A WEEKEND AT LADY ASTOR'S* - Frank Sullivan* It was in the spring of 1938.
For years I had been saying to myself, "Now I must go down to Cliveden and spend a weekend with Lady Astor," but you know how those things are. Weekends are such a bore. I kept putting it off and putting it off and - well - putting it off until I read in the newspapers that Nancy and the Cliveden Set were running the Chamberlain Gov- ernment, and I decided that was something definitely not to be missed. So the following Saturday I threw a few things into a bag, caught the 4:45 tram from Piccadilly Circus, and arrived at Cliveden just as the cuckoos were beginning their evening serenade. Naturally, my heart beat a little faster as I neared Cliveden. Some- where in that castle, I thought, is the little woman who rose from a humble beginning as a member of one of the First Families of Vir- ginia to a place in the front rank of the British peerage. I should have counted myself a poor sort of American had I not felt some pride in this doughty little fellow-countrywoman who held the destiny of the British Empire in her small hands; who, by a discreet whisper behind a potted palm or a fan, could probably cause Australia to be abolished or a law passed forbidding Englishmen to dress for dinner. I thought of the many times my heart had swelled with pride as I sat in the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons and heard the House roar an affectionate greeting to Nancy Astor, rising to a man as she entered and hollering "Shut up!," "Sit down!," or "Go on back to Ameddica, where you came from," even before she had opened her trap. Cliveden was lovely. The yews were in full bloom and cast blue- black shadows on the silver perukes of the- liveried footmen. Scores of beautiful women strolled on the terrace, influencing the decisions of monocled British statesmen by their charm and wit. "Is the Lady of the House in?" I asked the butler who took my bag. "Lady Astor is upstairs at the moment, rewriting the Court Circular for Monday's Times," said the butler. "Are you expected, sir?" "Well, not exactly. I'm just a fellow-countryman of Lady Astor. I. can't really say I know her." "Ah, you'll like her," smiled the butler. "She's a holy terror. Always on the go. And a mind like a steel trap. Click!" The butler imitated a mind like a steel trap. "She'll be delighted to see you, sir. Now you'd better run upstairs and police yourself up. Dinner's at nine. White tie." I was agog at the prospect of being present at one of those famous dinners of the British ruling class I had always read about so much, at which from time immemorial clever girls like Lily Langtry, Margot Asquith, Boadicea, and Nancy Astor have influenced the course of empire by their brilliance and charm. And the Cliveden Set particu- larly! The Cliveden Set rules the British ruling class at the moment. When you rule the ruling class of England, boy, I'm telling you, you're ruling! It was indeed a brilliant assemblage that gathered in the dining room at nine. There were no cocktails, as Lady Astor is a teetotaller, but fortunately the second assistant gamekeeper ran a speakeasy in one of the haunted rooms of the castle and those of us who had been tipped off, or whose noses had been rendered sufficiently keen by thirst, fortified ourselves there prior to dinner. We were a company of a hundred and forty-six, twenty-nine being absent. The Honourable Ursula Godolphin-Potts was forced to remain in her room with a headache, the result of overinfluencing a British statesman on the terrace that afternoon. The German Ambassador was also upstairs nursing an injury. While giving Lord Halifax the Nazi salute that afternoon, he had struck his hand a rather nasty bang on a low-hanging branch of an oak, lacerating it severely. Twenty-seven of the guests had left for home just before dinner on receipt of tele- grams announcing the serious illnesses of their grandmothers. The women wore two ostrich plumes, as Lady Astor is only a vis- countess. She is ten thousand four hundred and twentieth in direct line of succession to the British Crown, or four thousand two hundred and thirty-eight behind Lady Peel (Beatrice Lillie) and eight hundred and sixty-five and sixty-six, respectively, ahead of Dame May Whitty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke - Noel Coward, of course, being still a commoner. All the men wore knee breeches and silk stockings except me. As a virile, patriotic Yankee I refused to kowtow to British flummery in this respect, but as a concession to international good will I did roll my trousers up to my knees. The men wore their decorations. Mine consisted of my Junior Order of Birdmen jewel, my