The Stucco Venus: The Life and Times of Enid, Countess of Kenmare

Originally published in Social and Personal magazine

Despite accusations of gold digging, drug taking and murder, Enid Lindeman was certain of one thing: she was never going to be a wallflower. Born into the Lindeman wine family, in Australia in 1892, she had an upbringing befitting a young lady but she longed to escape colonial life. At the age of twenty-one, she married Roderick Cameron, a forty-five-year-old shipping magnate from New York. The marriage lasted a year, before Cameron’s death from cancer, leaving her with a baby son and a million-dollar fortune. She then began an affair with Bernard Baruch, an American financier and presidential adviser, but marriage was out of the question, for Enid thought ‘he was not much good in bed and he was very mean’.

The First World War gave Enid the excitement she craved and she moved to Paris to drive an ambulance for the war effort. Standing almost six-feet-tall with red hair and emerald green eyes, she caused havoc amongst the officers and one threatened to commit suicide. This was not a new occurrence for Enid, and during her many affairs five of her lovers killed themselves – one jumped into shark infested waters, another blew himself up. In 1917 she married Frederick ‘Caviar’ Cavendish, her reason for marriage was simple: she needed someone to manage her money. She followed Caviar to Cairo, where he was given command of the 9th Lancers, and as a dare she slept with his entire regiment. By day she schooled Caviar’s polo ponies, and by night she dressed as a man and played the piano or her Swanee whistle in the band of the officers’ mess. She also met and began an affair with Lord Carnarvon, custodian of Highclere Castle and dedicated Egyptologist, and she was among the first to be shown Tutankhamun’s tomb after its discovery in 1922. But she soon found herself in the familiar state of widowhood, after Caviar’s death from a cerebral haemorrhage.

Enid’s next marriage in 1933 was a bold move, even by her standards. Her new husband was Viscount Furness, the sixth richest man in the world. His first wife, Daisy, had died aboard their yacht during a cruise and he buried her at sea. Some say he murdered her, and others believed he would hang if the evidence was ever revealed. His second wife, Thelma Morgan Converse, from whom he was divorced, had been the mistress of the Prince of Wales and was the best friend of Wallis Simpson. He first saw Enid at a casino in Le Touquet, and after their first meeting he pursued her relentlessly: flowers and jewellery would arrive daily, and planes, yachts and Rolls-Royce cars were put at her disposal. Enid herself claimed she received the aforementioned without making any effort whatsoever. But her lifestyle came at a cost and Furness, a jealous man prone to uncontrollable rages, directed his anger towards Enid and her three children. This, she thought was a sign of his love for her. ‘There was nothing in the world he was not prepared to give me. Of all the men that loved me, he was the one who was prepared to lay the world at my feet.’ As the ‘thirties drew to a close the rows between Enid and Furness escalated. No longer did she discreetly see other men and outsmart the detectives he set upon her, she flaunted her affairs openly. One paramour, the Duke of Westminster, known as Bendor, was a threat to Furness as he was only man who rivalled his wealth. Furness departed overseas, a rare move for he rarely left Enid’s side, afraid that if he did she would cast her eyes elsewhere. What would follow would be something of a charade: she sent Furness a letter, claiming she was going to commit suicide by shooting herself. In great distress, he returned home and sent a search party to find her. She was discovered at the London Clinic with a wound on her head, but it was from a face-lifting operation.

In the early days of the Second World War Enid and Furness were staying at La Fiorentina, his villa in Cap Ferrat. He was bed-bounded with cirrhosis of the liver and surrounded by medical staff who cared for him until his death. Trapped in the south of France and short of money, Enid pawned her jewellery and bought a few goats so she could turn their milk into butter and cheese. There was a detention camp close to the villa, and she would often see the prisoners. It was not long before she began to help them escape, dressed in the gardener’s clothes or any civilian attire she could find. The police soon grew suspicious of her activities, and Enid began to plot how she and her daughter could leave France. Owing to her connections within the British government, she secured passage on an airship departing from Lisbon.

