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Elinor Glyn
Elinor Glyni A Biography
BY ANTHONY GLYN
Doribleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1955
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 55-5507
Copyright , 1955, by Sir Geoffrey Davson, Baronet
Copyright, 1955, by The Hearst Corporation
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States
At the Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.
First Edition
Romance is a spiritual disguise created by
the imagination to envelop material happen-
ings and desires, so that they may be in
greater harmony with the soul.
From Elinor Glyris notebook.
cmr csso.) PUBLIC LIBRART
i'J'T.I f!SS
Elinor GJyn
We were having lunch at the Ritz.
Lunch with Grandmamma was both a treat and an ordeal,
an occasion of mingled affection and apprehension. One's ap-
pearance was expected to he immaculate, one's manners flaw-
less, one's deportment at once correct and nonchalant. In
earlier days she had regularly sent her adolescent daughters
out of the restaurant in the middle of a meal to fetch a wrap
deliberately left behind, so that they might learn an easy and
unaffected poise under public scrutiny. Such ordeals, how-
ever, were not inflicted on schoolboy grandsons. To me she
was less intimidating, if not less awe-inspiring.
The sensation of walking along a knife-edge added con-
siderably to the excitement and memorability of these occa-
sions. But they were, even in their more alarming moments,
extremely enjoyable. Grandmamma was a delightful and stim-
ulating companion and she was always so genuinely pleased
to see me. Lunch at the Ritz restaurant, an infrequent ex-
perience anyway, was made all the more exciting by being the
cynosure of all eyes.
She had been lunching at the corner table of Ritz hotels all
over the world for the last forty years and was quite accus-
tomed to being covertly stared at from, behind menu cards.
Even at seventy her great beauty, her erect carriage, her
queenly presence, her imperious glance, her green eyes, red
Foreword
hair, and magnolia-white skin would have attracted attention
without her fame and reputation. It was pleasant to bask for
an hour or two in the reflection of her limelight.
We ordered lobster thermidor. Another of the nice things
about Grandmamma was that she always treated one as com-
pletely grown-up. To her children of any age were merely
small-scale adults and she expected them to have the same
interests and tastes as adults. She gave her granddaughter a
diamond wrist watch long before she learned to tell the time;
she gave me for my fourth birthday a typewriter, a scarlet
portable model, on which I am typing this. She never under-
stood about toys. Similarly, we were expected to have an adult
interest in our appearance and in the opposite sex, to enjoy
adult food, to like conversing about Greek philosophy or Ren-
aissance painting or Voltaire. It was a strain, but a very agree-
able one.
At the table next to ours were a father, mother, and daugh-
ter who were taking a considerable interest in us. Grand-
mamma told me that they were Americans, explaining the
many points of manners, appearance, and speech in which
Americans differed from the British, She went on to tell me
about anyone in the restaurant whom she knew. Finally, as
they brought our lobster, we started to play the game we al-
ways played when we lunched together.
We would discuss anyone in sight who looked interesting
and whom she did not already know, indicating the person
by pointing our knives lying on the table and staring in the
opposite direction. After a suitable pause we would examine
the person indicated and Grandmamma would describe what
she imagined his character and life to be a vivid description
which would have startled the person concerned considerably
if he could have heard. Her judgement about people, however,
was usually sound and it seems probable that she may often
have been very close to the truth. Several of her friends have
10
Foreword
since spoken of her ability to sum up with a good deal of ac-
curacy people who were strangers to her.
The American family were clearly fascinated by our con-
versation and had by now given up all pretence of main-
taining one of their own. Finally the father summoned the
headwaiter and asked who Grandmamma was. On being told,
he gazed at her more wide-eyed than ever.
We had now finished our game and I launched, with ter-
rifying precocity,, into a long exposition of the gold standard,
a topic which was being widely discussed at that time. It was
not a subject which appealed much to Grandmamma; money
matters at any level were anathema to her. But she had much
experience of lunching with politicians and it was unthink-
able to show boredom while eating in a public restaurant with
a young man, even a young man of eleven.
She listened politely. The American, however, could bear
it no longer. He stood up and addressed Grandmamma:
"Pardon me, ma'am, but I guess these are your furs."
He picked them off the floor and gave them to her. She
thanked him politely and we waited for him to sit down again.
But he, hoping for a rather more elaborate conversation with
Elinor Glyn, continued to hover by our table. Finally he said:
"The little boy's cute, isn't he."
Grandmamma turned the emerald stare full on him and
smiled sweetly.
"He's my grandson/' she said. "He's going to be Prime
Minister one day."
She gave him a gracious nod of dismissal and we turned
back to our lobster. The American sat down, openmouthed.
It was all a very far cry from the backwoods of Canada,
where the story really begins.
ii
BOOK ONE
The Cynical Romantic
1864-1892
The Saunders family was a remarkable one. Colonel
Thomas Saunders was half English, half French, his father
being related to Admiral Saunders, who brought Wolfe's
ships up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, and his mother a mem-
ber of a French aristocratic family. Several of his mothers
relatives had died under the guillotine and she herself had
escaped by hiding in Abbeville all through the Terror. Thomas
Saunders, who was born in 1795, was brought up in Paris,
though how this was managed during the Napoleonic Wars
is not known. After the battle of Waterloo he came to England
and married an Irish girl, the daughter of Sir John Wilcocks
of Dublin.
The young couple went first to Pondicherry in India in
search of their fortunes, but the heat and the life there did
not appeal to them and they returned to Paris. Soon after-
wards they immigrated to Canada, together with some other
young impoverished couples, trying to build a new life in a
new country. Thomas Saunders bought a tract of land called
Woodlands, near Guelph in Ontario, and settled down to farm
the virgin soil. It was a hard task, and of all the band of im-
migrants who came with him he was virtually the only one
to make good. He succeeded, after years of toil, in developing
Elinor Glyn
Woodlands into a fine agricultural estate, and when he came
to sell it and retire, it was turned into an agricultural college.
Guelph in 1830 consisted only of a few shanties and a
store. It provided absolutely no amenities or luxuries. The
Saunderses lived in a glorified log cabin under conditions of
terrible hardship; even the elementary necessities of life such
as soap and candles Mrs. Saunders had to make herself. It was
difficult to get any help in the home, even during her con-
finements; but nothing dismayed her, neither the long cold
winters nor the primitive conditions, nor the toughness of the
work itself. She bore eight daughters and one son, and they
all survived.
Mrs. Saunders' character must have been incredibly strong.
It was not enough to survive, to make good in those conditions,
to bring up nine children, to look after her domineering and
much-loved husband. The children must be brought up to
realise that they were by birth and breeding ladies and gen-
tlemen, the descendants of nobility. They must be inculcated
with the ideals and tenets of the aristocracy, its manners and
code of behaviour, so that they would be fitted to take their
place in society when the time came. Not for one moment did
that indomitable woman assume that her children were going
to spend all their lives farming in Ontario.
She took as her model the eighteenth-century French aris-
tocracy, which she greatly admired and to which her mother-
in-law had belonged. The classes of society, she believed, were
separated by virtually impassable chasms; entry into the upper
class could be effected only by birth, for it required the in-
herited traditions of hundreds of years of authority to produce
a gentleman. But, having been born into that class, there were
duties and obligations to be assumed as well as privileges. The
greatest contempt she had was for gentlemen who disgraced
their rank and brought opprobrium to their class. The guiding
principle of her life, which she often quoted to her children,
was noblesse oblige.
16
The Cynical Romantic
Courage and honour were the chief qualities required. Gen-
tlemen naturally did not show fear, nor did they break their
word. But there were other things, too. They must not be
overbearing or ostentatious, for those were the marks of an up-
start. They must shun pretence and affectation. Above aU,
they must have complete self-control; under no circumstances
must they ever show any sort of emotion, even affection, in
public.
She was fond of describing to her children the dignified
bearing of the French aristocrats on the steps of the guillotine,
and contrasting with them Madame Du Barry, who, for all
her years in court circles, was of plebeian descent and could
not help making an exhibition of herself on the scaffold. Mrs.
Saunders would challenge her children: how would they
behave on the steps of the guillotine?
She was, however, a devout Christian, and this served to
modify some of the more inhuman aspects of her creed. Unlike
most of the ancien regime, she believed in God, in marriages
for love, in the sanctity of marriage vows, and in friendship
and support for the middle and lower classes, which God has
also created, though this did not extend to actual intermixing.
One of her definitions of a gentlewoman was: "One who does
not humiliate those she is paying and is not familiar with the
wrong people."
Even in the Canadian wilds gentle manners were essential.
Departure from these standards "servants' behaviour" as Mrs.
Saunders termed it could not be tolerated for an instant. Ev-
ery night she and her husband would dress for dinner. After-
wards they would sit in straight-backed chairs on either side of
the fire, with the family grouped in a half circle between
them. One of the children would read aloud from The Liizes
of the Lord Chancellors of England, or other similarly austere
works, being corrected for pronunciation.
The children were taught, too, how to deal with servants-
wot that there were any servants at Woodlands, apart from an
17
Elinor
escaped coloured slave from Alabama who was employed later
to help with the growing family. But the time would come
when they would leave home and they must be fully prepared.
Elinor Saunders, the youngest but one of the family, in an-
other century and another hemisphere, would never pick up
her own handkerchief or say "Please" or 'Thank you" to a
servant, to the despair of her grandchildren. There was noth-
ing of highhandedness in this; no one had a kinder or gentler
heart But she had been taught by her mother eighty years be-
fore that it was not ladylike to do so, and she remembered
and obeyed.
Mrs. Saunders did what she could for her children's more
orthodox education. A decayed and rather drunken old scholar
was engaged to teach the girls English grammar, arithmetic,
history, and literature, and the boy Latin and Greek. A pov-
erty-stricken Frenchman taught them French, music, dancing,
and deportment. But this education could only continue in the
long, dark winter; in the summer all hands were needed on
the farm.
It was a harsh, rigid, narrow life. Once a year, however,
there was great rejoicing when le tonneau bienvenu arrived.
This was a huge barrel sent by the French relations, contain-
ing everything they imagined the exiled family in the Cana-
dian wilds might lack silk stockings, Paris hats, yards of
material, dresses, satin slippers, books, sweets, even wigs and
false teeth in case either parent might now need them.
A strange, ill-assorted existence. Yet there is a certain pa-
thetic grandeur about their efforts in the middle of a heroic
struggle for survival to maintain the standards which, far from
appearing incongruous, seemed to them completely essential
to life. The ideals and tenets in which they believed, and
which they preached to their children, were already a hun-
dred years out of date at that time. But the qualities they dis-
playedcourage, fortitude, industry, refusal to compromise
with what they felt wrong are timeless.
18
The Cynical Romantic
2,.
In 1715, Kenneth Sutherland, third Lord Duffus, followed
the Old Pretender. He was attainted for his part in the rising,
stripped of his title and estates, and was forced to flee to
Sweden. Later he was given the chance to return, sue for
pardon, and reclaim his estates, but by then he had fallen in
love with a Swedish lady, Christina Sioblade, and was deter-
mined to pursue his suit. He succeeded and married her, at
the expense of forfeiting his title and estates; but he was quite
happy about this, counting both rank and riches well lost
for love.
The title was, however, revived in 1826 by the House of
Lords in favour of his grandson James, who became the fif th
Lord Duffus. James, inheriting the family tendency to throw
everything overboard for the sake of love, had earlier eloped
with Lady Mary Hay, the daughter of the Earl of Enroll,
Hereditary Lord High Constable of Scotland, and the wife of
Major-General John Scott, to whom she had been married
only a year. This ruined James's promising military career,
but he was indifferent both to this and to the open scandal
involved in living for fifty-six years with a lady whom he was
never able to marry. They were a happy couple, but none
of their ten children, all of whom were illegitimate, could in-
herit the title and this passed to the son of his great-aunt
Elizabeth, from whom the sixth and seventh Lords Duffus
were descended.
It is not clear exactly how David Sutherland, Laird of
Cambusavie, was related to this family, but family tradition
has it that he was the son of the third lord's younger brother
Alexander, who took part in the Forty-five and is described in
the Scottish Peerage as having died abroad without issue.
David Sutherland's son, Andrew, fought in the American war
Elinor Glyn
of 1776; but he returned to meet financial disaster and he
was forced to sell Cambusavie, "the Manor Place, the gardens,
offices and houses thereof, also the said town and lands of
Cambusavie, Cambusmore and Balvraid, with house and beg-
gings, yards, tests, crofts, outsets, insets, mosses, muirs, com-
monleys and common pasturages" to his distant kinsman, the
Earl of Sutherland.
His son, Captain Edward Sutherland of the p6th Regiment,
was given a staff appointment in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and
when he retired, he settled in Sydney, Nova Scotia, with his
wife Christina and their four children, Douglas, John, Wil-
liam, and Frances.
Douglas Sutherland was born in Sydney in 1838 and chose
to become a civil engineer. Nothing is known about his child-
hood, but after he qualified, one of his first tasks took him to
Guelph, and there he was entertained by the Saunders fam-
ily, who were always glad to meet other people of good breed-
ing. It was there that he fell in love with Elinor Saunders, a
pretty girl with beautiful features and long mahogany-brown
hair. He was then only twenty. She was sixteen.
The Sutherland family viewed with some alarm their son
saddling himself with a wife, a penniless girl, when he had
yet hardly begun to make his career. Douglas, however, knew
no such doubts; for him, as for his Duffus relations, love must
always come first. But the Saunderses supported the Suther-
lands in wishing the marriage delayed; Elinor, they felt, was
still too young and they would prefer to see Douglas more
firmly set in his career.
His youth and inexperience were, however, the only factors
against him as a son-in-law. Mrs. Saunders naturally appre-
ciated his aristocratic descent and his noble cousins. His at-
20
The Cynical Romantic
tftude towards the gentry was very similar to her own and he
spoke with deep respect of his Scottish ancestors. His am-
bition, when he had made his fortune, was to prove himself
the rightful heir to the seventh Lord Duffus, who was an
elderly bachelor, and on whose death the title would (and
did) become extinct. Indeed, if Douglas were correct about
his ancestry, he was already the rightful Lord Duffus. Mrs.
Saunders thoroughly approved of his ambition, though obvi-
ously, as the legal costs would be considerable and the upkeep
of the title in the way they considered necessary even greater,
it might have to wait a long time before it was fulfilled.
Douglas Sutherland must have been a versatile young man,
and it was undoubtedly from him that his two remarkable
daughters inherited not only their romantic temperaments but
their creative gifts. He was a brilliant engineer and held posts
of considerable responsibility before he was twenty-five. He
was also an artist, he played the violin and spoke several lan-
guages. On top of all this he was a dashing, masterful lover.
Elinor Saunders adored him. She was especially proud of a
poem he wrote on her wedding day and which she copied into
her bride's book.
Give me a friend within whose well-poised mind
Experience holds her seat;
But let my lyride be innocent as flowers that fragrance shed,
Yet know not they are sweet.
While not showing any very great poetic gifts, the senti-
ment expressed has a fine masculine arrogance and Elinor
fully agreed with it. For all her eighteenth-century upbring-
ing, her submissive attitude to marriage and the status of wives
was as Victorian as his.
After two years he could wait no longer and both families
gave their consent. The marriage took place at Guelph in
January 1 86 1 , in the heart of the northern winter.
Elinor Glyn
The young Sutherlands' married life was an Arcadian love
idyll, punctuated by a series of personal disasters and ordeals.
A few weeks after they were married, their home in Guelph
caught fire. All the nearby water was frozen solid and the
young bride had the experience of watching helplessly while
her first married home, her trousseau, and almost all her hus-
band's personal belongings went up in flames.
In the spring Douglas Sutherland took a post which in-
volved their moving to New York, and here at last Elinor
found the leisured aristocratic society for which she had been
trained. Life in America was far more luxurious than any-
thing she had ever known, and she was much struck by the
beauty of the women's clothes and the punctilious courtesy
of the men. The Sutherlands were a popular pair and were
warmly received by the members of the exclusive society. Eli-
nor noted thankfully that, for all Mr. Lincoln's speeches about
democracy, New York was quite as feudal as anywhere else.
This impression was strengthened by their visits to the
southern states, where they also had friends. The watering-
places, in particular, with their fashionable ladies and hordes
of coloured servants, delighted her, and she found the stately
and ceremonious ways of the southerners even more appealing
than those of the New Yorkers.
The outbreak of the Civil War that year placed them in a
dilemma. They had friends on both sides; where did their
sympathies lie? Feelings were running high and they began to
find their position a little difficult. At this moment Douglas
was offered a job supervising the building of a railway in
Brazil. It was a great opportunity and railways were his spe-
cialty. He had little hesitation in accepting.
All the shipping had been commandeered and they had
22
The Cynical Romantic
great difficulty In finding passages. At last they got berths in
a 250-ton schooner which was sailing direct from New York
to Rio de Janeiro. The voyage was a terrible one and Elinor
was to retain nightmare memories of it all her life. It was
very rough and she was continually seasick. She longed for
fresh water, but it was all brackish. The food was uneatable.
The journey lasted no less than seven weeks and she was car-
ried ashore on a stretcher, little more than a skeleton.
The British Minister, Mr. Christie, and his wife were kind
people and took charge of her while her husband went up-
country to start work on his railway. She stayed at the Lega-
tion, regaining her strength and enjoying the diplomatic
society of Rio. An unpleasant memory of the period, though,
was the monthly arrival of the slave ship from West Africa.
The stench was so great that all the house windows had to be
kept closed for the three days while the ship was being un-
loaded. That and the sight of the Negroes battened down in
their overcrowded holds decided once and for all her loyalties
in the American Civil War.
As soon as she was strong enough, she insisted on going
upcountry to join her husband. The Christies tried to dis-
suade her, explaining that it was no life for a woman. But
Elinor was adamant; her place was at his side and they had
already been parted too long.
Reunited again, the couple lived at the railhead in con-
ditions which made Guelph seem luxurious. At least Wood-
lands had been clean. But here their house was an old
Portuguese shack, infested with snakes, rats, and insects. The
heat was terrific; there was no sanitation and almost no water.
At night the rats ran up and down the posts of the ancient
four-poster in which they slept, dropping off with a thud on
to the pillows. On her first night Douglas grabbed the nearest
garment, which happened to be his wife's white silk wedding
shawl, from which she was never parted, and rigged it up as a
protective canopy. The rats ate it during the night, and only
Elinor Glyn
a small remnant was found in a corner the next morning.
The railway, however, made steady progress, and a year
later they were able to leave Brazil They returned to New
York and came on to England, which had always been Doug-
las* goal. Their first child was born in London in July of the
following year, 1863. & was a && an< ^ ^7 name d ^ er Lucy.
While they lived in London, Douglas was working, in col-
laboration with a fellow engineer, on an invention he had
made. It was an ingenious device by which railway trucks
and carriages could be coupled and uncoupled without a man
having to stand dangerously between the buffers, and it
worked on the principle of a door latch. The invention was
duly patented and the royalties from it were expected to pro-
vide, if not his fortune, at least a steady income for himself
and, if anything should happen to him, for his widow.
Early in 1864 ^ e was engaged to work on the building of
the Mont Cenis Tunnel and he set off immediately for Turin.
By this time Elinor was expecting another child, and he left
her and Lucy in the care of a half-French aunt of hers, who
was staying in Jersey. And it was in Jersey that their second
daughter was born, on the seventeenth of October.
Lucy had brown hair like her mother, but the new baby
was a redhead. She was called Elinor after her mother.
Mrs. Sutherland was delighted by her new baby, but her
joy was short-lived. Six weeks later the news arrived that her
husband was seriously ill with typhoid. Immediately she hur-
ried to Turin, leaving Lucy and the baby with their great-aunt.
Douglas was clearly terribly ill. She nursed him devotedly but
he seemed to get worse rather than better. One can imagine
her anguish; alone in a land whose language she did not speak,
desperately anxious about her husband, separated from her
Tine Cynical Romantic
young children. Finally she made the decision. Somehow she
must bring her husband back to England, where they had
friends and where she could get help and good medical ad-
vice.
She never spolce afterwards of that journey home, but one
can imagine it: the sick husband, the long cold hours in car-
riages and on stations, the changes, the frontiers, the channel
ports. They reached London and went at once to 64 Albany
Street, near Regent's Park, where they had stayed before.
It was all in vain. Douglas Sutherland died on the thirtieth
of January, four years after his wedding, almost to the day.
His lovely young wife was left heartbroken, penniless, and
utterly alone.
She wrote in her diary :
This morning it has pleased God to take my darling hus-
band Douglas Sutherland to Himself. After one month of
illness. May He teach me to say "Thy Will be done/'
Elinor Sutherland
He was buried five days later in All Souls Cemetery, Kensal
Green.
6.
Douglas Sutherland's last words to his wife were a wish that
his children should be brought up in England, that they
should be taught to revere their noble ancestors and never de-
mean their gentle birth. Such a wish would always have been
carefully regarded; from her dying husband it became for Mrs.
Sutherland a divine command.
But how was she to carry it out? She had no money and
the invention was not being eagerly taken up by the railway
companies. Such royalties as did come from it were appropri-
ated by the engineer who had collaborated with her husband.
Elinor Glyn
How was she, without friends or family or income, to bring
up her two daughters in England?
Sadly she decided that it could not be done. For the mo-
ment she must take them back to her parents in Canada.
Perhaps someday the chance would occur for her to fulfil her
husband's last command.
She travelled to Jersey and brought her children to Lon-
don. "The children were so good all the time I was away,
though generally shy with strangers," she wrote. She was
helped in London by a friend of her husband's, Bernard
Beardmore, who arranged her passage home and accompanied
her to Liverpool.
On the tenth of August, 1 865, she
Went on board the Steamer Belgian this morning with
the dear children. Good-bye to dear England, where my
happiest and most sorrowful days have been spent. That I
may bring my dear children back there in a few years is my
most earnest wish.
She was then twenty-three. Lucy was a pretty little girl
of two and Elinor a sturdy child of ten months, already able
to walk. Her patent-leather shoes, just two inches long, she
wore down on the Mel by much determined tramping up and
down the steamer deck. ;
They reached Toronto on the twenty-fifth of August. Mrs.
Sutherland wrote in hex diary (the fifth and last entry she
ever made):
Arrived in Toronto at 9 A.M. Fanny and Bill Sutherland
met us. Papa at the Queen's. Went up to Guelph by after-
noon train. Tom and Jemima at station. Drove up to
Fairview and met them all again.
Her younger daughter, a more enthusiastic diarist, would
not have dealt with such a moving reunion so laconically.
2,6
The Cynical Romantic
The Saunderses had sold Woodlands and were living in re-
tirement at a house called Summer Hill, a gracious colonial
building with a columned portico, set in a pleasant park. Life
here was a good deal easier than it had been at Woodlands,
but the inflexible standards of behaviour, the rigid etiquette
were maintained as severely as ever. Here the Sutherlands
spent the next six years and the young Elinor came under the
influence of Mrs. Saunders, with results that were to be last-
ing.
Mrs. Saunders was now in her sixties, a frightening woman,
proud, aloof, autocratic, with dramatic manners and a wither-
ing tongue. Every morning the two children were ushered
into her presence and there they were made to sit without
making a sound or movement for five long minutes. To Lucy,
a restless, rebellious tomboy, this was sheer torture, but Elinor
found it easy and indeed natural. At other times Mrs. Saun-
ders would lecture them on noblesse oblige, the ideals and
obligations of aristocracy, as she had done to her own children
in earlier years. Lucy resisted violently but Elinor found her-
self once again in complete sympathy. She both emulated
and adored her fearsome grandmother, whose teachings she
regarded as incontestable and almost divine.
One of the earliest lessons given to the two children was,
of course, the story of the French Revolution, the impeccable
gayety of the French aristocracy under all conditions, and the
tragic death of Marie Antoinette. This last affected the im-
aginative Elinor till she could hardly bear even to look at a
flower with its head cut off. Her imagination was further fed
by a particularly brutal murder on the next estate, and she
began to be afraid of the dark, afraid to go into the woods on
the boundary of Summer Hill.
27
Elinor Glyn
Mrs. Saunders heard of this and was very angry. No grand-
daughter of hers might ever show fear, no matter what the
circumstances. Elinor was disgracing her class, The icy re-
bukes were effective, and Elinor changed almost overnight
from a rather timid child to an apparently trave one, at least as
far as outward appearances went.
Elinor saw her grandmother only twice a day. For the rest
of the time her chief companion was her aunt Henrietta,
the only one of her mother's sisters not yet married, Henrietta
was a delightful person and would read fairy stories and The
Idylls of the King to the solemn child, both to amuse her and
to comfort herself for a love affair which had come to nothing.
Elinor certainly did not understand everything, especially the
poetry, but one fact stood out for her. The heroes and heroines
of all the stories were Kings and Queens, Princes and Prin-
cesses. This was only to be expected, for they were also, on
Mrs. Saunders' authority, the heroes of real life. This belief
in aristocracy, by no means confined to the Saunders family,
was to stay with Elinor for her whole life, though later, with
an experience of the world a good deal wider than her grand-
mother's, she came to realise that the gulfs between the classes
were not so unbridgeable as Mrs. Saunders maintained.*
When Aunt Henrietta was not available, Elinor would
amuse herself.
I wove fairy tales for myself about a blue Salvia Prince
and a Fuchsia Princess, in the conservatory, which was my
principal playground during the long cold winters. I lived
*Of the heroines of Elinor Glyn's novels, two married Dukes, one
the heir to a dukedom, one a Marquis, one an earl, three Barons, five
baronets, one a Scottish Laird, three commoners of ancient stock, two
Russian Princes, one a Hungarian Count, and three Americans, two
of these being members of the First Families of Virginia and one
having risen from the Bowery on the strength of his own personality.
The heroines themselves were mostly well-born English and Amer-
ican girls but they included a Balkan Queen, an Emperor's grand-
daughter, a peeress in her own right, a chauffeur's daughter, and a
butcher s granddaughter.
The Cynical Romantic
in a fairy Kingdom of my own, and fancied myself as its
Queen. I used to drape a tablecloth round my shoulders,
and march about with measured tread, my head held high
beneath an imaginary crown. I never wanted to play much
with my cousins, my mother's brother s children, because
they seemed so robust and noisy. My sister was their leader
in every prank, but when I could not be with my mother or
Aunt Henrietta, I wanted to be alone with the flowers. Even
then I must have been an odd, vain, imaginative child, liv-
ing in a dream world.*
Occasionally a clergyman would visit Summer Hill to teach
Lucy and Elinor their catechism. He was not the most tactful
of men and both children took a strong dislike to him. They
rejected everything he tried to teach them, Lucy on principle,
and Elinor because some of his arguments seemed illogical and
against common sense; worse still, they were sometimes at
variance with the sacred teachings of Grandmamma Saunders.
The more Elinor tried to pick holes in his discourses, the more
dogmatic and assertive the clergyman became. Since he re-
ceived no great support in his proselytising from the other
members of the household either, he finally discontinued his
visits.
Elinor, however, was no atheist. All her life she believed
in a God, and she had a deep capacity and need for worship.
For the moment Mrs. Saunders* tenets were a satisfactory re-
placement for the Ten Commandments. But her rejection
of orthodox Christian dogma left a vacuum into which a num-
ber of strange beliefs were later to find their way.
* Romantic Adventure.
Elinor Glyn
8.
It was perhaps natural that under her mother's dominating
influence Mrs. Sutherland should fade once more into the
background. Her nature was always meek and docile and now
she was overwhelmed with grief. She was always gentle and
loving to her children but she played little part in their lives
or upbringing. Any reference to her dead husband made her
very unhappy and the children soon learnt not to intrude on
her sorrow.
She would sit, smiling sadly, staring into the fire, think-
ing of her Douglas and reproaching herself for her complete
failure to carry out his last commands. But she was utterly
unable to devise any method of having her children brought
up in England. She was still young and beautiful and sev-
eral young men who had known her as a girl offered her mar-
riage. But she rejected them all unhesitatingly because,
though they might have brought consolation, and even in the
end, happiness, they all meant settling permanently in Can-
ada.
Finally, in 1871, a Mr. David Kennedy, a well-to-do bach-
elor, visited Summer Hill. Although he was over sixty, he was
still handsome and well preserved. He had spent many years
in China, but he belonged to an old Scottish family, the Ken-
nedys of Knocknawlin. He was immediately attracted by the
lovely young widow, and after a rapid courtship he proposed
to her. She herself felt no more than a sort of fascinated re-
spect for him, but he seemed fond of her and she forced her-
self to accept, feeling that here at last was the opportunity she
had been seeking. Further, his Scottish connections might
well mean that the children would be brought up in Scot-
tish society.
They were married almost at once, and shortly afterwards
30
The Cynical Romantic
they said good-bye for ever to the Saunderses and Summer
Hill. As they sailed down the St. Lawrence, Elinor, already
romantically perceptive of the beauties of life, crept out of her
cabin early in the morning to see the Thousand Islands in
the dawn. At Montreal she watched the great cathedral of
Notre Dame in the sky above them and she wondered what
sort of a life lay ahead of her on the other side of the Adantic
and whether she would ever see the other and older Notre
Dame on its island in the Seine.
The journey to Europe was a most disagreeable one. Moun-
tainous green waves seemed about to envelop the ship, and
although Elinor had now learnt to suppress all signs of fear,
for much of the voyage she was terrified. Mr. Kennedy's affec-
tion for his wife had been short-lived and his true character
had already appeared cruel, selfish, overbearing, mean. His
bride, always the meekest and most submissive of wives, was
cowed and terrified, grimly apprehensive of the life ahead of
her and consoling herself with the thought that they were on
their way to Scotland and that she was carrying out, no mat-
ter at what sacrifice to herself, both the letter and the spirit of
Douglas Sutherland's last commands.
Lucy already loathed her stepfather and Elinor, withdrawn
in a world of her own, consoled herself for the unpleasant
present by the prospect of the castles and palaces that awaited
them in Europe.
On the voyage Mrs. Kennedy used to read to her children.
The first book, Alice in Wonderland, was not a success. Its
comedy did not appeal to the solemn Elinor, its burlesque of
Kings and Queens seemed distasteful and Use-majeste. The
next book, however, George Macdonald's The Princess and
the Goblin, made a deep impression and later Elinor con-
3*
Elinor Glyn
sidered it to be one of the turning-points of her life. A fairy
tale with a charming Princess and a dominating grandmother
naturally appealed to her. So did the emphasis on courage*
What was new was the mystical atmosphere of the book, the
gleam of the grandmother's lamp, guiding and inspiring the
hero, Curdie, as he groped his way in the black mine. The
idealistic and imaginative quality of the book, in a different
class from the normal fairy stories with their materialistic suc-
cess endings, fell on fertile ground. Her later interest in mys-
ticism and the occult, her idealism, her belief that it was right
and proper for women to inspire men to great causes she
traced back to the influence of Macdonald's fairy story at this
moment of her life.
Much of the book took place in a dark mine, and this, too,
struck her forcibly. All her life her greatest fear was to be of
caves and tunnels. Even in her mature years it was a personal
ordeal for her to travel through the Severn Tunnel and her
grandchildren would watch with secret amusement her grim,
set expression as she resolutely fought down the claustrophobia
which she never mastered.
To the expectant Elinor the first sight of Europe was a
severe disappointment. Londonderry in the wet dawn, with
its muddy, unpaved streets, was not what she had imagined.
The hotel was unspeakable, with strips of wallpaper peeling
from the walls and bugs crawling over the floor. They did not,
however, remain long, and the next day they went on to
stay with Mr. Kennedy's elder brother at Balgregan Castle in
Galloway.
The news of David Kennedy's marriage had come as a sur-
prise to his family, for they had all regarded him as a set
bachelor for life, and they were curious to see the presumably
uncouth "colonial" girl who had captured him in such a short
visit. They were even more surprised when they met her, sad,
beautiful, dignified, with two impeccably mannered children.
Elinor was overwhelmed with delight at Balgregan Castle.
32-
The Cynical Romantic
With its great rooms, its liveried footmen, its suites of grand
bedrooms, its strange staircases and turrets it was like the castle
of every fairy story. It had, in fact, been a centre of Jacobite
plotting, and there were several romantic legends about the
place; Mrs. Kennedy told her children that it was quite prob-
able that Lord Duffus himself had been there with the Old
Pretender before the rising.
There was a large house party assembled at the castle to
welcome the Kennedys home, and never before had Elinor
seen such splendour and such beautiful clothes and jewels.
Peter Kennedy, genial where his brother was curmudgeonly,
presided in a brown evening coat with a high stock. It was all
almost too good to be true. A famous London beauty of that
time, a Mrs. Bovill, took a fancy to the two small children and
allowed them to come and play in her huge bedroom while
she dressed. Elinor was fascinated by everythingthe innu-
merable bottles and powder boxes on the dressing-table, the
pink satin peignoir, the quilted slippers. One day, she prom-
ised herself, she would be a society lady too, with hundreds of
bottles on her dressing-table and pink quilted slippers.
There was, however, a darker shadow even in the golden
fairy-tale atmosphere of Balgregan Castle. Mrs. Kennedy,
strangely neglectful of the children for whose future she had
made such sacrifices, entrusted them completely to an English
nurse who bullied them severely without anyone caring or
noticing. The two small girls were locked for hours each day
in a dark, cold billiard room, while the nurse herself enter-
tained a good-looking young gamekeeper in the nursery. It was
at this time that both children came to realise that they must
rely on themselves and not on their mother for protection
against the buffets of the harsh world.
When they left Balgregan, the Kennedys went on to stay
with some more relatives in Yorkshire. While there, Mr.
Kennedy was taken ill with bronchitis, a complaint to which
he was much addicted, and the doctor recommended that he
33
Elinor Glyn
spend the rest of the winter in the milder climate of Jersey.
They set off there as soon as he had recovered sufficiently,
passing through London on the way.
In Elinor's memoirs there is a vivid passage in which she
described her first sight of London.
My first glimpse of London was, I believe, the greatest
disillusionment of my life. I had expected to find it the
Meccas of my dreams, a town of stately palaces, and filled
with delightful ladies like Mrs. Bovill. I had almost be-
lieved that the streets would be paved with gold, or at least
with marble.
As we drove along the twisting lanes which led from
King's Cross station, through St. Giles and Seven Dials,
then the worst type of slum, to Waterloo, I gazed with
sinking heart upon the dingy narrow streets, the pitiful
mean houses, and the rain. The pinched pathetic faces of
the ragged urchins who ran barefooted beside the cab, beg-
ging for pennies with which to get some food, seemed to
destroy all my most cherished hopes. There was no room
for poverty within my fairy world, and least of all within
the precincts of the celestial city which I had imagined
London to represent. I felt cold doubts spring up as to the
reality of all my dreams and I became silent and morose.
The gulf which lies between the romantic and the sordid
was never more clearly visible to me than on that day.
They reached St. Helier on a winter's morning at the end
of 1873, a melancholy quartet: Mr. Kennedy, tyrannous and
harsh like the popular conception of Edward Moul ton-Bar-
rett; Mrs. Kennedy, silent and terrified; Lucy, sullen and re-
sentful; and Elinor, returning to the island of her birth, a
sad, disillusioned little girl.
34
The Cynical Romantic
10.
Jersey In the 1870$ consisted, and still does, of two separate
societies, with very few points of mutual contact. One society
was indigenous: the local farmers occupied with their dairy
and potato farming, still speaking Norman French, shrewd,
suspicious, and contemptuous of more recent arrivals, cutting
down their trees so as not to shade their grass, tethering all
their beautiful cattle so that the fields might be evenly
cropped, polishing cabbage stalks into walking sticks for
souvenirs, gathering seaweed for manure, industrious, insani-
tary, and tight-fisted.
The other society consisted of refugees from cold winters
and high taxation: retired army and naval officers, colonial
administrators, men with small private means, eking out their
pensions and incomes in an easier climate. It was, of course,
to this latter society that the Kennedys belonged.
The social life of the island was formal and strict, far more
so than would have been found in a country town in England.
A Lieutenant-Governor lived at Government House and a
regiment was always stationed on the island for garrison
duties. The elaborate fixed etiquette found favour with the
retired stratum of Jersey society, in whom it aroused nostalgic
memories of service life in India or one of the colonies. The
indigenous part of the population naturally took no part in
this social life beyond providing the various households with
groceries. Except for the seigneurs of Rozel and St. Ouen
practically none of the Jersey families were ever invited to
Government House,
Mr. Kennedy liked the island so much and found the warm
winter so beneficial to his chest that he decided to settle there.
He rented a furnished house called Richelieu outside St.
35
Elinor Glyn
Helier on the road to St. Clement and it was here that the
Kennedys settled down to family life.
As might be expected, it was not a very happy household.
Mr. Kennedy's selfish and domineering ways cast a deep cloud
over everything. His ferocious temper reduced his wife to utter
subjection. His meanness was extreme. Apart from some ten
pounds a year of her own, his wife had nothing. She had to
beg him at nicely chosen moments for money to meet the
household bills and to clothe herself and her children, money
which was always given only grudgingly and in part. Every
night he forced his wife to play backgammon with him for
three hours, an ordeal which almost drove her insane. How-
ever, such was Mrs. Kennedy's mental attitude towards mar-
riage that although she loved her children and feared and
hated her husband, she nevertheless supported him absolutely
against her children.
Both Lucy and Elinor were, indeed, a serious disappoint-
ment to her. In her scheme of things children were silent,
dutiful, and obedient, and she had no idea how to deal with
two such turbulent personalities, both of whose characters
were so much stronger than her own. As at Balgregan she
left them alone for most of the time, descending on them at
intervals to lecture them on being seen and not heard, on
implicit obedience, on not asking questions, on the absolute
superiority and wisdom of their elders and betters in all things.
The house was run with the remorseless impersonality of a
machine and no allowance was ever made for either girl's
predilections or idiosyncrasies. Lucy became perverse, rebel-
lious, and defiant, Elinor vain and opinionated, driven more
and more into a world of her own. Both children were united
in their instinctive resistance to all instruction, an unfortunate
but perhaps not illogical consequence of the way they were
treated. At this moment in their lives both girls badly needed
firm and sympathetic guidance. What in fact they received
was an uneven mixture of neglect and nagging.
The Cynical Romantic
A series of governesses came to Richelieu but all, faced by
the implacable resistance of two difficult children, gave up the
task. Elinor could not imagine that such stupid women could
have anything useful to teach her and she resolutely deter-
mined not to learn the subjects upon which they concentrated
arithmetic, geography, grammar, and spelling. The music
master became so impatient of her that he made the great
mistake of rapping her over the knuckles. Neither threats nor
punishment ever persuaded her to touch the piano again.
Despite her resistance to education and authority Elinor
had a deep curiosity for life and an awareness that there was
much that she needed to know over and above the official
subjects of lessons. The house had a good library, which had
been collected by its owner, Mrs. Combe. There were no
library steps but Elinor read every book within her small
reach, irrespective of subject translations of the Greek clas-
sics, Scott, Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, Don
Quixote in eighteenth-century French, an unexpurgated edi-
tion of Pepys's Diary, the French classics, Lady Blessington's
novels, the complete works of Byron, and some rather ribald
French novels. There was no one to declare that some of
these books were unsuitable for a child to read and she studied
them all with the care and attention which she refused to
give to arithmetic.
One teacher alone earned her love and respect, Monsieur
Cappe, "of the soiled linen, ridiculous moustache, and un-
speakable scent of patchouli and stale tobacco." He seems to
have understood how to handle difficult children and to have
been able both to interest them and to get his ideas across.
Under his tuition Elinor became virtually bilingual, though
she successfully resisted his attempts, like all the others, to
teach her spelling and grammar in either language. He en-
couraged a literary bent which she was beginning to develop,
and she wrote for him long essays in both languages.
Her strange reading, alone in the library, had a great effect
37
Elinor Glyn
on the dream world in which she lived for most of the day,
The Princes and Princesses of the fairy world gave place to
the gods and heroes of Greek mythology. Her thoughts and
imagination revolved round characters from Scott and Don
Quixote and Byron, the subjects of the portraits by Lawrence,
Gainsborough, and Lely which Mrs. Combe had collected and
which hung in the hall, the two Pretenders, and the Kings
and Queens of England, especially, after reading Pepys,
Charles IL
She was always then, and later, a natural royalist, and
Agnes Strickland's book had done nothing to diminish this.
She believed implicitly all her life in the Divine Right of
Kings. In her history book of this date she wrote under the
picture of Charles II, "DEAR GOOD KING," and under Crom-
well's, "NASTY OLD BEAST."
But the book which made the greatest impression on her,
and which was to be still seventy years later the most dearly
loved of them all, was Kingsley's The Heroes, As she read
it, something seemed to leap into flame in her mind. She be-
came passionately absorbed not only in the heroes, heroines,
and gods of Greek mythology but in Greek history, sculpture,
and architecture, literature, philosophy, and ideas. She spent
long hours poring over translations of Plato and Thucydides
with the same engrossed fascination which she had had two
years earlier for fairy tales.
n.
Elinor's religious ideas at this time were extremely confused.
Following her rejection of orthodox Christian dogma in Can-
ada a further effort was made to indoctrinate hex in Jersey, and
this, too, was violently repelled. The Victorian version of the
Christian ethic with which she was presented seemed full of
inexplicable prohibitions and repressions. The idea of a puni-
38
The Cynical Romantic
tive and angry God ordaining 'Thou shall not" was too like
Mr. Kennedy to be acceptable. Nor could she take the sugges-
tion that so many of the good things of life which had pre-
sumably been put into the world for enjoyment (at this stage
she meant raspberry nougat rather than love) were sinful.
Her mind revolted against puritanism in any form; it seemed
to her blasphemous. She accepted the existence of a supreme
benevolent God; the rest she rejected completely.
She also believed in all the Greek gods and goddesses whom
she read about in Kingsley, and in Pan and his sprites, whose
picture, in the Italian Renaissance style, hung in the hall.
This order of gods was much more real and probable to her,
and the religion it implied more congenial than the orthodoxy
preached to her; there was no one at hand to explain to her
that it was no longer valid or acceptable. She liked to think
that Pallas Athene or Aphrodite or Psyche was with her,
watching over her like a guardian angel, and if some of the
behaviour of the gods seemed lamentably imperfect and well
below the standards which Mrs. Saunders would have per-
mitted, that was in tune with the mood of cynical disillusion
induced by reading Cervantes and sophisticated French nov-
els.
Later, of course, she came to see the Greek mythology in
a more normal light and relegated it with regret to her store-
house of imaginative fairy tales. But its influence stayed with
her always. In two of her novels the characters are affected
and comforted by statues of Greek goddesses, which were re-
garded with deep reverence.
12.
After about a year in Jersey the family returned to England
for a brief visit to the Kennedy relations in Yorkshire, and it
was on this occasion that Elinor had her first experience of
Elinor Glyn
physical danger. She and her mother were watching a local
meet when the horses of the carriage in which they were
sitting took fright and bolted. The coachman immediately
dropped the reins and jumped from the carriage, and the
horses stampeded down a narrow, twisting lane.
It was a moment full of frightening sensations the sicken-
ing lurches and jolts of the carriage, the frenzied thundering
horses, the feeling of utter helplessness as they sat awaiting
the inevitable crash. They were saved, in fact, by one of the
huntsmen, who galloped across a field, jumped the hedge, and
managed to stop and soothe the horses. Mrs. Kennedy and
her daughter were duly grateful for the man's gallantry, but
thinking the matter over later, Elinor was gratified to find
that she had neither shown nor felt any fear.
The incident did, however, give her a lasting hatred for all
horses, which was further increased by the news later of her
grandfather's death stopping a runaway horse. In her later
life the dictates of pride, fashion, or society occasionally forced
her to mount, without in the least diminishing her hippopho-
bia, which extended itself to cover both polo and racing. It
was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be per-
suaded to watch either of these two sports.
A further alarming experience took place in the winter of
the following year, 1875, when Mrs. Kennedy and her two
children were returning from another visit to relatives in Eng-
land. The ship bringing them back to Jersey was wrecked
on the notorious Casquet Rocks. It hung there for many hours,
gradually breaking up with the pounding of enormous waves.
No one knew if the distress rockets which had been sent up
had been seen. Indeed, as the long hours passed by without
any sign of rescue, it seemed only too probable that no one
knew of their plight.
I can still picture in my mind the gloomy scene; the dark
and stormy sky, the cries of the seagulls as they circled
40
The Cynical Romantic
above, and the thunder of the waves pounding mercilessly
upon the slanting deck. My mother held us silently by the
hand, too well-drilled by Grandmamma to show the slight-
est fear, although several of the other passengers were
screaming. She whispered to us that we must not forget
Grandmamma's teachings and that this was an occasion for
us to show that we understood them.
My sister, who was always naturally brave, was not a
bit afraid, and I believe she even thought it all a great
adventure; but I was filled at first with a kind of super-
stitious terror. In my pagan imagination, storms and disas-
ters signified the anger of the gods and I did not believe
we should be saved.*
In the end they were rescued by a tug from Guernsey, just
before the ship finally broke in half. Elinor, in the warmth
and safety of her bed that night, recalled with some surprise
that in those long hours of agony her prayers had been to the
Christian God, and not to her normal, friendly guardian deity,
Pallas Athene.
The children's closest friend on the island was Ada Norcott,
the daughter of the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Nor-
cott. Several afternoons a week she would come and play at
Richelieu or they would go up to Government House to be
with her. They devised litde plays for puppets, which they
made out of paper. Elinor, who was developing a talent for
pen-and-ink sketches, drew the faces, Lucy designed and
painted their clothes, and Ada acted as general factotum and
manipulator. The plays themselves were made up by Elinor,
her first attempts in public storytelling.
* Romantic Adventure.
4*
Elinor Glyn
The following autumn, 1876, Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy left
the two children behind when they went to England on a
visit and the two girls stayed with Ada Norcott at Govern-
ment House. It was at this time that Lily Langtry, the famous
society beauty nicknamed the "Jersey Lily" paid a visit to her
home island. Her beauty, her royal friendships, and the rather
spiteful gossip that she attracted wherever she went made her
the chief topic of the day. There were rumours that she was
going on the stage, which would, of course, put her beyond
the social pale; but this had not yet happened and she was
still received at Government House.
The three children were thrilled by her arrival and hid
under the dressing-table of the room where she was to leave
her cloak, having cut little peepholes in the pink calico dress-
ing-table curtains. An ill-timed giggle from Lucy, however,
gave them away and they were hauled out. They could not
take their eyes from the beautiful woman, splendidly dressed
in white corded silk with a low, square, tight bodice and a
bustle; she was the first woman they had ever seen who did
not wear a chignon. She, for her part, was considerably flat-
tered by the children's unconcealed adoration and she prom-
ised not to give them away. She even managed to send them
up some supper during the course of the evening.
During the rest of their stay the children busied themselves
with theatricals, which by this time had grown more elaborate,
puppet shows giving way to actual performances or charades.
Elinor was much mortified to find that she was never allotted
the leading feminine role but made to put on a false nose and
pad out her. figure for comic parts. But she soon came to have
no illusions about why this was. In those days red hair was
a terrible disfigurement and no one so monstrously ugly could
possibly be given a romantic lead.
Elinor's red hair was a sore point. Everyone condoled with
her, or with her mother in her presence, on such a misfortune
and openly compared her hair unfavourably with Lucy's
42
The Cynical Romantic
brown or Ada Norcott's fair hair. People behaved as if Elinor
were in some way almost to blame for it, and she derived a
certain melancholy satisfaction from watching the same treat-
ment meted out to another red-haired child, Ada Lloyd, the
daughter of a naval captain. Mrs. Kennedy was advised by
one well-meaning lady, again in Elinor's presence, to comb
the child's hair with a leaden comb in the hope of darkening
it. Only Sir William Norcott was kindly and expressed the
view that she might not be too ugly when she grew up, as she
had dark eyelashes. This conviction that she was ugly, labori-
ously instilled into her by all her relatives and friends at an
early and impressionable age, may perhaps lie behind her
later preoccupation with her appearance, her insatiable desire
to be told that she was beautiful, and to preserve that beauty
unlined into the furthest extremities of old age.
14.
The Kennedys returned from England in due course and
the tyranny at Richelieu started again. Now it was worse than
before. Mr. Kennedy's health was deteriorating and he spent
much of his time in bed, a crotchety, bad-tempered invalid,
with his wife a slave to his every whim. His investments, too,
were not prospering and he grudged every penny he had to
pay for his wife or stepchildren. All three of them were forced
to make their own clothes at home, even their "tailor-made"
suits. Fortunately they were all excellent needlewomen, and
Lucy in particular already showed an extraordinary flair for
designing clothes; they were always able to appear present-
able, even at Government House garden parties.
By 1878 the position was intolerable. Lucy, almost sixteen,
was on such bad terms with her stepfather that everyone
agreed with relief to her suggestion that she should go and
stay with her English and Scottish friends and relations. For
43
Elinor Glyn
the next two years she was hardly in Jersey at all. The Nor-
cotts, too, left the island at this time and Elinor said a sad
farewell to her friend Ada. Finally, in a fit of temper one day,
Mr. Kennedy dismissed the governess and decided that she
should not be replaced. Mrs. Kennedy meekly acquiesced; it
never seems to have occurred to her that the education of her
fourteen-year-old daughter, now completed, lacked anything
to he desired. Nor did she notice that her daughter was now
completely alone, without sister, friend, or companion, shar-
ing her solitude only with her collie, Roy.
The lease of Richelieu expired at this time and the Ken-
nedys moved to a new house in St. Helier, No. 55 Colomberie,
a pleasant stone house with oak panelling. There was no li-
brary in the new house but Mr. Kennedy sent to Scotland for
his books. For Elinor their arrival was the happiest moment
of the next two years. Mr. Kennedy was too ill to arrange them
himself and they were dumped, still in their packing-cases,
in a litde room on the ground floor. Elinor had plenty of
opportunity to read them in the two years that followed and
she would pore over them most of the day and far into the
night
As at Richelieu it was a strange, rather unsuitable collec-
tion for a young girl to base her entire education upon, and
once again there was no one to advise her or guide her reading.
There were whole sets of Dickens and Thackeray, rebound
during Mr. Kennedy's stay in Pekin in old Chinese silk;
eleven volumes of the memoirs of the Due de Saint-Simon; a
complete Gibbon; Sterne's Sentimental Journey; Voltaire's
Zadig; Chesterfield's Letters to His Son; La Rochefoucauld's
Maxims. These last four became like Bibles to Elinor. They
were always beside her bed and, having a remarkable mem-
ory, she soon knew them almost by heart.
The Saint-Simon memoirs linked themselves naturally with
what Mrs. Saunders had taught her about eighteenth-century
France and Elinor saturated herself in the history and customs
44
The Cynical Romantic
of the Bourbon court. The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, which she read from beginning to end, awoke an in-
terest in Roman history to supplement her already consider-
able knowledge of Greek history, but without noticeable effect
upon her later prose style.
When she had exhausted the books or wished for further
information on a subject, the only course open to her was to
walk to the St. Helier public library, some way away, and
look it up in an encyclopaedia. She did this many times in
her determined but rather pathetic efforts to provide herself
with the education that she felt was necessary. One cannot
but admire her doggedness, her energy, and her devotion to
the cause of knowledge, but the effect of such haphazard read-
ing was never altogether overcome in later life. The subjects
which she knew and where her sympathies lay she knew in
astonishing detail, which increased as the years went by; the
eighteenth century in France was of course pre-eminent by
the end of her life she had an intricate knowledge of the
literature, customs, clothes, furniture, art, architecture, and
history (but not music) of the period. She could date a pic-
ture to within a few years from the fashions or the furniture.
The seeds had been planted if they were not already there
in her Saunders blood by reading Saint-Simon at the age of
fourteen. The Italian Renaissance was another of her periods,
born of an early study of John Addington Symonds. But be-
tween these overgrown islands of knowledge there were deso-
late gulfs of ignorance, of which she herself was always sadly
aware and which she spent much care and effort in conceal-
ing.
The effect on her character was even more fundamental.
The division between the two sides of her personality was
already clearly discernible at this time. On one side there was
the romantic Sutherland streak, nourished by fairy stories, by
Balgregan Castle and the Thousand Islands in the dawn, by
the Stuarts and Jacobites, by Byron and Scott, and from which
45
Elinor Glyn
she derived her conviction that the beautiful things of life
were there to be enjoyed by all who had the eyes to see them.
From it too came her optimism, her steadfast conviction that
in the end everything would always be well.
On the other side was the French eighteenth-century back-
ground, growing out of her Saunders blood, cynical, worldly,
disillusioned, melancholy, pessimistic, concerned with the out-
ward form rather than the inner spirit; encouraged by the
sight of Londonderry and Seven Dials in the rain; nurtured
by Cervantes and Thucydides at an early age, and now ferti-
lised by Saint-Simon, Sterne, La Rochefoucauld, and Chester-
field. These two warring sides of her character she was never
able to reconcile and they may be held to explain the several
contradictions in her views and her behaviour. It may be
thought, too, that their clash provides the motive power for
her almost inexhaustible creative energy.
It was about this time that Elinor started to write stories,
romantic subjective efforts, carefully copied into penny note-
books. The earliest one, "Valerie Charteris," delightfully fore-
shadows the romances to come.
"By Jove! What a pair of eyes! Who is she, Clifford?"
said Guy Elmhurst as the dog-cart with the two men in it
swept rapidly past a girl walking along the road.
"Don't know," answered the individual addressed,
"Never saw her before, could hardly get a glimpse then,"
and he turned his head over his shoulder, but they were
twenty yards past her by this time. "Hardly fast enough
looking for one of Lady Di's friends," he laughed,
A few pages later they met again in a post office :
46
The Cynical Romantic
"Oh! I am in no hurry/* he answered, "Pray serve this
lady first."
Of course he was in no hurry. What idle man would be
when he had the gratification of looking at anything so
sweet and fresh and fair as Valerie. She blushed as he
spoke. Of course it was very silly of her, a thing no "well
brought-up young lady*' would have done. But then Valerie
was only a little country girl who had spent most of her
life in a French convent and who had never before seen a
handsome well-dressed man of the world.
"I want a shilling's worth of penny stamps/' she said
shyly, "and our paper/*
All this time Guy Elmhurst for it was he had never
taken his eyes off her face.
"By Jove!" he soliloquised, "what a sweet little wild rose.
How I should like to make love to her.'*
The start of another one, "A Gawky Schoolgirl!" reveals,
rather pathetically, the longings of her heart.
I am very pretty with straight features, big grey eyes and
curly golden hair. I am seventeen and have or will have
on my eighteenth birthday five thousand a year (I dare say,
dear reader, you are saying to yourself, how vain!) but I
am not. I have been pretty ever since I was born and have
known it ever since I could understand what the word
pretty meant so I have given up all vanity on the subject.
I am possessed of abundant spirits and a hot temper and
my name is Kate Brandon.
Already a conscientious craftsman, she was dissatisfied with
this and rewrote it in a milder version with a characteristic
little bitter touch at the end.
I believe I am rather pretty with straight features, big
grey eyes and curly bright golden hair. I am seventeen and
have or wiU have on my eighteenth birthday five thou-
47
Elinor Glyn
sand a year. Perhaps that accounts for people thinking me
pretty!
The time was to come when she would have far more than
five thousand a year and when she would not exchange her
red hair and green eyes for anything in the world.
The following year, 1879, saw the first volume of The Diary
of Miss Nellie Sutherland she was always called Nellie at
home which she was to keep intermittently for the rest of
her life. Later it was to be written in thick uniform volumes,
bound in purple velvet and fastened with Bramah locks, but
at this stage it was kept, like the stories, in a penny notebook.
The diary reveals only too clearly the drab, monotonous life
she was leading.
Morning sewed. Afternoon called at Government House
but saw no one. Evening can't remember.
The longest entry she made at this time was devoted to
the prediction of a fortune teller, which she wrote down with
a touching faith and excitement. (In this one instance the
spelling is left uncorrected.)
I have been very happy but am going to have some vexa-
tion and trouble. There is a dark gentelman who loves me
and will make a settlemet At some amusement at our house
I will be very vexed and troubled at somthing I here or
that hapens. I will quarell with my fiance and we are to be
seperated for a time but am to be eventually happy. Am to
be marrade at either 19, 20 or 21. My husband is to be rich.
As a forecast it was singularly wide of the mark.
16.
That summer the world suddenly brightened for Elinor.
An eighteen-year-old Eton boy came to spend his holidays on
4*
The Cynical Romantic
the island, and, red hair or no red hair, he was immediately
attracted by Elinor. Several other young men were also ap-
parently interested in her, as the following extract from her
diary shows:
Friday 3rd September.
Morning go to Macs to clear their floor, make it up with
Duncan, have great fun. Moss comes to dinner. Afternoon
do my dress. Evening Duncan brings me flowers for to-
night. Evening the Macs dance, have splendid fun, dance
five times with Herbert and sit out four! ! ! In nice, nicer,
nicest dance seven times with -Duncan. They have a scrim-
mage for the end dance and I give it to Percy. Great fun al-
together. Duncan jealous, Herbert triumphant.
She was already learning woman's wiles, discovering how to
arouse the innate masculine hunting instinct.
However, she rapidly became very fond of the Etonian (it
is never quite clear whether he was Duncan or Herbert) and
recorded obliquely in her diary the diffident joys and despair-
ing heartaches of first love. But the cynical side of her nature
refused to let her believe that it was anything more than a
holiday flirtation. She could not help counting the days that
were left "only three more days together" but she had been
well schooled in the control of her emotions and she saw him
off on his return to Eton dry-eyed and smiling. Mrs. Saunders,
had she been there, would have approved and might not have
noticed the lump in her granddaughter's throat.
The episode with the Eton boy did two things for Elinor.
It gave her a deathless admiration for the methods and tradi-
tions of Eton College; and, more important, it restored a good
deal of her self-confidence. A good-looking young man of eight-
een had found her attractive; perhaps she was not so ugly
after all.
She was also reminded, before it was too late, that the
spirit of romance, in spite of its sadnesses and disappointments,
49
Elinor Glyn
was far more enjoyable than a dry, aloof mood of cynicism.
Elinor's second romance took place about six months later,
and this was a far more adult and dangerous affair. A French
lady, Mademoiselle Duret, who was staying in Jersey, invited
Elinor to return to Paris with her on a week's visit. Mrs. Ken-
nedy, only too glad to get Elinor out of the house for a few
days, agreed, and so it came about that in the spring of 1880
Elinor saw Paris for the first time.
It was a delight and an enchantment to her. She felt, she
wrote later, as if she were returning to some place which she
had known well long ago. All Elinor's own French relations
were out of Paris and Mademoiselle Duret's family seemed
rather old and uninteresting to the youthful and ardent girl.
But as a treat and because Mademoiselle Duret felt that Elinor
ought to see the great actress, she was taken to see Sarah
Bernhardt in Theodora, Mademoiselle Duret believing erro-
neously that Elinor's French was not sufficiently fluent to
allow her to understand much of the story. Thirty years later
when Elinor actually met Sarah Bernhardt, she recalled in
her diary her memory of that performance of Theodora.
It made an immense effect upon me, as she moved and
undulated over her lover. Strange thrills rushed through
me. Although I analysed nothing in those days I know now
I had suddenly found my groupthe group of the Sirens,
the weird fierce passionate caressing and cruel group. I re-
member long sentences of her love words to Andreas. I
used to say them to myself and act the scene before the
dim glass in the little back room in the Rue de la Borde.
