User:Giano/Rat Week

“Mozart Zaide - Aria: Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Lebe”

‘’’Rat Week’’’ is a satirical poem written by Osbert Sitwell in December 1936, in the immediately aftermath of the King Edward VIII’s abdication. It commented, detrimentally, not only on the former king and Mrs Simpson, but also their close circle of friends.

Due to the poem’s libellous content it was not published until 1986. However, Sitwell ensured that it was circulated privately to those at the pinnacle of London’s high society within days of his writing it. The poem’s circulation and pithy lampooning of the former king’s friends, coupled with the tacit approval of the new queen consort, assisted in the social ostracism engineered by the British Establishment towards the old regime.

Two months later, in February 1937, a version appeared in Cavalcade, which Sitwell, who subsequently sued for breach of copyright, described as a "paper, which confounded liveliness with mischief".

Ethos
Rat Week was not written for general public consumption, it was written to amuse those members of London high society who had not been part of the coterie surrounding Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. This more conservative section of society, through their loyalty to King George V and Queen Mary, and in particular to the Edward’s younger brother and sister-in-law, the duke and Duchess of York, were seen as staid when compared to the smart, fashionable set surrounding Edward.

King Edward VIII’ mistress, later wife, Wallis Simpson, had angered the Duchess of York twice, once with a seemingly innocuous comment regarding the Duchess of York’s garden at Royal Lodge, Windsor, and later with an issue over precedence at Balmoral. The King and Mrs Simpson also like to allocate nicknames to those they patronised or disliked, the Duchess was “cookie,” alledgedly because she resembled a plump Scottish cook or, possibly, because they believed her birth mother was a French cook employed by the Duchess’ father.

When the British Government made it clear to the King that it was impossible  for him to remain on the throne with Simpson as his Queen, he chose to abdicate. Under British constitutional law, his younger brother, the Duke of York, became King. The Duchess of York, who had endured the sleights of the former king and his mistress was now Queen. She was a very unforgiving woman.

The author and poet, Osbert Sitwell, was close to the Cambridge family, of which the new Queen’s mother-in-law, Queen Mary was a member. In the aftermath of the abdication he penned his satirical poem, Rat Week, lampooning the smart crowd who had surrounded the former king. The poem was quickly circulated amongst the London Establishment and was promptly shown to the new Queen by the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. With a Jewish heritage, Cholmondeley, had little reason to admire the former King suspected of having Nazi sympathies. Queen Elizabeth read the poem, and allowed it to be known through Cholmondeley that she was amused. This was the social kiss of death to anyone alluded to in the poem. These once popular socialites were now abandoned by their former king and marooned in a London, where acceptance by the royal family cemented social position. To them, the royal back was now firmly turned.

Weekends at Fort Belvedere
That nameless, faceless, raucous gang

Who graced Balmoral's Coburg towers,

Danced to the gramophone, and sang

Within the battlemented bowers

Of dear Fort Belvedere;

Oh, do they never shed a tear?

Oh, do they ever shed a tear,

From swollen lids and puffy eyes,

For that, their other paradise?

How far it seems from here, how far

Now home again

In the Ritz Bar.



In 1930, George V gave the prince the lease of Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park. There, he continued his relationship with his mistress Lady Furness, the American wife of a British peer, who introduced the prince to her friend and fellow American Wallis Simpson. Simpson had divorced her first husband, U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, in 1927. Her second husband, Ernest Simpson, was a British-American businessman. Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales, it is generally accepted, became lovers.

At Fort Belvedere, the prince surrounded himself by set of friends of a similar age, this set became almost a court which was opposite in every way from the official royal court of his parents. Whereas, at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle strict, staid and sober etiquette wasn’t so much observed as strictly enforced, at the Fort, cocktails around the swimming pool were the norm, rather than formal, stilted presentation parties. Entertaining at the Fort was generally presided over by the Prince’s current mistress, during the tenure of Thelma Furness, King George V turned a reluctant blind eye; however, when she was replaced by Wallis Simpson, a woman with three husbands living, the King and Establishment became uneasy. While the British press were largely silent, the foreign press was not.

