as charlady at a furnished house I rented at Cromer in 1913. She was
a pretty, blue-eyed, doll-like girl, who earned a few shillings a
week by taking out on the sea-front perambulators containing children
of visitors who wished to go golfing or on excursions. She went to
London, met the son and heir of a well-known peer, and eventually
married him.
At once a press agent got to work. She was photographed as one of
England’s greatest beauties, her name was included in _Burke_, and
she has been boomed constantly. Once a week her picture will meet
your eye, depicting her riding to hounds, golfing, ski-running,
walking in the Park, or chatting on the Terrace of Monte Carlo.
And yet to the mother of this young lady with the soft complexion
and appealing eyes I paid a daily wage of two shillings to do the
scrubbing.
If you believe what you read about the pretty lady you will think she
combines the facial beauties of Miss Gladys Cooper with the prowess
of Diana, and is the last word in the sports of ski-ing in winter and
lawn-tennis in summer.
One night last season I met her at a dance given at Claridge’s by my
charming friend, the Marchioness Townshend, and we went into a corner
and chatted together. The great company, gay indeed, included the
French Ambassador and the Countess of Saint Aulaire, the Marquis and
Marchioness of Carisbrooke, Princess Troubetskoy, Lord Leigh, and
Mrs. George Pinckard. But I do not suppose anybody in the ballroom
suspected that when I sat out with the slim little blue-eyed lady
that I whispered a word of congratulation on her great social success.
Who among that gay crowd would have guessed the truth--that the
pretty young married woman, radiant and beautiful, with a splendid
diamond necklet, which her father-in-law had given her on her
marriage, was the daughter of my rheumatic old charwoman!
We have kept our secret even to this day. Her husband and her
husband’s parents do not know exactly who she is, though her name, as
I have said, appears in _Burke_, and, after all, she is very happy.
The story of the other pretty lady, also a peeress, is far more
remarkable, and again, for obvious reasons, I do not give her name.
Suffice it to say that she is not of English birth, though everyone
in her own smart social circle believes her to be.
She came beneath my notice in a curious way. While engaged in
counter-espionage work on the Clyde during the war, I had my
headquarters at the Central Station Hotel, in Glasgow. One evening
a young Canadian officer asked to see me, and disclosed a very
remarkable story, one so curious that I eventually induced him to
write down and sign the particulars. They were afterwards duly
investigated by the Intelligence Branch.
He told me how, two years before the declaration of war, he had left
Quebec to make a tour of Europe, and had joined a pleasure cruise
sailing from New York. Among the passengers was an extremely handsome
young lady named Ethel Muirhead, who came from Buenos Ayres, and
who was travelling alone. He confessed that he had fallen violently
in love with her, and on arrival in London had taken her to see the
sights of the metropolis. Later, in Paris, they were constantly
together, though she was extremely reticent concerning her relatives.
She had some German friends in Paris, to whom she introduced him, and
some friends of hers in Rome were also German. Indeed, in Rome the
secretary of the German Embassy apparently knew her well.
In due course, one night the liner put into Naples, whereupon the
lady, who was walking the deck with her admirer after dinner,
suddenly halted, and, looking into his face, said that she
felt herself compelled to tell him something--namely, that in
half-an-hour’s time she was going ashore, and leaving the ship.
“Why?” asked the young man, astounded at the sudden announcement.
“Because--well--to tell you the truth,” she said hesitatingly,
“because I am meeting my fiancé here, and we are going to be married!”
The young man was staggered, for all along he had believed that she
reciprocated his honest affection.
The girl bade him farewell, and he saw her go ashore in the tender.
She would not allow him to accompany her, because her fiancé was
awaiting her, but before they parted she gave him her photograph as a
souvenir.
He showed it to me. That photograph went to London together with the
young Canadian’s signed story, and by its means inquiries were made
concerning the pretty Ethel Muirhead, as she had called herself.
I think I cannot do better than copy the report of the searching
investigation made in a number of quarters. It runs as follows:
“Alice Ann Morrison, _alias_ Ethel Muirhead, Mary Greenlees,
known as ‘Slim Betty.’ Born in Buenos Ayres in 1893, her
father being a shipping clerk and her mother Italian. Was
employed in a shop in Buenos Ayres. Went to New York and
thence to Berlin. Knows Spanish and Italian well, and has been
identified by S---- S---- as a well-known German secret agent,
who lived in Paris, 124 Rue des Petits Champs, in 1912, being
on friendly terms with B----, who was then a high official
at the French Admiralty. Two years prior to this the girl
in question acted as decoy to the dangerous Creswell gang
of card-sharpers working the transatlantic liners, and was
then known as Betty Bates, and to her associates as ‘Saucy’
Greenlees. Is an adventuress of the worst type and a very
clever secret agent. Married in 19-- ----”
and following is the name of a well-known English peer!