I had no idea of anything sensual it was merely a sudden
flint touching steel which had ignited the tinder. I remem-
ber letting down my hair as a cloak and covering this
imaginary lover with its copper waves. He had no personal-
ityhe was not Andreas. He was something for the rousing
of the soul of me. The old lady who took me to the theatre
50
The Cynical Romantic
believed that a child of fifteen would notice nothing, would
not understand the French, would take it as a pantomime!
I remember trembling in my bed the whole night through.
This was a sudden awakening to the possibilities of life.
The following day, while Elinor was still in a romantic
daze over the love of Andreas and Theodora, a good-looking
young Frenchman who had visited the Kennedys in Jersey a
month earlier came to call at Mademoiselle Duret's fiat, bring-
ing an invitation that they should visit his own family. He
contrived to spend the next three days in Elinor's company,
and although they were naturally never left alone together,
he managed to make passionate love to her in English, which
Mademoiselle Duret understood imperfecdy. The three of
them visited the Paris Zoo and it was there that Elinor saw her
first tiger skin. As she stared, fascinated, through the bars of
the cage, the young Frenchman kept whispering "Belle
tigressel" into her ear. Coming directly on top of Theodora,
this made Elinor intoxicated with romance. She went about
in a starry-eyed dream, murmuring "Andreas, je t'aime . . "
to herself.
However, the cynical side of her nature stood her in good
stead and she declined the Frenchman's invitation to fly with
him. She returned to Jersey a few days later with a new copy
of La Rochefoucauld, a present from the Frenchman, and the
firm conviction that the world was, after all, an exciting place,
that she herself was both beautiful and attractive to men, and
that what she had so far experienced was only a foretaste of
the raptures to come.
17.
In 1880, Lucy, now a lovely girl of seventeen, returned for
a while to Jersey and Elinor once more had a companion.
5*
Elinor Glyn
They both went out a good deal. Lucy, in particular, was very
much in demand at parties. Many of the young officers in the
regiment stationed there were in love with her and she her-
self was very fond of one of them, a particularly charming
young man, from all accounts. Elinor felt no jealousy of her
sister's success and romantic preoccupations. Her week in
Paris had completely restored her self-confidence. She, too,
was beautiful; her own time would come.
In the meantime, between social events, she lived in her
dream world, imagining her lover to be now like the Etonian,
now like the Frenchman. He would be handsome, well born,
rich, utterly eligible. She would be his passionate, devoted
bride and they would live happily ever after. Her cynical
thoughts, it will be seen, were for the moment firmly shelved.
By the following year Lucy and her young man were com-
pletely devoted to each other and Mrs. Kennedy was begin-
ning to congratulate herself that one of her daughters would
soon be off her hands. At this point, however, the young pair
had an unfortunate quarrel. It would undoubtedly have been
completely forgotten in a day or so but Lucy, in a fit of pique,
went straight to England before any apologies could be said.
She stayed there at an old house called Kings Walden in
Hertfordshire and there she met James Wallace, a dissolute
bachelor, more than twenty years older than she was. He was
entranced by her youth and charm and asked her to marry
him. She accepted without hesitation.
Mrs. Kennedy was appalled when she heard the news. She
knew of Wallace's reputation for loose living. He had very
little money; Lucy had known him only a few days; the young
officer in Jersey was only too anxious to make up the quarrel.
Would not Lucy reconsider her decision?
But Lucy, perverse and headstrong as always, was adamant.
The more they argued with her, the more stubborn she be-
came. It was plain to all that the marriage could end only in
disaster, but Mrs. Kennedy saw that nothing would change
The Cynical Romantic
her daughter's mind and reluctantly she withdrew her opposi-
tion.
The wedding took place soon afterwards, very quietly.
18.
After their marriage Lucy and James Wallace went to live
in a little house in the grounds of Cranford Park, near
Hounslow, which was owned by Lord Fitzharding, a friend of
James Wallace's father. Elinor went to stay with them each
year and the place became a second home to hernot a very
happy home because Lucy and her husband were already be-
ginning to quarrel, but at least it was a pied-a-terre in Eng-
land away from that suffocating island with its unhappy as-
sociations.
Lady Fitzharding, a corpulent but kindly lady, took a fancy
to Elinor and constantly invited her up to Cranford Park and,
on occasion, to stay in London. It was under Lady Fitzhard-
ing's aegis that Elinor was launched in society and started
her first English season.
Cranford Park was a gay place at that time. Its house
parties were large and fasionable; numbers of notable people
came down every Sunday from London and the house was
usually thronged with young officers from the cavalry barracks
in Windsor. The food at Cranford was Lucullan and the chef,
Frangois, a master of his craft. His speciality was poulard
celeste, which Elinor was able to describe so accurately in
her first novel, The Visits of Elizabeth, that Escoffier of the
Carlton was able to imitate it exactly for the celebration lunch
on publication day. Frangois, however, was dismissed by Lord
Fitzharding, soon after Elinor's first visit, as he refused to
manage on less than two thousand eggs a week, and his lord-
ship thought that excessive.
Lord Fitzharding himself was a delightful person, with a
53
Elinor Glyn
kind heart, a neat wit, and a minute stature, causing him to
be known, with relentless British humour, as "Giant." He
was much entertained by Elinor's gifts as a lightning artist
and especially proud of a sketch she did of him in his tall
cap covered with hedgehog quills. He encouraged her to
sketch the other members of his parties, and this little talent
helped her to become a noticed and, unless the caricature was
too mordant, a popular member of his circle.
At Cranford she received invitations to other house parties
all over the country, and soon she was "visiting" like the most
established members of society, an elegant girl with a haughty
poise, no money, a courtly manner, and homemade clothes.
On the surface she was a young lady of gentle birth, taking
her rightful place in society though some hints in her novels
and the general contempt in which "colonials" were held in-
dicate that her path was not always smooth enjoying the
pleasures of the idle rich, the companionship of good friends
of both sexes, staying at great houses, relishing the unsur-
passed amenities of life. But underneath her romantic heart
was searching for her dream lover, for Andreas.
Her search was not altogether in vain. Several charming
young men were strongly attracted to her, but they were all
virtually penniless and Elinor, her cynical side for the moment
uppermost, held her emotions in stern check. She knew that
her mother would be deeply disappointed if she, too, married
badly and her own studies in eighteenth-century thought had.
taught her that the success or failure of a young girl's life was
measured entirely by whether she made a rich or a poor mar-
riage. Even in Victorian times this view had not entirely been
abandoned. Elinor herself had had enough of poverty under
Mr. Kennedy's regime and prospects of a lifetime of love im
a cottage held no attractions for her. The whole point of
Cinderella was that she ended by living in the palace; if after
her marriage she were to continue having to sweep out the
54
The Cynical Romantic
kitchen, with or without Prince Charming to help her, the
story would have lost all its appeal.
In her first two seasons at Cranford no less than three men
proposed to her, all of whom were rich and influential enough
to satisfy all her worldly desires. But all three were very far
from heing the dream lover for whom her romantic heart
yearned. She had already twice tasted the heaven-sent de-
lights of young love; she could not bear to throw away so
soon all the bright dreams of her adolescence.
All her three suitors were elderly and they were all physi-
cally very unattractive. The first, a bibulous peer with a
walrus moustache, disgusted her by spluttering over her as he
proposed. The second was the Duke of Newcastle, and Elinor
would have given a very great deal to have been a Duchess.
But as she wrote later :
He was absorbingly interested in the details of ecclesi-
astical apparel and this subject was so far removed from
my ideas as to the things that matter most in life that I
wonder that I appealed to him sufficiently for him to pay me
such a compliment.
The third was a millionaire, but he was vulgar and ostenta-
tious, with a common voice and unfastidious manners. Mrs.
Saunders would not have permitted him inside the house, and
all Elinor's childhood training revolted at the thought of
marrying such a man. On top of everything else he had a
beard. James Wallace, however, pressed her strongly to accept
him and all four of them went on a yachting trip on the mil-
lionaire's yacht in August when the season was over. Elinor
firmly refused the proposal when at last it came. James
Wallace was furious and sent her home to Jersey in disgrace.
In 1887 she paid her first visit to Hillersdon in Devon,
which was owned by Mr. W. J. Grant, himself to be one of
her gayest and most steadfast friends. More than twenty years
55
Elinor Glyn
later when she was again at Hillersdon, she tried in her diary
to describe herself as she had been on that first visit.
Twenty-three years ago since I first floated on this lake.
I remember I was unhappy even in those days. Always some
sword of Damocles hanging over me. First cantankerous
step-father. Then an unspeakable brother-in-law making
home impossible. There were long visits to French relations,
rich and prosperous, and returning laden with exquisite
clothes, flung at me as a parting gift, galling always. Then
there were those visits for the autumn balls, and the women
hated me. Why, I wonder? My old friend (Billy Grant)
said because I was so white and slim and red-haired and
could dance and speak French and had not red arms and
carried my head very highly and wore Doucet ball dresses
and when one has no connections even in England, surely
these were causes enough in all conscience! An upstart,
half-foreign person! who dared to sail into the sacred pre-
cincts and cause havoc among the young country squires
and especially ensnare the heart of the great catch of the
neighbourhood and then not marry him!
A girl with such an appearance must be bad! Red hair
and black eyelashes and green eyes! ! No really nice woman
creature could have colouring like that! She must be stoned!
But I had my triumphs in those days. Now that I look
back upon it all, there was something a little pitiful about
it. A poor little lonely girl hiding many troubles under a
haughtily set head, longing to be protected and loved.
Timid really and very tender hearted and always antag-
onously treated by women for no fault except nature's
bizarre choice of red, white and green. Always the centre
of the passionate love of men always proud always alone.
Ah me! how I remember when I decided to marry. I thought
I would choose some good Englishman who would be kind
to me, where I could shelter from the turmoil and have
56
The Cynical Romantic
some domestic happiness and peace and above all a home!
Ah me!
We must make allowances for the mood of disillusion in
which that was written and for the spirit of self-pity engen-
dered so often by writing a diary. She was undoubtedly hap-
pier in those days than she remembered. She had forgotten
her youth, her romantic ardour, her delight in the society
world in which she now found herself, her thankfulness at
her release from the long years of imprisonment in Jersey.
But there was a grain of truth in it, all the same. Her
haughty bearing, her arrogance, her icy courtliness, her in-
tolerance must have often repelled many who would have
liked to have befriended the young girl. Men were drawn to
her like moths to a candle. It was her own sex that looked at
her askance.
19.
In 1888, Elinor's French cousins, the Fouquet Lemaitres,
invited her to spend the season in France and she, hoping
perhaps to find there the dream lover whom she had so far
failed to find in England, accepted gladly.
The Fouquet Lemaitres were an affluent aristocratic family
with a beautiful chateau near Bolbec in Normandy and a town
house in the Champs Elysees. Elinor found herself very much
at home in that milieu; her command of the language, her
miscroscopic knowledge of certain aspects of French life and
culture stood her in good stead, though in a young republic
they were a little surprised by the vehemence of her royalism,
about which she seems to have expressed herself with force
and frequency .
On this visit she saw for the first time the palace of
Versailles, the place which was to mean more to her than any-
57
Elinor Glyn
where else on earth and which she ever after regarded as her
spiritual home. To her earth had not anything to show fairer
than the great facade of the palace seen from the steps above
the tapis vert. She both amused and shocked her companion,
the Comte de Segur, by declining to waste her time looking
for a portrait of his ancestor, a Napoleonic general, as she
was not interested in cette canaille-Id.
Although they were living in the progressive, industrious
world of the Third Republic, the Fouquet Lemaitres and their
circle still conducted themselves according to the ethics and
manners of the ancien regime, and Elinor regarded them with
warm approval. The approval was mutual when they saw
her own manners, her knowledge of French history and art,
her undisguised admiration for France. Clearly she had been
very well brought up.
They were very kind to her, loading her with presents of
clothes, which she, remembering her own scanty wardrobe,
accepted with mingled gratitude and humiliation. It was a gay
and enjoyable summer and she did all the things that fash-
ionable girls in Paris were expected to do. She made trips on
the Seine short ones in Mr. Gordon Bennett's fast yacht, the
wash of which half drowned the washerwomen on the bank
and the longer excursion with the whole Fouquet Lemaitres
family to Rouen. This, judging from the description of it in
The Visits of Elizabeth, must have been a farcical riot from
beginning to end. She played tennis at Puteaux. She stayed
at Bolbec. She took part in the cotillons. She even forced her-
self to ride in the Bois, where she hoped that her beautiful
figure with its seventeen-inch waist would distract attention
from her shocking seat on a horse.
She was overjoyed to find that the French considered her a
beauty. Monsieur Marcel, the famous hairdresser, kept two
distinguished clients waiting the whole afternoon so that he
might have the pleasure of doing her lovely hair himself.
Wearing a brand-new white tulle ball dress (a present from
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The Cynical Romantic
her cousins), she was taken to a ball at the American Embassy
the same night. Feeling exactly like Cinderella, she was be-
yond doubt the belle of the evening. Handsome men crowded
round her, she danced every dance.
Unlike Cinderella's, her beautiful new ball dress did not
turn back into rags at midnight but there was no Prince
Charming either. Gradually she came to realise that though
she might easily find romance in France, she would never find
a husband. She had no dowry.
20.
The following year, 1889, Mr. Kennedy died and his wife's
long years of servitude were over at last. She sold 55
Colomberie and moved to London, where she took a little
house in Davies Street, Mayf air.
A new trouble immediately appeared for the poor woman.
Lucy was by now very unhappy with her husband, whose
drinking habits were making life impossible at home. Her
four-year-old daughter Esme was sent to live at Davies Street
to be away from her father and to be cared for by her grand-
mother. Lucy, who for all her faults was a courageous girl,
made a last effort to save her marriage.
It had, however, deteriorated past repair, and finally Lucy
was forced to admit that there was no course left except to
end it. Divorce in those days was a costly matter and the legal
expenses absorbed the bulk of the estate which Mr. Kennedy
had left. Mrs. Kennedy found herself almost back at the point
where she had been twenty-four years before, with almost no
money, two unmarried daughters, and now a small grand-
daughter to support as well.
Elinor was now twenty-five and her failure to find a hus-
band was glaring. She wondered many times whether she had
59
Elinor Glyn
not been selfish in refusing the Duke or the bearded million-
aire.
Mrs, Kennedy decided, after much serious thought, to use
the rest of Mr. Kennedy's estate in starting Lucy in a small
dressmaking business on the ground floor of the Davies Street
house. It was registered as Lucile's, Ltd., and Mrs. Kennedy
herself helped with the cutting-up and sewing in the back
room. The history of that venture, romantic though it is in its
growth from one room in Davies Street to the foremost cou-
turier business of the time, Lucile's of Hanover Square, Paris,
New York and Chicago, lies outside the scope of this book.
Elinor, meanwhile, continued the social round, now becom-
ing desperate with the passing of time and the lack of money.
She visited her French cousins again in the summer of that
year and the following one, 1890, That winter she went once
more to stay with Billy Grant at Hillersdon, and here an in-
cident took place which was to alter her life entirely.
A large house party was assembled for the duck-shooting
and the Exeter Ball, and at the latter event Elinor was once
again in the centre of all attention, to such effect that four
men of the Hillersdon party, who had been competing for her
favours all the evening, threw each other into the lake on
their return to Hillersdon. They then pulled off their sodden
evening clothes and took baths in their host's best champagne
to ward off the chills of midwinter bathing. That episode was
remarkable even for the Naughty Nineties and news of it
travelled fast through the social world. It reached amongst
others some friends of Elinor's, the Chisenhale-Marshes of
Gaynes Park, Essex, and they retailed the story to a neighbour
of theirs, Clayton Glyn, a wealthy landowner who for twenty
years had saddened the hearts of society mothers by firmly
remaining a bachelor. He was intrigued by the story, knowing
the four men concerned. Any girl who could persuade four
such stolid types to jump into a lake at three o'clock on a
winter's morning must be worth looking at, and he suggested
60
The Cynical Romantic
to the Chisenhale-Marshes that next time they invited Elinor
to stay, they should ask him, too.
The invitation materialised that autumn, Elinor having duly
been told about the man who was showing such a gratifying
interest in her.
"Clayton Glyn," she wrote later, "was in his ways and
thoughts always instinctively and naturally the most perfect
grand seigneur that I have ever met, and one of the kindest
of men, generous in everything and incapable of meanness of
any kind/* In appearance he was striking, tall, broad-shoul-
dered, with a dignified carriage, a good-looking face with china-
blue eyes, perfect teeth and unexpectedly thick wavy silver
hair, the consequence of a gas explosion when he was a child.
He was a descendant of Sir Richard Carr Glyn, the banker
and Lord Mayor of London, but Clayton Glyn had no busi-
ness interests, his life being centred round his house, Durring-
ton, and his surrounding estates. He was a fine sportsman, a
magnificent shot, a connoisseur of food and wine, a great trav-
eller, known with respect and affection by almost every head-
waiter and wine waiter in Europe and the Near East. He
had a dry, caustic but strong sense of humour and a merry
smile.
He was obviously very far from being disappointed with
Elinor when they were finally introduced. A great part of his
attraction for her, she later confessed, was his mastery of the
situation from the very first moment. He took it completely
for granted that she would consent to marry him.
Elinor herself was excited and bewildered. The mental pic-
ture she had always had of her future husband was under-
going drastic changes in her mind. Clayton Glyn was very
different, both in appearance and in manner from the young
Frenchman who had captivated her eleven years before. He
did not make love to her, as she expected or hoped. He did
not whisper passionate words in her ear. Indeed, he had at
all times an innate distrust of the sentimental, the dramatic,
61
Elinor Glyn
and the highfalutin. Elinor was a little disappointed but she
managed to persuade herself quite easily that romance did not
consist only in ardent phrases. And there was so much that
was attractive about Clayton his smile, his blue eyes, his
grand manner, above all his hair. It was like a powdered wig.
He might have been a Marquis at the Bourbon court or
Prince Charming stepped out of an illustration of "Cinder-
ella."
21.
In February of the following year, 1892, Elinor and her
mother went to Monte Carlo. Clayton Glyn, still like Prince
Charming, pursued them, and there beside the blue Mediter-
ranean he asked her to marry him. She accepted gayly and
he promptly bought her a large diamond ring at Carrier's. It
was decided that they should be married in London at the
end of April. Then, unlike Prince Charming, he abandoned
his fiancee of a few hours and returned home to see how the
young pheasants were getting on. As he was a poor corre-
spondent, Elinor neither saw him nor heard from him again
till immediately before the wedding. If she could have seen it,
in that moment of casual neglect on his part lay the seeds of
much future disillusionment, and of more than twenty ro-
mantic novels.
Nothing, however, could shake Elinor's happiness at that
time. She and her mother came slowly back, stopping in Paris
to do a little shopping for Elinor's trousseau, the bulk of
which, of course, was to come from Lucile's. The Fouquet
Lemaitres were astounded by the news they had never ex-
pected their impoverished cousin to marry. Clayton Glyn, they
felt, must indeed be in love with her; but in which case why
was he not now by her side? Elinor laughed but did not care,
In less than two months she was going to be married.
62
The Cynical Romantic
2,2.
Clayton Glyn and Elinor Sutherland were married on the
twenty-seventh of April, 1892, at St. George's, Hanover
Square, the parish church of Mrs. Kennedy's house in Davies
Street. They must have been a striking couple, the tall, dis-
tinguished, silver-haired bridegroom and the slim, beautiful,
red-haired bride.
It was the first fashionable wedding that Lucile's had
dressed and Lucy had done her sister proud, with a beautiful
full-skirted gown of white brocade and a veil of Brussels lace
held in place by a diamond tiara, a present from the bride-
groom, who insisted that a wreath of orange blossoms, then the
usual headdress, was not fine enough for his dazzling bride.
She looked, he told her, just like a fairy queen.
They spent their honeymoon at Brighton. Clayton observed
that it was sad to have married the Lorelei and then give her
no opportunity of displaying her charms. So he hired the pub-
lic baths for two days so that she might swim up and down
alone, naked, her long red hair, which when uncoiled reached
her knees, trailing in the water behind her. It was a romantic,
costly, and rather uncharacteristic gesture which completely
won his bride's heart
After the honeymoon they returned to Durrington in tri-
umph. At long last the squire was bringing home a bride.
They drove in their carriage through cheering crowds of vil-
kgers to the main gate, where the horses were taken out of
the shafts and the farmers themselves, In Newgate-frill
beards and wearing their Sunday best, drew the carriage up
the drive, under the evergreen triumphal arches with floating
tanners and mottoes of "God Bless the Bride and Bridegroom."
At the end of the drive was the fine Palladian fagade of Dur-
rington House, no mean threshold over which to be carried.
Elinor Glyn
That night there was a banquet for the tenants, with un-
limited punch and long laborious speeches full of hearty
references to the possibility of an heir. Outside there were fire-
works. It was a magnificent home-coming. Elinor was trium-
phant and radiant. At long last, after all those interminable
years of waiting, her dreams had come true. Cinderella had
married her Prince Charming. She had everything in the
world she craved. She had romance and she had riches.
The tragedy was that in fact she had neither.
64
BOOK TWO
The Best-Selling Novelist
1892-1907
Clayton Glyn was very much the country gentleman, in-
terested in his land and his farms, discussing the prospects of
pheasants with his head gamekeeper. He was a Justice of the
Peace, the squire of the neighbouring village, Sheering; the
villagers pulled their forelocks or curtseyed as he passed
through. For much of the time, of course, he was away from
Essex, at other houses or travelling abroad, but when he was
at home, his villagers and tenants regarded their lord of the
manor in a suitably feudal and respectful way.
He went to church every Sunday, wearing a top hat, for it
would, in his opinion, have been extremely disrespectful to
God to have called on Him less formally attired. On the other
hand, he was invariably six minutes late in case the vicar might
get uppish and it was very many years before his children
discovered exactly what happened at the beginning of Morn-
ing Prayer.
Into his country life Elinor fitted a little awkwardly. She
had no experience of its special pleasures and duties and she
tended to regard it all as rather provincial and dull. She had
been sufficiently long in Paris to have acquired some of the
urban condescension with which the Parisian loeau monde of
that date looked down upon their country cousins. In ap-
67
Elinor Glyn
pearance, too, site was rather un-English. She had only one
tweed suit and did not care greatly for it. With the smart
fashions that her cousins had pressed on her and her elegant
Lucile clothes, her high heels, and polished nails, she was a
conspicuous figure in Essex County society and regarded with
a certain amount of suspicion. Among her neighbours she
made few friends.
There was, however, one notable exception. The Countess
of Warwick, one of the most beautiful, gracious, and resplend-
ent hostesses of that period, lived at Easton Lodge, some ten
miles from Durrington, and she took the young and inex-
perienced bride under her wing. No one was a more capable
or energetic Lady Bountiful than Lady Warwick, but though
Elinor tried hard to emulate her, she found she had little
vocation for the task. She did not enjoy taking port and jellies
to sickly villagers and sitting with them while they told her
all about their tedious illnesses and families. They, in their
turn, did not altogether relish the patronage of someone so
bizarre and outre. No county in England is more insular than
Essex and they never carne to regard Elinor as anything else
but a "foreigner."
Lady Warwick was, however, more successful in instructing
her in her social duties, for, though Elinor had often been to
the great houses of England in the Cranford days, being a
hostess was a new experience for her. Army or naval officers,
diplomats or clergymen, it was explained, might be invited to
luncheon or dinner. The vicar might be invited regularly to
Sunday lunch or supper, if he was a gentleman. Doctors and
solicitors might be invited to garden parties, though never,
of course, to lunch or dinner. Anyone engaged in the arts, the
stage, trade or commerce, no matter how well connected,
could not be asked to the house at all.
Elinor had much cause to be grateful to Lady Warwick.
For years she was her closest friend. She supported the young
bride and championed her when others in the county were
68
The Best-Selling Novelist
distant and cool. The hospitality of Easton Lodge and War-
wick Castle, two of the greatest centres of society at that date,
was always open to her. But though Lady Warwick's friend-
ship was undoubtedly a great help and consolation to Elinor
in those first difficult years, we may doubt whether it was a
benefit in the long run, tending as it did to bring out and
emphasise Elinor's less lovable qualities, her class-conscious-
ness and her arrogance*
2.
Married life with Clayton was also not quite easy. The
divergence in their tastes and interests and in their attitude
towards life became more marked now that they were living
together. The episode of the swimming-bath at Brighton
seemed to have been his last romantic gesture. Back at Dur-
rington he picked up the threads of his normal life and he
expected his wife to take her rightful place.
She, still a little bewildered at finding herself so suddenly
the wife of a country squire, would watch him covertly from
the far end of their long dining-room table and try to suppress
her growing doubts about him.
An incident which occurred shortly after their wedding
typified the situation between them at this time, although she
recorded it much later in her diary.
Oh my heart! This evening I have been in a wood! A
wood! which for eighteen years I have longed to enter, but
it has been defendu. 'Women must not walk there, they
will disturb the pheasants, only the feet of the keepers must
tread these sacred paths." And so it has remained a place
of mystery. I first saw it at exactly this time of year, when
bluebells were blooming and the larks singing and all na-
ture talking of love and hope. I was very young and had
69
Elinor Glyn
been married about a fortnight. We walked there and I re-
member how the beauty of It came upon me and with a
foolish little cry I rushed forward to pick the bluebells
and it was then it was explained to me the impossibility of
an entrance. Bluebells! ridiculous! Did I not know at that
time of the year the mischief going into a wood caused! And
so we walked on round it and my pleasure in the day was
gone. And in the years that followed it always hurt when
I remembered and I never tried to penetrate among the
trees even in winter. Indeed as long as pheasants lasted it
was ever defendu, a forbidden corner, an unexplored land.
Once again we must discount the tone of self-pity, but in
that incident we find a microcosm of their contrasted attitudes
toward life: the ardent, passionate girl, tending to dramatise
herself, longing to enjoy the more romantic aspects of nature
in springtime; and the quizzical ex-bachelor, afraid for his
young pheasants and unable to understand why his wife
should want to run about in bluebell woods.
It would, however, be a mistake to regard Elinor as an un-
happy bride. Like every other newly married couple she and
Clayton had many mutual adjustments to make. The fact
that they both declined to make these adjustments did not
affect the marriage till later. In the meantime there was much
that was new and exciting. Above all, there were the house
parties. She and Clayton were never happier together than
when they were sitting in their brougham behind their two
horses, Pair and Impair (named in memory of Monte Carlo),
driving over to Easton.
Country house parties played an important part in the social
life of the time and formed the background of Elinor's first
The Best-Setting Novelist
four novels; so it is perhaps worth while to examine them a
little more closely and see just what they involved.
The guests might number anything from twenty to forty,
the creme de la creme of society peers, senior Tory politi-
cians, Ambassadors, sportsmen, perhaps even the Prince of
Wales. They came with their valets or ladies' maids, driving
up to the front door in their broughams and landaus, there to
be welcomed by the groom of the chambers, that immensely
competent and discreet factotum who organised the entire
household. They were then ushered into one of the drawing-
rooms, where their hostess was waiting to welcome them with
afternoon tea. No introductions were ever made and it was
tacitly assumed that everyone present already knew everyone
else, an assumption which made things a little difficult for
young men and girls in their first season and for brides like
Elinor.
The whole house, with perhaps the exception of the host-
ess^ private wing, was open to the guests. They were free to
wander through the many rooms and galleries, admiring the
furniture, the family pictures, or the rich tapestries. The effect
was lush and magnificent, though by modern standards every
room would have been thought overfilled with sofas, tables,
and china cabinets. The walls of the front hall were invari-
ably covered with heads which the host had brought back
from his several big-game expeditions. Upstairs the bedrooms
were no less luxurious than the drawing-rooms, with silk bed
curtains, huge armchairs and sofas, innumerable soft cushions,
and a white bear hearthrug. A dozen of the newest novels,
biographies, and travel books stood on the bed table. The writ-
ing tables were equipped with every imaginable gadget from
Asprey's or Webster's and every variety of stamp or writing-
paper. Flowers were placed on the dressing-table every eve-
ning for the guest to wear at dinner, carnations or gardenias
lor the men, great sprays of stephanotis or orchids for the
women. There were, of course, no bathrooms, but each bed-
7*
Elinor Glyn
room contained a metal tub, painted to match the curtains,
tipped up against the wall behind a screen. This was laid
out, filled, and emptied by toiling housemaids with huge cans
of hot water every evening.
The rooms were usually warm in winter, with big fires in
the grates, but the passages were normally cold and draughty.
As evening cloaks or scarves were not fashionable, ladies
would scurry down them with chattering teeth. Easton Lodge
was an exception in having warm passages.
The clothes to be worn at these visits were formal and pic-
turesque. In the daytime the guests would wear whatever was
suitable for the time of year and the particular sport of the
moment. It was not, however, correct to lunch in tweeds and
ladies were expected to change into frocks. After lunch they
changed back again into tweeds if it was a shooting party, or
put on full-length sealskin coats if they were to go motoring.
For tea they changed again into tea gowns, seductive, diaph-
anous affairs with low-cut bodices, while the men wore brightly
coloured velvet smoking suits; Clayton's was sapphire blue,
and other popular colours were emerald green and crimson.
For dinner the guests wore full evening dress, the men in
white ties and tails and the women in dresses with trains,
carrying ostrich feather fans. Evening bags were never used,
as cosmetics were at that time almost unknown in society cir-
cles and could be bought only at a theatrical costumiers.
The food at these parties was equally sumptuous. Breakfast
could be taken either in bed or downstairs from a row of silver
chafing-dishes on the sideboard, the men sitting grumpily apart
at their own table. Lunch was a lengthy but informal meal;
often it took place out of doors at the shooting-stand, or in the
lunch tent at the cricket match or the race meeting. Tea, in
the drawing-room, varied from the thin bread and butter of-
fered at some houses to the comprehensive farmhouse tea
muffins, honey, and Devonshire creamprovided by Lady
Warwick at Easton.
72
The Best-Selling Novelist
But It was dinner that was the great moment of the day.
The guests were paired off in the drawing-room and went in,
arm in arm, in order of precedence. There were usually nine
or ten courses to be got through, each with a different wine,
and the meal naturally took a very long time. Polished tables
were not then in fashion and the table was covered with a
white damask tablecloth. Great bowls of flowers stood in the
centre of the table and elsewhere in the room, and these were
changed for each meal.
After dinner the gentlemen drank port while the ladies re-
tired to the drawing-room. When they rejoined the ladies they
would all split into pairs or groups for conversation. Good con-
versation at that time was not a way of passing odd moments
but an end in itself. It was one of the objects of the assembly
to hear and to practise witty, rapid, devastating, profound, or
cynical repartee, especially if some notable figure or wit was
present. For those few who did not care for conversation there
was always the billiard room or the card room for bezique or
whist. In certain houses, Shipley and Titchborne for instance,
but not Easton, baccarat was permitted.
The object of these elaborate and costly house parties was
threefold. The first was the enjoyment of the good things of
life; good living, good food, good company; the exercising of
the privileges of a highly exclusive society, membership
of which could be attained virtually only by birth.
The second object was sport. Most of the large parties cen-
tred round a big shoot or meet in the winter, a race meeting,
a cricket or a yachting-week in the summer. The men would
participate, the women would listen sympathetically, watch as
much as they could bear, and hope that it would soon be over.
The third object was philandering. If the etiquette was
strict, the morals were light. Any husband or wife, however
newly married, was fair game and large house parties were an
admirable cover for clandestine love affairs. Gentlemen could
whisper to ladies as they lit their candles for them at night,
73
Elinor Glyn
notes could be brought on die breakfast trays, arranging ac-
cidental meetings or rendezvous. No hostess was so expert as
Lady Warwick in summing up at a glance just how alone a
couple wished to be and detaching any tactless and unwanted
third. There were so many places the happy pair could go to
portraits of ancestors to be seen in a gallery, books of en-
gravings to be turned over in some small library. They could
take walks through the woods to a belvedere or viewpoint. In
the grounds of Easton, within comfortable walking distance,
there was a small pleasure house, with the Love Lyrics of
Laurence Hope already lying conveniently on the table in case
the cavalier should become suddenly tongue-tied.
The essence of all these affairs was absolute secrecy. Every-
body, in fact, knew who at the moment was interested in
whom, but it was never admitted, even tacitly. In the com-
pany even of their closest friends, who knew all about the
affair, lovers would remain friendly but distant. To have be-
trayed any sign would have been "frightfully bad form/' Just
as a stranger, joining one of these parties for the first time,
would have found it difficult to discover who was whose hus-
band or wife, so he would, without enlightenment, have found
it impossible to know who was whose lover or mistress unless,
that is, he was sufficiently misguided as to wander about the
passages at night,
They asked me why I was so sleepy, and I said because
I had not slept well the last night and that I was sure
the house was haunted. And so they all screamed at me,
*Why?" and so I told them, what was really true, that in
the night I heard a noise of stealthy footsteps, and as I
was not frightened I determined to see what it was, so I got
up Agnes sleeps in the dressing-room, but, of course, she
never wakes--I opened the door and peeped out into the
corridor. There are only two rooms beyond mine towards
the end, round the corner, and it is dimly lit all night. Well,
74
The Best-Selling Novelist
I distinctly saw a very tall grey figure disappear round the
bend of the hall! When I got thus far every one dropped
their books and listened with rapt attention, and I could see
them exchanging looks, so I am sure they know it is
haunted, and were trying to keep it from me, I asked Mrs.
Smith if she had seen or heard anything because she sleeps
in one of those rooms. She looked perfectly green but she
said she had not heard a sound, and had slept like a top,
and that I must have dreamt it.
Then Lady Doraine and every one talked at once, and
Lord Valmond asked did anyone know if the London eve-
ning papers had come. But I was not going to be put off like
that, so I just said, "I know you all know it is haunted and
are putting me off because you think I'll be frightened;
I am going to rush out and see the ghost close.**
Then everyone looked simply ahuri. Mrs. Smith looked
at me as if she wanted to poison me, and I can't think why
specially, can you? 5 ''
After a week or so the house party would disperse, to re-
assemble again shortly afterwards, in almost the same form, at
another stately home. It was this society which Elinor entered
in full flower as a bride. She had tasted it before in her Cran-
ford days, but it had not formed so continuously a part of her
life as it did now. Yet, though she was an accepted part of it,
intermingling freely and naturally, she always remained dis-
tinct, watching it objectively and curiously, a little critical, a
little puzzled. She relished its splendours but she recorded
its shortcomings caustically in her diaries and in her novels.
It was not its exclusiveness that worried her; she had as little
sympathy as any other member of it for upstarts and parvenus
and "colonials/' But she was concerned about its ineffective-
ness, its uselessness and, within the closed circle, its unkind-
ness. The great personalities, the great hostesses she admired
* The Visit* of Elizabeth.
75
Elinor Glyn
warmly. She was less impressed by the spitefulness and the
time-tilling inactivity of the lesser fry.
In August 1892 the Glyns went to St. Fillan's in Perth-
shire for the grouse-shooting, which was not only the re-
quired activity for August but also Clayton's favourite sport.
Elinor soon discovered that it was very far from being her
favourite pastime. With her high heels, her long skirts, her
long gloves, her big hat and veil, her parasol she found walking
across the heather a hot, tiring, and uninteresting occupation.
She resented, too, the somewhat ignominious position to
which women were relegated at shooting-parties; she dis-
liked having to play second fiddle to mere birds. "Men," she
wrote in Letters to Caroline, "are always hunters at heart,
jealous, primitive darlings!" and it was only natural for them
to be primarily interested in sport. But that was no reason why
their womenfolk should have to be present on these occasions
and Elinor determined that in future years she would leave
Clayton in Scotland in August and go herself to visit her
French relations. It was a further divergence of their ways.
From St. Fillan's the Glyns went on to a number of shoot-
ing-parties, ending up at Shipley Hall in Derbyshire, where
Elinor took part in some tableaux vivants. These amateur
theatricals were a popular country-house amusement at the
time, usually put on in aid of some charity in which the hostess
was interested. Elinor enjoyed them very much, throwing her-
self on this occasion into the part of Mary Queen of Scots
with gusto and complete lack of self-consciousness.
That autumn and winter Elinor and Clayton spent at Dur-
rington, and here there was no escape from shooting-parties*
Though she detested walking round the covers on a cold day
or tramping across muddy fields, she accepted it meekly. Her
7 6
The Best-Selling Novelist
shooting manners were, of course, perfect; in her books it is
only the upstarts or the villainesses who wear bright yellow
at the stands or talk as the birds come over.
After a few months, however, she discovered to her joy
that she was expecting a child and she was able to give up for
the time the more strenuous aspects of shooting-parties and
spend long hours lying on the sofa, sewing or reading. The
child, a daughter, was born in June of the following year.
Clayton was clearly a little disappointed that it was not a son,
but Elinor was delighted. She called the child Margot after
her cousin Margot Fouquet Lemaitre, who was to be a god-
mother.
In her book of essays, Three Things, Elinor differentiated
sharply between what she termed "animal mothers'* and
"spiritual mothers/' Spiritual mothers, into which category
Elinor enrolled herself, were interested in the child's charac-
ter, thoughts, ideals, tastes, manners, and general behaviour.
Animal mothers, on the other hand, were concerned almost
exclusively with the child's physical welfare, with mothering
its small body. For this form of motherhood Elinor had neither
sympathy nor inclination. She regarded it as a regrettable
form of self-indulgence on the part of the mother and she
handed over the physical care of her own child altogether to a
nanny, dissociating herself completely from that side of family
life. The nanny was, fortunately, both kind and competent.
Clayton, for once, fully shared his wife's views in the matter.
Small children did not appeal to him and he would not even
travel on the same train as his daughters until they were
grown-up. Special arrangements at Durrington had to be made
to keep all nursery sounds and smells away from his notice.
After a year of married life Elinor was reasonably happy
and contented, especially when she compared it with what
77
Elinor Olyn
had Been two years or ten years before. She had come to terms
with life in the country and was able, within limits, to live
in her own sophisticated urban way. She was able to condemn
most of her future heroines to a rural life without a qualm
when they married their heroes and began to live happily
ever after.
The principal disappointment was Clayton. She had always
known in her heart that he was not the lover about whom she
had dreamed for so many years, but she could not prevent her-
self still wishing that he was, still hoping that one day he
might become so. In fact, however, he seemed to be growing
progressively less ardent as the weeks went by. To counter
her disappointment she reminded herself often of his many
good qualities, his kindness, his sympathy, his good humour,
his grand-seigneur manner, his generosity, the way he paid
her huge Lucile bills without even reading them through.
He took her to Paris two or three times a year so that she
might shake the country earth off her high heels, meet her
cousins, and buy even more clothes. In the coldest of winter
months they, like the rest of fashionable English society, went
to the Mediterranean.
It was at Hyeres in January 1894 t ^ iat Elinor caught typhoid
and was seriously ill. She seems to have suffered from a series
of misfortunes at this time, for no sooner had she recovered
from typhoid than she had a concussion of the brain, the
consequence of a fall while taking part in some amateur the-
atricals at Lord Rosslyn's house near Edinburgh.
As a consequence of her continued illnesses she gave up,
with Clayton's approval, and probably at his suggestion, her
losing struggle to take her full part in rural activities. Hence-
forward she confined herself to the house and the garden,
and put her tweed suit away in moth balls. A girl who had
been one of Elinor's bridesmaids came to stay at Durrington
at this time and Elinor was grateful to her for taking over some
of her own rustic chores; the girl, a healthy, open-air type,
7*
The Best-Selling Novelist
seemed actually to like washing dogs, nibbing down horses,
and going for long walks in the rain, all the things that her
hostess loathed so much, and Elinor was glad that Clayton
should have her companionship on his rounds of the estate.
It was not until later that she came to suspect that the as-
sociation might not be entirely innocent.
The extent to which Clayton was losing interest in his
wife was brought home to her forcibly by an incident which
occurred that summer. A large house party was gathered at
Warwick Casde and Lord Warwick himself took Elinor round
the rose garden in the late afternoon of the second day of
her stay. There he began to make love to her, saying that
she was the fairest rose in the whole garden and that he had
fallen deeply in love with her. He then kissed her.
Elinor was outraged. She drew herself up haughtily and
tried to freeze him off. At that moment other guests arrived
on the scene and caused a diversion. But Elinor was consider-
ably concerned in her own mind whether she should tell Clay-
ton or not. She half feared to do so, half hoped that the
knowledge of the incident, the realisation that other men
found her desirable might stir him out of his own apathy to-
wards her.
She told him that evening after she had finished dressing
for dinner. He was in his dressing-room next door, in his shirt
sleeves, tying his white tie in the looking-glass, the moment
of the day when he always seemed especially glamorous to
her. His valet, Billingham, discreetly left the room and Elinor
related the incident, both fearing and hoping for an explosion
of jealous rage.
He caught her eye in the looking-glass and grinned at her.
"No! Did he?" he said. "Good old Brookief And he went on
tying his tie imperturbably.
"You see, Paul," said the lady in Three Weeks, "a man can
always keep a woman loving him if he kiss her enough and
make her feel that there is no use struggling because he is too
79
Elinor Glyn
strong to resist A woman will stand almost anything from a
passionate lover. He may beat her and pain her soft flesh; he
may shut her up and deprive her of all other friends while
the motive is raging love and interest in herself on his part
it only makes her love him the more."
Bayard Delaval in The Great Moment said, "A woman
would have to he utterly mine in word and thought and look.
Fd never stand any other fellow hanging around. If I gave her
the whole of my heart, Yd want the whole of hers."
"Yes, I could be cruel, I expect," said Prince Gritzko in
His Hour, "I could be even brutal if I were jealous or the
woman I loved played me false ... If ever she became my
Princess she shall be entirely for me. I will not let her have a
look or thought for any other man. All must be mine unshared
and then she shall be my Queen."
But Clayton Glyn, learning that his wife had been kissed
by another man, only laughed and said, "Good old BrookieF
It was a bitter blow and she took it very hard. Her romance
was already over after only two years. Was this what she had
dreamed about? Would her passionate Frenchman have been
so apathetic?
6.
It is difficult at this stage to be sure just why Clayton
Glyn's affections towards his wife should have cooled so soon
and so completely. Perhaps his love would have cooled equally
rapidly towards any wife. He had had twenty years of aloof,
self-contained bachelordom, to be betrayed for a time first by
curiosity and then by infatuation; but in the end his own es-
sential character must have reasserted itself.
Or perhaps there may have been some failure, some in-
adequacy on Elinor's part. In her books The Philosophy of
Love and This Passion Called Love, and in many of her un-
80
The Best-Selling Novelist
collected articles, she reiterates her belief that love could not
be commanded at will. A man could not guarantee to love
one woman all Ms life any more than he could promise to
keep the wind in the south. It was up to the wife to attract
and retain her husband's love, and vice versa. By admitting
this Elinor tacitly placed the failure of her own marriage fairly
and squarely on her own shoulders.
She was undoubtedly a difficult person to live with, though
he must have known when he married her that he was ac-
quiring no ordinary bride. At times, of course, he was extremely
proud of her, of her beauty, her composure, and presence in
social gatherings. When she was in a cynical or mischievous
mood, they were very close together. But at other times, her
passionate enthusiasms, her lush romanticism, her originality,
her self-dramatisation, her partiality for "scenes" must have
jarred on his dry, quizzical temperament. He must have
been saddened by her inability to share fully in his own pur-
suits and interests.
Elinor firmly believed all her life in the universality and
infallibility of the masculine hunting instinct. Man, she as-
serted, was always basically a hunter. It was the elusiveness
of his lady and the uncertainty of his final success which in-
trigued him and challenged him during his courtship. But
after marriage that was gone and "no man likes shooting tame
rabbits*" A wife, therefore, should be elusive, mysterious, un-
predictable, so that her husband's hunting instinct would
never be lulled to sleep, later to be reawakened by some new
quarry.
In August of that year, 1894, Clayton went, as usual, to
his Scottish grouse moor while Elinor took her year-old baby
Margot to meet her French godmother at Dieppe, then a f ash-
81
Elinor Glyn
ionable watering-place. The astringent atmosphere of French
society was a welcome change after Essex and consoled Eli-
nor a good deal for the frustrations of her private life.
She was almost thirty and in the full noonday glory of
her beauty. She was also, it appears, in good spirits, despite
the shortcomings of her husband as a lover, if we are to judge
from two portraits of her which Jacques Blanche painted on
this visit. One of them was a formal portrait of great beauty;
despite the colour of her hair the artist gave her a pink bow.
Fifteen years later this was repainted blue at the insistence
of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who could not bear the clash
of colour. The other picture, Le Chat Nelly, is a delightful
and witty exposition of her feline character, painted forty years
before her own interest and pleasure in the company of mar-
malade-coloured cats.
She returned to Durrington in the autumn, and for the
next year continued the social round to which she was now
accustomed; visits all over England and Scotland, the South of
France in January, Paris at Easter, the London season in May
and June, Cowes in July, Dieppe once again in August. In
the autumn they went to Italy, and Elinor saw Venice for the
first time. It made a great impression on her; no other place
she had yet seen was so romantic. She ached for her dream
lover, for the ardent Frenchman whose memory was still with
her, for someone who would whisper words of passion and
adoration in her ear as they stood in the loggia of their palazzo
or floated down the Grand Canal in a gondola,
But Clayton had never been given to things like that, now
less so than ever. He insisted on Elinor's maid, Williams, go-
ing with them in the gondola so that she, too, might have the
pleasure of seeing the Grand Canal by moonlight. Elinor was
utterly frustrated,, but she gained a litde introverted satisfac-
tion from dashing off passionate love scenes between herself
and an imaginary lover in her diary.
The Best-Selling Novelist
8.
It was during this year, 1895, that Clayton decided that
Durrington was too large, expensive, and inconvenient a house
for them and suggested that they should move to Sheering
Hall, a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse about a mile away.
Elinor never questioned her husband's decision on matters of
this sort and she set herself to make Sheering as comfortable
as possible. Amongst other alterations a new wing had to be
built on for the nursery, so that it might be kept far away from
Clayton.
The actual move into Sheering Hall took place early in
1896 and with it a new life seemed to begin for Elinor. The
ill-health and emotional frustration which had dogged her for
the past two years seemed to slip away. Clayton, too, seemed
to rediscover that he had a passionate and beautiful wife.
They took a small flat in Sloane Street for the season and
Elinor threw herself once more into the delights of social Lon-
don. In May she took part in a masked ball at Covent Gar-
den dressed, with Lady Rosslyn, as les chauves-souris. A few
days later she was presented at court for the first time. This
was long overdue but a combination of illness and other cir-
cumstances had prevented its taking place before.
It was the first time she had ever been to a court function
and she wrote in her diary afterwards pages of glowing de-
scription of the splendid scenes in the throne room and the
anterooms. She herself, looking radiantly beautiful, made her
six curtseys faultlessly to the Princess of Wales (who was
deputising for Queen Victoria) despite a train four yards long.
She was, however, less impressed by the other ladies at the
court. She wrote in her diary :
There were numbers of hideous women there, with Ye
Gods! what skins! Brown or pimply or red and coarse! One
Elinor Glyn
could count on one's fingers the women who could stand
king viewed in full regalia in the sunlight with impunity.
Mrs. Kennedy had by this time given up the Davies Street
house to Lucy and her daughter and Clayton now installed
her in a cottage near Sheering called Lamberts. Though it had
recently been pebble-fronted, Lamberts was old and spacious,
but further enlargements and modernisations were required
before it was ready for Mrs. Kennedy.
In January 1897 the whole family, Clayton, Elinor, three-
and-a-half-year-old Margot, Mrs. Kennedy, and retainers went
to Italy to escape the cold months, the first of many large-
scale family excursions. They went first to Rome, where they
had many friends at the various embassies. Later they went
on to San Remo to stay with Sir William Walrond (later Lord
Waleran) who had often entertained them at duck-shooting
parties in England. Sir William Walrond was at the time Gov-
ernment Chief Whip, but such was the tempo of the age that
he was able to conduct the bulk of his parliamentary duties
perfectly satisfactorily from his villa in Italy.
The rest of the year they divided between Sheering and
Sloane Street, On Sunday nights they would often dine at the
Savoy at a window table, looking out over the embankment.
These were some of the happiest hours of Elinor's whole life.
One of the consequences of her amateur theatricals in Scot-
land, her close knowledge of Paris f ashiojis, and her own beau-
tiful clothes was her first journalistic commission. The editor
of the magazine Scottish Life invited her to write a series of
fashion articles, to take the form of a weekly open letter
from Suzon to Grizelda and to contain not only a description
of the latest clothes and hats but also general advice on beauty.
The first instalment of Les Coulisses de VEleganceloy Mrs.
Glyn, as the series was called, appeared on May 14, 1898,
and ran all through the summer and autumn. Elinor began a
little diffidently:
84
The Best-Selling Novelist
I am sure you will be nice to me, Grizelda, and won't
write back and tell me that from a literary point of view
my letter is all wrong, my grammar horrid and my sentences
not properly formed, because I confess to you I have never
written a letter to be printed in my life though upon the
subject of frocks and chiffons I do claim to know a good
deal.
But she soon gained her self-confidence.
I hear, Grizelda, that you are tall and lovely, but also that
you stoop. I shall have to give you a tremendous lecture
about this because it is of the first importance. No one, how-
ever beautiful, looks distinguished with round shoulders; I
don't believe any woman (except Miss Hardcastle) ever yet
stooped and conquered.
There we have in one paragraph the three principal in-
gredients of an Elinor Glyn article; the emphasis on poise and
deportment, the admonitory tone and the crisp phrase, which
were to remain unaltered throughout the hundreds of articles
she was to write during the next forty years.
Les Coulisses de I'Elegance, however, caused no great stir
and she herself seems to have forgotten in her later life that
they were in fact her first published works.
Elinor's second daughter, Juliet, was born in December of
that year. It was a hard, exhausting birth, and it was feared
for a time that Elinor herself might not survive it. However,
she recovered slowly, nursed by her mother. Clayton was bit-
terly disappointed at being presented with a second daughter.
He waited long enough to be sure that his prostrate and ex-
hausted wife was not going to die and then he went off by
himself to try to forget his sorrows at Monte Carlo.
Elinor Glyn
He was a born gambler and believed in backing against the
ran of the cards or the wheel and in staking heavily to re-
cover earlier losses. On this occasion he lost more than ten
thousand pounds and he returned to Sheering in a gloomy
frame of mind. Fortunately for her health Elinor did not learn
about these losses till later.
Quite apart from this financial setback the birth of a sec-
ond daughter had a deep and far-reaching effect upon the
marriage and upon Clayton's own attitude towards life just
how far-reaching and drastic Elinor did not discover for an-
other ten years. The immediate consequence, as far as she was
concerned, was that a deathblow had been dealt to his in-
terest in her, only so recently reawakened. Henceforward his
attitude towards her was affectionate, considerate, and avun-
cular.
10.
During that winter a governess, Miss Mary Dixon, was en-
gaged to give Margot her first lessons. This was a happy and
auspicious event; Dixie, as she was always known, came to
be dearly loved and depended upon, not only by the two chil-
dren but by the whole family. She remained with them for
the next thirteen years, and after that was, and still is, a close
and valued friend. At first she bicycled out daily from Harlow,
but later as her responsibilities increased, she lived in with the
family.
Shortly after she was up and about again, Elinor was caught
in a heavy rainstorm at a shooting-lunch which she had been
unwisely persuaded to attend, and she developed rheumatic
fever. Once again she was seriously ill and both Clayton and
Mrs. Kennedy were deeply anxious about her. For a time Eli-
nor herself was convinced that she was going to die and felt
vaguely that it would be romantic and beautiful to die so young
S6
The Best-Selling Novelist
and that die world had little left to offer her. However, as
she recovered her strength, her natural buoyancy and resili-
ence came to her aid and to amuse the beginning of her con-
valescence she asked her mother to get out some of the diaries
which she had written at the time of her first country-house
visits, and her journal of her first French season with the
Fouquet Lemaitres. This journal had been in fact written in
the form of letters to her mother but had not been posted; her
mother was shown it at a later date.
Reading them through again now, Elinor was much amused,
and the idea came to her to rewrite them in the form of a book.
Everyone was considerably surprised by her plans, but the
invalid had to be humoured. Apart from the fashion articles
and her diary, the creative urge had lain dormant inside her
for fifteen years and there was no holding it now. Lying out in
a deck chair in the warm spring sunshine, too weak to be
able to cross or uncross her own legs, Elinor began to write
The Visits of Elizabeth. She wrote fast, in her fine handwrit-
ing and her incredible spelling, correcting, revising, recopying
pages, drawing on incidents and characters both from the
Cranford days and from her more recent experiences, shaping
the raw material into a polished, rounded whole, a witty,
sparkling, shrewdly observed, sometimes malicious description
of society*
The work was cast in the form of letters from Elizabeth to
her mother, and when it was finished Clayton took it up to
London and showed it over lunch at the Garrick Club to Sam-
uel Jeyes, then assistant editor of the Standard. To have
a wife who had written a book was at that time and in that
society a matter more for shame than for anything else, but
Clayton was concerned for his wife and thought that a friendly
comment from an established literary man would be a nice
surprise for the convalescent
Mr. Jeyes read the book and was sufficiently amused to read
some of it aloud that evening in the club, to the accompani-
87
Elinor Glyn
merit of guffaws from other members. He declined to say who
the author was and it was assumed that he had in fact writ-
ten it himself. The following day, Elinor, who was beginning
to hobble about on two sticks, was astonished and delighted
to receive a telegram from Jeyes: "Elizabeth will do. May I
come and see you."
He came the following Sunday and told Elinor, now im-
proving rapidly with the excitement, that the editor of the
World had agreed to buy the serial rights. She asked Jeyes to
make all the arrangements for her and it was decided that the
book should be published anonymously.
The first instalment of The Visits of Elizabeth appeared
in the World on Wednesday, August 9, 1899, and as the weeks
went by, the letters caused something of a sensation. All fash-
ionable society read the World and there was little difficulty
in recognising most of the characters and the places described.
There was a good deal of speculation about the author's iden-
tity; it was obviously someone who knew society very well.
But Jeyes kept the secret well and Elinor believed that even
the editor of the World himself did not know. One lady com-
ing to visit the Glyns at Sheering brought a copy with her to
aniuse Elinor and speculated at length about who the author
might be. Finally Elinor admitted responsibility, but the guest
remained unconvinced.
"But, Nellie darling, it can't possibly be you!" she exclaimed.
"A really clever person must have written these letters."
Society, on the whole, was much amused by it. One or two
people were rather shocked and wrote letters to the paper call-
ing it "disgraceful" and a "melange of vulgarity, nastiness, and
unclean stupidity and dullness"; but the book was vigorously
defended in reply by an anonymous admirer calling himself
Toby Belch, and Elinor was most gratified.
88
The Best-Setting Novelist
II.
Under the stimulus of the success of her book, Elinor's
health improved rapidly, and by the late summer she was able
to resume her normal place in society. In May of the follow-
ing year, 1900, she took part in a matinee at Her Majesty's
Theatre arranged by Lady Arthur Paget in aid of a South
African war charity. She appeared with four other red-haired
society ladies, Baroness d'Erlanger, Lady St. Oswald, Mrs.
Curzon, and Lady Mary Sackville, in a tableau vivant of an
imaginary Titian picture, The Five Senses. To make the eff ect
even more striking Beerbohm Tree, who was the producer,
made them sprinkle copper dust on their hair. In a few hours
it turned bright green and proved extremely difficult to get
out.
For the coining winter Clayton decided that his wife would
benefit from a stay in a still warmer and more dependable
climate than even the South of France provided and he pro-
posed that they should go to Egypt. The children were to be
left with their grandmother at Lamberts, and in anticipation
of this plans were put in hand for extensions to be built on to
the old cottage, a nursery wing and a servants' wing to house
the additional staff which would now be required there. Mrs.
Kennedy was delighted at the prospect.
During the summer Samuel Jeyes met Gerald Duckworth,
who had recently started a publishing house and was looking
for new authors for his list. Jeyes, remembering with some
pride the success which The Visits of Elizabeth had had as a
serial, suggested that the letters would probably be well re-
ceived in book form and sent him a copy. Duckworth's reply
was received on the eighteenth of August.
89
Elinor Glyn
Mydearjeyes,
I like very much The Visits of Elizabeth and think in
volume form they should sell well. Will you put me into
communication with the authoress? I should suggest a 15%
royalty,
I am ordered to Aix-Ies-bains for haths and leave London
on the 28th* Can it be done before this date so that I may
put things "en train"?
Yours ever,
Gerald Duckworth
Jeyes accordingly came down to Sheering once more, bring-
ing the good news, which thrilled Elinor. The letters, he
explained, would need to be considerably lengthened for pub-
lication in book form. When he had gone, Elinor got out again
her French journal and interposed the whole of the French
section of the book, the part which may be thought to contain
some of the best scenes and characters. The revised manu-
script was sent off to Duckworth, and Elinor sat back with
a delightful feeling of achievement and expectation, very dif-
ferent from the melancholy gloom of eighteen months earlier.
There was a certain amount of discussion as to whether
the complete book should also be published anonymously and
if not what name should be chosen. Elinor herself favoured
her normal signature; since most of her friends now knew that
she was the author, there was little point in concealing her
identity any longer. She consulted Lady Warwick, who agreed
with her, adding,, "Elinor Glyn sounds like a nom de plume,
anyway.*
12.
The Visits of Elizabeth was published in November 1900,
price six shillings, an apple-green volume with a flat back,
The Best-Selling Novelist
white label, and gold lettering, a form of binding which, in
varying colours, Duckworth was to use for all her books and
which provided a uniform edition from the very beginning. It
was very well received by the critics and seemed to appear
overnight in stacks on every bookstall. It was all very surprising
and unexpected for a lady of fashion.
The world of high society which Elinor Glyn satirised in
her first novel has long since passed away but the gayety and
the wit of The Visits of Elizabeth is still as fresh as ever.
There is practically no plot and very little romance. Harry,
Marquis of Valmond, is forward enough to kiss Elizabeth un-
der the ear at an early stage and gets his face sharply slapped
for his impertinence. He annoys her by repeatedly forcing his
charming and, of course, irresistible presence upon her.
And we made up our quarrel, and he kissed me again
and I hope you won't be very cross, Mamma; but somehow
I did not feel at all angry this time. And I thought he was
fond of Mrs. Smith; but it isn't, it's Me! And we are en-
gaged. And Octavia is writing to you. And I hope you won't
mind. And the post is off , so no more.
The bulk of the book consists of Elizabeth's descriptions
and experiences of her first season, recorded with neat and
ingenuous frankness.
What do you think has happened? Sir Dennis sat beside
me on the sofa just as he did last night and well, he said
I was a perfect darling, but that he never could get a
chance to say a word to me alone, but that if I would only
drop my glove outside my door it would be all right; and
I thought that such a ridiculous thing to say that I couldn't
help laughing, and Lady Cecilia happened to be passing,
and so she asked me what I was laughing at, and so I told
her what he said, and asked why? There happened to be
pause just then and, as one has to speak rather loud to Lady
9*
Elinor Glyn
Cecilia to attract her attention, everyone heard, and they
all looked flabergasted; and then all shrieked with laughter,
and Sir Dennis said so crossly, "Little fool!" and Lady Des-
mond simply glared at me, and Lady Cecilia said, "Really,
Elizabeth!" and Sir Dennis got purple in the face and Jane
Roose whispered, "How could you dare with his wife lis-
tening!" and everyone talked and chaffed. It was too stupid
about nothing; but the astonishing part is, that funny old
thing I thought was the mother turns out to be his wife!
