The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (51 page)

7 May 1914

My dear John

Rosemary tells me she has wired you to come here next Thursday to lunch and motor with her and I hope stay the night?

If you come it must surely mean you want to see her, be with her?

Now will you forgive me for this letter, dear John. The thing that keeps you two apart is a sort of independent spirit – of not wanting
to knuckle under!! Either of you!! Don’t think it impertinent of me to write this – you have had a lot to put up with. Your love was wounded: your pride hurt – and you’ve behaved like a brick.

But Rosemary is a tough proposition – darling as she is – and if you want to win her right out you’ve got to use
tough
means! It’s no good being gloomy and distrait and silent with her. She wants someone to carry her off her feet. You in your sweet sensitiveness are shy in putting yourself in a false position again.

Rosemary has that gay glorious nature that takes pleasure in all life – but no man has meant anything to her but
you
– and it’s up to you to play the game that will win her into your arms. Dear John, my real affection for you prompts me to write this. You can’t kill Rosemary’s critical, independent spirit – but you can grab her heart. Grabbing and deliberate overwhelming is the only way – not waiting on her pleasures! Women are queer! You don’t know this perhaps! They yearn to be dominated rather than be worshipped. They like the ‘Damn you, I’ll die, or get you’ attitude best!

Engagements are difficult things. Once Rosemary is yours, and you can teach her love, you’ll be the happiest in the world – her mocking spirit is surely a pose. She yearns for things inwardly that she confesses not at all outwardly.

Every word of this I mean, John dear. I know exactly what
you
are struggling with – but if you want her there are no half measures. If you
don’t
want her, stay away. Bless you always, my feeling of affection for you has never wavered. You may be taking on a difficult task, but you’d never find your foundations if you didn’t dig, would you?!! Marriage is a hard hunt. Rosemary has a heart of gold and the simplest and overwhelming sincerity for
natural
happiness, which makes her difficult to understand for some.

Your true friend MS

Tear this up.

John, however, knew Rosemary’s ‘mocking spirit’ was not ‘a pose’. The truth was he loved her far more than she loved him.
He broke off the engagement
because he knew he could never make her happy.

Throughout their eighteen-month affair, as Rosemary refused to
commit to a wedding date, John’s agony was compounded by Violet’s loathing of her. He had tried to conceal the tempestuous passage of his relationship from his mother, but she had gleaned the details through her ‘spy system’. In Violet’s eyes, Rosemary – whose striking masculine looks were unfashionable – was neither rich enough nor beautiful enough: lacking any discretion, Violet made her views well known.

By February 1914, the deferred wedding – and John’s humiliation – was the talk of London. Even Daisy, Countess of Warwick, a notorious gossip, had become involved. She wrote to Violet to commiserate, and to tell her she thought it unlikely that even were the couple to agree to a wedding date, the two dukes – Henry, and Strath Sutherland – would never agree to the terms of Rosemary’s marriage settlement:

Darling

I fear I cannot manage
this
week as governess and tutor are away, and I have the children
quite
alone with me.

I should have
loved
a quiet day with you – to talk – and try to be
some
sort of comfort to you. For, my dear, I know just what you are feeling, with all my heart I understand and sympathise. First – I don’t think Henry will see any charm – he will think her ugly – and all the daughters of your house are beautiful, and those that married into the house also, judging by the pictures! The money is a great obstacle.

The countess had made discreet enquiries through Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, to establish the exact financial position. In the unlikely event the marriage were to go ahead, she told Violet to hold out for as much as she could get:

If I might advise be
firm
. Unless more is given, the engagement can’t be. Strath is a ‘pincher’ but I don’t think he could risk making Rosemary unhappy.

It is really too bad, because
Geordie
*
has his own independent income, so there are only two children to provide for. I know that
Alistair
*
threatened to leave the Army unless he also was given enough – and it
was
given. Rosemary can do
anything
with Strath.