At the height of the Blitz, Enid moved into Claridge’s while she awaited her inheritance from Furness to be settled. As fate would have it, Enid discovered an old boyfriend, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Valentine Browne, once the most famous gossip columnist in London, had taken a suite at the hotel. He had been married to Doris Delevingne, a notorious courtesan, which ended in divorce. Over the years he and Enid had contemplated marriage to one another, but as Enid put it: ‘My husband or his wife got in the way.’ Despite his fame and Earldom of Kenmare, he was always short of money. Enid, however, must have suspected his title came with a fortune, and Valentine himself assumed she was a millionairess. Their love of money and false impression of one another inflamed their love affair, and they were married in January 1941. Now the Countess of Kenmare, she followed her husband to Ireland, where she established herself at his family seat, Killarney, in Co. Kerry. Eight months later, she was, once again, a widow after Valentine suffered a fatal heart attack. As he died without an heir, Enid, who was fifty-one at the time, fabricated a story that she was pregnant. Remaining at Killarney she kept up the ruse for a year, during which time a baby failed to materialise.

Having been gossiped about and associated with the rumour that she had killed four husbands, Enid would become embroiled in a real scandal. In 1954 she and Donald Bloomingdale, of the department store family, crossed paths at the Sherry-Netherland hotel. Over the course of her stay, Bloomingdale asked for heroin and she gave it to him. It was said that the heroin was delivered in a lace handkerchief embroidered with a coronet and her initials. Another claimed it had been smuggled in a silver frame behind a photograph of Enid. Either way, the dose proved fatal and Enid fled New York. ‘You know how the American police are,’ she said at the time. In light of the Bloomingdale scandal, Enid’s own drug-taking past was scrutinised. She was said to be a former heroin addict herself, and was on the drug register. This was partly true: in the 1930s she had fallen from her horse and was prescribed morphine to ease a back injury. Having become addicted, she entered a clinic to cure herself. If she was absent from a party or late to arrive, Daisy Fellowes, with whom Enid shared a difficult relationship, would say: ‘Probably busy with her needle.’

After the incident, she never discussed Bloomingdale and for a long time she stayed away from New York. Her society friends had their theories, but they never asked her about it. Daisy Fellowes was far more blatant: she was going to host a dinner party and invite twelve people. ‘All murderers, very convenient,’ she said. ‘There are six men and six women. And Enid will have the place of honour, because she killed the most people of anyone coming.’ She was never kind to Enid, describing her as ‘an Australian with a vague pedigree’. Once, when they were conversing, Enid began with, ‘People of our class . . . ‘ Daisy raised her hand and stopped her, ‘Just a moment, Enid, your class or mine?’ And at a dinner party on Long Island her host asked why she was known as ‘Lady Killmore’ – a nickname given to her by Somerset Maugham. Enid rose from the table and said she had endured enough, she was leaving. Predicting her reaction, earlier in the evening the host had sent her car back to Manhattan, but Enid walked to the highway and hitch-hiked home.

In her old age Enid lived at Broadlands, a farm in South Africa, from where she bred race horses. Her old friend, Beryl Markham, trained them but their partnership was tested by various factors, notably Enid’s refusal to give her control of the stables. This frustrated Beryl, and she said: ‘Enid was getting very old and difficult. She couldn’t understand what I needed, and so I left.’ She felt the loss of Beryl greatly, and the running of the farm became increasingly difficult. For the remaining years of her life, until her death at eighty-one, she was in great pain but refused to take medication, fearing her old morphine addiction would return. She was determined to overcome weakness, but strong enough to recognise it. Her motto for life springs to mind: ‘Never be ill, never be afraid, and never be jealous’.

The above is an edited extract from These Great Ladies: Peeresses and Pariahs by Lyndsy Spence

The Film Star’s Husband who Went to Antrim and Became a War Hero

Margaret Lockwood and her daughter Margaret Julia Leon aka ‘Toots’. Scanned from My Life and Films and published in Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen. Image courtesy of Julia Lockwood-Clark 

Originally published in the Antrim Guardian 

In today’s society of instant celebrities, one might be forgiven for drawing a blank at the name Margaret Lockwood, but mention a handful of her iconic films and the wheels begin to turn. A Hitchcock heroine, she starred in The Lady Vanishes, the film which launched director Alfred Hitchcock’s career in Hollywood, and she led the cast of The Wicked Lady, the first British film to gross £1-million at the box office. While Hollywood had a stable of A-list actresses, the British film studios banked on only one name to keep the industry afloat during the war years, and that was Margaret Lockwood. What is more extraordinary to me, as Margaret’s biographer, was the discovery that her husband was stationed in Antrim for a year during the Second World War, and this played a pivotal part in the couple’s marriage at the height of her fame. And, perhaps unlike his fellow comrades, the events which took him to Antrim were unique.