gold badge as former honorary police commissioner of Long Beach, Long Island, my insignia of the St. Aloysius Sodality of St. Peter's Church, Saratoga Springs, and my blue ribbon as healthiest American boy in the national 4-H Contest of 1932. We were a brilliant throng and Lady.Astor never looked lovelier as she sat on the woolsack at the head of the table, with Neville Chamberlain on her right and Lord Lothian on her left. Of course there was "one vacant chair," as the saying goes. Good old Joe Ribbentrop was missing from his usual place, having been transferred to his home office. After a deal of good-natured roughhouse over who should precede whom, during which some of the older duchesses got banged about quite a bit, we all reached our correct seats and Lady Astor motioned for silence. "Welcome 'to Cliveden, ladies and gentlemen," she said. "Oh, shut your mouth," said one of the guests. Nancy Astor was on her feet in an instant. "If the honourable gentleman from Upper looting," she snapped, "thinks that telling me to shut my mouth is any solution of the vital problem which confronts this assemblage at this momentous and sol- emn hour - 1 refer to the problem of getting the soup served before it gets cold - then all I can say to the honourable . . ." "Oh, go sit on a tack!" shouted the honourable gentleman from Upper looting. Would Nancy Astor stand for that? Would the famed mistress of Parliamentary repartee parry this clever thrust or would she allow it to floor her ? The dinner table held its breath. Then she let him have it. "Go sit on one yourself and see how you like it," she snapped. A murmur of admiration swept the dining room. "Gad, I wish I'd said that," said Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times, an Astor paper. "Isn't she in ripping form tonight, though?" said I. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer, another Astor paper. "I thought she gave him Hail Columbia - if you'll pardon the Ameri- canism," said Lord Lothian. The Archbishop of Canterbury also seemed pleased. "Who is the lad who asked our hostess to sit on the tack?" I said to my dinner partner. Lady Feather Barksdale-Wotton. "Oh, he's a spy from His Majesty's Opposition," said Lady Feather. "He's here every weekend. Rather nice chap." The dinner proceeded smoothly. Lady Astor, skilled hostess that she is, had assembled a truly stimulating group, representing every shade of political thought, from conservatives who felt that Hitler should be given only Czechoslovakia, Memel, the Ukraine, the Polish Corridor, and Denmark, to extreme radicals who felt he should also be given France and England. The conversation sparkled. I heard a chap up the table a piece from me say, "Now don't misunderstand me. Some of my best friends are Jews." "Gad, I wish I'd said that," I exclaimed to Lady Gwydd Stensitty- Wowdle, who sat on my left. "Who's he?" "That's Lord Londonderry," said Lady Gwydd. "You know - he wrote that amusing book in praise of Hitler." "Oh, is he the one?" I leaned over and called to him. "Lord Londonderry." "Yes, my good man." "How's tricks? Everything according to Heil?" But he muffed it. The British are so slow at getting a joke. I caught another fragment of conversation. "You know," I heard a peer named Lord Featherstonehaugh (pro- nounced Fuff) say, "sometimes I think Nancy Astor has got herself slightly confused with the British Empire." Instantly every guest produced a notebook and started writing. "What are they doing?" I asked the Honourable Hebe Quart, who sat next Lord Fuff. "Jotting down notes for their memoirs," said Lady Hebe, who was hard at it herself. "We'll all claim we said that instead of Fuff." I must say that it seemed to me, from what discreet peeking I could do, that not all of them were good reporters. Some of the older peers who were hard of hearing had not quite caught FufFs mot and other peers who were hard of artery had caught it all right but could not remember it long enough to record it, so that many inaccurate versions got jotted down, such as "Sometimes I think Nancy Astor has got the British Empire slightly confused" or "Sometimes I think Nancy Astor has got herself slightly confused." This was all very well, but I wanted to sec some action. "When is Lady Astor going to start influencing the British Govern- ment?" I asked Lady Feather. "It's four minutes past ten now and I haven't seen anything." "Silly," admonished Lady Feather. "You have, too. You are seeing the entire Cliveden Set in action. Scarcely a remark has been passed at this table tonight - except by you, of course - that has not been fraught with significance." "You mean?" "I mean that we are not so gauche as to come right out and influence