Mrs Greville was Marmite. What did Chips Channon, a man who does not mince his words, write in his diaries?
4th August 1939
I drove in the rain to Polesden Lacey where I had not been for 15 years, a long time. The gardens are glorious, the grounds magnificently green and well kept. Everywhere there is the silence, and spaciousness that comes from long established wealth. But the house, while Edwardian to a degree and comfortable and full of rare china and expensive treasures, is really a monster. When I arrived I was told, grandly, that Mrs Greville would see me at 7.30, so I went for a walk meanwhile, and got caught in a shower. I returned dripping but was at once shown up to Maggie’s little boudoir. I found her changed, older, and thinner. Her hair is quite grey. We gossiped, and she proceeded to be awful about Mrs Vanderbilt whom she hates. There is no one on earth quite so skilfully malicious as old Maggie. She told me that Mrs Vanderbilt had said she wanted to live in England. ‘No, Grace, we have enough Queens here already’ Maggie had retorted. She was vituperative about almost everyone, for about 40 minutes and it was a scramble to get dressed.
30th April 1942
Lunch with Mrs Greville in her suite at the Dorchester. The old lady received me, covered with jewels, sitting in her bath chair at the door, and she looked well though apparently she is always in pain and greeted me with the words ‘Chips is my only vice’. It was a pleasant party. The Kents, she, lovely and amber-coloured, he in an Air Force uniform … Both Mountbattens. What a dazzling couple they are. I sat between them and found Dicky much grown in stature since he took up his highly important, indeed vital, command*. But he remains simple and unaffected, and only when I talked of his nephew, Prince Philip of Greece, did his sleepy strange eyes light up with an affectionate, almost paternal light. Molly Buccleuch in spite of just recovering from a tonsil operation, looked radiant but pretended to have caught a cold from walking for an hour in the Downing Street gardens yesterday, with Winston. Also, Brendan Bracken, bombastic, imaginative, and kindly, with his teeth blacker than ever, and his red hair greying. And the Duke of Alba. We stayed until 3. I felt sleepy after the rich food and Moselle wine.
23rd September 1942
I attended a memorial service for poor Mrs Greville, which was crowded with Ambassadors and all the usual funeral faces. I afterwards invited the Sitwells, Sachie and Georgie, and the Carisbrookes, to luncheon at Claridges. Irene Carisbrooke, a great lady, was gentle and charming. Her husband Drino talked of Mrs Greville and of her famous ‘mots’. A few are worth recording. When Lady Chamberlain returned from Rome in early 1940 Mrs Greville remarked: ‘It is not the first time Rome has been saved by a goose’. Apropos of another woman well known for her loose morals, she said: ‘I don’t follow people to their bedrooms. It’s what they do outside them that is important’. And her final polishing off of poor Emerald. ‘You mustn’t think that I dislike little Lady Cunard, I’m always telling Queen Mary that she isn’t half as bad as she is painted.’ Yet another of her remarks was about Mrs Keppel, who was making heavy weather about her escape from France. Of her, Maggie said: ‘To hear Alice talk, you would think that she had swum the Channel, with her maid between her teeth’. No one yet knows what will happen to the world-famous Greville jewels. Luncheon cost me £10 including tips and three bottles of Moselle.
*Chief of Combined Operations.
Chips was visiting Margaret Greville at Polesden Lacey from 1923 until 1941. As you have said, after that he visited her at the Dorchester Hotel.
He also dined at her house 16 Charles Street, Mayfair from 1935 – 1937 with his wife.
I think Chips and Margaret Greville were an even match, each with sharp wit.
Reviewing Chips diaries in The Observer over forty years ago, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “Grovelling sycophantic and snobbish as only a well-heeled American nesting among the English upper classes can be, with a commonness that positively hurts at times. And yet – how sharp an eye! What neat malice! How, in their own fashion, well written and truthful and honest they are! … What a relief to turn to him after Sir Winston’s windy rhetoric, and all those leaden narratives by field-marshals, air-marshals and admirals!”