Elinor herself maintained later that the character of Eliza-
beth had been partly inspired by Lady Angela St. Clair-
Erskine, who had been something of an enfant terrible at some
house parties. But in fact the character of Elizabeth is a por-
trait in a mirror not a complete portrait, but a demonstration
of some of her most lovable qualities, her gayety and her mis-
chievous sense of fun (the book was written in a moment of
painful illness and emotional depression), her ability to com-
bine shrewd satire with gentle warmheartedness, her ob-
servant eye and light pen, her ability to laugh at others and
at herself simultaneously.
The comedy of manners, of which, of course, Jane Austen
is the supreme exponent, is one of the principal currents in
the great river of English fiction; and in this current The
Visits of Elizabeth was a highly popular and not insignificant
landmark.
In January 1901, Queen Victoria died, and Elinor, staying
the night before with Lucy in Davies Street, watched with
deep emotion the funeral procession from the windows of the
Berkeley. Soon afterwards, with the children safely installed
with Mrs. Kennedy at Lamberts, the Glyns sailed for Egypt.
The Best-Selling Novelist
Travelling with Clayton was always a pleasure automat-
ically to have the best cabin, the most comfortable compart-
ment, smiling managers, head stewards, headwaiters to greet
her at every stage, specially attentive service, every plan dove-
tailed and smooth and effortless. This was due not only to his
careful planning and generous but not excessive tipping, but
also to his obvious appreciation of the finer points of service,
food, and wine. Even in places which he had not visited be-
fore, his fame as a connoisseur of good living had gone before
him, passed from one restaurateur to another, so that the same
cordial welcome awaited him as if he had been a visitor all his
life.
This was especially so in the case of these visits to Egypt,
the longest journeys which he and Elinor ever made together.
For Elinor this particular voyage was made especially pleasant
from seeing the number of people on board who were reading
The Visits of Elizabeth.
She was delighted by Egypt and rhapsodised in her diary
about the beauty and the colour of everything, the sapphire-
blue sky, the brilliant green rice fields, the picturesque build-
ings, the domes and minarets, the camels, the desert, the
sense of endless space and endless time.
They stayed at the Savoy Hotel, and soon found themselves
participating in the social life of Cairo, led by Lady Cromer,
the wife of the High Commissioner, and Lady Talbot, the wife
of the General Officer Commanding. The social life was quite
as gay and select as in London but with fewer vices, since most
of the men were usefully employed.
A pleasing incident occurred after they had been there
about a fortnight. One of the pashas had been eyeing Elinor
with a good deal of interest; he now approached Clayton
through an intermediary and asked whether Clayton would
be willing to sell the pasha his wife. Perhaps the English
gentleman would be tired of his wife by now, it was explained;
one tired quickly of redheads. Both Clayton and Elinor were
93
Elinor Glyn
delighted by the story, but the intermediary swore solemnly
that it was a perfectly serious offer. Clayton often teased his
wife in later years, threatening that he would sell her into a
harem if she became tiresome; but Elinor, whenever she told
the story, always left out the part about tiring quickly of red-
heads. It was too near the truth for joking.
On this visit they spent only a few weeks in Cairo and re-
turned to England in March, staying in Naples and Rome
on the way. Back at Sheering they threw themselves once
more into fie English social season.
14.
It was now that the inevitable happened the consequence
of a romantic temperament, an uninterested husband, and a
gay, leisured social world. Indeed, one can only wonder that it
Bad not happened earlier. Elinor fell, deeply, passionately,
desperately in love.
Major Seymour Wynne Finch was a Guards officer whom
she had met many times at parties. Even in that brilliant,
fashionable throng he was a person of unusual charm and
distinction. He was very handsome and his appearance was
especially elegant; his smoking suit was made of Paisley shawl
with black silk facings. He had a gay and ready wit: on hear-
ing that a certain lady treated her husband 'like furniture,"
he asked without a moment's hesitation, "Drawing-room or
bedroom? It does make such a difference." He had a warm
and sympathetic personality; he himself was deeply in love
with Elinor.
One can imagine the happiness and the distress that must
have been going on simultaneously inside her; torn not only
by the unavoidable conflict of conscience and desire but by
the two different halves of her own temperament. The ap-
proved solution of the time would undoubtedly have been a
94
The Best-Selling Novelist
discreet love affair, such as most of her friends indulged in.
Clayton himself might well have countenanced it, provided
that it was carried out without any scandal, the sine qua non
of all such affairs. Elinor's own cynical side, her eighteenth-
century training, the Due de Saint-Simon himself, would have
found no fault in it. In The Reflections of Anibrosine, the
French Marquis who had been the lover of Ambrosine's grand-
mother says, <f The only vows which a lady or gentleman may
break without dishonour are the marriage vows. w
But the romantic side of Elinor's personality rebelled
against such a thought. Even Mrs. Saunders had believed
firmly in the sanctity of marriage vows and Elinor herself had
not yet entirely despaired of her marriage. The correct ending
for the fairy story was for Prince Charming and Cinderella
to live happily ever after; not, after a few years, to go their
own ways with mistresses and lovers. She placed several of
the heroines of her novels in precisely the same predicament,
and it is significant that (excepting Three Weeks, which is a
special case) it is not until she reached The Sequence in 1912
that she allowed one of them to yield.
She said a sad farewell to Seymour Wynne Finch and never
saw him again.
The visit to Egypt had been such a success that it was de-
cided to take out the whole family that winter, including the
children, Mrs. Kennedy, a French governess, Mademoiselle
Courtellement, and Williams. This time they remained in
Cairo the whole winter and the social life seemed more spar-
kling than it had been before, Elinor even allowing herself to
be persuaded by Lady Newtown-Butler, the leader of the
"Kasr-el-Dubara" set and later the Duchess of Sutherland, to
watch the nth Hussars playing polo at the Gezireh Club.
95
Elinor Glyn
Cairo at that time was full of interesting people. Cecil
Rhodes and Dr. Jameson passed through and Elinor wrote
in her diary:
Rhodes and Jameson and those other three men were
sitting together at dinner and five more ill-shapen creatures
I have never seen. Dr. Jameson's hack view is like that of
an old rat with pink ears and a bald head!
Sir Ernest Cassel was also there and became friendly with the
Glyns.
The inevitable tableau vivant for charity was organised and
Elinor took part as the Lorelei, clad only in tights, yards of
green gauze, and her hair, which she combed out to its full
length. She must have been a wonderful sight. She went
shopping in the mouski for rahat lakoum and for cheap flawed
pale green emeralds to match her eyes. The High Commis-
sioner gave a children's fancy-dress party at the Residency to
which the eight-year-old Margot and the three-year-old Juliet
went, looking like china dolls in hooped skirts and powdered
hair.
This particular party, however, ended in wails of misery.
The balloons which the children were given were filled with
gas and, once lost hold of, rose rapidly to the ceiling, where
they bobbed about tantalisingly. Lady Cromer had to promise
to have long ladders brought and to send the balloons round
to the children the next day at their own homes. At another
fancy-dress ball, this time for grownups, a set of Lancers was
arranged by Lady Talbot: eight ladies, including Elinor,,
dressed as Romney portraits and eight officers of the nth
Hussars in full levee dress.
The great ball of the winter was the Khedive's Ball. At
this time the Grand Duke Boris of Russia was in Cairo and
one of his suite was Prince Gritzko Wittgenstein, a young
daredevil whose exploits and wildness were notorious even out-
side Russia. He was immensely good-looking. "I think/' wrote
9 6
The Best-Selling Novelist
Elinor, "that he was the most physically attractive creature
that I have ever seen. 1 * The tales of his wickedness were end-
less; of his orgies in his palaces; of how he would fight duels
in darkened rooms over a lady; of how he would ride his
favourite Arab horse up and down the stairs till its legs were
broken; of how, when a gipsy girl defied him, he stripped her
naked and dropped her over the balcony of the restaurant
where they were dining into the soup tureen of the unsuspect-
ing dinner party below. He was not formally presented to Eli-
nor, but she noticed him watching her as she talked to the
Grand Duke Boris. He was a striking figure in his full-skirted
scarlet Cossack uniform.
Later he came and, still unintroduced, asked her to dance.
Before she could wither him for his impertinence, he swept
her on to the floor in a waltz, pressing her so tightly that the
cartridges in his crossbelts left red weals on her white chest.
Manoeuvring her skilfully into a corner, he suddenly bent
and kissed her on the throat and then abruptly turned and left
her blazing with cold fire, speechless with outraged haughti-
ness. She was to make good use of this scene later.
But the most memorable incident of the visit was an ex-
pedition to the Sphinx by moonlight on a camel. At that time
the Sphinx was not surrounded by shacks and advertisement
hoardings, and the beauty and mystery of the scene, the play
of moonlight and sand, the aloof, brooding agelessness of the
Sphinx itself touched some chord in Elinor's mind. She was
deeply moved and she determined that her children, too, must
have this wonderful experience.
A few days later, to their intense delight and excitement,
she mounted them on camels and led them out into the
moonlit desert. The other ladies in Cairo thought it very odd
of her and it was long past the children's bedtime. But Elinor
was indifferent to the views of such animal mothers. It was
her duty to teach her children to appreciate the fine things
97
Elinor Glyn
in life, and the Sphinx by moonlight was certainly one of
them. It was never too early to begin.
16.
The illness which dogged so much of the early part of her
life descended on her again now in the form of painful at-
tacks of gallstones. It would come upon her in waves of agony
and she had several times to be given morphia. She lost weight,
and both Clayton and her mother became once more very
anxious over her,
As she got slowly better, Prince Hussein, later the King of
Egypt, gave her permission to sit in his garden at Gezireh
Palace. This was a remarkable place, situated on a small is-
land; but it was so cunningly contrived with vistas and arti-
ficial mounds that it seemed to stretch for miles. It was filled
with flowers, giant violets, roses, lilies of the valley; bougain-
villea and clematis hung from the tree trunks. There was
never any sign of a dead or dying plant, the gardeners work-
ing by night, digging up every wilting bloom and replacing it
with a fresh one.
In this exotic atmosphere Elinor's spirits and health revived
rapidly and, as before, her return to convalescence was marked
by a desire to write a book. She lay there in the garden,
wondering what would have happened if she had married the
bearded millionaire eighteen years earlier. How would she
have endured life, supposing she had later met and fallen in
love with Seymour Wynne Finch? In the Gezireh garden,
with that central situation in her mind, she began her second
novel, The Chronicle ofAmbrosine.
She did not, however, get very far with it before the mo-
ment came to leave for home. Clayton and Elinor were once
again to travel back through Italy while the rest of the party
went home by sea. Their arrival at Naples was marked by a
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The Best-Selling Novelist
scene of utter farce ? the sort of third-rate bedroom comedy,
which Elinor, to her, great amusement, seemed fated to un-
dergo periodically.
A liner had been delayed leaving Naples and their reserved
bedrooms had not been vacated. The valet of Mr. Van Allen, a
distinguished American diplomat, who had been friendly with
the Glyns on board, succeeded in finding a bedroom with two
single brass beds in it and it was proposed that all five should
share this for the night. Elinor and Williams were to have
one bed, Mr. Van Allen the other, Clayton was to be on the
sofa and Mr. Van Allen's valet on a chair.
Williams was appalled at the presumption of sharing a bed
with her mistress and slept on the very edge. Clayton and Mr.
Van Allen undressed with difficulty behind a small screen; the
valet did not even unfasten his collar. It was a disturbed
night. The valet sat bolt upright on a small gilt chair, his
mouth wide open, snoring hard, while his master occasionally
shouted at him. At intervals Williams fell out of bed. The
lamplight poured into the room through the Venetian blinds
and every time Elinor sat up in bed to get a breath of air, she
noticed Mr. Van Allen propped on one elbow, staring at her,
murmuring, "God! what a formP Whenever she woke up dur-
ing the night, he was still sitting gazing at her, muttering pas-
sionately to himself*
"Old fool!" said Clayton the next day, who was not amused
by the breakdown in his travelling arrangements. "Bothering
about women when we were all so tired."
Clayton seems to have been in a testy mood all that spring,
for when they reached Rome, Elinor began rhapsodising about
the beauties of art and architecture and he would exclaim, 'Tor
goodness* sake go and get your ebullitions over while I order
lunch."
In Rome they attended a large wedding between an Aus-
trian Prince and an Italian Princess and went on motoring
expeditions in the American Ambassador's new Packard to
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Elinor Glyn
Viterbo, Orvieto, and Villa d'Este. Italian peasants shook their
fists at the strange new machine, with its weirdly garbed oc-
cupants, trundling slowly along. Elinor struck up a firm friend-
ship with Lord Grey, who took her sight-seeing and tried to
fill the gaps in her Roman history which Gibbon had left. A
young attache at the French Embassy fell passionately in love
with her and confided to Clayton during a picnic at Villa
d'Este that it made him furious to see Elinor going about so
much with Lord Grey. Clayton tried to reassure him: "Don't
worry, my dear fellow. He's only one of Elinor's antiques."
While in Rome they went to many large parties in the
palaces of Italian nobles, but she also had a recurrence of
pain and Clayton took her to see Dr. Axel Munthe, at that
time famous only as a physician. She was immensely struck
by his almost hypnotic personality and by his uncanny appear-
ancethe soft, closely cut beard and spectacles so thick that it
was impossible to see his eyes. He was also apparently much
struck by Elinor, and he told her later that he had described
her in his casebook by the single word "siren." He was openly
contemptuous of the smart Italian ladies who flocked to see
him, but he was kind and sympathetic to Elinor and the
treatment he prescribed proved effective.
From Rome they went on to Lucerne. Elinor had never
seen Switzerland before and was quite overcome by the beauty
of the Alps and the Lake of Lucerne itself. It was springtime,
the time of year when she, in common with most of the world,
always felt especially romantic. She longed once again for an
ardent and passionate lover and turned to Clayton in hope and
desperation. But he was no longer able even to conceal his
boredom at his wife's continual ecstasies, and in deep disap-
pointment she turned, as she had done in Venice, to her
diary, where she wrote long, passionate, imaginary love scenes.
In a fur shop near the Hotel National was a magnificent
tiger skin and Elinor was fascinated by it. She stared at it
longingly, and finally she asked Clayton to buy it for her. In
The Best-Selling Novelist
his disgruntled mood he flatly refused; his wife was already
sufficiently tigerish without that. In frustrated silence they
walked back to their hotel through the rain.
There she found a letter from Duckworth enclosing a large
cheque on account of royalties from The Visits of Elizabeth,
which was still selling very well. After lunch she crept out,
cashed the cheque, and bought the tiger skin, paying in her
eagerness about double its proper price. It was, however, a
splendid beast. I have it still; even after fifty years, its hair
is hardly worn.
It was brought up to their sitting-room that afternoon, and
when Clayton came in later, he found his wife reclining on
the floor on the tiger, stroking its fur, quivering with emotion,
staring at him with smouldering, romantic eyes; looking, in
fact, very like the later popular idea of herself.*
It was the last straw! It was bad enough having a siren
wife who wandered round Europe in a starry-eyed dream,
rhapsodising about the beauties of art and nature, with thirty-
seven new dresses, a train of antique admirers, and a maid
who fell out of bed and now a tiger skin, for which a large
special trunk had to be bought the following day.
In July the pain returned and on Axel Munthe's advice
Elinor went to Carlsbad to try a cure there. She liked the
place, and even more she liked the intimate group of English
people who gathered there every summer. Two of them, Sir
Francis Jeune (later Lord St. Helier) and his wife were to
become her most dearly loved friends. Jeune, besides being
a High Court judge, was also a fine classical scholar and he
* In her autobiography Elinor explained that she did this mainly in
order to tease her too, too solid hushand.
zoi
Elinor Glyn
reawoke in Elinor all her Greek enthusiasms and aspirations,
which had now been dormant for some years.
They would take their slow prescribed walks through the
Carlsbad woods, discussing Greek art and Greek philosophy.
From him she was able to fill in some of the gaps in her hap-
hazard education, to evolve a critical standard, and to weld
the isolated items in her already comprehensive knowledge of
classical art and history into a proportioned and homogenous
whole.
Her favourite authors . were Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Lucian. She read the tragedies
but they seem to have meant less to her. One surprising omis-
sion was Homer, for one would have thought that both the
Iliad and the Odyssey, with their noble, fearless heroes and
their beautiful women, enslaving the men's devotion or in-
spiring them to greater deeds of glory, would have been ex-
actly to her taste.
As her health improved with the cure, she took up again
the manuscript of The Chronicle of Ambrosine and she fin-
ished it on August 20. For the next ten days she revised and
expanded it, and a fortnight later she changed its title to The
Reflections of Ambrosine. Sir Francis Jeune read it in manu-
script, liked it very much, and urged her to continue to write
what she wanted to write, irrespective of what her friends or
the critics might think. She followed this advice faithfully; in
fact, she rarely read reviews of her own books and she did
not subscribe to a press-cutting agency until she went to Amer-
ica after the First World War.
Jeune also suggested that she should write more slowly,
taking more pains over her style and her English, her grammar
and spelling, even when she had cast the book in the form of
a diary or letters. Sir Gilbert Parker, the novelist, who was
also in Carlsbad, read the manuscript and gave her the same
advice, as many of her other friends were to do in the years
to come.
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The Best-Selling Novelist
It was, of course, sound and well-tried advice, but one may
wonder now whether It was right for Elinor Glyn. For her
composition was a spontaneous effort of creation. She medi-
tated on an idea for a long time, but when the moment came,
she thought and wrote fast. She was usually prepared to alter
and revise her manuscripts and to accept, though often with
considerable reluctance, the criticisms and suggestions of
others. The more flagrant errors of grammar or spelling she
was content to leave to the printer or her friends to put right.
But it may be thought that her best books are the ones which
she wrote fast; the ones over which she laboured were less
successful.
18.
The Reflections of Ambrosine* was published in December
1902 and, like its predecessor, was very well received both
by the public and by the critics. Now, fifty-two years later,
it is of all her books the most disagreeable to read a heavy-
handed, long-winded sermon on the theme that Norman blood
and the distant shadow of a coronet are worth far more than a
kind heart.
Ambrosine Athelstan, a haughty, blue-blooded girl whose
ancestor died under the guillotine, had been brought up in
proud poverty by her grandmother (a ferocious portrait of Mrs.
Saunders). The landlord of their cottage, a wealthy, amiable
young man called Augustus Gurrage, was much attracted by
Ambrosine. He used phrases like "snug little crib/' "beastly
hard luck/' and "jolly fellows/ 1 and she regarded him as un-
speakably common. The grandmother had a heart attack and
learned that she had not long to live; and she ordered her
granddaughter to accept Augustus' proposal, if and when it
should materialise; otherwise she would starve. It would be
* Published in America under the title The Seventh Commandment.
103
Elinor Glyn
distasteful to Ambrosine, but she would bear it with die forti-
tude and control which she had been trained to show. "The
great honour you will do him by marrying him removes from
you all sense of obligation in receiving the riches he will be-
stow on you.**
Ambrosine could have screamed with horror at the order,
but she obediently accepted Augustus' proposal.
"Darling," he said, and kissed me deliberately. Oh! the
horror of it. I shut my eyes, and in the emotion of the mo-
ment I bent the clasp on the top of the frame of Ambrosine
Eustasie.
Then dragging myself from his embrace and stuttering
with rage:
"How dare you/* I gasped, "how dare you!"
He looked sulky and offended.
"You said you would marry me what is a fellow to un-
derstand?"
"You are to understand that I will not be mauled and
kissed like Hephzibah at the back door," I said with freez-
ing dignity, my head in air.
"Hoity-toity!" (hideous expression!), "what airs you give
yourself! but you look so deuced pretty when you are an-
gry l n I did not melt, but stood on the defensive.
He became supplicating again.
"Ambrosine, I love you don't be cross with me, I won't
make you angry again until you are used to me. Ambrosine,
say you forgive me," He took my hand his hands are hor-
rid to touch, coarse and damp I shuddered involuntarily.
He looked pained at that; a dark red flush came over all
his face; he squared his shoulders and got over the window-
sill again,
"You cold statue," he said spitefully, "I will leave you."
"Go," was all I said; and I did not move an inch.
He stood looking at me for a few moments; then with
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The Best-Selling Novelist
one bound he was in the room again and had seized me in
his arms.
"No, I shan't!" he exclaimed. "You have promised and
I don't care what you say or do, I wiU keep you to your
word/*
Mercifully at that moment Hephzihah opened the door,
and in the confusion her entrance caused him, he let me
go. I simply flew from the room and up to my own; and
there, I am ashamed to say, I cried sat on the floor and
cried like a gutter child. Oh! if Grandmamma could have
seen me, how angry she would have been. I have never
been allowed to cry a relaxation for the lower classes, she
has always told me.
My face burnt all the botdes of lubin in Grandmamma's
cupboard would not wash off the stain of that kiss I felt.
I scrubbed my face until it was crimson.
It is the character of Ambrosine herself that sticks in our
throats. Elinor, naturally, could not have detected the dif-
ference between Elizabeth and Ambrosine for they were both
based on different facets of her own many-sided personality.
It is, however, surprising that the critics should have been
equally unable to notice the difference. "Mrs. Glyn's new
book is very much like the letters of Elizabeth," wrote the
Spectator. "Ambrosine is Elizabeth over again.**
But Ambrosine was a very different person. For one thing
she had no sense of humour.
19.
The book is worth considering for a moment here however,
primarily because of the character of Sir Antony Thornhirst,
the book's hero, for he appears under different names in a
great number of Elinor Glyn's novels. "The 'beau ided of a
105
Elinor Glyn
cynical gentleman, cultured, a viveur, gallant and brave and
gentle/ he was the dream hero not only to his author but to
many maidens of the time. Handsome, well born, rich, elegant,
a fine shot, a good man to hounds but otherwise completely
idle, he was typical of his age. There were dozens of men
like him at every house party, and no one thought it odd that
they should have no interest in life except sport. It is only
since 1939 that we have come to regard wealth and leisure
with suspicion.
Naturally, many young men of the time and the class did
have a profession. They were soldiers, sailors, politicians, bar-
risters, or diplomats, and it is to be noted that Elinor's own
closest friends were drawn from this group. Her "antiques"
were men who had had distinguished careers in their various
professions; the most cherished of her younger friends were
regular soldiers. But, curiously, she never put them into her
books. Her imaginary heroes joined the Army in time of war,
and were sometimes killed gallantly in action, but they were
never in the regular army. Out of her first fourteen novels
the heroes of twelve have no peacetime occupation at alL
They were in theory landowners, and various hints are
dropped through the books about the duties involved in this.
One cannot, however, take this very seriously. None of the
gentlemen are ever prevented from going to a house party or
London or Cowes or abroad by pressure of work on their es-
tates. Two of them, indeed, go off at short notice to Tibet or
Alaska for several years to shoot bears and ease their broken
hearts, without noticeably inconveniencing their tenants. In
The Sequence, Sir Hugh Dremont comes to visit his beloved
Guinevere on the pretext of seeing some new stable drains
that her husband has just put in. This deceives no one, for
though he is a model landowner, he has never been known
to take any interest in stable drainage before. Many land-
owners, including Clayton, took a pride in not understanding
i 06
The Best-Selling No^ 7 el^st
the business of their estates and in leaving everything to the
agent.
It was their position and thek right, as it had been their
fathers', and they accepted it unquestioningly and unques-
tioned. But Elinorand here she was in advance of the gen-
eral spirit of her time did not accept it. Almost every one of
her heroines chides the hero for his self-indulgent idleness
and urges him not to waste all his life and his great opportuni-
ties in shooting. She did not mean that he was to go and
increase his already great wealth in some money-grubbing
middle-class profession, but that he should do something great
for his country. Elinor's heroes usually responded by throwing
themselves vigorously into politics; most of them were already
members of the House of Lords.
In this we may see the pattern, not only of the time, but
of Elinor's own attitude to life and to the role of women In it.
The men were brave, noble, cultured, gentle, and honourable;
but they were "sound asleep to the fine" In life, to their po-
tentialities and responsibilities. It was the duty of women
to awaken them, to inspire them with noble ideals, to urge
them on to great deeds and great causes. In the words of
her favourite quotation from Kingsley's The Heroes:
I am Pallas Athene, and I know the thoughts of all
men's hearts and discern their manhood or their baseness.
And from the soul of clay I turn away; and they are blest,
but not by me. They fatten at ease like sheep in the pas-
ture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall
. . . But to the souls of fire I give more fire, and to those
who are manful I give a might more than man's. These are
the heroes, the sons of the Immortals who are blest, but
not like the souls of clay, for I drive them forth by strange
paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and monsters,
the enemies of gods and men. Through doubt and need and
danger and battle I drive them, and some of them are slain
107
Elinor Glyn
in the flower of youth, no man knows when or where, and
some of them win noble names and a fair and green old
age.
She allotted the role of Pallas Athene to the heroines of
her English novels, and to herself in real life, not seeing the
essential conflict between this and her other role, that of siren.
It was to her no contradiction to seek to be at once a driving-
force and a magnet.
20.
On the eleventh of June, 1903, the King and Queen of
Serbia were assassinated. The whole world was shocked, none
more so than Elinor, for whom regicide was the vilest of all
crimes. The thought of the death of Queen Draga upset her
particularly; it was the first time since Marie Antoinette that
a Queen had died by violence. She brooded long over it, with
results that will be seen later.
She had benefited so much from her cure at Carlsbad the
year before that she determined to return there again this
year and, accordingly, she left London as soon as the season
was over in company with Lady Arthur Paget.
Once again there was pleasant company assembled at the
spa, amongst them Lord Milner, resting after his arduous
and prolonged efforts in South Africa. Elinor and he took to
each other at once and their friendship was cemented by a
common love of Greek writing and philosophy. Once again
she took the measured walks through the pine forests, dis-
cussing the Greek contribution to art and knowledge and,
once again, with enormous benefit to her own critical stand-
ards. She was deeply impressed by Milner. "I always thought/'
she wrote, "that he must be the reincarnation of Socrates."
On the terrace in the evening he would read Plato aloud.
108
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To the end of her life Elinor never ceased to be surprised by
the number of eminent men who chose to express their friend-
ship and pleasure in her company by reading Plato and Aris-
tode aloud to her. It was a curious tribute to one who was so
often regarded, not without reason, as a siren. But it should
be remembered, when we consider her vanities and egotism,
her follies and foibles, her astonishing financial incapacity,
that her closest and most faithful friends were the ablest men
of her generation and they regarded her as being in her own
way their intellectual equal. Two of them, Lord Curzon and
Lord Milner, were never men to suffer fools gladly.
21.
Elinor, Lady Arthur Paget, and Milner returned to Eng-
land together, stopping for a while in Nuremberg to see the
sights. As a farewell present Milner gave Elinor an inscribed
copy of Henley's poems.
Back in Essex she found that Clayton was proposing to
move house once again. He had never been very happy at
Sheering Hall and he thought it was too near the river to
be good for his wife's health. Ever since their return from
Egypt the children had spent most of their time at Lamberts
with their grandmother, who adored them and who was al-
ways at hand to give them the motherly care she had withheld
from her own daughters. Clayton's idea was that he and Eli-
nor should move in to Lamberts, too, thereby reuniting the
whole family under one roof .
Elinor, as always in matters of that sort, acquiesced without
argument. For her Sheering Hall was associated with pain and
illness and she would be glad to leave it. There was room in
the actual cottage itself for Clayton's bedroom and study but
a new annex would have to be built on for Elinor's rooms.
Elinor Glyn
Work on this was begun the same autumn and the house
began to resemble in plan a game of dominoes.
Elinor's annex was joined to the main house by only a glass-
roofed passage. The rooms were for herself alone and she was
able to give her artistic taste full rein in their decoration. Out-
side the annex's appearance was unprepossessing, but inside
she decorated it to resemble Marie Antoinette's rooms in the
Petit Trianon at Versailles. Her drawing-room was filled with
French furniture, with cushions and beautiful stuffs and bro-
cades. She would rearrange it in different colours to suit her
mood or the mood of the book she was writing. Her bedroom
was filled with hundreds of pink silk roses, on the canopy of
her bed, on the bed curtains, on the bed ends, on the covers
and bedspreads; they were sewn indefatigably by Elinor her-
self, with considerable assistance from Margot, Dixie, her
maid, and anyone else who might be induced to lend a hand.
In her bathroom next door she decided, rather surprisingly,
to put in a sunken Roman bath. It is still there, a monument
to the originality and unpredictability of her tastes.
The whole annex she called her Pavilion in the Garden, or,
more usually, her Trianon; and here she could retire when
she wanted peace or privacy.
At this time she was almost always writing novels, diaries,
journals, notebooks, commonplace books, letters, anything
which would provide an outlet for her boundless creative en-
ergy. She did not in any sense regard herself as a professional
author and in her diary she always differentiated between
"working" and "writing." 'Working" to her meant sewing.
She was merely a society lady who wrote books to amuse
herself. Apart from Duckworth and Jeyes, and a slight ac-
quaintance with Sir Gilbert Parker, she knew no one at all
in the world of letters. She was a complete amateur whose
books people happened to enjoy.
She wrote always with a stylo pen, either in her "rose-bed,"
as she termed it, or curled up on a sofa with a lot of cushions.
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Tine Best-Selling Novelist
In the summer she liked to write out in die garden. In the
middle of the lawn there was a large old apple tree. She had a
seat and a platform built up in the tree, and there, with rugs,
cushions, and her block, she would retire on a summer after-
noon and be undisturbed by the vicar, if he should call. An-
other hide-out was in the ha-ha, where the trees met overhead,
forming a cool green tunnel. Here she had a bench put and
commanded Monk the gardener to grow flowers all about so
that she might see them as she wrote. He, however, said there
was too little sun for flowers and he felt, in any event, dis-
inclined to co-operate with such idiosyncrasies.
When her novels were finished, she would take them up
herself to Gerald Duckworth at 3 Henrietta Street, Covent
Garden. She was by this time on extremely cordial terms with
her publisher and he encouraged her to read her books, or
large portions of them, aloud to him. Her books, she main-
tained, were intended to be read aloud and lost their proper
effect if they were read in silence. She herself was extremely
proud of her reading voice; she would read slowly, with long
dramatic pauses, and Duckworth would meekly put aside all
other work and listen, while Margot often waited patiently
in the hansom outside.
When Duckworth had had enough, he would take her to
lunch at the Savoy, where they would eat steak, fried on-
ions, and boiled lettuce, before returning to the office and a
further instalment of the work. Sometimes he would come
down to Lamberts for a Saturday-to-Monday (it was never
called a week end in that society) and would retire with
her to the house in the tree or the Trianon to hear the new
book. He was, it will be seen, prepared to give a great deal
of time and, trouble to the books of Elinor Glyn not only be-
cause they were proving extremely profitable, but because he
was also personally fascinated by their author.
Elinor Glyn
22,
Elinor's next novel, The Vicissitudes of Evangeline* was
published in March 1906. After the sour tone of her last two
books, it is a relief to find that in the new one she is back
again in her happiest mood. Evangeline herself is the most
enchanting of all her heroines, even including Elizabeth a
merry girl of twenty with red hair, green eyes, and long black
eyelashes, from under which she gazes at young men to see
what the effect will be. It is invariably devastating.
The book starts splendidly:
I wonder so much if it is amusing to be an adventuress,
because that is evidendy what I shall become now. I read
in a book all about it; it is being nice-looking and having
nothing to live on, and getting a pleasant time out of life
and I intend to do that! I have certainly nothing to live on,
for one cannot count 300. a year and I am extremely
pretty, and I know it quite well, and how to do my hair,
and put on my hats, and those things, so, of course, I am
an adventuress!
Unfortunately for her chosen career, she has a warm heart
and rapidly falls in love with Lord Robert Vavasour. "He has
great big sleepy eyes of blue and rather a plaintive expression
and a little fairish moustache turned up at the corners and the
nicest mouth one ever saw. And when you see him moving
and the back of his head, it makes you think all the time of
a beautifully groomed thoroughbred horse/' She is persuaded
not to go and stay at Claridge's all alone, (the only hotel she
knows of) as she at first intended, but to visit some relatives
of hers for a while until something more permanent can be
arranged.
* Published in America under the title Red Hair.
112.
The Best-Selling Novelist
The relatives are rather shocked by her.
Lady Katherine and Mrs. Mackintosh came into my room
on the way up to bed. She Lady Katherine wanted to
show Mary how beautifully they had had it done up, it
used to be hers before she married. They looked all round
at the dead-daffodil-coloured cretonne and things, and at
last I could see their eyes often straying to my nightgown
laid out on a chair beside the fire.
"I do not think such a nightgown is suitable for a girl,**
said Lady Katherine in a grave duty voice.
"Ohf but I am very strong," I said. "I never catch cold/'
Mary Mackintosh held it up with a face of stern disap-
proval. Of course it has short sleeves ruffled with Valen-
ciennes and is fine linen cambric nicely embroidered. Mrs.
Carruthers was always very particular about them and chose
them herself at Doucet's. She said one never could know
when places might catch on fire.
"Evangeline, dear, you are very young," Mary said, "but
I consider this garment not in any way fit for a girl or for
any good woman either. Mother, I hope my sisters have not
seen it!"
I looked so puzzled.
She examined the stuff, one could see the chair through
it beyond.
"What would Alexander say if I were to wear such a
thing!"
The thought seemed to suffocate them both.
"Of course it would be too tight for you/' I said humbly,
"but otherwise it is a very good pattern and does not tear
when one puts up one's arms/*
"I hope, Evangeline, you have sufficient sense to under-
stand now for yourself that such a a garment is not at
all seemly/ 1
"But why not, dear Lady Katherine?'* I said. "You don't
know how becoming it is/'
Elinor Glyn
"Becoming!" almost screamed Mary Mackintosh. "But no
nice woman wants things to look becoming in bed!"
The whole matter appeared so painful to them I covered
up the offending nightie with my dressing-gown and
coughed. It made a break and they went away, saying good-
night frigidly.
And now I am alone. But I do wonder why it is wrong
to look pretty in bed considering nobody sees one too!
Evangeline is, however, befriended by a Lady Verningham,
who loves her ingenuousness, the only snag being the discov-
ery that Lord Robert is Lady Ver's "special friend/' which, of
course, puts him out of Evangeline's reach for ever. Lord Rob-
ert encounters Evangeline sobbing on a bench in a fog in
Hyde Park (she cannot help such a vulgar exhibition since
one of her grandmothers was, regrettably, a housemaid, and
breeding will tell). There is a charming love scene; she ex-
plains why she has been freezing him off and he tries to
reassure her. But there is a further difficulty. He is heir to his
half brother's dukedom and fortune and the Duke would never
tolerate Evangeline, because of the housemaid's blood. Evange-
line, however, takes the bull by the horns and succeeds in
persuading the Duke that she will herself, in due course, make
an admirable Duchess. All ends happily, Evangeline snug-
gled against her Robert, Robert bewitched by the amount of
red hair he has suddenly acquired, and only Evangeline's
maid a little sad that she will not be able to embroider coronets
on her mistress's lingerie just yet.
It is a light, frothy souffle of a book, to be read at a sitting
and not be taken too seriously .
It is both a beguiling entertainment and another self-portrait
of the authoress in her gay, mischievous mood. Indeed, the
miniature of Evangeline which forms the frontispiece to the
book was a portrait of Elinor, painted by Miss May Dixon,
Dixie's sister, to Elinor's exact specification of expression. The
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novel was dedicated, affectionately and triumphantly, a to the
women with red hair."
23.
The Vicissitudes of Evangeline marks the definite end of
the first stage of Elinor Glyn's literary progress. The Sphere
wrote at this time: "She is, at this moment, our leading novel-
ist of modern manners/' She was still very far from heing the
Queen of Passion or the High Priestess of Romance, as she
was later termed, and for which she is now chiefly remem-
bered.
But she was already moving in that direction. Robert's and
Evangeline's love scene was handled with more warmth and
tenderness than anything in her first two novels. In her next
book, Beyond the Rocks, she took a long stride forward to-
wards romance. Her cynical vein, for the moment, had worked
itself out; her innate romanticism was beginning to take hold.
One may detect the change in the new form of title and in the
fact that she took the precaution of calling her new book *A
Love-Story/' It was the first time, too, that she wrote in the
third person.
She started with the same situation she had already ex-
plored in The Reflections of Ambrosine, the situation which
was so close to her own predicament, and which held at this
time a special fascination for her. Theodora Fitzgerald, blonde,
blue-eyed, and sweet, marries a rich Australian to save her
charming ne'er-do-well aristocratic father's broken fortunes.
But the characters this time are entirely different. Josiah
Brown, the Australian, though vulgar, is elderly and ailing
and Theodora loyally does her best to be a good wife to him.
However, she meets Lord Bracondale, a handsome, well-bred,
elegant man of her own class, and falls in love with him.
They have many pleasant but innocent meetings at Versailles,
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Elinor Glyn
where the first half of the book takes place. Later the scene
moves to the familiar house parties of England. Finally The-
odora decides that she and Lord Bracondale must part. Hap-
pening to be alone at a house party for the moment, she writes
a long, passionate letter of farewell to him and a short note
to Josiah about her return to London. Her enemy, Morella
Winmarlelgh, who is jealous of Theodora's success with Lord
Bracondale, changes the letters over and Josiah learns that
his wife's affections belong elsewhere. He behaves with great
dignity at this moment; Lord Bracondale goes off to Alaska
to shoot bears, consoled with a bust of Psyche, and Josiah
slowly dies of a broken heart.
Beyond the Rocks is a sentimental little story, too slight
in plot for its length, but it has some charming moments, es-
pecially the love scenes and the day in the woods at Ver-
sailles when Lord Bracondale tells Theodora a fairy story. The
effect on his worldly, sophisticated attitude of the girl's in-
nocence and purity is skilfully touched in; the social back-
ground, the balls and house parties, are drawn with greater
mordancy than usual, almost with venom; there is hardly a
character who is not immoral or spiteful or vindictive, and
there is a terrible picture of everyone closing ranks to exclude
and humiliate Josiah and Theodora.
But despite this Beyond the Rocks is a minor work of Eli-
nor's, remarkable mainly because it provides the bridge be-
tween her comedies of manners and her romances. There is
none of the wit of Elizabeth or Evangeline but, equally, there
is none of the sour self-pity of Ambrosine.
24.
Seymour Wynne Finch's place in Elinor's affections had by
now been taken by Lord Alastair Innes-Ker, Royal Horse
Guards. He, too, was charming, elegant, and amusing, a per-
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feet specimen of the breed. He was often at Lamberts, and
both Clayton and Mrs, Kennedy were much attached to him.
Margot was due to go to school in France that autumn and
the whole family, including Innes-Ker, went to Paris that
September for a holiday and to see Margot installed (together
with a copy of The Reflections of Ambrosine, which she was
enjoined to keep in a locked box beside her bed, a circum-
stance which the school regarded with the gravest suspicion).
Before the family returned, Elinor took Innes-Ker out to Ver-
sailles. She made him walk with his eyes shut across the great
terrace, so that his first sight should be the full facade of the
palace stretched out in its splendour. When they reached the
top of the steps, above the tapis vert, she said, "Now! Turn
round and look.*
His immediate comment "Gosh! what a lot of lightning
conductors!" deflated her completely. Later she would tell the
story as an illustration of how completely the young gentle-
men of her generation were sound asleep to die fine things
of life. But in fact it seems more likely that he was teasing
her for her dramatic gesture.
Even after this episode Elinor remained very fond of him.
When he went away to India the following year, he gave
her a copy of Laurence Hope's Love Lyrics from India as a
farewell present, and Clayton, a typical Edwardian husband,
told his children to be specially kind to their mother.
25.
In August 1906 the Glyns went to stay with Lord Kintore
near Glamis. The focus of this particular house party was
fishing, and Elinor spent one uncongenial day sitting beside
the river in the pouring rain, watching the male members of
the party failing to catch salmon. At teatime they abandoned
the sport and went home to bath and change. After tea they
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Elinor Glyn
sat round the fire, Elinor idly watching a young man, a mem-
ber of the party, lying on the hearthrug in his velvet smoking
suit, playing with his rough-haired terrier. He was yet an-
other perfect specimen of the breed, well born, educated at
Eton and Oxford, handsome, virile, a sportsman, "intellectu-
ally and emotionally sound asleep/' Elinor wondered vaguely
what would happen if he were suddenly awakened to life, if
he were to meet and fall in love with some intense, passionate
woman, someone like Sarah Bernhardt in Theodora.
A picture seemed suddenly to form inside Elinor's brain.
A number of unconnected impressions and longings of the
past dropped into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle her im-
aginary love scenes in Lucerne and Venice, the murder of
Queen Draga of Serbia, the tiger skin, the handsome boy
lying on the hearthrug, Andreas and Theodora, Lancelot and
Guinevere, Tristram and Yseult.
Someone suggested that Elinor, the storyteller, should
amuse them as they sat there; and she complied by telling
them the story of her new novel, which had been born that
moment in her brain. It was a very different affair from the
stories of country-house philandering which had previously
occupied her.
The moment the party dispersed she hurried back to Essex
and there, in her Trianon, she began to write the novel which
was to send her fame ringing round the world. Her inspiration
was white-hot. "It seemed as though some spirit from beyond
was guiding me/* she wrote in a later article, "I wrote breath-
lessly for hours and hours on end, hardly conscious at times
of the words which were pouring into my brain, until I carne
to read over the chapters and found that what I had written
was exactly what I had hoped and meant to say. The original
manuscript shows this, it flows on with hardly a correction or
alteration .*
She felt intensely as she wrote; often she was in tears.
The two warring elements inside her had clashed and ex-
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ploded; her ardent romanticism had burst Into flame, break-
ing through the barriers of self-control and repression that
Mrs. Saunders and Elinor herself had so carefully built up
in the earlier years. All the time she was writing her new
book she lived as one who had seen a vision. She saw again
Lucerne In springtime, the palazzi of Venice by moonlight,
Sarah Bernhardt caressing her lover. In a little over six weeks
the book was finished.
26.
The story of Three Weeks is simple and dramatic. Paul
Verdayne, the handsome and athletic son of Sir Charles and
Lady Henrietta Verdayne, broke his collarbone In a hunting-
fall and was looked after by Isabella Waring, the parson's
daughter, who washed his dog Pike and read the sporting
papers aloud to him. She had large red hands and was fond
of hockey and running with the hounds. One regrettable
afternoon Paul kissed her large, pale lips just as his mother
came into the room.
It was a most unfortunate entanglement. As soon as he
recovered he was sent abroad so that he might forget Isabella.
Paul went grumpily sight-seeing in France, decided Versailles
and Fontainebleau were "beastly rot," and longed to break
his promise and write passionate love letters to Isabella, from
whom he was being so cruelly parted. In a furious temper he
reached Lucerne in the pouring rain. He cursed the waiters
for the smoking fire and resented the elaborate attention
which the hotel staff were bestowing on a lady at the next
table. He drank four glasses of port and stared at her with
hostility.
He fancied he smelt tuberoses and perceived a knot of
them tucked into the front of her bodice.
Elinor Glyn
A woman to order dinner for herself beforehand, to have
special wine and special roses and special attention too!
It was simply disgusting!
An elderly dignified servant in black livery stood behind
her chair. She herself was all in black and her hat cast a
shadow over her eyes. Her face was white, he saw that
plainly enough, stardingly white, like a magnolia bloom,
and contained no marked features. Yes he was wrong, she
had certainly a mouth worth looking at again. It was so red.
Not large and pink and laughingly open like Isabella's, but
straight and chiselled and red, red, red.
The white lids with their heavy lashes began to irritate
him. What colour could they be? those eyes underneath.
They were not very large, that was certain probably black
too, like her hair.
He could not say why he felt she must be well over
thirty. There was not a line or wrinkle on her face not
even the slightest nip in under the chin, or the telltale
strain beside the ears.
After dinner he sat on the terrace and smoked a cigar.
A vague feeling of oppression and coming calamity
passed through him. The woman and her sinuous and
sensous black shape filled the space of his mental vision.
Black hair, black hat, black dress and of course black eyes.
Ah! if he could only know their colour really.
He started violently, and brusquely turned and looked
up. Almost indistinguishable in the deep shadow he saw
the woman's face. And looking down into his were a pair
of eyes a pair of eyes. They seemed to draw, him draw
something out of him intoxicate him paralyse him. Were
they black, or blue, or grey, or green? He did not know, he
could not think only they were eyes eyes eyes.
The lady did not come into lunch the next day but he
encountered her unexpectedly that afternoon on the Burgen-
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stock; almost immediately she disappeared again. He returned
to his hotel, baffled, and found a letter from Isabella all about
his horse and his dog, which thrilled him less than it ought
to have done. The lady was again at the next table at dinner,
and afterwards, as he sat on the terrace, he saw her go across
to a little gate, a private entrance to her suite. He waited for
a while, and just as he despaired of seeing her again, there
above the ivy he saw her face looking down upon him.
He jumped on to the bench. Now he was almost level
with her face. Was he dreaming or did she whisper some-
thing? He stretched out his arms to her in the darkness,
pulling himself by the ivy nearer still. And this time there
was no mistake:
"Come, Paul/ she said.
The apartments of the lady (she is anonymous through-
out) were presumably the best suite of the hotel, but they had
been transformed by her. There were masses of flowers, roses,
tuberoses, lilies of the valley. The lights were low and a great
couch covered with a tiger skin filled one side of the room.
It was piled with pillows of all shades of rich purple velvet
and silk. She reclined on it and teased Paul, in a voice which
was like rich music, about why he was so upset and drank so
much port.
Suddenly she sprang up, one of those fine movements
of hers full of catlike grace.
"Paul," she said, "listen/ and she spoke rather fast. "You
are so young, so young and I shall hurt you probably .
Won't you go now while there is yet time? Anywhere away
from me/
She put her hand on his arm and looked up into his
eyes. And there were tears in hers. And now he saw they
were grey.
He was moved as never yet in all his life.
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Elinor Glyn
"I will not!" he said. "I may be young, but tonight I
know I want to live! And I will chance the hurt because
I know that only you can teach me just how "
Then his voice broke and he bent down and covered
her hand with kisses.
The next day they went on the lake together and talked
of many things, and in the evening he forced himself to write
a farewell letter to Isabella. As he walked through the streets
of Lucerne, he saw a tiger skin in a shop window and he
bought it for the lady. That evening he was again admitted
to her sitting-room.
A bright fire burnt in the grate, and some palest orchid-
mauve silk curtains were drawn in the lady's room when
Paul entered from the terrace. And loveliest sight of all, in
front of the fire, stretched at full length, was his tiger
and on him also at full length reclined the lady, garbed
in some strange clinging garment of heavy purple crepe,
one white arm resting on the beast's head, her back sup-
ported by a pile of the velvet cushions, and a heap of rarely
bound books at her side, while between her red lips was a
rose not redder than they an almost scarlet rose.
Paul bounded forward but she raised one hand to stop
him.
"No! you must not come near me, Paul. I am not safe
today. Not yet. You bought me the tiger, Paul! Ah! that
was good! My beautiful tiger!" And she gave a movement
like a snake, of joy to feel its fur under her, while she
stretched out her hands and caressed the creature where
the hair turned white and black at the side and was deep
and soft,
"Beautiful one! beautiful one!" she purred. "And I know
all your feelings and your passions, and now I have got
your skin for the joy of my skin!" And she quivered again
with the movements of a snake.
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"Qhl Good God! If you knew how you are making me
feel lying there wasting your caresses upon it.*
She tossed the scarlet rose over to him it hit his mouth.
"I am not wasting them," she said, the Innocence of a
kitten in her strange eyes. "Indeed not, Paul! He was my
lover in another life perhaps who knows?"
"But I," said Paul, who was now quite mad ? "want to
be your lover in this!**
Then he gasped at his own boldness.
With a lightning movement she lay on her face, raised
her elbows on the tiger's head, and supported her hands.
"Paul what do you know of lovers or love?" she said.
"My baby Paul!"
A rage of passion was racing through Paul, his incoherent
thoughts were that he did not want to talk only to kiss
her to devour her to strangle her with love if necessary.
He bit the rose.
She talked to him about love, which must be paid for in
tears and cold steel and blood. Then she read to him Apuleius
in Latin, and finally she sang to him to a guitar.
"You mustn't be teased. My God! it is you who are mad-
dening me!" he cried, his voice hoarse with emotion. "Da
you think I am inanimate like that tiger there? I am not,
I tell you!" and he seized her in his arms, raining kisses
upon her which, whatever they lacked in subtlety, made
up for in their passion and strength. "Some day some man
will kill you, I suppose, but I shall be your lover first!"
The lady gasped. She looked up at him in bewildered
surprise, as a child might do who sets light to a whole box
of matches in play. What a naughty, naughty toy to burn
so quickly for such a little strike!
But Paul's young strong arms, held her close, she could
not struggle or move. Then she laughed a laugh of pure
glad joy.
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Elinor Glyn
"Beautiful savage Paul/' she whispered. "Do you love
me? Tell me that/'
"Love you!" he said. "Good God! Love you! Madly, and
you know it, darling Queen/*
"Then/' said the lady in a voice in which all the caresses
of the world seemed melted, "then, sweet Paul, I shall
teach you many things, and among them I shall teach you
how~to-LIVE." '
They went to stay across the lake on the Burgenstock,
where they could be alone. Everything was discreetly ar-
ranged by the lady's servants, Dmitry and Anna. There their
honeymoon began.
"Oh! darling, do not speak of it/' cried Paul. "I wor-
ship, I adore youyou are just my life, my darling one, my
Queen!"
"Sweet Paul!" she whispered, "oh! so good, so good is
love, keep me loving you, my beautiful one keep my desire
long to be your Queen."
And after this they melted into one another's arms, and
cooed and kissed, and they were foolish and incoherent,
as lovers always are and have been from the beginning of
time.
The spirit of two natures vibrating as One.
At the first glow of dawn, he awoke, a strange sensation
almost of strangling and suffocation upon him. There bend-
ing over, framed in a mist of blue-black waves, he saw
his lady's face. Its milky whiteness lit by her strange eyes
green as cat's they seemed and blazing with the fiercest
passion of love while twisted round his throat he felt a
great strand of her splendid hair. The wildest thrill that yet
his life had known then came to Paul, he clasped her in
his arms with a frenzy of mad, passionate joy.
Her voice grew faint and far away, like the echo of some
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exquisite song and the lids closed over Paul's blue eyes and
he slept.
The light of all the love in the world seemed to flood
the lady's face. She bent over and Idssed him, and smoothed
his cheek with her velvet cheek, she moved so that his
curly lashes might touch her bare neck, and at last she
slipped from under him and laid his head gently down upon
the pillows.
Then a madness of tender caressing seized her. She
purred as a tiger might have done, while she undulated
like a snake. She touched him with her finger-tips, she
kissed his throat, his wrists, the palms of his hands, his
eyelids, his hair. Strange subtle kisses, unlike the kisses of
women. And often, between her purrings she murmured
love-words in some fierce language of her own, brushing his
ears and his eyes with her lips the while.
And through it all Paul slept on, the Eastern perfume
in the air drugging his senses.
Paul had now gathered that his lady was a Balkan Queen
and he was considerably disturbed when Dmitry asked him
to carry a pistol the whole time. Gradually he learned about
her husband.
Then at last she looked up at him and her eyes were
black with hate. "I would like to kill one man on earth a
useless vicious weakling, too feeble to deserve a fine death
a rotting carrion spoiling God's world and encumbering
my path! I would kill him if I could."
"Oh! my Queen, my Queen!" said Paul, distressed.
"Don't say such things *
Later they moved on to Venice, the lady, Dmitry, and Anna
going on ahead to make the arrangements. Here their honey-
moon reached a new phase.
Her expression too was altered. A new mood shone there;
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Elinor Glyn
and later, when Paul learnt the history of the wonderful
women of cinquecento Venice, it seemed as if something
of their exotic voluptuous spirit now lived in her.
This was a new Queen to worship and die for, if nec-
essary. He dimly felt, even in these first moments, that
here he would drink still deeper of the mysteries of life and
passionate love.
'"Beztzenny-moi," she said, "my priceless one. Ah! I must
know it is really you, my Paul!"
They were sitting on the tiger by now, and she undulated
round and all over him, feeling his coat, and his face, and
his hair, as a blind person might, till at last it seemed as if
she were twined about him like a serpent. And every now
and then a narrow shaft of glorious dying sunlight would
strike the great emerald on her forehead, and give forth
sparks of vivid green which appeared reflected again in her
eyes. Paul's head swam, he felt intoxicated with bliss.
"This Venice is for you and me, my Paul/' she said.
'The air is full of love and dreams; we have left the slender
moon behind us in Switzerland; here she is nearing her
full the spring of our love has passed. We will drink deep
of the cup of delight, my lover, and bathe in the wine of
the gods. We shall feast on the tongues of nightingales and
rest on couches of flowers. And thou shalt cede me thy
soul, beloved, and I will give thee mine "
But the rest was lost in the meeting of their lips.
As they travelled about Venice in their gondola, they be-
came aware that they were being followed, and presently an-
other of the lady's servants, Vasili, arrived to say that the
Imperatorskoye was in danger.
"Shall I kill the miserable spy? Vasili would do it this
night," she hissed between her clenched teeth. "But to what
end?"
A tumult of emotion was dominating Paul. He under-
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stood now that danger was near he guessed they were be-
ing watched but by whom? By the orders of her
husband? Ah! that thought drove him mad with rage her
husband! She his own the mate of his soul of his body
and soul was the legal belonging of somebody else! Some
vile man whom she hated and loathed, a "rotting carrion
spoiling God's earth."
"Queen,* he said, his voice hoarse with passion and pain,
"let us leave Venice let me take you away to some far land
of peace. You would always be the empress of my soul/*
She flung herself on the tiger couch and writhed there
for some moments, burying her clenched fists deep in the
creature's fur.
"Moi-LiotiKwyi my beloved!" she whispered in an-
guish. "If we were lesser persons yes, we could hide and
live for a time in a tent under the stars but we are not.
They would track me and trap us, and sooner or later there
would be the end, the ignominious end of ordinary dis-
grace n Then she clasped him closer, and whispered
right in his ear in her wonderful voice, now trembling with
love.
"Sweetheart listen! Beyond all of this there is that
thought, that hope ever in my heart that one day a son of
ours shall worthily fill a throne, so that we must not think
of ourselves, my Paul, of the Thou and the I, and the Now,
beloved. A throne which is filled most ignobly at present,
and only filled at all through niy birth and my family's in-
fluence. Think not I want to plant a cheat. No! I have a
right to find an heir as I will, a splendid heir who shall
redeem the land the spirit of our two selves given being
by love, and endowed by the gods. Ah! think of it, Paul.
Dream of this joy and pride. It must quiet this wild useless
rage against fate.**
All that was noble and great in his nature seemed rising
up in one glad triumph-song.
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Elinor Glyn
A son of his and hers to fill a throne! Ah! God, if that
were so!
The following night they celebrated the feast of the full
moon.
The lady was the most radiant vision he had yet seen.
Her garment was pale green gauze. It seemed to cling in
misty folds round her exquisite shape, it was clasped with
pearls. A diadem confined her glorious hair which de-
scended in the two long strands twisted with chains of
emeralds and diamonds. Her whole personality seemed
breathing magnificence and panther-like grace. And her
eyes glowed with passion, and mystery, and force.
Paul knelt like a courtier and kissed her hand. Then he
led her to their feast.
The whole place had been converted into a bower of
roses. The walls were entirely covered with them. A great
couch of deepest red ones was at one side. From the room
chains of roses hung, concealing small lights. The dinner
was laid on a table in the centre, and the table was covered
with the tuberoses and stephanotis, surrounding the cupid
fountain of perfume. The scent of all these flowers! And
the warm summer night! No wonder Paul's senses quivered
with exaltation. No wonder his head swam.
Throughout the repast his lady bewildered him with her
wild fascination. Never before had she seemed to collect
all her moods into one subtle whole, cemented together by
passionate love. It truly was a night of the gods and the
exaltation of Paul's spirit reached its zenith.
"My darling one," the lady whispered in his ear, as she
lay in his arms on the couch of roses, crushed deep and
half-buried in their velvet leaves. "This is our souls' wed-
ding. In life and in death they can never part more."
In the early morning, before Paul was awake, the lady,
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shaken with fierce, dry sobs, tiptoed away, wrote Mm a fare-
well note, and was gone. The three weeks were over.
When Paul awoke and found that she had indeed gone, he
collapsed and was unconscious with fever for days. In his
delirium the whole story came out and his father, who had
been sent for, learned everything. Paul crawled hack to life
at last, to his beloved Queen's last letter and her last gift to
him, a gold collar for his dog, over which he cried like a child.
His father took him back to England, but he was a changed
man. He studied earnestly in preparation for a political career
and all the time he watched the calendar in gnawing anxiety.
At long last the letter came, containing a tiny curl of
golden hair, and written on the paper: "Beloved, he is strong
and fair, thy son."
Meanwhile his father and a friend, Captain Grigsby, man-
aged to discover who the lady was, Paul, by arrangement, met
Dmitry again in Paris. The lady would be at her villa on the
Bosphorus later that year, and if the Excellency could come,
he might be able to see her again. The cry of a sea gull three
times would show him it was safe to land.
He set off at once with his father in Grigsby's yacht,
landed, but was promptly sent away by Dmitry, who told him
there was danger. He must return in two days* time, if the
flag was flying. Two days later he returned, desperately anx-
ious; but the flag was not flying. Later, in a letter from Dmitry,
he learned the awful truth. The King had entered suddenly
and in a drunken rage had stabbed the Queen to death, say-
ing, "It will be a joy to kill thee," only to have his own life
throttled out a moment later by Vasili.
Paul, almost mad with grief, travelled the world for five
years, searching in vain for consolation. At last he realised
that he was wasting his life; he mastered his sorrow and
longed to see his little son. He wrote to the Regent, who
replied, inviting him to be present at the celebration for the
little King s fifth birthday.
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Elinor Glyn
It was in a shaft of sunlight from die great altar window
that Paul first saw his son. The tiny upright figure in its
blue velvet suit, heavily trimmed with sable, standing there
proudly. A fair, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired English child.
And as he gazed at his little son, while the organ pealed
out a Te Deum and the sweet choir sang, a great tender-
ness filled Paul's heart, and melted for ever the icebergs of
grief and pain.
And as he knelt there, watching their child, it seemed
as if his darling stood there beside him, telling him that
he must look up and thank God too for in her spirit's con-
stant love, and this glory of their son, he would one day
find rest and consolation.
27.
We cannot now quite take Three Weeks in the spirit in
which it was written. Its voluptuousness, its exotic setting, its
full-blooded passion, its uninhibited idiom, its use of the sec-
ond person singular, its exclamation marks are no longer fash-
ionable. But the intensity of the inspiration still comes
through. Elinor was convinced when she was writing it that
she was creating one of the great love stories of the world,
which would be remembered long after she was forgotten.