Edward VIII as Prince of Wales had a collection of close friends who formed a clique around him, accompanying him for weekends at Fort Belvedere and after his accession at [Balmoral castle]]. While some were aristocrats, others were drawn from the world of the arts and many were people Mrs Simpson had collected from her travels around the world. Their common denominator was they they were far more relaxed and casual in their behaviour then those who formed the court of Edward's parents, King George V and Queen Mary, who considered their sons friends to be dissolute or as John Pearson described them in his forward to Rat Week: "an unedifying little court." Pearson; p17 Significantly, Edward's friends were also very different to those of his brother and sister-in-law, the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, whose friend were drawn from the ld upper class families who had served the monarch for generations. Hunting, shooting and fishing was more to their tastes than cocktails and night clubs. If the latter couple visited a night club, it was done discretely, while Edward went through the front door with one of his mistresses on his arm. behaviour which infuriated and strained his relationship with his father.

The most prominent figures of the Prince’s circle were later to be lampooned by Osbert Sitwell as “That nameless, faceless, raucous gang.” In the years following the Abdication crisis of 1936, they as much as the ex-king himself were to feel the displeasure of the British Establishment and in particular the icy cool of the new Queen, who as Duchess of York, had been mocked by Wallis Simpson.

Of those listed below, perhaps on Lady Diana and Duff Cooper survived with their social credentials intact.

The Lady Diana Cooper
She was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the Duchess of Rutland; but Lady Diana's biological father was the writer Henry (or Harry) Cust. As early as 1908, various pamphlets were being circulated by a former governess claiming that Cust fathered Diana Manners, and David Lindsay (a distant cousin of her mother) noted in his diary that the resemblance was said to be striking. In her prime, she had the widespread reputation as the most beautiful young woman in England, and appeared in countless profiles, photographs and articles in newspapers and magazines.

She became active in The Coterie, an influential group of young English aristocrats and intellectuals of the 1910s whose prominence and numbers were cut short by the First World War. Some see them as people ahead of their time, precursors of the Jazz Age.

Lady Diana was the most famous of the group, which included Raymond Asquith (son of H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister), Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Edward Horner, Sir Denis Anson and Duff Cooper. Following the deaths at relatively young ages of Asquith, Horner, Shaw-Stewart, and Anson—the first three in the war; Anson by drowning—Lady Diana married Cooper, one of her circle of friends' last surviving male members, in June 1919. It was not a popular choice in the Manners household, since the bride's parents had hoped for a marriage to the Prince of Wales.

Don’t forget (Sitwell p70)

Duff Cooper
On 2 June 1919 he married Lady Diana Manners, whose family were initially opposed to the match (she was officially the daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland, but was widely believed – including by herself – to be the natural daughter of Harry Cust). She tolerated Cooper's numerous affairs.

Cooper and his wife did not share the the Rat Pack's pro Nazi sympathies. During the run-up to World War II, the Duke of Westminster supported various right-wing and anti-Semitic causes, including the Right Club. "His anti-Semitic rants were notorious," according to a biographer of Coco Chanel. In her book The Light of the Common Day, Lady Diana Cooper reminisces back to 1 September 1939. She and her husband, the prominent Conservative Duff Cooperwere lunching at London's Savoy Grill with the Duke of Westminster. She recalls;

":when the Duke of Westminster added that Hitler knew after all that we were his best friends, he set off the powder-magazine. "I hope," Duff spat, "that by tomorrow he will know that we are his most implacable and remorseless enemies". Next day Westminster, telephoning to a friend, said that if there was a war it would be entirely due to the Jews and Duff Cooper.""

Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow
During the 1930s Brownlow was a close friend and equerry to the Prince of Wales, and later Lord-in-waiting when he became King Edward VIII. The Prince spent many weekends at Brownlow's country house, Belton House, but it is not known whether or not his future wife Mrs Wallis Simpson ever spent time at Belton. Upon the prince's accession to the throne, Lord Brownlow became heavily involved in the abdication crisis which followed the new King's intention to marry Mrs Simpson. Brownlow personally accompanied Mrs Simpson on her flight to France to escape the media attention, and encouraged Mrs Simpson to renounce the idea of marriage to the King. Returning to England, Brownlow attempted to enlist the support of the King's mother Queen Mary, but she refused to receive him.

Following the abdication, Lord Brownlow attempted to extricate himself from the former King's circle, refusing to attend the Duke of Windsor's marriage ceremony in 1937. For this Edward and his wife, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, regarded Brownlow as disloyal. The Duchess in particular never forgave the man who had once championed her.

