My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyThe leading English hostesses of those post-war days evoke different memories; theywere sedate, very sedate. Mrs. Ronnie Greville inherited a brewer's fortune and livedin Charles Street, with a country house at Polesden Lacey; appropriately she looked arather blousy old barmaid, but she had an intelligence acute enough to attract thediverse allegiance of the ascetic Sir John Simon and the bucolic Sir Robert Home. Shemixed her company well and also her dishes. Persistent of invitations to all wellknownpeople was Lady Colefax, who had a charming house in King's Road, Chelsea,with a garden at the back, Argyll House. Endless were the jokes and stories about her,authentic and invented. But she was a kind and agreeable woman, and a provider ofmuch fun to many people. Never has anyone hunted lions with such persistence, andthe chase was almost always triumphant. The gay and learned head of the School ofOriental Languages, Sir Denison Ross, recounted that she asked him to lunch on aMonday, and, on his refusal, continued to do so through each day of the week,compelling him to find always a different excuse; finally he said, 'Dammit, I'll come,Monday'. Osbert Sitwell, whose wit I much appreciated, chose Lady Colefax for afavourite butt.Practically everyone of interest in London life went to the house of this quietbourgeois figure, presenting such a remarkable contrast to the sparkling Americanswho in mind and character were in some curious fashion nearer to the aristocraticEnglish hostesses of earlier periods—of the eighteenth century and the Regency—with their audacity, their wit and their vitality. The reason is perhaps that suchexpatriate American women develop an extraordinary capacity for assimilatingthemselves into other people's ways of life completely different from their own, andeven into the manners of other epochs if the trend again makes them fashionable.Lady Colefax remained solidly and traditionally English. Harold Nicolson observedthis quality one day acutely as we left her house together. She had upset withconsiderable mess the coffee cona in which she laboriously cooked the coffee of herguests. 'Dear me, I am a real Auntie Nervous,' she said. 'That moment,' said Harold,'took us right back to the Simla nursery.'Harold Nicolson was completely at home in that world, and should never have left it.His metier was diplomacy and the writing of belles lettres, to which he madecharming and various contributions; in fact, his erudition went further and enteredsome really interesting ranges of thought. I remember him quoting a phrase I may inmemory have improved—a foible of mine—'the only tears which mingled with theHellenic waters were not for sins committed but for joys foregone'. He was one of themost civilised products of the London official and social world. Also he hadconsiderable wit, he said good things. For instance: 'Lloyd George plays on an organwith many stops, Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) is the vox humana'. I had some hope thatH.N. might be such a stop in my organ, but he gradually insisted on becoming the voxtremula. He was quite unsuited to politics, as he appears to have recognised in hislater diaries. He would have made an excellent ambassador and a possible ForeignSecretary in combination with a strong Prime Minister, but was unsuited to the roughand tumble of a new movement advancing novel ideas contra mundum. He wasattracted by the thought, but repelled by the process; he loved the end, but could notbear the means.I first met Harold Nicolson during the war in Leicestershire, where I used to escapefrom my hospital treatment in London to hunt each weekend directly I was allowed to69 of 424