Pamela - Part Two

In the spring of 1947, Pamela Churchill moved to Paris.  I’m not clear about where she did it or exactly how, but she "became a courtesan".  That's not a word I have cause to use very often, so I looked it up:

cour·te·san

/ˈkɔrtəzən, ˈkoʊr-, ˈkɜr-/ Show Spelled–noun

a prostitute or paramour, especially one associating with noblemen or men of wealth.

Origin:
1540–50;  < Middle French courtisane  < Italian cortigiana,  literally, woman of the court, derivative of corte court

OK, I get it now.  Anyhow, she hooked up with men like the Aga Khan (I'm guessing this one, as he held the title about then) and one of the Rothschild sons.  According to Virginia Rounding, author of The Grand Horizontales, (the book is about four other courtesans, not her) Pamela spent twelve years perfecting her art of seduction.  Part of her routine was to spend an evening talking with a man, get him into bed, and the next day to go to Cartier.  There she would purchase a silver cigarette box and have something engraved in the lid as a gift for him.  I’m not clear why or which part of it all was so irresistible but she had a fair success rate, apparently.  By the time she was 30 she had a fortune in gifts from her lovers.

Her son, Winston Churchill, said his was not a particularly maternal mother.  However, from the age of 8 or 9, she had a use for him.  If she had no male escort, he was to put on his navy suit, white silk shirt and tie and provide her an escort.  Must have been some upbringing.

At some point in this period, Pamela linked up with handsome (?) Italian playboy, Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune, with a string of homes between St. Moritz and St. Tropez, the programme said.  She spent five years trying to land him, but in the end he dumped her, in spite of the fact she’d become pregnant and he made her have an abortion.  What could she expect?  After all, she was divorced and he was Catholic.  And these are not nice people.  

In 1953 when celebrations were held for the coronation of the new Queen Elizabeth, Pamela was desperate for an invitation.  No chance, though.  The ambassadors’ wives knew all about her and they were not having it!  Can't blame them, can you?

In 1959, at nearly 40, Pamela took herself off to New York, to a room at the Carlyle Hotel.  Somehow she managed to snag herself the Broadway producer, Leland Hayward, who’d had affairs with the likes of Garbo and Hepburn.  They were married on the 4^th of May 1960.  Brooke Hayward, Pamela’s step-daughter, said her father had explained his marriage with the observation that Pamela was the ‘greatest courtesan in the world.’  The narrators say that for the next ten years Pamela did her job as an English trophy wife and made a great life for him.  Whilst taking care of him, however, she also took care of herself.

Apparently self-care Pamela-fashion included fresh flowers, to the tune of $10,000 a year.  In the 1960s.  According to this Inflation Calculator  the present value of that money would be between $59 and $73 thousand dollars.  I'm thinking that's a lot of roses!

Step-daughter Brooke also reported that Pamela had diamonds "in swathes".  A friend,  seeing the collection, remarked that "it was F.S. Fitzgerald stuff" (must read some, sometime) and Pamela tended to wear the lot.  Paints a picture of a walking Piccadilly Circus, I think, but then this is a bitter step-daughter speaking. 

Said step-daughter at one time was married to actor Dennis Hopper, who admired the art the Haywards had on the walls, pieces by Matisse, Picasso and the like.  Upon hearing her son-in-law remark how much he admired a particular piece, Pamela’s response was to tell her husband they really ought to leave that piece to a museum.  So, a strong message not just to the son-in-law but also to the step-daughter. 

Hayward died in 1971 and at the reading of the will, it transpired that there was no money left.  Pamela had burned through it all.  She was ‘ruined’, but within six months, she was married again - to her final husband, Averell Harriman.

The day after Hayward’s funeral she was on the phone to Peter Duchin, son of bandleader Eddy Duchin and - more importantly - godson of her old friend Harriman.  

The TV programme didn't explain that Peter Duchin's mother had died when he was only a few days old and that the Harriman's had raised him.  Nor did they mention that Duchin was eventually also son-in-law to Pamela, being the second husband of Brooke Hayward.  And they say that the upper class in Britain are all related to some degree...  One thing is for sure, reading about the lives of these people doesn't highly recommend fame and fortune in support of happy relationships.