The reader would be very surprised to know the present name of this
ex-German spy, who is to-day a pretty and much-photographed peeress,
whose smiling face frequently peers out at you from the pages of the
illustrated papers. Very few people except myself know the real truth
concerning her.
I meet her sometimes, and she is always gracious to me. But will she
be so kind and affable when she has read these lines, and learns, for
the first time, that I know her secret?
Truly this is a strange world, and the phantasmagoria of life is full
of interest. Would that I dare reveal her identity.
But what a shock her husband would sustain.
It is a secret that is better undivulged.
* * * * *
I was walking across Grosvenor Square one day with the Marquis
Imperiale, the Italian Ambassador in London, who was for several
years so popular in society.
We passed a rather angular lady of uncertain age, evidently a
war-widow, who was wearing extremely smart shoes and very expensive
silk stockings.
“Ah! Signor Le Queux,” remarked His Excellency, “the goods are well
displayed in the window, are they not?”
I afterwards met the same lady a few nights later in a certain
drawing-room in Curzon Street, and two months later her photograph
appeared in the _Evening News_ as the chief figure in a certain
_cause célèbre_.
As a novelist I have naturally ever been in search of real romance.
The romances of real life are around us every day, as any reader of
these pages well knows. But it was a particularly curious romance of
real life in which I participated while I rented a flat that had been
vacated by Madame Marconi (mother of Senatore Marconi), facing the
Mediterranean at Leghorn.
The British chaplain one day hinted to me that among the small
English colony in the sun-blanched Italian town there was a
half-starved teacher of English, a certain Signora Baccelli.
I managed to meet the lady, and discovered a very curious romance. It
was, to tell it briefly, that she, the eldest daughter of a certain
well-known English earl, had, while on their annual winter sojourn on
the Riviera, met and fallen in love, with Enrico Baccelli, a tall
and particularly handsome gendarme in the service of the Principality
of Monaco. Her parents were aghast. Every effort was made on the part
of the father and mother to keep their daughter from the good-looking
guardian of the peace, who, in his smart uniform, used to do daily
duty in patrolling the Place du Casino. They appealed to the Prince
of Monaco, and the too-handsome young fellow was, on some pretence,
sent to Austria.
But the pretty young lady managed to escape from her father’s seat in
Hampshire and join him in Prague, where they were married. Then her
parents cut her off, and allowed the newly-married pair to drift.
Poor little lady! Though her name is one of the most historic in
Britain, and you will also find her in _Burke_, she was in very
homely circumstances when I met her. She cared not a jot for the
action of her parents. “They had to do it,” she remarked to me in
English, while her tall, handsome husband stood by, not understanding
what we were saying. “I do not blame them. One day they will
recognize that I love Enrico. I would rather marry the man I love,
though he be a gendarme, than make a loveless alliance, such as
is made each season in Mayfair. After all, we women ought to be
mistresses of our own hearts.”
I agreed. We all three became friends, and for a couple of years
they often came and lunched with me. At last the earl forgave his
daughter, and to-day they both live in London and are highly popular.
Baccelli is not the gendarme’s real name, but it is an Italian one,
and you often see a reference to their doings in the _Morning Post_.
Such is real romance--romance that, when the novelist like myself
deals with it, resembles mere fiction. But it is to be found
everywhere.
* * * * *
“Jean” Palmer, as she was known to her intimate friends, lived
in a beautiful corner house in Grosvenor Square, in what Society
contemptuously nicknamed “The Biscuit Box.” She was the wife of Sir
Walter Palmer, of the firm of Huntley & Palmer, of Reading, and was
for many years my friend. We had literary and artistic tastes in
common. Oscar Wilde and Coulson Kernahan were of our little set. The
wife of a very wealthy man, she delighted in being a Bohemian, and
was at heart a great lover of good music.
Her “Wednesdays,” when she decorated her house in Grosvenor Square
with flowers, which, by the way, often cost her three hundred pounds,
will long be remembered. The gorgeous rooms, with their priceless
paintings, the concerts that cost her fabulous sums in fees to the
greatest artists of the day, and those wonderful suppers with the
most cultured and artistic set in London around the tables, are still
fresh in the memory of many besides myself.
