Chips Channon will be the death of me. His diaries are on the top shelf and I struggle to reach them while teetering on the library steps. It wasn’t worth the effort either as he never mentions Anthony Biddle.
Major-General Anthony J Drexel Biddle Jnr (1896 – 1961) was US Ambassador to the governments of Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Greece, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia between 1939 and 1944 while they were in exile. As you can see he was on the cover of Life in 1943. He was known for dressing elegantly in bespoke suits and starched Charvet shirts that had horizontal stripes. Another American magazine picked him as the best-dressed American of all time. Feliks Topolski captures his dandyism in this sketch.
On Sunday morning I spent an enjoyable hour exploring The National Gallery of Ireland and came across a room devoted to Irish stained glass. There were several pieces by Evie Hone including this study of a cockerel titled The Betrayal.
I was pleased to discover it as it makes sense of this sketch.
Incidentally, there is a fine Evie Hone window in the southwest transept of the Cathedral in Washington DC that I have not seen myself. It depicts Christ healing Jairus’ daughter, and the woman healed from an issue of blood by touching the hem of Christ’s robe.
I’m not sure what this entry on ‘Tony’ Biddle is a propos of. He and his wife Margaret were great friends of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I met his sister Cordelia Robertson (who worshipped him) in New York in 1981 – in her late 80s but a live wire.
Of course you know about the Evie Hone window in College Chapel.
It is mentioned in this October 2016 post
https://christopherbellew.com/evie-hone-window/
Biddle certainly would have agreed with Baron Rothchild that bankers are the aristocracy of the bourgeois. He believed in eat,drink and remarry and I believe he was the last man to become major general in the USArmy with a high school diploma…he left his boarding school to fight in WW1 and quit the diplomatic service in 44 to join the army and UNRRA. He was off to Spain as ambassador when he died at 61. Great panache and a lucky star …a combination not unknown to the Drexels and Biddles of PA.