relations. Otherwise the child seems to tag along with whatever Doopie is doing, which cannot be very much. They take each other for walks in St. James’s Park and make tiny coverlets for a dolls’ house. My arrival caused great excitement, and the child immediately showed signs of wishing to attach herself to me, so today I was forced to establish some rules. She is not to visit my room. She is not to lurk in doorways spying on me. She is not to play her drum within a country mile of me. One must start as one intends to go on.
As for Doopie, she never seems to age. She stared and stared at my face, then smiled and said, “Ids Bayba!” but I’m not convinced anything really registered with her. Violet credits her with understanding, but a person may smile in an aimless way without at all understanding whether there’s anything to smile about. Nora Sedley Cordle springs to mind.
I haven’t yet sighted the two boys. They are normally kept at a school called Pilgrims but are being allowed out tomorrow night for something called an exeat. Not on my account, I hope.
A sweet note of welcome waiting for me from Pips Waldo, now Crosbie. She and her husband, Freddie, are in Halkin Street, just off Belgrave Square. We lunch on Monday.
14th May 1932
Besieged. The house is filled with boys wearing hobnailed boots. They were brought down to the drawing room to meet me last evening. All Violet’s children have Melhuish’s carroty hair and freckled skin. Ulick is tall, I’d say, for twelve; Rory is like a skinned rabbit. According to Violet, he suffers from night terrors. According to one of the housemaids, who offers unsought opinions on everything while dust gathers in drifts inches deep, he sees “imaginings.” Well, all children are prone to imaginings, and the less intelligence they have the more susceptible they are. I remember I used only to have to snake my arm out of bed and set a rocking chair in unexplained motion for Violet to start howling, followed rapidly by Doopie.
Anyway, both boys shook me nicely by the hand and Ulick asked me how many acres I have at Sweet Air. Rory was gazing at me with his mouth open, Ulick nudged him in the ribs, and when he still stood catching flies, Ulick said, “And how was the crossing? Agreeable, I hope.”
Rory said, “You beast! I was going to ask that. You know I was. Now what shall I ask?” Quite droll.
But they’ve all been tramping overhead since the crack of nine and now, just as I thought I’d found peace in the morning room, Violet has appeared with her book of lists, and the child Flora has bounded in, draped in a tartan traveling rug. She says they’re playing Highland Clearances and she is It.
This evening, Violet and Melhuish are dining with the Bertie Yorks. He’s a brother of the Prince of Wales. Violet said, “I’ll have cook prepare you a tray. I hope you understand. It’s not the kind of dinner where one can arrive with an extra.”
Extra indeed! As if I’ve come to London to beg dinners from junior Royalties! I shall go to a movie theater with a box of candy.
15th May 1932
The boys Ulick and Rory were driven back to their school after luncheon, Rory sobbing pitifully when the moment came to leave, begging to be allowed to have lessons at home like Flora. Ulick was in a fury with him. He kept saying, “Stop it at once. Melhuishes don’t blub.”
Violet busied herself in the library with committee papers while he was being bundled into the car. She says he always cries, but once he’s back with his friends he soon cheers up. She said, “He’ll toughen up. And someday he’ll thank us for it. Imagine if a boy went into Officer Training still soft from home life.”
16th May 1932
Lunch with Pips Crosbie. She now has a red tint and bangs and looks adorably modern. She goes to Monsieur Jules in Bruton Street and is going