_Trilby_ had been produced, and Jean Palmer had nicknamed me “Little
Billee,” a name which stuck to me for years.
One day, during the winter season in Florence, I met her in Gilli’s
in the Via Tornabuoni, at the fashionable hour of eleven, when
everyone goes and eats a cake and drinks a glass of vermouth.
“Hulloa, Little Billee!” she cried. “Look here! Come to a concert
with me this afternoon. There’s a new fiddler going to play in a
schoolroom out at the Porta Romana.”
I pointed out that the day was warm, and I was not keen about sitting
to hear a fiddler in a schoolroom that afternoon.
“Gladys is going with me. Won’t you take mother and daughter?” she
urged.
So I reluctantly consented.
After luncheon we drove to a small schoolroom somewhere near the
gate of the old road to Rome, where we found about forty people
had assembled. On the platform there presently appeared a thin,
cadaverous, shabbily-dressed youth, with black, piercing eyes and
long hair and rather sallow complexion.
“Oh! So that’s the new genius!” I whispered to Jean.
“Yes. He looks the part, doesn’t he?”
We waited. He played on his violin so magnificently that some of the
audience declared him to be the new Paganini.
“Funny name!” remarked Jean, who had never before even looked at her
programme. “Kubelik. Hungarian, eh?”
That moment marked the young violinist’s rise to success. After
the performance she sought him out and invited him to dinner. We
all three dined together. Next day she invited him to drive up to
Fiesole and take lunch there. In the carriage Lady Palmer had her pet
Pekinese.
Kubelik, shy yet charmingly boy-like, remarked in French:
“Oh, what a pretty dog! Those are very expensive, are they not?”
“I gave a thousand francs for him,” replied his hostess.
Whereupon he sighed and said:
“Ah! that is just double what my violin cost!”
Within two months Jean Palmer had presented him with that magnificent
Stradivarius which she acquired from the Finch Hatton family, and had
launched him in London on the road to fame.
He was tied up to some Hungarian agents in Budapest, but in order to
free him she paid them out a very big sum. She presented him to King
Edward, who gave him the magnificent ring that he showed me on the
night he received it, and she paid him a fee of five hundred pounds
each time he performed at her “Wednesdays.”
Therefore by the kind-heartedness of Jean Palmer did Kubelik rise to
the pinnacle of fame as the greatest violinist of his time.
* * * * *
On a January afternoon in 1914 I was standing on the carpeted steps
of the Casino at Monte Carlo, having just left an American friend,
when suddenly I met a smartly-groomed man whom I knew in London--a
man-about-town reported to be wealthy, and a member of at least two
good clubs.
“Look here, Le Queux,” he exclaimed in a low voice, “I know you are
interested in little Lady X, as everyone is. What do you think of
this?” And he took from his pocket-book a letter in the handwriting
of a much-photographed young peeress, whose beauty was notable and
whose marriage had been one of the smartest in the previous season.
It was, I must admit, a most compromising letter, with a date that
showed it to have been written since her marriage.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you think of that, eh?” and he grinned.
“You ought to burn it--not show it round.” I declared in annoyance.
“Where did you get it?”
“That’s my affair, my dear fellow,” he laughed, putting it back into
his wallet. “I mean it to be of considerable use to me,” he said in a
voice of triumph.
Then I recollected that I had once heard a faint whisper that my
well-dressed friend lived by his wits, and now I realized that he was
a blackmailer.
In secret, I watched during the months that followed, and it became
plain that the scoundrel squeezed money time after time out of the
pretty young wife. I happen to know that he compelled her to pawn
her jewels, and when he could get no more out of her, the blackguard
gave her husband the incriminating letter, and it formed the basis of
divorce proceedings. Poor little Lady X died last year.
But to-day that despicable blackguard is actually a knight! He
married a rich woman older than himself, and you will constantly read
of their doings in the “Society gossip.” Is it any wonder when I
read of them I am nauseated? Yet is it any worse to grant honours to
war-profiteers or aliens from nowhere?
The King cannot be blamed for the graft that has been accepted for
honours in the past. Indeed, it is hoped that the new system, with
its array of penalties, may prevent it in future. The King naturally
believes in those whom he trusts with the government of his country,
and not even the most violent tub-thumper in Hyde Park can possibly
blame him.
