Long life
Hostess with the mostess
Nigel Nicolson
It is difficult, I find, to be a successful host if one lacks a wife. Guests seldom respond to a host's invitations with the same alacrity as they would to those of a hostess, because on the whole he is not an estimable figure.
Only one host in history stands out as wothy of his wife, Lord Holland, a nephew of Charles James Fox, of whom it was said that he possessed an extraordinary ability to put the most bashful newcomer at his ease. But that was nothing to the tributes paid to great hostesses like Madame Recamier:
Her smile of welcome expressed sympathy and understanding, and she listened to what was said with deep interest. She spoke little, but always with tact and kindness, praising the talented, encouraging the shy, soothing the difficult.
I was never admitted to a salon like Recarnier's, but in my youth I was occa- sionally invited to lunch or dine with two of the most famous hostesses of the day, Lady Cunard and Lady Colefax. Neither of them was in the least like Recamier, Cunard because she was formidable, and Colefax because she was shy. Sacheverell Sitwell wrote of Emerald Cunard that no other hostess in London could keep a dinner- party entranced for an hour or more by her high spirits, but my chief memory of her was when she shouted at me down the length of the table, 'Who are you in love with now?' Twenty pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction. I was only 21.
Sibyl Colefax would never have done that. She was a brilliant convener of inti- mate parties, but never dominated or intimidated them. Although she was a highly organised woman, she was modest, and like most modest people, she was accident-prone. On two occasions I shared her distress.
She took me one evening to watch a newsreel of the departure from Delhi of two of her closest friends, the Mountbat- tens, at the end of his vice-regal term. They were seen off at the airport by Jawaharial Nehru. As the plane took off, Sibyl said to me, 'But what they didn't show was that Edwina at the last moment kissed Nehru full on the lips, which deeply shocked Indian feelings, undoing all the good that Dickie had done.' The woman sitting immediately in front of us turned and said, `Hullo, Sibyl.' It was Edwina Mountbatten, and sitting beside her was her husband. They had come incognito to the cinema to watch themselves. There was little doubt that they had heard what Sibyl said. I whis- pered to her, 'Would you like to leave?' I think we'd better,' she replied. We left.
The second solecism was in no way her fault. She was in a nursing-home, and friends were summoned to her bedside. When I arrived, Somerset Maugham and Peter Quennell were already there. She told us that she was expecting a fourth guest, the Duchess of Windsor, and that she had warned the nurse to meet the Duchess and escort her upstairs. She must not announce her as Mrs Simpson, but as the Duchess. The girl met her as instructed, and as she guided her along the corridors, she muttered to herself, like the White Rabbit in Alice, 'I mustn't say Mrs Simp- son. I must say the Duchess. Not Mrs Simpson.' She opened the door of the room where we were sitting, and announced with a flourish, 'Mrs Simpson, m'lady.'
`Bloody privatisation . .
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