Pamela - Part One

Bill went into Newcastle the other day to find the wires necessary to connect his laptop to our big screen TV.   His having spent £17 I figured we ought to try it out so we looked at the listings and selected a few that sounded interesting.  The first programme we watched was called Churchill’s Girl.  

 

It was about Pamela Harriman, about whom I’ve heard, but didn’t know much.  Maybe you’ll learn some things you didn’t know either.

She was the eldest of four children born to the 11^th Baron Digby in Dorset.  They interviewed her younger brother, the present Lord Digby, for the show, also her only child, a son named after his famous grandfather, and a variety of biographers and university professor types.  Lord Digby (interviewed presumably in his stunning home) said she always was fairly bossy and kept him firmly in line.  She was also outspoken, full of confidence and rather determined.  Pamela Digby also despised the quiet country life of Dorset.  When war broke out in 1939, she headed to London for a job in the Foreign Office.  Wikipedia says she was a translator of French documents.  Speaking French well was a very important skill we later find out.

According to biographer Christopher Ogden, she was staying at the home of a family friend and had been in London less than two weeks when Randolph Churchill (son of the Winston) rang one evening looking for some company.  The householder wasn’t so inclined but passed the phone to Pamela.  When asked what she was like, she replied “Rather fat, but mummy says it’s baby fat.”  He took her out dancing at the Ritz all the same.  He was tall, blonde and very good looking, but also described by all as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’.  

Randolph Churchill

He proposed marriage to her that very night; she was the fifth woman to whom he’d proposed to since the war began.  She accepted and they were married three weeks later, on 4 October, 1939.  She married in spite of being warned off, even by his friends.  Randolph was a drunk, a gambler and a womanizer.  As a husband, he would be impossible, but she took him on anyhow.  The Churchill name was worth having, in her opinion.  I can’t help but wonder why he was all the sudden so keen to find a wife; perhaps a duty to continue the family line before he was killed in the war?

She couldn’t have reckoned on having her father-in-law become Prime Minister, however.  The story goes that she got along well with Winston Churchill.  Well enough that he asked her to 10 Downing Street often and they sat talking of an evening.  She went to the bomb shelter with him, sat through air raids, listened to him tell his troubles.  Churchill battled with depression and she sat with him.  If nothing else, what she will have learned is that even the most powerful of men have their doubts and fears, their troubled thoughts; even the most important of men need comfort.  She and her father-in-law formed a special bond. 

Early in 1941, American aid for the war began, but it was not enough.  Enter American Averell Harriman, a multi-multi-millionaire, whose family owned several railroads, special envoy to Europe and 'special representative to the Prime Minister'.  He was 49, tall, dark, handsome – beautiful even.  

Averell Harriman

I don’t quite see it, but perhaps it was the look of the day.  Skeptical me says it was the reflected beauty of the bank balance.  She met him at a party at the Dorchester Hotel (where the Mitford sisters hung out when they were in town) when the sirens went off.  When everyone else headed for the basement for shelter, Pamela and Harriman headed for his bedroom – even her son said ‘They ended up under the same bed’.  Right.  

Never mind that she was married, so was he.  Her affair with Harriman suited her father-in-law, strangely enough.  She was able to bring President Roosevelt’s man into Churchill’s sphere of influence.  All his private views and ideas she repeated for her father-in-law’s benefit, so he’d 'know how to operate'. 

The programme didn’t clarify how the Churchill-Harriman affair ended, but when in December 1941 the US entered the war, high ranking officials were entertained at ‘The Churchill Club’.  Pamela’s job was go to home with the generals.  She collected men like charms on a bracelet:  Fred somebody, USAF Bomber Commander (tick), RAF Chief of Staff (tick), and then there was a lowly Captain.  He was just a millionaire (tick).  Churchill approved of his daughter-in-law’s activities; he used her influence to his advantage.  My overwhelming thought was that these were not nice people.

When Randolph came home on leave in the spring of 1942, he didn’t care for what he heard about his wife, not that he was any saint himself.  On the way to his posting in Egypt he gambled away three year’s salary.  He left the problem in Pamela’s keeping:  “Find a way to pay this off for me, even if it is just month by month.”  Charming.  They were soon divorced.

