Victorian
Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd
Margaret Countess of Jersey Violet Powell (Heinemann £5.90) Lady Violet Powell, sister of the Earl of Longford, is perhaps the most underrated of the literary Pakenhams. Married to our greatest living novelist pace, for once, Auberon Waugh Anthony Powell, Lady Violet is an exceptionally good writer on her own account with an eye for every nuance, a faultless technique and a beautifully underplayed wit. Her previous books have included two volumes of autobiography and studies of Maud ffoulkes, the Edwardian 'ghost' writer, Somerville and Ross, and of the novels of Ivy ComptonBurnett. Now Lady Violet has written a first-rate biography of her grandmother, Margaret Countess of Jersey, author of Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life and founder of the Victoria League (a living memorial), who died, aged ninety-five, at the end of the second World war. Towards the end of her grandmother's life, Lady Violet presented her own elder son, Tristram now a noted television director 'and so linked him with a past when his great-grandmother had met the Duke of Wellington'.
Born in 1849, Margaret was the eldest child of the 2nd Lord Leigh, of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, which was portrayed in Mansfield Park by a cousin of the family, Jane Austen. When Margaret was eight, Queen Victoria visited Stoneleigh and even the pigsties were painted in her honour. At Christmas, the Leighs used to indulge in the extraordinary ritual of 'Bullet Pudding', where one of the diners had to extract a bullet orally from the mound of flour. Two felicitously named women who featured in the two extremes of Margaret's life were Miss Custarde, her governess, and Cabbage, her maid at her London house, who, though she resembled that vegetable, was eventually found to be called Cubbage.
Margaret married the 7th Earl of Jersey, a minor politician, in 1872 and, although the daughter of a Liberal peer, became a strong Tory. From Middleton Park in Oxfordshire (later demolished and rebuilt), she moved to Adam's Osterley, 'an ideal suburban house'! which became the joy of her life.
Lady Jersey was an inveterate world traveller; she hid a revolver on her person fora Greek trip with her 'twin', Lady Galloway, (whose husband had 'a predilection for girls below the age of con sent'); and called on the Nizam of Hyderabad, after he had allegedly been flogged by some of his four thousand women ('whether from sexual frustration or to get their pensions raised was not, it seems, known', comments Lady Violet). A more lasting spiritual experience in India was the revelation of the prismatic nature of God (`God is like . . . light and the different religions are the different colours through which He shines') made to her by the Maharajah of Bhownugger. Margaret accompanied her husband when he, like Belloc's Lord Lundy, went out to govern New South Wales, and she was able to befriend Robert Louis Steven' son on Samoa. Stevenson commemorated her visit in Samoid 'the fire of two dark eyes, in the field of the unflushed face' which was not well received by Mrs Stevenson. From her earliest days, Margaret, whose intelligence and warm, endearing character is most sympathetically conveyed by her granddaughter, had a rare gift for friendship; she was fortunate enough .to meet an astounding gallery of historical figures. In the world of politics and public affairs these included the voluble octogenarian, Lord Brougham, at Cannes, Jefferson Davis, who stayed at Stoneleigh when on parole; Bismarck, whose eagerness for social life was enhanced by his massive consumption of champagne; Lord Derby, who refused the throne of Greece as a young man with the inquiry 'Don't theY know I am going to be Earl of Derby?' certainly, as Lady Violet remarks, 'a more solid prospect'; Joseph Chamberlain, rf°t approved by Lady Jersey's butler; the Aga Khah, 'who gave himself up to the enjoY" ment of. . . creamy English cakes'; Kitchener, Stanley, the explorer, and many other great figures. Literary friends ranged from Browning, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hughes and Augustus Hare to Kipling and Owen Wister, her honorary 'cousin' who wrote The Virginian, possibly the progenitor of the entire 'Western' industry. This elegantly produced book is full of interesting points, nice touches, anecdotes and good jokes which reflect the spirited sense of humour of the subject of the biography as well as of the author. The last chapter is devoted to Lady Violet's owo recollections of her distinguished grandmother and has a farcical description of how the present Lord Longford hid hull' self and his tea-cup under the table in La".Y Jersey's house in Montagu Square to avoid his aunt, the lugubrious Lady Gough, with" out realizing that his aunt had witnessed this performance through the window "Where's Frank?" she inquired, "Under the table, I suppose", and picking up the table cloth, revealed that that indeed was where he was.' It was, incidentally, LaclY Jersey's younger son, Arthur Villiers, wh° introduced Lord Longford to good works, as Villiers's godson, Richard Ingratns, pointed out in the 150th anniversary issue of Ladyt he Spveicotal et ac r. says in her introduction to this enjoyable book how much she owes t° her husband Anthony Powell; those whn, pay detailed attention to her style ano accomplishments as a writer might welt conclude that he also owes much to her.
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