the British Empire directly. It's not so much what we say, it's the way we say it. With us, the most commonplace remark, uttered with just the right flicker of an eye, takes on a significance that can cause repercussions in the farthest-flung outposts of the Empire." Well, that put a different light on things. Here I had been kicking because I thought the dinner conversation was lagging and apparently hell had been popping right in front of me all the time, and I never knew it. After that I had a grand time. It was fun to hear somebody like Lord Halifax say something about foxhunting and then try to figure out whether that remark meant that Britain would or would not go to the aid of France if France went to the aid of Czechoslovakia when Hitler started his Putsch there. Then Lady Astor asked Neville Chamberlain if he would have an- other helping of asparagus. It sounded innocent enough, but every- body at the table knew that it really meant: Would Neville get a place in the Cabinet for General Franco? It was done so neatly that even the old seasoned diplomats at the table could not repress enthusiastic gurgles of admiration. "By gad," said Lord Lothian, "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if sooner or later Nancy Astor succeeded in changing the map of Europe." "Or vice-versa," heckled the spy from His Majesty's Opposition. That crack at our gallant little hostess seemed scarcely cricket to me and I rather burned. "See here," I drawled, "I'm jest a plain, red-blooded American and I s'pose I ain't up to the ways of you Bridish, but by gum. I'm durncd ef I'm a-goin' to set here and listen to y'all cast aspersions on a little woman from Virginia, the Mother of Presidents, that ain't done y'all a mite o' harm. Now get this, you ornery passel o' furriners. George III got England away from the United States but by jiminy, Nancy Astor has got it back. Yip-e-c-e-e!" "Yip-e-e-e-c! Hear! Hear!" shouted the gentleman from His Maj- esty's Opposition. Lady Astor gave me a smile of gratitude. "Why don't you play that on your bazooka?" sneered Lady Feather. "You want to make something of it?" I ra'red. "Sure do, pardner," said Lady Feather, rising. "Keep your shirt on, honey," I advised. "I never hit a woman with a tiara on yet, and now ain't no time to start." "I'll take it off," said Lady Feather, taking it off. "Now you take your glasses off." For a minute it looked as though Lady Feather and I might mix it, but Neville Chamberlain stepped between us and fixed things up. He conceded his watch and chain to me and gave Lady Feather a half- interest in Spain. After that the ladies retired and when we fellows were left alone over the port and nuts, Bernard Shaw talked most interestingly for an hour or two on why it was all right for Hitler to burke Austria. Then we fellows joined the ladies in the drawing room - all except Bernard, who stayed on alone in the dining room because he still had an hour or so talking to do. The dinner conversations were resumed in the drawing room, but you couldn't fool me now. I knew that when Nancy Astor asked Neville if he took sugar in his demitasse it could mean anything from the transfer of a British diplomat in Hong Kong to a new alliance with Mussolini. It set me up no end to be in the know like this, for a while anyhow. Then the idea struck me that if I hung around Cliveden much longer might start saying things fraught with significance. My common sense told me it was unlikely, but you can't be too careful. What would the folks back home think if they heard I was helping the Cliveden Set influence the course of empire? I got pretty uneasy. I wanted to leave but didn't have any good excuse, because I hadn't thought to arrange to have one of those telegrams sent about my grandmother being sick. Then something happened that spurred me to action. I saw Lord Londonderry approaching with a copy of his book on Hitler. He was heading straight for me. I felt like some wild thing about to be trapped. Londonderry came on . ..on... on. I had to act quickly. There wasn't a second to lose. Already he was saying, "Now don't misunderstand me .. ." A footman happened to pass with a tray heaped with telegrams. With a wit born of desperation I seized one and ripped it open. It was for Neville Chamberlain. It read, "Return home immediately. Grandmother ill. Urgent." Darting between Lord Londonderry's legs, I escaped to Lady Astor, pretended the telegram was for me, made my apologies, expressed my thanks for her hospitality, caught the 1:20 goods train back to Water- loo, and was on my old bench on the Embankment in an hour. And never did home seem so sweet. | ||
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