Edward R Murrow

The next main event for Pamela seemed to be stumbling onto Edward R. Murrow, an American who did nightly radio reports on the war:  "This is London"..."Good night and Good Luck".  The programme described Murrow as brooding, mysterious and intellectual.  She learned a great deal from him.  By the spring of 1945, she was divorced and they were engaged.  There was only one small hitch that he went home to take care of:  he was also married.  She got a telegraph over Christmas that year explaining that his wife had become pregnant, there was now a son named Casey and ‘Casey won’.    It has to be said that for all his glaring flaws, Murrow has perhaps the most decent character in the story told by this programme.  (To be continued...)

In another twist that causes me to wonder if all roads lead to Oklahoma, I found this story about a woman who believes she is the illegitimate daughter of Randolph Churchill.  Even more weirdly, she and I were born in the same year.

Dare I mention that I, too, cock my left eyebrow just like Randolph?

Bill Takes a Walk - Part Two

Bill's been out there walking quite a while now; guess it's time to bring him home, eh?  (Esp. since I showed you a 30 mile map and photos from two separate walks.  Just ignore what I write and look at the pictures, OK?)

He encountered a number of pieces of 'public art'. 

This is fairly common stuff in the North East.   This one is called Woodpecker.

 

I showed you some when I was on a run one day.

This similar piece was called an 'all weather seat', the carvings showing the sun, the wind and the rain.

This one was called the West Wind.  

 

It's not just a row of iron bars, 

 

there are blue coloured mosiac stones affixed to one side of them.   

 

Is this Art?  Who knows...

Even the bollards were artistic, which was kind of nice.

Now we come to the end of Bill's trek:  The Angel of the North.  

 

It's quite large as you can see and a major feature off the main road - the A1 between London and Newcastle, between London and Edinburgh for that matter.  

 

It's considered an icon of the North East, though I still think of the Tyne Bridge as filling that role.  

 

One could spend all day arguing whether a giant metal statue is a good use of £1 million, but instead, 

 

Bill hopped on a bus that took him to the nearest Metro, which carried him back home. 

Misses Baird and the Bees

More about Princess Alice and all her fabulous dwellings here!  In 1917 she and her sister Sybil were sent to a girls' school called St James in West Malvern.  

Malvern St James

Their mother had considered sending them to the more fashionable Heathfield, but was dissuaded by the clothing list for the girls:  white silk frocks and stockings, white satin pumps, etc.  In contrast, St James only required white cotton shirts, navy blue coats and skirts.

The school was an old Victorian house built by Lord Howard de Walden.  It was run by twin sisters, Alice and Diana, heads of the senior and junior houses, respectively.  The Baird twins were two of the five Baird spinsters, all eventually to serve as headmistress of the school and all very tall.   Princess Alice wrote that it was rumoured that all the Baird sisters laid end to end would measure the same as a cricket pitch, but that seems unlikely when one does the math.

Whilst at school, Alice and Sybil shared a room.  She remembered it as being cold to start and then there was apparently a rule about having to keep a window open  even in winter so that sometimes there was snow on the floor when they woke.  War-time shortages meant the classrooms were also cold and they were fed only rissoles.  She broke her tooth on a nail in the rissole at one meal.  Her brother Billy was a soldier in France and his letters home were almost entirely about food:  what package had been received and what he wanted sent.

The Misses Bairds main interest was in stilling a sense of 'citizenship' and apparently many of their graduates went on to have lives of public service.  Mind, over here being Royalty is consider to be a life of public service.

On their way to and fron school they would stay a night with their Grandmother Ida ("Guida") at Castle Bromwich, in Birmingham.  

Castle Bromwich Hall

It is an Elizabethan manor house now referred to Castle Bromwich Hall.  The present owner is apparently selling off the furniture in case you are interested.  No, that's wrong.  The present owner is in the furniture business; my mistake. 

There was a trick the girls used on the train that I'm considering how we might borrow.  When they went on the train they took a small cardboard box with the hole in it.  They found a car that was empty and when anyone else tried to join them, they would say nervously to each other "I hope the bees don't escape!"  This wouldn't of course work very well in the modern trains, but occasionally one gets lucky enough to find a Harry Potter styled car!