The case I have referred to is, I fear, but one of many where honours
have been bought by men in order to whitewash themselves--bought in
the open market, as they would buy a bundle of pink tape. But I have
hope that such cases will never again be repeated. We must not allow
“celebrities” to manufacture themselves by means of a fat cheque
to “the proper quarter,” and thus demand a niche in the already
overcrowded pages of “_Who’s Who_.”
CHAPTER TEN
Stories of Notable Women--Old Countess of Cardigan and
Her Gay Parties--Naughty Stories Told by the Wittiest
Woman in London--The Phantom Car in Park Lane--When Don
Jaime, the Spanish Pretender, Saw a Ghost--High Jinks at
Deene Park--Edward and the Game-keeper--How the Cardigan
_Memoirs_ Came into Being--My Friendship with the Crown
Princess of Saxony--Its Result--I Arrange Her Highness’s
Secret Marriage with Signor Toselli--Amusing Incidents
After the Ceremony--I Induce the Princess to Write Her
_Memoirs_.
Dinner-table stories are directly responsible for the prevailing
fashion of writing one’s recollections, this book of mine being one
of many such volumes.
I may be justly accused of having invented the modern “memoir.” It
happened in a curious way. The old Countess of Cardigan, widow of
Lord Cardigan of Balaclava fame, whom I had known all my life, had
been a friend of my father. In my boyhood days she called me “Willie
Liqueur.” For thirty years or so I was constantly a guest at Deene
Park, Northamptonshire, the stately home of the Cardigans, where King
Henry slept after the Battle of Bosworth.
Lady Cardigan was a celebrity. She had for seventy years known
everyone who was worth knowing, and had led a very hectic life--if
all reports were true.
When she was eighty, with her yellow wig and her painfully narrow
chest, her dress of pale carnation satin and her squeaky voice, I
often used to sit in her little upstairs drawing-room at Deanery
Street, Park Lane, and listen to her gossip over the tea-cups. Her
statements about people caused me, as a journalist, to shudder for
fear of the law of libel, and I have often strolled back down Park
Lane utterly amazed that I should have been so magnetized for an hour
by a woman old enough to be my great-grandmother.
I had heard hundreds of stories--some of them side-splitting--from
the old countess’s lips, but her handwriting grew from bad to worse,
till it became quite illegible, so whenever I received a letter with
the well-known coronet upon it I always rang up the faithful and
portly Knighton, who was her butler as well as her man of affairs,
and a conversation something like this took place:
“I say, Knighton, I’ve had a letter from her ladyship. When shall
I come?” Knighton would then apologize, and go to look at his
mistress’s diary, and afterwards reply:
“Dinner, sir, next Friday.”
And so I would sit down and write an acceptance.
One night at Deanery Street during the London season, the “Old Lady,”
as we called her, gave a dinner-party, and among those present were
the Countess of Westmorland, Lady Angela Forbes, “Cis” Fane, young
Brudenell-Bruce, who was heir to the Cardigan estates, but who, alas!
was killed in the war, and Sir Nigel and Lady Kingscote.
I remember that we had one of her ladyship’s pet dishes, a Spanish
ham that she got from somewhere in Castile, stewed in sherry. Over a
slice of it, served with great dignity by the never-smiling Knighton,
Lady Cardigan began to tell some extremely amusing stories of people
she had known, including Lord Beaconsfield, who had proposed marriage
to her. Then she eclipsed the stories by an extremely “risky” one, at
which we were all convulsed--all but Knighton.
“Well, Lady Cardigan,” I exclaimed across the table, “I’m a bit of an
author. And I’m wondering why you don’t write a book of your stories.”
“A book!” exclaimed the yellow-haired old lady, who was glittering
with diamonds. “A book! My dear Mr. Le Queux! Why, if I wrote a book
who would ever publish it?”
“If you will write a book, I will see that it gets a publisher,”
I said, taking a sporting chance, but remembering that a big blue
pencil would be necessary.
“Yes!” cried pretty Lady Westmorland, who had been one of the great
beauties of England, and who was sitting beside me. “Oh! it would be
such fun!”
Cis Fane opposite me sighed, and whispered audibly:
“Good Lord deliver us!”
The party seemed all highly tickled by the suggestion, and presently
her ladyship said:
“Very well, Mr. Le Queux. If you think the public would like to read
some of my stories, then I will hold you to your promise, and write
them.”