Rupert Leon was a Londoner who came from a wealthy family; his father headed British Steel, and so when it came to marrying Margaret, a starlet on the rise, he was not content to play second fiddle to his wife, in both her earning capacity and her career. It is interesting to note that no photographs exist in the public domain of Rupert from that time, except one shot in which his back is turned, rather tellingly, to the camera. The couple met in their teens and secretly married when Margaret was twenty-one, two years later she was sent to Hollywood under contract to Twentieth Century Fox to star opposite Shirley Temple. But it proved a miserable experience: she was homesick, the war was imminent, and on impulse Rupert resigned from his job at British Steel and caught the next boat to America to join her.

After several months in America, the London they returned to was unrecognisable and Britons were preparing for a war that was yet to be declared. Life for Margaret went on as before and her time was consumed by the studio. But for Rupert, who was unemployed and facing an uncertain future, he signed up to the Territorial Army. He had some army experience behind him, having gone to Germany in 1932 where he experienced Nazism first-hand, and seeing Adolf Hitler deliver a speech had left a lasting impression on the young man – ‘I would as soon slept with a cobra as trust Adolf Hitler’ – and he joined the London Rifle Brigade upon his return. All his life he would despise the politicians who had appeased Hitler in those early days – ‘Guilty men,’ as he called them. But at twenty-five his age went against him, and to his fury he was sent to a training camp in North Wales where he served as a Royal Artillery officer due for commission. However, a visit from his famous wife lost him that commission when he shirked his responsibilities to spend his days with her before she returned to London to film the wartime thriller Night Train to Munich with Rex Harrison and Paul Henreid. He then received word that he was to be posted to the 145^th Field Regiment RA serving as a gunner with the 61^st Division in Northern Ireland.

Not every young soldier could have said that Hollywood played a part in their war record, but like many men who went overseas, Rupert had to leave his wife, who was expecting their first child. The prospect of becoming a father put his own mortality into perspective, and his main objective was to not only stay alive but to ‘get the hell out of Northern Ireland’. His regiment was posted as a deterrent for Hitler, who could have conquered Ireland with his parachute army, but, to quote Rupert: ‘We up north in Ulster would have proven a tougher nut to crack.’

Stationed in the unforgiving landscape of the glens, and in the winter of 1940, the conditions as well as the physical training were tough. ‘They asked the impossible from us, and we gave it to them,’ he said. Trucks became bogged down by rain, sleet and snow on the hills, and they were ordered to haul the guns by foot. Sleep became a luxury and during every brief halt in their marching, the men were known to nod off. When he was not on guard duty, Rupert was given the task of cleaning latrines and peeling potatoes. In spite of the distractions, morale was low and officers were pulling strings and leaving Northern Ireland in their droves. Sensing he would be killed when the Germans attacked (which they did in April and May 1941), Rupert harboured an ambition to leave too.

In the summer of 1941, he was granted compassionate leave to travel home to England for the birth of his child, a daughter named Margaret Julia Leon, best known to future audiences as the actress Julia Lockwood. He spent those few days with Margaret at a nursing home in Hampshire, but tensions on the home front ran high due to his disapproving mother-in-law usurping him from their happy home life. Forbidden to spend his leave at the family’s cottage, purchased by Margaret before the war and inhabited by her formidable mother, Rupert returned to Northern Ireland, frustrated by the semi-estrangement from his wife (they divorced after the war) and his absence in his daughter’s life.

On a rare day off, Rupert travelled into Portrush and visited the Giant’s Causeway. Having walked the mile long route of hexagon rocks, he discovered a wishing well. ‘These wells are the homes of Irish fairies which are said to have special powers,’ he remembered. ‘If they like the wisher, they will grant that the wish come true, that is if you believe in fairies, as I do!’ He threw a penny into the well and wished to leave Northern Ireland. ‘The good fairy did not take offence,’ he said, ‘for she must have realised that I meant nothing personal against her well or her country.’ A week or two later, the wish was granted. Rupert spied a notice requesting volunteers for special duties, one of which was the ability to speak German fluently. The next day he caught a train to Larne and boarded a ferry to Stranraer, from where he then journeyed to London for his interview. Remembering this turn of good fortune, he said: ‘I guess the good fairy had done her part and now it was up to me.’