Maud Cunard
David Lloyd George considered Lady Cunard "a most dangerous woman", because although she was not greatly interested in politics, she beguiled senior politicians such as Lord Curzon into indiscreet statements at her dinner table. Among her regular guests in the 1930s was her fellow American Wallis Simpson, whose liaison with Edward, Prince of Wales she encouraged, thus reinforcing Queen Mary's disapproval of the Cunard set. Believing that Mrs. Simpson would become queen, Lady Cunard hoped to be rewarded with the post of Mistress of the Robes in the new court. When her dream was dashed by Edward's abdication in 1936, she wept and lamented "How could he do this to me!" On entering a London ballroom immediatly after the abdication, she was shunned, while Lady Mendl had been hissed at the same function.

Elsie de Wolfe
De Wolfe's 1926 marriage to diplomat Sir Charles Mendl, the British press attache in Paris, was page-one news in the New York Times. The marriage was platonic and one of convenience. The pair appeared to have married primarily for social amenities, entertaining together but keeping separate residences. In 1935, when de Wolfe published her autobiography, she didn't mention her husband in it. Although his career had been of no great distinction, Mendl's knighthood was allegedly bestowed due to his retrieval of letters from a gigolo who had been blackmailing Prince George, Duke of Kent.

The Times reported "the intended marriage comes as a great surprise to her friends," a veiled reference to the fact that since 1892 de Wolfe had been living openly in what many observers accepted as a lesbian relationship. As the paper put it: "When in New York she makes her home with Miss Elizabeth Marbury at 13 Sutton Place."

The daughter of a prosperous New York lawyer, Elisabeth (Bessy) Marbury, like de Wolfe, was also a pioneer career woman. She was one of the first female theater agents and one of the first woman Broadway producers. Her clients included Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. During their nearly 40 years together, Marbury was initially the main support of the couple. Dave Von Drehle speaks of "the willowy De Wolfe and the masculine Marbury ... cutting a wide path through Manhattan society. Gossips called them "the Bachelors."   Expecting nothing to change in their relationship due to her marriage to Mendl, de Wolfe remained Marbury's lover until the latter's death in 1933.

Sibyl, Lady Colefax
In 1901, she married patent lawyer Sir Arthur Colefax, who was briefly the MP for Manchester South West in 1910. They set up home at Argyll House, King's Road, Chelsea and at Old Buckhurst in Kent. Widely admired for her taste, after she had lost most of her fortune in the Wall Street Crash she began to decorate professionally, using her formidable address book for contacts. She was able to purchase the decorating division of the antique dealers Stair and Andrew of Bruton Street, Mayfair and established Sibyl Colefax Ltd. She was the inspiration, according to the art historian John Richardson, for the designer Mrs. Beaver in Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, and for Mrs. Aldwinkle in Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves. House & Garden, September 1983</ref Tinniswood, p157, anecdotes. Present at nativity etc.

John McMullen
An American, once an editor of Vogue and cavalier servente to Lady Mendl. He used to give lectures to male audiences on how to dress. Cruelly ridiculed by Sitwell for trying to appear younger than he was. When he died, lady Mendl write to a friend; "I'd love to come to your party tonight, but do you mind if I dont bring John McMullen, as he died last night in his own bed.

Fruity Metcalfe
With his wife, he attended meetings of the Oswald Mosley organization in the January Club, and, in May 1934, a dinner at London's Savoy Hotel of the British Fascist Blackshirts, of which he was a member.

After the king abdicated on 11 December 1936 and became the Duke of Windsor, Metcalfe was best man at his wedding in France to Wallis Simpson on 3 June 1937. He was his equerry from 1939 in Paris and Antibes until the German invasion of France in 1940 prompted the Windsors' evacuation and the Duke's appointment to govern the Bahamas. Donal

Lady Alexandra Curzon
She was the first love of Prince George, Duke of Kent. However, on 21 July 1925 she married Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, the best friend and equerry of George's older brother, Edward VIII. She was one of a handful of witnesses to Edward's marriage to Wallis Simpson.

She had affairs with Jock Whitney, Michael Lubbock, Walter Monckton, and Charles Duncombe, 3rd Earl of Feversham. Before World War II she earned the sobriquet Baba Blackshirt, and for a while played a murky role as a semiwitting go-between for Oswald Mosley and her other lover at the time, Dino Grandi, Benito Mussolini's ambassador to London, while simultaneously enjoying the romantic devotion of the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, who was staying at the same Dorchester Hotel as Alexandra and her sister.

Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
A distant cousin of the King and impoverished member of the extended Hessian and British Royal families, he married the heiress Edwina Ashley. MountbattenMountbatten admitted "Edwina and I spent all our married lives getting into other people's beds." He maintained an affair for several years with Yola Letellier, the wife of Henri Letellier, publisher of Le Journal and mayor of Deauville (1925–28). Yola Letellier's life story was the inspiration for Colette's novel Gigi.

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aTvKUukyrRoC&pg=PP131&lpg=PP131&dq=sybil+colefax+and+queen+mother&source=bl&ots=phP8j4-a8s&sig=ACfU3U0sAuXuOcHZNjN0Vn_JoKjpka5IYg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjCmtfmp_3fAhWL1uAKHS5KDYEQ6AEwEnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=sybil%20colefax%20and%20queen%20mother&f=false see footnotes. Tricky Dicky]

Edwina Mountbatten
Drew Pearson described Edwina in 1944 as "one of the most beautiful women in England". She was known to have affairs throughout the marriage, doing little to hide them from her husband. He became aware of her lovers, accepted them and even developed friendships with some of them – making them "part of the family". Her daughter Pamela Hicks wrote a memoir of her mother in which she describes her mother as "a man eater" and her mother's many lovers as a succession of "uncles" throughout her childhood. Edwina's affair with Prime Minister Nehru of India both during and after their post-war service has been widely documented.

The Mountbattens had two daughters, Patricia (14 February 1924 – 13 June 2017) and Pamela (born 19 April 1929). In her memoir daughter Pamela describes Edwina as a detached, rarely seen mother who preferred travelling the world with her current lover to mothering her children.

Research libel case and BP luncheon following it. Also signed photo story with Georg V.

Lionel,6th Earl of Portarlington
1883–1959),

John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough
Entertained E&W frequently at Blenheim. See Henrietta Churchill book. None too bright (see Consuelo and Alva book) work in father’s comments on the unemployed.

P15: why did he only name a few


 * A queer old place: Tinniswood, p201.

The Rat Pack at sea
The infamous Nahlin (yacht) Cruise

In 1936 Nahlin a super yacht owned by the film financier Annie Henrietta Yule was chartered by the King for an Adriatic cruise with his mistress, Wallis Simpson. He could have used the Royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert III, but decided against it as he wished to "enable the avoidance of formality accorded to Royalty.” Lady Yule was a strict teetotaler, so the king, who had taken over the library on the shade deck, replaced the books with bottles. The presence of Simpson on board the yacht first "alerted the world's media to the impending abdication crisis."  Informal photographs of Edward and Simpson on board together during the cruise were not published in Britain but became front-page news in the United States. During the cruise, Nahlin was escorted by HMS Glowworm (H92), a Royal Navy destroyer.

Sitwell’s relationship with the Yorks and Queen Mary
Sitwell as a socialite. (Pearson, p100)

Osbert Sitwell enjoyed very friendly terms with Queen Mary; the Queen's niece was married to Sitwell's second cousin, the Duke of Beaufort, and both often stayed with the Duke and Duchess at Badminton House.

Sitwell was a close friend of both the future Queen Elizabeth and King George VI, whom he had first met at ???????. He maintained a close correspondence with the new queen (expand here from Sitwell p 12), Elizabeth whose private correspondence, since as far back as 1933, had revealed a dislike of Mrs Simpson predating the 1936 abdication, a dislike which she seldom lost an opportunity, with seeming innocence, to encourage in others. In August 1933, during Cowes Week, Elizabeth, then Duchess of York, had incited her father-in-law, George V, to anger over Mrs Simpson's relationship with his son and heir. Concerned she had gone too far, she wrote to Queen Mary: "...Pappa had heard a certain person was at the Fort when Bertie (her husband) and I had been there and he had a very good mind to speak to David about it......I do hope he won't do this as I'm sure that David (The Prince of Wales) would never forgive us for being drawn into anything like that...I know it would make things more uncomfortable if David thought I had been brought into it all". Cecil Beaton later described her as a marshmallow made on a welding machine'

At that time, Edward's relationship with Simpson was testing his already poor relationship with his father. King George V and Queen Mary had met Simpson at Buckingham Palace, in 1935, when she was formally and publicly presented; however, they later refused to receive her. The refusal to grant Mrs Simpson a royal audience was something Elizabeth managed to preserve until, Simpson was finally acknowledged, in 1966, at the unveiling of a memorial to Queen Mary. However, even then, Simpson was not received at Buckingham Palace or Clarence House.

