Back in Europe, Dorothy falls in love with a French sailor, and then has a date with the future King Edward VIII.
France
I have no records at all after we came back from Egypt till late in the autumn. By then I was living at 9 rue de la Grand Chaumiere, in a house which consisted of furnished rooms; as far as I can remember there was only one bathroom in the entire house and it was necessary to book it days in advance. I think I only used it once; it was much easier to go to the public baths not far from the Café du Dôme. I think Zora was under the impression that where I was living was a sort of students’ hostel, like the Studia, but it wasn’t. However there were quite a lot of students there. I had a huge room which served as a studio; I could do my batiks there – that is, the actual painting of the wax, but I had to dye them at Mlle. de Félice’s place at Nauitly, which was a bore, carting them back and forth. In addition to my room there was a small cabinet de Toilette with running water – cold, of course. Each morning the maid brought me a huge can of hot water, and so I managed.
9 rue de la Grand Chaumiere is now a hotel, A La Villa des Artistes; my guess is that it’s the same building as in 1923.
Lily “Zora” Wickersham (1870-1956) was Dorothy’s aunt, who had informally adopted her after her mother’s early death.
Dorothy doesn’t mention it, but we know that in August 1923 she joined the lending library run by Sylvia Beach’s famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, for a month, and then renewed for a year in September, which indicates that she planned to make Paris her medium-term base. She later renewed for another 12 months in September 1924 and October 1925.
Evelyn and Muriel Bradford, friends of the Bideleux girls in Havre, were there too, and also Ken Warden – who was supposed to be working for examinations. But his passion was, and still is, bridge. When he’d spent his month’s allowance he stayed in bed most of the day, and just got up in time to go and play bridge; there was always plenty to eat at the bridge parties he went to, so he didn’t have to buy food. We only got breakfast – coffee and croissants – in the house itself; a maid brought them to our respective rooms. Once or twice I got worried about Ken’s not getting enough to eat and I’d invite him to lunch at a restaurant and order a large steak for him. He was in love with Maisie Bideleux but they weren’t engaged till some time later.
Alice Evelyn Bradford (1902-1956) married Edmund Drane Skepper (1900-1962) in 1927. Their children included Olympic skier Robert Skepper.
Muriel Caroline Bradford (1906-1994) married John Edward Anderson (1903-1982) in 1933. I have not found any record that they had children.
In late 1923 they had very recently lost both their parents, Cecil Alexander Bradford (1873–1923) and Caroline Ruth Budgen (1874–1922); their mother died in May 1922 in Fontenay sous Bois on the outskirts of Paris, and their father in March 1923 in Davos, Switzerland.
They also had a younger brother, Robert Alexander Bradford (1908-1958). He would have been only 15 in 1923.
Maisie Bideleux’s boyfriend was William John McKendrick Warden (1904-1980). They married in 1928. As well as his bridge-playing, they were a formidable mixed doubles tennis team in Singapore in the 1930s.
The next section was originally placed at the end of the 1923 chapter of the typescript, but I have moved it up here for reasons which will be obvious.
Oh, now I remember something about the summer of 1923. I think I went straight to the rue de la Grande Chaumiere after I got back from Egypt, though I don’t know who could have told me about it. In July Marguérite Quersin, who had married a naval officer, Albert Vulliez, invited me to go to stay with them at Toulon, where Albert was stationer. My friends in Paris all said I was mad, that no one could possibly stand the heat down there in July. It’s funny how ideas change; now the Midi is quite dead except in the summer! But then the season was roughly from just before Christmas till just after Easter, and the big hotels were shut up all summer and autumn. Anyway I went. Marguérite had told me that Albert’s sister had recently died, and that her husband Loïc Petit de la Villeon, was very unhappy and she hoped I’d help cheer him up.
As previously noted, Marguerite Angéline Zélie Thérèse Bertha Quersin (1897-1977), married Albert Vulliez (1897-1976) in 1922 in Brussels; they may have had two children (my information is not clear). They divorced in 1947 and Albert then married Wanda Lapara, who was also a writer.