In 1944, after intense training in York and having served in Africa, Rupert was posted to Germany with the Intelligent Corps. He was the first man on the side of the Allies to learn of Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun and of their joint suicide. He interrogated senior Nazis and, after the war ended, he exposed one of the top leaders of the Wehrwolf organisation. The physical effort of his future war work, he said, ‘was puny compared to the training I [received] in Northern Ireland’.

Margaret Lockwood: Queen of the Silver Screen (Fantom Films, 2016) was written and released to coincide with Lockwood’s centenary. As Britain’s number one box-office star during the war years, her iconic films gained her legions of fans and she won the Daily Mail Film Award three times. With a career spanning fifty years, she reinvented herself from a film star, to an Agatha Christie heroine on the West End, to a television icon in the 1970s series, Justice. This biography details the life of an independent woman who was intensely private away from the spotlight and whose life was unlike anything that was reported in the press.

A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan As a Modern State : Letters Home

Much has been written about the Mitfords girls’grandparents, with anecdotes peppering the many biographies and volumes of letters published on the family. Both of their grandfathers were eccentric men who sired children with their mistresses, and they each led adventurous lives – Tap Bowles on his yacht, sailing the Orient with his mistress, Snell; and Bertie Mitford travelling to Japan in the mid-1800s, at a time of political uncertainty and dodging an assassination attempt. They each dabbled in politics, and worked in some capacity in the publishing industry – Tap in his founding of The Lady magazine, and Bertie with his travel writing and introducing Japanese literature to Britain. He wrote introductions for H.S. Chamberlain’s books on philosophy, the most prominent being Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which was said to have influenced Hitler’s ambition for an Aryan race. Bertie’s friendships would mirror the choices his granddaughters Diana and Unity would make decades later, whether or not that was intentional remains to be seen. And, like his granddaughter Diana, his mother was a bolter who left her husband and comfortable marriage to set up home with a Mr Molyneux. It seemed the girls inherited many aspects of their characters from their grandfathers, for a traditional life befell their parents, David and Sydney Redesdale.

A fascinating individual such as Bertie Mitford, First Baron Redesdale, deserves a biography or at least an extensive study of his life. Robert Morton’s clever book brings to life all elements of his personality; his upbringing, his marriage, his place in society, and his thirst for adventure. He was prone to brilliance but he was also selfish and foolish; he built Batsford Park and its Japanese gardens, and squandered his inheritance. Morton brings forth the facts to present a complex man who, in his own way, played a part in nineteenth century history. I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to know more about the Mitford girls’ forebears, outside of ‘Muv’ and ‘Farve’.

You can read more about Bertie Mitford here.

 

Death in the Stars: A Book Review

I am fairly new to Frances Brody’s mystery novels, having only read the previous one Death at the Seaside, so I have a lot of catching up to do! In the past I have ran extracts of Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver mysteries. Needless to say, if you enjoy those stories then you’ll love Brody’s work. The covers are always a treat, very Mitfordeseque, and the content inside does not disappoint. This latest instalment, Death in the Stars, draws on the eclipse of 1927, an unsettling and exciting period when people thought the world was going to end (nothing new there!) or that some form of witchcraft was at work. The perfect setting for things to go wrong! Super sleuth Kate Shackleton is invited to accompany Selina Fellini, a theatrical actress, to a viewing party at Giggleswick School Chapel. As you can tell, the names are often what the Mitfords would call a tease; a real homage to 1920s and 30s detective novels, whilst still retaining the integrity of the story. Of course it is during this natural phenomena that a death occurs – Billy Moffatt, Ms Fellini’s co-star vanishes and is later found dead, and soon two other members of the theatrical troupe die under mysterious circumstances. Is there a murderer in the company? It seems likely. But when Ms Fellini’s husband, a war hero prone to mood swings and violent behaviour, emerges on the scene everything changes. Who will be next? With nods to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Ethel Lina White, this neat murder mystery has all the touches of a gripping thriller along with a lighthearted narrative to hold the reader’s attention. Although such contemporary books can often be dismissed as quirky tributes to the aforementioned crime authors, it is wrong to assume they are frivolous stories. Frances Brody’s background is in television writing, and this is apparent in her effortless touch when forming the plot. It is a witty, suspenseful novel, and a perfect companion for those who love a bit of glam with an atmospheric touch.