By 1936, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law was King and her antipathy had extended to him too, writing to Queen Mary, on 11 October 1936, she wrote: “Darling Mamma, ...you and Pappa made such a family feeling with your great kindness and thought for everybody, but David does not seem to possess the faculty for making people feel wanted. It is very sad and I feel the whole difficulty is a certain person. I do not feel that I can make advances to her and ask her to our house as I immagine would be liked." However, writing to the new King, just two weeks later, Elizabeth writes: "Darling David....you are always so sweet and thoughtful to us..."

Again, after a long report on Mrs Simpson and Edward VIII to her mother-in-law, in October 1936, Elizabeth continued: "forgive me darling Mamma for letting myself go so indiscreetly..as ever since I was married I have made it a strict rule never to discuss anything of family matters with even my own relations..." Whether Elizabeth did discuss her concerns about Mrs Simpson outside the Royal Family or not, her views were sufficiently known for Lady Cholmondeley to show her a copy of Rat Week within days of its private and limited circulation. Elizabeth then requested a copy for the Royal Archives, clearly indicating she thought the poem’s content worthy of preservation.

Bring in the Kenneth Rose journals here.

Royal family "deplored Edward's circle" (Sitwell p74)

Queen Elizabeth, until the end of Edward’s life, believed he wanted to return some day as King

Sitwell's relationship with Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson
Sitwells known enemies included (p14): Churchill, Beaverbrook, Edward Marsh, Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence and especially Noel Coward and Wyndham lewis. During his literary feuds of the 1920s "no ridicule or vituperation had been too bad to hurl at them, now with the royal crisis, Osbert reacted much as he had at the height of some literary feud."

Sitwelll p13

Sitwell had a "jaundiced" view of Americans in general

Suspicious of the flirtations with Naziism (p13)

Sitwells homosexuality precluded him form understanding the love between Edward and Mrs Simpson (reffed to Sitwell, p13) - Can one say that in this day and age - is it correct to say it?

Persecution of the Rats
Two days after the abdication, the British Establishment's line regarding the former King's friends was made public by no less a pillar than the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, who thundered in a BBC broadcast:

Even more strange and sad it is that he (Edward VIII) should have sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage, and within a social circle whose standards and ways of life are alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people. Let those who belong to this circle know that today they stand rebuked by the judgement of the nation which had loved King Edward.

This was a put up job by QM, expand on this.

Thus it appeared the fiends of former King Edward, had not just offended the new monarch and the British people, but also God himself. The speech was widely condemned for its lack of charity towards the departed king However, the new Queen let it be known that the monarch, his wife and mother were united in endorsing this view. Thus in this febrile climate, Osbert Sitwell, a friend of the new King and queen and close friend of Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, penned Rat Week and privatly sent it to the the most influential leaders of London society, who included: Lady Londonderry, Mrs Ronnie Greville and Lady Cholmondeley. The latter passed a copy to the Queen. See also Chips Channon p15.

The Queen was delighted by the poem and immediately wrote wrote to Sitwell telling him how much she admired the recently written Rat Week and asking for an autographed copy for the Windsor Castle library. Displaying her mindfulness of it's libellous nature, she inform him that it will be quite safe there and only for future generations and tells Sitwell that the next time she sees him she will give him her opinion of those mentioned - "an opinion she knows he can imagine". Thus the new Queen let it be known in society her opinion of those who made up the old regime. . However, Sitwell always claimed in all the conversations he had with the Queen concerning Mrs Simpson, he never once hard her speak of Mrs Simpson "with venom."

Rat Week
The ratpack

Where are the friends of yesterday

That fawned on Him (Edward VIII),

That flattered Her (Wallis Simpson);

Where are the friends of yesterday,

Submitting to His every whim,

Offering praise of Her as myrrh To Him?

They found Her conversation good,

They called Him 'Majesty Divine'

(Consuming all the drink and food,

'they burrow and they undermine'),

And even the most musical (ref to: Maud Cunard)

Admired the bagpipes' horrid skirl

When played with royal cheeks outblown

And royal feet tramping up and down.