 

Best Friends

Remember our walk in the park with Simon the other weekend?  This park has a wealth to offer, you know.  Beyond bowling greens and daffodils, even more than medieval archeology there is a pet cemetery.  I'm certain there are many elsewhere, but this is the only one I've ever spent any time in.  All our dogs and cats got buried in the back yard.  Grandmother's got paving stones and angel statues, outside her bedroom window, though I would argue that Duke-the-mad-German-Shepherd was any sort of angel, but never mind.

If you wanted inspiration for pet names you could do worse than this cemetery.  I can offer you Bambi, Bobby, Bop,

 

Bruno, Bushy, Chino, Judy, Laddie, Lassie, Lucky, Mac, Monty (for a tortoise), Paddy, Panza, Peter, Prince 

Rex, Robin, Rorie, (the not-very-original) Rover,  Sammy, Scrappie, Shandy 

Tanza, Teddy, Tich, Tiger, Toodles, Towzer, Trottie or Tootsie.

I think there is an art to naming pets.  Personally, I prefer to avoid people names.  One doesn't want to call the cat and inadvertently acquire a lodger.  Also, I think a person should give thought to whether they will feel foolish shouting the name down the street.  

 

Randy, whilst a common enough name in the US, has unfortunate connotations here in Britain; Rodger might best be avoided for the same reasons and I'd be cautious about choosing the name Snookie.  Maybe depends upon your neighbourhood, eh?  In some areas, even shouting 'Whiskey' might be open to misinterpretation.

This pet cemetery seems to have been in use mainly in the 50s and 60s; the latest date I found was 1972.  Perhaps the names Chinky and Nigger wouldn't be wise choices these days.  Personally, I wouldn't name someone I loved Bimbo, but I don't know what it meant back then.

I thought the name 'Chee-Kola of Kinlo' was rather special and, strangely enough, because of the internet I can tell you that it was a registered chow chow bitch belonging to a Mr. H. Smith who lived not far from Northumberland Park at 101 Bamborough Terrace in North Shields.   

Simon thought it a bit creepy that Rover's grave (and his was the only one) was so well tended and decorated.  I suspect his owner or a family member lives near by.

Special mention should also be made of Pop, whose headstone was erected by the RSCPA for loyal and faithful war service, 1939-1945.  

 

Also of Trixie Fox, who was rescued from the Normandy beaches in 1944 and lived until 1958.

 

There must be stories - amazing and ordinary - behind all those tombstones.  I picture older men in tweed plus- fours and caps; women wearing wool skirts, headscarves and walking brogues.  I see baskets placed near the coal fire and walks in the rain, drizzle and howling winds included.  They may have varied the walks between the park and the beach, depending upon the weather.  There will have been tennis balls and knotted ropes and holidays planned to include Toodles.  

More than anything, this pet cemetery feels like another time when Britain - like everywhere else - was a very different place to now, that place that Robert Westall wrote that he would go back to like a shot.  It is a nice place to visit.

Bill Takes a Walk - Part One

A 15-mile walk, that is.  

He often likes to get a bus or metro off someplace and then run home.  This provides for different scenery.

 

In this case, however, he got a bus to the Rising Sun Country Park in Wallsend (at the top of the red line) and then walked to The Angel of the North outside of Gateshead.  He took a few photos along the way.

These are tufted ducks at the Rising Sun. 

 

There were also moorhens.  It's tricky taking photos of birds:  they don't stay still for long and tend to be far away.

The new underpass to allow pedestrians and cycles to cross under the Coast Road was striking on a somewhat grey day. 

 

Holy Cross at Wallsend is a popular drinking spot for the 'yoof', I'm guessing from the litter.  Bill reckons these stones are what St. Leonard's Hospital at Northumberland Park would likely have resembled.  

The bridge over the gorge at Rosehill has been newly painted.  I believe it's called Willington viaduct, built 1837-9, and it's a 'listed' feature, which means protected from demolition because of its historic value.

This was originally Haggies Rope, then British Rope then Bridon Fibres.  Apparently it has always been considered to be haunted.  Maybe that's why this interesting shaped building hasn't been developed into flats or something.

These are swans on the river at Dunston.   