Loïc Antoine Marie Petit de la Villéon (1896-1978) married Charlotte Vulliez (1894-1923) in 1919. He was the oldest of ten brothers and sisters. Charlotte had died as recently as 18 April, so only three months before Loïc met Dorothy. His second wife was Marcelle Lechartier (1902-1997); they appear to have had five children, including at least one son. There is a noted French oceanographer with the same name.
When I arrived Marguérite met me; Albert was on duty so we didn’t meet till he came home in the evening. They had a nice villa, and Vimy was there, older and rather grey, but he recognised me at once and was delighted to see me and slept in my room. [This is the first and only mention of Vimy, presumably a dog.] They also had a lovely salugi [another dog] that some Arab prince had given to Albert; she was very gentle and very clean, her coat smelt rather of hay, fresh and sweet. When Albert came home – I think we’d already dined and that it was late – Marguérite introduced him and then literally picked him up and carried him off over her shoulder – he was small and she was large – and he waved to me saying “Au revoir, Doffie!” He had curly fair hair and looked very young.
I think it was the next day that I met Loïc. As I remember it almost the first thing he said to me was: “When are you going back to Paris?” which slightly surprised me till it appeared that he wanted to go on the same day; In the event we did go back together, sitting up in a first-class carriage, as Loïc being an officer could travel free first-class, but would have had to pay a supplement for a sleeper. I’d rather have taken a sleeper but wanted to be with him, so I sat up too, and didn’t sleep much. He took a room in Paris and I saw a lot of him.
It is 850 km (530 miles) from Toulon to Paris. Today’s high-speed trains do it in four hours, but it is a nine hour drive, and trains in 1923 would probably have taken about that length of time.
I thought I was very much in love with him and was quite determined to marry him. Lyman [Dorothy’s elder brother Lyman Charlton Hibbard (1893-1956)] didn’t seem to take much interest; he was sharing a flat with Rudi de Wardener [Baron Rudolf Theodore de Wardener, 1887-1962] – at least it was Rudi’s flat, at 55 rue Jouffroy. Rudi told me later that he said to Lyman: “You really ought to do something about this young man of Dorothy’s” and Lyman agreed. So he rang me up and arranged to take Loïc and me out to the Bois for dinner, at a place where we could dance. But Loïc couldn’t dance, because he had sciatica. I danced a bit with Lyman. He didn’t speak English, but Lyman’s French was quite good. Lyman was very nice to him and I thought they were getting on very well, but Rudi told me later what Lyman said when he got back. Rudi was interested to hear about him and waited up till he heard Lyman come in whistling.
“Well, you look pleased, do you like him?” Rudi asked.
“Oh, he’s a poor fish, she’ll never marry him,” Lyman said. It is really thanks largely to Lyman that I didn’t marry him. The family came from America that summer and Lyman saw them before I did and impressed on them that they must be very nice to Loïc and not say a word against him to me, just leave me alone to decide for myself. I was all prepared for opposition – that no one would want me to marry a penniless French Naval Officer (if I remember rightly his pay was about £10 a month then) and I suppose that was really half the charm of the affair. But everyone was very nice to him, and said nice things about him to me, though Zora told me she might not be able to continue my allowance – however Loïc seemed to think we could manage.
In August we went to Normandie where Zora and Dollie had a villa at Houlgate, but for some reason – perhaps there wasn’t room at the villa – Loïc and I stayed in a farmhouse where Mary Syers was staying with Sonia. Mary didn’t care for Loïc much, I think. If I remember rightly, that was before the family came, because I’m almost sure it was before he’d met them, and when I was expecting opposition from them, that Loïc, who was stationed at Cherbourg, told me he was having the flat done up and that if I came there we could be married at once by a Naval Chaplain. But then when the family was so nice to him, there didn’t seem to be much point in not having a proper wedding. He often got leave and came to Paris, but we were both cooling off. Finally I wrote him a letter saying I thought we were making a mistake, and that crossed a letter from him saying much the same thing.