Where are they now, where are they now,

That gay, courageous pirate crew,

With sweet Maid Mendl (ref to: Elsie de Wolfe) at the Prow,

Who upon royal wings oft flew

To paint the Palace white -- (and how!)

With Colefax (Sibyl, Lady Colefax) - in her iron cage

Of curls - who longed to paint it beige;

With John McMullen (Vogue's “As Seen by Him” columnist) at the helm

Who teaches men which way to dress?

These were the mighty of the realm

Yet there were others less!

That nameless, faceless, raucous gang

Who graced Balmoral's Coburg towers,

Danced to the gramophone, and sang

Within the battlemented bowers

Of dear Fort Belvedere;

Oh, do they never shed a tear?

Oh, do they ever shed a tear,

From swollen lids and puffy eyes,

For that, their other paradise?

How far it seems from here, how far

Now home again

In the Ritz Bar.

Oh, do they never shed a tear

Remembering the King, their martyr,

And how they led him to the brink

In rodent eagerness to barter

All English history for a drink?

What do they say, that jolly crew?

Oh. . . Her they hardly knew,

They never found Her really nice

(And here the sickened cock crew thrice):

Him they had never thought quite sane,

But weak, and obstinate, and vain;

Think of the pipes; that yachting trip!

They'd said so then (‘Say when, say when!').

The rats sneak from the sinking ship.

What do they say, that jolly crew,

So new and brave, and free and easy,

What do they say, that jolly crew,

Who must make even Judas queasy?

Making Judas queasy
"Pull yourselves together" (Sitwell,p77)

Following the new accession, one of the first to feel the frost of royal displeasure was Lord Brownlow. A close friend and equerry to the Prince of Wales, and later Lord-in-waiting when he became King Edward VIII. The Prince spent many weekends at Brownlow's country house, Belton House. Upon the prince's accession to the throne, Lord Brownlow became heavily involved in the abdication crisis, and personally accompanied Mrs Simpson on her flight to France to escape the media attention, and encouraged Mrs Simpson to renounce the idea of marriage to the King. Returning to England, Brownlow attempted to enlist the support of the King's mother Queen Mary, but she refused to receive him.

Following the abdication, Brownlow attempted to extricate himself from the former King's circle, refusing to attend the Duke of Windsor's marriage ceremony in 1937. For this Edward and his wife, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, regarded Brownlow as disloyal. The Duchess in particular never forgave the man who had once championed her. . However, it was not enough to save him from the displeasure of the new King and Queen. He read without prior warning in the Court Circular, that he had been replaced as the Sovereign's Lord-in-Waiting. Telephoning Buckingham Palace for an explanation, he was given the curt information that his resignation had been accepted – he had never tendered it. It was also made clear to him that the new monarch and his queen had ordered that Brownlow's name was never again to appear in the Court Circular.

Lady Cunard hissed at a society party (Sitwell book)

people like Mary Soames.....to please Churchill etc. Expand. Rose VOl II

Charles Bedaux
Charles Eugène Bedaux (10 October 1886 – 18 February 1944) was a French-American millionaire who made his fortune developing and implementing the work measurement aspect of scientific management, notably the Bedaux System. Bedaux was friends with British royalty and Nazis alike, and was a management consultant, big game hunter and explorer.

On 13 January 1943 Bedaux was in Algeria allegedly supervising the construction of a German pipeline when he and his son were arrested by the Americans. He was kept in custody without charge for a year. Bedaux was eventually flown to the US, and, awaiting charges of trading with the enemy and treason, committed suicide using an overdose of barbiturates while in FBI custody in Miami, Florida. His death featured prominently in the contemporary media, particularly an influential New Yorker biographical trilogy by Janet Flanner. Here, Flanner attacked the Bedaux System and Bedaux Unit as not differing 'much from the old Frederick Winslow Taylor shop-management system of the nineties' despite Bedaux's verbose claims to originality.

Non-rats

 * Katherine and Herman Rogers
 * Hugh Molyneux, 7th Earl of Sefton particularly his wife
 * Daisy Fellowes

Mrs Ronnie Greville
Following Greville's death, Queen Elizabeth, who inherited the bulk of Greville’s huge collection of jewellery, described her as "so shrewd, so kind and so amusingly unkind, so sharp, such fun, so naughty; altogether a real person, a character, utterly Mrs Ronald Greville".