And it is the love scenes which are the glory of Three Weeks.
Oh! the divine joy of that night!
"Paul," she said, "out of the whole world to-night, there
are only you and I who matter, sweetheart. Is it not so?
Remember, Paul/' she whispered when, passion madden-
ing him, he clasped her violently in his arms "remember
whatever happens whatever comes for now, tonight,
there is no other reason in all of this but just I love you
I love you, Paul!"
130
The Best-Selling Novelist
"My Queen, my Queen!" said Paul, his voice hoarse in
his throat.
And the wind played in softest zephyrs, and the stars
blazed in the sky, mirroring themselves in the blue lake
below.
Such was their wedding night.
Oh! glorious youth! and still more glorious love!
28.
Three Weeks was published in June 1907 and fell like a
thunderbolt on the unsuspecting world.
"An exceedingly difficult work to know how to review,*
wrote the Onlooker rather helplessly. "It is perhaps better
written than anything Mrs. Glyn has done before. It is em-
phatically not your les jeunes filles"
The Bystander put up a cautious umbrella against the storm
to come:
Mrs. Glyn has chosen to write of a passionate and beauti-
ful love episode between persons who have not previously
been married. That is her offence and for it, of course, she
must suffer the abuse of those most trustworthy of Mrs.
Grundy's spokesmen the daily reviewers.
The Sunlay Times, almost alone, came out on Elinor s
side.
With the exception of the Times Literary Supplement,
which maintained a pained silence, all the other critics were
unremittingly hostile.
Elinor Glyn
29.
Critical response seemed to have little effect on the public,
however, for as fast as Duckworth reprinted, he was barely
able to keep pace with the demand. It is not possible now to
give an exact figure of the total sales of Three Weeks to date.
In 1916, nine years after publication, and immediately before
the production of the first cheap edition, the sale in Great
Britain, the British Empire, and America was just short of two
million copies. The book was translated soon after publication
into virtually every European language, the sales being par-
ticularly heavy in Scandinavia, Spain, and South America.
We must also include the flood of cheap editions which began
in 1916; in Great Britain no less than three separate pub-
lishers brought them out. In 1933 an article in Everybody's
stated, on information supplied by the author, that the total
world sales were then five million copies. If we can accept this
figure and it is just possible then Three Weeks must take
its place among the Himalaya of world best sellers.
Three Weeks brought in, as was to be expected, a very-
large quantity of fan mail from all parts of the globe. This
had been coming in a quiet stream ever since The Visits of
Elizabeth; now it burst into full flood. Kings and Queens sent
messages; Australian bushmen, Bishops, Klondike miners, Ro-
man Catholic priests all wrote letters of appreciation. There
were also a large number of abusive letters, but Elinor noticed
that these only came from English-speaking countries, just as
it was only British and American reviewers who did not ad-
mire the book unreservedly.
A more substantial form of fan mail arrived over the years
in the form of tiger skins, presented by various admirers,
known and unknown, including one each from Lord Curzon
and Lord Milner. It was at this time, too, that the rhyme,
The Best-Setting Novelist
which caused Elinor much amusement, first appeared; and
which helped to contribute to her reputation as a scarlet
woman.
Would you like to sin
with Elinor Glyn
on a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
to err
with her
on some other fur?
30.
The hook sold sensationally fast, hut even faster went its
reputation for immorality. Lady Warwick had read the man-
uscript and sternly advised Elinor not to publish it, as, if she
did, none of her friends would ever speak to her again. It
was bad enough for a society lady to write novels at aH, with-
out perpetrating books of that sort.
Despite her warning Elinor was surprised and bewildered
by the extent of the hostility engendered by Three Weeks.
Among her friends in society she was abused and reviled,
called an immoral woman and a glorifier of adultery. This
hurt her extremely and she felt that such criticism was, from
that source, pure hypocrisy; the members of Edwardian soci-
ety, with their lovers, mistresses, and illegitimate children,
were, she felt, the very last people to cast stones.
Even Professor Thomas Lindsay, the Principal of Glasgow
College, coming to spend the week end at Lamberts, scolded
her for having produced such an offensive book. She asked
him whether he had himself read it, and on learning that he
had not, she gave him a copy and sent him up to his bedroom
to read it. He did not come down to lunch, and she found
Elinor Glyn
him later that afternoon In tears, sobbing that he had grossly
misjudged it. Elinor was much gratified.
She gradually came to believe that those who were most
shocked by the book were those who had not themselves read
it; or if they had read it, had missed the point, Paul's regenera-
tion, by not bothering to read on after the lady's death. This
view was strengthened by a further episode. Three Weeks
had been banned at Eton, as at most schools, and the Head-
master, Dr. Edward Lyttelton, wrote to her (beginning,
formally, "Madam") to inform her of this. She replied spir-
itedly, challenging him whether he had himself read it, to
which he was obliged to reply that he had not She sent him
a copy, and later he wrote to her again (beginning "My dear
Mrs. Glyn") to say that he had enjoyed the book and had
been misled by its reputation. The ban, however, must stay.
In her distress and bewilderment at the reception of the
book into which she had poured her whole heart, she was
much comforted by the fact that those whose opinion she
really valued saw the point of the story and appreciated it.
The Duchess of Abercorn and Lady Arthur Paget both wrote
charming letters, and she specially treasured the letter that
Lord Milner wrote her.
Three months after its English publication the book was
published in America, and there it raised the same storm. It
was banned altogether in one state. It was not allowed to be
sent through the post. It was boycotted in Boston and banned
in most schools and libraries. Though it found many cham-
pions, American high society was in general shocked by it.
These strong feelings lasted for many years. Twenty-five
years later, in 1932, a Mickey Mouse cartoon was banned al-
together in the state of Ohio because it showed at one mo-
ment, a cow, reclining in a field, reading Three Weeks.
A consequence of the book's sales and fame was, not un-
expectedly, the appearance of several works purporting to be
by her and trying to pirate her idea. One of these, called
Hie Best-Selling Novelist
One Day, which Elinor regarded as a travesty of -her own
inspiration, achieved a certain success, siphoning off some of
her own sales in the process and damaging her own literary
reputation. In 1915 a film appeared called Pimples Three
Weeks (without the option). It was a burlesque of such cru-
dity that Elinor brought an action for infringement of copy-
right against the film company.* Mr. Justice Younger, in the
course of his judgement, said:
But there is another, and from the public point of view,
a much more important aspect of this case which in my
judgment entirely debars the plaintiff from obtaining re-
lief in this court. The episode described in the plaintiff's
novel, which she alleges has been pirated by the defend-
ants, is in my opinion, grossly immoral both in its essence,
its treatment and its tendency. Stripped of its trappings
which are mere accident, it is nothing more nor less than
a sensuai ? adulterous intrigue. And it is not as if the plain-
tiff in her account of it were content to excuse or palliate
the conduct described. She is not even satisfied with justi-
fying it. She has stooped to glorify the liaison, both in its
inception, its progress and its results and she has not hesi-
tated to garnish it with meretricious incident at every turn.
Now, it is clear that copyright cannot exist in a work of a
tendency so grossly immoral as this; a work which, apart
from its other objectionable features, advocates free love
and justifies adultery where the marriage tie has become
merely irksome.
We are constantly hearing of the injurious influence ex-
ercised upon the adventurous spirit of our youth by the
"penny dreadful 19 which presents the burglar in the guise
of a hero. So is a mischievous, glittering record of adulterous
sensuality, masquerading as superior virtue, such as we find
in this book, calculated to mislead, with consequences as
* Glyn v. Western Feature Film Co., Ltd., 2 1 st December, 1915.
135
Elinor Glyn
certain as they are sure to be disastrous, into the belief that
she may without dishonour choose the easy life of sin,
many a poor romantic girl, striving amidst manifold hard-
ships and discouragements to keep her honour untarnished.
It is enough for me to say that to a book of such a cruelly
destructive tendency no protection will be extended by a
court of equity. It rests with others to determine whether
such a work ought not to be altogether suppressed.
This remarkable judgement still stands in law. It is curious
to think that if judicial precedent be followed, no modern
book, play, or film which deals with adultery, no matter how
tragically but without direct censure, is protected by the law
of copyright.
It appears strange that Three Weeks should have inflamed
such high feeling, for it seems now a very mild and inoffen-
sive book. There is not a salacious word in it. Many modern
novels contain descriptions far more intimate and detailed
than Three Weeks. Elinor herself was not much interested in
sex; she thought it unromantic, animal, earthy. She was in-
terested in love, in the romantic disguise which enveloped
more material thoughts and feelings, and the maintenance of
which was the great ideal of her life.
There was nothing crude about her pattern of love-making,,
which she repeated many times in her later novels. The man,
passionate and strong, would master the woman with his
strength and the intensity of his love; then, suddenly, all the
mastery would be gone and he would be on his knees before
her, offering worship and homage. Further than that Elinor
did not go. It may have been a little unrealistic, her own
136
The Best-Selling Novelist
wishful thoughts finding expression, but It was certainly not
lascivious.
One is struck, too, in reading Three Weeks now* by its
high moral tone. A very large part of the book is devoted to
the lady's lectures to Paul on being worthy of his name and
race. And the final scene in the cathedral, with Paul on his
knees in joy and thanksgiving, is not what one would expect
in a vulgar and offensive "shocker/*
For the first American edition Elinor wrote a preface, in
which she defended her book and hoped to temper the wind
in advance. She later wrote a longer and more detailed de-
fence, which she had privately printed, and which she in-
corporated into an article in the Grand Magazine of March
1920, called "Why I Wrote Three Weeks" Her defence
rested on a number of points: that the lady was a Slav and
must not be judged by English standards; that her marriage
to her husband was a marriage in name alone, and for this he
was solely responsible; that she was accustomed, being a Rus-
sian Imperial Highness as well as a Queen, to ordering any-
one who amused her into her sitting-room, a performing
monkey, a street singer, a carpet seller, or Paul; that the love
between Paul and herself was overwhelming and perfect on
every level, body, mind, and soul; and, lastly, that the lady,
having offended against the laws of man, duly paid the su-
preme price of her life.
Elinor also printed, for private circulation, Mark Twain's
defence of Three Weeks, in which he argued that so great a
love was divine and beyond human control or law.
None of these arguments, however, had any effect at the
time. Only the passing of years, which, ironically, has spoilt
the flavour of the prose, has been able to acquit Three Weeks
of an immoral purpose.
137
EUnor Glyn
32.
The astonishing and sustained sales of Three Weeks can-
not be wholly attributed to its immoral reputation though
this, of course, played a considerable part. To be banned was
then, as now, to be assured of a certain curiosity value. But
the sales of Three Weeks were just as heavy in countries
where its reputation was blameless, and something further is
required to explain its success.
We may perhaps attribute it to its being unashamedly and
sumptuously a romance. A great love story fills a crying need
of the human heart and it had been many years since there
had been another one in the class. The fact that so many of
the love stories of the world Paris and Helen, Antony and
Cleopatra, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristram and Yseult,
Sigurd and Brynhild, Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Paul and
his lady cut across the marriage ties was, in Elinor's view, an
unfortunate outcome of the conflict between the laws of God
and the laws of man. She was in later years to devote much
thought to the reasons why domesticity should so often prove
fatal to great love, and to proving that the two need not nec-
essarily be mutually exclusive. It should be possible, she
argued, given sufficient skill and wisdom on both sides, not
only to generate but to maintain inside marriage the degree
and quality of love that Paul, and others, had found only out-
side it. It was to providing this skill and wisdom that she
gave so much of her later time and energy, with, as will be
seen, considerable success.
Another reason for the popularity of Three Weeks may
perhaps lie in the fact that it coincided with the great wave
of feeling which sought to sweep away the restrictive and
unimaginative barriers of Victorian purltanism, and which
washed up on the beach such a curious mixture of treasure-
is*
The Eest-Selling Novelist
trove and iotsam. Elinor herself would have been both sur-
prised and indignant if she could have realised the company
she was in, if she could have seen that Three Weeks appealed
to the same renascent and manumissive instinct that had also
welcomed, for example, Freud. She and Freud, of course, were
poles apart in ideals, in methods, in aspirations; they were
united on one count only, a hatred of repression for repres-
sion's sake.
And, lastly, seeking to account for the success of Three
Weeks, we must not forget the book itself. It had, and still
has, something over and above its fulfilment of the wide-
spread longing for romance, its embodiment of the general
distrust of restrictive prohibitions, its appeal, if indeed there
ever was any, to the salacious-minded. Three Weeks was writ-
ten in a white heat of inspiration. The heat is not yet cooled.
The book is by no means the best of Elinor Glyn's novels,
but alone of them it flickers and glows with the rare fire of
genius.
33-
The book's success had one further consequence, which
was again not entirely unexpected. The rumour went about
that it was, in fact, a true story. Several men announced that
they were Paul; one man in America called himself Prince
Paul, thereby showing that he had not read the book. It was
also reported that the Czar had mentioned Three Weeks as
being a book about his wife.
Elinor regarded these reports indulgently, the inevitable
consequences of the book's popularity. The story, she main-
tained, was wholly imaginary; she had made it up on a wet
afternoon in a Scottish castle.
A little more fully documented, however, was the story of
a man she met the following year in America. He said that
Elinor Glyn
the Dowager Empress of Russia, despairing of an heir, had
sent her daughter-in-law off on a yacht with "Paul" nine
months before the birth of the Czarevitch; and the Czare-
vitch's haemophilia was transmitted, as always, through the
mother. The American insisted on the story, asserting that the
"Paul* 1 was an Englishman and had in fact died in his arms.
Elinor was interested, but once again disbelieving. The
book, she assured him was entirely imaginary; it had no con-
nection with the Romanoffs.
It was not until 1910, when she went to Russia, that she
came to realise that she might, in writing Three Weeks, have
stumbled on something dangerously close to the truth.
140
BOOK THREE
American Journey
1907-1908
I.
During the summer of 1907, Clayton Glyn decided that it
was time his family saw more of the world, and he -planned
to take them that winter on a trip which would encompass
the globe. In July, Elinor went to France to collect Margot
from her school, and, while in Paris, she stayed with Mrs.
Kate Moore, a well-known American hostess, who suggested
that she should visit America that autumn. Elinor was con-
siderably more attracted by America than Ivy Ceylon or
Japan and she accepted gladly. She paid herself for Mrs. Ken-
nedy and Dixie to travel with the family in her place and it
was arranged that she should meet them in San Francisco
and that the whole family, reunited, should travel back across
America together.
In the autumn, just before her forty-third birthday, Elinor
sailed for America in the Lusitania, aimed with a sheaf of
introductions from Mrs. Moore and Lady Arthur Paget. She
was a striking figure in a purple overcoat, a purple toque,
and a purple chiffon veil, which she could wrap round her
face; the whole effect was reminiscent, not altogether with-
out design, of the Imperatorskoye. She took also sixty pairs of
high-heeled shoes for her beautifully shaped, tiny feet.
She was enjoying herself immensely. Travelling with Clay-
Elinor Glyn
ton had been very pleasant and luxurious, but it was agreeable
for a change to be on her own, to be Elinor Glyn the famous
authoress rather than the odd-looking wife of Clayton Glyn,
the well-known traveller.
She had one friend on board, Consuelo, Duchess of Man-
chester, a fascinating American* who was a close friend of
King Edward and Queen Alexandra, and the Duchess warned
Elinor that the reporters would fall on her like wolves in New
York- Elinor did not altogether credit this. She had not yet
got used to the idea that she was a famous personality and
that anyone outside society circles might be interested in read-
Ing about her. She had, in the past, been interviewed by re-
porters only once or twice at most, and she had been then,
unwisely, a little brusque.
She was taken aback now by her reception in New York.
Reporters boarded the ship from launches as soon as she en-
tered New York Harbour. Elinor was interviewed, photo-
graphed, interviewed again on the quay, followed to the Plaza
Hotel, and interviewed again there. She had had no idea of
the methods of the American press and she was amazed at the
barrage of personal questions fired at her.
Was it true that Three Weeks was her own life story? Who
was the real Paul? What did she think of America? What
did it feel like being famous? What did she think about Ameri-
can divorce? What were her early struggles like? How long
was she going to stay?
Elinor thought at first that they were joking, especially
when she read in the previous day's paper a list of possible
Pauls, culled probably from Debrett. But as soon as she
realised that they were serious, she did her best to answer
carefully and fully. She attributed afterwards the kindness
with which the American press invariably treated her, both
then and later, to the good impression she succeeded in mak-
* She was the daughter of Antonio Yznaga de Valle of Ravensnood,
Louisiana.
144
American Journey
ing in those first interviews in New York. Though they nat-
urally portrayed her as the siren to end all sirens, they never
indulged in the bitter personal attacks which she had often
later to endure in the British press.
New York astonished her the height of the buildings, the
hurry and the bustle, above all the noise. People seemed al-
ways to be shouting at the top of their voices, even in private
rooms; usually, Elinor observed, they were shouting that they
knew what you were saying already; however, she went on,
such was their capacity for absorption that they no doubt did,
soon after they finished speaking.
After London and Paris the "democratic*' manner of por-
ters, waiters, chambermaids, and shopgirls pained her. It re-
quired a thick-skinned determination to make a purchase in a
shop. However, when she next returned to America four years
later, she found that once again the Americans had learnt
fast and the New York shopgirls were now level with, if not
ahead of, their London and Paris counterparts in subtle, flatter-
ing salesmanship.
Together with Mrs. Fritz Ponsonby (later Lady Ponsonby)
and the Duchess of Manchester, Elinor went, soon after her
arrival in America, to stay with Mrs. Frederick Vanderbilt at
her stately home at Hyde Park on the Hudson. Elinor had
known Mrs. Vanderbilt in Paris and had found her a kindly
lady, completely human and natural; she was utterly unpre-
pared for the imperial grandeur of Mrs. Vanderbilt's manner
at home.
A long flight of marble steps led from the drive to the front
door, and on every third step was a footman in knee breeches
and with powdered hair, drenched in the pouring rain. The
guests were received in the hall by a pompous English butler
Elinor Glyn
and led through a series of salons to the great drawing-room,
where their hostess was waiting to receive them, magnificently
gowned and wearing some fifty thousand pounds' worth of
pearls and long white kid gloves. The drawing-room was fur-
nished TOth fine cabinets and chairs, the cream skimmed from
the antique dealers of the world.
Tea in English country houses was an informal meal, dis-
pensed by the hostess, but here it was evidently a highly
formal occasion, with rows of footmen waiting as if it were a
state banquet. The ladies sat in a line on a series of valuable
but rather uncomfortable sofas; the gentlemen, silent and ill
at ease, sat opposite them on a row of hard gilt chairs with
their backs to the wall. It was as if everyone present were
about to take part in some parlour game.
The conversation was slow and platitudinous, until sud-
denly Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, whose caustic tongue was fa-
mous, remarked:
"They say in Europe that all American women are virtuous.
Well, do you wonder? Look at those men!"
The line of men sitting meekly on their gold chairs fidgeted
awkwardly and accepted this sally in docile silence/ Elinor
reflected that Clayton or Wynne Finch or Innes-Ker would
not have allowed such a quip to go unanswered.
Dinner that night was an amazing meal, twice as large and
magnificent as anything Elinor had previously experienced.
She was particularly astonished by the flowers; the American
Beauty Roses, each one of which would have won a prize in a
flower show, were so enormous as to seem artificial. The food
was wonderful, and the whole company dined, of course, off
gold plate.
Only the conversation seemed a little below the standard,
with everyone speaking slowly and loudly, rarely pausing to
listen for an answer. A pleasant and refreshing feature, how-
ever, was the absence of double-entendres, which were such
a feature of English society conversation/
146
American Journey
One thing Is noticeable and nice. The conversations
everywhere are all absolutely jeune file, never anything
the least risque though it is often amusing**
The bedrooms were fully as palatial as the downstairs
salons. Each room had at least two Louis Quinze suites. The
curtains, the dressing-table covers, the pillow cases, even the
edges of the sheets themselves were embroidered with real
Venetian lace. The pot-de-chambre had a lace cover; the lava-
tory chain a large blue satin bow on it. There were no books
or any evidence that the room had ever been slept in before.
Mrs. Vanderbilt's own bedroom, where she received Elinor
the following morning, had a balustrade separating the bed
from the rest of the room, as in Louis XV's state bedroom at
Versailles.
**I suppose/* murmured Elinor reminiscently, "that only
Princes of the Blood are allowed behind the balustrade."
"Elinor!" said Mrs. Vanderbilt, deeply shocked. *You must
not say such things in America.**
It was with a certain relief that Elinor discovered that the
Vanderbilt standard of living was not typical of the whole
of American society. She spent week ends with the Ogden
Mills at their house on the Hudson, and with the Bryces and
the Greswolds on Long Island, and there she found an atmos-
phere more nearly approximating that of an English country
house.
In between these week ends she lived at the Plaza Hotel
and saw the sights of New York: Central Park, the Stock Ex-
change, a big newspaper being put to press, and even an
opium den in Chinatown, though she discovered later to her
chagrin that this had been arranged specially for her*
* Elizabeth Visits America.
147
Elinor Glyn
America, even in 1907, was a very different place from
England. Elinor found it difficult at first to reconcile herself
to the different attitudes towards life which she found in New
York. The domination by the female sex she found particu-
larly hard to accept. In her view man must always be the
master; women might be the inspiration, the consolation, the
ideal, even the goal in themselves, but they could never be
the masters. A matriarchy seemed to her a topsy-turvy world.
Almost equally odd she found the lack of interest of the
sexes in each other. The men seemed to be married to Wall
Street, the women to their clubs.
And what with the smell of the innumerable flowers and
the steam-heated rooms, and the cigarettes, I can't think
how they have wits enough left to play bridge all the after-
noon, as they do with never a young man to wake them
up. Of course it is amusing for Octavia and me to see all
this as we are merely visitors, but fancy, Mamma, doing it
as a part of one's life! Dressing up and making oneself
splendid and attractive to meet only women! I*
And why, she wondered, should the men, even the sons of
millionaires, who had no need to work, rush downtown early
every day to spend their best hours in a masculine bedlam
like Wall Street, when they could be enjoying the company
of beautiful women at home?
This point troubled her a good deal, and she finally attrib-
uted it to the gold-digging propensities of American women.
It was they who drove their menfolk on in the eternal pursuit
of the Almighty Dollar. It was the mothers, wives and daugh-
ters, she decided, wanting enough furs, new cars, jewels, ali-
* Elizabeth Visits America.
148
American Journey
mony, not only to keep up with the Joneses but to go one
better, who drove their men to stupefied exhaustion, plati-
tudes, sentimentality, and too many cocktails. Money in Eng-
land was not a subject of much interest in high society; either
you had it or you did not, in which case you might be forced
into taking up some profession. But if you had it, there was
no earthly reason why you should bother to make any more;
it was not as if it had any great virtue in itself. In America
the opposite view seemed to prevail.
Elinor was, of course, meeting for the first time a society of
men earning their daily bread, a society which is now univer-
sal and commonplace; and she was meeting it in a drastic
form. Here was an upper class which did not regard estate
ownership, sport, and opening bazaars as an adequate life oc-
cupation, and who equally seemed to take little interest in
public service or public affairs. It was rarely that politics were
discussed at meals or in drawing-rooms; the masculine talk was
always of finance, the feminine of culture or of bridge. Elinor
herself at no time in her life took any interest in any form of
finance and was accordingly specially unimpressed by this
great interest of the American male; nor did she ever play
bridge; and she regarded the type of culture purveyed by
American women's clubs as highly superficial.
In her diaries, her memoirs, and her book, Elizabeth Visits
America, she was particularly severe on the "fluffy little gold-
diggers'* she found in New York society. Everything seemed
to be on a tit-for-tat basis. A girl would only give a kiss in
return for an engagement ring, a wife would only allow her
husband his marriage rights in return for flowers or furs. Ev-
erything had to be bought by the man; love was never be-
stowed as a free gift for the joy of its own sake or for the sheer
pleasure in giving. It was not even parted with on credit terms.
It is ironical that when Elinor came to America after the
First World War, she found herself attempting to push the
pendulum the other way, urging greater restraint and f astid-
Elinor Glyn
iousness in, the relations between the sexes, less casual pawing
and petting and kissing. But in 1907 there was certainly no
need for such advice.
Elinor found regrettably little romance in New York, with
the two sexes living in their own worlds. When they did meet,
it seemed to be more on a brother-and-sister basis. The women
seemed to have very little desire to make themselves mysteri-
ous or elusive, to arouse the men's hunting instinct, and in-
deed, she wondered if the men had a hunting instinct for
anything except dollars.
The dance was such fun, a bal Hanc, as only young peo-
ple were asked, and they all came without chaperones, so
sensible, and all seemed to have a lovely romp and enjoy
themselves in a far, far greater degree than we do. It was
more like a tenants' hall or a children's party, they seemed
so happy, and towards the end lots of the girls' hair became
untidy and their dresses torn, and the young men's faces
damp and their collars limp.*
Elinor smiled indulgently but was deeply puzzled. She
would never have allowed a man to ruffle her hair.
Elinor was prepared to give full credit to American women
for their soigne appearance, their beautiful clothes worn with
style, their well-groomed heads; the all-pervading influence of
the beauty parlour put them well ahead of their English or
French counterparts. In this, she observed, they certainly gave
their husbands value for money.
She was, however^ deeply pained by the drinking habits of
American society, especially the younger members of it. She
found it distressing to go into a ladies' cloakroom and find girls
of nineteen or twenty laid out like salmon on a slab." At one
dinner party which Elinor attended a young man became ex-
tremely drank and disgraced himself. In England he would
have had to resign from his clubs, possibly from his regiment,
* Elizabeth Visits America.
American Journey
too, if he bad one; but in New York this course was apparently
not necessary. He was only being gently teased for being
"overfull" when Elinor met him again at a dance two nights
later. But there were compensations even in drunkenness, one
vice driving out another.
She says the young men now in New York nearly all
drink too many cocktails and that is what makes them so
unreserved when they get to their clubs. So the women
can't have them for lovers because they talk about it.*
Elinor reserved her full scorn for the pretensions and snob-
bery of high society, those members of the Four Hundred
who informed her continually about their own .ancestry.
If people are nice in themselves how can it matter who
they are, or if ^fashionable" or not? The whole thing is
nonsense and if you belong to a country where the longest
tradition is sixteen hundred and something, and your an-
cestor got there through being a middle-class puritan or a
ne'er-do-well shipped off to colonise a savage land, it is too
absurd to boast about ancestry or worry in the least over
such things. The facts to be proud of are the splendid,
vivid, vital, successful creatures they are now, no matter
what their origin. Nearly everyone tells you here their great-
great-grandfather came over in the Mayflower. (How ab-
surd of the Cunard Line to be proud of the Mauretania!
The Mayflower, of course, must have been twice the size.)*
Among the "smart set** (do forgive this awful term,
Mamma, but I mean by that the ones who are "in the swim"
and whose society is the goal of the other's desire) they
don't often tell you about the Mayflower and their ancestors
though on Wednesday a frightfully rich person who has
only lately been admitted into the inner circle because both
her daughters have married foreign Princes, said to me, she
* Elizabeth Visits America.
151
Elinor Glyn
loved the English, and was, Indeed, English herself and
some distant connection of our King, being descended from
Queen Elizabeth! ! ! It was unfortunate her having pitched
upon our Virgin Queen, wasn't it, Mamma? But, perhaps,
as she had rather an Italian look, it was the affair of the
Venetian attach^ and when I suggested that to her,
she gazed at me blankly and said: "Why, no, there never
has been any side-tracking in our family, we've always been
virtuous and always shall be! f **
And again:
The talk of equality is just as much nonsense In America
as in every other place under the sun. How can people be
called equal when the Browns won't know the Smiths! And
the Van Brounkers won't know either and Fifth Avenue
does not bow to Riverside Drive and everyone is striving
to *go one bette/ than his neighbour?*
It should not, however, be imagined that Elinor found only
subjects for carping criticism in the New World. Her eight-
eenth-century upbringing had taught her to pay great atten-
tion to outward form and etiquette, and many customs of
America startled and jarred on her. Nor was there, at any
rate in the environs of New York, a rosy aura of romance to
compensate and appeal to the other side of her nature. But
once the first shock of America had worn off, she found much
to admire and appreciate the frankness, the kindheartedness,
the generosity, the abundant hospitality.
These few days in New York have confirmed our opinion
of everyone's extraordinary kindness and hospitality. All
their peculiarities are just caused by being so young a na-
tion, they are quite natural whenever their real feelings
come out. As children are touchy, so are they, and as chil-
* Elizabeth Visits America.
ijz
American Journey
dren boast, so do they, and just as children's hearts are
warm and generous, so are theirs. So I think this quality
of youth is a splendid one, don't you, Mamma?*
She also strongly admired their determination :
I felt obliged to ask them [some boxers] if they minded
at all having their noses smashed in, and black eyes, and
if they felt nervous ever and the little coloured gentleman
grinned and said he only felt nervous over the money of
the thing! ! He was not anxious about the art or fame!
He just wanted to win. Is not that an extraordinary point
of view, Mamma, to -win? It is the national motto, it seems,
how does not matter so much, and that is what makes them
so splendidly successful, and that is what the other nations
who play games with them don't understand. They, poor
old-fashioned things, are taking an interest in the sport part,
and so scattering their forces, while the Americans are con-
centrating on the winning. And it is this quality which, of
course, will make them the rulers of the world in time.*
The only thing she really missed in America was romance,
and she was to find this further west.
Elinor returned to her suite at the Plaza Hotel one day to
find that Mark Twain had called while she was out. She was
flattered that he should have come all the way from his house
in Washington Square just to see her, and she returned his
call the following day .
He is a dear old man with a halo of white silky hair and
a fresh face, and the eyes of a child which look out on life
* Elizabeth Visits America.
Elinor Gfyn
air of wisdom one sees peeping sometimes
a soul To find such eyes In an aged face
proves many as to the hidden beauties in the char-
acter. Marie Twain was dressed in putty-coloured almost
white broad-cloth, very soigne and attractive looking. We
sat on a divan, and he gave orders that we were not
to be disturbed..
She for an hour and a half, and for most of that time
they Three Weeks, which he greatly admired, both
In matter and In style.
As she was leaving Elinor said she would write down a
summary of their conversation and send him a copy to read; it
Is this summary which forms the basis of the paper already
referred to and which Is quoted above. She duly sent him the
summary and Mark Twain, clearly a little afraid that she
might publish It, which would be a breach of his contract with
his publisher, replied :
2. i Fifth Avenue,
Jan. 24, 1908.
Dear Mrs. Glyn,
It reads pretty poorly. I get the sense of It, but It is a poor
literary job; towever, It would have to be because nobody
can be reported even approximately except by a stenogra-
pher. Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated
poems, artificial flowers, and chromos all have a sort of value,
but It Is small. If you had put upon paper what I really said,
it would have wrecked your type-machine. I said some fetid
and over-vigorous things, but that was because it was a con-
fidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My own re-
port of the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a
Sunday School It, and certain other readable chapters of
my autobiography, will not be published until all the
Clemens family are dead dead and correspondingly indif-
ferent. They were written to entertain me, not the rest of
American Journey
the world. I am not here to do good at not to do it
intentionally. You must pardon me for dictating this letter;
I am still sick a-bed and not feeling as well as I might.
Sincerely yours ?
S, L. Clemens
They met again later that winter when they were both
guests of honour at a dinner given by Daniel Frohman. Mark
Twain made a Mnd and most entertaining speech about Eli-
nor. Also at the dinner was John Barrymore, who made a point
of telling her how much he had himself enjoyed Three-
Weeks.
Elinor remained in New York all through the winter.
I used to have ovations wherever I went, and began to
think that the role of a famous authoress was a most de-
lightful one. The air of America is rightly compared to
champagne exhilarating, delicious, but most intoxicating,
and fatal to good judgement and capacity for self-criticism!*
In the spring she set out on her coast-to-coast trip. She
started by going to Philadelphia, which she found quieter
and more old-fashioned than New York; but she regretted that
the finest site in the city should have been used for a cemetery.
She was fascinated by a reporter who described it as a "cun-
ning place to take your best girl on Sunday to do a bit of a
spoon/' Love in a cemetery was a new aspect of romance for
Elinor.
From Philadelphia she went, via New York, to Niagara,
where she stayed at the honeymoon hotel. There were four
honeymoon couples there at the time and she was surprised to
* Romantic Adventwe.
Elinor Glyn
all breakfasting downstairs in public. None of them
One couple, who had been married three days, read
the morning propped up against their cups, at the
time furtively holding hands under the table. The sec-
couple, **mere children/ had been married only the day
before and the girl blushed crimson when she had to ask her
husband whether he took sugar in his coffee. The third, mar-
ried a fortnight, were obviously already very bored with each
other; and the fourth, married three days, bolted down their
breakfast as fast as they could before rushing out to play ten-
nis. As honeymoons went, it was a very different atmosphere
from Three Weefes.
On the train from Niagara to Chicago, Elinor met the mil-
lionaire who made such a deep impression on her.
He had "raised" two young men in his office, and as
proof of their wonderful astuteness from his teaching "I
give you my word, Ma'am/' he said, "either of them could
draw a contract now for me, out of which I could slip at
any moment! ! !**
Detroit she thought the most perfectly laid out city she had
ever seen; Chicago itself she found "an immense, busy place
with colossal blocks of houses and some really fine architec-
ture; all giving the impression of a mighty, prosperous, and
advancing nation, and quite the best shops one could wish for,
not too crowded and polite assistants. (Even at the ribbon
counter!)"*
The further west she went, the more she seemed to like
America.
One of the strangest things is, that no one is old, never
more than sixty and generally younger, the majority from
eighteen to thirty-five and also something we have remarked
everywhere, every one seems happy. You do not see weary,
* Elizabeth Visits America.
American Journey
tired, bored faces, like in Europe, and BO one is shabby or
dejected, and they are all talking and drinking and laugh-
ing with the same intent concentrated force they bring to
everything they do, and it is simply splendid.*
And here, too, she was. struck by the chivalry and considera-
tion of men for their womenfolk.
The cold in the wife's head could be heard quite plainly
even where we were, and the host shouted so kindly, "Say,
Anabel, be careful of that draught."
Fancy an English husband bothering to think of a
draught after a catarrh had been there for fifteen years!*
6.
The next section of her journey led through the mining-
camps and ranches of Nevada, and here at last she found the
romantic America which she had been seeking. When she
reached the town of Goldfield, a deputation of miners awaited
her, saying that they had all greatly admired Three Weeks
and would Mrs. Glyn come and visit their new camp at Raw-
hide, nearly a hundred miles away. Elinor accepted gladly,
and that visit to Rawhide was to remain one of the happiest
memories of her life; indeed, one may regard it as a turning-
point in her spiritual progress.
Rawhide was not at first sight an inviting place. It was in
the middle of a desert, without a blade of grass or any greenery.
For hundreds of miles on either side there was nothing but
earthy sand and sad grey sagebrush. The camp itself had been
built only some two months before, but there were dance
halls and a rough board hotel with a gambling-saloon, a bar
on the ground floor, and about thirty bedrooms above. These
had cheap, ill-fitting, plank partitions, in some cases papered
* Elizabeth Visits America.
157
Elinor Glyn
old and the doors consisted of a few boards
only a lift latch for fastening. Round
the camp were plentiful and the continual wind
the In sandstorms.
It was the miners themselves who Impressed Elinor so
They to have stepped straight out of the pages
of Bret Harte, They all carried guns openly It was an offence
to concealed. Many of the qualities and traditions
of the old covered-wagon days had survived; the courage, the
endurance, the respect for women, the modesty, the rough
but real of justice. In physical appearance, too, they
were very different from the more thickset types of the eastern
or the Middle West. Here in Nevada they had the
slim, loose-limbed, well-bred appearance of thoroughbreds.
There were ? of course, those who did not come up to the
standards set by the others ? "the bad men," "the dirty yellow
dogs,* and at Intervals these were rounded up and dealt with
In a suitable way. There was also Scottie.
Scottie was a desperado, an outlaw who lived near by in a
lair called Death Valley, a humid place below sea level, where
he was guarded by his gang. In the sack of fan mail about
Three Weeks which Elinor had found awaiting her at Gold-
field was a letter from Scottie, saying how much he had en-
joyed the book and would she come and spend an evening
with him, when he would show her the real Wild West* He
gave details of the rendezvous and the point where she was
to leave her escort and go on alone; and he promised "on the
honour of a bandit** that she would be returned to her friends
safe and unharmed. Elinor was keen to accept, but her hosts,
the sheriff and deputy constables, flatly forbade it and In
deference to them she had to decline, writing that she had no
time on this trip, and enclosing the signed photograph for
which he had asked.
The miners showed her all round the camp. She was taken
down a gold mine and suffered agonies of claustrophobia. She
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American Journey
watched diem playing poker in the gambling saloon, wearing
green talc eye shades, which gave the gamblers 9 faces a
strange, livid glow; a felt-slippered bartender silently padded
round with drinks. The usual stake was a thousand dollars,
and some of the men had twenty-five thousand dollars in
front of them. The guns were all put up on a shelf, because,
as the proprietor told Elinor, They so often got to shootin* one
another when they played as high as that 1 * He found it "more
conducive to a peaceable evenin* if their guns were handed
out before they began. 11 At the other end of the saloon there
was singing and dancing.
The etiquette towards women, Elinor found, was strict and
formal. A miner's wife was perfectly safe at any hour of the
day or night with anyone; but any woman who wished to be
flighty was fair game and she would live in a special part of
the camp with "Katie" or "Polly** written over her door.
There was one pleasant incident when a deputation of
miners, led by Governor Hutchinson, came to present Elinor
with a gun.
'We give you this here gun, Elinor Glyn," said one of the
miners, "because we like your darned pluck. You ain't afraid
and we ain't neither/'
Then Governor Hutchinson pinned the badge of deputy-
constable on her breast and told her she could now arrest "any
boy in the state." Elinor replied happily that she would like
to arrest the lot, they were aU so delightful. Everyone cheered
wildly.
They also gave her a banquet. The long table in the saloon
was specially covered with white oilcloth and about twenty of
them sat down on plain, backless benches* Once again Eli-
nor remarked the perfect, unaffected manners of the miners.
Those sitting at the other tables glanced up and smiled as she
came in; after that they never looked her way again. She was
a strange, unaccustomed sight in that, or indeed in any, com-
Elinor Glyn
munity, but they never stared. She might have been at Easton
or Cranford.
The drinking-water had to be brought six miles. The food
had come a hundred miles by wagon, the champagne from a
deal farther off. One man had ridden ninety miles across
the desert to fetch some yellow daisies, the only flowers pro-
curable, to decorate the centre of the oilcloth-covered table.
Elinor was almost in tears. Ninety miles, there and back,
across the desert, just to fetch her some flowers, and she never
even knew which man it was.
She had always vaguely considered the phrase "nature's
gentleman 3 * to be a polite fiction, but now here he was before
her eyes, the living proof that gentle manners and aristocratic
behaviour were dependent, not on birth, or on the acquired
traditions of centuries of authority, or on education, but on
character. It was a shattering discovery. Mrs. Saunders would
have accepted it with the utmost reluctance; Ambrosine would
have died rather than admit it. But Elinor Glyn, faced with
its actual presence, accepted it unconditionally.
Nowhere in the world, whether in the houses of the rich,
ax in the courts of Kings, have I found such chivalry, such
a natural sense of the fitness of things, such innate aristoc-
racy as in the mining camps of Nevada.*
She never forgot the Rawhide miners. They seemed to her
the embodiment of everything that was best in the New
World. She set the climax of two of her novels in the Nevada
gold fields; and the deputy-constable's badge and the gun a
small pistol mounted in mother-of-pearl were for the rest of
her life her most cherished possessions.
* Romantic Adventure.
1 60
American Journey
From Nevada she went, via Denver, to San Francisco,, and
there she found herself back in the hectic socialite atmosphere.
Her hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Miller Graham, had not yet arrived
from Santa Barbara, and she lunched by herself in the Fair-
mount Hotel. At the next table were six ladies, who were
evidently the hostesses of a ball being given that evening for
the officers of the fleet.
They were arguing in loud voices about whether one of
their guests should be "thrown down'* that night. The advan-
tages and disadvantages of this action were fiercely debated.
Another lady, joining the party late, strongly advised against
such a course, as the guest in question was a personal friend
of Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, no less, Elinor
realised that it was she who was under discussion.
She attended the ball that night for which Admiral Long
had sent her a special invitation. She was not "thrown down/'
and she was a little disappointed to find that the hostesses
did not seem to recognise her as the lady at the next table at
lunch. She thanked them politely for inviting her, to the
amusement of Admiral Long, who had heard the whole story.
Three Weeks seemed to have aroused greater hostility in
San Francisco than anywhere else in the world; Elinor sus-
pected that, once again, most of the book's principal critics had
not themselves read it. She was accustomed by now to receiv-
ing whole sacks of fan mail at each of her halts across America,
the larger and masculine part of it favourable, the smaller part,
almost entirely from women, abusive. But in San Francisco
even the men seemed to be shocked by its reputation.
It is not altogether surprising that Elinor liked San Fran-
cisco the least of all the American cities she visited, though
she attributed this not so much to its hostile reception of her
161
as to something sinister and discordant in the atmosphere.
Most of the town had been destroyed by earthquake and fire
only two years earlier, the disaster which had shown up the
graft of the original building contractors and revealed so many
apparently solid walls as mere shells filled with nibble. This
seemed to be a cause more for pride than for shame, and
Elinor was astounded by the number of San Franciscans who
told her, a visiting stranger, the full details and drove her
about so that she might herself see as much as possible of the
evidence of corruption.
In San Francisco she found a message from Clayton from
Japan, saying that he was unable to get passages across the
Pacific and was taking the family home instead across Siberia.
On the first stage of her own journey home she travelled
south from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then only a small
California town, and eastward to Salt Lake City, where she
saw the Mormons. The idea of sharing a man with several
other women was yet another new aspect of romance to her,
but one which did not appeal greatly.
From Utah she went on to St. Louis, where Mr. James
Hackett was arranging to produce a dramatic version of Three
Weeks; which Elinor had written herself in New York a few
months previously. However, when she finally reached New
York again, she unwisely allowed herself to sign a contract
allocating not only the stock repertory rights of Three Weeks
but, as was afterwards discovered, the whole dramatic rights
east of the Missouri to a Miss Marbury for a mere one hundred
pounds. All her life Elinor suffered from an inability to re-
frain from signing any contract laid before her, and the result
of this sale was to prevent the stage production of Three
Weeks not only in St Louis, but in New York, too.
162
American Jonmey
8.
Elinor returned from America with a number of new ideas
and theories about life. The chief of these was the so-called
a New Thought,** which at that time was sweeping America
and whose literature was to be seen on so many bookstalls.
With her rejection of the teachings of the Church and her
deep 'Curiosity about the causes and reasons behind life and
human behaviour, she was specially vulnerable to influences
of this sort; and after nearly a year of adulation and lionization
her critical faculties were a little blurred.
The language with which the teachings of "New Thought**
were veiled, quasi-Biblical with quotations from the New
Testament, made it only too easy for Elinor to believe that
here was the true Christian teaching undistorted by centuries
of ecclesiastical misinterpretation.
The conception of the mind's influence over matter was,
of course, basic to her Saunders upbringing, but Mrs. Saunders
would never have approved, or even understood, the methods
of the newly discovered "thought-f orce w and the ends to which
it was applied. Those who practised this cult were beyond
doubt more prosperous and successful than those who did not
and there were apparently thousands of Americans who spent
hours every day willing themselves to receive large sums of
money, exceptionally profitable contracts, or new fur coats.
Elinor herself spent much time reading the publications, es-
pecially Richard Ingalese*s The History and Power of Mind;
it seemed to fit in, in so many ways, with her own instinctive
beliefs and disbeliefs, and it provided an authoritative ex-
planation for many of the points which troubled her. She
would sit hex sense of humour for the moment in abeyance
for more than an hour a day concentrating in the approved
manner, doing the prescribed exercises, and visualising the
163
EMnor Glyn
and the riches which she was teaching herself to desire.
In due course she sloughed off the greedier and more ma-
terialistic aspects of New Thought and she came to consider
evil, verging almost on black magic. But she never aban-
doned her belief in the power of thought-force. She had been
taught that the atmosphere was full of good and evil thoughts,
magnetic and unmagnetic vibrations, radiating like wireless
waves, and the human mind, by regulating its own thoughts,
could **tune in* and receive whatever good or bad influences
were present in the surrounding atmosphere. To think evil
thoughts, to break one's promise, to lie were not only wrong
in themselves; they would tune her mind to receive only evil
or unmagnetic vibrations, which would probably bring disaster
in their wake. She extended this theory to cover her own per-
sonal inclinations; to save for a rainy day, she contended, was
inevitably, by the power of thought-force, to attract that rainy
day a financial doctrine which was to drive her relatives and
advisors almost to despair.
Apart, however, from this special application, this later,
modified conception of New Thought was both harmless and
appealing. I myself can remember her sitting in the garden
under a purple parasol, her eyes closed as she concentrated
upon golden light.
She also returned from America with a new philosophic
jargon, the chief item being "The New Religion of Common
Sense.** Her eighteenth-century rationalism had always prized
this quality and she herself used the term to describe indiffer-
ently both the sensible and the incredible. Part of this en-
thronement of common sense was a series of laws "The Law
of Cause and Effect,* 'The Law of the Boomerang," "The
Law of Periodicity 3 * laws whose universal application she
sought to establish, not always successfully, by scientific or log-
ical method,
Yet another acquisition in America was 'The Secret of El-
Zair," a form of the elixir of eternal youth. Over the next two
164
American Journey
years Elinor carried out at carefully regulated Intervals the
prescribed treatment, partly mystical, partly medicinal, and
kept a full account of her progress in a notebook specially
bound to resemble a copy of Beyond the Rocks. She averred
that she benefited considerably from the treatment, adding
drawings and data to prove her point; it not only rejuvenated
the skin, the muscles, and the eyes, but also removed neural-
gia, neuritis, and rheumatism. She succeeded in persuading
a number of friends, including Lucy, her new husband, Sir
Cosmo Duff-Gordon, and Lord Redesdale to try it, though
Lord Redesdale, who was then seventy-two, was too old to
benefit fully except in *Tiis youthful exaltation of mind."
Lucy's actual health improved:
. . . but I am more than ever sure, from one case I have
closely observed, that if used with doubt and grumbling,
the effect is only half as good and the youthful effect nil.
Far more serious and fundamental than these theories and
experiments was Elinor's belief in reincarnation, which came
at this time to full flower. This was not a new discovery in
America; she had been thinking deeply on the matter for years.
She herself attributed her first interest in the subject to a visit
she made to Paestum in Italy on the occasion of her first re-
turn from Egypt. It was there that she had a very definite
sensation of having been in the place before, of being linked
in some way with the past. This sensation was to return to
her several times in her life and in widely different places,
amongst them St. Petersburg, Versailles, and Shepherd's Mar-
ket in London.
The more she thought about reincarnation, the more it ap-
pealed to her as an explanation and a pattern of life. It pro-
vided a satisfactory reason, a "common sense reason," for so
many of the perplexities, the seeming unfairnesses of life. It
fitted in, too, with her conception of a supreme, benevolent
165
Glyn
negative Deity, occasionally overriding the laws
of nature to help and comfort some repentant sinner.
During Elinor's stay in America and in the years that fol-
lowed she meditated a great deal on the subject, eventually
clarifying her theory and restating it in a number of articles
and essays. In later years, as her views became more widely
known, she would elaborate her own earlier lives in more de-
tail. She would even claim that she could, in certain moments
of insight 7 see glimpses, half-seen pictures, of the earlier lives
of her friends. They found this a bewildering gift, uncertain
whether she was serious or joking.
In fact, she was sometimes one, sometimes the other, de-
fending on her mood. For, like the rest of the English nation,
she had the ability to make jests on occasions of the things she
held most sacred.
166
BOOK FOUR
The Breadwinner
1908-1914
I.
Elinor arrived at home in June 1908, very pleased with her-
self and with life, with her success in America, with the new
sights and scenes of her travels, with the large sums of money
which all her books were now bringing in. She was utterly
unprepared for the reversal which awaited her.
Her family had arrived back some three weeks previously
and were full of the wonderful time they had had on the
long journey, which had even included a mild train crash on
the Trans-Siberian Railway. The children had grown and de-
veloped considerably under the stimulus of new sights and
sounds, while Mrs. Kennedy declared that she had had her
happiest six months since her first husband died.
But Clayton seemed to have changed considerably for the
worse. Seeing him every day, Elinor had been less aware of
his physical deterioration; now, after an interval of nearly a
year, she was shocked by the change. He had grown very
much stouter and there was about his face a purple tinge in-
dicative of heart trouble. He had always been a little asthmatic
and this, too, seemed to be worse.
For years his doctors had been urging him gently to give
up smoking twelve cigars a day, to eat less rich food, to drink
less port, to cut down the numbers of turkish baths, journeys
169
Hmor Glyn
in hot countries, long August days on grouse moors all the
things which he loved most in the world. He had steadily
the doctors' advice, even when Elinor had joined them
in him to treat his no longer youthful constitution with
more consideration. Now it seemed that he was paying the
price for his own self-indulgence.
After a while Elinor noticed that the trouble was not only
physical His gayefy, his merry smile had gone; there was a
pathetic hangdog look about him. She realised with a sinking
heart that there was something else, other than his health,
worrying him. It was several weeks before she discovered what
it was.
He came into her room one day one of the few occasions
on which he ever entered her Trianon and handed her, with-
out speaking, a letter from his solicitors. For a while she could
not grasp its meaning. Then the terrible truth dawned on her.
Clayton had been living all these years not on his income,
but on his capital; and the capital was now exhausted. Worse
than that, he had been borrowing money everywhere he could
find it The property was mortgaged to its full extent; he was
deeply in debt to the bank, to his friends, and to money-
lenders. And now his creditors were demanding repayment.
The crash had come.
In later years Elinor blamed herself severely for not realis-
ing that in the first sixteen years of their marriage they must
have been living far beyond their possible maximum income.
But, in fairness, she must be exonerated from this charge.
Clayton never took her into his confidence about his financial
affairs; indeed, he would have avoided discussing them with
her even had she shown any desire to. He had never suggested
that their standard of living, their long luxurious journeys
were too costly. He had virtually encouraged her to spend as
much as she liked on clothes. His only efforts at economy,
their successive removal to smaller houses, he always camou-
flaged by giving some other reason for the change.
I/O
The Breadwinner
Elinor herself had never "been of a frugal nature and she
had spent her own earnings freely. However, so large were
the royalties which her books were now bringing in that she
had, .almost without intention, accumulated a considerable
fortune in her bank account. She did not hesitate to give the
whole of this to Clayton, but large though it was, it was only
sufficient to meet the more pressing of his creditors, and after
a few weeks it became apparent that if he was to be saved from
bankruptcy, she would have to sign away her marriage settle-
ment, too. Once again she agreed, preferring to part with her
last financial resources, the sole bulwark between her and
destitution in the years to come, rather than that Clayton
should be publicly disgraced. She also undertook, with rather
a heavy heart, the support and maintenance of her husband
and children, since she alone was capable of earning her own
living. From now onwards, she realised, the whole family
would be dependent upon her earnings. Her pen alone stood
hetween them all and starvation.
It was her responsibility now to reorganise the family fi-
nances. In one way there could have been few people less
fitted for the task. Her own lack of financial acumen, her
spasmodic but unpredictable and irresistible extravagances,
hex dislike of petty restrictions did not assist her to impose a
more economic pattern of life upon the family.
She had, however, two enormous assets to help her at this
moment of crisis. One was her own innate courage and the
other, almost equally great, was her capacity for making
money.
It was not till after Clay ton's death in 1915 that Elinor
was able fully to understand the reasons which lay behind the
purblind, cruelly short-sighted attitude towards life that he
Clyn
adopted. Then, going through his papers, she was able to
enough of his early life to understand, if not to excuse,
his later behaviour.
His father had died while he was a child and he had been
brought up by his mother to expect every luxury and, at the
tirae^ to live on an allowance small compared with his
ultimate expectations. He had wanted to go into the family
regiment, the Rifle Brigade, but she had persuaded him out
of this. He was called to the bar, but she did not encourage
him to practise. By the time he came to his full inheritance,
the damage was done; he was by then fully accustomed to
luxury, idleness, and debt. Even at Oxford he had got into
the hands of moneylenders and he remained in their clutches
for the rest of his life.
The property was already heavily mortgaged when he mar-
rial Elinor, but he made, reluctantly, one or two efforts at
economy so that there might be some of his estate left to
bequeath to his son. It was the birth of a second daughter
and the loss of ten thousand pounds at Monte Carlo that
settled the pattern of his future life. There was now to be no
son and so there was now no point in saving any of his estate
for the next generation.
The alternative before him had been clear-cut and had been
presented, no doubt, in a most cunning light by the money-
lenders, who were the evil geniuses of his life. Either he could
economise and live out a dreary but probably much longer
life, or he could continue the way he was going, the way of
the lotus-eater, and have a shorter but a gayer life. He chose
unhesitatingly the second course,
His doctors had assured him that he was killing himself with
his present manner of living and he continued in that way,
even stepping it up further, gayly and deliberately under-
mining his health, smoking not twelve but sixteen cigars a
day. Suicide itself was vulgar and unthinkable, but it seemed
172
BreadimmmeT
only too likely that he would be naturally dead before his
money ran out.
After that his widow would have her marriage settlement,
and judging by the number of her admirers, she would have
little difficulty in marrying again. His children, too, were pro-
vided for under the settlement; so too was Mrs. Kennedy, who
was at this time drawing a fair income from her founder's
shares in Lucile's. The only losers would be those who had
lent him money and who now, his widow's settlement being
untouchable, would never recover it; but Clayton, like so
many others of his generation, had little sympathy for dis-
appointed creditors, even his own! He had only himself to
think of and he was, according to his lights, perfectly en-
titled to choose for himself the swift and easy path to destruc-
tion. One can exonerate his doctors, who knew nothing of the
financial reasons for his way of life and who continued to
urge much greater austerity upon him; but one cannot avoid
wondering at those who knew the truth and who acquiesced
meekly in such an egoistical and disastrous policy.
By ending his married life with his wife Clayton could be
certain of never having a son, the contingency which would
upset his plans. But he could never be certain that he would
die before his money and his credit were finally exhausted.
That must always be a gamble and, as such, it attracted him,
a born gambler. As always, he lost lost by seven long, pitiful
years.
Even though she did not know the full truth at that time,
Elinor never blamed her husband for bringing them, without
a twinge of conscience, to their present pass. He was still for
her the grand seigneur, and whatever his other faults and
shortcomings, she never ceased to look up to him and admire
Elinor Glyn
him, when no points of mutual contact remained, even
he almost to delight in adding to her burdens
than in diminishing them. Indeed, on looking tack,
her principal reaction was of astonishment at his gayety and
cheerfulness all the years when the gaunt spectres of death
and disaster were approaching remorselessly nearer, all the
time that he was hugging his terrible secret to himself. She
tool the attitude that it was his money to do with as he
While he had had it, he had spent it freely upon
her. Now it was her turn to repay his generosity.
For Clayton, as for many others of his generation, debt was
no special matter for shame. It was perfectly natural to bor-
row money, even from personal friends, without any hope of
repayment. It was only actual bankruptcy which was a dis-
grace.
Upon this point Clayton and Elinor had, once again, a
totally different attitude. She detested borrowing money, but,
if she was forced to do so, it was inconceivable not to repay it
at the first opportunity. In the years that followed, she was
several times forced to ask some of her friends, especially her
cousin Geoffrey Glyn and her sister Lucy, for assistance. But
she always repaid them as soon as possible in full.
It was not easy to economise at Lamberts. Elinor disliked
it, Clayton resisted it. Mrs. Kennedy adored Clayton; in her
eyes he could do no wrong. Her character was always at its
weakest when there was a male influence in her life, and now
she connived at his extravagances, she indulged his luxuries
at a time when she ought to have been resisting them and
urging retrenchment
The six years that followed were a continual struggle for
Elinor to pay the household bills, to bring up and educate her
children, and to maintain a reasonable standard of life for
her family. They were years of almost unremitting financial
crisis. Over and over again she was saved from ruin by an
unexpected cheque from her publishers, or if this was not
174
The
forthcoming, by the proceeds of hastily written novels and
short stories. Sometimes the weight of the burden upon her
seemed to be almost overwhelming, but she was always just
equal to it.
The immediate necessity was to increase the family income.
Over a year had elapsed since the publication of Three Weeks
and there had been nothing since then 7 apart from a slim
anthology of quotations and aphorisms derived from the early
books, principally The Reflections of Ambrosine, called, Say-
ings of Grandmamma, and this clearly was not going to bring
in any very large sum in royalties.
She began at once to write Elizabeth Visits America, the
gayety of which she was very far from feeling, but it was to
be nearly another year before that work appeared on. the book-
stalls.
The Grand Duchess Kiril of Russia, whom Elinor had met
the previous summer in Paris, had suggested that a good way
of vindicating the morals and reputation of Three Weeks
would be to stage a private performance of a dramatic version
to which the whole of London society could be invited. Elinor
remembered this suggestion now. It seemed to her that by
putting on such a performance at the present time she would
not only clear the name of her book, but she might well also
interest a manager in a commercial presentation. The dramatic
version of the novel was already written and Elinor threw
herself energetically into the preparations for the performance,
It took place, as an invitation matinee, on the twenty-third
of July, 1908, at the Adelphi Theatre. In order to make the
presentation still more attractive Elinor was persuaded to act
the part of the Queen herself. She had, apart from tableaux
vivants, charades, and some amateur theatricals, no dramatic
175
Elinor Glym
experience and there was no time to do more than teach her
her lines. But the part, being a portrayal of yet another aspect
of her own personality, demanded little more of her than that
she should recreate once again her own passionate, intense
mood As her model, there was always in the back of her
mind Sarah Bernhardt as Theodora.
The rest of the cast was professional. Paul was played by
a handsome young actor, Charles Bryant. CL Aubrey Smith
(later Sir Charles Aubrey Smith) was Paul's father, and the
play was produced by Sir Charles Hawtrey. Lucile's provided
the dresses for the one sumptuous performance to which most
of London society came.
Even with an amateur in the principal part it was a con-
siderable success, and it seemed for a time that both Elinor's
objectives might be achieved. The play was a straightforward
rather melodramatic tragedy, without a single indecent line,
and many of Elinor's friends confessed to her later that they
now understood the motives which had impelled her to write
the boot. Hawtrey himself began to make plans for a West
End presentation, with a professional actress in the leading
part, and the contract was signed, giving Elinor handsome
terms. The play was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for
approval.
It was turned down flat No explanation was given and all
requests for information as to which lines or scenes might be
thought objectionable were ignored. Elinor and all her friends
were astonished, for there seemed nothing censorable in the
version as played at the private performance. However, there
was nothing to be done about it, and the contract was can-
celled.
It was a heavy blow, for the mounting of the private per-
formance, financed personally by Elinor, had been costly and,
apart from increasing the reputation of the book and of Eli-
nor s own resource and versatility, the outlay had yielded no
dividends. It was not until later that Lord Redesdale gave Eli-
176
The Breadwinner
nor to understand that die ban had been instigated at the
request of the Foreign Office.
