The following morning while I was packing and getting ready to leave, she began quietly to weep. I was going in the car of a friend who came up to announce that everything was ready and that he would be waiting downstairs. She bit her index finger and now began weeping bitterly. ‘Please don’t leave me, please don’t – don’t.’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ I asked coldly.
‘Just let me go with you as far as Paris; after that I promise never to bother you again,’ she replied.
She looked such an object of pity that I weakened. I warned her that it would be an unhappy journey and that it did not make sense, because the moment we arrived in Paris we would separate. She agreed to everything. That morning the three of us left for Paris in my friend’s car.
It started out a solemn journey, she quiet and subdued, I cold and polite. But this attitude was difficult to keep up, for as we travelled along something of mutual interest would catch our eye, and one of us would comment. But it was all outside of our previous intimacy.
We drove directly to her hotel, then said good-bye. Her pretence that this was her final farewell was pitifully transparent. She thanked me for all I had done for her, shook my hand and with a dramatic good-bye disappeared into the hotel.
The next day she rang up and asked if I would take her to lunch. I refused. But as my friend and I left the hotel, there she was outside all dressed in furs and what-have-you. So the three of us had lunch together and afterwards visited Malmaison, where Josephine had lived and died after Napoleon had divorced her. It was a beautiful house, in which Josephine had shed many tears; a bleak autumn day befitted the melancholy of our situation. Suddenly I missed my lady friend; then I found her in the garden sitting on a stone seat dissolved in tears – imbued, it seemed, with the spirit of the whole atmosphere. My heart would have relented had I allowed it, but I could not forget her Egyptian lover. So we parted in Paris and I left for London.
*
Back in London I saw the Prince of Wales several times. The first time I had met him was in Biarritz through a friend of mine, Lady Furness. Cochet, the tennis player, two others and myself were at a popular restaurant when the Prince and Lady Furness came in. Thelma sent a message over to our table asking if we would join them later at the Russian Club.
It was a perfunctory meeting, I thought. After we were introduced, his Royal Highness ordered drinks, then got up and danced with Lady Furness. When he came back to the table, the Prince sat down beside me and began to catechize: ‘You are an American, of course?’ he remarked.
‘No, I’m English.’
He looked surprised. ‘How long have you been in the States?’
‘Since 1910.’
‘Oh.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Before the war?’
‘I think so.’
He laughed.
In the course of conversation that night I said that Chaliapin was giving a party for me. Quite boyishly the Prince remarked that he would like to come along. ‘I am sure, Sir,’ I said, ‘Chaliapin would be honoured and delighted,’ and I asked permission to arrange it.
The Prince won my esteem that evening by sitting with Chaliapin’s mother, who was in her late eighties, until she retired. Then he joined the rest of us and had fun.
And now the Prince of Wales was in London and had invited me down to Fort Belvedere, his house in the country. It was an old castle that had been renovated and furnished in rather ordinary taste, but the cuisine was excellent and the Prince a charming host. He showed me over the house; his bedroom was simple and naïve with a modern red silk tapestry with the royal ensign at the head of his bed. Another bedroom quite bowled me over, a pink and white affair with a four-poster bed that had three pink feathers at the top of each post. Then I remembered; of course, the feathers were the Prince’s royal coat of arms.
Someone that evening introduced a game that was prevalent in America, called ‘Frank Estimations’. The guests were each given a card with ten qualifications on it: charm, intelligence, personality, sex appeal, good looks, sincerity, sense of humour, adaptability, and so forth. A guest left the room and marked up his card with a frank estimation of his own qualifications, giving himself from one to the maximum of ten – for instance, I gave myself seven for a sense of humour, six for sex appeal, six for good looks, eight for adaptability, four for sincerity. Meanwhile, each guest gave an appraisal of the victim who had left the room, marking his card secretly. Then the victim entered and read off the marks he had given himself, and a spokesman read aloud the cards of the guests to see how they tallied.
When the Prince’s turn came he announced three for sex appeal, the guests averaged him four, I gave him five, some cards read only two. For good looks, the Prince gave himself six, the guests averaged him eight, and I marked him seven. For charm he announced five, the guests gave him eight, and I gave him eight. For sincerity the Prince announced the limit, ten, the guests averaged him three and a half, I gave him four. The Prince was indignant. ‘Sincerity is the most important qualification I think I have,’ he said.
As a boy I had once lived in Manchester for several months. And now that I had little to do, I thought I would run up there and look around. In spite of its grimness, Manchester had a romantic appeal to me, something of an intangible glow through fog and rain; perhaps it was the memory of a Lancashire kitchen fire –