On that same evening I had a curious experience. As I left the house
with Brudenell-Bruce, the butler blew his whistle for a taxi, and we
entered, telling the man to drive to the Bachelors’ Club.
Hardly were we inside when a breath of sweet perfume caused me to
glance around, and I said:
“Why, this isn’t a taxi, Brudenell!”
“No, apparently not,” he drawled. “But it will take us to the club.”
A few minutes later we got out, and, as I went forward to pay, I
was faced by a smart chauffeur, who gazed at me, and, apparently
startled, hastily drove swiftly away down Piccadilly, leaving us both
standing on the pavement amazed.
We never fathomed the mystery, but it seemed certain that the car was
waiting in Deanery Street for some evil purpose, and the man mistook
us for the persons who were to join him.
Next day I sought Eveleigh Nash at his office in King Street, Covent
Garden. He, not knowing Lady Cardigan, except by repute, did not
seem anxious to publish the book, so I went away resolving to let the
matter drop.
A week later, however, I had an urgent summons to go to the “Old
Lady” at Deanery Street, and found that she held me to my promise
given over her dinner-table!
So next day I returned to my friend Eveleigh Nash, told him the whole
circumstances, and in the end it was decided to obtain the help of
Mrs. Maude Chester ffoulkes. I took Mrs. ffoulkes round to tea at
Deanery Street a few days later, with the result that the first
Volume of modern “recollections” was issued to the public, and made a
great sensation.
But I can tell you that when the manuscript was ready the blue pencil
had to be exercised very freely on some of those stories before
they were passed by Eveleigh Nash, who detested the book from the
beginning and, I believe, always regretted that he published it.
Old Lady Cardigan was a wonderful figure. Her Christmas and shooting
parties at Deene were centres of the wildest fun--the merriment of
the gayest and most irresponsible set in England. They were the
“smartest” of the “smart” and when one accepted an invitation it
meant uninterrupted enjoyment from the moment of arrival to that of
departure.
The magnificent old mansion, once an ancient abbey, stands in the
midst of a beautiful park, and after the “Old Lady” had retired, as
was her habit, at 9 p.m., the great lakes and splendid beech-formed
avenues echoed with nocturnal merriment.
Dinner was always served on a service of George III. silver, with
great state at a big round table. I hated those heavy silver soup
plates, and when later on one used one’s knife upon a plate, it cut
into it. It was always a stately meal, but the plates to me seemed
ever greasy.
Lady Cardigan would allow no motor-car to approach Deene, nor would
she have any electric bell. In the dining-room she had the ordinary
pull-bell, with a long string attached to it; while her constant
attendant, waking or sleeping, driving or pouring out tea, was a
particularly annoying brown miniature Pomeranian named “Bundle.” One
dare not go near one’s hostess for fear of “Bundle’s” teeth.
At one of the shooting-parties, that included, as was usual, a number
of well-known people were Don Jaime, the Pretender to the Spanish
throne, and his brother, who figured prominently in the public eye at
the moment.
Don Jaime occupied King Henry VII.’s bedroom, a great panelled
apartment with a huge four-post bed in which I had often slept. His
brother was in the next room, and I in the room adjoining that. The
rest of the old wing was occupied by Dr. Thomas Pink, of Lyddington,
Lady Cardigan’s pet doctor, whom she always told people had kept her
alive for the past twenty years, young Brudenell-Bruce, and several
other bachelor guests. It was the bachelors’ quarter.
On that well-remembered night we all retired about 2 a.m., after
a gay time among the ladies in the big smoking-room--an apartment
with highly-decorated Renaissance carvings over the fireplace that I
hesitate to describe here, but a description of which may be found in
certain books on English architecture.
I suppose I had been in bed about an hour when I was awakened by a
most unearthly yell. I dashed out into the corridor, to find Don
Jaime in pale blue silk pyjamas.
“_Dios!_” he gasped. “I--I’ve seen a ghost!”
“What?” I ejaculated.
Brudenell, who had at that moment sprung out of his own room, heard
the Prince’s assertion and said:
“Ghost be hanged! Go to bed, Prince. We don’t have ghosts at Deene!”
“You do! Lady Cardigan believes in the White Lady,” he said, in his
broken English.
“Well, I don’t--for one,” I said, and by this time the whole
corridor was agog with Don Jaime and his ghost. He described it as a
young nun in a black habit.
“Oh, get back to bed and make love to her if she comes again,” I
replied, rather annoyed at being awakened out of my sleep. So we
returned to our rooms.