The Daily Mail does a quality remembrance

[mme_hardy]

of Barbara Cartland, written by Michael Thornton.

Some highlights:

'Well, I may write about innocent virgins,' she said, over a lavish lunch of pheasant and vintage hock, 'but I wasn't one when I married. I lost my virginity at 18 to Viscount Elmley, the son of the seventh Earl Beauchamp, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose glorious home, Madresfield Court, was the model for the house in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

'My mother wanted me to marry Elmley, but I didn't find him attractive, which is just as well because, my dear, there was the most ghastly scandal.

'Lord Beauchamp was caught b****ring the footmen and had to leave England in the dead of night to go into exile. I mean, you can't have people b****ring the servants, darling, now can you?'
...
'The trouble was that I didn't find out until after I had married [her first husband] that he was a falling-down drunk. He was paralytic from morning till night, so our sex life was nonexistent. I was never in the slightest danger of getting pregnant by him.

'After a year of absolute misery, I began to take lovers.' As one does.
...
But [Cartland's and Lord Mountbatten's] relationship was entirely platonic. She was sharply aware that Mountbatten, emasculated by the infidelities of his promiscuous and nymphomaniac wife, Edwina, had scant interest in sex in his later years, particularly with women.

I was reading an exquisite Telegraph review of a book about the Beauchamp family, and came to this inimitable phrase:

Over the coming years, William would seek out the sweet rains of Paris, the clefts in the rocks of Sydney's Botany Bay, the secret valleys of San Francisco and the great waters of Venice, in an almost ceaseless passage between the four cities of the world reputed to tolerate the homosexual community.

Comments

[executrix]

"The crack of dawn ain't safe around that man!"

[kore]

the four cities of the world reputed to tolerate the homosexual community

I wonder if he got a package discount

What a story -- the love of his children is really moving. That excerpt makes me want to read more.

[mme_hardy]

Me, too. And what a vicious, nasty piece of work his brother-in-law was.

[kore]

Yeah, he reminded me of the Marquess of Dingleberry. //shudders

[nineveh_uk]

It's baffling to wonder what the brother-in-law was planning to get out of it. He embarrassed himself and the extended family as well as Beauchamp. What was the point?

[mme_hardy]

All the online articles I read yesterday -- I was on a bit of a kick -- indicated that Bend'Or (who was named after his father's favorite racehorse, so clearly he had a lot of rage to work off) was pissed off that his two divorces made him unwelcome at court, while Lord Beauchamp got off scot-free even though some subset of everybody knew he was having sex with lots of men. And, in retrospect, sexually harassing his servants, although at the time it was seen as just vulgar.

[movingfinger]

I dare say Bend'Or came in for more than his share of ragging due to his name, in the public schools.

[legionseagle]

I'm afraid I read that as "the clefts in the rocks of Sydney." I felt a bit worried for Sydney.

[mme_hardy]

As one would. I hadn't previously heard of Sydney as a homosexual hotbed.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

whose glorious home, Madresfield Court, was the model for the house in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Well, that is odd. Madresfield is faux-Tudor and faux-Gothic. Brideshead was the site of the protagonist's "conversion to the Baroque."

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Apparently Madresfield is a bit of everything mushed together?

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I think Cartland lived in a pleasant haze of heightened reminiscence...

Castle Howard is more like it.



But apparently the Arts-and-Crafts chapel at Madresfield was the model for Lady Marchmain's incongruous wedding present.



Holy blap.

Nine

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Cartland sounds like a crackup. Her daughter in the photo looks stunningly like Shirley Temple.