By contrast, Sir Cecil Beaton described her as "a galumphing, greedy, snobbish old toad who watered at her chops at the sight of royalty ... and did nothing for anybody except the rich".

Somebody else called her a venomous slug. Find out who

Cosmo Lang
In December 1936, a poem was circulated about Lang: “'My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are! And when your man is down, how bold you are! Of Christian charity how scant you are! And, auld Lang swine, how full of cant you are!'

Stanley Baldwin
Baldwin said of Edward: “‘He is an abnormal being, half child, half genius ... it is as though two or three cells in his brain had remained entirely undeveloped.’

Reffs to use

 * George VI: The Dutiful King, By Sarah Bradford
 * The QM letters book
 * The Blenheim Book (left in Ragusa)
 * Sitwell: QM and others (here)

Quotes to incorporate

 * Her one-time friend the Duchess of Marlborough observed: ‘I went to look at the flowers. It was tragic: they were all from dressmakers, jewellers, Dior, Van Cleef, Alexandre. Those people were her life.’ (That would have been Laura Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough).


 * “It wasn’t really a life at all,” her close friend, Lady Diana Mosley, said yesterday. “I’m delighted to hear she has died. I wish she’d died many years ago.”


 * Lady Diana Cooper remembered the Duchess “as the soul of discretion when I first knew her and she was living with the king. She was perfectly discreet and I was very fond of her. The king worshipped her.”


 * "It leaves unnamed certain favourites of Sitwell's, including Lady Cunard and Lady Diana Cooper, and concentrates its venom on the less able to look after herself Lady Colefax." It’s really bullying, look into that.


 * "The author tells us that Queen Elisabeth 'always spoke of the Duchess of Windsor without venom'." Author is Sitwell


 * "Lady Diana Cooper, who, having acccom- panied the ex-King the previous year on the yacht Nahlin, opened a conversation with the new one by saying: 'I'm afraid I'm a Rat, Sir." Find Coopers backtracking of the Nahlin cruise in her bio

origins of circulation and exclusion of Cunard

Laura Mae Corrigan, ‘humble’ Cleveland waitress turned wife of a steel millionaire. (see above). Mrs Greville claimed that she was ‘never hungry enough’ to dine with crude Mrs Corrigan; Mrs Colefax and Mrs Corrigan competed over access to Mrs Simpson,

"Ambitious, competitive and snobbish to the bone marrow, each woman, says Evans, exercised a ‘profound effect on British history’ and helped bring about ‘social revolution’, be it through her response to the abdication crisis (‘How could he do this to me?’ wailed Emerald when Edward VIII blew her chances of becoming lady in waiting) or to the Munich agreement (Mrs Greville, Lady Londonderry and Emerald Cunard were enthusiasts for Hitler, and Nancy Astor — ‘the Member for Berlin’ — was pro-appeasement)."

[Lady C declared an outcast by QM - also Archbishop condemns the whole crew and royals support that view

citazioni importanti

Court Case
The Cavalcade version omitted the "offensive" references to Edward and Mrs Simpson. This resulted in the poem’s gaining an unwarranted reputation as being sympathetic to the Windsors over the way some of their friends had treated them. Cavalcade also missed out a verse in which a number of the "rats" were named explicitly, as to publish this would have been libellous.

Sitwell sued Cavalcade for breach of copyright He obtained an interim injunction preventing further publication in Cavalcade, which ensured further surreptitious circulation of the poem. When the full case came to court, Cavalcade tried to get Sitwell to produce the missing verse. Sitwell resisted on the grounds that he could not be forced to make a criminally libellous statement. The case ended up in the Appeal Court, where Sitwell won and obtained damages and costs.

See Sitwell-69 to elaborate on this.

Epilogue
Sitwell knew that, because of the libel issue, the poem could not be published in his lifetime; he decided that publication should wait even longer than that to avoid "pain to those still living". The poem was first published in 1986 by Michael Joseph in a book entitled Rat Week: An Essay on the Abdication authored posthumously by Sitwell. Sitwell, in his essay, explained the background to the poem in some detail because he recognised that the long delay in publication would result in many readers being unfamiliar with the characters. The book also contains a foreword by John Pearson, explaining some of the background to the publication of the book.


 * Mozart Zaide - Aria: Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Lebe