Such a lot of parties
Celestria Noel
JENNIFER'S MEMOIRS by Betty Kenward HarperCollins, £17.50, pp. 386 Mrs Betty Kenward retired in 1991 after 47 years as the author of a social diary. By then she had become an instantly recognisable figure, as the Queen Mother IS, with her bouffant hair secured by the inevitable bow, her plain, dark dresses adorned with her favourite diamond brooch and her stack-heeled shoes. She Was accepted and trusted in the social world she moved in, which was the only World she minded about. She was never unkind about people in her diary and was accused soon after she started of making it too bland, but she triumphantly outlasted all her cattier rivals, taking it with her from the then weekly Taller where she began, during the war, to Queen and then Harpers & Queen.
She had every reason to hate and fear scandal. Her own mother was a cruel, adulterous beauty. When Betty, then aged
got in the way, she was sent to a finish- ing school in Belgium where all the girls v`'re four or five years older. She made mends with a girl called Bunty and they wanted to share a room the following term, but it was vetoed by Bunty's mother on the grounds that Betty's mother was living with a man who was not her husband. Betty ran away from home, aged 17, and went to vvork for an elderly spinster relative who had a hat shop. She had no money other than what she earned and very little securi- ty. Later she married an alcoholic and had r„? run away from him with her little son 'Up, pregnant with a baby who did not sur- vive. E,
She thus learned that the victims of
scandal and immorality are usually the helpless spouses and children of the wrong- doers, and that bad behaviour is not always as amusing as all that. In her social diaries Ive are presented with clean fun, lots of "aPPY young people dancing reels till dawn. If it is easy to mock at her habit of mentioning 'kind friends' who constantly °ffer her this and that, then we should remember that she needed her friends des- Aerately, having had so little help from her ?wn family. She did adore her twin prothers but one was killed in the war and er son was to emigrate to Canada. ' hereafter, her life was her work and
she was indefatigable.
A copy of each 'Jennifer's Diary' has been kept by the British Museum, for the use of scholars 50 years hence. Who but Mrs Kenward will future historians be able to rely on when they want to know who officiated at the christening of Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia? Who would believe that when the Egyptian ambassador to the court of St James gave a lavish party for King Farouk's birthday a hungry elderly peeress filled her bag with goodies to take home or remember the embarrassment of the Duchess of Windsor and Mrs Kitty Miller when they turned up in the same couture dress? Mrs Kenward braved the glare of the Duke of Windsor, whom she had first met when her mother's boyfriend tried to sell him a horse in the Twenties, and refused to curtsey to the Duchess. She also took all the howlers she could find out of his book, A King's Story. Its American author, Charles Murphy, made all her suggested cuts.
The only party she is actually rude about is one given at Sutton Place by the late Paul Getty. The only named person whose behaviour she condemns is Randolph Churchill, who, to cries of 'Qui est cet homme?', got up and started dancing at Prince Rainier's wedding when everyone was waiting for the bridal couple to take to the floor.
Her style of writing does lead her into some funny descriptions of people. In Israel, for instance: 'My escort was a very keen soldier, like his father-in-law General Moshe Dayan.' She saw dynasties and dictators come and go. She celebrated the engagement of King Faisal of Iraq in 1957 and the coronation of the Shah of Iran ten years later. She notes the first time Group Captain Peter Townshend appears with the Royal Family and the last time Maria Callas entertains for Aristotle Onassis on his yacht before the advent of Mrs Kennedy.
She was always a sport, having been keen on hunting and skiing when young. At a very advanced age she tried a Big Wheel for the first time and attempted to help Lord Rothermere break into his old home where the ex-wife of its new owner, Heini Thyssen, had barricaded herself in while he and his current wife gave a large party out- side.
Her memoirs make daunting reading for me as the new 'Jennifer'.
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