Past Imperfect

It must be said that the wife of the new Grand Duke was not enthusiastic. Until then, she had been having quite a jolly time between their home in Vie

Surprisingly, perhaps, Grand Ducal Moravia made it as far as the Jazz Age, but the forces of Stalin, coupled with a swelling resistance to the monarchist solution, proved the undoing of the dynasty. By 1947 it was over and the ex-reigning Moravian family had taken up residence in a five-storey house in Trevor Square, a pleasant enough location and very convenient for Harrods.

But even easy shopping could not revive the spirits of the defeated Grand Duke and in a matter of months he had given up the unequal struggle. It was at this point that his son, having assumed the grand ducal title, the last of his family to do so, and released perhaps by the demise of his august papa, made a spirited decision that would vastly diminish his chances of regaining the throne of his forebears and vastly increase his chances of living well in the interim. With the dignified, if pained, acceptance of his widowed mother, a princess of a cadet branch of the Hohenzollerns, he contracted to marry the only daughter of a businessman from Leeds, one Harold Swindley, who had made a fortune in self-catering, package holidays. In the following three years, two children had arrived to bless this most sensible of unions, the new, so-called Crown Prince Feodor and his sister, the Princess Dagmar.

But for us, and even more for our parents, the Fall of the House of Moravia was still pretty recent and even the elevation of Miss Marion Swindley could not dim the lustre of a genuine crown. Only twenty years had passed since their deposition when Dagmar arrived at our parties. Besides, the Communist regime that replaced them was not popular, the family was still on the guest list at Buckingham Palace and there was talk at the time of a restoration coming in Spain. In short, forty years ago the Royalist cause didn’t seem hopeless by any means.

The new Grand Duchess had delivered. The Swindley money may not have been particularly fragrant but, for the first years of the marriage at least, there was quite a lot of it. And she learned her part pretty well until, like every fervent convert, she was soon plus Catholique que le Pape. Admittedly, she was not by any standards a beauty but, as the Dowager Grand Duchess was once heard to sigh when watching her daughter-in-law stump across a drawing room looking like a Marine in training, ‘Oh, well. One can’t have everything,’ and nobody could say she was not impressive. Her size alone guaranteed that. Nor was she a fool, having inherited more from her (discreetly invisible) father than she might care to admit in terms of solid, common sense.

For all the bowing and ma’am’ing that still went on in those days, the Grand Duchess understood that no throne awaited her timid daughter in the post-war world. She also knew that she had not anticipated the drain on her capital made by a husband who wished to live en prince but did not intend to do a day’s work, nor earn a single pe

The inspiration for the party was the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, that famous 1815 gathering, given in Brussels on the very eve of Waterloo, and it was held at the Dorchester in Park Lane. Today, one thinks of the hotel as the haunt of film stars and merchants from the East, but in those days it played quite a major part in what was still referred to as ‘Society.’ On the night in question we came in, I think, by the ballroom entrance at the side, situated on Park Lane itself, and the theme of the evening was quite clear the moment one stepped inside, into that long, rather low, hall. Liveried footmen stood to attention, all modern signs, ‘Exit’ and the like, had been hidden behind greenery and there were candles everywhere. None of these last details would be legal today, of course, but nobody cared then. In truth, the party seemed to have taken over most of the ground floor of the hotel. It can’t have, really, can it? But that’s what it felt like on the night. Of course, we didn’t arrive much before eleven, having eaten our di

Later in the Season, when more dances were given in the country, this would entail putting them up for the night, and essentially meant throwing a house party for strangers, who would drunkenly rattle around the countryside in their cars at all hours. But in London the thing was more easily managed. Sometimes you were flattered to receive an invitation to join the di