One of those who came to the matinee was Lord Curzon of
Kedleston. His distinguished but controversial viceroyalty of
India had ended three years earlier, unmarked by any public
recognition, and he was now living, a disappointed widower,
in partial retirement. She had met him on one or two previous
occasions and had been a little in awe of him. Now he wrote
her a charming letter of appreciation of Three Weeks, of her
acting, and above all, of her courage in trying to vindicate
herself in such a bold way.
Elinor replied suitably, much cheered and comforted by
the kind words from someone whom she hardly knew and
whom she had previously supposed to be reserved and rather
inhuman. She was not to know, when she wrote, that she
was entering into what was to be the great romance of her
life.
It is at first a little puzzling to see just why Lord Curzon
and Elinor should have been so strongly attracted to each
other. Curzon had, it is true, a penchant for romantic women
novelists; he had for years kept up a desultory correspondence
with Ouida. He much admired Elinor's physical beauty and
he gave her later a miniature Delia Robbia bust of Venus,
which he thought she strongly resembled. But at first glance
he and Elinor would seem to have been so different the cold,
aloof, intellectual statesman, dedicated, industrious, contemp-
tuous of feminine charms and failings, and the ardent, pas-
sionate novelist, capable on occasions of those exaggerations
and follies which he admired least.
Yet if we examine both characters more closely, we find
that they were, even on the surface, surprisingly similar. Lord
Glyn
D'Abemon has said of Curzon that Tie was born and died
in the faith of an aristocrat of the English eighteenth cen-
tury/ and the same may be said of Elinor, substituting
"French* for ^English. 1 * They were both of ancient patrician
breeding, with a more Immediate provincial and impoverished
background. They were both lonely, both felt themselves ill-
used by the British public, and both bore their moments of
adversity and disappointment with courage and dignity. They
were both excessively class-conscious, self-assertive, and ego-
tistical; they both lacked a sense of proportion; they were both
energetic and Idealistic; they shared a common love of the
classics.
There were, of course, matters in which she and Curzon
differed sharply; Curzon s meticulousness, particularly over
cash accounts, had no counterpart In Elinor. But in general
their characters and their attitudes towards life were such as
to make us believe that the bond between them was the mu-
tual attraction, not of opposites, but of equivalents.
6.
Elinor decided that Margot's education should be finished
by a stay in Dresden and Elinor herself went there later in
the summer of 1908 to find a suitable pension. On her return
journey she met Curzon at Heidelberg and he showed her the
sights of the city.
Margot and Dixie went to Dresden in the autumn, but
almost at once Margot caught scarlet fever and was removed
by the German authorities to an isolation hospital, where,
Elinor maintained, she would inevitably have died but for
Dixie's devoted attendance. There was only one nurse and
one wardmaid for the whole ward of thirty beds and the nurse
was on duty day and night.
Elinor rushed out to Dresden again but she was not allowed
178
The Breadwinner
even to have a glimpse of Margot and had to content herself
with receiving daily reports from Dixie. Elinor was treated,
apparently, by the authorities with crude and autocratic Brutal-
ity, and from this episode we must date her lifelong detestation
of Germany and the German race.
She returned to England as soon as Margot began to im-
prove. In due course Dixie brought A/fargot to Monte Carlo
to convalesce and Elinor motored out to join them. However,
a new financial crisis at this time, the one which involved
Elinor in having to sign away her marriage settlement, cast a
grey shadow over the gathering.
They all returned together in the new year, 1909, and Eli-
nor started to make arrangements for ten-year-old Juliet to
go to school at Eastbourne.
Elinor's concern that her children should have a better edu-
cation than she had had was well within the terms of reference
of spiritual motherhood. She had also to guide their tastes
and ideas. She made them read the boots which meant most
to her and chose the pictures for their bedrooms, reproduc-
tions of eighteenth-century portraits, which she mounted her-
self, so that her daughters might look upon good art first thing
in the morning and last thing at night.
Otherwise her care for her children was a little haphazard.
At times she would take immense trouble over them, particu-
larly in cases where her own ideas of entertainment and theirs
coincided. She herself had painted the bill of Juliet's duck a
brighter orange so that it might win a prize at a gymkhana.
She had gilded the horns of Margot's cow, Wilhehnina, and
hung its neck with garlands so that it might be a worthy
centrepiece for the children's fete champ&tre, an entertain-
Elinor Clyn
in which Marie Antoinette herself would have de-
lighted.
Elinor loved picnics. She would take the children and Dixie
to a nearby field and there over an open fire she would cook
curry foe tea and everybody present would wolf it down with
glee. Clayton would sometimes wander down from the house,
wrinkle his nose with distaste at the smell, observe drily that
they had all had a large lunch and were about to have an
.even larger dinner, and wander back again.
At such moments Elinor was a delightful mother. The un-
predictability and unusualness of her tastes appealed strongly
to children sated with nursery or schoolroom routine. But at
other times she was casual and indifferent, wrapped up in her
own world, not knowing whether they were happy or not. She
was, of course, engaged for much of the time in writing the
books which paid for their meals. But she tended too easily to
think that they were brimming over with happy animal spirits
whilst she was bearing the sorrows and burdens of the world
alone. She had never understood the mind of a child; the
special problems and unhappinesses of adolescence were
equally beyond her.
It was as well for the children that Mrs. Kennedy was al-
ways at hand to provide a stable background, to give that
continuous love and sympathetic companionship which they
received only intermittently from their mother. Mrs. Kennedy
all through those years gave the two girls all the love and
devotion which she had not been able to give her own chil-
dren, and both Margot and Juliet responded by considering
her as being virtually their mother .
8,
Even apart from the financial crises life at Lamberts was
not very easy during these years. Clayton and Elinor had for
i So
The Breadwinner
some time had very few points of mutual contact; there were
practically none left now. She did not reproach him for his
part in bringing about their financial ruin, but they had very
little else to talk about.
The position was not made any easier by Mrs. Kennedy's
own attitude towards the situation. Lamberts was her house,
given to her as a present by Clayton^ and it never occurred to
her for one moment that she might abdicate in favour of her
daughter. It was she who sat at the head of the table, with
Clayton opposite her at the other end. It was she who ordered
the long, elaborate meals which Clayton enjoyed so much.
Lunch never lasted less than an hour and a half, dinner
two hours, and the only permitted topic of conversation was
food, a conversation carried on entirely by Clayton and Mrs.
Kennedy. Elinor would sit at the side of the table, silent,
abstracted, almost in a coma of boredom. Her interest in food
was confined to certain favourite dishes in which she revelled
and liked to eat as often as possible. But it was not, in the
abstract, a topic which she wished to discuss at length*
Often she would have meals sent across to her own sitting-
room on a tray and she always left her husband and her
mother to breakfast alone together. In the evening, after din-
ner, Elinor would retire at once to her Trianon the only part
of the house which seemed to her like home while Clayton
and Mrs. Kennedy would go to the drawing-room and play
patience or piquet.
A stranger to the household would have guessed that it was
Clayton and Mrs. Kennedy who were the married couple and
that Elinor, who was in fact the breadwinner for the whole
family, was a poor relation who had outstayed her welcome.
181
Glyn
In the summer of 1909 a fresh financial crisis broke on
the family, bom as usual of Clayton's refusal to economise,
Mrs. Kennedy's weak indulgence of his wishes, and Elinor's
own feeling that it was not for her to refuse him anything
after all the money he had spent upon her so ungrudgingly.
A diary entry of this time gives some idea of the weight of
the burden upon her and the amount of fortitude she had to
summon to meet it. The entry also illustrates the extent to
which her private thoughts were now dominated by Curzon.
It has come. Now I must face the inevitable and call all
my forces to give me courage. Before me, humanly speak-
ing, there is nothing to be seen but a weary life of work.
Immense worries, the responsibilities of all my dear ones
on my shoulders, the watching ever of one who suffers.
Away weakness and repining! Away concentrated ab-
sorbed thought of and for one person! Call common sense.
Say, *Your duty lies in using your brain and force for your
sweet ones and your family. It does not lie in undesired
and idolatrous obsession over the sun, moon and stars/ 1 Re-
assert your personality which was once a potent factor in
your life. Take the gifts fate throws in your way. Your idol
will not value you the less because you are successful and
gay. He is too busy over his own great aims to care for your
worship.
Cease brooding for hours if his little finger aches. Cease
praying for his glory and happiness and health from morn-
ing to night, and instead be joyous when you do see him,
and between whiles concentrate upon your affairs for the
benefit of your sweet ones and those dependent upon you.
Be true to yourself and not the miserable slave of an obses-
182
The Breadwinner
sion. He your Idol never wished you to be a slave or im-
posed any single thing upon you. He is great, he only
desires your welfare so away with worship!
10.
Later that summer Elinor went to Carlsbad, where she un-
derwent not only the prescribed cure but also the secret treat-
ment of El-Zair. Her maid, Williams, had had to give up
service through ill-health, and on this trip Elinor was ac-
companied by her new maid, Maria Fielder,* who was to be
with her for more than ten years. On her return Elinor, to-
gether with Margot, went to stay with Count Cahen cTAnvers
at Champs for a shooting-party. While there, she received a
telegram from the Grand Duchess Kiril of Russia asking if she
could meet the Grand Duchess and her mother-in4aw, the
Grand Duchess Vladimir, in Munich.
Elinor accordingly went and met both ladies, who invited
her to spend that winter in St. Petersburg with a view to
writing a book about the Russian court. They had been much
impressed by the grasp of the Russian character which Elinor
had shown in Tferee Weeks and thought that she would be
able to make a sympathetic study of their home life.
The Grand Duchess Vladimir, a magnificent, stately Prin-
cess, said, "Everyone always writes books about our peasants.
Come and write one about how the real people live/*
Elinor accepted eagerly. She loved travel and new sights,
and she loved court society. Moreover, it was now becoming
urgent for her to write another novel and she had no desire
at the moment to return to her earlier fields, English country
house parties. The Grand Duchess Vladimir advised her to
*Both Williams and Maria had red hair, and this coincidence gave
rise to the story that Elinor only engaged red-haired maids because
they understood her temperament.
183
Glyn
plenty of dresses as it was rumoured that the Czar and
the Czarina were about to emerge from their seclusion at
Tsarskoe Selo and there would be court balls and much gayety.
On the strength of this Elinor ordered an entire new ward-
robe from Lucile's and a number of new hats from Reboux to
go with Lucy's masterpieces.
Elinor arrived at St. Petersburg on the twenty-eighth of
December^ 1909 (English calendar), and went at once to the
Hdtd de FEurope, where she was to stay. It had been ex-
plained that she would have more liberty staying there than at
the Vladimir Palace. She learnt that the Grand Duke Michael
had just died in Cannes and that the court was in mourning
for two months. Elinor had only two black frocks with her, one
for day and one for evening, and she realised that she would
have to wear these, day in, day out, for the next two months,
while her beautiful new Lucile dresses remained in their
trunks.
She found on taking tea with Lady Nicholson, the British
Ambassadress, that afternoon that even her new black Reboux
hats were unacceptable and that Lady Nicholson had already
ordered her a black crepe mourning bonnet with a long flowing
veil.
The following day Elinor attended church with the Grand
Duchess Vladimir and was much impressed by the weird sing-
ing and the magnificent robes of the priests. Afterwards there
was a salon, at which she was presented to most of the
Imperial family and the various court equerries and ladies-in-
waiting. She noted that the men, though otherwise fine-look-
ing, seemed very pasty-faced, the result, she supposed, of
living in steam-heated rooms without much fresh air. The
Grand Duke Boris recalled their meeting in Egypt but he
seemed to have aged a lot and to be very bored with life. The
Grand Duke Andre and the Grand Duchess Helene (Princess
Nicholas of Greece) examined Elinor's eyes closely to see if
they were really as green as they were reputed to be.
184
The Breadwinner
After this they took zaeousk, the famous Russian hors
d'oeuvre, and eventually sat clown to a banquet, the conversa-
tion being conducted in several different languages, but always
in English or French whenever Elinor was within hearing.
The following day she watched the Grand Duke Michael's
funeral precession from the windows of the British Embassy
and wrote in her diaiy a vivid account of it: the Czar and the
Grand Dukes marching resolutely behind the coffin, in terror
of assassination; the Czarina cringing in her carriage; the
priests 7 magnificent vestments, trailing in the slush; the double
line of soldiers lining the route, facing both the procession
and the crowd; the blind-shuttered windows from which no
one, except at the British Embassy, was allowed to watch; the
sullen, ungrieving crowds. As a state funeral she could not
help contrasting it with Queen Victoria's. In Russia death
seemed to have no real meaning.
She attended the Grand Duke's funeral the next day, to
find herself in the front row of the foreign guests, only ten
feet from the Czar himself, and she was struck by his resem-
blance to his cousin, the Duke of York, who was later King
George V, yet his face was so unnaturally composed as to
seem like a mask. The Czarina had refused to be present.
The service lasted for four hours and there were no chairs.
With the uniforms and candles it was a fine spectacle but
Elinor felt herself getting very tired towards the end. At least,
being a Protestant, she did not have to hold a heavy candle
throughout; nor, like the Czar and the members of the Im-
perial family, did she have the ordeal of kissing the dead
man's face.
For the next two months Elinor lived in St. Petersburg,
seeing the sights, observing the habits and customs of the Rus-
sian court, and being entertained royally. Wherever she went
she was greeted by bowing officials; the policemen knew her
carriage by sight and held up the traffic for her. The Czar gave
orders that the Winter Palace was to be opened specially so
185
Elinor Glyn
that she might see It, and she was shown over it, rather over-
come by the honour, by two Grand Dukes and a host of lesser
royalty. Without having been there before she seemed to know
her way round the Winter Palace well, and she explained to
the startled Grand Duke Andre, when he commented on it,
that she was herself the reincarnation of Catherine the Great
and remembered the palace quite well, adding, for corrobora-
tion, some details about Catherine's death which were not at
that time supposed to be known outside Russia.
She was also making notes for her novel, working out scenes
and plots. She was, however, in difficulties about the character
of her hero. The Russian nobles whom she had met seemed,
for all their urbanity, a little charmless. Though they would
make admirable subsidiary characters, none of them inspired
her sufficiently to be the hero of the story that was growing
in her mind.
Finally, at tea one day in Elinor's suite, the Grand Duchess
Hel&ne suggested that she might describe Prince Gritzko Witt-
genstein, who had been killed in a duel recently. Memories of
Cairo and the Khedive's Ball flooded back into Elinor's mind,
and at once she saw her way clearly. She would start the book
in Egypt, with the Sphinx by moonlight and the Khedive's
Ball; then she would move the story to St. Petersburg. She
would put in all Gritzko's exploits, of which all the court were
now busily reminding her, even the story of the gipsy girL
She wished to begin the book straightaway, but her Egyp-
tian diary, with her descriptions and memories of Gritzko, was
at Lamberts and she wanted to reread it before starting. She
had also received that morning a disturbing letter from her
lawyers; Clayton had apparently been borrowing money again
and the creditor was pressing for repayment.
She decided to travel to England, ostensibly to fetch the
diary, pacify the creditor, and then return to Russia. Everyone
was deeply impressed by her conscientiousness and asked her
to be back quickly, as court mourning was just ending and
The Breadwinner
there would be balls and great festivities In honour of the King
of Bulgaria, who was about to visit Russia. Elinor promised
faithfully that she would be back within a week.
It was suggested that she should return to England via Mos-
cow, which she needed to describe in her novel, and plans
were made accordingly. A court official called on her In her
suite and explained the arrangements for the journey. In Mos-
cow the keepers of the palaces and museums had been in-
structed to give her special facilities for seeing them. A sleeper
had been reserved on the night train from Moscow to Warsaw.
She was to spend the following night at the Hdtel de I'Europe
in Warsaw, \vhere a room had been reserved, and catch the
Berlin train the next morning. A carriage had been ordered
to meet her in Warsaw, as it would be late in the evening and
there might be no cabs. The official gave her her ticket and
sleeping-car reservation and explained that the tickets and res-
ervations for the part of the journey onwards from Warsaw
would be awaiting her at the Hotel de TEurope.
The meticulousness of the arrangements was typical of the
care and thoughtful planning which Elinor had experienced
ever since she arrived in Russia. She thanked the official for
the great trouble he had taken in ensuring her a comfortable
journey. He bowed, kissed her hand, and left. Only after he
had gone did she realise that she had never seen him before,
although she now knew almost all the court officials by sight
The following day she set out. Ever since her arrival in St.
Petersburg, Maria had been the victim of continuous stomach
upsets, which she attributed to the contrast of hot rooms and
cold air outside. Elinor, however, had suspected appendicitis
and tad sent her back to England, her place being tempo-
rarily taken by a sulky Russian maid. Elinor thought It an
unwarrantable expense to take this maid with her and she
was therefore on this journey, for the first and only time in
her life, travelling completely alone.
187
Elinor Glyn
II.
The arrangements went as smoothly as clockwork. In Mos-
cow, Elinor was treated with the same elaborate consideration
which she was used by now to expect in St. Petersburg. She
saw over the palaces and museums and was struck by the city's
contrast with St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg was a wholly
westernised city it could have been London or Paris or Vi-
enna, But Moscow, barbaric and oriental, could have existed
only in Russia.
She caught the night train to Warsaw, as planned, and was
not disturbed on crossing the Polish frontier. She reached
Warsaw the following evening after it was dark. There were
no porters about and she was forced to carry her own dress-
ing-casefortunately, on this occasion, she was travelling unu-
sually light. Nor were there any cabs waiting outside the sta-
tion, except for a single carriage with two good horses and two
men on the box. This was evidently the carriage which had
been ordered to meet her.
The man beside the coachman climbed down, bowed
gravely, and enquired, "Madame Glyn?"
Elinor nodded and climbed in, feeling tired after the train
journey and appreciating the excellence of the travelling ar-
rangements made for her. The man climbed back on the box
and they drove off.
After a while Elinor realised that they were driving very
fast, and moreover that they were travelling through poor,
mean streets which she was sure could not lead to the Hotel de
FEurope. She vaguely wondered if there had been some mis-
take, but everything had worked so smoothly so far and the
carriage had clearly been ordered expressly for her. The man
on the box had said her name.
She opened the window and shouted, "H6tel de FEuropeP
188
The Breadwinner
The coachman gave no answer but instead whipped up his
horses into a gallop. In the dim snow-light Elinor could see
that they were almost out of the city; soon they would be in
open country. With a sickening qualm of apprehension she
realised that she was being kidnapped.
They were travelling too fast for her to be able to get out
without serious injury. She leaned out of the window and
screamed again and again as loudly as she could. The horses
galloped faster than ever; the bitter wind stung her cheeks
and blew her cries away across the fields. There was no sign
of anyone and she felt desperate.
Suddenly she heard shouts behind her. Two riders overtook
the carriage Polish police she imagined and forced it to a
halt. There followed a long altercation In Polish, with Elinor
interjecting "Hotel de FEurope* at intervals. At last the man
who had greeted her climbed off the box and one of the police-
men took his place. He made the coachman turn round and
drive back into the city while Elinor sat in the carriage, weak
and gasping with relief at the narrowness of her escape.
All sorts of new thoughts struck her now. Maria's stomach
upsets were they really appendicitis? Elinor had often re-
turned to her rooms in St. Petersburg to find them in some
disorder. Might that not be because someone was systemati-
cally searching them? The court official who had made the
arrangements for her journey, who was he really?
They reached the Hotel de FEurope and the policeman
helped Elinor down. She was feeling weak about the knees
and glad of his support. He gave her a significant look, put his
finger to his lips enjoining silence, and mounting the box,
drove off. She had dearly never been intended to reach the
Hotel de FEurope and she was hardly surprised to find that no
reservation had been made for her. Indeed, the whole hotel
was completely full and there was no room vacant; nor were
there any tickets or sleeper reservations awaiting her. Further,
Elinor Cljn
the surprised night porter explained that the Berlin Express
went out the same night and not the following morning,
Elinor hurried back to the station, where to her joy she
found a friend, Sir Savile Crossley, also waiting for the train.
She flung herself upon him, begging his protection for the
rest of the journey. He made his valet give up his sleeper, and
Elinor in due course arrived in London without further in-
cident.
There she saw Duckworth and obtained an advance against
her Russian no\ T el, which she had not yet begun. She visited.
her lawyers and paid them the advance, for onward transmis-
sion to the creditor, and then she went to lunch with CUIZQZL
She told him of her Polish experiences, and he strongly ad-
vised her not to return to Russia, as there was clearly someone
there who wished her out of the way. But Elinor would not
consider this. She was now committed to finishing her Russian
novel, and in any event she despised those who were deterred
from a reasonable objective by the thought of physical danger,
She rejected the same advice from Lord Redesdale, who rec-
ommended her not to mention her experiences to anyone at
all inside Russia, even the Grand Duchess Vladimir. He him-
self would ask the Foreign Office to look after her on her return
journey.
She went down to Lamberts, saw her family, collected her
Egyptian diary, and began again the long journey back to St.
Petersburg. On the way she meditated upon the incident in
Warsaw. The plot had clearly been deeply laid and meticu-
lously planned. To have disposed of her in St. Petersburg
itself under the noses of the British Embassy would not have
been easy. But in Warsaw, where no one knew she was, it
was a different matter. If she had disappeared mysteriously
there, it would have been days before anyone noticed, Clay-
ton would have imagined her detained in Russia, the British
Ambassador in Russia would have thought her safely in Eng-
IpO
The Breadwinner
land. By the time the disappearance was noticed, the trail
would have been cold.
What was the motive, she wondered. She had dearly a
deadly enemy in Russia. Did someone imagine that she was
dangerous, that she perhaps knew too much? Elinor remem-
bered the story that the Czar had spoken of Three Weeks
as being a book about his wife; she remembered the Ameri-
can's tale about the Czarina; and she came to the conclusion
that the plot against her life had been hatched in Tsarskoe
Selo and that her enemy was someone in the Imperial en-
tourage.
But the suggestion that Elinor should travel via Moscow
had been made by her friends at the Vladimir Palace and the
arrangements for her to see Moscow had been made on the
orders of the Grand Duchess Vladimir herself, whom Elinor
refused to think even as a possible accessory before the fact.
Who had made the arrangements for tie rest of the journey?
We may well wonder now whether the whole invitation to
Russia was not part of the trap, whether her magnificent re-
ception by the Imperial court was not window-dressing de-
signed to cover up her later, inexplicable disappearance, with
the Grand Duchess Vladimir and the Grand Duchess Kiril
acting, unwittingly and innocently, the part of decoys.
Elinor was back in St. Petersburg exactly a week after her
departure. Everyone expressed surprise that she should have
succeeded in making such a long and arduous journey so
quickly. Elinor, gazing round at their friendly smiling faces,
wondered exactly how surprised some of them were.
With the lifting of court mourning and the arrival of the
King of Bulgaria court life in St. Petersburg was now a whirl
of gayety, and at last Elinor was able to wear her beautiful
191
Elinor Glyn
new dresses. The pomp and ceremony, the glittering uniforms,
the magnificent je\vels ? the gorgeous court balls fulfilled all
the Cinderella dreams of her childhood. Even more enjoyable
were the numerous private balls and parties, with their at-
mosphere of hectic enjoyment and irresponsible hilarity.
In the middle of die night everyone would suddenly rush
out, tumble into sleighs, and drive across the frozen Neva to
the Islands, there to continue the party. No one dreamt of
going to bed before four or five in the morning.
She came to realise that the Russians were, for all their
veneer of sophistication, due mainly to their clothes and to
their mastery of foreign languages, still very primitive under-
neath. They were not yet grown-up; children who put on their
best drawing-room manners to go downstairs and meet guests,
and upstairs romp wildly by themselves. The same unaccount-
able waves of gayety and depression would sweep through a
party as through a nursery, to be followed by yet another
exhibition of high spirits.
Elinor watched it all with acute, fascinated eyes, and one
can only be amazed that she should have retained enough
energy not only to participate in the nightly festivities, but
also to write her novel.
She needed for one scene to describe a typical Russian coun-
try house, and the Grand Duchess Vladimir arranged for her
to see one at Peterhof, three hours' journey away, which had
belonged to Potemkin, the friend of Catherine the Great. At
a private ball given the same night by the Countess Shuvalov
for the King of Bulgaria, the Minister for Foreign Affairs came
up to Elinor at about five in the morning and presented a
handsome young officer who had been instructed by Her Im-
perial Highness to show Elinor the country house. "If they
are to be back before dark/* the officer explained, "they must
start almost at once/*
Elinor had just time to change out of her ball dress and
they set off. The road was appalling and their troika, a pic-
192
The Breadwinner
tuiesque but uncomfortable vehicle, bumped mercilessly. The
young officer clasped Elinor tightly to shield her from the
bumps and reassure her. She was very tired when they finally
reached the house but she insisted on seeing over it, much
to the surprise and annoyance of the young officer. The house
itself had teen extensively renovated in the worst Victorian
manner and only the astoundingly inadequate sanitary ar-
rangements made any real impression on Elinor.
Soon after they started on the return journey a terrible
snowstorm broke. The light disappeared and the. troika was
thrown in every direction while the horses floundered on
through the deep drifts and the driving snow. Elinor and the
officer huddled under the fur rug, and once again he tried
to console her by clasping her tight in his arms and murmuring
French love words, interspersed at the worst jolts by Russian
swear words. Elinor was too cold and weary to care. She fell
fast asleep in his arms and she was quite surprised to End,
when she woke, that they were safely back at her hotel.
The Grand Duchess Vladimir summoned Elinor at the unu-
sually early hour of half past nine the next morning to be
reassured that Elinor had come through the experience safely.
The Grand Duchess was lying in bed, having her ankle mas-
saged, and Elinor related her experiences.
Had the officer behaved well, she was asked.
"Comme nn ange, ALtesse" replied Elinor serenely.
Beside the bed was an enormous showcase filled with thou-
sands of pounds' worth of diamonds and white and black
pearls. The Grand Duchess explained that since she was still
in mourning for her husband she could not look upon any
coloured jewels.
"Quelle delicatesse, madamei" murmured Elinor, hiding her
smile.
Elinor was given neither facilities nor encouragement to
see anything of Russian life other than the life of the court
and she felt that it would foe an abuse of the warm hospitality
Eltnor Gfyn
which she received to try to do so. But one morning she hap-
to glance out of her window at about nine o'clock, long
before anyone normally stirred, and she saw about thirty
wretched men and women, barefoot and in rags despite the
bitter weather, being driven along by Cossacks with whips.
She the hall porter later who they were, and he an-
swered that they were only foolish people who had come into
the city without passports and he advised Madame that it was
wiser for her not to look from her window in such a treacherous
climate.
In April 1910, Elinor travelled to London, returning once
more to Russia in May 7 this time taking Maxgot with her.
She was astonished at the change that had come over the
Russian countryside with the abrupt arrival of spring. Russia
had seemed to her a land of snow it was strange to find it
green and smiling.
The gayety of St. Petersburg, however, had been closed
down once again by court mourning, this time for King Ed-
ward VII, and even Margot was obliged to go about in a long
black veil looking like a widow* Once again Elinor was warmly
welcomed by the whole court and once again her rooms were
searched continually by some unknown agent.
Elinor's Russian novel, His Hour, was now complete, and
she read it aloud to the assembled court in her beautiful, low,
dear speaking voice of which she was so proud. The readings
went on for ten days, at the end of which the Grand Duchess
Vladimir expressed her unqualified approval and the book was
dedicated to Her Imperial Highness "with grateful homage*
and devotion."
The Breadwinner
His Hour, which was published in October of the same
year, is one of the most characteristic and one of the best of
Elinor's romances. Tamara Loraine, a prim misslsh young
English widow, visiting Egypt with relatives, encountered a
strange young man while she was seeing the Sphinx by moon-
light. She later discovered him to be Prince Gritzko
Milaslavski At the Khedive's Ball he behaved towards her
exactly as the real Gritzko had behaved towards Elinor, and
he was again on the ship going to England, where the in-
cident with the gipsy girl took place, in a very mild and fully
clothed version.
Later she went to Russia to stay with her godmother,
Princess Ardacheff (the Grand Duchess Vladimir), and took
part in the social life of St. Petersburg. Here she met Gritzko
again, who was obviously much attracted to her and with
whom she rapidly fell in love. But she held him firmly at
arm's length, feeling, not without reason, that he was merely
trifling with her affections. Princess Ardacheff tried to throw
them together but Tamara remained haughty and reserved,
Gritzko did many of the wild deeds of his real prototype.
He was slightly wounded in a pistol duel he fought in a dark-
ened room with Count Boris Varishkine over Tamara. He
broke his favourite Arab horse's legs by riding it up and down
the stairs of his palace. Tamara, like all Elinor's other hero-
ines, reproached him for wasting his life and his opportunities
so flagrantly; but whereas the English heroes would have
flung themselves enthusiastically into politics at this point,
Gritzko a shrewd touch this when it was suggested that he
might do something about his serfs, merely shrugged his
shoulders, hopeless and Russian.
Before she returned to England, it was arranged that the
195
Elinor Gfyn
whole party, including Tamara, should see Gritzko's country
house near Moscow, sending the night in Moscow. On their
return from visiting the house there was a fearful snowstorm
and Gritzko contrived to lose the way in his sleigh, so that
he and Tamara were benighted in a shooting-hut, deliberately
provided in advance with food and champagne. There, faced
with the prospect of dishonour, Tamara snatched the pistol
from Gritzko s belt, held it to her head, saying that she would
How her brains out if he approached any nearer. After an
hour or so of this, however, she fainted, and when she came
to she knew by her disordered clothing and Gritzko's trium-
phant expression that the worst must have happened.
Gritzko proposed to her formally by letter, and poor
Tamara, disgraced and anxious about the possible conse-
quences of Gritzko's misdeed, had no choice but to accept. The
wedding took place soon afterwards, quietly because of Lent,
Tamara's English relatives being greatly astonished and dis-
approving strongly.
That night, in his palace, Gritzko showed Tamara his
mother's room and the sanctuary with the lamp swinging be-
fore the Ikon, which no woman since her death had been
allowed to see. There he confessed eternal love for Tamara,
and she, deeply moved, responded by breaking down the icy
reserve which had encased her for so long. She forgave him
freely for his misdeed towards her, and only then did he con-
fess that in the shooting-lodge, in the hour when he had had
her at his mercy, he did but kiss her little feet.
His Hour undoubtedly owed its great popularity to the char-
acter of Gritzko masterful, tempestuous, passionate, untame-
able. It was his picture, and not Tamara's, which was shown
on the frontispiece. Young ladies would lie on their beds read-
196
The Breadwinner
ing His Hour, wondering If such a fascinating, romantic man
could possibly exist and would ever come into their lives.
But for those readers who find Gritzko's irresponsibilily and
wildness a little tedious, the charm of the book lies in the
amazingly vivid picture of the Russian court of 1910. We are
a very long way from the imaginative backgrounds of Marie
Corelli or the notorious inaccuracies of Ouida. Elinor *s keen
eye, her gift for descriptive writing served her in good stead
in Russia. Over and over again the book is illumined by some
little vivid touch which lights the scene in our eyes :
Then her attention was diverted, as it always was each
time she saw the blazing braziers and heaped up flaming
piles of wood at the corners of the streets, since she had
been in Russia. "How glad I am there is something to make
the poor people warm," she said.
"When it gets below twelve degrees it is difficult to en-
joy life, certainly," the Prince agreed. "And, indeed, it is
hard sometimes not to freeze/
It was a strange lurid picture, the Isvostchiks drawn
round, while the patient horses with their sleighs stood
quiet some little distance off.
The romance of Gritzko and Tamara was full-blooded
enough to satisfy Elinor's greediest admirers, but when we
think of His Hour now, we think, not of them, but of the
vanished splendours of Imperial Russia, the pomp and cere-
mony, the balls and banquets, the uniforms and the jewels,
the endless court mourning, the endless games of bridge, the
feverish, irresponsible gayety, the hot rooms and the icy wind,
the polonaises and the mazurkas, the sleigh bells and the
snow.
Gritzko and Tamara settled down at Milaslav, but for once
we can be certain that they did not live happily ever after.
They can have had only seven years at most of tempestuous
married life before the Revolution swept them away.
197
Gljn
Elinor, In her descriptions of Russian life, did not venture
any criticism, apart from Tamara's pep talk to Gritzko. In-
with the Grand Duchess Vladimir and most of the Rus-
court virtually looking over her shoulder as she wrote,
she was hardly in a position to do so. She had misgivings
about the value and the ethics of the life she ivas describing,
but it is doubtful if she foresaw that it must end so soon in
violence. And such a prophesy would hardly have been wel-
comed by her hosts, who had suggested the book and who had
given her such opportunities and such help in writing it. Eli-
nor could only record what she saw objectively and, as far
as possible, sympathetically. It is, for that reason, all the more
devastating an indictment.
16.
Elinor and Margot returned to England in June in com-
pany with a newly acquired Siberian cat, and Elinor picked
up again the threads of her normal life at home.
Tonight we have dined with Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn
Wood, rather deaf, seventy-two and as active as a two-year-
old! He began by saying he enjoyed the rare pleasure of
a long chat with me, that I was so intelligent and he loved
listening to me! 1 1 He said that he adored my books and
wished to hear aU about my Russian trip. 1 opened my lips
to speak, but was not allowed to get the words out, as he
had a number of long stories and remarks to make himself*
I remembered Sterne "I take heaven to witness that I
never once opened the doors of my lips" and remained per-
fectly silent, only nodding and smiling at intervals. He told
my husband I was such a witty person! ! and my Russian
trip must have been extremely interesting! ! !
For most of the summer of 1910, Elinor seems to have been
The
in a depressed frame of mind; partly due, no doubt, to re-
action after the excitements of Russia, partly to a particularly
dismal spell of wet weather, and partly to the endless financial
struggle and the frustrations and aimlessness of life at home.
She was also grieving and worried over Clayton and in-
creasingly preoccupied with the painful intensity of her feel-
ings for Curzon.
How dark! how cold! Leaden skies and damp lawns,
Glorious roses spoilt, tears in die air, a wild rebellion in me.
Day after day the same life, incomplete, hungry, with no
aim or 'end, only to get through with it. A strange nameless
excitement is in my veins. There is a magnet here in Eng-
land and I am a needle, and between the two are all sorts
of paltry obstacles and some great ones, and I fed I could
scream to the night, Tear me a path, sweep them .aside,
let me be free to follow my bent/
In August she and Margot went to Gowes, which, with
King Edward so recently dead, was a very quiet affair that
year. Later they went on to stay with Billy Grant at Millers-
don. They returned to London at the beginning of September
and Elinor was visited by Milner.
I have seen him, my old friend. I wonder why in the
past I never loved him. He loved me and loves me still.
His stem face grew soft when his eyes rested upon me.
We talked for hours in the firelight and he forgot his duties
and his dinner. We visited past scenes Stephaniewartz and
the new moon! I gave him a new moon out of the tiniest
diamonds Carrier I remember designed it and made it into
a pin he wears it still! We spoke of Nuremberg and our
joyous day there; of pine woods; of forests; of walks high
up the mountain where, gay as children, we used to wander;
and he reminded me of our playful afternoon when we got
lost and I was childish and pretended there were bears com-
Elinor Glyn
Ing out of the dark trees to eat us! and how I held his hand
and him run down into the open early moonlight.
I had forgotten it all. We talked of that time seven years
His face at last was full of wistful pain it touched
me. And at last he went away and I fear he will not come
again. I cannot love him I love only one. But even though
he wiE not see me ? we shall write. That side of me he can
safely have, the intellectual. He shall be the friend of my
ideals.
In September she and Margot went to stay with Curzon
at Crag Hall, Derbyshire. It was a pleasant family party.
Cuizon's daughters were much the same age as. Elinor's,, the
eldest, Lady Irene (now Baroness Ravensdale) being just
three years younger than Margot. Elinor mercilessly drove the
whole family out to picnic in the woods, cooking over an open
fore boiled bacon and potatoes for tea. Over more formal meals
in the house the assembled families would play the history
game. Curzon would describe in splendid, orotund language
some historical event and then ask one of the girls present to
identify it In the evenings Curzon, like so many others, would
read Aristotle aloud to Elinor.
It was a happy party, but It seems to have added fuel to
the raging fires inside Elinor. She wrote in her diary on her
return to London :
thoii great one, calm and wise, accept this my cry of
worship. Know that for me thou canst do no wrong. Thou
art the mainspring of my life, for whom I would die, for
whom I would change my character, curb my instincts,
subjugate every wish, give my body and soul, worship
blindly* Maimed or sick, well or strong, thou art adored,
my arms for thy comfort, my soul for thy assuagement
And a little later on she wrote :
1 wrote and wrote and read and worked, then I went
2,00
The Breadwinner
alone Into the garden. A great bed of white roses drew me,
pale stars, more pure than in June. This Is the Indian Sum-
mer, the first we have had of any sort this year, and it is
calling me and mocking me, I am wild with unrest and
pain. Oh night! with your black wings, enfold and soothe
me, give me sleep, heavy and dreamless. Blunt my longing,
give me peace.
But later her spirits began to improve .and on October 17,
her forty-sixth birthday, she wrote :
I have seen a vision. Away with all sorrow or weariness
or despair! Away with all sad and depressing things! The
glory of it has gilded all the horizon. All is well. Never
again can dark thoughts come to me. High above all earthly
things shines the light. To thee eternal God I cry aloud in
praise and thanksgiving. Shadows are passed. All is well.
She and Margot spent all Halloween staying with Lord
Ormonde at Kilkenny Castle in Ireland. On her return she
stayed with Lady Jeune (now Lady St. Helier) at her house
in Portland Place. She had been accustomed to stay with the
Jeunes whenever she was in London, first at their house in
Harley Street and later in Portland Place. But she decided
that it would be more convenient now if she had her own
pied-a-terre in London and she took a small suite at the Ritz,
which, despite financial crises, she retained for the next two
years.
Clayton longed to winter again in the South of France,
and Mrs. Kennedy encouraged this wish. Elinor, remember-
ing all the trips abroad he had given her, acquiesced. A
warmer climate, too, might be good for his asthma. Accord-
ingly he, Mrs. Kennedy, and Margot set out for the Medi-
201
Etinor GI/
terra&ean in November to for a suitable hotel. They went
first to Bonnes More deciding on the Hckei Beau-
Rivage at St. Raphael
Elinor them later In the year, stopping for a while
in Paris.
I am better. There are angels of some kind of peace
around me. I seem to feel no sorrow. I seem to realise that
all things have phases and the pendulum swings both ways.
The atmosphere of Paris suits me. Here, and in Russia,
there are no quaintly jealous women. They understand and
appreciate what they are good enough to call my "esprit.*
I have my place, conceded with homage. AE the great ones
of the earth who are here for the time do me honour. And
although honour will not lift the ache from my heart, it
will soothe one's self-esteem.
Then she motored on to St. Raphael, stopping, as was her
habit, to look in the antique shops she passed for good French
furniture, and finding on this occasion the lovely piece of silk
brocade whose design she adopted for her bookplate.
Also staying in die Beau-Rivage was Professor F. H. Brad-
ley, the most distinguished metaphysician of his age. He had
come to St Raphael for peace and especially to get away from
children, whom he detested. But he was apparently intrigued
by Elinor, for he came up soon after her arrival and introduced
himself as a fellow author* With him she struck up one of
those faithful and incongruous friendships which were such a
feature of her life.
They would walk together through the pine woods round
St Raphael and Valescure discussing philosophy in general
and reincarnation in particular. Like Jeune and Milner he
helped to fill in some more of the gaps in her education, in
particular the nature of philosophy since Aristotle, which was
still largely a closed book to her. "And there were some things,"
she wrote in her memoirs, "which I really believe I might
2,0 Z
The
have taught him too, had we met earlier In both our lives.*
They exchanged signed copies of their works and sat side
by side In the sunshine, Bradley reading His Hoar he had
already read Three Weeks and Elinor working her way
doggedly through Appearance and "Reality. Bradley also spent
a good deal of time In trying to improve Elinor's spelling, an
Impossible task, for though she was by now a willing pupil y
It was too late for her to alter her own individual ideas about
the way words should be spelt.
Elinor returned to England at the beginning of 1911 and
paid a brief visit to America, seeing friends In and around
New York and discussing her books with her American pub-
lisher, Appleton. She was back again in England shortly be-
fore Easter, collected Juliet from her school at Eastbourne,
and took her out to join the family at St. Raphael.
At the end of April, Clayton, Mrs. Kennedy, and Juliet
returned home, while Elinor and Margot went on for a motor
trip through Italy. The financial cloud had for the moment
been blown away by the large sales of His Hour, and the
Italian trip was a specially happy experience. Elinor was at
the time enthralled by the Renaissance and she and Margot
spent many enjoyable days exploring Perugia and San
Gimlgnano. They remained in Italy for six weeks, returning
to England at the beginning of June.
18.
During Elinor's absence in Italy, Clayton had supple-
mented the regular allowance which she made him by borrow-
ing a thousand pounds from a friend against an IOU, which
he had neither the resources nor the intention to redeem. The
IOU came into Elinor's possession on her return from Italy
and she was not only exasperated but humiliated; humiliated
especially, because Clayton had got the loan from Curzon,
203
Glyn
the one person horn whom, in Elinor's mind, it was utterly
unthinkable to accept money. She saw herself placed in a
unbearably mortifying.
At all costs the IOU must be redeemed at once. But after
the expenditure of the winter and the spring, the heavy trav-
eling expenses and hotel bills incurred in St. Raphael and
Italy, the family exchequer was almost empty. There was not
a thousand pounds in it.
In her shame and desperation Elinor went to R. D. Blu-
inenfeld, the editor of the Daily Express, who was not only a
friend and neighbour but also an admirer of her works. She
asked him if he could help her to earn a thousand pounds as
quicHy as possible. He replied that he would willingly pay a
thousand pounds for the first British serial rights of a new
Elinor Glyn novel provided that it was delivered before the
serial at present running in the paper finished in three weeks'
time. The new novel, he added, should be at least ninety
thousand words. Elinor murmured something about a half-
finished novel in her drawer which might be suitable and
hurried back to Essex.
There was, of course, no half-finished novel in her drawer.
She had at that moment not even an idea for one. Back at
Lamberts she retired at once to bed, with a stack of blocks
and her favourite stylo, now badly worn down on one side.
She instructed Maria that she was not to be disturbed and
she settled down to write the opening chapters of The Reason
Why.
For the next three weeks she hardly got out of bed at all.
Meals were brought to her on trays in between whiles she
was fortified with coffee and brandy. She wrote most of the
day and far into the night. Beside her on the bed table was
the terrible IOU r haunting her, driving her on even when she
felt tired out. She finished the novel in eighteen days, and
the first instalment appeared in the Daily Express on Monday,
J u ty 3> i9 11 * exactly three weeks after her commission to
204
The Breadwinner
write it. She received die cheque for one thousand pounds the
same day, as promised, and was able to redeem the IOU.
Then she lay back, saddened and utterly exhausted.
She seems, strangely enough, to have felt no resentment
against either of the two men, the borrower or the lender,
who had placed her in such an invidious position, from which
she had extricated herself only by straining her creative en-
ergy to its utmost limit. All her resentment at the episode
was concentrated upon, the unfortunate book itself. In dash-
ing off a potboiler in such haste, without thought of style,
construction, plot, or grammar, she had prostituted her art and
forfeited for ever in the minds of all right-thinking people
her literary reputation. For the rest of her life she always con-
sidered The Reason Why the very worst book she ever wrote.
"My only choice on this occasion,* she wrote, "seemed to lie
between the degradation of myself or of my pen. The Reason
Why is my witness that I chose the pen.*
19.
Elinor's three principal literary advisors, Curzon, Milner,
and Bradley, urged her continually to take more pains and
trouble over her books. Cuxzon was especially severe on her
for her "cursed facility. 1 * He wanted her to take her time and
write a book which would do full justice to her literary gifts
and of which she could be justifiably proud.
The opportunity to write this book seemed to present it-
self at this moment. The Reason Why was not yet out and
there was no cause to hurry with a new book. And by writing
such a book she would not only give herself deep satisfaction,
but regain her literary standards and reputation, damaged by
recent potboiling. The book was to be her credo, the embodi-
ment, in the form of a love story, of her beliefs and attitude
towards Mfe. She would distil into it her love for classical
205
Gljn
Greece. She would call the book and the heroine Halcyone,
the fairy maiden, the daughter of the beach and the
wind, described in Kingsley's The Heroes.
She mote the novel that autumn aed winter at the Hotel
des R&ervoirs at Versailles, while the rest of the family
gathered once again at St. Raphael When the book was fin-
ished, Elinor went on herself to St. Raphael and gave the
manuscript to Bradley, who was also wintering there. He read
it carefully, suggested some revisions and alterations, and
provided her with the Greelc quotations she required. He also
corrected her myriad spelling mistakes in a handwriting so
vile that even the printers could not read it.
20.
Haley one* published in June 1912, and dedicated to the
memory of Sir Francis Jeune, was Elinor's own favourite
among her books. She prized it higher than Three Weeks or
The Visits of Elizabeth, or His Hour, and for this reason it
deserves special consideration in the canon of her works. It
was also, we may note, the first of her novels in which the
hero had a career to follow.
The story of Haleyone is almost unbearably poignant in
view of what was to come later. Haleyone La Sarthe lived
alone with two impoverished aunts in the dilapidated La
Sarthe Chase. She was a strange solitary child, pure, innocent,
loving, darting about the woods like a will-o'-the-wisp, com-
muning with nature, uneducated but with a naturally culti-
vated taste and mind, revering almost to idolatry a bust of
Aphrodite which she had found in an attic, herself in love
with ancient Greece.
A retired professor came to live in a cottage outside the
gates. Haleyone made friends with him, nicknamed him
* Published in some American editions under tlie title Love Itself.
2.06
The
Cheiron, and persuaded him to teach her Greet and to give
her an extensive classical education. There one day she met
another of his pupils, John Derringham, now a rising politi-
cian, ambitious, egotistical, with a tendency to deliver rather
pompous lectures on the necessity for aristocratic government.
He was at this stage not the least interested in Halcyone,
Many years later, when she was grown-up, she met him
again at Cheiron's house. It was necessary for his political
career that he marry someone with money and he was now
wooing a rich American widow, Mrs. CricHander, who had
leased a house near by. Mrs. CricHander had her culture pur-
veyed to her daily, predlgestecl, by an English companion
specially employed for that purpose, and by this resourceful
means she was able to keep her head above water in a com-
pany whose conversation was almost exclusively classical and
even, apart from a few lapses such as confusing Cheiron with
Charon, to impress John Demngham, himself a fine scholar.
John Derringham, however, met Halcyone and fell in love
with her, although he had always scoffed at love.
The moon was growing brighter and a strange mysterious
shimmer was over everything, as though the heat of the day
were rising to give welcome and fuse itself with the night.
He was alone with the bird who throbbed from the copse,
and as he sat in the sublime stillness he fancied he saw
some does peep forth.
But where was she the Nymph of the Night?
His heart ached, the longing grew intense until it was
a mighty force. At last he buried his face in his hands; it
was almost agony that he felt.
When he had uncovered his eyes again he saw, far in
the distance, a filmy shadow. It seemed to be now real, and
now a wraith, as it flitted from tree to tree, but at last he
knew it was real it was she Halcyone! . . .
All reason, all resolution left him. He held out his arms.
207
Elinor Gfyn
"My love!" he cried. a l have waited for you! Ah, so longP
And Halcyone allowed herself to be clasped next his
heart.
They had such a number of things to tell one another
about love. He who had always scoffed at its existence was
now eloquent in his explanation of the mystery. And
Halcyone, who had never had any doubts, put her beauti-
ful thoughts into words. Love meant everything it was
Just he John Deningham. She was no more herself, but
had come to dwell in him.
She was tender and absolutely pure in her broad loyalty,
concealing nothing of her fondness, letting him see that, if
she were Mistress of the Night, he was master of her soul.
He would marry her at once, though the marriage would
have to be kept secret, since if it was known that he had a
wife, he would have to keep her in the stately splendour his
position demanded, and which he could not afford. Halcyone,
loving and trustful, agreed simply. Coming to meet her at
the arranged rendezvous a few days later, he fell, a little un-
romantically, into the ha-ha and knocked himself out; and
Halcyone, distraught at his failure to appear, was taken off
herself to London by her legal guardian.
John Derringham was nursed slowly back to health by Mrs.
Cricldander, at the end of which time he found himself en-
gaged to her. Too late he came to his senses and realised that
she wanted him only for his position; by then he was in hon-
our bound to her. Halcyone, heartbroken at seeing the an-
nouncement of his engagement in the paper, and Cheiron,
who now knew everything and despised John for his ignoble
conduct towards Halcyone, went off together for a trip to Italy,
taking the bust of Aphrodite, from which she was never sepa-
rated.
Mrs. Cricldander, however, discovered that the govern-
ment was about to fall and, having no wish to be for years
208
The Breadwinner
the wife of an opposition leader, she dropped John and trans-
ferred her attentions to a Radical. John, fearful that he might
have lost Halcyoae for ever, pursued her and found her on
top of a tower in Perugia. There on his knees before her he
begged her forgiveness and love. They were happily married
soon afterwards.
The book was in many ways the most ambitious Elinor had
yet attempted a study in pure and simple love, trusting, open-
hearted, scorning all tricks, all prevarications, all flirting,
despised, unshakeable, and finally triumphant. Halcyone her-
self is, of course, yet another self-portrait of the authoress,
this time as she wished to see herself, idealised almost to the
point of incredibility. Halcyone, the fey child, is frankly un-
believable, the dream child of one who never for a moment
understood children. Grown-up, she is a little more solid, a
little more three-dimensional. But she is absurdly overpraised;
her natural purity of soul, nobility of mind, and cultivation
of taste are emphasised to the point of satiety. Yet the evident
sincerity with which the character was conceived and the de-
votion with which she was described are strangely moving in
their intensity.
Gheiron, the prof essor, was a loving portrait of Bradley. And
we are given many indications of the personage who inspired
John Derringham. like Curzon, he was a fine scholar and
had been Captain of the Oppidans at Eton. His aristocratic
descent was, like Curzon's, partly obscured by a more im-
mediate background of poverty. Like Curzon he was an am-
bitious politician. Like Curzon he had already been Foreign
Under-Secretaiy.
We cannot think that Curzon, when he read Halcyone,
failed to recognise himself; and, equally, we cannot think that
209
Glyn
be can have been very pleased at the character displayed
there, a selfish, egotistical man who was prepared to put his
own alms and ambitions before anything else; who believed,
at any rate initially, that only the male sex could have souls;
and who was told forcibly by the professor at the end that
he was not worthy of Halcyone. The letter which Curzon
wrote to Elinor after she sent him a copy has not been pre-
served, but she said in later years that he merely acknowledged
the of the boot and pointed out two spelling mistakes
In her covering letter.
The critics viewed the book with qualified approval and
Dr. Edward Lyttdton, endeavouring to atone for his incivility
over Three Weeks, wrote a letter of appreciation. But the
rest of the great public the thousands all over the world who
loved Elinor's boots were deeply disappointed. After the
strong situations and the brightly coloured passions of her last
three novels they were puzzled by the gentle story and the
quiet half-tones of the new book. They were bewildered by
the feyness, by the unleavened mixture of piety and paganism,
and by the continual classical allusions. They were frightened
away by the unpronounceable tide, by the Aphrodite on the
frontispiece, and by the awe-inspiring inscription on the
cover:
APASANTI HAEIN
which they were expected to translate for themselves.* Finan-
cially, the book was an almost complete failure.
22.
Margot was now eighteen, and in the summer of 1912,
Elinor took a litde house in Green Street, Park Lane, for her
first London season. Elinor redecorated the house lavishly,
* "To him that doetb, so let it be done/ Aeschylus, Cho&pkoroe.
2,10
The
and there was hardy enough money left at the end for taads,
much less to give a dance. House decorating was fast becom-
ing Elinor's ruling passion, amounting almost to mania, and
while it was upon her, all thoughts of economy, never vezy
strong, were thrown to the winds.
Margot, however, was duly presented at court and was en-
tertained a good deal, and Elinor was able to look at society
through her daughter's eyes and observe how it had changed
and relaxed its formalities since the days when she had been
a debutante. The summer was clouded by Clayton's health,
which was now very poor, and Margot would usually go back
to Lamberts for the week end to look after him.
In taking the house in Green Street, Elinor had a second
purpose besides launching Margot; that was to repay some of
Curzon's hospitality, and he did in fact come to dine several
times, though not as often as she hoped. Her f eelings towards
him had not weakened in the least with the passing of the
years. Despite his frequent letters and his present of a mag-
nificent diamond and sapphire ring the only jewels she ever
accepted from an admirer she had the inescapable feeling
that their romance was not advancing towards any very happy
outcome. On receiving a letter from him about this time she
wrote in her diary :
The writing always makes my heart beat. Why are we
such slaves to emotion, that the sight of traced words on
paper causes sudden physical sensation of thumping puke,
and heat or cold? Alas! the power of the Loved One, even
at a distance! When shall I be able to dominate these things!
Alas, when? One can obtain dominion over all outward
demonstration with a strong will, but who can crush the
soul's acheI wish I knew.
It was only to be expected that she would be considerably
influenced by Curzon's political views. Her own convictions
were, by nature, high Tory and many of his opinions con-
211
Elinor Glyn
and crystallised her own instinctive but less explicit
thoughts. Amongst other things she disapproved deeply of the
suffragette movement, thinking it both undignified and un-
feminine.
And as women by their greatness, tact and goodness in-
fluence affairs and governments and countries, through
men, a thousandfold more than the cleverest suffragettes
could influence these things by securing votes for women
I do implore you, Caroline, when your turn comes to be
the inspiration of some nice young husband, to use your
power over him to make him feel truly the splendour of
his inheritance in being an Englishman, and his tremendous
obligation to come up to the mark.*
But women were not only the inspiration and the guiding
light; they were also, in the last resort, the end in themselves.
She wrote in her notebook :
If a women excites a man's senses but remains a prob-
lematic possession, the man will skimp his duty, neglect
his friends and snatch even hours from sleep to spend them
in her company.
To Elinor there was nothing illogical or mutually incon-
sistent in this dual conception of the role of women. Nor at
the time did she see the irony in herself being a stern opponent
of the emancipation of womenshe who had shocked society
by earning her own living and by doing so had helped to blaze
the trail towards feminine independence.
23.
In the course of the season Elinor and Margot went once
again to Cowes and in the Squadron Gardens there Teresa,
* Letters to Caroline.
212
The Bread-winner
Marchioness of Londonderry, related to Elinor 'the story of a
woman she knew. This story struck Elinor forcibly and she
used it, with very little alteration, for the plot of her next
novel, The Sequence.
After Cowes they went to Paris, where they stayed, .as
usual, at the Ritz. They were welcomed warmly by Olivier,
the headwaiter, who was now an old friend. For lunch every
day they ate lobster, raspberries* and cream; it was Elinor's
favourite meal and she saw no reason why she should have to
eat something she liked less weU every second or third day
merely for the sake of variety. Olivia: called 'the meal,
"Comme d'Habitude," and gave them a special reduction.
From Paris they went on to Carlsbad, returning at the end
of the summer to the Hotel des Reservoirs at Versailles* where
Elinor finished The Sequence. In December they returned to
England to prepare for the usual family migration to St.
Raphael.
In the new year, 1913, Elinor and Margot went first to
stay with Curzon at Hackwood; then they went on to Paris
and Cannes. Mrs. Kennedy went direct to St. Raphael as
advance party. Clayton was due to join her there, but he never
came.
He was far from well physically, and by now his moral
disintegration was almost complete. He had been living on
his wife's charity for almost five years and he could bear the
humiliation of his position no longer. He gathered up his re-
maining possessions, including some of his family silver, and
disappeared into the blue* No one knew where he was until
a letter, addressed not to any of the family but to Dixie, about
his clothes, disclosed that he was in Constantinople. The mar-
riage had been a long time a-dying, but it was dead at last
One may be tempted to think that Elinor's marriage to
Clayton Glyn brought her little except disillusion and disap-
pointment and heavy financial burdens. From a bright start
it had declined, at first slowly, with occasional lifts back into
Etinor Glyn
the sunlight, and then with an Increasing acceleration down
into the shadows. But to represent her marriage only as a
story of decline and frustration is to present a convincing but
incomplete picture. There were times, especially in the early
years, when Clayton made her very happy; and while he still
had the power he gave her everything she asked for except
romance. Above all, he gave her her position as his wife.
Had he not married her, her life would have been very
much harder than it was. As a spinster, her place in society
every year more difficult, mortified by the fact that for all her
beauty no man apparently wanted her as a wife, hard up, a
burden to her friends and relatives, she would only have been
Poor Nellie, consumed even more with frustrated romantic
longings .and self-pity. As a spinster, her articles upon love
and marriage, her position as an acknowledged authority on
the subject, which she became in the twenties, would have
been less acceptable. She would probably have written books,
but they might have had to be rather different books. She
might well have made money, but without the advice and re-
straining influence of her daughters and sons-in-law she might
easily have ended friendless and destitute like Ouida.
In marrying her Clayton Glyn gave her that essential pos-
session, a place in the world, which she was never to lose,
and for that she forgave him everything. And it was a debt
which she repaid in full.
24.
As soon as the news came through, Elinor and Margot
joined Mrs. Kennedy in St. Raphael and there they waited
for further developments, which did not, in fact, materialise.
Early in the spring they returned to England, and arrange-
ments were made to sell Lamberts. Essex was Clayton's home
county, but now that he was gone there was no need for
214
The
Elinor to remain there any longer. The family for die
moment into the Green Street house.
The final breakup of Elinor's marriage was, of course, her
private affair only. Life must go on. Books must be published,
her position in society retained; and that summer she went as
usual with Margot to Cowes and to Carlsbad. On the way to
Carlsbad news came that Clayton, now coming slowly home
from Constantinople, ivas lying ill at a hotel in Interlaken
and Margot went there to nurse him. When he recovered,
he returned to England, where he took a small house in Rich-
mond. Here he lived quietly for the next two years, alone
but not unhappy, visited at intervals by Elinor and his daugh-
ters.
The Green Street tenancy was now up, and Elinor de-
cided that henceforward she and her family would live mainly
in France. Accordingly she took a long lease of No. 5 Avenue
Victor Hugo, Pare des Princes, outside Paris, and proceeded
to redecorate it in her usual extravagant style. Precautionary
thoughts were brushed aside: beautiful brocades were spe-
cially woven; she did not even ask for estimates for the altera-
tions she planned and the builders* bill alone for the house
came to more than a thousand pounds.
25.
In the autumn the whole family moved to Paris. It was a
pleasant house at the far end of the Avenue Victor Hugo, near
Boulogne-sur-Seine, but they soon found that it was too far
out from the centre of Paris to be convenient Elinor tad had
several objectives in taking the house. She wanted somewhere
as dissimilar as possible from Essex, with its unhappy associa-
tions; she had always wanted to live in France; she wanted
Margot to taste the delights of French society and Juliet to
finish her education there. She wanted a home that was ab-
2.15
Elinor Glyn
solutely her own, decorated and furnished by herself for her-
self; and she wanted a home where she could receive and
entertain Curzon IB the style which he showed her at Hack-
wood and which she had not been able to reproduce ade-
quately in Green Street. She wrote inviting him to come, but
he responded, temporising.
