Them and Us: The American Invasion of British High Society by Charles Jennings A dinner-party hosted by Chips Channon at his ostentatious Belgrave Square flat in 1936 frames this book. It is described in the introduction and appears again in the final chapter, for its composition defines what had gradually happened to high society in the previous 50 years.
Buried within the pages of this book there lies an extraordinary story worth the telling, the bald facts of which require none of the elaboration to which they are here subjected. In 1896 a certain Anna Maria Druce, of 68 Baker Street in London, petitioned the home secretary to have her late husband’s coffin opened, on the grounds that his funeral in 1864 had been a purposeful sham devoted to ceremonial disposal of an empty box. Mr Druce had not died at all; he had simply wanted to revert to his other identity as the 5th Duke of Portland, of Welbeck Abbey near Worksop.
Thirty years ago Sandy Fawkes was a Daily Express reporter following a story in the southern states of the USA. She met a good-looking young man in a bar, and spent the next six days in his company, driving around with him, eating out, and sharing a bed. He was enigmatic and monosyllabic, but sufficiently intriguing to keep her interest alive. Just as well, for had he been bored he might well have murdered her. She later discovered that he had been responsible for the hideous deaths of at least 18 people, the last four within the two days immediately before he picked her up. She had been intimate with wickedness, and the realisation frightened her. This was a better story than any she had been sent to cover, so she naturally wrote it up in a book she called Killing Time.
It seems only the other day that Ian Huntley was convicted at the Old Bailey of the pointless murder of two pretty Cambridgeshire schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and here, already, is a book about the case by a journalist who covered every day of the investigation. One is bound to ask why. What purpose can the book serve? What can it add to our understanding of what happened? What solace can it offer to the bereaved? What wisdom can it provide to the curious? The answer to all four questions is, I am afraid, not much. The book fulfils the very least of expectations by presenting a cogent narrative for posterity. This is exactly how the story unfolded and how it was resolved, with no added flourishes or embellishments.
The story has been told dozens of times already, but never gets dull, and until the 1996 McDonald’s libel case there had not been a longer saga played out in any English court. From 1867 the Tichborne claimant dominated conversation for years, and people openly despaired they might die before a verdict was reached. Photographs of the claimant outsold those of the royal family, and such was the hypnotic fascination of the case that even they fell victim to it, the Prince and Princess of Wales sitting next to the judge on the bench on one occasion (on another, George Eliot was in the public gallery).
We are none of us, thank heaven, one-dimensional creatures easily and succinctly defined by a single characteristic. It is an obvious truth, yet was almost entirely ignored in the reporting of Diana Mosley’s death in Paris last summer, announced with the same clamour as had enveloped her for many of the last 70 years of her life. She was often vilified with a glee and enjoyment which carefully avoided any thought and latched on to the remorseless repetition of two simple facts, that she had been Hitler’s friend and Mosley’s wife. Ergo, she had to be detestable. To their great shame, even some serious historians were prepared to join in the ranting lest their political sense might appear to wobble. This biography is more responsible.
It is difficult to demonstrate why the Lees-Milne diaries, of which this is the tenth volume, are among the best of the 20th century. Easy to feel why, for you race through the pages with addictive passion, not wishing to miss a word, but awkward to justify the excitement. These are not records of momentous events (Greville or Nicolson or Channon), nor cleverly turned insults (overrated Alan Clark). They are simply the thoughts of an educated, emotional, rueful man with his eyes and ears perpetually on the alert for what makes human beings interesting or foolish, written with such tasteful ease one swallows them like Belgian truffles. They are nearer to Pepys than any other attempt at the genre.
According to Ward McAllister, the fabled gate-keeper of New York high society in the 1890s, to be counted among the privileged few you needed poise, an aptitude for polite conversation, a polished and deferential manner, an infinite capacity of good humour, and the ability to entertain and be entertained. And also, by the by, pots of money. Given that one was expected to change one's entire outfit nine times a day and take 20 gowns just for summer hols, the cost of belonging could have floated a small country, let alone a young lady. Yet the need to be part of an icily exclusive set with a profound sense of position was so desperate that women tormented themselves into obedience to shared rituals of numbing idiocy which must surely have smothered their humanity.