dishevelled elk hound for a chief whip, I wonder?”
But Philip had long resisted his wife’s attempts to get him to cut his long and infrequently brushed hair. It was part of his identity.
The Blunts had embarked on the New Year with considerable energy for a couple in their sixties. They had begun by treating Evangeline to a performance of Noël Coward’s new play at the Phoenix Theatre, Tonight at 8.30, a sequence of one-act dramas Coward had written for himself and his favourite leading lady, Gertrude Lawrence. After the show the Blunt party met the playwright for a drink in the Café Royal. Evangeline could not help staring at the man whose work filled theatres on both sides of the Atlantic and who had helped make Gertie Lawrence such a star. In Evangeline’s opinion, Coward’s looks just missed qualification for heartthrob status but he was so funny and warm, referring to Gertie as “Gert,” whom, he told them, he had loved ever since she was an unknown fourteen-year-old. Evangeline remembered her mother mentioning a scandal involving Coward and the Duke of Kent, the Prince of Wales’s younger brother, although the precise nature of that friendship had never been explained. To Mrs. Nettlefold’s frustration, British newspapers always maintained absolute discretion as far as stories about the royal family was concerned.
First nights at London theatres, especially a Noël Coward first night, were glamorous occasions, providing an opportunity for the stars of London society to dress up, turn out and show off to one another. But Evangeline preferred the evening parties at Hamilton Terrace. The Blunts’ guests tended to be older than herself and demonstrated a gratifying interest in life in America. They were curious about the racial tension that dominated so many cities, in the tallness of the new buildings, in the new museum that had opened just before Christmas at the New York home of art collector Mr. Henry Clay Frick, in the goings-on among the film stars in Hollywood and most particularly in Baltimore itself. Evangeline was enjoying the novel experience of being “interesting” and a little giddy with the notion that she was bringing “insights” into how American and British ways of life differed. Privately she felt a little deflated when the conversation turned to the two other insatiable topics of the early spring.
Speculation about the Prince of Wales and his relationship with Mrs. Simpson was rarely off the agenda. The British newspapers were silent on the subject and the couple in question moved easily and without inhibition within the upper circles of London society. They would regularly be seen in each other’s company at the theatre, at nightclubs, and at dinner parties in the private houses of the rich and well connected. Mrs. Simpson’s husband was usually included in such expeditions and hostesses marvelled privately not only at Ernest’s tolerance of the Prince of Wales’s devotion to Mrs. Simpson but also at how Wallis herself seemed to manage the threesome with such dexterity. She seemed to feel genuine affection for both men. Nevertheless, London drawing rooms were fizzing with talk about how long this arrangement could last and also how long the story could remain out of the newspapers.
War was the other subject that monopolised conversation. Despite Philip Blunt’s insistence that some sort of martial conflict with Germany was inevitable, he often found himself to be a lone voice in the matter. There was indeed little evidence to convince anyone of the imminence of war. The Olympic Games the coming summer were to be held in Berlin and opened by the German chancellor himself, Adolf Hitler. According to the Blunts’ daughter, Bettina, “le tout monde,” by which she meant a large delegation from the upper ranks of British society, was planning to be in Germany in August for the many Olympic parties and balls in Berlin and Rupert Blunt was intending to go straight out there to celebrate the end of his final exams at Oxford. He and Bettina had accepted a stylish invitation to attend the games from the American bon viveur Chips Channon, a member of Parliament and friend of their father.
Scattered throughout the gaiety of Evangeline’s days there had been moments alone with her godmother that reminded her of the hidden challenges of life. Although nearly two decades had elapsed since the death of Joan’s sister, her grief was rarely far below the surface, evident when her eyes would suddenly lose their natural shine, as if shrouded by a layer of dust. One of Joan’s