One day, December 3, she saw in an illustrated paper
photographs of Curzon and Milner, the two eminent states-
men who were her closest friends, and she was moved to con-
trast them in her diary.
Today in an illustrated paper there is a picture of you,
my King, as you sat when the speech was done, leaning
your proud head against the wall. You look weary and
rather sad as you gaze into distance and the picture pulls
at my heartstrings. I long to draw you to rest and caress
those lines of care away. Ah me!
And side by side on the page there is my old friend ad-
dressing a vast multitude too. How strange that you should
be so near together! How different are your personalities,
both so great, both true and noble and splendid, and yet
the sight of one picture moves every passionate emotion
and the other stirs a gentle admiration. And you are both
counted as cold and stern and indifferent. Women, they
say, are things of naught in both of your lives!
Curzon finally came in the spring and was warmly wel-
comed by the whole family, including Juliet, who had been
taken away from school at Eastbourne to attend classes in
Paris. Elinor discovered to her astonishment that Curzon had
not been to Versailles since he was a small boy and she took
him there, leading him with closed eyes across the terrace, as
she had led Innes-Ker nine years before.
"Now!" said Elinor, turning him round.
Curzon gazed at the great facade for a long time without
speaking, while Elinor waited with bated breath.
216
The Breachmmer
Finally he gave his opinion. "Architecturally coned, but
monotonous." Elinor, once again delated, was left wondering
whether anybody but she appreciated the most wonderful
sight in the world.
During the winter she worked on a new novel. The Man
and the Moment, which had been commissioned by her Amer-
ican publishers, and which they wished to appear in America
before it appeared in England. The expenses of redecorating
the house and living expenses generally had been heavy and
Elinor worked fast and hard to meet the alarming bills which
were now coming in. Juliet attended her classes and Margot
experienced the fashionable merry-go-round of smart Paris so-
ciety, which Elinor had enjoyed in her day.
Elinor herself entertained a certain amount at her big house.
At one of these parties, reclining on a sofa in a purple alcove,
she read aloud from her works, both in the original and in
the French translation, to a resplendent assembly which in-
cluded the Duchesse de Luynes, the Duchesse de Rohan, the
Duchesse de Noailles, the Marquise de Mun and the Com-
tesse de Segur. Such readings were not unusual among es-
tablished authors of the time and Elinor's books had a high
reputation with French literary critics higher than they had
in England.
But France was changed and Elinor was troubled at the
new atmosphere in Paris, the hectic, feverish pursuit after
amusement, no matter how bizarre or distasteful. Even among
the upper classes the reserve and dignity which Elinor had
thought practically synonymous with French aristocracy
seemed to have gone.
The onrush of the war took the French upper classes com-
pletely by surprise. Elinor had already arranged to return to
England for the season, being dissatisfied with French society,
and had fortunately made her travelling arrangements well in
advance. On the Quatorze JuOlet she took the girls to Ver-
sailles to see the fireworks, let off in front of a huge crowd as-
217
Glyn
sembled round the Bassin de Neptune. The holiday spirit
seemed undisturbed and there was no suggestion of calamity
in the air.
On July 23 they went to a chitaau near Paris for the week
end and both they and their hostess were surprised and of-
fended at the sudden departure of the Austrian Ambassador,
who was one of the guests. It was Fielder, Elinor's chauffeur,
who mentioned that he thought there might be going to be a
war y and everyone searched hurriedly in the newspapers to
see what he could mean and with whom the war could be.
The family reached England on July 29 to find that Eng-
lish society was almost equally unaware of what was going on.
Leaving Juliet staying with Lucy at her house in Lennox Gar-
dens, Elinor and Margot went, as usual, to Cowes.
They found the place in commotion at a rumour that the
regatta might be put off. Most people refused to take this
seriously but Lord Ormonde, the Commodore of the Squadron,
told Elinor that he thought there must be something in it, for
Prince Hemy of Prussia, who never failed to come, had can-
celled Ms visit
218
BOOK FIVE
The War Correspondent
1914-1919
I.
During the rest of 1914, Elinor and Iier family lived in
London. Mrs. Kennedy took a flat on the ground floor of
Shelley Court, Tite Street, Chelsea, while Elinor stayed at
the Ritz. Margot enlisted as a V.A.D. and worked in the
kitchen of a hospital in Park Lane. Juliet, not yet sixteen,
refused to go back to school, and instead put her hair up,
pretended to be older than she was, and became a V.A.D.,
too. Elinor herself hankered to be given some war work, and
she was greatly attracted by a suggestion that she should re-
turn to France and write articles for the American press about
the devastated areas in France. The necessary permits and au-
thorities, however, were not immediately forthcoming, and
she remained for the moment in London, writing articles for
the English press.
In 1915, impatient of the delay in completing the arrange-
ments for her to write her articles, she returned to Paris, leav-
ing her daughters in the care of their grandmother at Shelley
Court. She decided that her house in the Avenue Victor Hugo
was too far out and she stayed now at the Ritz, where she
would be nearer to the heart of things.
Paris had altered greatly from the hectic days before the
war. Everything was very serious, sober, and quiet. But at
221
Elinor Glyn
the time Elinor noticed none of the earnestness, the
appreciation of the gravity of the situation, the desire to be
something, too, which was so apparent in London, even
though the war was being fought on French soil.
She was especially disappointed at the attitude of the aris-
tocracy. Very few of them were fighting; most of them were
living quietly on their country estates and the rest had ob-
tained safe jobs. Etiquette did not allow any well-born French
girl to be a nurse or to do any form of war work at all, and
it was solemnly explained to Elinor that no girl who demeaned
herself in such a way could possibly hope to make a good
marriage. Elinor remembered her own daughters in the hos-
pital kitchen in London and was amazed at the different atti-
tudean attitude which persisted to the end of the war.
Paris was a depressing place at this time and Elinor's diary
makes gloomy reading. The war was not over by Christmas
and no one had yet developed his second wind. A great num-
ber of Elinor's friends, many of whom had been regular
officers or in the reserve of their yeomanry or county regi-
ments, had been killed.
Her permits to visit the battle areas had still not come
through and she used to pass the time by taking flowers and
cigarettes to the British Hospital in the Trianon Palace Hotel
at Versailles. She would spend much of the day there, talking
to the men, listening to their accounts of the battles. On one
occasion she arrived at the hospital, her arms full of red roses,
just as a man was wheeled past on his way to the operating
theatre. He looked ghastly, and the sister, when Elinor glanced
enquiringly at her, shook her head sadly. On a sudden im-
pulse Elinor pushed a rose into his hand and told him that if
he held on to it he would be all right. The man's fingers
closed on the rose and he smiled feebly. Later the surgeon
told Elinor that the man had held on to the rose even under
the anaesthetic and was now making an almost iniraculous
recovery.
222
The War Correspondent
The permits, however, still failed to appear, and Elinor be-
gan to feel that she was achieving nothing by remaining in
Paris. She was becoming very depressed, both by the war news
and by the lack of Interest of all her French friends In the
war. The news also came that Clayton was seriously ill, and
in the summer of 1 9 1 5, Elinor returned to London.
She took a Eat on the top floor of Shelley Court while her
mother and her daughters remained on the ground floor. As
usual, Elinor redecorated the flat completely before she moved
in, giving the living-room varnished purple walls.
In March, Duckworth published her new novel, The Man
and the Moment, which had been brought out the previous
year in America. It was a light romance, very slight and
artificial, but It was written with a great deal of charm and
skill. The opening chapters, indeed, have a gayety reminiscent
of The Vicissitudes of Evamgeline.
But perhaps the foremost claim that The Man and the Mo-
ment has to our attention Is that in It appears the first mention
of "it," that personal magnetic quality whose discovery and
identification was later to bring Elinor fame and fortune al-
most as great as that brought her by Three Weeks.
1 know one particular case of It In a friend of mine. No
matter what he does, one always forgives him. It does not
depend upon looks either although this actual person Is
abominably good-looking It does not depend upon intelli-
gence or character or anything as you say, it is just "it.*
Now you have "it w and the Princess, perfectly charming
though she is, has not.
2,.
For the summer of 1915, Curzon lent Elinor his villa,
Naldera, at Broadstairs. Her personal feelings for him were,,
223
Elinor Glyn
if than they had been seven years
she could not help hoping that in due course
their might be established on a more serene and
not less Intense, basis.
But, if she have seen it, the writing was already on
the wall. On the twenty-seventh of May, Curzon joined the
Government as Lord Privy Seal, and from that mo-
onwards his political ambition was once more in the
ascendant*
Shortly afterwards she was present at a public speech which
he made, and she wrote in her diary:
What magic in a personality! Oh! my heart! to see you
there, master of those ten thousand people, calm, aloof, un-
moved. To hear your noble voice and listen to your masterly
argument. To sit there, one of a rough crowd, gazing up at
your splendid face and to know that in other moments that
proud head can lie upon my breast even as a little child,
Ah me! these are moments in life worth living for. And
what matters to me that sometimes you are cruel and aloof
even to me? Have you not a right to be what you please
since you are certainly Icing of my being? Did I write some
while ago that my soul worship of you was dead! Poor fool!
It is greater than ever. It slept, but not with the sleep of
death. No other man and no other voice can move me ever.
Only you, beloved one in all the world. I have been through
many days of anguishing sorrow. You wiU never know, my
heart, the agony. But now I am calm again and I have seen
you playing your great part in the fierce light and I am
satisfied.
Curzon had taken a long lease of Montacute House in
Somerset, and he suggested now that Elinor might like to go
down there in the autumn and winter and supervise its redec-
oration for him. This suggestion appealed strongly to her and
she spent a large part of the rest of that year, and of the
224
The \Var Correspondent
following year, 1916, at Montacute. Normally she not
endure room temperatures to be below seventy and it
is tribute to her devotion both to Cunon to decora-
tion that she should have been willing to live in the wintry
weather in the cold stone house, much of the time spent
on the top of stepladders in large, unheated rooms.
In November 1915, Clayton Glyn died, his long years of
illness and dependence at last over. Elinor had the painful
task of going through all his papers and learning so much
about him which he had never allowed her to know during
his lif etime, and mourning again the decay of her once bright
and happy marriage.
Soon afterwards she became ill herself and had to remain
in bed for several weeks. On her recovery she determined that
she must do something active to help in the war and she
joined the canteen in Grosvenor Gardens, choosing the night
shift, explaining that at her age it no longer mattered what
happened to her*
I was never a good waitress [she wrote], always stupid
and muddling, but I could sweep and dean nicely and
finally became one of the most expert of the washing-up
staff.
In company with other voluntary workers she washed up
thousands of greasy plates, knives, and forks, and scrubbed
tables and floors with those immaculate, lily-white hands of
which she was so proud. She was bullied by the professional
canteen manager, who enjoyed humiliating the more aristo-
cractic or celebrated members of her voluntary staff.
Elinor derived a considerable satisfaction from her work,
feeling that at last she was doing something to help and lik-
225
Elinor Glyn
Ing the direct contact her work gave her with the troops. The
worst part of the night shift was the trudge home at four In
the morning to Tite Street, for there was no transport avail-
and, petrol being unobtainable, no one kept a car.
In between her shifts she would go down to Montacute or
in her flat in Tite Street, She was also at this time writ-
Ing articles for the British press, and in the intervals of every-
thing else she was at work on her new novel, The Career
of Busk
In the spring of 1916 the first suspicions came to Elinor
that her friendship with Curzon was drawing towards its close.
She wrote in her diary :
Oh, I realise no man matters but my Lord, and I must
crush all that and be a cynic and when I see you, oh my
heart, I must be gay and not feel, and there is some change,
I know it, in me. It is the third stage, it is of a tender place
that is growing a hard surface to protect itself. I am afraid
of suffering but I must be gay, for of what good to be
tortured? The moment might come when you would again
think only of what was lest for you, and then what would
become of me? Should I die, or simply go to hell?
But how shall I feel when I see you, Oh my heart? That
is what I do not know. I must of course be cold and friendly,
since that is what you wished, but what will it be if, as ever,
your much loved face moves me to the passionate tender-
ness of old. Surely I am strong and can meet you calmly.
Surely my will has not been all in vain.
However, her will could not meet die demand she made of
it.
Tonight I have seen you again and I know that, however
226
The War Correspondent
it for this world, I can never love you less. You are my
darling, my Moved Lord. However you will, you can come
back to me and I will love and soothe you and be tender
and true, and some day, since 1 believe In God, I shall have
peace and my heart's desire and no more pain.
Meanwhile let angels watch over you and keep you. I
care not whether you are .selfish, as everyone says, or no. I
care not if you are famous, or no. Nothing can change my
absolute love. Darling one, goodnight, and let my love bring
you rest and peace.
Elinor had been trying for years to conquer either her love
or her misgivings. She had not succeeded in doing either.
When the blow finally fell, it fell with a suddenness that was
overwhelming.
On December 10, 1916, Lloyd Gorge formed his War
Cabinet, with Curzon as a member; and on looking in The
Times the following day to read about the appointment Eli-
nor saw there the notice of Cuizon's engagement -to Mrs.
Alfred Duggan.
There had been no letter beforehand warning her of what
was to come; nor was there any letter afterwards. If only
there had been some word of warning, some word of explana-
tion, it might have hurt less. Their faithful, passionate friend-
ship had lasted for eight and a half years, and now it was
severed by one public blow of the axe. She never saw him or
wrote to him again. His letters to her, nearly five hundred
of them, she burnt herself the funeral pyre of her last and
greatest love.
In April 1917, Elinor returned to Paris, since the arrange-
ments for her to write for the American press and the permits
227
Elinor Clyn
to visit the battlefields had at last come through. She was as-
at the change that had come over France in the two
years she had been back in England. The subdued, depressed
note of Paris had completely gone. Now there were gay crowds
everywhere. The Ritz swarmed with expensively dressed
women in silver fox capes; both the beau monde and the
now congregated there and it was impossible to
tel them apart. In the evenings, however, the Ritz would
be empty, everyone having gone to the Cafe de Paris, where
the best of the oocottes assembled, or to the Folies Bergere, at
the bar of which a lower type of courtesan, usually only seen
on the streets, was available. "They are the most appalling-
looking creature, painted, diseased, and half-drunk with
absinthe or drugs/* she wrote.
No one had any war work to do. Indeed, no one seemed to
take any interest in the war. "The sight of the whole com-
pany of idlers at tea the first day struck me as dreadful, after
seeing the hard work done in England and remembering the
touching belief which still prevailed that everyone who had
work in France must be a hero." Elinor was much chaffed at
the appointment of a food controller in England; the thought
of food regulations was to French society incredible, the sort
of absurdity which only the English could think of. No one
had any knowledge of or interest in the German submarine
menace, then at its height.
A French Comtesse, hearing about Elinor's work in the
canteen, commented, "I suppose it feels wonderful to work. I
must try it a new emotion/'
Elinor loved France deeply. It was her second home and
some of her happiest days had been spent there. She filled
her books with French phrases, she spoke its language as eas-
ily as her own. She was a passionate admirer of French art,
French architecture and furniture, French habits, French
civilisation. She loved Paris, Above all, she loved the French
nobility, whom she had been taught to admire from the mo-
228
The \Var Correspmideni
ment she coulcl understand human speech, whom she
had herself always thought to be the embodiment of the
virtues that she most admired.
She was bitterly disappointed now. Apart from the
Duchesse de Rohan, whose house was a hospital, and the
Comtesse de la Beravdiere who had turned her big hdtel in
the Pare Monceau into a leave centre for British officers, none
of the French nobility seemed to take the slightest interest in
the war. She wrote in her diary :
What has happened to the gallant French nation that I
used to adore? So much of the aristocracy here in Paris
seems to be just fin de race. They have no true outlook,
only just some decadent remains of the dbckuitime and the
Second Empire without the wit and dignified point of view
of the former, and without the pinchback vigour of the
latter. They seem to be wilted flowers revived by some
chemical for a short time, but their roofs no longer exist.
The war only means something to those who have suf-
fered by it; it means little in the abstract and less than
nothing to the section it has not touched. The peasants are
carrying on in the fields near the Front because it is their
life. The little shop-keepers near the lines are carrying on
their business with unruffled calm, but the real source of
their contentment is not patriotism but merely greed. They
charge exorbitant prices for every bundle of straw and every
cup of water which they dispose of to the exhausted troops,
filling their pockets out of the extremity of human need.
And later she wrote :
The women have a sex urge but they are vicious with
overdvilisation. They want men, they do not want chil-
dren. Nature speaks, but sophistication diverts nature. Poor
France!
Among the lay population, to those who have lost no
229
Gljn
ones and have suffered no decrease of wealth, the
war is simply a bore nothing further "Voyonsl the thing
has gone on too long it is an ennui."
What has become of the proud old French race? The
French of today are an astonishing people. Ungrateful,
emotional, dramatic, crafty and self-seeking; witty, gay,
brave and untrue; yet so fascinating and so brilliant that
they will always be loved, not for their qualities but in
spite of them.
6.
Soon after her arrival in Paris, Elinor made her first visit
to the battlefields, nearly becoming a casualty on her first
day, the American officer who was driving her misjudging
the width of a tram. Fortunately she had had a premonition
of disaster and had insisted on sitting in the back in lonely
state instead of beside him, as he wished. He was much im-
pressed by her premonition and she decided afterwards that
she bore a charmed life.
She dined that night at the French G.H.Q. at Compiegne,
and was considerably relieved to find that the French Gen-
erals took more interest in the war than the Parisians. She
spent the night at Compiegne and set off next morning to
see as much as she could of the front. The French author-
ities evidently attached a good deal of importance to her Ameri-
can articles and her permits gave her wide scope.
She had several narrow escapes. Once she was bombed on
the road and several times caught in artillery bombardments;
but the most frightening experience she had was in one
specially heavy bombardment. She was made to take shelter
in a deep dugout, where she suffered miseries of claustropho-
bia. "My tongue was dry and my forehead damp and only
230
The War
the memory of Grandmamma's teachings me from
screaming al0ud/ f she wrote.
She speat several nights sleeping in the car or in a ditch
at the side of the road, in stern contrast to the high standard
of living upon which she normally insisted. At one point she
was arrested, the troops being suspicious of the beautiful red-
haired lady she was fifty-two, but she looked at least fifteen
years younger driving about just behind the lines. They were
convinced of her innocence, not by her formidable permits,
but, strangely enough, by the discovery of an elegant pink
satin nightdress in her luggage, which they searched.
Her most moving experience of the war was a night she
spent in a deserted house which had been sliced in half by
a shell. The vilkge ? too, was deserted, and uncannily quiet,
but to get away from any stray starving dogs she camped in
the first-floor bedroom and there, lying on the hard skeleton
fed, she watched through the space where the wall should
have been the bombardment of St. Quentin a few miles away.
The noise of the guns effectively prevented sleep and she lay
there all night watching the scarlet flames sweeping through
the town, the huge masses of earth and masonry hurled into
the air and the gaunt old cathedral standing out black against
the glow.
It was a solemn and terrible sight and it moved her later
to write a piece called Destruction, a paean of lamentation
against the horror of war.
Elinor's graphic pen stood her in good stead on these visits
to the battlefields. She wrote in her diary after one visit :
As I returned to the car I passed once more the heaps of
stones that marked the site of the shattered village and
I noticed the pathetic evidences of family life protruding
from the ruins a poor old bedstead of iron, a sodden mat-
tress, and in one place the head of a child's toy horse. A
curious feeling of stupefaction came over me and I looked
231
Elinor Glyn
tip Into the sky for relief. Then suddenly the air was
rent with the thunder of battle beginning again to-
wards the south.
The country for around and beyond Bailly was one
vast rendered the more piteous to look at by the
contrast of the tender spring green of any bush and sapling
which had chanced to escape the blast of shells. And not
merely of shells. One of the things which enraged me the
most was the wanton destruction of all the young fruit trees
by the Germans before their retreat. For miles and miles
the smiling Innocent trees, their early bloom still on them,
lay prone, hacked down out of pure malice and brutality.
One of her tasks was to investigate the stories of German
atrocities, and she spent a good deal of time interrogating the
victims and witnesses of alleged cases of German torture and
rape. M udh as she had always disliked the Germans, she tried
to be fair and impartial, but she came to the conclusion that
there were few exaggerations in the stories told to her.
Elinor returned to Paris from her first trip to the battle-
fields deeply shocked and moved by all she had seen; but her
diary entry of the day of her return ends with a description
of a new Reboux tat which had arrived in her absence and
which she was furious to find had got dented on one side.
When Elinor was not touring the battlefields, she remained
at the Ritz* She had a suite on the Cambon side of the hotel,
which she retained for the next three years, and also, through
the kind offices of Olivier, a corner table in the restaurant,
where she and her friends could talk without being overheard.
Many interesting conversations took place there during the
next three years, for Elinor was a good hostess and she was
232
The War Conesptmdemt
exceedingly discreet. Colonel Le Roy Lewis, the military
attache, and his assistant, Colonel Spears (later Major-Gen-
eral Sir Edward Spears), often dined with her and discussed
the war.
While she was in Paris, she undertook, "besides the writing
of her war articles, a subsidiary war job, becoming vice-pres-
ident of a society caled the Secours Franco-Americain. This
had been formed to assist in resettling refugees as soon as
possible in the recaptured battle areas and in starting them
growing food again, wherever this was feasible. It was Elinor's
first experience of a committee and she was most unimpressed.
Many French noble ladies were also members, but they
seemed unwilling to do any work and delighted in sidetracking
the discussions on to subjects unconnected with the war.
Everything was decided by sentiment, except when the ques-
tion of subscriptions was raised, when the French members
would sit for once absolutely silent.
Only the English and American members were willing to
do any actual work, and Elinor, accordingly, found herself in
charge of the building of the temporary huts for the resettled
farm labourers and their families in the Noyon district. She
spent a good deal of time at Noyon, doing a job which lay
completely outride her normal experience, but from which she
derived a good deal of solace and satisfaction.
This work involved a considerable amount of travelling to
and fro between Noyon and Paris; and what with this and her
journalistic work in the Battle areas, there was little time left
for that other essential activity, earning her living* However,
her energy was very great and she somehow found time in
between other duties to start a new novel, The Price of
Things.
Her earlier novel, The Career of Kcztherine Bush, which
she had been writing during 1915 and 1916, was published
in April 1917.
233
Elinor Glyn
8.
It was ten years since Elinor's discovery in the Nevada gold
ields tliat gentle manners and aristocratic behaviour had no
automatic connection with birth. She had been meditating
upon this and upon its social implications ever since. The
lesson had been repeated more recently in the Grosvenor Gar-
dens canteen, where she had observed the admirable manners,
without any suspicion of familiarity or awkwardness or affec-
tation, of the British private soldiers towards the peeresses
who were waiting on them.
She had also been watching the many American girls who
had married into the British peerage and who, although they
lacked what Elinor had once supposed to be the two prime
requisites of aristocracy, birth and tradition, nevertheless suc-
ceeded in merging into their new social background as com-
pletely as if they had been born into it. Elinor had been grad-
ually coming to the conclusion that there was no reason why
anyone of any social stratum, given the intelligence and the
will to learn, should be unable to become a personage of the
highest social standing, accepted freely in all courts and
houses, filled with noblesse oblige, and upholding proudly all
the traditions of the aristocracy.
She accordingly took for the heroine of The Career of
Katherine Rush not a young woman of ancient lineage, still
less a Russian Imperial Highness, but a girl from the English
lower-middle classes, the daughter of a Brixton auctioneer, the
granddaughter of a pork butcher.*
* We may see tow far Elinor had travelled if we compare a passage
from Beyond the Bocks.
Lady Hairowfield tittered and whispered almost audibly to her
neighbour:
"These are the creatures Florence insisted upon my giving an
234
The War Correspondent
Katherine Bush was the young, attractive secretary of a
firm of moneylenders, and over the glass screen she heard
the younger sons of the nobility begging loans against their
future expectations. She thought how aristocratic and won-
derful they were, herself imitating their voices and expressions
against the time when she would be one of them. At home in
Brixton she lived with her family, whom she despised heartily
for their commonness, their lack of desire to raise themselves
to aristocratic heights, and their petty snobberies. They in
turn bore with {Catherine despite her hardness, her refusal to
marry the worthy Charlie Prodgers, and her de haute en bos
manner, and they were glad of her ruthless efficiency.
{Catherine had always refused all invitations from the aris-
tocratic clients of her employers, feeling that these would only
distract her from her principal objective. However, to increase
her knowledge of high life, she agreed to go for a week end
to Paris with Lord Algy FitzRufus, one of the more charming
and impoverished of them. Here she learned which fork to
use for oysters and that the nobility apparently had baths
every day. She survived the week end without unfortunate
consequences (due solely, we are given to understand, to her
strength of personality, while her sister, a weaker character,
was, under similar circumstances, less lucky), but to her as-
tonishment she found herself passionately in love with Algy.
She crushed this weakness ruthlessly, refused to many him as
he wanted, and insisted that they must never meet again,
adding, for good measure, a pep talk about his idleness.
She resigned from the moneylenders and took a job as per-
sonal secretary to Lady Garribardine (a portrait of Teresa,
invitation to last night. Look at the man!" site added. "Has one
ever seen such a person, except in a pork-butcher's shop!"
"I have never been in one," said Lord Bracondale agreeably;
"but I hear things are too wonderfully managed at Harrowfield
House though I had no idea you did the shopping yourself, dear
Lady Harrowfield/*
She looked up at him, rage in her heart.
235
Elinor Gljn
Lady Londonderry), helping her with her charitable work.
Katharine's family despised her for being a paid employee and
haYing to live in," but Katherine was entirely content, living
now in the houses of the great, learning all the time. She
made mistakes, of course, but she only made them once. She
used her physical charms to attract her employers married
nephew Gerard, so that he might teach her about Renaissance
painting and lend her Chesterfield s letters and other good
books. When he, not understanding, presumed to go further
and start an affair with her, she sent him smartly about his
business.
Usually she lived in her own room, eating her meals off a
tray, but occasionally she was allowed into the drawing-room
or dining-room, and here she would astonish everyone by the
wisdom and sense of her remarks, by her discourses on the
necessity for aristocratic government and especially for an aris-
tocratic Foreign Secretary, by her strictures on the irrespon-
sibility of some members of society, and by her emphasis on
the general need for common sense.
Finally she went one day, by design as always, to the House
of Lords to hear the Land Bill debated. One of the speakers
was the Duke of Mordryn, a proconsular figure with a
Curzonian style of oratory. She learned that he was a widower
and she persuaded the unfortunate Gerard to introduce her
to him without disclosing her subservient status.
The ending, of course, is inevitable, though there is one
bad moment when Katherine, in her unswerving honesty of
purpose, felt herself obliged to confess her affair with Algy to
the Duke and at first to refuse his offer of marriage. However,
we leave her a radiant Duchess, nursing the son and heir, and
shedding a tear over the news of Algy's death in action at
Mons a strange touch of sentiment which Elinor later ad-
mitted to be out of character and artistically a mistake*
The Career of Katherine Bush is a product of Elinor's
236
The War Correspondent
cynical mood. Apart from a little perfunctory passion at the
end, there Is no romance In it. One of Elinor's better known
aphorisms, which occurs in several of her books, was: "It is
wiser to marry the life you like, because, after a litde, the
man doesn't matter." It was a sentiment which she alternately
resisted violently or accepted, cynically, depending upon
whether she was in her romantic or her sceptical mood. In
The Career of Katherine Busk the man hardly matters, except
in so far as he provides the life that Katherine wants. The
Duke of Mordiyn only enters the book three quarters of the
way through and it is not his character which entices Kath-
erine. It is his tide, his coronet, the greatness of his position
and we must be fair the greatness of his opportunities.
Ten years after publication, in 1927, Elinor wrote on the
flyleaf of her own copy :
At the time this book was written, to be an English
Duchess was the height of any young woman's ambition.
Now, of course, all that has passed away. But the great
lesson which the book still teaches is to make yourself the
round peg before you aspire to the round hole never try
and force yourself into a position you are not fitted for.
Make yourself fitted for it; then in justice you can shout
and complain if you cannot obtain it. It is the shouting of
the square pegs for the round holes which makes all the
difficulty in life.
We may concede the sincerity of the author's purpose and
the effectiveness with which she makes her point, while at
the same time finding the book the social climber's vade
mecum. Katherine herself, snobbish, humourless, hard-
hearted, ruthless, selfish, and immoral, runs Ambrosine close
as the most dislikeable of all Elinor's heroines. As one reads
the book, ploughing onwards through the turgid sermons
about aristocracy and common sense, one cannot help longing
237
Elinor Glyn
for some setback, some disaster, some form of suffering to over-
take such a terrible girl. And one longs In vain.
The book is, of course, a Cinderella story, stripped of all
its romantic atmosphere. But Cinderella, even such a hard,
unloveable one, cannot fail, and the book was extremely pop-
ular, especially in Great Britain. Its ultimate British sale was
surpassed only by Three Weeks, The Visits of Elizabeth, and
His Hour,
The Career of Katherine Bush was serialised before book
publication in Nosh's Magazine, like so many others of Eli-
nor s novels. Elinor s literary agent, Hughes Massie, had in
1915, while Elinor was still planning the book, submitted the
synopsis to the Hearst press for serialisation in America. Now,
however, on receiving the finished manuscript, the editorial de-
partment had certain qualms about the story's acceptability in
America. Mr* William Randolph Hearst himself read the
manuscript and sent a message to Hughes Massie that he
thought die character of Katherine was too hard for his read-
ers; he would like her given some human faults and failings
and made rather more lovable; he would like her to be less
complacent about her early lapse from chastity; and he would
like her to be less laudatory of English aristocracy in general
three criticisms which may be thought reasonable.
Hughes Massie passed these points on as tactfully as he
could to Elinor, explaining that he thought it deplorable that
she should be asked to alter her work by a newspaper propri-
etor or editor, but that perhaps in this case Elinor might be
able to meet Hearst's points without compromising her ob-
jectives in writing the book. Elinor, however, refused to con-
sider this, and cabled at once to Hearst the first personal
communication that ever passed between them :
The War Correspondent
WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST
RIVERSIDE DRIVE
NEW YORK CITY
YOUR EDITOR WANTS ME TO MAKE MY POWERFUL STORY
CATHERINE BUSH MORE SUGARY I KNOW BY EXPERIENCE
THAT MY OWN FLARE SUCCEEDS BEST WHEN NOT TAMPERED
WITH FEEL STRONGLY STORY WILL BE FAR MORE SUCCESS-
FUL IF LEFT RUGGED AND ARRESTING THOUGH WOULD NOT
OBJECT SHORTENING PSYCHOLOGY PROVIDED NOTHING NEW
INSERTED PLEASE CABLE YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS
ELINOR GLYN
RTTZOTEL
LONDON
The reply to this has not been preserved but it cannot
have been favourable, for a few days later Elinor wrote Hearst
a long letter defending and justifying the book. She was pre-
pared to make Katherine less complacent about her early
lapse, since this was, of course, a manifestation of the sex urge,
which she was so soon to suppress. But Elinor would not give
way on the other two points.
I feel that if I have made myself clear I am sure you
will see that I could not condemn any of her opinions which
I respect for their honesty, but I could more strongly en-
force the want of wisdom of her initial act. Her opinions
are perfect sound common sense unbiased by emotion, and
I should fancy would greatly appeal to the clever sensible
American public who must be sick of mawkish sentimen-
tality and unreal romantic sentiments.
I feel it would be immoral if I, the author, showed that
I condemn the heroine's opinions, because if I did that and
still made her successful it would be preaching the most
wicked doctrine, when on the contrary Katherine's convic-
tion is that only perfect honesty must win, and this is also
my preaching.
239
Elinor Gljn
I could write a preface if you think fit explaining as I
have in this letter. I have the highest opinion of the com-
mon sense of American readers and always feel I have their
sympathy. They' understood Three Weeks when the Eng-
lish did not. I know and feel this book will he of great
interest and arouse controversy once we have made my
point plain.
She also wrote to Mr. Edgar Sisson, the editor of Cosmo-
olMm magazine, which was considering the book.
My view of it is that I wished not to draw a lovable
sweet heroine but a strong clever magnetic woman who
wins out by sheer splendid courage and truth, even against
the tremendous handicaps of her initial mistake. Every one
of K.B. s views are sane, logical, honest and full of common
sense and show that she has deep psychological deduction.
The whole explanation of what is true aristocracy I feel is
the best thing I have ever done. K.B. was a true aristocrat
and "the Duchess of Dashington" no better than a com-
mon barmaid. The pictures of English society before the
war are photographic; so are all the portraits and will be rec-
ognised by everyone in England. Every single touch in the
whole book is drawn from life.
KJB. is a proof of what strong will coupled with perfect
honesty can do. Above all things, she respects herself and
her act of renunciation when she tells the Duke her story
shows sublime honour and courage. Readers will be deeply
interested in her whether they like her or no. I believe
there is no ridiculous snobby class in America like Kather-
ine's family with their shams and pretences, but still it may
interest Americans to hear about what such people are like
in England.
But in her next letter Elinor wrote :
240
The War Correspondent
Dear Mr. Hearst,
On second thoughts I feel that if you would rather not
risk Katharine Bush in your paper I shall quite understand,
since you know your public best, and I could then make
other arrangements. I have perfect confidence in your
judgement of your public and think you are quite right to
give them what you think best, only I write my books from
inward conviction and make a study of my characters to get
them exact to life, so I could not alter the principles in
Katherine Bush which I have already explained. It would
be like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
I feel quite sure this will clear up all points and that
even if Katherine Bush does not appear under your aegis
we can have better luck next time. As you know your pa-
pers have aU my sympathy.
Yours sincerely,
Elinor Glyn.
The Hearst press bought the serial rights of The Career of
Katherine Bnsh for ten thousand dollars and it was serialised
in Cosmopolitan with only the one agreed alteration. It was
very well received by the American public and it was the be-
ginning of Elinor's long association with the Hearst press.
Most of her future novels were serialised in Cosmopolitan,
which had an exclusive option on her work, and she was as
well to contribute articles to other papers of the syndicate for
the next twenty-five years. It was also the beginning of an
oddly assorted but lasting friendship between Elinor and Wil-
liam Randolph Hearst.
In book form The Career of Katherine Bush did not sell
well in America, its publication coinciding with the end of the
war in Europe. Her American publisher wrote apologetically:
Just consider for a moment the last three weeks. I am
replying to a letter of yours dated October 23rd. Since then
terrific battles have been fought, the Austrian Empire, hun-
241
Elinor Glyn
dreds of years old, has gone to pieces, the great German
Empire and its dreadful 'fighting machine have both entirely
collapsed, 279 kings, princes and grand dukes and their
families have abdicated and fled to neutral or unknown
places, revolution started in all middle Europe and the war
Is done and finished. No other three weeks in all history
can show anything approaching this. Can you expect peo-
ple to bey novels at such a time with such events going on?
And for two years this country has been going through this
sort of thing in a milder form. The result is that fiction has
suffered materially in this country,
This letter was shown to Hughes Massie, who commented
drily:
I should say he is anxious not to offend you but is not
very clear himself just how the small sales of Katherine
Bush can be explained.
10.
Meanwhile, in 1917, Hughes Massie had astutely realised
that with the changed conditions in Europe there would prob-
ably be now no objection to a stage presentation of Three
Weeks. He considered, however, that it would be advisable
to have a fresh dramatic version made, not only to ease Its
passage through the Lord Chamberlain's office, but also to
bring the dialogue a little more into line with modern tastes.
Elinor agreed with this, and it was arranged that Roy
Horniman, who had successfully adapted Locke's Idols for the
stage, should write a new dramatic version. The play opened
at the Strand Theatre on July 12, 1917, with Marga la Rubia
as the Queen and Barry Baxter (succeeded later in the run
by Basil Gill) as Paul.
One can fully appreciate Horniman's difficulties in casting
242
The War Correspondent
the book into a satisfying dramatic form, but at the same time
his version must be open to some criticism. Most of the original
dialogue, as might have been expected, has gone, the parts
that remain standing out in startling and incongruous con-
trast. With the original dialogue has also gone the special at-
mosphere of exotic eroticism which was so essential to the story.
The mysterious, passionate Slav Queen has been turned into
a normal chain-smoking sex-starved woman called Sonia.
Paul is a caricature of a stupid young Englishman; he
whistles the "Eton Boating Song" just before each entry and
after each exit as if it were a Wagnerian leitmotiv. The couch
of roses, the feast of the full moon, the cupid fountain of
Eastern perfume have all gone. The tiger skin just scrapes
in; Paul twists his whiskers and calls him "Old Chap," a fa-
miliarity he would never have dared in the book. Paul's entire
family, together with the English part of the story, has been
cut out, thereby largely eliminating the point of the novel,
Paul's awakening from intellectual and emotional sleep.
In place of these omissions Horniman put in a large number
of Balkan courtiers and politicians, who, led by the King,
continually interrupt the Swiss honeymoon to argue about pol-
itics or flirt with each other. There is even a distressing little
romance between the Queen's maid, Anna, and a Swiss waiter.
Elinor had carefully left the Balkan background vague, a sug-
gested menace hanging over the pair; but in the dramatic
version much of the time is taken up with arguments about
the Constitution and the Legislative Council. The work be-
came, not a passionate and original love story, but a Ruritanian
romance played by stock characters in stock situations with
stock dialogue and without the twists of plot and the pace
which forms so necessary a part of Ruritanian adventure.
Worst of all, the play was given a happy ending, which
seemed to Elinor not only morally and dramatically indefen-
sible, but also, by eliminating Paul's grief and subsequent
regeneration, to remove the second point of her novel.
243
Elinor Gljn
The Times dramatic critic gave the play a lighthearted re-
view, concerned solely with the number of cushions on the
stage and the fact that nobody ever sat on them. The Daily
Telegraph, which had been so deeply shocked by the original
novel, found now ten years later with surprise how mild and
inoffensive the story seemed; oddly, because the adultery and
the consequent baby were still there, made more flagrant by
the happy ending, triumphant rather than tragic. But, in the
critic's opinion, the play seemed unreal and melodramatic,
though it was. well acted apart from some moments of over-
playing by Miss la Rubia*
Even the inadequate new version was sufficient to start
again the arguments about the morality or otherwise of the
Queen's behaviour, and it was on its opening night enthu-
siastically applauded by the audience. But it was taken
off on October 20 after a run of a little over three months,
and one cannot really feel that it deserved a longer run.
On tour it played to large houses. In Colchester the dra-
matic muse, presumably in outrage at the happy ending,
gave the play a cataclysmic finale, which Elinor could not ever
have bettered. The entire theatre burnt to the ground during
the last act
Elinor herself took little interest in the play, leaving the
whole of the arrangements to Hughes Massie. She was not
in England at any time during the West End run, and as far
as is known, she never saw a performance of the play.
n.
Elinor's contacts in Paris in that autumn and winter of 1917
were sufficiently senior and well informed to let her have no
illusions about the seriousness of the war situation. The con-
versations at her table with French Generals, with Le Roy
Lewis and Spears, the letters she received from Milner, who
244
TJie War Correspondent
was a member of the War Cabinet, while not disclosing any
secrets, gave her a clear and anxious picture of future pos-
sibilities. She was all the more resentful at the uncaring at-
titude of French society to the war.
There was in Paris now a certain feeling that economy
should be practised, but there was no suggestion among Eli-
nor's French friends that they should go without food, petrol,
or luxuries. It was, however, no. longer good taste to wear
sables and silver foxes in public these were replaced by
sheared rabbit, mounted on the most expensive materials and
almost equally costly.
She wrote a bitter entry in her diary at this time:
Vice is rampant in Paris, Lesbians dine together openly,
in groups of six sometimes, at Larue's. They are every-
where, and are freely spoken of without shame. Men are
the same. Nothing is sacred, nothing is hidden, not even
vice and avarice. The note is to be "natural" and "Nature"
now appears to be a distorted thing. Oh! what is the matter
with humanity?
Last night I dined with Princess , daughter of a very
old noble family. We went on, all crammed into her motor
(only the friends of Ministers or Generals can obtain petrol
nowadays!) to the Lune Rousse and heard some very witty
songs, and then on to Madame *s where we sat and
watched the dancing.
The Young Comtesse , charming bacchante that she
is, dances with perfect poetry of voluptuous motion, clasped
close in the arms of an Argentine tango expert, their lips
not two inches apart, eyes plunged in eyes, her unquiet
body undulating against his, every movement of both in
unison. The Argentine has been her partner not her lover
for several months, though no one would believe it to see
them dance. The real lover is an Italian, with whom she
has been going about since she parted from a certain noble
Elinor Glyn
Englishman, and rumour has it that she has "been careless
over this affair and is to have an operation. The old hus-
band has been told it is appendicitis.
Imagine the mentality which could dance such dances
night after night with a professional partner, when she was
already aware of the existence of the lover's child! She
does not know that there is a war and cares not a whit for
the old and honoured name which she holds although she is
highly bom herself also.
Another entry reads :
One young widow was there tonight, her husband only
killed four weeks ago, so bored, she said, with the funeral
ceremonies and her mother-in-law's crocodile tears, that
she had to come out and dance for a litde! She was wrapped
in a yard or so of Hack chiffon and apparently nothing else.
If God sent the war as a lesson to the world, it is not half
learned yet I fear! Certainly not in Paris.
She was, however, encouraged by the arrival in Paris in
December 1917 of Milner. He dined with her several times at
her table and she later wrote, "I am proud to remember that
he honoured me with his confidence and treated me as a
reasonable and patriotic being, worthy of trust in matters of
state.*
Elinor's discretion was complete, and Milner had a great
regard for her judgement of people, which, unlike her judge-
ment of business affairs, was usually very close to the mark.
On this occasion she was much cheered, not only by his com-
pany, but by his attitude to the war, so very different from,
that which she heard all around her. On his return to England
he wrote to her:
Anything may happen. One lives in the presence of the
most staggering possibilities of disaster. But so also does the
enemy. If I am cheerful, it is because I am "all in w with-
246
The War Correspondent
out any reservation whatsoever, or regrets for the past or
thought of the future. ft On fait ce qnon feut* and the
event is on the knees of the gods.
In December 1917 the first American troops began to arrive
in Paris. Elinor was friendly with their provost marshal, Gen-
eral Allaire, but she was appalled by the indifference and in-
gratitude of her French friends towards the American Army,
Even for Christmas the Americans were offered no private
hospitality, no form of welcome; no effort was made to mitigate
their loneliness. Only those officers who came with the correct
social introductions were received in French houses.
Elinor felt very bad about it. Together with some English
and American friends she persuaded the Comtesse de Sainte
Aldegonde to lend her large house in the Avenue du Bois for
a big New Year party to which every American officer in Paris
was to be invited. To make it seem like a French party the
invitations were sent out in the names of some grand French
ladies, who had been persuaded to act as hostesses. Some two
hundred American officers accepted and they were duly re-
ceived by the official hostesses at the head of the great stair-
case. However, having shaken hands, the hostesses then
turned their backs upon the company and spent the rest of
the evening talking to each other and to a few American
officers whom it was correct for them to know. The rest were
cold-shouldered.
Elinor and her five friends did their best to make the re-
mainder feel that they were being given a rousing welcome
by the French, but they were only six among two hundred
and there was a blank, depressed air over the whole party
which nothing could shift. As midnight approached, Elinor
noticed some of them slipping away quietly, unable to bear
any more of it. She felt desperate; something drastic had to be
done to retrieve this terrible evening. She seized a glass of
punch, climbed up on to a table, and began to sing "Dixie,"
247
Elinor Gljn
The band joined in, and so, gradually, did everyone else. The
action put Elinor socially beyond the pale, but at least the ice
was broken and the party ended with some show of hilarity.
12.
IB March 1918, shortly before the big German offensive,
Elinor had a severe attack of Influenza, followed by laryngitis;
afterwards she was sent to the South of France to convalesce.
She went as usual to St. Raphael, and while she was there
she read of the disquieting break-through on the British front.
When she recovered, she went over for the day to Nice, a town
she had always hated; now its gayety, its luxury, its shops full
of jewellery and fashions and hats in the middle of the su-
preme crisis of the war seemed to her revolting. She returned
to Paris as quickly as possible.
Paris was at the time being shelled by Big Bertha, and most
of Elinors French friends had fled from the city to their coun-
try estates. The remainder, to her astonishment, made a point
of being personally rude to her about the British. Army and
British morale. One lady, whom Elinor had known intimately
for thirty years, went so far as to write her an insulting letter
about the British. Among those members of the resettlement
committee who still remained in Paris there was special re-
sentment that their work should have been wiped out so com-
pletely by the German advance.
Elinor refused to leave Paris. Someone, she felt, must re-
main in the city. Almost the whole of society had gone, and
everybody else who could afford to about a million alto-
gether, it was said. Of Elinor's friends in Paris, virtually only
the English and American war workers remained. On the
evening of May 28 she and Lady Congreve were able to walk
at half past eight in the evening round the Place Venddme,
down the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Castiglione without
The War Correspondent
seeing a single human being or vehicle. There were rumours
that the government was about to move to Bordeaux.
At the beginning of June, Sir Henry Thornton, the Assist-
ant Director General of Movements, urged Elinor to leave
Paris, pointing out that after her propaganda articles she
might expect no very humane treatment if she were captured
by the Germans. Milner was In Paris at the time and she ap-
pealed to him, asking if she need really go. Milner, however,
was more optimistic about the situation at that moment, and
it was arranged that Elinor could stay in Paris until or unless
he sent a message to Sir Henry Thornton, The code word
"Cherbourg* was to mean "Please arrange to move Mrs. Glyn
to a place of saf ety "
On June 7 Milner wrote to her :
"I am very much struck indeed by what I see of your Amer-
icanssplendid men/
The use of the word "your" amused her, and she told him
in reply of a proposal made by General Allaire that she should
visit the American base camp at St* Nazaire. Milner urged
her to accept and to try to make the Americans feel how much
their help was appreciated by the Allies.
Elinor, however, was reluctant to leave Paris to visit any
base camp at that moment, and on the twelfth of June, Milner
wrote again:
I cannot say that I regard Paris as unsafe yet and it may
never become so. But what makes me uneasy is that I
think, if anything did go wrong, it might come suddenly,
without previous warning, through some internal trouble
which could not be foreseen here. I am not happy at the
thought that you might be depending upon me for a signal
which I should not have the knowledge to give in time.
My advice is rather, that if your work with the Americans
can begin now, you should not delay it. I know you would
not like to leave Paris, unless you were doing something
249
Elinor Glyn
to help the cause. But as things stand, I really think that
you might be rendering more service with the Americans
and certainly your friends would feel easier in their minds!
The same day came news that the German advance had
teen checked and Elinor prepared to set out for St. Nazaire.
She was deeply impressed by the American Army, which
she now met in full scale for the first time. The grim, single-
minded spirit, which she missed so badly among the French,
reminded her of London in 1915. But she was also particu-
larly impressed by the organisation of the American Army, by
the care taken to draft every man to the branch where his own
peacetime trade was likely to make him of most service. She
went over the huge salvage depot near Blois and discovered
that the gum-boot stores were in the charge of a leading rubber-
boot manufacturer and the clothing-repair section supervised
by the manager of a famous tailoring firm, both enlisted men.
It had been very different in the British Army in 1914, with
qualified engineers sweeping out stables and mathematicians
working as navvies in labour battalions.
While she was at St. Nazaire, an American troopship ar-
rived and she stood on the quay watching the men disembark.
It was an imposing sight, and she was greatly struck by their
fine physique, deep sunburn, and predominantly Anglo-Saxon
appearance. This last surprised her, and she wondered whether
the Anglo-Saxon strain was far more widespread in America
than her travels had led her to believe, or whether it was in
some way connected with their being volunteers. They were
very different from the type of cosmopolitan American usually
found in Paris; none of them had ever been to Europe before.
In addition to seeing round the base camps she would also
250
The War Correspondent
address the men In huge drill sheds or canteen huts, dwelling,
as Milner had urged her, on how glad their allies were to see
them on the soil of Europe. She would also sometimes declaim
her piece Destruction. It was a dramatic and moving perform-
ance, Elinor standing on the platform, a solitary figure in black
in front of the American flag, one blinding white spotlight fall-
ing on her red hair.
After her visit to St. Nazaire, Elinor came to London,
where she visited her mother and daughters. She was back in
Paris at the end of July and busied herself with the Secours
Franco-Americain, her articles for both the British and Amer-
ican press, with finishing her novel, The Price of Things, and
starting a new one, Elizabeth's Daughter.
This last was a description of the American base camps at
St. Nazaire by the seventeen-year-old Lady Ermyntrude,
whose epistolary style was very reminiscent of her mother's.
There were the usual gayety, the usual "Glynisms," and a
slight romance with an American officer, whom she called
Hiawatha because of his Red Indian appearance. But unlike
its predecessor Elizabeth Visits America, Elizabeth's Daughter
had a vigorous pro-American bias, so vigorous that it may have
been less acceptable to English readers, particularly if they
were members of the British Army. It was serialised in Great
Britain in Newnes* Newel Magazine and by the Hearst press
in America, but it was never published in book form, both
her publishers feeling by then that it would be a mistake to
bring out a war book soon after the armistice, and that by
doing so they would divert attention from The Price of Things.
With this view Elinor agreed.
Although Elizabeth's Daughter* has many pleasant touches,
we must feel that this decision was the right one, especially
in view of the book's narrow scope and ephemeral setting.
For us now, however, the chief interest in the story lies in the
* Serialised in America tinder the title Elizabeth's Daughter Visits
theS.O.S.
251
Elinor Glyn
acid comments which Elizabeth's uppish little daughter makes
about the fading middle-aged beauty of her companion, a red-
haired, green-eyed authoress who had written a shocking novel
called Nine Months. Elinor's ability to laugh at herself was
often buried deep in her moments of self-drama or self-pity,
but it was never extinguished and it was always liable to reap-
pear, most endearingly, at unexpected moments.
14.
With the final turning of the tide of war life in Paris became
increasingly gay and cheerful. Society began to return, and
the abuse of the British Army, which Elinor had endured so
impatiently for the last three months, slowly died away,
though even now her friends made a point of drawing her
attention whenever possible to the fine achievements of the
soldiers of other nations.
After the armistice Elinor decided that she had had enough
of Paris, Her work in the devastated areas, both in journalism
and resettlement, was over, though she continued to write for
both the British and American press. She wrote a series of ar-
ticles for Sir Frank Newnes on such subjects as "Are Women
Changing?" "Is Chivalry Dead?" and "If I Were Queen,"
which were published in the Grand Magazine and for which
she was paid her usual British price of sevenpence-halfpenny
per word.
To write these articles Elinor wanted to get away by her-
self somewhere peaceful and quiet, which would at the same
time not be too remote from the interesting events and people
connected with the forthcoming peace conference. Accordingly
she took a flat at No. 23 Rue du Peintre Lebrun at Versailles
and spent some happy weeks redecorating it. She moved in in
the early spring of 1919 and there, besides writing articles
252
The War Correspondent
and reflecting on life, she began her new novel, which was
later to be published under the title Alan and Maid.
When she was not writing at Versailles, she would be at
the Ritz in Paris, where she still kept a suite, watching the
parade of personalities gathered in the city for the peace con-
ference, meeting most of the principal participants, and learn-
ing something of what was going on behind the scenes. She
had several old friends in Paris at that time; Lord Milner was
there and also Lord Riddell, to whose newspapers she was con-
tributing regularly. Both men often dined with her at her cor-
ner table.
In her diary she recorded her impressions and opinions of the
statesmen gathered there. Lloyd George she met at dinner one
night in the house in the Rue Nilot where he stayed.
He struck me as such a purely Celtic type that I felt that
I was talking to some foreigner who spoke English well
rather than to the British Prime Minister.
The conversation was nothing but chaff at first, but soon
the P.M. began to tell us of his horror at the disgraceful
way in which the French had thrown stones at the depart-
ing German delegates. He spoke strongly about the ungen-
erous vindictiveness of the French and I could see that his
automatic sympathy for the underdog was turning him
away from the French point of view about the terms of
peace.
After dinner he talked to me for some time. He curled
up his legs on the tiny hard French sofa and leaned across
the little table towards my chair, gazing intently at me as
he spoke. I noticed the pupils of his eyes kept expanding
and contracting, producing a peculiar hypnotic effect. As
far as I could tell, throughout our conversation he gave me
his undivided attention, and this remarkable power of con-
centration struck me as the most wonderful of all his qual-
ities. Most men are too vain to pay this compliment to a
Elmof Glyn
woman, but I feel sure that Lloyd George devotes the
whole of his great capacities to everything which he under-
takes and never misses a point by failing to attend to the
evidence of a witness.
The next day, in the course of a rather more elaborate anal-
ysis of his character, she wrote :
The word which rises to my mind as I write of him is
TroiAadourl Perhaps it was his long hair and well-known
love of music that gave me this odd impression, perhaps
some momentary insight into an earlier incarnation. What-
ever the cause, it was rather as a famous poet and minstrel,
reciting his historic lays to the accompaniment of a strange
musical instrument in the flickering fire-light of a castle hall,
that I found myself picturing that peculiar Celtic visage,
and never as the successor of Chatham and Peel, presiding
over the British Cabinet at No. i o Downing Street.
She was considerably less impressed by President Wilson.
Wilson's face is a mask. I feel that no one believes in
him less than he does himself and that only a quarter of
what he says and puts forward is real. The cultivated the-
orist in him has made him set out to accomplish a great task
which he has now realised he is incapable of bringing to
fruition, but he has not the courage to adapt his theories to
fit the facts and continues to wear an air of supreme con-
fidence which would be comic if it were not so tragic in
its consequences. Despite his mask-like cheerfulness, I
gained an impression of disappointment and of dreadful in-
ward anxiety. There is a touch of Pan in him so carefully
hidden and suppressed that it only shows clearly in his sud-
den automatic smile. The mistake which all the Allies have
made has been treating him with too much respect, as if
his views were really those of the American people.
254
The War Correspondent
At one time or another during those months she met most
of the foreign delegates and described them in the locked
pages of her diaiy: Venizelos, whom she regarded as the ablest
man at the conference; Hughes, the Australian, whose deaf-
ness confined itself to inconvenient questions; Lord Riddell,
with his curious trick of seeming not to hear or be interested
in what was being said to him, and of suddenly referring to
it again an hour or a week later; and, of course, Milner, the
contrast and the complement to Lloyd George.
Several passages in her letters home at this time throw light
on her relationship with Milner :
He is here rushed out to see me as soon as he had
signed Peace on Wednesday, and we spent the afternoon
in the woods. He only signed the Peace to make the excuse
to get over to see me. He told me he need not have done
it, and yet he is one moment passionately loving, and the
next, aloof and unapproachable. He is the most remark-
able character of cunning, caution, sophistry and nobility
one could imagine. We are just friends.
It was as the correspondent for Lord RiddelFs papers that
Elinor attended on June 28, 1919, the signing of the peace in
the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. She was one of the only
two women present and she had to stand upon a precarious
perch for a long time, waiting for the ceremony to begin.
She had expected the day to be a moment of triumph and
thanksgiving, but instead she was overcome by a sense of fore-
boding. All she could think of was the empty meaning of the
ceremony.
As I stood there upon the tottering bench, feeling that I
must take care to be able to keep my balance, a sadness
fell upon me. I did not want to see any more. It seemed as
if the peace of the world must be as insecure as my own
footing upon the bench had been.
255
BOOK SIX
Courts and Capitals
1920-1931
I.
In February 1920, Elinor paid another visit to Egypt, stay-
ing with Lady Congreve, whose husband was General Officer
Commanding the Forces. Cairo at that time was full of friends.
Lord AUenby was High Commissioner and Milner was also
there on the abortive "Milner Mission,** his recommendations
being subsequently rejected by Lloyd George, despite the sup-
port of Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, and Allenby, the High
Commissioner.
Before leaving for Egypt, Milner had written to Elinor:
I don't believe the Mission can do much good. First of all
I was going in October, then I was firmly convinced I was
not going out at all, now I am shot out at a moment's notice
because the recalcitrant Nationalists have declared they
won't have me Send me a message to deliver to your friend
the Sphinx and pray that the Egyptian malcontents may
aim badly they generally do!
But when she met him there, she found him thoroughly bored
with the cloud of detectives who surrounded him all the time.
Elinor was always particularly sensitive to atmosphere and
she found Egypt now very changed since her last visit eight-
259
Elinor Glyn
een years earlier. There was an uneasy, hostile atmosphere in
the country, which had found expression in the serious riots
ten months earlier. She could not help contrasting Egypt with
what now seemed in retrospect to be the golden days of Lord
Cromer's administration. The precincts of the Sphinx were
now filled with unsightly shacks and boardings. The weather
was cold and forbidding.
There was a change in Elinor, too. Since her last visit she
had been through a great deal Her health admittedly was
much better now, but she was sadder, wiser, and older. Her
prime of life was past. The easy, sunlit, civilised life of prewar
days, which she had enjoyed so much, had disappeared, pos-
sibly for ever. At times the future seemed rather bleak and
cheerless.
She stayed in Egypt only four weeks, and though she was
received with every kindness by Lady Congreve and Lady AI~
lenby, she was glad to leave when the time came.
The King of Egypt remembered her and the long hours she
had spent in the Gezireh Gardens on her last visit, and he
invited her to a magnificent banquet which he was giving for
Milner. It was a splendid occasion, but very different in style
from the banquets she had experienced in Russia. The hun-
dred guests sat round a huge horseshoe table, and there was
none of the ostentation and elaborate ceremonial which she
had come to expect of state banquets. The food was simple
and unexpectedly hot, while the general atmosphere was
reminiscent of dinner in an English country house, except for
the service, which was like something out of the Arabian
Nights. There were a vast number of perfectly drilled men-
servants, dressed in scarlet and gold Turkish costumes, and
they carried the dishes and plates high above their heads,
moving always at a smart double. The whole dinner was over
in forty minutes.
Elinor went also to a large number of balls and gay parties
in Cairo that winter, given in honour of the Crown Prince
2.60
Courts and
(later King Carol) of Rumania. He invited Elinor, on behalf
of his mother, Queen Marie, to come and stay with them in
Bucharest on her way home to England. Elinor, to her deep
regret, had to decline, as she was just off to stay with the
Queen of Spain.
Elinor arrived in Madrid for Holy Week and was accord-
ingly able to be present at the magnificent Easter ceremonies
of the Spanish court. Elinor loved court pomp and ceremony,
especially when this contained traditional ritual whose origins
went back far in history. She had been much interested in
Russia by the ceremony of the Czar blessing the waters, but
even more impressive now was the washing of the beggars'
feet on Maundy Thursday. It was a moving sight, the Gran-
dees in their glittering uniforms, the Duchesses in their high
combs and mantillas, kneeling in stately dignity before the
beggars, while the King and Queen passed down the line,
washing and kissing the bare feet. She described the scene in
enthusiastic detail in her book, Letters from Sfain.
There were many other court ceremonies, and Elinor passed
through Easter week and the two months following starry-
eyed with delight There is something a litde pathetic about
her longing for royal pageantry and her yearning to find in
some modern capital the gorgeous court life of Versailles un-
der Louis XV. She was fated ever to find such splendour only
on the eve of its dissolution a dissolution which she was, by
conviction and temperament, never able to foresee.
