My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyof Delhi, where life perhaps inclined more to the voluptuous than intellect requires orthe sororities of America would approve. The phenomenon of a very rich man whoreally knows how to live has yet to appear in America. A small society which taughtthe world how beautiful life could be might be justified when the full affluence ofAmerica is realised, and the still prevailing areas of poverty and degradation havebeen resolved.The society we saw at that time varied between a rather stiff imitation of Englisharistocracy and the bohemian gaiety of artists. In the first category were theVanderbilts, whom we had met with Lord Curzon at the time of our marriage. Mrs.Vanderbilt was at home in the Curzon milieu in London, and in America she appearedto live in much the same way, but in an even more exaggerated fashion. She stood upquite well to the shock of the socialist opinions we had acquired since meeting her inEngland. The lighter side of American life which later became so spectacular and sopublicised was then only just beginning to appear. Cole Porter, a little dark elfincreature whom I always expected to find sitting on a mushroom, was singing hissongs to us in private, but not yet in public. He and his beautiful wife Linda weremore in our life later in Paris and Venice than at that time in America. So was ElsaMaxwell who in those days gave discreet parties, at least in Paris, without publicity ofany kind. According to the legend she had recently emerged from playing the piano insome local cinema, but her simple and boisterous turn at the piano in these smallparties had not yet been transmuted to a world-wide music hall with all participantsdisplayed to the headlines in the grotesque acrobatics of superfluous wealth. TheVernon Castles floated through our lives, literally floated, for they were famousprofessional ballroom dancers, and later they entranced London as they had NewYork. This gay and varied world briefly arrested but did not long delay us in NewYork, for we had come in all the seriousness of our political mission for a differentpurpose.Our main purpose in America was to tour the industrial areas, which was indeed anexperience. We were accompanied throughout the whole journey by a large concourseof journalists of both sexes. Once we tried to shake them off by an elaboratemanoeuvre and thought we had made a clear getaway, but they were waiting for us onthe platform of our arrival. They were very agreeable and completely honourable;never on the whole tour was anything said off the record reported, and they were withus night and day. Down the coal mines we went, and the women journalists came too,in the silk dresses of the period. Wet and plastered with coal dust as we emerged, Iwould condole with them on their ruined dresses: 'That's all right, it is all on thepaper,' they would reply. America even then did everything— large or small—on thegrand scale.167 of 424