Blanche Lucy “Dollie” Sperling, nee Rigg (1872-1946), was a close friend of Dorothy’s aunt Zora. Her husband Harvey had died very recently, in 1921.
Mary Syers, nee Mary Cicely Nevill (1879-1963) was another close friend of Zora’s. Her daughter Sonia Syers (1918-1982), who would have been only 5 in 1923, became a well-known archaeologist and anthropologist, associated closely with Mary Leakey.
But before that he had invited me to go to St-Servan, where his parents lived. [In Brittany, now part of Saint-Malo.] I didn’t stay in the house – I think there wasn’t room – I stayed at the convent of some Red Carmelites quite near. I’ve never seen them anywhere else but they wore brilliant red habits and looked beautiful. I had all my meals, I think, except breakfast, with the Petit de la Villéon family. I loved Loïc’s mother but I hardly remember his father. His sister Rozanne [Rosen] was at home, and his little brother of 11, Guenolé, a most fascinating child and so gifted, who played the piano and the organ, and was quite outstanding in every way. I longed to marry into the family just to have him for a brother; I’d always wanted a little brother. [Sadly Gwenolé died when he was still a teenager, in 1930.] There was another, older brother, Yann, who was I think in S. America.
Loïc’s father, also Loïc Petit de la Villeon (1869-1938) was also a naval officer. He married Marguerite Beaufils (1872-1963) in 1896.
Loïc was the oldest of eleven siblings, at least four of whom had died by 1923. They were Yann (1899-1975); Armel (1900-1918); Noël (also born 1900, died 1902); Joël (1903-1973), Henriette (1904-1920), Rosen (1907-1996), Gwenolé (1918-1930), and three other sisters whose birthdates are unclear or absent, Suzanne, Genevieve and Soizic. So in late 1923, quite apart from his first wife’s death in April, Loïc had recently lost a 16-year-old sister in 1920 and an 18-year-old brother in 1918.
Though we’d decided not to marry I still saw quite a lot of Loïc when he came to Paris. I remember once he brought Rozanne and left her with me while he went to the Ministry or something; I said I must go out but he said she could read a book. We had some difficulty in finding a book in my library which was suitable reading for a well-brought-up French girl of sixteen! [What did Dorothy have in her library, that she could not share with young Rosen?? Sadly the Shakespeare and Company lending records do not survive!] By the way Loïc’s mother prided herself on bring very modern; she told me that when she was a girl she was never allowed to go out without a maid in attendance. She said they were poor, and had only one maid, who had a great deal to do, so that she often had to wait a long time for the maid to be free to take her, and she thought that was ridiculous, so she allowed Rozanne to go out just with her little brother Guenolé. Of course the idea of her going out quite alone was still unthinkable.
The Loïc affair was quite over and done with long before I went to England in November; in fact I wrote to Papa that Loïc had gone to Constantinople, as it then was. Papa sent on that letter of mine to various members of the family to read, with his own comments and explanations on a separate sheet. His comment on Loïc was: “Loïc is a French Naval Officer with who Dorothy thought she was in love but now knows she is not. We met him in Paris last summer. He seemed a nice good-looking young fellow whom Dorothy would have dominated completely if they were married.”
Perhaps he was right, but I don’t think Loïc was quite as easily dominated as all that. Anyway I’m very glad I didn’t marry him. I’ve never met his wife, but Vera’s sister Squeak knows her and says she is charming. They have three daughters. [My information suggests that they had five children, of whom the oldest was a son.]
England
Sometime late in November I went to London to stay with Sir Glyn and Lady West – whom by that time I called Kitty. She was a darling but very outspoken. The first time she ever met Zora they were going out somewhere together, and in the car Kitty looked at Zora and said: “I don’t like your hat.” Zora was slightly surprised but she only said: “What a pity you didn’t tell me before we left the house and I could have changed it!” After that they were firm friends.