 

I remember the time I spent working at the Environment Agency.  From their offices on the north side of the river there was a great view of Dunston Staithes, opposite, the history of which I find fascinating.  Otherwise, I remember running on the Dunston side with Bill one evening when he told me about an American murderer having been apprehended at the Royal Hotel there.  It was creepy, the place we were at when he told me the story; I've never gone back there.  Personally, I recommend viewing the Staithes from the Newcastle side.

Bill's main destination was Causey Arch Bridge, something he'd never visited before.  

 
Causey Arch is the oldest surviving railway bridge, built in the early 1700s to allow horse drawn wagons to transport coal from the Tanfield mines to the River Tyne.  

 
The two rails were termed 'main way' and 'bye way'.  Along the flat part of the main way (towards the river), horses pulled the coal forward.  

For the steep part down to the river, the horses controlled the downward descent of the carts.  They returned along the 'bye way' with empty carts.  


I just realised this is where you get the staying about 'highways and byeways'...  

The signage there says that ballast (scrap coal) was put between the sleepers to protect the sleepers from the horses' hooves.  

 

The wooden rails of the byeways lasted about three years, but the main way only lasted about one year.  The bridge was only in use for about 14 years, as the Tanfield mines caught fire in 1739.

If you enlarge the map/photo at the top, you can see that the eastern portion is quite built up and actually a lot of it is industrial.  

 

This is not a very pretty part of the North East.  However, there are green areas tucked in alongside the concrete and brick and some of them are surprisingly attractive.  It is one of the things I like about Britain, that although it is densely populated to a degree that makes me a bit crazy at times, there are green spaces that have been preserved.  

 

Life during the industrial age in this part of the world must have been horrific, and yet people flocked to live in the cities from the the countryside.  This does suggest that country life may have been pretty but it must also have been quite hard.  I suspect we're all very soft compared with our forebears, don't you?


Except for Bill, of course, who still walks 15 miles for fun.


To be continued...

April in Retrospect

I don't suppose we can have a post about April without a picture of flowers.  The saying may talk about flowers in May, but they definitely start here in April, if not earlier.

OK.  We have that out of the way.  Now we can talk about

2008

• I seem to have had my own version of a Happiness Project before I discovered that of Gretchen Rubin.  If you've never made a Happy List, I highly recommend it for several reasons, mostly listed there.
• We'd practically starve in this house without rice dish.  Thirty-minutes from start to table is about as fast as food gets, warm food anyhow.  That and a bowl of chopped fruit with yoghurt and we have fruit, veg, carbs, protein.  Perfect.
• I've never yet made it back to Colchester, or to Essex, even.  (But I'm still wearing and loving the clothes I thrifted there!)
• I told you everything I knew about my Dad.  I had no idea then what I didn't know.
• We started our Square Foot Gardening, such as it was.  Bill was never very impressed with it to start with, then the brick layers tramped through and now Bill is in charge of growing food and will likely redesign the beds anyhow.  Still, it worked reasonably well for me at the time and made gardening seem almost manageable.

2009

• I showed you some spring flowers in my neighbourhood.
• This Coffin Company has since relocated and is now a betting shop or bookies.  Not a place I've ever been or envision going, but a major part of British culture all the same (betting shops, that is).
• Sure enough, Bob's never returned to Dubai.  I' don't think he's even left the country since!
• I took you to Tynemouth Village.  
• If you want a lot of hits on your blog, write about a popular shop.  This post about the Raspberry Bazaar has the second highest number of hits in my whole blog.  The first highest?  Find an image that applies to Boxing Day.  Isn't blogging weird sometimes?
• More than you probably want to know about fashion history, but I'm thinking of re-reading that book and looking for other textbooks, actually.  I was fascinated.
• I took you to Washington Old Hall.

2010

• We toured the Royal Yacht Britannia. (OK, this series started on the 31st of March, but then we spent a couple of weeks in April on board.  I've just linked you to the first post in April).
• We noted the Queen's birthday.  I believe she turns 85 this year.
• I introduced myself to Josephine Baker; you had probably already met her.  Actually, I have since found a series of six videos that are brilliant.  They skip over some of the more scandalous bits, but there's plenty of great stuff left!
• Remember this bathmat I made?  It didn't survive its first washing very well.  Two of the squares disintegrated.  I started to replace them, but then lost interest and put it in the recycling bin.  Takes care of loads of guilt, you know, being able to recycle fabric as well as plastic, paper and metal...