My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyshould consist of conversation by brilliant men against a background of lovely andappreciative women, a process well calculated continually to increase the supply ofsuch men. These beauties were often of character simpler than their appearance andused to wilt beneath their hostess's vivid and indeed florid descriptions of their charmsand attributes as they entered the assembled company. A word in rejoinder was onlypossible and permitted to the brightest, among whom was my second wife, Diana.Lady Cunard always called her Golden Corn and insisted she must be her successor inLondon society; a hope which was frustrated by her marriage to me, consequentpolitics, war and again politics.Lady Cunard would announce your name and record with the clarity of a toastmasterat the Lord Mayor's banquet, and in her whimsical and audacious fashion wouldsometimes add a few imaginary attributes not usually discussed on such formaloccasions. It could require a face of brass to stand up to the barrage of badinage andcomment, but it was all enormous fun. The cleverest met together with the mostbeautiful, and that is what social life should be. She died not long after the SecondWorld War, during which she went to live in a hotel: I last saw her in the late forties.After her death her fascinating affairs were arranged with the utmost discretion by myfriend, Sir Robert Abdy, the art connoisseur, who rightly cherished her memory asanother work of art. I miss the bird of paradise among the sparrows round Roosevelt'sstatue in Grosvenor Square.It is strange that so many of the outstanding hostesses of this period were Americans,because in the previous generation before my time they were mostly English. In thatepoch Lady Londonderry—not Ramsay MacDonald's friend, but her mother-in-law—was the most prominent on the Conservative side, balanced on the Liberal side byMargot Asquith, who was the match of any woman in wit and more than a match inaudacity, but lacked the resources and the large houses necessary to the ambience ofsociety in that phase. She alone survived into my time, but, of course, was thenwithout the citadel of Downing Street. Many beautiful and distinguished Englishwomen still possessed fine houses and considerable resources, but it was theAmerican energy which made the society of that period, and not only in England.Among all the brilliant Americans the only equal in wit to Lady Cunard was PrincessJane di San Faustino, who ruled Roman society in the twenties, and ruled it inAmerican, resolutely refusing for the best part of half a century to learn Italian.Soon after I left hospital I was taken to the house of Maxine Elliott, the Americanactress, who lived at Hartsbourne Manor, a few miles from London. Later shemigrated to the Chateau de Horizon at Antibes in the South of France, where I used tovisit her in the twenties. A great classic beauty, she looked like a Roman Empressshould have looked; massive, at once sombre and serene. She organised her life on anorderly and severely practical basis; everything had its clear purpose and proper place.Her two chief friends were Pierpoint Morgan, the financier, and Wilding the tennischampion. The young and innocent wondered what each was for.It was in her house that I first met F. E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, and I think itwas also there that I met Winston Churchill for the first time. F.E. was a frequentguest, and he then used to take me to luncheon at the Ritz while I was still on crutches.Lunch took a long time and was of course enlivened by his caustic wit which becamelegendary. About this time he invited me to a river party which left by boat from the66 of 424