Sir Glynn Hamilton West (1877-1945) was the chair of the Armstrong-Whitworth engineering company. He and Katrine Mary Mather (1878-1960) married in 1903. This photograph in the National Portrait Gallery, taken by Bassano Ltd, shows her in 1923.
I had gone over to London chiefly to see if I could sell some batiks there. Kitty lent me the car and I went to various shops and sold quite a lot. Papa wrote that I would find people didn’t pay me, but I told him later that everyone had always paid – in fact in all the time I was selling batiks I remember only one bad debt, and that was a friend of a friend, whose name I forget; she ordered a blouse, which I made and sent to her, with the bill, and I think I sent the bill a second time, but she never paid. Months later I met her somewhere and she said she owed me for the blouse; she also said it wasn’t right and she’d given it away. Anyway she never paid, but she was the only one. But soon after this trip to London I began to do so well in Paris that I had all the work I could manage; in fact I could have had several girls working under me, but I preferred to be on my own. My system was to work very hard for a few weeks and lay up a stock of batiks, then amuse myself till I’d sold most of them, and then work again.
Anyway to go back to that trip to London; I wrote Papa that I was having a wonderful time. The people in the ships weren’t always pleasant, but as I said to Papa it didn’t matter to me, and I used to amuse my partners at dinner telling them all about it. I was seeing quite a lot of Mr. Hansell [the royal tutor who Dorothy had met in Romania in 1921], and Kent Colwell was in London, and Hugh de Poix, an English artist whom I’d met in Paris. I told Papa that whenever anyone asked me what I’d like to do I chose a play, instead of going dancing, as I said I loved seeing as many English plays as I could, and that the men I danced with in Paris danced much better than the ones I knew in London.
Kitty’s boy Jock was at Eton, and one Sunday Kitty took me there to see him, stopping for luncheon with Uncle Bobby at the Nook on the way. I wonder if that was the time we saw the Wall Game? I know I went once with her to see it – it is quite the oddest form of sport I’ve ever come across! Nothing ever seems to happen, just a lot of muddy wet boys shoving against each other. Occasionally the ball comes out but is always put back again into the heaving mass of boys.
The Wests’ son Glynn Sackville West was born in 1906, so would have been 17 in 1923. I have no other information about his life. There was also a sister, Elizabeth Katrine West (1909-2013) who outlived two husbands, John Ali MacKintosh (1906–1945) and John Alphonse Marie Joackin Goldie (1889–1963) and lived to the age of 103.
The Wests wanted to have Sir Glyn’s portrait painted and asked me what artist I’d suggest. I told them of three, Jan Juta, Josselyn Bodley, and Hugh de Poix; they decided on Jan Juta and he did it, but they weren’t terribly pleased with it – I don’t know what happened to it. Jan wasn’t pleased either, as they wanted him to paint it for the dining-room; I should have thought he’d like to know where it would hang and I still can’t see why that should have annoyed him; Shades of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel!
Jan Juta’s most famous work is probably his 1920 portrait of his close friend D.H. Lawrence, again in the National Portrait Gallery. It is a striking piece of art, but I cannot imagine why Dorothy or the Wests could possibly have thought that its artist would produce something suitable for the Bryanston Square dining room. Hugh de Poix would have been a much better choice, judging by his other work.
In fact the best surviving portrait of Sir Glynn West is another Bassano Ltd photograph in the National Portrait Gallery.
The 1923 typescript ends with an account of Dorothy’s dance with the Prince of Wales, but she also typed it up at slightly greater length as a standalone piece, and the latter text is what I have used here with a couple of additions from the 1923 typescript; so there is a little repetition about the Wests at the start.
