to Simpson for four years, his name is Ernest, and she’s never been happier. Of course, she said that when she married the aviator, but it was all far too hasty.
The first summer we were “out,” 1915, she got an invitation to visit a cousin who was stationed at Pensacola, Florida, and she was off like a shot. Wally always adored a uniform. The next thing we knew, she was back with a diamond on her finger, engaged to a lieutenant in the Aviation Corps. That was Win Spencer.
The wedding was at Christ Church, and I was supposed to be a bridesmaid, along with Mary Kirk, but then Grandma Patterson died and I had to go to the burying, so Lucie Mallett stepped in at short notice. I wasn’t altogether sorry. The gowns were yellow, which has never been my color, and our bouquets were snapdragons. Somehow whenever I see a snapdragon, I think of Wally.
We lost touch after that. I said, “You could have written.”
“Well,” she said, “it wouldn’t have made an edifying read. I knew the first week I’d made a mistake.”
I think the honeymoon comes as a shock to every bride. It was years before I felt able to enjoy the Pocono Mountains again. But with Win Spencer, there was the additional problem of drink. They went to a resort in West Virginia, which was dry, but apparently he’d thought to bring along his own supplies.
She said it was the stress of flying that had turned him to alcohol. It was the usual thing to toast the flag before anyone went up in one of those crates, but Win would always have a couple more shots, to settle the first one.
She sounds to have had a pretty good war though. He was posted to California and they say the beaches at Coronado are divine. Then he was sent to China, and she thought it’d be more fun to tag along than sit it out on Soapsuds Row with all the other Navy wives, so she followed him. There was never any stopping Wally. In fact, advising her against something only made her all the more set on doing it. Like the time she borrowed Nugent Wilson’s suit and crashed a Bachelors’ Club ball dressed as a buck.
She says China was a real adventure. Hong Kong, Shanghai. There was a war going on, people getting shot in the streets, heads appearing on pikes, and there was typhoid. She ended up in Peking, had an affair that didn’t work out, and then decided to call it a day with Win. He was drinking more than ever. She went back to the States, got a divorce, and was staying with Mary Kirk for a while, getting back on her feet, when she met Ernest, who has business interests in London. So here she is.
I said, “You never looked up Violet? She’s Lady Melhuish, you know, in Carlton Gardens?”
“Yes,” she said, “I know. But I don’t think Violet ever really approved of me, and these days she’s so grand. Frankly, I’m looking to create a livelier circle. I’m more interested in what people are than who their grandfathers were.”
I’m invited for Saturday. She says I’ll find Ernest very knowledgeable on wine and literature.
Loelia and Bendor Westminster to dinner at Carlton Gardens. She’s his third duchess and very young. They say she married him for his money. Poached salmon again. Violet might take time off from her committees one of these days to review her recipe book.
26th May 1932
Flora fell crossing the Mall, and came in crying. Even Doopie couldn’t soothe her. “Mummy, I crazed my knee,” she kept sobbing, but there was cold comfort to be had from Violet.
“Did you, darling?” she said. “Jolly good. Now off you skip. I have Fishermen’s Orphans this afternoon.”
Every day there’s something. Consumptives, Highland Crafts, Unmarried Mothers.
A note pushed under my door when I woke from my nap. HULO written in wax crayon. The poor child spends too much time around Doopie.
28th May 1932
Wally’s apartment is in Bryanston Court. A dull building in a dull street. Wally’s on the second floor with a cook, one live-in maid, a daily, and a driver for Ernest. A claustrophobic entrance hall filled with white flowers and ivory elephants. A modest drawing room, mahogany and striped silk mainly, but one glorious lacquered Chinese screen and a table full of gorgeous little jade doodads. All bought for a song, I’m sure. Her China years may be glossed over whenever Ernest is around, but she doesn’t make any effort to hide the booty.
Ernest came home at seven and presided over the drinks’ tray. He’s pleasant enough, dapper, a little too fat in the face to be handsome and he almost certainly dyes his mustache. To hear him speak, you’d take him for an Englishman. He showed me some of his first editions while Wally interfered in the kitchen. She always did love to cook. After her mother remarried, she’d often come home with me during vacation, and one time she took over our kitchen and made terrapin stew, because she heard Father saying it was his favorite dish in the whole world and nobody ever cooked it for him.
I reminded her about that. She laughed.
“Nineteen-twelve,” she said. “I can tell you exactly. After Mama moved to Atlantic City with that four-flusher.”
Her stepfather was a drinker and an idler called Rasin. Goodness knows what Mrs. Warfield saw in him. Wally used to say she prayed he was a seedless Rasin, because she was in no mood for any baby sisters and brothers. He was dead within two years anyway.
Ernest said, “You two certainly do go back a long way.”
Indeed we do. Back as far as her mother’s sad little boardinghouse, though I’d never dream of bringing up that kind of embarrassment now.
29th May 1932
Decided it was time to pick the brains of someone from the old crowd, so I placed a call to Lucie Mallett. Violet fretting in the background about expense, quite unable to understand why a letter wouldn’t do just as well. She knows I always pay my way. I just wanted to find out if Lucie knew anything about Ernest.
She said, “All I know is, Wally came back from China with her insides in some kind of disarray, crossed the state line to get a divorce, and wasted no time in helping herself to someone else’s husband. She met him at Mary Kirk’s.”
I said, “I know that. But who is he?”
“A nobody,” she said. “And he left a child and an invalid wife, just because Wally Warfield snapped her fingers. Scandalous.”
I said, “I’ll tell her you said hello.”
“Please don’t,” she said.
Another note under my door. HULO ARNT.
30th May 1932
Lunched with Pips and Wally at the Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly. I do feel a light touch is called for with mosaics, unless you’re decorating a temple of worship.
The girls were a little stiff with each other at first, but a bottle of hock wine soon got them talking about past times. Pips remembered something I’d quite forgotten: how Wally talked Homer Chute into masquerading as her cousin and picking her up from Oldfields in his Lagonda one Sunday. They were gone all day at the pleasure beach and Wally came back with a tintype portrait of herself sitting on Homer’s knee. Not that Pips was backward with the boys. She had more fraternity pins than any of us.
Wally says she doesn’t know how long she and Ernest will be in London but she’d really like to liven things up while she’s here, and leave her mark. Pips suggested costume parties, but she hasn’t seen Bryanston Court. It’s far too small for a crush. Anyway, Wally says unlimited drink is death to conversation. She prefers elegant little dinners where she can draw people out.
Wally believes the secret of success as a hostess is to mix important people with a sprinkling of interesting types from lower levels. Also, in the matter of food and presentation and entertainment to have the courage to season the