He has an hallucination that he is ‘broke’. What he
has
is a million
^†
invested in Canada, and he has a million
here
to invest – so, on the
pretext of poverty is having an Empire gamble – being sick of England. He keeps his yacht, costing £20,000 a year, for
himself
and uses her 2 months! Sometimes he lets her a few months, other times not. His villa at Menton [on the Côte d’Azur] is of use to
no one
but himself! He keeps it all going there and lives there 6 weeks! He has Dunrobin, and Tongue, and Hook Hill all ‘going’, besides London – so it is all ridiculous. He ought to give Rosemary £3000
^‡
a year at least and leave her £100,000.
^§
One thing is, his health is
precarious
so it would be as well to know what he has ‘left her’? This is how I feel about it, and I repeat to you exactly what Millie said when I spoke to her of finance. You, darling Violet, I wish I could come to you, but you do know how I am thinking of you, don’t you?

Post going so abrupt stop!

Loving Daisy

Determined to prevent the marriage from going ahead, Violet tried to lure John away from Rosemary with other candidates – even those she had previously rejected. One – as a letter to Charlie reveals – was American heiress Mary Hoyt Wiborg, the daughter of a Cincinnati ink manufacturer. Violet called her ‘Hoity’:

Listen
– I never thoroughly wanted Hoity. I hated the idea all through the summer and was very worried at the time of the ‘House boat’ party for fear of J proposing! I should be pleased if it happened
only
if it was to keep Rosemary out. But if
she
was not on the horizon, then
not
because I hate the American accent – and could never, were I a man, kiss her mouth! Then came the
big
fear of Rosemary – and then I said – oh,
better
better far – Hoity! What a pity she isn’t here now.

About this other fine healthy lovely girl
*
with a little money and education (‘beautifully brought up’ and in ‘the best society’, as a Paris informant tells me) and a fine breeder of tall healthy sons!! Well, I have an instinct. I have only myself had it once before about a wife for John – that was Margaretta – who has proved perfection! (and now again in slim, perfect looks – and brave sons!) Yes! The instinct that this might be the saving of us all! I will get her to Belvoir hoping John will not avoid her!!

I would give anything to stop
R – gt danger
. So, dear, don’t go against me and don’t think I am ramming Jacqueline down his throat – John would not be influenced against his wishes and what does it matter if I
show
her to him while he is there. I
don’t
want him to avoid her or else it will be like in the Dresel [
sic
] case – mother and daughter then thought he cared nothing for her – and so quickly married someone else. And I wouldn’t like this one to be lost – snapped up – before he is sure he doesn’t want to
attract
her!!

Violet had even gone so far as to tell John that Rosemary was barren – information that she claimed to have gleaned from a ‘doctor friend’ who knew Dr Fripp, Rosemary’s GP. When, in early 1914, she heard the engagement was back on, she was forced to back-pedal furiously. ‘I thought it only fair to see Fripp myself,’ she told her niece, Ruby Peto:

I did it well
(as I know him rather well) put him in no difficult position – gave him NO questions to answer – but went to him saying that as a mother longing for her son to marry would he advise
me
to help those 2 [John and Rosemary] to meet – or
not
unnecessarily to bring them together.

If he had said – as I expected – ‘leave it alone’ I should have begged you to put before John the misery of childlessness as a deterrent from answering a call from Milly. But instead Fripp clearly told me he believed that physically
she could at once have children and as many as she was given the chance of having
.

I know you will think, as I did, what an odd thing that this should be the same man who had told the opposite to his friend a few months ago!

It was with relief that, in the spring of 1914, Violet learned that John was not going to marry Rosemary after all. ‘Darling – John says “all is off” and is hiding unhappily in Charlie’s rooms,’ she wrote to Diana. ‘Little
brute
is not caring 2 straws! I may hear why tomorrow, but perhaps not – anyhow we can say if asked there is no engagement at all.’

