This is a good and interesting read with plenty of local history and information. The book is arranged into ten chapters each addressing a different role in Ettie Desborough’s life. It shows Richard Davenport Hines’ admiration for her determination and courage, for the book is sub-titled, ‘the dauntless spirit’ with good reason.
Orphaned at three years old, Ettie lost her brother at seven years, her two oldest sons in the war in 1915, and her last son, the baby of her five children, ten years later in a car accident. These are the more obviously devastating deaths, and Ettie also lost the generation of young admirers who represented the life blood at Taplow Court before the Great War, as well as suffering the early deaths of much-loved grandparents, aunts and guardian uncles who had provided the love and care of her young life.
Ettie married Willie Grenfell, later Lord Desborough, in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s fiftieth jubilee. Both families were wealthy and influential. Both Ettie’s grandparents came from very rich aristocratic families owning vast estates, described as quintessentially great Edwardian whigs. The biographer presents mixed views of their lives, describing on the one hand rich and beautiful people living in sunshine, but on the other hand a story of a woman battling all her life against the depression she believed was congenital in the Cowper side of her family. This she dealt with by the strong religious conviction that the dead look after the living. She had seen her father as well as aunts and uncles collapse with grief and she is described by her son-in-law as determinedly overcoming the sorrow at the loss of her sons with sheer will-power. Some contemporaries suspected that her insistent optimism in the face of death was superficial, but most admired what they saw as magnificently heroic behaviour.
When Ettie and Willie, newly married, returned from their honeymoon, the biographer describes them being met at the old Taplow Station (on the Bath Road opposite the Harvester public house) by tenants and employees who hauled their carriage from the station up Berry Hill to Taplow Court as a gesture of fealty. Taplow Court had been left to Willie by his grandfather, the then MP for Windsor, together with 3,000 acres of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Like neighbouring Cliveden, Taplow Court was used as a residence because of its proximity to London compared to other family seats.
The sparkling group of influential poets, polititians and literary figures entertained at Taplow Court, who became known as ‘the souls’ in London society, are described by Davenport-Hines as witty, clever and politically highly influential; both Balfour and Asquith were members and regular visitors, as was Churchill. Ettie was a dedicated letter-writer and reader, and her vast correspondence with such major personalities of the time provides one of the sources for this book.
In 1893 the Astors moved to Cliveden, and there followed years of competition between Ettie Desborough and Nancy Astor over extravagant Saturday-to-Monday house parties, although eventually the two women became friends. Willie became Mayor of Maidenhead in 1895 with mammoth local celebrations, and Ettie was an active and popular lady bountiful in the district, enthusiastically collecting piles of goods from friends with which to hold huge jumble sales.
During the Second World War, Taplow Court became a convalescent home for exhausted nurses, and for evacuated babies and their mothers, at least partly under the influence of Ettie’s eldest daughter, who had been a nurse in the Great War. Now in her fifties, Ettie, described as still beautiful and still charming, continued to enjoy the company of bright young writers but was also still possessive of them. She became a courtier to Queen Mary, who had been a girlhood friend. This role continued for 28 years, during which time she accompanied the King and Queen on strenuous war work, and she was present with Queen Mary when George V died.
Willie died in 1944, aged 89, and was buried at Taplow with Ivo, his youngest son. The previous year Ettie had fallen and broken her hip, which never really healed and left her unable to travel, but she continued to entertain until her death in 1952. Interestingly, Skindles was left by Willie to his granddaughter, but her father thought it too disreputable to be owned by a 15-year-old-girl, and it was sold.
The book provides a fascinating insight into an impressive life a century ago. It is the only biography of this local, glamorous Edwardian hostess, a beautiful, rich, charming and clever woman of huge personal strength and will-power, who, despite great tragedy, utterly refused to become bitter.
Esther Willmore