King Alphonso XIII of Spain was a personal friend of hers;
he himself on a visit to England climbed the four flights of
stairs to her flat on the top floor of Shelley Court to see her.
Now, in Spain, she specially approved of the dignified way
in which he carried out his duties and upheld the cause of
261
Elinor Glyn
noblesse oblige. She likened him, curiously, to the Prince of
Wales, especially in his zeal for social improvements and re-
forms, and she was unwise enough in her hook to prophesy
a long and glorious future for such a popular monarch.
She spent only two months in Spain, as compared with her
six months in Russia and her year in America, and she was
correspondingly less able to form a complete idea of the coun-
try. As in Russia, she moved almost exclusively in court circles
and her contacts were confined almost exclusively to the upper
classes. She conceived a great admiration for the Spanish male,
despite his undoubted cruelty, jealousy, and his frequent
fickleness as a husband. He was invariably completely mascu-
line, without even a trace of the feminine in him.
There were, she found, two chief differences between the
Spanish and Russian courts. In the Spanish court there was
a strong atmosphere of piety and religion which found no
counterpart in Russia. There was also, again in contrast to
the rather hopeless cosmopolitanism of the Russian nobles, a
feeling of intense personal pride which seemed to exist at all
levels, and this showed itself in strange little ways. In Russia,
for example, as in America, every servant's hand in hotel and
private houses seemed to be held out continually for a tip; in
Russia, Elinor had even had to tip the guards on the bends
of the stairs in the royal palaces each time she passed. But in
Madrid her attempt to tip the maid of the lady-in-waiting who
had been assisting her caused only strong offence.
She attended two bullfights. One was a big corrida before
the King and Queen, in which both Belmonte and Joselito
fought. Elinor watched it from the box of the Duke de Tovar,
who had bred the bulls. She was considerably revolted by the
sight the horses at that time were not padded and even
more by the cruelty of the crowd, which was extended not
only towards the horses and the bulls but towards the mata-
dors themselves. However, her training in the control of her
emotions stood her in good stead.
Courts and Capitals
Her second bullfight was a private one given for the Queen.
This time they stood on a rickety plank gallery over the arena
while young matadors fought young bulls. It was raining hard
and, with the mud .and the blood, it was a gruesome scene.
On the slippery ground the matadors had several escapes, one
having part of his face ripped open, and Elinor was con-
siderably relieved when the Queen, who herself hated bull-
fighting, stopped the fight
Even nastier to watch than a bullfight, Elinor found, was
a cockfight, though there was the consolation here that the
cocks were fighting to the death not at the instigation of a
human master but for their own reasons. And she could not
help being struck by the courage and the pride of the birds.
I was obliged to sit there and watch three maines, and
really, horrible and even disgusting as it was, no one could
fail to admire the courage and endurance of the birds: and
what superlative belief in Self! For the fight is not caused
by previous personal hatred for the adversary, but by re-
sentment that any rival could exist! They do not hesitate
a second to fly at each other once they are in the matting-
covered ring, never having met before. Vanity and egotism
are evidendy the chief characteristics of cocks,*
Elinor was lavishly entertained as usual, going to a large
number of private parties and balls: a concert and reception
by the Duchess de Fenian Nunez; a tea with the celebrated
Spanish dancers of the Countess de Casa Valencia; the Duke
de Tovar's private entertainment at the opera; and the balls
of the Countess Romanones and the Duchess de Parsent. Eli-
nor had been warned jbeforehand that Spanish society was
extremely exclusive and that she would probably not see the
inside of any private houses, so she was especially pleased and
gratified by the warmth of her reception. She was also sur-
* Letters from Spam.
263
Elinor Glyn
prised to find that BO one sat down to dinner till ten o'clock
in die evening.
She was shown over the Prado and the Escorial the last
she found grim and depressing. She also stayed in country
houses and visited Cordova, Seville, and Toledo.
You never enter a French village with its pollarded trees
in the square in front of the Mairie, without some feeling
that on f te days it will be gay; but you cannot think of any
gayety in these grim towns of Spain. Romance may linger
behind those barred windows, but of lightness there is no
trace. Solemnity and resignation are in all faces.
What can the lives of the people be who live there?
Their grave faces show no emotion whatsoever and oh!
what quantities of priests everywhere.
Again I say, why are priests generally so fat?
The countryside she thought gaunt and desolate, but she ap-
preciated the architecture, especially where the Moorish in-
fluence was prevalent. The cathedral at Avila she admired
gready.
Best of all was Seville, with its wild feria. Her romantic
spirit was completely overwhelmed by the Garden of the
Alcazar, with its scents and sounds and lights.
Oh! such a garden! Fine tiled walks amid a riot of
orange trees in full bloom, of roses, of jasmine and every
voluptuous sweet-scented thing. What wonderful creatures
those old Moors were! Even in the thirteenth century they
knew how to construct the finest water works. You step on
certain stones in the paths and set in motion litde fountain
sprays to cool each walk in front of you. Then there is the
mysterious bath of the ladies of the harem, below the Palace.
A cool place filled with glamour which Pedro the Cruel gave
to the only creature he loved and was very good to, his
adored mistress. The scent of the orange-blossom mingling
264
Courts and
with the roses and jasmine simply intoxicates you when
you come out again into the garden.
How anyone can keep from desiring to be young again
and walk there with a lover I cannot imagine! The whole
of Seville is passionately romantic, but the Royal garden is
the concentrated note of it.
265
BOOK SEVEN
The Film Producer
1920-1929
I.
In June 1920, soon after Elinor's return to Paris from Spain,
she received a letter from Hughes Massie mforming her that
the representative of one of the principal Hollywood film com-
panies, Famous Players-Lasky, was in Europe and wished to
come to see her* There had been discussions going on for
some time about the possibility of the sale of the film rights of
Three Weeks, and Elinor assumed that the visit would be in
connection with that.
The representative, however, a Miss Mayo, did not seem
particularly interested in the film rights of Three Weeks, but
sounded Elinor as to whether she would be willing to write
original stories for films. Apart from one or two war films
Elinor had seen no moving pictures at that time but, unlike
many authors and literary people, she did not despise the new
medium and saw at once its artistic and romantic possibilities*
The sequel to Miss Mayo's visit came shortly afterwards,
when Hughes Massie transmitted an invitation from Mr.
Lasky for Elinor to go to Hollywood and study the technical
and other problems of moving pictures in the studios. She was
then to write a scenario specially for filming and herself super-
vise its production as a moving picture. For this she was to
receive ten thousand dollars plus travelling expenses plus the
269
Elinor Glyn
prospect of the renewal of the contract on better terms if the
picture should prove a success,
Elinor accepted at once and she sailed for America that
autumn on the Mauretania. At the bottom of the gangway, she
recalled later, she paused for a moment, appalled at what
she was doing. She was a lonely widow, almost fifty-six; she
was uprooting herself from her familiar, well-loved back-
ground in London and Paris, and she was turning her back
on her family and her friends; she was going, not to visit, but
to live in a strange, utterly different world six thousand miles
away, where she knew practically no one; she was going to
try to master a completely new medium in severe, merciless
competition with a crowd of talented people half her age.
She stood on the quayside staring up at the funnels of the
liner, for almost the first time in her life scared and unsure
of herself. Then she pulled herself together and went on
up the gangway.
She had never been one to miss an opportunity for travel
or adventure and this was just the sort of opportunity that
appealed most to her. Not only was she going to a strange new
challenging country but she had also been given the chance
to open up a great new field for her stories and ideas, in par-
ticular for those romantic ideals which had seemed to her in
the past so woefully missing in America. She had also the
prospect of making a lot of money. Though she was by now
accustomed to living from hand to mouth, she was uncomfort-
ably aware that the moment must come when her skill, her
energy, and her popularity must wane and she had no savings
upon which to fall back.
At the moment, however, she had on hand as much work as
she could manage and Hughes Massie had to send her a letter
as she sailed reminding her of all her literary commitments.
The Hearst press were taking advantage of her presence in
America, not only to publicise her, but to sign her for a series
of articles. There were a number of series of articles for Eng-
270
The Film Producer
lish journals to which she was committed. There was her
scenario for Lasky and there was also her yearly novel for
Duckworth.
She was met in New York by a representative of Famous
Players-Lasky and a fill blare of publicity. It was suggested,
on the strength of Elizabeth Visits America, that she was go-
ing to California because she preferred the Far West to the
eastern seaboard. Elinor, however, tactfully but firmly, refused
to make any such invidious 'distinctions. A few days later she
arrived at the Hollywood Hotel, a homely place run by an old
lady of over eighty. There she met the other authors whom
Lasky had also invited to Hollywood: Maeterlinck, Edward
Knoblock, Somerset Maugham, Gouverneur Morris, Gertrude
Atherton, and an old friend, Sir Gilbert Parker.
It is difficult now, more than thirty years later, to re-create
the extraordinary topsy-turvy atmosphere of HoUywood in
1920. The lusty young film industry was finding its feet and
was full of boisterous self-confidence. Everyone connected with
the studios was firmly convinced that he or she knew all about
everything, even ways of life far removed from his own, con-
firmed in this belief by the large box-office returns brought in
even by the primitive silent films then being made.
They all believed they knew exactly what the public
wanted and were perfectly capable of supplying it without
any outside advice. Their efforts, however, were met with
uncompromising hostility from almost all dramatic critics and
a great number of distinguished people in the world of letters
and art. The heads of the studios were pained by this criti-
cism, to which they seem to have been particularly sensitive,
and it was to combat this distrust and contempt for moving
271
Elinor Glyn
pictures in general that Lasky had invited his eminent authors
to Hollywood.
It did not take the authors long to discover that their pres-
ence in Hollywood was only window-dressing. It was their
names and not their literary abilities which were required by
the studios. Elinor wrote in her memoirs :
The blatantly crude or utterly false psychology of the
stories as finally shown upon the screen was on a par with
the absurdity of the sets and clothes, but we were powerless
to prevent this. All authors, living or dead, famous or ob-
scure, shared the same fate. Their stories were rewritten
and completely altered either by the stenographers and
continuity girls of the scenario department, or by the As-
sistant Director and his lady-love, or by the leading lady, or
by anyone else who happened to pass through the studio;
and even when at last, after infinite struggle, a scene was
shot which bore some resemblance to the original story, it
was certain to be left out in the cutting-room, or pared
away to such an extent that all meaning which it might
once have had was lost,
One by one all the imported authors departed in varying
conditions of rage, disappointment, or sorrow. Maugham did
not even stay to watch the shooting of his script but moved
on quickly to his more familiar stamping-grounds across the
Pacific, Elinor alone stayed on to fight it out.
There was, of course, another side to the story. Some of
the authors whom Lasky had invited to Hollywood were no
longer able or willing to learn their trade all over again.
Their skill and their reputations were founded upon their mas-
tery of words and they found it difficult now to adapt them-
selves to a wordless medium. Maeterlinck's first scenario was
"a charming little tale about a small boy who discovered some
fairies. I'm afraid/' wrote Mr. Samuel Goldwyn, "my reactions
to it were hardly fairy-like." Maeterlinck's second effort was
2-72
The Film Producer
a love story so daring that no censor could have passed It, and
he returned to Europe in high, dudgeon.
U A versatile woman, Elinor Glyn, [wrote Mr. Goldwyn]
and one whose name will always figure in any history of the
film colony though she didn't think much of Hollywood.**
It may well be thought that Elinor's success there, under
the given conditions, was the most remarkable achievement of
her whole career.
Her first script, The Great Moment, was carefully devised
for the silent screen and depended on plot, strong situations,
vivid scenes, and clear-cut characters rather than the subtle-
ties of human relationships. The Kine Weekly said of it :
It is a highly-coloured, semi-sensational society drama but
it has many good points to recommend it, including an orig-
inal plot, definite characterisation, dramatic situations, a
strong love interest and plenty of interest particularly suited
topicturisation.
Sir Edward Pelham, a reserved, conventional English dip-
lomat, has, in a moment of ecstatic passion, married a Russian
gipsy girl, and in terror in case their daughter Nadine should
grow up as wild as her mother, now dead, he keeps her virtu-
ally imprisoned in his English country house during her
childhood. He also arranges for her to marry his distant cousin
and heir, Eustace Pelham, a dull, pompous young man. Na-
dine, in her loneliness and yearning to escape, dreams con-
tinually of a Knight Bayard who will come and set her free.
She sees from her bedroom window a handsome young man
whom she imagines to be Eustace coming to propose but is in
fact the manager of her father's American gold mine, Bayard
Delaval.
273
Elinor Glyn
Nadine is deeply disappointed by the real Eustace, who ar-
rives later, but accepts him. She falls ill, and on the doctor's
recommendation she, her fiance, and her father go to Nevada
to inspect the mine and to have a holiday. There, of course,
she meets Bayard again and falls in love with him. Riding
back with him from the mine across the desert, she is bitten by
a rattlesnake, and Bayard in anguish saves her life by carrying
her to a shack of his near by and pouring a botde of whisky
down her throat. Nadine becomes very drunk and, her gipsy
blood coming out, she makes passionate love to him. At this
strong and compromising situation, her father and fianc6 ar-
rive on the scene.
Sir Edward is outraged and tells Nadine he never wishes
to see her again; he leaves her with the man whom he im-
agines to be her seducer. Nadine falls unconscious, and when
she wakes she does not recognise Bayard. He, suddenly realis-
ing that her love the night before was only due to gipsy blood
and the whisky, and not to love for him, sends her quickly
away after her father, who forgives her a little bleakly. Poor
Nadine, not understanding at all why her beloved Bayard
should send her away so brusquely, is very unhappy. She goes
to Washington to stay with friends and gets into the worst set.
A millionaire called Hopper wishes to marry her and gives
vast parties for her which turn into orgies and at which Nadine
makes an exhibition of herself in her general misery and
frustration.
However, through the influence of friends who understand
the true story, Bayard arrives to claim her just before her mar-
riage to Hopper. Nadine is radiandy happy, even at the
thought of spending the rest of her life in a shack in the Ne-
vada desert; and Bayard keeps as a surprise for her the knowl-
edge that he is now retiring, a rich man, from gold mining
and is taking Nadine to live at his ancestral home in Virginia.
As was later conceded, The Great Moment was admirable
material for a Hollywood silent film of 1920. It was, however,
274
The Film Producer
at first treated with contempt, and the continuity writer pro-
ceeded to cut the story to ribbons. The director, Sam Wood,
"in order to increase the suspense," decided to treat part of the
film as a knockabout farce, and there were moments when
Elinor herself was on the verge of packing her bags and re-
turning to England.
One day, at a conference on the, set, the director remarked,
"Say, boys, I guess you all think you know just what ought
to be done, but I certainly can't think how to end this story
myself.** In the moment of silence that followed, Elinor sug-
gested tentatively that perhaps, as the author, she could sug-
gest an ending. Cecil B. de Mille, one of the most powerful
of Lasky's producers, was walking through the studio at that
moment and he caught Elinor's eye and laughed out loud.
That one laugh, Elinor later realised, did her film career more
good than anything else. With de Mille's support and influ-
ence she was In a far stronger position to battle on for the
Ideals and objectives which had brought her to California.
The Great Moment was a considerable success at the box
office, even in Its mutilated, farcical form. This was due partly
to the story Itself, the hard core of which was still apparent,
and partly to a vivid performance by Gloria Swanson as Na-
dine, wilful, passionate, bewildered, half child, half woman.
Lasky was pleased and Elinor was signed on for a further pic-
ture on an improved contract.
She had by now seen enough of Hollywood studios to know
that, even with de Mille behind her, she was powerless to
prevent her stories being altered almost beyond recognition.
But at least she could do something to make the sets a little
more realistic. Indeed, this aspect of film making seemed to
her even more important than the story itself .
275
Elinor Glyn
Few of the art directors, the scene designers, the costumiers
or the hairdressers of Hollywood had been outside the States,
but they would accept no advice or suggestions from Elinor.
She was appalled to think that millions of Americans and Brit-
ons were going to see such travesties and presumably believe
'them to be accurate. In vain she protested that English Duch-
esses did not wear their hair like frizzy golllwoggs; that the
drawing-rooms of English country houses did not contain
bamboo tables, aspidistras, or the various knickknacks usually
associated with seaside lodging-houses; that ducal castles did
not have a line of spittoons, even gold ones, down the middle
of the drawing-room.
Elinor had always a passionate love of truth, and she could
not bear now to see the scenes she knew and loved so well
misrepresented and held up to derision, even unintentionally.
She was the sole representative of European high society in
Hollywood and she felt her responsibility keenly.
It has often been said that Hollywood is a difficult place in
which to retain a sense of proportion; Elinor found it as diffi-
cult as anyone else. One can sympathise with her indignation
at seeing such travesties of English high life enacted on the
sets, but at the same time one must feel that she often could
not see the wood for the trees and that it would have been
better had she conserved her combative efforts for broad prin-
ciples and general atmosphere rather than for details of scen-
ery or clothes. However, one has only to recall many of the
Hollywood films of the thirties, with their greater desire for
accuracy not only of sets and clothes but also of speech, at-
mosphere, and character, to realise how far the cinema pro-
gressed in those ten years, at any rate in authenticity. And for
that progress Elinor must be given a good deal of the credit.
276
The Film Producer
"Elinor Glyn's name [wrote Mr. Goldwyn] is synonymous
with the discovery of sex appeal for the cinema."
Elinor herself disliked the term "sex appeal/* much pre-
ferring her own a it. w But "it** was a quality which one either
had or had not and which could never be acquired. Romance,
that spiritual disguise so necessary to human happiness, was
the teachable quality. In 1907 she had been shocked by the
lack of romance in America, by the indifferent, mercenary at-
titude of American men and women to love, and although the
pendulum was now swinging the other way, she felt that a
great deal still could and should be done to bring romance
into the lives of ordinary people and to teach all gold-digging
girls that true love meant giving unconditionally and not re-
ceiving or bargaining.
But she was soon made to realise that American girls were
not wholly to blame for this attitude.
I had not been long in Hollywood before I discovered
that what I had always suspected was true; American men
of those days simply could not make love! Not even the
leading screen actors had any idea how to do it then. One
after another screen tests of handsome young American film
stars were shown me for approval, but in every case I con-
sidered that the performance was lamentable! I christened
them all woolly lambs and besought the studio managers to
find me someone who could treat differently, in front of the
camera, the actress who was supposed to be his sweetheart
from those who were supposed to be his aunts and sisters.
The best of them was Rudolph Valentino, not yet at his
full fame, but even he had a lot to learn from Elinor in the
art of making love convincingly before a camera. "Do you
277
Elinor Glyn
know,** she would murmur in later years, Tie had never even
thought of kissing the palm, rather than the back, of a
woman's hand until I made him do itf
6.
It is not quite clear who suggested Beyond the Rocks for
Elinor's second film. Lasky himself had considerable misgiv-
ings about it and, indeed, the book with its very slight plot
would not seem to be good silent-film material. However, the
story was approved and production started early in 1922.
Unlike The Great Moment, the whole action of Beyond the
Rocks takes place in France and England, and this gave almost
unlimited opportunities for those anachronisms and solecisms
which Elinor so much abhorred. She and Sam Wood had dis-
agreed many times in the first film; they were completely at
loggerheads now and appalling rows went on between them
on the set, each giving as good as received. Miss Ruby Miller,
the Gaiety Girl, who was in Hollywood at the time, recalls
that she went down to lunch with Elinor on the set, to find her
in full battle over a shooting-party which was assembled in
hunting pink before a cottage on which rambler roses were in
full bloom. By the time Elinor had sorted this out to her satis-
faction, the day was almost over and neither she, Miss Miller,,
nor anyone else had had any lunch.
Like a lot of other women I know [wrote Mr. Goldwyn]
she liked her own way, though it didn't always follow that
she got it with me. She not only wrote the scenarios, but
insisted on designing the dresses and arranging the draw-
ing-room as a replica of her own room in London. When
someone remonstrated with her about this, she retorted:
"Do you think they would know how to arrange a gentle-
woman's room but for me?"
278
The Film Producer
The principal shortcomings in the completed picture of Be-
yond the Rocks were not in the settings, but in the acting
and direction. The charm of the book, it will be remembered,
lay in the effect of Theodora's innocence and purity upon
Lord Bracondale's jaded man-of-the-world attitude. Both the
principal actors seemed to misread their parts: Gloria Swan-
son played Theodora as a sophisticated minx and Rudolph
Valentino, for all his charm and passion, portrayed Lord
Bracondale as a young boy going through his first love affair.
The continuity writers had taken every possible liberty with
the story to introduce sensational effects. The scene at Ver-
sailles, in which Lord Bracondale tells Theodora the fairy
story, was played in eighteenth-century clothes in and out of
a sedan chair. Josiah, instead of dying quietly of a broken
heart, was sent off big-game shooting in Africa to be brutally
murdered by natives. There were also some rather surprising
shots of Lord Bracondale galloping about a desert in a burnous,
the studio having decided to put in some unused sequences
from Valentino's previous film, The Sheik.
Altogether Beyond the Rocks was not, artistically, a great
success. But with those stars and that author it could not fail
at the box office. Exhibitors were advised to "Boom the Au-
thor!"
Conjure with the name of Elinor Glyn! The fact that the
author has supervised this film may be mentioned but if it
allows patrons to think that the book has been faithfully
followed, they may be disappointed.
Soon after her arrival in Hollywood, Elinor began to make
a series of new friendships to replace those she had left be-
hind in Europe. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were,
Elinor Glyn
of course, the uncrowned king and queen of Hollywood at that
time and Elinor, a connoisseur of queens, found in Mary Pick-
ford the same gracious regal qualities she had found in the
courts of Europe. The so evident love of this famous couple
for each other was very moving, a thing utterly apart from
anything else in the glossy, false-fronted life of Hollywood.
There was an atmosphere of peace and happiness in their
home, Pickfair, and some of the happiest hours of Elinor's
years in Hollywood were spent there.
The parties there, always lively, were especially gay when
Charles Chaplin was present. Elinor had met Chaplin a few
days after her first arrival in Hollywood at Goldwyn's house.
Chaplin had had a sudden fit of depression about his recently
completed film, The Kid, and Goldwyn gave a small private
party to show the film to a number of selected friends, in-
cluding the authors so recently arrived from Europe. The Kid
was the first Chaplin film that Elinor saw and she was deeply
impressed. Her spontaneous words of admiration to him in
that moment of misgiving began a warm personal friendship
founded on mutual admiration.
Other close friends of Elinor's during those years were
Gloria Swanson and Marion Davies, and she was a frequent
guest at both their houses. She was also on pleasant if less in-
timate terms with a whole host of other Hollywood luminaries.
Hollywood parties at that time have come down to us with
the reputation of being veritable orgies. There was certainly
a great deal of drinking, particularly during Prohibition, but
the notorious excesses did not take place at the parties given
or attended by the more famous of the stars. But their parties
were, all the same, unusual affairs. Married couples, or couples
who were, in the slang of the time, "going with each other/'
sat determinedly side by side at meals, holding hands under
the table. The conversation, especially when Chaplin was
present, would range nimbly over a wide variety of subjects,
controversial and intellectual.
280
The Film Producer
After dinner everyone would do turns or play parlour
games, charades, dumb crambo, act Impromptu scenes, or make
one-minute speeches on abstruse subjects. Elinor was amazed
that people who had spent the whole day acting In the studio
should want to continue doing it in private in the evening. It
was part, she supposed, of the hectic, restless atmosphere of
the place.
The speeches and scenes set were often very exacting and
left no doubt in Elinor's mind that being a leading film star
needed not only appearance, personality, and acting ability but
also a more-than-average share of brains. She herself loved
any form of amateur theatricals or charades and she threw
herself into these entertainments with extreme enjoyment.
She recalled one of these charades in her memoirs:
Charlie [Chaplin] drew me as his partner and from the
bowl I picked our subject which was "Hate." Our turn was
last and as all the rest had treated their themes in a comic
vein, Charlie decided that we would be serious. By some
magic he got himself up into an alcove behind which the
supports of the window appeared like a cross. He wore noth-
ing but a cloth twisted round him and spread out his hands
as if crucified. I knelt, draped in a white sheet, at the foot
of the alcove, to represent the Mourning World, while
Charlie's Japanese servant lit up the whole scene with a
single candle, held low from the side where he could not
be seen. The room was otherwise in darkness and the effect
was extraordinarily moving. I remember the sudden rev-
erent hush as the audience first saw his face, so wonderfully
filled with agony and resignation.
Elinor was also a popular figure at the bigger and rather
less intellectually strenuous parties. She had always been at
her best in social company and now, even in that throng de-
termined to outglitter each other, her great beauty, her regal
presence, and her personality made her, effortlessly, one of the
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Elinor Glyn
outstanding figures. Her gift of quick and amusing conversa-
tion, practised and perfected at so many Louse parties in Eng-
land, made her a welcome guest.
It was in Hollywood that she first actually met William
Randolph Hearst in person, and she went many times to his
amazing ranch, San Simeon, where each guest had his own
Spanish villa and everyone ate in a huge tapestried dining-hall
off one of the longest refectory tables ever seen. The tatle and
all the room were crowded with the relics of European culture.
Furniture, painted ceilings, Gothic choir stalls, complete Tudor
rooms lay about or remained in partly opened packing-cases.
It was aB very bewildering to Elinor, who venerated English
stately homes strongly and could not reconcile herself now to
seeing so many of their treasures jumbled together as if in a
huge antique shop. The pick of the antique sales of the world
was here, higgledy-piggledy, uncatalogued, some pieces, it was
said, bought by mistake twice over. The noise, too, was terrific,
with a crowd of minor film stars shouting and laughing, and
gramophones blaring; and in the middle of all the hubbub was
Hearst himself, conducting his business with his secretaries.
Although they were so very different in character, Elinor
and Hearst took to each other. She had always admired strong
characters and she certainly found one in Hearst. She found
him, too, a generous and thoughtful host and a kind employer.
He, in his turn, liked Elinor, admiring her work and her per-
sonality, and finding her a social asset at his parties. He also
acted at times as her business advisor, cautioning her against
various deals and speculations to which she was being tempted.
Had his advice been more continually available, she might
well have ended a much richer woman than she did.
It was on her way to stay with Hearst in Mexico that Elinor
experienced another of her bedroom farces. A storm had
washed away the road and she, Chaplin, and his new wife,
Lita Grey, had to spend the night in a double-bedded shack.
It was filthy and very uncomfortable, but nothing else was
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The film Producer
available at two o'clock In the morning. Chaplin and his wife
bickered continually about the amount of bed the other was
taking up. At last, just as Elinor, in a child's cot, with her feet
on a packing-case, was dropping off to sleep, Chaplin suddenly
sat up and said in a deep, sepulchral voice, "My God! Think
of Charlie Chaplin and Elinor Glyn in bed together in the
wilds of Mexico! 19
Elinor burst out laughing and, thus stimulated, Chaplin de-
livered a long monologue, reciting imaginary press paragraphs
describing the scandal, mimicking the voices and different re-
actions of all those who might read the news. Never had Elinor
known him more brilliant and she felt quite weak from laugh-
ter. Finally, as dawn was breaking, they decided to get some
sleep. Elinor was just dropping off when the sepulchral voice
announced, "My God! There's a bug!" And he started all
over again. This time the laughter and noise was so great that
other members of the party who were sleeping in the saloon
or in cars outside burst in to see what the trouble was and
whether there had been a holdup.
It would, however, be a mistake to think of Elinor's time
away from the studios being filled with continual parties. She
had far too much work to do for that, and most evenings she
would spend quietly in her room at the Hollywood Hotel,
reading Plato in a dogged and rather touching effort to try to
retain her sense of values in that crazy looking-glass world.
She was only too well aware of the dangers to the human
personality of what she called the "Calif ornian Curse,* and
of which the most flagrant and tragic example was the breakup
of that seemingly perfect love idyll between Douglas Fair-
banks and Mary Pickford.
The Curse is nothing less than that of the Evil Fairy in
the old stories, who was able to banish the real personality
of those whom she bewitched, forcing them against their
wills to carry out her commands, to forget the land of their
Elinor Glyn
birth, die purpose of their journey and many of the princi-
ples which they had hitherto held most dear.
The early symptoms of the disease, which break out al-
most on arrival in Hollywood, are a sense of exaggerated
self-importance and self-centredness which naturally alien-
ates all old friends. Next comes a great desire for and belief
in the importance of money above all else, a loss of the
normal sense of humour and proportion and finally, in ex-
treme cases, the abandonment of all previous standards of
moral value,
By her foreknowledge, by her determined concentration
upon what she conceived to be the eternal verities, she was
able for a while to ward off and delay the effects of the Cali-
fornian Curse. As will be seen later, even she was not able
to escape it altogether.
8.
During 1922, Elinor was approached by another film com-
pany, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who proposed that, when Be-
yond the Rocks and her contract with Famous Players-Lasky
were completed, she should join MGM to supervise the film-
ing of Three Weeks. For years Elinor had been hoping that
she would one day be given an opportunity to film her best-
seller and she accepted the tempting new offer with alacrity
too great alacrity for the contract she might have won from
them by harder bargaining.
The production was scheduled to begin in March 1923, and
meanwhile Elinor decided to return to Europe to revisit her
family and friends and familiar scenes. Her absence in Amer-
ica had prevented her, to her distress, from being present at
either of her daughters' weddings, Margot's to Sir Edward
Davson, and Juliet's to Sir Rhys Rhys-Williams, both of which
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The Film Producer
had taken place in 1921, Now she was able to be present at
a great family reunion and to meet her first two grandchildren
(one of them myself), for whose schooling, with her newly
acquired wealth and her instinctive generosity, she immedi-
ately started insurance policies. She installed her mother in a
comfortable flat in Embankment Gardens and reopened her
house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, Paris. She also went with
Margot to Cannes, made another trip to Spain, and gave a
series of lectures in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. She was
back again in Hollywood at the end of February 1923, living
now in a suite on the sixth floor of the Ambassador Hotel, Los
Angeles.
During her visit to Europe she had been working on the
film version of Three Weeks, and we may with some justice
regard the finished scenario as a considerable achievement, a
yardstick of the degree to which in her first two years in Holly-
wood she had mastered the art of the silent film. Horniman
had discovered how difficult it was to cast Three Weeks into
a dramatic version. The greater part of the book, it will be
remembered, is virtually one long love scene, and to get this
across without any dialogue and without lapsing into either
offensiveness or ribaldry made a considerable demand on Eli-
nor's skill. To break up the love scene, and in the interests of
clarity, she was obliged to insert some sequences of the Balkan
background, to show briefly the King's depravity, his unpopu-
larity, and the love and respect in which the Queen was held.
She also put in, to increase the suspense, a fight on the edge
of a Venetian canal between Vasili and one of the King's spies,
but otherwise she stuck closely to the book, except that, at the
demands of the studio, she was obliged to put in a brief reunion
between Paul and the Queen in the villa before the final trag-
edy. The English part she left unaltered.
Her scenario, however, tested to the utmost the resources
even of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's experienced continuity writer.
For the scene in the Queen's boudoir in Lucerne where she
285
Elinor Gfyn
lies on the tiger skin, quivering with emotion and passion, he
wrote, a little helplessly :
SCENE 137 CLOSE-UP INTERIOR THE LADY*S SUITE
Better than describe this scene, I will simply mention
that Mrs. Glyn will enact it for Mr. Grassland on the set.
The lady malces her decision to accept Paul as her lover.
She hears Paul outside and indicates for him to come in.
Elinor enjoyed working for MGM more than she had for
the Lasky studios, finding the art department, under the di-
rection of Cedric Gibbons, more amenable to her insistence
on accuracy and beauty of setting. She cared terribly that
Three Weeks should be worthily produced and several times
she had scenes, which still dissatisfied her, reshot at her own
expense.
There was also the shadow of the censor falling across this
particular film. Elinor had cherished a faint hope that, in the
interests of verisimilitude, Paul might be allowed to play the
final love scene on the night of the full moon in pyjamas; but
she was soon made to realise that this would never be per-
mitted, and in the approved version the Queen tiptoed away,
wracked with sobs, leaving Paul asleep on the couch of rose
petals, still in full evening dress, his hair smooth and his white
waistcoat uncrumpled. As a consolation for this MGM allowed
Elinor real rose petals for the couch .
The part of the Queen was played by Aileen Pringle, look-
ing astonishingly like Elinor, who had coached her assiduously.
She gave a beautiful performance, dignified, regal yet passion-
ate. Conrad NageFs Paul was adequate, if a little weak, but
the actor who played the King unfortunately burlesqued his
part. As one critic remarked, the story as a whole could do
with a little humour, but not in that particular character,
Three Weeks, however, fully deserved its enormous suc-
cess at the box office. In England the censor made a large
number of cuts, including, rather strangely, the tide, which
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The FUm Producer
was not allowed to appear even on a by-line. But despite this
handicap The Romance of a Queen did very well and provided
a strong resurge of interest in the original novel.
Three Weeks has never been filmed as a talking picture,
though a proposal from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to do so in
1933, with Gloria Swanson as the Queen and Irving Thalberg
as director, reached an advanced stage before it was abandoned
in deference to a "cleaner fihns w campaign then sweeping
America.
It had occurred to several people that Three Weeks was
well suited to musical treatment. In 1908 the book had been
suggested to Puccini as a possible libretto, and we may well
think that the intensity, the drama, and the passion of the
story might have fired Puccini to write some of his most ap-
pealing music. He himself gave the book serious consideration
but rejected it in the belief, erroneous as it turned out, that
The Girl of the Golden West would have greater attraction
in America. In any event, however, the projected operatic ver-
sion must have encountered serious difficulties over the vexed
question of the ownership of the American dramatic rights of
ThreeWeeks.
In 1924 the Shubert brothers proposed to present the work
as an operetta in New York. A musical score was commissioned
and completed before the venture foundered on the unseen
rocks that bar the way for so many Broadway productions.
Elinor's views about American women, and perhaps the
women themselves, had changed considerably since 1908*
They were no longer the "fluffy little gold-diggers"; on the
contrary, they were as capable of love as European women.
Now they wrote to her in their hundreds, following the pub-
lication of her newspaper articles, asking for help and advice:
287
Elinor Glyn
How were they to win the man they loved? How were they to
hold his love? How could they rekindle his earlier love, now
seemingly dead?
The popularity of Elinor's own novels, of Rudolph Valen-
tino's films, showed only too clearly how desperately hungry
the women of America were for love and romance; and Elinor
thought it pitiful that they could find it only in print and in
celluloid. Real life, she was convinced, was as full of potential
romance as any book or film; but it was so easily smothered
by dull, matter-of-fact routine, by sordidness, or by excessive
familiarity. She had been puzzled, even in the days of Three
Weeks, as has already been shown, by the way the marriage
ties so often proved fatal to love itself; her own marriage had
been a case in point. Her cynical, disillusioned spirit had, in
The Damsel and the Sage, accepted this seemingly inevitable
consequence of marriage with a shrug and a pout. It had al-
ways been so and would probably always remain so.
But her romantic heart rebelled. It should be possible, she
argued and the whole of her creed of life was based upon
this premise for men or women of any nationality to find all
the romance they wanted in their own lives, not only before
but even after marriage, without having to resort to novels and
films provided ttat they had the necessary skill and wisdom.
And it was to provide this skill that she wrote for her Ameri-
can readers The Philosophy of Love.
The book contained many of the thoughts and conclusions
of her own life, and much of it was taken from articles she had
already written on the subject. It dealt with many aspects of
love and marriage, and especially with the problem of how
to make love last. She coined a new word, to "revulsh": less
strong than to disgust, stronger than to put off, it covered all
those little points of habit, speech, and hygiene, those mi-
nute pinpricks, all of them almost negligible, which cumula-
tively killed love far more completely than the greater
matrimonial crimes of cruelty or infidelity. This point has since
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The Film Producer
been made by many others in books and newspaper articles.
She also campaigned against the touching and "petting*
which had become so prevalent since her first visit and which
was partly a reaction from the chaperoned austerity of those
days and pardy, no doubt, the social consequence of the wider
ownership of small, closed cars.
Don't cheapen all agreeable emotions by being so physi-
cally friendly with every girl that is, touching her at every
moment, taking arms and so on, when you are not the least
interested in her, or she in you.
Touching ought to be reserved entirely for the loved one
that is, if you want to feel any thrills; and this advice
applies to girls also. This continuous and promiscuous
familiarity of pawing each other, is the first step towards
destroying the capacity to love.
Quite apart from the practical results of disillusionment
such pawing was, in Elinor's view, "servants* behaviour," and
she fought against it unwearyingly for the rest of her life. We
can imagine that she must have regretted the passages in
Elizabeth Visits America in which she urged American girls to
be less grudging and miserly with their kisses.
The Philosophy of Love also includes an extended analysis
of the male and female characters and contains her division of
the female sex into three parts, lover-women, mother-women
and neuter-women; the characteristics of one or other group
should, Elinor contended, be discernible even in early child-
hood.
The book is, on the whole, sensible and constructive, and
is free of those wilder and more controversial theories about
life which both enrich and mar Elinor's other works. It is full
of earnest, practical advice, some of it dull and a little obvious,
other parts strong and outspoken. It was written in a sincere
attempt to bring romance into the lives of young Americans,
Elinor Glyn
particularly young American women, and for that reason it
deserved the astonishing reception that America gave it.
When it was published in England, under the title Love
What It Means to Me, it caused no great stir. But the Amer-
ican nation has an almost inexhaustible thirst for books of
practical advice upon human relationships. The Philosophy
of Love sold a quarter of a million copies in its first six months
of publication and its ultimate American sale was second only
to that of Three Weeks,
The consequences of the book's widespread popularity were
twofold. One was an enormous increase in Elinor's own mail
letters from girls, young husbands, young wives, asking her
further advice upon some particular point, and to each of
which Elinor replied fully and conscientiously, despite the de-
mand which they made upon her severely limited time. She
found herself, in effect, running singlehandedly a marriage-
advice bureau and she continued this up to her departure from
America in 1929. She liked the insight which it gave her into
people's lives and problems, the feeling that she was bringing
her romantic ideals into widespread practice, and especially
the thought that she was repaying to the American people
something of the kindness and hospitality they had always
shown to her.
The other consequence of the success of The Philosophy
of Love was more spectacular: an engagement to appear in
vaudeville in New York, giving ten-minute talks on love, at
a salary of five hundred pounds a week. This engagement she
carried out during the winter of 1923; and one may wonder
if, while she was waiting in the wings for her cue, she ever
recalled the days when she would not have allowed anyone
connected with the stage inside her house.
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The Film Producer
10.
Elinor's second film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, His Hour,
was produced early in 1924, and the making of dais film was
one of die happiest experiences Elinor had during her stay in
Hollywood. She found her new director, King Vidor, a con-
genial person, and for once there was no difficulty about the
authenticity of the sets. Hollywood swarmed with emigre
Russians earning their living as film extras, and Elinor was
both pained and amused to find several of them playing in
her film very nearly the same parts they had played in St.
Petersburg in real life.
The story was only altered very slightly, the duel between
Gritzko and Boris in the darkened room playing a rather more
important part, and the climax in the hunting-lodge being
made a litde less risque. Aileen Pringle acted Tamaxa on rather
a subdued note, as if she were determined to emphasise the
difference between Tamara and the Queen in Three Weeks,
John Gilbert as Gritzko showed very nearly as much a it w as
the original Gritzko himself a vivid, passionate performance
in the Valentino manner which raised him at once to the
heights of stardom.
n*
Elinor had always thrived on admiration. Any form of dis-
paragement or deflation was fatal to her self-esteem and her
creative impetus. During her visits to America she had always
moved in a spotlight of admiration, the greater part of it gen-
uine. But, like so many others who feed on admiration, she
could never tell the real praise from the false; she could never
291
Elinor Gljn
detect the unscrupulous flatterer among tie crowd of sincere
admirers.
We cannot wonder now that, alone in Hollywood, six thou-
sand miles from her family and friends and her familiar back-
ground, intoxicated by the success and fortune she was making
in her new career, stimulated by her fame and popularity
among hundreds of thousands of Americans, she should have
been specially vulnerable to smooth dishonesty or glossy sharp
practice. She had never had any kind of business sense, and
now, with the thought of her large film earnings behind her,
she launched into a variety of projects, speculations in land,
gold mines, companies, and investments, from only some of
which Hearst managed to dissuade her. "Everyone tells me,"
she wrote rather touchingly in one letter home, "what a won-
derful business woman I have become/ 1 In blissful self-con-
fidence over her deals she was robbed on all sides. She forgot
her original intention to salt away a proportion of her earnings
in gilt-edged investments against the time when she would
retire.
Her personal expenses were also high, though perhaps not
excessively so in view of the standard required to be main-
tained by successful people in Hollywood. She was also very
generous to a large number of her compatriots who had been
less fortunate than she. The full extent of these benefactions
will never be known.
As always, she signed any contract laid before her, and be-
came increasingly entangled with varying agents of conflicting
interests, some of them of dubious integrity. One contract she
signed entitled an agent to a 50 per cent commission on all her
earnings from her books and films, past as well as future.
Something drastic had to be done, and in the summer of
1924, Juliet and her husband, Sir Rhys Rhys-Williams, a
noted barrister, travelled out to Hollywood to disentangle El-
inor's affairs. The first step was to free her from her commit-
ments to these agents, in particular the one who was taking
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TJxe Film Producer
a 50 per cent commission. Rhys-Williams interviewed him and
the man produced triumphantly the signed contract. Rhys-
Williams explained that Mrs. Glyn always honoured her con-
tracts and would no doubt do so in this case, but he must ask
for the contract to be published. Rather than do this, the agent
tore it up.
Rhys-Williams then turned to the tougher business of nego-
tiating an improvement in Elinor's contract with Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer. This involved some hard bargaining with
Mr. Louis B. Mayer, and in the end a satisfactory solution
was achieved. Elinor was to make further films for MGM and
to be paid not only lump sums for the purchase or lease of the
film rights, and expenses, but also a royalty on the box-office
takings, with a guaranteed minimum of ten thousand pounds
per picture.
It was, however, not enough merely to get Elinor out of
her mess. Steps had to be taken to prevent or at least to reduce
the likelihood of such a position recurring. It was not easy to
persuade her to agree to any safeguards, for her belief in her
own judgement and abilities was unshaken. Finally it was
decided that she should become a limited liability company,
which would hold the copyrights of all her works and receive
all royalties arising from diem. Juliet was the secretary of this
company and various members of the family its directors. Eli-
nor herself was not on the board, and it was hoped by this
means, if not to prevent altogether, at least to reduce the com-
mitments into which she might rashly enter.
A more immediate result was that what remained of the
fortune Elinor had made in America could now be invested
for her in annuities.
12.
In 1924 the effects of Prohibition began to reach serious
proportions due to the extensive indulgence in "hooch" or
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Elinor Glyn
"moonshine" alcohol even by some of the lesser stars and film
technicians. The whole level of character and intelligence of
the rank and file of the film industry sagged badly, and on
several occasions shooting at the studio had to be suspended
for a whole day or more while some vital member of the cast
or technical staff slept off the effects of his or her overintoxica-
tion. Elinor herself was furious at such behaviour. She was
abstemious by nature and made it a point of honour to be
punctual on the set every morning. The studio authorities
would censure mildly the miscreant for the time and money
wasted, but Elinor was deeply distressed to note that among
the lesser people such behaviour was regarded with admiration.
Coinciding with the rise in drunkenness was an increase
in lawlessness. Elinor heard continually of terrifying holdups,
violent robberies, and strange, unexplained murders. The
Chief Constable of Los Angeles told her that crime was far
worse than anyone knew and that more murders took place in
Los Angeles and Hollywood in a month than in the whole of
France in a year. She had no means of confirming the statis-
tical accuracy of this statement, but she was well aware of
the prevalence and violence of the crime wave.
Practically every one of her friends had been held up and
robbed at some time or other. All the leading stars were fol-
lowed all the time by armed guards and their houses were
patrolled by guards at night. Elinor grew accustomed to hiding
her rings and her pearl necklace in her stockings before driving
about at night. After an evening at Pickf air, Douglas Fairbanks
would always send a car to follow her own car back to her
hotel if there was no other guest going that way.
On one occasion Elinor, Chaplin, and Marion Davies
emerged from Elinor's suite in the Ambassador Hotel to find,
just outside her door, a murderer in the act of killing a man.
Before anyone could realise what was happening, the lift ar-
rived filled with police, who hurriedly removed both the mur-
derer and the corpse. Elinor expected that the police would
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The Film Producer
call and question her and that she would be subpoenaed as a
witness. But nothing at all happened, nor was there any ref-
erence to the crime in the papers. She asked the manager
about it, but he brusquely denied that any such event had
taken place. Only an obstinate bloodstain on the carpet out-
side her door, which defied repeated scrubbings, reminded
her that the whole thing was not a mere figment of her im-
agination.
On several other occasions she heard shots and screams
from the garden under her balcony, and she became accus-
tomed to finding that nobody knew anything about them the
next day.
During the summer of 1924 she herself began to receive
anonymous letters and mysterious telephone calls threatening
her life. She felt disinclined to do battle with a murder gang,
and on her son-in-law's advice she gave the letters to the hotel
detective, promising a large reward if they could be stopped.
The detective smilingly announced a few days later that the
letters had been traced to a madman who had now been re-
captured and that she would not receive any more of them.
Elinor did not believe the story for a moment, but she paid
up meekly and the letters duly stopped.
Looking back later, Elinor was horrified, not so much by
the crime wave itself, which was in due course brought under
control, but by her own placid acceptance of the normality
of such events and the way in which they were hushed up.
This stifling of her conscience, this blunting of her moral
scruples she considered as yet another manifestation of the
effects of the Calif ornian Curse.
In 1925, Elinor produced a film version of Man and Maid
for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This followed the story of her
Elinor Glyn
novel, but a silent film could not carry all the subtle overtones
of character and relationships which had distinguished the
hoot, and the film showed simply and rather sentimentally a
poor typist marrying a rich hero. The settings included some
glittering French interiors and the film was adequately acted
by Lew Cody as Nicholas and Harriet Hammond as Alathea.
There was also an excellent little performance by Renee
Adoree as Suzette.
For her next film, Love's Blindness, which was made at the
end of the same year, Elinor reverted to her English settings.
Hubert, Earl of St. Austell, is involved in a spectacular money
crash, and to save himself and, even more, his friends, he
agrees to Benjamin Levy's conditional offer of help. Levy has
social ambitions and his condition is that Hubert should marry
his daughter Vanessa. Hubert, trapped and humiliated, loathes
the thought of Vanessa; he does not notice her beauty, which
is derived from her aristocratic Italian mother, and treats her
with icy contempt. Vanessa, however, knows nothing of her
father's machinations; she has adored Hubert from afar for
some time and imagines that he is now marrying her for love.
Hubert's treatment of her, the unconscious partner and wit-
ness of his degradation, breaks her heart and gives her a mis-
carriage. The final happy ending comes as something of a jolt.
The film's settings were costly and elaborate and evocative
of an English country house, but it was acted by Pauline
Stark and Antonio Moreno with almost excessive restraint,
and it aroused little enthusiasm among either the critics or
the public. The book version of the story was published by
Duckworth in February 1926 and was called by The Times
Literary Supplement a "capable romance/'
For her next film, The Only Thing, which was the last
that she made for MGM, Elinor turned again to a Balkan
kingdom. She put in popular and well-tried ingredients : the
heroine, the beautiful Queen; the old, unattractive King;
the handsome English diplomat in love with the Queen;
The Film Producer
the Queen's charming American girl friend, Sally; a hand-
some, upright Balkan politician in love with Sally; a sinister
blind beggar, the embodiment of evil, who stirs up the mob to
revolution, killing the King and throwing the Queen and the
diplomat into prison. Elinor had in the past five years learned
a great deal about negotiating with Hollywood film compa-
nies, and at this point her draft synopsis breaks off abruptly
with the words:
The rescue from the prison and the final great situation
which is very dangerous and exciting I do not propose to
tell anyone, until the contract is made, as it is a unique and
great situation.
Mr. Mayer accepted the bait thus held out to him, the con-
tract was signed, and Elinor revealed the missing scene, a new
version of the manage de Nantes in which the Queen finds
herself tied in the sinking barge to the diplomat, who is dis-
guised, to her unspeakable horror, as the blind beggar himself.
This scene was to be shot partly under water by a method
devised by Elinor herself. The closing sequences of the story
were to show the Queen and the diplomat married, living
quietly in his English country home, while the people of
die Balkan state acclaim their new republic and their new
President and his wife Sally a startling denouement for such
a royalist author.
The film was made in the summer of 1926, with the
manage de Nantes just as Elinor conceived it But the
American continuity writers took out Sally and the republic,
and turned the diplomat, whom Elinor had made a commoner,
into a Duke.
14.
The Khys-Williamses' efforts to minimise Elinor's general
expenditure and the possibility of further commitments were
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Elinor Glyn
only partially successful. She engaged a young man as secre-
tary and personal agent, the Intention being that he should
obtain further lucrative contracts for her and in general man-
age her business interests. For this he was to be paid a salary
of five thousand pounds a year.
The directors of Elinor Glyn, Ltd., appalled, cabled from
England that this was an English Cabinet Minister's salary
and surely there must be some mistake. Elinor replied su-
perbly that she thought the figure entirely reasonable for the
work he was doing, and the directors had no option but to
pay this salary, to the considerable detriment of Elinor's bank
balance,
Elinor had at this time virtually turned her back on the
Old World, becoming more and more imbued with the tech-
nique and aspirations of the inhabitants of Hollywood, with
the belief that wealth and notoriety were in themselves worthy
ambitions. She was full of supreme confidence in her own
judgement, abilities, and the tightness of all her actions, and
she tended to treat with a certain amount of contempt any
dissenting voice from the Old World, merely because it was
the Old, and in her present view obsolescent, World.
A momentary check in this rising megalomania was pro-
vided by the arrival in Hollywood of Lady Ravensdale, on a
tour round the world. Elinor was delighted to see her again;
her mere presence brought back memories of Crag and Hack-
wood and Montacute, the gracious society world now so far
away. Elinor showed her round Hollywood, introduced her to
everyone she wished to meet, and gave a party for her. To-
gether they attended Rudolph Valentino's amazing funeral.
Later that night Elinor went to condole and discuss the Great
Lover with Pola Negri, who, though never his wife, was wear-
ing the blackest of widow's weeds.
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The Film Producer
One of Elinor's principal literary activities at this time was
a series of articles called The Truth, which she wrote for the
Hearst press. There were more than two hundred and fifty of
them, and they dealt not only with love and marriage, hut
with almost every other subject under the sun.
She adopted in these articles an uncompromising^ forth-
right style, a ruthless didacticism, deliberately intended to
strip away all self-deception and prevarication. She herself was
both hurt and enfeebled when her own self-deceptions were
stripped from her, but of these, her own self-deceptions, she
was for the most part unaware. She had no compunction,
when truth and honesty demanded it, in letting others see
themselves and their actions in the cold light of realism.
But the most important and the most consequential piece of
literary work which Elinor produced at this time was her fa-
mous conte, tf It/ * In length " It* * is more a short novel than
a short story. It was serialised in the Cosmopolitan and was
published the following year by itself in America and by
Duckworth in a volume containing four other short stories,
*Tt'* was deservedly a great success and one must regard it
not only as the cream of her American literary output, but
as one of the most striking pieces she ever wrote.
"It/" as the tide suggests, is a study in personal magnet-
ism. Since The Man and the Moment there had been in her
novels and articles, letters, diaries, and even, it is understood,
in her conversation, several mentions of "it/* And now in her
new story she defined it once again.
To have "it," the fortunate possessor must have that
strange magnetism which attracts both sexes. He or she
must be entirely unself-conscious and full of self-confidence,
Elinor Glyn
indifferent to the effect he or she is producing, and unin-
fluenced by others. There must be physical attraction, but
beauty is unnecessary. Conceit or self-consciousness destroys
"it* immediately. In the animal world "it" demonstrates in
tigers and cats both animals being fascinating and mys-
terious, and quite unbiddable.
Both the hero and the heroine of the story possess "it" to
a marked degree. The hero, John Gaunt, has raised himself
by Ms own exertions from the depths of the Bowery to the
head of a prosperous New York business, but despite this and
despite his attraction for women he realises that there is
something missing in his life. The girl, Ava Cleveland, is well
born, proud, impoverished, "a little sister of the rich/* in con-
tinuous difficulties mainly through the financial irresponsbility
of her scapegrace but charming brother, Larry.
Gaunt, deeply attracted to her, has mentioned that he will
give her a job if ever she needs it, and finally in desperation
she takes it. She finds herself sitting at a desk immediately
outside his door, sorting press cuttings at a large salary, re-
sented by the other girls in the office and the supervisor, and
acutely aware of her humiliating and invidious position. She
is as strongly attracted to Gaunt as he to her, but she holds
him firmly at arm's length.
Larry, also an employee of Gaunt's, continually runs up
bills, and Ava knows that her fate and Larry's are now com-
pletely in Gaunt's hands.
Gaunt names the price that he will require for forgiving
Larry. Ava puts on her loveliest evening dress and goes to
dine with Gaunt alone in his house, ready to pay the price.
The scene that follows is perhaps the strongest that Elinor
ever wrote. All through the dinner, behind their fencing and
sparring, lies their acute awareness of each other's "it," and
this gives a sharp tang to their words. After dinner Gaunt
suddenly offers Ava her brother s freedom and pardon with-
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out demanding any price. Ava, almost overcome with longing
for Gaunt, replies that her class does not accept favours from
his, and that she prefers to pay.
He took her forward into the apricot-rose bedroom. It
had evidently been prepared for someone to stay there for
the night; for filmy, gossamer raiment lay ready on the bed.
Intoxication filled Ava's brain a divine madness perme-
ated her being Her ears but dimly heard, but her heart
registered that John Gaunt's deep voice was saying sternly
"Tell me the truth Is it for your brother or for a cat-
like desire for the conquest of a man? Is it for the pride
of taking me from another woman, that you are here?
Or is it just for the love of me Ava?"
Her eyes, wet with dewy tears, looked up at him, while
her willowy body grew limp in his embrace. His passionate
regard devoured her His head drooped closer and closer
to her Then his lips met hers in utter abandon of desire,
which filled them both.
"Ah, God!" at last, she said divinely 'What do I care
for a price or tomorrow or the afterwards I carne because
I love you John Gaunt!"
All the dreams of heaven which he had dreamed of as a
child when once he had strayed from the Bowery, all dirty
and ragged into St. Patrick's Cathedral and heard High
Mass sung, now seemed to return to him Here was his
heart's desire, won and in his arms His to have and to
hold from now for henceforth till death them do part-
Given of herself without reservations, without bargainings,
without vows.
Then he gave her a number of presents, her creditors* bills,
paid and receipted, her treasures redeemed from the pawn-
broker, and last of all, a glorious necklace of virgin pearls.
"These" he said as he fastened the diamond clasp "are
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Elinor Glyn
for the lady I have always intended to marry 1 * Then when
he saw that all the soul of love was gazing at him through
Ava's tender eyes, suddenly he released her from his arms,
and kneeling down, he kissed her ivory hands.
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer in the course of
his notice wrote :
The first story gives us a situation much favoured by
Mrs. Glyn in which a powerful and wealthy lover subdues
the persistent coldness and reluctance of the girl he means
to win. Ava, with her coolness and restraint, reminds one
a little of the heroine of Mrs. Glyn's novel The Career of
Katherine Bush. Despite the author's slipshod English and
a curious feeling one sometimes has that she is burlesquing
her own style, these stories certainly let themselves be read.
From this view there can be few dissenting opinions.
16.
In March 1927, Elinor paid a brief visit to England, during
which Laszlo painted, in only three hours, the lovely sketch
of her on the jacket of this book. In this sketch, hurried and
unfinished though it is, the artist has captured not only Eli-
nor's own appearance but also her personality far more suc-
cessfully than in the formal and finished portrait which he
had painted thirteen years earlier.
But as we look at the sketch, our chief feeling must surely
be of astonishment that it should be a picture of a woman of
sixty-two. There are, however, many photographs taken of
her at this time to prove that Laszlo did not flatter her. Ever
since her girlhood she had devoted much of her time and
energy and thought to preserving her beauty, unlined and
unwasted by the passing of time. She fought all her life a
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The film Producer
grim, implacable delaying action against old age, a "battle
which she came as near as anyone ever has to winning. She
never disdained the use of artifice, employing everything from
the secret treatment of El-Zair to the more commonplace face
creams. In Hollywood in 1926 she had undergone a facial
treatment so painful that her arms had had to be strapped to
her sides for ten days. She would rise very early in the morn-
ing so as to have plenty of time to complete her elaborate
toilet and beauty treatment, and, incidentally, to do some writ-
ing before going to the studio*
Whether the time and energy Elinor devoted to her ap-
pearance were worth while is a moot point. But worth while
or not, we cannot, after looting at Lasdo's sketch, deny the
effectiveness of her methods; and we may think that it was
exactly because she was still, even in her middle sixties, so
beautiful, and able to command such a quantity of spontane-
ous admiration, that she could carry out so successfully such
a large and taxing programme of work.
Also in March 1927, Duckworth published The Wrinkle
Book, a slim volume giving some extremely practical and up-
to-date advice about face massage and exercises. It was in the
preface to this book that Elinor produced two of her more
startling aids to beauty. One was to scrub the face hard with
a dry nailbrush till the skin glowed crimson. The other was
always to sleep with ones head to the magnetic north. Both
these treatments she faithfully carried out herself; die latter
one, she explained, was "pure common sensed
17.
Elinor's last three films in Hollywood were made for her
old company, Famous Players-Lasky, which was by now re-
named Paramount. The films were all light comedies, a new
genre in films for her. The first, Ritzy , was easily the worst
33
Elinor Glyn
of the three. It was founded very remotely upon a short story
of Elinor's of the same name, about a bumptious American
girl who tried to teach Paris society a lesson and got severely
snubbed. In the film only the heroine's nickname and her dis-
likeable character remain. Ritzy Brown longs to marry a Duke,
but to her annoyance falls in love with a commoner. The
Duke and the commoner, however, turn out to have ex-
changed roles, to teach her a lesson, and so Ritzy gets it both
ways. It says a good deal for the ingenuity and skill of all
concerned that any laughs were got out of such a wretched
little plot
The second film was "It" Once again there was no ob-
vious resemblance between the film and the original story
except the tide. But this time Elinor wrote the screen play
herself. In the book the dominating character had been John
Gaunt, but the Paramount studios wanted the chief part, the
character who had "it," to be the girl. Further, it was to be
a light comedy, and not, like the book, a tense study in human
relationship.
For a while Elinor felt puzzled, but after she met Clara
Bow, who was to play the heroine, she saw her way clear
before her; and under the considerable stimulus and inspira-
tion of Clara Bow's own personality Elinor produced the
scenario of her most famous and successful film.
In synopsis form the story seems very slight. A New York
store proprietor, Cyrus Waltham (played by Antonio
Moreno) is strongly attracted by one of his shopgirls, the
'pert and unabashed" Betty Lou Spence (Clara Bow). Going
to call on her in her modest home, he finds her minding a
friend's baby. He jumps to the conclusion that Betty Lou is
an unmarried mother and offers her his protection. She is
indignant at this supposed insult, but after some gay misun-
derstandings the story finally reaches a happy conclusion on
Cyrus's yacht. The film was sparHingly directed by Clarence
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The Film Producer
Badger, and was in the words of one critic, iW as entertaining
as it is disarming."