John, of course, was ‘caring 2 straws’. As his war diary shows, he hadn’t been able to get over Rosemary. Throughout 1915, she haunted him; he was clearly still in love with her. ‘Spent all the evening trying to instil a little organization into the HQ staff servants,’ he wrote from Cassel on 4 March 1915: ‘Then to bed. Picture papers arrived with a photo of Rosemary with R – how I hate to see her with anyone … Rothesay says I talked in my sleep last night mentioning “that she is in London”: I wonder who I was dreaming of – I expect I can guess.’

A month later, he drove General Stuart Wortley to Dunkirk, where they had tea with Rosemary and her mother at their hospital for wounded officers. ‘My God I know what misery is when I see Rosemary,’ John wrote: ‘The appalling strain of holding oneself in instead of opening my arms and squeezing her, but why should I be so sorely tried – the darling, God bless her – she was looking jolly, but I think she was thinking just a little about me. The depression I get after seeing her is something dreadful, enough to destroy myself, but I must to bed, hoping to get to sleep. I wonder if she ever thinks kindly of me.’

John, as he told Marjorie, was convinced that he would never fall in love again. He knew when he invited Kakoo to stay at Belvoir in December 1915 that he wanted to marry her. From the moment she arrived, he was on tenterhooks.

In the record John kept of Kakoo’s four-day stay, the cynicism, the brittleness – and the depression – so often present in his writing, melted away. He seemed happier than he had ever been in his life. There was hardly a minute of her visit that he had left out:

My K. arrived on Dec 18th in the evening in time for tea. I was so excited, and unfortunately Father took me into his study just before she arrived so that when I came into the drawing room there she was.

I did feel funny all over – there was Marjorie, Mother, Bridget Colebrooke,
*
and Charlie in the Castle. We had a very nice evening. I sat opposite to K – feeling aglow – she looked too lovely. We just did nothing much after dinner. I hardly said anything to K. Then to bed.

The next morning, the 19th, Sunday, we met at late breakfast. Oh, how delicious she looked. I asked her to come out for a walk, which she did. We – at least I – had a wonderful morning, and the same after lunch. We went for another walk all round Frog Hollow and back through the pasture. I did not see K. much from after then till dinner, except for a short while in Marjorie’s bedroom. I sat next to K. at dinner. Oh, I was feeling happy.

I had made up my mind not to propose to her till Monday, as I wanted everyone to have left the Castle. I knew that Father, Mother, and Bridget, were leaving early Monday morning. After dinner, I managed to get a little talk alone with K. just before everyone was going to bed. So I walked her to her bedroom. It was as much as ever I could do not to propose to her then. She was too lovely. Just as we started for bed, I kissed her hand again, and I can’t remember quite what K. said, but something to the effect that ‘I did
not mean anything’ and I was quite miserable. I went to bed feeling that even if I did propose, she would say ‘No’ and – as she has since told me – she was dreadfully unhappy too that night. When she shook hands with Mother just before getting into bed, her dear little hand was shaking all over, so Mother told me afterwards.

My darling had come to Belvoir against all the wishes of her family. Her family did not like me, and they had told K. that I was a flirt – and that I would never propose – but K. had come against them all, and then when I did not look like proposing, she felt that her family would be right after all, and she felt, so she told me, that she had made a mistake in coming, but that her love for me had made her come – so we both went to bed quite miserable. She thinking that I did not really love her – I thinking that she did not like me.

Dec 20 – next morning. Father, Mother and Bridget left for London about 10. Then I got K. to come for a walk. We walked down to the lakes across the large open field straight to the middle of the lower lake. Then the wonderful moment came. I asked my darling and she said ‘Yes’. My God, I was happy. I kissed her dear little face all over – we walked slowly back to the Castle in time for lunch. We had made up our minds we would not tell Charlie and Marjorie till after tea. We spent a glorious afternoon and evening in my sitting room. Then – about half an hour before dressing for dinner – I went down to the Nursery and told Marjorie. She was utterly taken by surprise. K. then went and talked to Marjorie, and I went and told Charlie. Soon after that, K. and I telephoned to my Mother, and she wired to her Mother in Scotland. We sat up very late – what a perfectly wonderful evening.