Salons
Great Hostesses Brian Masters (Constable £8.95)
Adumpy woman, with a slight look of Mrs Ronnie Greville, stands bemused in the middle of a room, a dog at her feet, while an ill-assorted collection of people turn their backs upon her, two of them clearly passing unfavourable comment on her portrait. Thus Pont depicts the Attitude Towards Hostesses in The British Character. My own thankfully limited ex- perience of hostesses (still not quite extinct as a species, though now more often than not male in gender) suggests that the wretched woman had probably persisted in pinning her guests down to a date so far in advance that it was impossible to say 'No'. Churlish though it may be, one cannot help feeling that hostesses ask for this sort of treatment.
As a pathologically shrinking violet, I can hardly imagine a worse nightmare than find- ing myself set down chez the 'great' 20th- century hostesses portrayed here, whether Lady Desborough, the two Lady Lon- donderrys, Mrs Stuyvesant Fish (not so troutish as she sounds), Mrs Vanderbilt, Mrs Greville, Emerald Cunard, Sibyl Cole- fax or Laura Corrigan, and being expected to `joust' (to borrow the word of one veteran socialite). But as someone also obsessed by people, I am bound to admit that being a fly on the wall, to see and yet
not be seen, would have its moments. These moments have been brilliantly captured by Brian Masters, who is living up to his name as one of the ablest operatives in the uPPer" class industry, in a highly entertaining and deceptively well done study. The subject is, thank God, utterly frivolous but, in the best traditions of farce, Mr Masters treats it with just the right degree of due seriousness.
He draws fine distinctions between a hostess and a lady who has dinner parties, between snobbery and elitism. He argues that the 'delightful education', whereby
young tyros were thrown into the deep end with 'the great and the distinguished in the land' is now sorely missed. The attributes of the successful hostess are wittily analysed and the need for spontaneity in conversa- tion is well brought out. That the subject is not just social fluff is illustrated by the in- fluence exercised by some of the salons: Lady Desborough on Balfour, Lady Lon- donderry on Ramsay Mac, Ladies Cunard and Colefax on the Abdication, etc. (HaP pily Cliveden and Garsington are left off the itinerary.) Mr Masters cites Ann Fledl" ing as perhaps the last of the true pros, I feel sorry for the generally nondescript husbands of these energetic hostesses and I must confess to a soft spot for boring aid Arthur Colefax ('deaf and unfortunately the very reverse of dumb', noted Chips Channon). As for the ladies themselves, Lady Desborough, the last of the great Whig hostesses, is paid a sympathetic tribute by Brian Masters in an attempt to restore the balance after the Mosley bash, but she is ultimately dished by all that frightful gush of the Souls. Much of the Londonderry chapter will be familiar to readers of H. Montgomery Hyde's fandlY portrait and one might have thought that there was nothing new to say about the 'ir- resistible' Emerald. However, Mr Masters has a deft stab at convincing us that LadY Cunard was the hostess with the mostest. Parts of this book brought out the prig in me, none more so than the chapter devoted to the loathsome pro-Nazi materialist Mag- gie Greville. I felt more warmly towards the somewhat pathetic Lady Colefax, the Pro- prietor of 'Lions Corner House'. Ow good copy over the years certainly provided plenty , be told that she was theit is hecgo°mt ot°11 denominator of literally hundreds of Pec); pie, even if many of them did sneer behind her back. There is something touchingly British in the way Sibyl plugged on gamely
in for which she was singularly suited.
The two chapters I enjoyed most were Mr Masters's acute descriptions of American society and of the lumberjack's daughter_ they snubbed, only to see her become legend in London. This is the first time that the lavishly generous Laura Corrigan has tion to them'), he explains how it was MugrfMuhaswteitri possi- hreel held hceesnht es material.stage n a While lke ahnadv her malapropisms (when asked if she had seen the Dardanelles, Laura replied 'On my, no, but I did have a letter of introduc.- ble for her to be 'at one and the same time a Joke, a snob and something of a saint'. Great Hostesses is stuffed full (and by no Means with old chestnuts) of anecdotes. Several reduced me to fou rive. As a corn- Pulsive glutton, I found particular solace in ihe stories of Mrs Fish's Dogs Dinner (where Mrs Elisha Dyer's dachshund ate so had it fell unconscious by its plate and 'lad to be carried home) and of how Mrs Greville's bloated, red-faced butler, Bacon, ailing to resist the baby tongues he was Int1-IPPosed to be serving, began to stuff them ,,° his mouth, duly consuming the entire course. Wouldn't it be nice if one was a, 'lowed to collect one's rations at a hostess's door and then take them for Private consumption elsewhere?
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