Sometimes I went to stay in London, usually with Lady West in Bryanston Square. Her husband, Sir Glyn, was very well off and they had a lovely house. Their own children were rather young and Kitty, Lady West, loved having girls to stay of an age to go to dance; in fact she had chaperoned me to my first London ball at Kent House. Sometimes there were other girls staying when I was there, but sometimes I was the only one. I was the only guest on one occasion, and Kitty had asked me to be in one evening for dinner and to play bridge afterwards, as she had people coming for dinner.
That afternoon when I came back in good time to dress and dine, she came to meet me in the hall.
“You’ll dine here, but you won’t be playing bridge,” she said abruptly.
I was surprised. “Why not? Aren’t the others coming?”
“Yes, but you’re going to dance with the Prince of Wales.”
I stared at her.
“Mr Hansell rang up,” she explained, “and said the Prince asked him to get you to go to the Magdalen College Mission Ball tonight. Mr Hansell wanted to take you to dine first, but I wanted you to be here for dinner, so he said he’d come for you afterwards.”
The Prince of Wales was an undistinguished alumnus of Magdalen College, Oxford, having attended but failed to graduate between 1912 and 1914. The Magdalen College Mission was founded in 1884 and did Good Works for the poor living in the slums of Somers Town in London, between Euston and St Pancras. It ceased operating in 1940.
What had happened was, as Mr. Hansell told me later, the Prince was looking at his engagements and said to Mr. Hansell that he thought he should go to the Ball, and added: “What about that American girl you’re always talking about? Do you think you could get her?”
And so it was. Oddly enough I can’t remember what I was wearing that evening; probably it was some dress I’d got at Cyber in Paris; most of my evening dresses came from there. Mr Hansell duly arrived and took me to the Victoria Hotel in Northumberland Avenue, where the ball was held. He introduced the secretary of the College Mission to me, whose name I forget, but who was very nice, and then went off to collect the Prince. Other young men were introduced and I danced with one or two of them, and while I was dancing with the secretary himself there was a slight bustle at the entrance to the ballroom and my partner murmured:
“The Prince has arrived, what do we do now? If we go on dancing would it be lèse-majesté or something?”
“Of course we go on dancing,” I said firmly, and we did, but as soon as the music stopped he led me over to where the Prince and Mr Hansell were standing. I was duly presented and made a curtsey and then the Prince asked me to dance.
The first words he said were:
“Do you know any girls here?”
He said it with a strong affected American accent, more like “gurrls” and I laughed. I glanced round the room and saw one or two girls I knew slightly, and said so, but he asked if they were American, and when I said no he lost interest. He had great charm when he cared to use it.
The prince’s taste for American girls clearly developed early. A few years later, between 1930 and 1934, he had a relationship with the American Thelma Furness, who introduced him to his future wife Wallis Simpson, also an American.
He danced very well, and as I am small, we were well suited in size. He was amusing, too, and sang part of the time – one of the tunes of the time was “The Back Porch” which he seemed to like. We sat out between dances on the steps or went to the buffet where he had whisky but I was given champagne. That was a pity; he asked if I’d like champagne, and I said yes, thinking it was there, but when they started off to get it he tried to stop them, saying he had thought it was there. “Of course I want you to have it if you really want it,” he said, but I assured him that I’d be just as glad to have some cup, which was all ready. However nothing would stop them, and the champagne was brought, and of course I had to drink some, though he didn’t. The old head waiter was evidently enchanted with him.
“I heard the first speech Your Royal Highness ever made in public,” the old man said. “And I heard the first speech Your Royal Highness’s father made, and I heard Your Royal Highness’s grandfather too.”
“Wonderful memory,” the Prince said with a delightful smile at the old man.
Every second dance he danced with one or the other of the important women there, and then came back to me for the next dance. I, in turn, danced with one or the other of the various young men I’d met. Once the dance seemed very short and we started to clap for an encore – or at least I did – but my partner said: “That’s no use, the Prince won’t have encores except when he’s dancing with you.”