The screen's most piquant star [wrote the Kine WeeMy]
in an Elinor Glyn story, demonstrating the presence of an
indefinable attraction. The comedy situations are excel-
lently handled and the treatment is light, bright and
vivacious.
"It" grossed more than a million dollars at the box office,
at that time a prodigious figure for a film. It also boosted the
reputations of all those concerned with the film, principally
Elinor herself, who also reaped large financial rewards. The
Bioscope wrote in a rather sardonic paragraph :
Few authors have boomed themselves so successfully as
Elinor Glyn. Her latest effort is as astute as it is likely to
be effective. Having written a book called It, she proceeds to
get a picture produced explaining what "it" is, and inci-
dentally appears in the picture and tells the hero what
"it" is. Then for the past year she has been lecturing on
"it," and the new cult has spread across the continent to
the east coast.
Elinor's fan mail had been large ever since the publication
of The Philosophy of Love. Now it swelled to proportions
reminiscent of die days of Three Weeks. All over the world
girls wrote asking exactly what "it" was and how they could
acquire it. To this last question, of course, there was only one
answer that "it" could never be acquired. Elinor also wrote
numerous articles on the subject, listing some of the well-
known figures who had "it,"* and trying to show the difference
between those who had it and those who had not. The press
could not leave the subject alone and were for ever inter-
viewing her about "it"; and Elinor was deeply gratified, find-
* These included the Prince of Wales, Gary Cooper, and Lord Beaver-
brook.
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Elinor Glyn
ing herself back on the peak of fame and fortune, as high if
not higher than she had reached twenty years hef ore.
The film also made the reputation of Clara Bow. She was
later to play many other parts of very different character, but
lor the rest of her career she was always thought of primarily
as the "It" Girl. She herself was keenly conscious of the debt
she owed to Elinor. When she came on her honeymoon to
see Elinor in England, she wrote on a photograph of herself,
To Elinor Glyn, whom I respect and admire more than any
other woman in the world/'
EBno/s last Hollywood film, Red Hair, was made by the
same team, author-producer, director, and actress. The film,
which was in colour, was designed as a vehicle for showing
Clara Bow's versatility and for illustrating the passion in-
herent in redheads. The heroine was a little manicurist, who
received presents from three male admirers, of whom one
saw her as a demure young miss, one as a "vamp* and one as
a temperamental young woman. She herself reformed when
she met the right man, who was the nephew of two of her
admirers and the ward of the third. They attempted to in-
terfere with her new romance, but the handicap of their own
pasts and the heroine's fiery temper frustrated them. The
final and rather daring scene took place on a boat, in which
she undressed and returned them their presents of dothes in
each other's presence, to their great consternation, before go-
ing off with the right man.
Once again the story provided a series of nicely contrived
comic scenes, expertly directed by Clarence Badger, and once
again Clara Bow was in excellent form. Red Hair was almost
as successful as "It,* grossing nine hundred thousan^ dollars
at the box office, and Elinor decided wisely to relinquish her
Hollywood career on this note of triumph.
She had successfully achieved her triple objective, for
which she had first come, to Hollywood seven years before.
She had spread her romantic ideals, not only through her
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The Film Producer
films but through her books and articles far wider through
America than she had ever dared to hope. She had made her
fortune. She had acquired a large number of new friends,
and a considerable insight into the American way of life. And
she had re-established her fame in a way she had never even
dreamt. Now, at last, she could afford to retire and lead a more
leisured existence.
18.
Elinor had never pulled her punches about America, either
in the early days of Elizabeth Visits America or more recently.
She had never been one to indulge the shortcomings of others,
except, perhaps, her husband. Though she was not so un-
gracious as to stint her admiration for the good aspects of the
American scene, she never hesitated to pass severe and some-
times scathing comment on the parts which pleased her less.
She had during her seven years in America consciously re-
sisted all efforts to Americanise her. In her books, especially
The Flirt and the Flapper, we may note that she had a con-
siderable command of American slang, but she never used a
single Americanism in her own conversation. There was no
trace of an American accent in her voice.
We cannot be surprised at this. It would, indeed, have been
surprising if she, her habits, manners, and speech trained in
the style and tradition of the English and French aristocracy,
should have moved so far from her rigid and proudly held
standards as to adopt, even for protective colouring, a form of
outward behaviour, habit, and speech which she had once
thought uncouth. But underneath the purely outward, formal
standards there had been a considerable change. In mind and
in spirit she was now far closer to the American way of life,
more nearly attuned to American ideals and geared to Ameri-
can tempo. She had also, not unnaturally, become very fond
307
Elinor Glyn
of a country and a people which had given her such splendid
opportunities and which had rewarded her efforts so lavishly.
And so we find that when the moment came in 1927 when
she was free to leave America and return to England, she
found suddenly that she could not bear to go* She wanted,
however, to leave California, even though she had so many
friends there, and she went to live in New York, taking a flat
on the top floor of the Ritz Tower, at that time the tallest
inhabited building in the world.
Elinor loved the view from her flat, which had windows
on all sides, the strange lights and shadows, the lightning and
thunder and high winds around her and, especially on calm
nights, the city lights twinkling far below her as if they were
stars reflected in a lake. She lived there for nearly a year,
writing articles for Hearst and magazine stories.
One of these stories, Such Men Are Dangerous, she sold
for six thousand pounds, and it was the first of her stories
to be produced as a talking picture. The story dealt with an
immensely rich and rather unattractive man, married to a dull
wife and longing for romance. In the middle of a flight across
the Channel he jumped out of the aircraft and disappeared
for ever. In fact, he parachuted down and was picked up by a
midget, two-man submarine* which he had arranged to be at a
certain spot* He then went to Vienna and placed himself in
the hands of a plastic surgeon, who lifted his face, remoulded
his nose, altered the shape of his hands, stretched him on a
rack, carried out a difficult operation on his shoulder muscles
to alter the set of his shoulders, and gave his vocal chords and
hair drastic treatment. The millionaire was now unrecognis-
able in every way and he set out to find romance. His wife,
in the meantime, had brightened herself up and in due course
the millionaire met her, fell in love with her, and married
her all over again, without ever telling her the true story.
* This was a remarkably prophetic invention of Elinor's for which
some of the critics laughed at her.
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The Film Producer
The film followed the story in outline, if not in detail, and
Warner Baxter gave a good performance as the millionaire.
Elinor took no part in the production, but she was pleased by
the finished picture, especially by the meticulous accuracy of
the sets.
In the summer of 1928, Elinor returned to Hollywood, stay-
ing with Marion Davies at her beach house. She thoroughly
enjoyed luxuriating in her new-found idleness in the warm
California climate and seeing her friends again, and at Mar-
ion Davies' stern insistence she stayed there for six weeks be-
fore leaving for Washington.
Washington had always appealed greatly to Elinor, with
its old houses, its cosmopolitan atmosphere, and its diplomatic
society. Elinor had many friends in the city and she now de-
cided to make her home there. She bought a pleasant house
of the 1790 period in Georgetown and spent the whole of
the autumn and winter of 1928 redecorating it.
Her ideas of house decoration, never austere, had been en-
couraged in Hollywood by the sumptuous sets she had de-
signed for her films. It was many years since she had last
decorated a home of her own, and in Washington now, secure
in her newly acquired wealth, she gave her ruling passion and
her lavish ideas full rein, denying herself nothing, however
extravagant. The house in Georgetown was the costliest that
she ever decorated for herself, and, ironically, it was the only
one that she never lived in.
Shortly before she moved in, in the spring of 1929, she
paid a visit to England, intending to spend a few weeks with
her family and friends. In fact, she remained there for the
rest of her life.
BOOK EIGHT
The Legend
1929-1943
I.
In considering Elinor Glyn's life and career one is struck
by the way in which the pattern repeats itself. In 1908 she
had returned from America flushed with her triumph, her
pockets hulging with her earnings, her head turned by the
adulation she had received, intransigent, indifferent to cau-
tionary advice, her judgement unstable and unreliable. In
1908 her intransigence had been tempered, one might almost
say her character redeemed, by the sudden shock of financial
adversity. Twenty-one years later, the pattern repeated itself
almost exactly, with the colours, if anything, a little height-
ened.
Elinor's American fortune was no longer as large as it had
once been or as she herself still believed it to be. Much of it
had disappeared in Hollywood without trace, melted like hoar-
frost in the sun. She had been profligate with money, both
in New York and in Washington, and there were, too, sudden
large demands for income tax, for which she had made no
provision and which she tended to ignore, vaguely thinking
it unjust.
Her family rapidly appraised themselves of this true posi-
tion of her finances and pressed her strongly not to return to
America. There was no particular reason why she need live
3*3
Elinor Glyn
there now and she was quite capable of continuing her jour-
nalistic work there from England, where her family would
be able to keep a closer watch upon her expenditure. Elinor
herself was deeply affected by her return to familiar scenes
and faces, and by a strong desire to live in closer contact with
her growing family, and especially with her mother, who had
had a stroke; she wanted, too, to pick up her old friendships
and her own life.
A house, Wolsey's Spring, near Kingston, had been pre-
pared for her return, and Elinor now settled in there. As a
permanent residence it was not altogether ideal. It was too
far from London to be convenient, although it was hardly
remote by American standards. Elinor had been deprived, per-
haps fortunately, of the opportunity of supervising the com-
plete redecoration of the house and she felt a little aggrieved
at this. It was large and there seemed to be too many servants
about for her liking; apart from her personal maid in her own
rooms Elinor always preferred the rest of the staff to be as
little in evidence as possible. The house was also rather ex-
pensive to run. However, it provided, for the moment, a suit-
able milieu as well as the standard of living which she wished
and still thought she was able to afford.
2.
In 1908, Elinor had brought back with her from America
a number of new ideologies of dubious value, the chief of
which was New Thought. In 1929 she returned home under
the strong influence of spiritualism and the occult in general.
She had always had an interest in occult and psychic matters.
All her life she had been keenly attentive to, if not actually
influenced by, the predictions of soothsayers and clairvoyants;
she had worried over her children's horoscopes and tried hard
to find a scientific basis for astrology.
3*4
The Legend
She knew, too, that she was unusually imbued herself with
psychic powers. Many times she had premonitions and fore-
bodings which were so definite as almost to amount to second
sight and which were usually fulfilled with uncanny accu-
racy.* Her first experience with ghosts took place when she
was still very young* She had been staying in a country house
in Hertfordshire, the owner of which lay seriously ill upstairs.
At a quarter to one in the morning Elinor and several others,
though by no means all, of the household,, heard the passing
bell toll from the neighbouring, deserted, and securely locked
church. The owner of the house died twenty-four hours later,
exactly to the minute.
Elinor had many other experiences of this sort both in Eng-
land and France* In Kilkenny Castle she heard a disembodied
voice sighing in the corner by the fireplace, a sigh which could
be heard by those who were completely deaf. In one French
chateau a weird white figure arose and wailed at the end of
her bed. If there was a ghost about, Elinor usually saw or
heard it, and these experiences cannot be attributed merely to
her vigorous imagination, for in each case there was a strange
story about the house or the room which she did not learn
till the following day.
She was interested but not frightened by these experiences,
regarding them as yet another example of her own susceptibil-
ity to waves and vibrations. The two ghost stories which she
wrote herself* lack the eery, chilling quality of the great
masters of the macabre.
Elinor's main interest in 1929, however, was not in ghosts
but in spiritualism and all such efforts to make contact with
departed spirits. She joined a circle of spiritualists and at-
* She warned the MoDisons in 1933 that their plane, the Seafarer,
would crash on its forthcoming Atlantic flight unless it were painted
some colour other than black. Mrs. Mollison explained why it was
impossible to repaint the plane another colour, but she thanked Eli-
nor for her warning. The plane duly crashed.
* "The IrtonwoocT Ghost" in The Contrast and Other Stories and
"Why D" in It and Other Stories.
3*5
Elinor Glyn
tended several seances with a good medium, making contact
with Clayton and many friends of hers who were now dead.
At first Elinor was considerably impressed* The seances
seemed to be perf ectly genuine, and on one occasion she took
a secretary with her to make sure that the words were actually
spoken and were not merely imagined by her. Messages from
Clayton and her friends contained references which could
not be known possibly to any third person. There were also
forecasts about the future which were sometimes correct.
Automatic writing was a variant which she also practised,
and for which she found she had a gift. She would take up a
pencil and block, make her mind as blank as possible, and
after a little while she would find the pencil writing by itself
in her hand. The handwriting was utterly different from her
normal one, and once again messages came through from
Clayton and others which were very difficult to explain if
they were not genuine communications. The official explana-
tion of automatic writing is, of course, that it is the expression
of the subconscious. But Elinor refused to believe this. Not
only were many of the messages extremely distasteful to her,
but also, when she first experimented with automatic writing
in Egypt in 1920, she wrote several pages of faultless Arabic,
of which she knew not a word. She could not credit her sub-
conscious with the power to write faultless Arabic when her
conscious found it difficult enough to write faultless English.
After a while Elinor noticed that all the messages, whether
addressed to her or to other members of her circle, no matter
from whom they were supposed to come, were always in ex-
actly the same style pompous platitudes, minute instructions
about ornaments or other trivia, detailed but quite useless
remedies for her rheumatic knee, elaborate prophesies about
the future which were usually quite misleading. Just as Elinor
refused to think her own subconscious responsible for such
utterances, so did she also decline to believe that Clayton,
Wynne Finch, and her other friends could have lost their
3x6
The Legend
sense of humour and proportion so completely when they
"passed over." In his lifetime Clayton had detested pompous,
dramatic slogans and cliches; he had never been particularly
interested in the ornaments in Elinor's bedroom or, for that
matter, particularly concerned about her health. Nothing
about the messages bore the hallmark of their senders' per-
sonalities and gradually Elinor came to believe that they were
fakes, sent perhaps by some imp or sprite of the half -world in
the intent of teasing and making mischief among gullible
people like herself. She became sick of the whole business as
her incredulity and her sense of humour reasserted them-
selves, and in due course she gave it up altogether.
At that time table-turning, planchette boards, and other
minor manifestations of spiritualism were popular after-dinner
entertainments at some house parties. Elinor participated in
them with the utmost reluctance. Though her belief in die
efficacy of such communications was fading, she still believed
in the strength of her own pyschic powers and regarded them
as too dangerous for use in casual parlour games. In one house
party in Yorkshire, Elinor was at last persuaded to take part
in a session at the planchette board. In her hand the trolley
prophesied the death within a year of another member of the
party, specifically named. This prophesy, which turned out to
be correct, caused a good deal of consternation among the
party and marked the end of Elinor's experiments in spiritual-
ism.
Automatic writing, however, remained a considerable temp-
tation, and it required a strong effort of will not to sit back and
idly watch the pencil writing of its own accord when she
should have been busy upon an article or a story.
3*7
Elinor Glyn
The British film industry at this time was at a particularly
low ebb. With the end of the silent films many studios had
dosed down and actors and technicians were thrown out of
work. Little finance was available for equipping either studios
or cinemas for talking pictures, which themselves, by re-erect-
ing the language barrier, had cut potential film producers from
their lucrative foreign markets.
Elinor's re-entry into the world of films was largely
prompted by a genuine desire to rehabilitate British films by
placing her experience and her reputation as a film author at
the industry's disposal. She also hankered again for the fame
and fortune her Hollywood films had brought her. By making
films herself in Britain, she told herself she would not only
help to revitalise British films, now receiving some belated
assistance from the recently passed Quota Act, but also create
a new outlet for herself and her stories, and restore her fortune
again to the pinnacle from which it had so sadly slipped in
the past few years.
Accordingly she formed a small company, Elinor Glyn Pro-
ductions, Ltd., and rented studio space at Elstree. She en-
gaged a production manager who had been well recommended
and placed the lighting and photography in the hands of the
man who had been Mary Pickford's cameraman for eleven
years. She asked Edward Knoblock, who had been one of her
fellow authors in the early days in Hollywood, to collaborate
with her on the script. United Artists guaranteed a release
and promised a large advance payment on delivery of the
negative. The prospect for the moment seemed fair and the
production, which was financed entirely by Elinor herself, be-
gan in the autumn of 1 929.
The film, Knowing Men, was based on a story Elinor had
318
The Legend
written for Clara Bow but which had been rejected in favour
of Red Hctir. It was a very slight and improbable comedy
about an heiress who pretended to be a poor companion to
her aunt so as to discover the real characters and intentions of
her male admirers. Several of the scenes were rather risque
and the critics found them shocking. Elissa Landi played the
Clara Bow part with great charm and Carl Brisson did his
best for the stupid but athletic hero; the cast also included
Helen Haye and Jeanne de Casalis. H. Fraser-Simson wrote
a catchy theme song and Elinor herself directed her first talk-
ing picture.
The production went smoothly and was finished in only
two days over the scheduled time, to the amazement of the
Elstree studio manager. The first night took place at the Regal
Cinema (now the Odeon), Marble Arch, in February 1930.
For years Elinor had been protected and insulated from the
blasts of criticism by the organised publicity campaigns of the
big film studios and she had not realised what it was like to
be entirely on her own. She was aware that the film was not
as good as her Hollywood productions, but she hoped that the
reviewers would be indulgent, as it was her money that she
was spending. In this she was sadly disappointed.
She had been unwise enough to appear in a prologue to the
film delivering a scathing speech about the failings of the male
sex, and this alienated the audience from the start. The no-
tices that Knowing Men received were so bad as to be news
in themselves. One of the kinder of the critics wrote :
Neither plot nor direction display originality and the pic-
ture suffers from the writer's deep and apparently incurable
mistrust of men, first displayed thirty years ago when she
introduced Elizabeth, the child of her fancy, to a sniggering
public.
We may note with some surprise that the critic's hostility was
so widespread as to envelop in retrospect Elinor's first novel,
319
Elinor Glyn
which had been so highly praised by the critics of the time
and which was not at the moment under review.
The morning after the disastrous first night Edward
Knoblock obtained a temporary injunction preventing the pic-
ture being shown again, and the film had to be taken off
after one performance, pending the hearing of the case.
Knoblock lost the case and a permanent injunction was re-
fused, but the damage was done and the release missed. Ex-
cept for the guaranteed advance, the film was a dead loss.
In London at the time was the head of United Artists, Mr.
Schenk, and he thought sufficiently well of Knowing Men
to urge Elinor to make further films, which he would dis-
tribute for her. He even spoke hopefully of an American re-
lease. Elinor was riled by the treatment that Knowing Men
had received and allowed herself to be persuaded by his sug-
gestions.
The Price of Things was chosen for her second film in
the hope that a more dramatic story would appeal to those
critics who had taken exception to her comedy, but despite
Mr. Schenk's promises no release of any kind was forthcom-
ing and it too was a complete loss to the litde company.
Elinor was now back where she had been twenty years be-
fore, reduced to writing novels in haste to pay off her debts,
and in the next four years she published four novels and a
book of short stories. To live on, she had only the annuity
which the Rhys-Williamses had bought for her out of the
savings from her first four American films and it was obvious
that a policy of severe retrenchment was necessary. Wolsey's
Spring was sold and Elinor moved into a small flat in Hert-
ford Street, near Shepherd's Market, Mayf air .
She could also no longer support her mother. The flat in
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The Legend
Embankment Gardens was given up and Mrs. Kennedy went
to live at Miskin Manor, the Rhys-Williamses* country home
in Glamorgan. Here she remained for the last seven years of
her life.
They were in some ways the happiest years since Douglas
Sutherland's death. Mrs. Kennedy had her own suite of rooms
where she lived with her devoted maid, Frances, and from
which she could see across the fields to the bluebell wood.
She would come down ceremonially to lunch and dinner each
day, a manner of life which reminded her nostalgically of
the better days at Lamberts. Especially pleasant were the mo-
ments in the summer and at Christmas when there was a
large family gathering in the house.
Following her stroke her memory was strangely elliptical.
She remembered only the happy days of her life and a few of
the minor unpleasantnesses the journey in the schooner to
South America, the smell of the slave ships in Rio. The major
horrors, the winter journey home from Turin to England with
her dying husband, his death, the whole of her marriage to
Mr. Kennedy, were effaced altogether.
She died on April zo, 1937, at the age of ninety-six.
Elinor lived in her Hertford Street flat till 1934, when she
moved to a larger one in Connaught Place, Bayswater, with
a lovely blue and gold drawing-room overlooking Hyde Park.
Both these flats she filled with her own taste and personality.
Her fine collection of French furniture and pictures, her beau-
tiful silks and brocades, her tiger skins gave her drawing-room
a unique and piquant atmosphere. One American visitor com-
plained later that "There wasn't a darned chair in the room
you could relax in/' but Elinor herself, except when she was
curled up on a sofa, always sat upright in a chair.
'Elinor Glyn
There were five of her tigers on view: "Paul" (the original
one from Lucerne), "Curzon," "Milner," and two anonymous
ones. She loved them, for their own sakes, but their presence
invariably stimulated reporters, who came frequently to in-
terview her about love, marriage or "it," into keeping the tiger-
skin legend alive.
Elinor also acquired about this time a pair of marmalade-
coloured cats whom she named Candide and Zadig, as a trib-
ute to Voltaire. They were beautiful, proud, independent
creatures of enormous character and "it," in many ways very
like their mistress. Elinor was devoted to them and they be-
came as much a feature of her life as her tigers.
She was at this time continually in the public eye, an almost
lengendary person, a red-haired, green-eyed Queen of Pas-
sion, who spent her day, so it was supposed, reclining on her
tiger skins. The "it" vogue showed no signs of abating, and
hardly a day passed without some reference to this personal
quality in some paper or magazine. Her opinion was sought
on all sorts of current controversial problems, and she con-
tributed a large number of articles both to the British and
American press on topics of the day, principally, of course,
love and marriage. Her own name was another factor, a
fortuitous one, in keeping her name before the public, and
jokes about Nell Glyn pattered regularly from variety come-
dians.
Although it was now thirty years since she had published
her first novels, her books, in particular the earlier ones,
showed no signs of waning popularity. In 1933 Ray Smith's
Twopenny Library reported, with a certain amount of sur-
prise, that the three women authors most in demand were
still Ethel M. Dell, Elinor Glyn, and Marie Corelli, in that
order. The overseas demand for Elinors novels was also well
maintained. In the same year a Lisbon statistician stated that
the seven novelists of any nationality most widely read in
Portugal were Edgar Wallace, Rafael Sabatini, Conan Doyle,
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The Legend
A. E. W. Mason, E. M. Hull, P. G Wren, and Elinor Glyn.
Elinor's own taste in books had altered little in the last sixty
years. She read no modern or recent fiction other than her
own novels. Her favourite books, to which she turned again
and again, and which she now possessed in sumptuous calf-
bound copies, given to her by Curzon, were the ones which
she had come to love during her childhood in Jersey: the
Greek classics, Sterne, Chesterfield, La Rochefoucauld, Vol-
taire, and, pre-eminently, Kingsley's The Heroes. To these
she had later added Syrnonds' Renaissance in Italy, Pater's
Marius the Epicurean, Lander's Pericles and Aspasia, and
James Bain's A Digit of the Moon, the latter's thoughts on
reincarnation coinciding strongly with her own beliefs.
6.
Elinor had little difficulty in re-establishing herself in her
old background, and during these last years she went out and
about a good deal, staying with friends in the country, going
to lunch, dinner, and cocktail parties in London, attending
first nights, lunching, as so often before, with friends at the
Ritz. She loved dancing, but her enjoyment of this favourite
pastime was reduced by her rheumatic left knee, which was
often very painful. A heavy fall from a bus which moved on
while she was still climbing on board damaged this knee
severely, and she was obliged to spend most of 1932 on her
sofa.
She went several times to stay with Hearst at St. Donates
in Glamorgan, where he had bought the old castle. Into the
thick castle walls he had built dozens of new bathrooms and
decorated them lavishly with genuine mediaeval tapestries
and suits of armour. Downstairs gramophones blared and
minor film stars shrieked; and presiding over everything was
3*3
Eli-nor Glyn
the genial but autocratic figure of Hearst himself, resplendent
in bright pink tie and Tyrolean hat.
Elinor was a popular figure at these gatherings. The starlets
called her Grandmamma and liked to think they were shock-
ing someone who had herself shocked an earlier generation.
Elinor was by this time practically unshockable, but she duti-
fully pretended to be shocked by their clothes and behaviour,
and everyone was pleased.
She was, however, considerably surprised at the way the
members of the house party chose to amuse themselves. They
played ceaselessly a game called Monopoly, and Elinor, who
was bored by most games, was very puzzled.
"They play all night as well," she commented on her re-
turn to London af ter one of these visits. "The boredom of it!
And not even for money P
It had not been thus in the great days at Easton.
Elinor also did a certain amount of entertaining herself.
These parties were pleasant occasions, for she was a good
hostess, able to listen to two or three separate conversations
simultaneously and careful to see that no one was left out in
the cold. One might expect to find there a cross section of the
different worlds in which she had lived: peers and peeresses,
politicians, diplomats, soldiers, university professors, foreign
royalty, American film stars a wide and varied circle of
friends. There were always as well a large number of young
people, partly because Elinor liked to have their company
and partly because she remembered how much she had owed
to the kindness of Lady Fitzharding in her youth. She would
take special trouble over debutantes in their first season, ad-
vising them on hair styles, clothes, and make-up, introducing
them to eligible young men or to any others of her friends
whom they might specially wish to meet.
It was a pleasant pattern of existence, a serene and golden
sunset after the tempestuous, crowded life she had lived
earlier. The only dark cloud was the eternal problem of fi-
3*4
The Legend
nance. The income from her annuity was adequate for simple
living, tut Elinor found it difficult to cut her cloth accordingly.
Over her chief mania, house decorating, she was as Incor-
rigible as ever, and her family were for ever persuading her
out of her yearly plan to make a fresh home for herself some-
where else.
"Money!" she exclaimed at one family inquest into her ex-
penses. "Don't let's any of us ever mention the subject again.
We get on much better when we don't/
It was finally decided that she must no longer have control
of her own bank account. For the last eight years of her life
she never signed a cheque. The bank paid all standing ex-
penses, such as the rent of her flat, and doled out the rest to
her in cash. With this she paid for everything, and by this
means she was constrained to live within her income. It was
typical of her financial scrupulousness that she should have
accepted this ignominious and inconvenient arrangement so
completely. Not once did she attempt to evade it, although
she could have obtained credit anywhere with ease. One must
feel that Clayton Glyn's reaction to such a plan would have
been very different.
"Vanity," Elinor wrote in her commonplace book, "is one
of the hideous burdens the gods imposed upon mankind,
knowing that it would for ever keep human beings out of
Olympus."
All her life Elinor inveighed against vanity. It was, she
considered, responsible for those shortcomings of human be-
haviour that she despised so much shyness, bumptiousness,
self-consciousness, affectation. These were all forms of bad
manners, she considered, owing their origin to vanity. It was
because the person was vain and preoccupied with the im-
325
Elinor Glyn
pression he was making on the other person rather than with
the person himself that he became tongue-tied or loud-
mouthed, clumsy or precious, whichever way his self-con-
sciousness took him. The characters, both in real life and in
her books, whom she admired most she called sans gene- -at
ease. It was the mark of a gentleman to be always poised and
without affectation, completely unaware of the excellent im-
pression he was making.
Yet it would take a brave man to declare Elinor herself free
from vanity. She was always deeply conscious of the effect she
was creating. She longed for admiration and thrived on it,
and one may well feel that she herself ought to have been
the very last person to despise vanity.
But it would be harsh to regard this as simply an example
of practising herself what she condemned in others. We may
think it more just to look on it as yet another contradiction
of the two sides of her character, her dramatic instincts at
war once again with her eighteenth-century training in self-
restraint.
Elinor herself would have had no difficulty in explaining
the inconsistency. It was merely the difference between van-
ity and pride. She wrote in her commonplace book :
Vanity is the desire for the esteem of others, which, sub-
consciously, we know that we do not deserve.
False pride is the result of sub-conscious knowledge of
inferiority which makes the individual experience a pro-
found urge to receive all the outward and standardised
proofs of honour.
Real pride is the consciousness that there is God's image
within us, which must not be degraded.
"It is vanity which makes you cry/' she would observe to
a child sobbing after a rebuke. "Pride would prevent it/'
When R. J. Minney, the playwright, was going to Holly-
wood, Elinor gave him a number of letters of introduction to
326
The Legend
her friends there, including one to Irving Thalberg, the pro-
ducer.
"And tell him," went on Elinor, producing a copy of Lytton
Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, "that this is to be the subject
of his next film. And I wish to play Queen Elizabeth/ 1 She
went on to illustrate the various gestures and expressions she
would use to portray Queen Elizabeth's various moods.
When Minney got to Hollywood, he duly passed on Elinor's
lighthearted message to Thalberg. Thalberg commented :
"Well, it's quite an idea. She could certainly manage the
part. Why, she's always acting."
This remark was not passed back to Elinor and her reaction
to it cannot be judged. She might have taken it in the same
frivolous spirit in which she had sent her own message, or
she might have been hurt. To be "always acting** was hardly
consistent with being natural or sons gine.
Thalberg's comment, though at first sight true enough, is
too simple and sweeping. Elinor, undoubtedly, was usually
playing a part, adopting a pose; but she did it for reasons very
different from the usual reasons. People who are "always act-
ing" normally borrow their poses from others they admire in
order to hide some inadequacy, some interior hollowness. Eli-
nor borrowed her poses from no one. She drew them up out
of the rich storehouse of her own personality.
There were four principal poses and we have met them all
already. The one which fortunately predominated was her
Elizabeth pose gay, witty, sophisticated, and affectionate.
There was also a pose of queenly passion reminiscent of
Three Weeks. There was the Halcyone pose, fey, simple,
naive, openhearted. And, fourthly, there was the Ambrosine
pose, a particularly tiresome one, full of misunderstood self-
pity. She adopted one or other of these poses as the mood or
the occasion suited her, changing it as easily as a dress, some-
times to the bewilderment of her friends.
But her poses were not artificial; they were the products of
327
Elinor Glyn
the many-sidedness of her own personality. They were, if the
contradiction in terms may be allowed, genuine poses. And in
so far as she was "always acting/' she was acting and we may
think sometimes burlesquing the part of Elinor Glyn.
Nor was there any interior hoUowness to conceal. A great
number of people have testified that even a single meeting
with her was an unforgettable experience. A few minutes'
conversation with her was enough to reveal a highly charged,
full-blooded personality, with a richness and a vitality rarely
encountered in any walk of life.
8.
In 1931, Elinor went to Hungary at the invitation of Baron
and Baroness Rubido-Zichy, staying for about two months^
and getting background for a new novel which she was plan-
ning.
Hungary had been a republic ever since the breakup of
the Austrian Empire in 1918, but Elinor found, to her great
pleasure, that many of the aristocracy hoped that the mon-
archy might be restored at a not too distant date. Hungarian
society was the most exclusive that she had yet met. Despite
the general impoverishment of the landed classes after the
Treaty of Versailles, it was not yet possible for any upstart,
however rich, to buy himself into the aristocratic set, an ex-
clusiveness of which she approved.
There were, she discovered, two separate aristocratic circles
in Hungary, One was rich and cosmopolitan, at home in Buda-
pest or Cannes or Paris, The other comprised members of the
old and famous families who had not had the means to travel
abroad. Their behaviour towards Elinor was equally courteous
and well bred, but because of the narrowness of their ex-
perience and interests it was difficult, even when they spoke
English well, to keep up a long conversation with them.
3**
The Legend
The Hungarian people as a whole she found surprisingly
different from all their neighbours; practical, unlike the
Austrians; casual about financial gain; proud, independent,
and still, at that time, completely feudal. No Hungarian lord
would dare treat his servants or his peasants in the curt,
peremptory manner Elinor had observed in Russia and Aus-
tria; and no Hungarian peasant, no matter how poor, would
dream of letting his wife work for hire.
The Hungarian people, Elinor decided, were, If anything,
nearer to the British people than to anyone else in their atti-
tude toward life, in their mutual respect between the various
classes, in their love of sport, and above all, in their love of
horses. Hungary was, she discovered, the land of horses. Every-
one seemed to be a born rider and the advent of the motorcar
had apparently made no difference. There were statues of
horses in the streets of Budapest; everyone took a keen in-
terest in racing, hunting, polo, and driving. On the country
estates the horse was supreme.
Elinor's Hungarian novel, Loves Hour, which was pub-
lished in March 1932,, was, as the tide shows, intended to
echo her best-selling Russian novel of twenty-two years be-
fore. There are, indeed, many points of similarity, in the
delineation of minor characters, in the construction, and es-
pecially in the evocation of a country, a people, and a society,
which was the chief feature of His Hour. If the picture of
Hungary seems less striking, that is perhaps due to the fact
that life in a Hungarian chateau was not so very different
from life in an English country house.
But Elinor's gift of description never failed her and we take
away from Love's Hour an impression of a civilised, aristo-
cratic, if once again, rather idle society; Budapest at night;
gipsy music and Tokay; plains and castles; stags roaring in
the deer forests; above all, horses those well-groomed, high-
mettled thoroughbreds handled by their masters with such
complete expertise and sympathy. It is difficult, as one reads
3*9
Elinor Glyn
the descriptions of horses in Loves Hour, to remember that
Elinor was, even in Hungary, a confirmed and unswerving
horse hater.
Had Love's Hour remained a love story told against this
colourful background, it might have deserved the same fame
and success as its predecessor. But unfortunately it misses the
simplicity and bold sweep of His Hour. It is cluttered up with
a motley collection of Elinor's other ideas and interests, which
were now so deeply imbedded in her personality. She tossed
them In casually, hardly noticing that she did so, not realising
how inappropriate some of them were to a Hungarian love
story reincarnation, Greek philosophy, French furniture,
noblesse oHige, the need for aristocracy, the law of the boom-
erang, the hunting instinct. The book gives one a compre-
hensive picture of Elinor's mind, but the story and the
background are in consequence often a little blurred. The ro-
mantic pair, both of them rather unreal characters, are paying
off their "karmic debts" incurred in a former life, and the
strange, occult atmosphere, which Elinor tried with some suc-
cess to establish in several scenes, does not mix well with the
detailed factual descriptions elsewhere.
There are, however, some magnificent moments of passion.
The English heroine is, as so often, haughty and disagreeable,
a Circe enslaving all men's hearts and despising them, and in
desiring her the hero gives a remarkable example of the vigour
of the Hungarian hunting instinct.
The visit to Hungary was the last of Elinor's journeys, for
we cannot count the several visits to Paris she made in the
remaining years of peace. She had in her life travelled far
and wide, from California in the West to Russia in the East,
usually in the cause of her art, always with relish. She be-
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The Legend
lieved strongly in the educative influence of travel, in its
broadening effect upon the mind, illustrated so completely by
the two Hungarian societies. It was vital, she thought, to meet
people of other races, other ideas, other customs, even though
in her case she so often saw foreign countries from the same
queenVeye view.
But, wherever she went, her chief interest was in the pur-
suit of the romantic ideals which were, to her, an essential
to true living. She herself admitted that the search for ro-
mance, her felicitous definition of which is printed in the
first pages of this book, was the guiding principle of her life
and she was prepared to travel far and wide in her quest.
She summarised her conclusions about one aspect of ro-
mance in a characteristic passage in her commonplace book,
though one must think that it was derived more from general
observation and deduction than from firsthand experience.
American
French
Austrian
Hungarian
Scandinavian
Russian
Spanish
Italian
English
German
All the Near East
As Lovers-
Fatherly and uncouth
Passionate and 'petit-maitre
Sentimental and feckless
Passionate and exacting
Psychological and scientific
Passionate and unstable
Jealous and matter-of-fact
Romantic and fickle
Casual and adorable
Sentimental and vulgar
Passionate and untrustworthy.
10.
Elinor's appearance during these years was as astonishingly
youthful as ever. Miss Christina Foyle recalls that at a literary
33*
Elinor Glyn
luncheon in 1939, a young man asked to be introduced to "the
beautiful young girl/' Even when one was close to her, there
were no visible telltale signs to show that she was in her mid-
dle seventies.
The number of her admirers, too, showed no signs of fall-
ing off, and she was carrying on at this time an amorous cor-
respondence with a Polish Prince in America, an Austrian
Prince in Vienna and, of all people, Field-Marshal Manner-
heim of Finland, whom she had known both in St. Petersburg
and in Paris. These affairs, if they may be so called, never
progressed beyond the correspondence stage, and Elinor
treated them with lightheartedness, although she answered
the letters gravely and carefully (observing of the Austrian
Prince, "One has to be so careful with Austrians, they com-
mit suicide so easily") She was, however, considerably grati-
fied to think that even in her seventies Princes and Field-
Marshals still wished her to fly with them.
Her heart was never engaged. After the Curzon episode
she was never again capable of supreme self-denying love.
The most she could achieve was fondness and affection, no-
tably for Milner. She had been badly hurt once and she was
thankful to find that she was never so vulnerable again.
The effect upon her of her relationship with Curzon is
more evident at this stage than immediately after its end.
Then there had been no outward or visible effect. We may re-
call a phrase from her diary quoted earlier in this book about
a friend of hers similarly forsaken: "But she is a person of
the old school and she gives no sign." It was the same with
Elinor. It would have been unthinkable to give any sign. Pri-
vate emotion, private suffering must be held in an iron self-
control and must be concealed from the world. That had been
the teaching of Mrs. Saunders; it was Elinor's own teaching,,
too.
She bore no resentment against Curzon. Rancour was an
emotion of which she was always wholly incapable. His qual-
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The Legend
ities never seemed to Her less than admirable, and during these
last years she spoke of him frequently, not as the great love
of her life, but as the most interesting of her many friends;
and it is in this guise that he appears briefly in her autobiog-
raphy.
Curzon's influence upon her may be seen in the fact that
she now took it for granted that all young men should wish
to be exactly like him. He was the beau ideal. She assumed,
as a matter of course, that her grandsons would wish to follow
in his footsteps, would enter politics, and would be inspired
by the Curzonian triple crown of ambition Captain of the
Oppidans at Eton, Viceroy of India, and Prime Minister
the last tier of which had eluded even him. (Three of her
grandsons did achieve this position at Eton. But none of them
have gone into politics, and the viceroyalty of India is no
more.)
11.
Elinor's autobiography, Romantic Adventure, was pub-
lished in June 1936. She had had a serious illness and opera-
tion the previous year and it was a considerable effort and
achievement to deliver the manuscript on time. There were
many aspects of her life and career with which, of course, she
could not herself deal and she could not be expected to ex-
amine, except by implication, her character or her work with
the objectivity that has been possible here. But at the same
time she was able to give a spirited account of her vivid and
varied life, and it would be ungracious for me not to acknowl-
edge here the great help I have received in writing this book
from Romantic Adventure, especially in the early chapters,
where few other sources of information are available.
The book was well received by the critics. The Times
Literary Supplement atoned for many early blows with a
333
Elinor Glyn
charming review, appreciating the solace she had given to in-
numerable readers and wishing her many adventures and
much more romance. The side of herself which she revealed
in her autobiography came as a considerable surprise to her
public, who, in default of any other information about her
private life, had vaguely identified her with the heroine of
Three Weeks. For the first time they learned something of
the true background of her life; of the aristocratic circles in
which she moved and the eighteenth-century standards and
manners which she maintained so inflexibly; of her hours of
adversity and the courage with which she always met them;
of the various adventures of her life which she entered upon
so gayly; above all, of the sheer, slogging hard work that lay
behind her success.
It was very far from being the popular picture of Elinor
Glyn. Mr. Beverley Nichols wrote at this time in an article
in the Sunday Chronicle:
I looked again at the beautiful woman who was still
beautiful because of her strict and almost Spartan respect
for her body and her looks. It was Elinor Glyn.
Reputations are curious things. I suppose if you asked
the average young man in the street what sort of woman
Elinor Glyn was, he would tell you that she spent most of
her time on a tiger skin, smoking scented cigarettes, writing
passionate passages with a purple pen and occasionally sip-
ping a liqueur.
This is so exacdy the opposite from her normal mode of
life that it is worth noting.
Elinor Glyn does not loll about on tiger skins, nor on
anything else. She sits bolt upright on a hard chair. Hence
she has the shoulders of a young girl, although she is a
grandmother. She does not drink liqueurs. She drinks water
lots of it
is the rhythm of
334
The Legend
Elinor Glyn*s life. Mental discipline as well as physical
because she is one of the few women I know who goes
daily to the fresh stream of the classics for her inspiration.
And yet in the popular imagination, she is a whirlwind
of eroticism.
12.
During the summer of 1936, Elinor rented a cottage near
Taplow and the following year, still temporarily bored with
London, she took a flat at Saltdean, near Brighton. This she
redecorated in her own individual style, impervious to the con-
trast between the square block of flats, with its low rooms and
modern doors, and her Louis XV furniture. The ceilings she
painted the same bright colours as the walls, a technique of
decoration which in such small rooms caused an almost pain-
ful intensity of colour.
Both at Taplow and at Saltdean she would wander about
the village, talking to the people, learning about their lives
and families in a way she had never done in Essex. She was
much mellower now. The haughtiness, the arrogance, the
class-consciousness were almost all gone. She was more toler-
ant, too, of shortcomings, even in the things that mattered
most to her, though from time to time her old self would still
flash out. To her thirteen-year-old granddaughter, who came
to see her without wearing gloves, she observed icily, "Are
you especially proud of your hands? "
Elinor's health had been weakened by the operation and
she no longer had the same buoyant energy, the same creative
urge. She still wrote her diary and long, amusing letters to
friends, but her literary career, as far as the public was con-
cerned, was almost over. Her knee, too, continued to pain her
and restricted her activities. She liked, however, to walk along
the front at Saltdean, getting as near as possible to the great
335
Elinor Glyn
waves which crashed against the cliffs during the equinoctial
storms.
In February 1939, Elinor returned to Jersey for the first
time since Mr. Kennedys death in 1888. It was something
of a triumph; parties and receptions were given for her, both
at Government House and elsewhere. The Bailiff of Jersey
presented her with the Great Seal of the Island, The shops
where she had dealt in her youth sent presents; autograph
hooks arrived Ly the hundred. The Rotary Club gave a lunch
for her and she wrote in her diary :
They were delighted with my speech apparently. Not
one person made me any compliments or expressed surprise
that I looked so young, or said anything personally ap-
preciativealthough what I must have looked like among
them I can't think! All hats too big in the head and rammed
down, like ten years ago. Just too comic and behind the
times. I wore my brown suit and my sables as it was too
warm for the mink coat, and the fur hat that Margot likes.
They, however, clapped to the echo. They are awfully proud
of me as their own!
Elinor also met some relatives of her last governess who
had died shortly before, aged ninety-five. The governess ap-
parently had prided herself on having taught Elinor Glyn,
who was such a brilliant child, a verdict at variance with her
expressed views at the time.
When Elinor was not attending functions or receptions, she
would travel about the island, reliving the memories and re-
visiting the haunts of her youth.
We passed all the old landmarks. The college high on
33*
The Legend
the hill, up on top of It along the parapet was where I
received the first kiss from my "Eton boy! P I remember
I felt obliged to be very insulted and angry and not to
speak to him for some days, but I really enjoyed the ex-
citement very much! !
No. 55 Colomberie had been pulled down, but Richelieu
was still there, strangely naked with all the ivy pulled off.
She searched for, but did not find, the house where she had
been born. But there were many other things for her to show
Margaret, her maid. 'That house where an actress once
stayed we were not allowed to look up when passing/' She
could not help mourning the spoliation of the green island
in the last fifty years, the shacks and bungalows spreading
like a blight along the shore.
Elinor stayed at Government House and noted sadly the
decline from the earlier standards of elegance. The atmos-
phere of the place was changed.
The nil admirari note strong! The whole atmosphere
with no deference to the Governor or the hostess was just
too astonishing in contrast to the etiquette of our day. We
just walked anyhow into dinner and the Governor indicated
that I was to sit on his right hand. No ceremony at all, or
names by plates. I am not saying whether this change is
for the better or worse, nor do I mean any snobbish
criticism. I am merely putting down the astonishing change.
To us the Governor meant the representative of Queen
Victoria and as such was reverenced and we paid him
homage. Now everyone is "hail fellow well met!"
The exclusive Government House set, of which the Ken-
nedys had been such jealous members and to which entry
was only to be obtained by having the correct introductions,
was gone. Elinor saw, with mixed feelings, that both the
Lieutenant-Governor and his wife were now, in Mrs. Saun-
337
Elinor Glyn
ders* phrase, 'familiar with the wrong people." Guests were
BOW invited to Government House who would not have been
permitted inside the grounds fifty years earlier. All the
splendour, all the sacrosanct etiquette seemed to have gone,
though Elinor noted thankfully that the loyal toast, "The
Duke,* 3 (of Normandy) was still drunk at dinner.
Most shocking of all to Elinor was the realisation of the
petty rivalries and spiteful gossip which went on and from
which the Kennedys, in their aloof and exclusive society, had
been to some extent insulated.
The impression grew and grew upon me that the whole
island is now full of bad, petty and envious vibrations. I
found it almost impossible to concentrate upon my prayers
and golden light, as if some dirty mist were between.
We must have been really strong characters under Gran's
[Mrs. Kennedy's] aloof influence, always to have struggled
away from the small petty gossips and never to have be-
come as the others were. "I want to get out, I want to get
out*' like Sterne's starling, I always used to cry! Lucy mar-
ried really for no other reason but to get away. I remem-
ber now feeling on the boat in 1888 when we finally left,
that prison doors were opening at last. It cannot be good
for human beings to be on so small an island with no out-
side interests. I never wish to go back again.
But I only found kindness and welcome and honour in
my short time there now. For good or ill I was born there
and spent the years there, on and off, from 1873 to 1888.
This was my last night in Jersey. We left for St. Malo
early next day with bouquets of violets and homage, and
France seemed free and wonderful on landing.
33*
The Legend
14.
The outbreak of the Second World War found Elinor at
Saltdean. Her reaction to the news was characteristic. The
passing of time and the buffets of life had left her idealism
undimmed and her view was simple and unshakeable. Part
of her diary entry for the fifth of September, 1939, re ads:
1 7 A Curzon House, Saltdean.
War was declared on Sunday last with Germany that
pagan doomed country ruled by a mad upstart, evidendy
under the strong influence of very evil forces. So that it is
not like an ordinary war waged between greedy human
beings. This seems to be the first war since the inspired
Crusades, which on our side is for purely altruistic reasons.
So that we shall certainly win it presently, if we learn the
lesson of it in time.
It may be the means of removing for ever oppression and
class-hatred and selfishness and injustice. The last war gave
great liberty from custom and convention. It broadened
people's outlook, but the misery had been so great that
many of orthodox religion lost faith and seemed afterwards
to drift. Immediately after, the younger generation seemed
to become putrid. Vices never spoken of openly before were
chaffed about and thought quite ordinary. To say a young
man was a "pansy" was no longer a crushing disgrace. But
while all that generation grew more and more disgusting,
education was advancing and gradually a keener under-
standing of everything began to appear and now the very
young seem to be splendid people. The Forces of Good are
fighting upon our side against the forces of evil. So the end
is sure to be glorious. We have only to bear the terrible
intermediate period. Thus, at nearly 75, I look on with, I
hope, wise, experienced eyes.
339
Elinor Glyn
Equally typical was an incident which she recorded later
in the same extract.
On Sunday, just as I was going to Rottingdean to have
lunch with Margot and the boys, an air raid warning
sounded. A foolish woman was creating a mild panic in
the hall. I am afraid I snubbed her, but immediately calm
was restored.
One can imagine the withering scorn with which she must
have castigated the woman. Her lack of self-control, her out-
burst of "servant's behaviour*' would have been deplorable at
any time. Now, with a war on, it was not to be passed over
in silence.
In due course Elinor returned to London, to her new flat
in Carrington House, Shepherd's Market, the part of London
which she loved most. In this flat, smaller than her ones in
Connaught Place or Hertford Street, she established her own
characteristic milieu, and it remained her home for the rest of
her life. Her move was fortunate and well timed, for both the
Connaught Place and the Saltdean flats were severely dam-
aged in later air raids.
October 17, 1939, was Elinor's seventy-fifth birthday, and
she attended a large celebration lunch at the Berkeley. Al-
though she fought the appearance, mind, and habits of old
age as resolutely as ever, it was not part of her attitude to
conceal her real age. She was rather proud of the advancing
years and of the little mark they left upon her. One of the few
signs of the passing time may be detected in the increasing
terseness of the daily entries in her diary. The entry for the
seventeenth of October concludes :
"Dozens of roses. People so kind. Lose gas-mask/' The gas
mask had had a short and inglorious career; she had never
been much interested in it.
The blackout, however, intimidated her a good deal. Two
days later she wrote :
34
The Legend
"Have fall in black-out by stupidity of Sir A. .*
And the following day :
"Not well enough to go to wedding* Sir A. brings flowers
because of having been so stupid."
The fall damaged her knee again, and for the rest of that
winter she went out as little as possible at night. Instead she
wrote a new novel, her last. The Third Eye was her only
attempt at a thriller and was inspired by the stories of secret
service which had been related to her by Sir Paul Dukes,
a close friend at this time.
Elinor's other literary work were her occasional articles in
the British press and, more notably, her regular contributions
to the Hearst press in America. She was the only British writer
admitted now to the columns of the Hearst newspapers and
she liked to think that her articles about wartime England
were doing something to help the war cause.
When invasion was feared in May 1940, her family sent
Elinor, protesting, to the Rhys-Williamses* country house,
Miskin Manor, in South Wales, There she remained for sev-
eral months. She recognised that her presence in London was
a liability and an anxiety to her family but this did not prevent
her feeling bored and out of things, suddenly cut off from the
social intercourse which had always formed such a part of her
life.
When other members of the family were there on leave
from the Army, or on holiday from school, the atmosphere of
the house was, even under the war conditions, almost as agree-
able and gay as it had been in the old days. But for much of
the time she was alone there with her adolescent granddaugh-
ter, to whom she gave continual advice about poise and de-
portment. Out of sheer boredom she came to adopt far more
341
Elinor Qlyn
frequently than usual her Ambrosine pose, till it almost
ousted her normal Elizabeth mood.
Sometimes, however, other moods would show themselves.
The house was being requisitioned by the Army for a field
ambulance unit and an R.A.M.C major came to inspect it.
Partly to amuse herself and partly as a demonstration to her
granddaughter of feminine attraction, Elinor set herself out to
bewitch the unsuspecting major. Assuming her Three Weeks
pose and dressing with elaborate care, she sat under a mag-
nolia tree and greeted the major on his arrival with that special
mixture of imperiousness and hidden passion which she had
captured so successfully in her best seller. She commanded
the major to sit down beside her and in her most dramatic
manner she read Three Weeks aloud to him. She had lost
none of her own charm and the major left a few hours later,
having made only the most perfunctory inspection of the
building, but deeply impressed by Elinor Glyn.
It was not, however, boredom or loneliness which finally
drove Elinor away from Miskin, but horror of old age. Her
mother had lived the last seven years of her life in the rooms
at the end of the big passage and her aura still hung about
them. Mrs. Kennedy had never resisted old age as her daugh-
ter did. Indeed, she had almost seemed to welcome it. She was
a gracious, serene old lady, lace-capped and ebony-sticked, and
she had been like that for the last forty years of her life,
hardly changing in outward appearance. In that house, in
that passage, Elinor, her daughter, could see the shape of
things to come only too clearly. The image was already materi-
alising for her, ghost-like, photographed upon the air, herself
with lace cap and ebony stick, white-haired, fumbling.
It was to her the ultimate horror and she shrank from it.
Better anything, better bombs than that. She must get away
from Miskin now, quickly, before old age got too firm a grip
upon her.
34*
The Legend
16.
The air raids were now at their full violence, but Elinor,
back in London, was not daunted by them and was happy at
her return to her well-loved setting. She was even able to
pick up something of her old life. On the twelfth of Sep-
tember, 1 940, she wrote to Margot :
The raids are truly too interesting! One has to keep say-
ing "I am not dreaming, this is really England and not a
wild west show of incessant shooting.* Irene's [Lady
Ravensdale's] house was hit on Monday night.
The Foyle luncheon was very interesting yesterday. Duff
Cooper made an excellently worded speech but he has no
magnetism or good voice or delivery. Now we must get
ready for invasion I suppose! The curious thing is that every-
one is speaking of it just as if it were a new oyster season
opening or some quite natural ordinary thing!
I am enjoying it all! Fondest love to you all, darling.
Her general health, however, was weaker. In her diary
there are an increasing number of mentions of feeling ill:
"Did not feel well" or "Too tired to go out."
This physical ill-health and weariness brought with it a cer-
tain amount of mental and emotional depression. But, as ever,
she kept this concealed, as far as possible, from her family
and friends. In the company of visitors she was stimulated
into being her normal, buoyant Elizabeth self, ready to dis-
cuss the war news, or Greek philosophy, or eighteenth-cen-
tury furniture, or love with all comers. I remember visiting
her on her birthday, bringing her some oysters. She was in
rather low spirits when I arrived and was staying in bed that
big bed with the silk canopy which was the most striking
343
Elinor Glyn
feature of her bedroom. As we talked, she blossomed out into
her old self, ending by measuring my Sam Browne belt to
compare it with her own waistline at the same age.
During the summer of 1942 she fell ill again, this time
more seriously. On September 20 she wrote to Marion Davies
in Hollywood, in a handwriting so weak and shaky that it is
hardly decipherable :
Marion darling-
How good you are sending all these lovely things. W.R.
[Hearst] so kind too with the two packets. I know you
will forgive me writing so badly. I have been very ill. I had
a kind of sudden turn (not the usual old age stroke or high
blood pressure). Just a turn of faintness. However, I am
much better now, so I thank you as soon as I can hold the
pencil.
This ugly war! It is getting a turn for the better so per-
haps the end may come soon. I shall always carry on and say
Cheerio! till the end anyway. I know we shall win all right.
Fondest love and oh do thank W.R. Ill write when I
can. I am grateful.
Elinor
The flesh was now very frail but the spirit was still as vital
as ever.
She recovered from this illness, but old age, so trium-
phantly held at bay for so long, was now coming in on the
flood tide. Neither her memory nor her concentration was as
it had been. When one talked to her, one had often the im-
pression that her mind was a long way away, that her spirit
was already beginning to move out of her failing body.
In the summer of 1943 she fell ill again, and on September
15 she was removed to a nursing home. On the evening of
the twenty-second of September she lost consciousness and
she died in the early hours of the following morning, the
twenty-third of September, 1943, a few weeks before her
344
The Legend
seventy-ninth birthday. Her funeral took place at Golders
Green Crematorium.
Despite the severe restriction on the size of newspapers
and the demands of their space, The Times wrote a full,
thoughtful, and appreciative obituary notice, surveying Eli-
nor's life and works and ending:
At first she dealt in scarlet passions and risque innocence;
but beneath her pretensions to sophistication and dalliance
with "naughtiness" she was an incurable romantic. She de-
fined romance as "spiritual disguise created by the imag-
ination with which to envelop material happenings and
desires and thus bring them into greater harmony with the
soul." In accordance with that conception she regulated
both her life and her work. She was by nature intense and
lived every moment of a long and adventurous life. Despite
some foibles and petty vanities she was a vital and coura-
geous woman.
It is by her own standards that she should be judged. In
My Religion she wrote, "I believe Deception, Lying and
Cruelty are the three deadly sins. And Love, Understanding
and Courage the three greatest virtues." She sometimes de-
ceived herself but she never consciously deceived other people;
nor can one imagine her, under any circumstances, lying or
cruel.
Of the three virtues that she prized so highly, she some-
times failed in understanding. But her courage and her love
never faltered that love which embraced not only those who
were nearest and dearest to her, but also her uncountable
readers, whom she had tried so hard to help and to whom she
had given so great happiness.
345
SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is derived from the following sources :
Elinor Glyn's published books and articles; the synopses,
scenarios, and continuities of her films; certain preliminary drafts
and unpublished manuscripts.
The diary which she kept intermittently from 1879 to 1942
and which she used to record thoughts and impressions rather
than the events of her life; the journals which she kept on special
journeys; the notebooks which she used for miscellaneous rec-
ords and descriptions; the commonplace books in which she
wrote aphorisms and definitions.
The recollections of her own family and friends; information
supplied by those who had business dealings with her; my own
memories of her during the twenty-one years that our lives over-
lapped.
The letters which she wrote to the members of her family
when she was away from home, and the bulk of which have been
preserved; such of her business and personal correspondence with
her friends as has survived; certain other relevant family papers.
The contemporary press notices of her books and films; various
newspaper and magazine articles about her.
I am deeply grateful to all those who sent me information and
reminiscences, or who allowed me to come and ask questions, and
in this connection I would particularly like to thank the Baroness
Ravensdale, Lady Moore-Guggisberg, Miss Mary Dixon, Miss
Alice Head, Miss Christina Foyle, Miss Ruby Miller, Miss Evadne
Price, Mr. Alan Arnold, Mr. Jonathan Cape, the Honourable
Mervyn Horder, Mr. George MUsted, and Mr. R. J. Minney. My
thanks are also due to Miss Joyce Weiner for valuable suggestions
347
Elinor Glyn
and advice, and to the librarians and staff of the British Museum
Newspaper Library and the National Film Library for kind and
patient assistance. But my principal debt is to the members of my
family for much encouragement, for a wealth of reminiscence and
factual material, for entrusting me with a mass of family papers,
and for reading and checking this book in typescript. It is a debt
that cannot be adequately acknowledged in one sentence.
I must, however, make it clear that this book is not intended as
a family tribute to Elinor Glyn. I have tried to see her as objectively
as possible, consistent with the demands of filial piety, and I am
solely responsible for the selection and the arrangement of all ma-
terial and, except where otherwise indicated, for all opinions ex-
pressed.
My thanks are also due to Elinor Glyn, Ltd., Gerald Duckworth
Co., Ltd., Ivor Nicholson & Watson, Ltd., and The Amalgamated
Press, Ltd., for permission to quote from Elinor Glyn's published
books and articles; to Harper & Brothers for Mark Twain's letter to
Elinor Glyn, previously published in Mark Twain's Letters, edited
by Albert Bigelow Paine; to The Times for an extract from Elinor
Glyn's obituary notice; to Mr. Beverley Nichols and the Sunday
Chronicle for part of an article by Mr. Nichols; and to the News
of the World for some sentences from an article by Mr. Samuel
Goldwyn.
For permission to quote from private correspondence I must
record my gratitude to the Viscountess Milner; Mrs. Gerald Duck-
worth; Elinor Glyn, Ltd.; Hughes Massie & Co., Ltd.; and Apple-
ton-Century-Crof ts, Inc.
34$
The drawing-room at Connaught Place, 1936.
Elinor, aged 72, two Persian cats and three
tiger skins.
Elinor with the Nevada miners, 1908.
Drawing of Elinor in Three Weeks pose, 1907.
ilinor in the stage produc-
o( Three Weeks, 19GB.
Shooting Beyond the Rocks, '\
Hollywood, 1922. Elinor
and Rudolph Valentino.
Le Chat Nelly by Jacques
Emile Blanche, Dieppe,
1894.
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