But apart from the fact that we danced well together, I don’t think he found me particularly attractive, and for my part, though I found him quite charming that evening, I had no great wish to see more of him. We just weren’t on the same wavelength, as they say now. But for an evening he was an excellent companion and we talked a lot – I had just been in Romania, where I’d seen a good deal of his Royal cousins there – not that he seemed very much interested in them, but he was interested in hearing that I had met Mr Hansell there. He spoke of Mr Hansell with the greatest affection.
“I love that man; he taught me everything I ever knew,” he said once. He noticed that I always said “Mr Hansell” and suggested that I should use the nickname “Mider” which he and his brother, the Duke of York, had always used. He said he gave me full permission to use it too, and I said very well, I would.
But though we got on well enough, he didn’t stay till the very end of the ball. Mr Hansell went to see him off, and told me that the Prince stuck his head out of the car as it was driving away and shouted back:
“She’s going to call you Mider, she’s going to call you Mider!”
Mr. Hansell was terribly pleased with the success of the evening.
The next day I went to stay with my aunt in Carlton House Terrace, and she took a party to dance at the Embassy Club. The Prince was there too, with a party. Mr Hansell had told me not to expect him to recognise me in a place like that; he said that the Royalties had had to make a rule that they wouldn’t speak to anyone out of their own party, as they might so easily overlook someone and give offence, whereas if they never spoke to anyone no one could be offended.
So, when I was dancing with Prince George of Russia, and the Prince of Wales passed near me with his partner, and bowed to me, I glanced over my shoulder to see who it was he was bowing to, thinking it couldn’t possibly be me. But he turned his partner so that he was looking straight at me and bowed again. Prince George was most upset that the Prince had recognised me and not him, which just shows that the rule of not recognizing anyone was a good one.
“He spoke to you but he never noticed me, though I’m his cousin,” he said bitterly, and though I tried to soothe him down by explaining that it was just because I was of no importance that the Prince had acknowledged me, he remained unhappy over the incident.
Wikipedia says of Prince George that he “never married” but “became a successful interior designer”. It is not clear how Dorothy knew him.
The next day I went back to Paris, to Mr. Hansell’s distress as he said the Prince wanted to see me again. But we never did meet. Once, though, when I was taking a train in Paris and several people came to see me off, one of the men told me that the prince was standing watching me from the next carriage, but I didn’t see him.
At this point Dorothy would have been 24 and the Prince 29. She obviously couldn’t decide whether to be underwhelmed or overwhelmed by the encounter. The business of procuring eligible but non-threatening dancing partners for the heir to the throne strikes me as slightly sordid, and the business of his not being allowed to greet his own relatives just seems sad.
The final two paragraphs are from the 1923 typescript.
France
That autumn one of my childhood friends in Plainfield, Kathryn Borden, died in childbirth, leaving an adoring husband and a baby boy of three, as well as the new-born baby, also a boy. It was very sad. I can’t remember her married name; she never was much of a letter-writer and we had rather lost touch. So it wasn’t a great personal loss to me but I was distressed to think of her dying and leaving her husband and children.
Dorothy is (as she herself admits) hazy on the details here. The official record has Katharyn Yates Borden (1898-1923) born in Plainfield and dying of typhoid, rather than childbirth complications, aged only 24, poor thing, leaving two-year-old and five-month-old sons and her much older husband, Allen Butler (1879-1960). Both of her sons died relatively young too, the older (Allen “Buddy” Butler Jr, 1921-1931) in a drowning accident aged 10, and the younger (Frederick Yates Butler, 1923-1968) of a heart attack aged 44.
I went back to Paris, but whether I spent Christmas there or not, I don’t know. I went to Cannes sometime after Christmas, and also spent a few days with Bunnie, who was at Cap-Ferrat. Uncle Bobby was there too.
Frances Belt “Bunnie” Wickersham (1862-1949) was Dorothy’s aunt, her mother’s older sister. She married Sir Robert “Bobby” Hadfield (1858-1940) in 1894; they had no children, but informally adopted Dorothy.