Imagine
picking up the newspaper and reading about the scandalous
doings of an upper-class wife in Happy Valley, Kenya and
finding out that the woman in the article was your
great-grandmother! That is what happened to writer Frances
Osborne in her teens. She happened to be reading an article
about the book White Mischief, a new book about the murder of
Josslyn Hay, the Earl of Errol. The article mentioned his
first wife, Lady Idina Sackville and the outrageous life of a
group of English settlers in Kenya. Too her surprise, her
mother told her that Lady Idina was her great grandmother, a
skeleton in the family closet, that had never been
revealed.
Intrigued, Frances kept digging for information. As she researched,
she must have been reminded of that old adage, that one should be
prepared when researching the family tree, that you might not
always like what you find. Happily for those of us who love reading
about Scandalous Women, she kept on researching.
The result is a book called The Bolter. The nickname stands for
women who loved too much and cared too little. Everything about
this book is intrguing, from its topic and story to the
relationship of the author to the woman that the book is about. The
inspiration for a character called The Bolter in Nancy Mitford's
novel, The Pursuit of Love, Lady Idina Sackville was born in 1893
to the Earl de la Warr(the family gave their name to the state of
Delaware) and his wife Muriel, a rich heiress. When Idina was about
five years old, her father ran off with a can-can dancer, only
returning long enough to father his heir, before decamping for
good. Furious at the way her husband was now spending her money on
his mistresses, Idina's mother divorced him for desertion, which
was a terrible scandal at the time. Little Idina suddenly found
herself without her usual playmates, as the aristocratic world was
closed to her. Her mother found a new calling, devoting herself to
supporting Labor politician George Lansbury (grandfather of actress
Angela Lansbury) and the theosophist movement. She also became an
ardent suffragette.
Lady Idina Sackville grew up, like most women of her class, with
very little education apart from snaring a rich husband. At the age
of 20, she married Euan Wallace, the son of a rich Scottish
landowning family. The couple were only married a few short months
before war was declared and her husband went off to serve with his
regiment. He returned home long enough for Idina to give birth to
two sons, David and Gerard in 1914 and 1915. The cracks in the
marriage soon appeared. On leave during the war, Euan left Idina,
who was seriously ill, alone while he continued to party. He spent
his time with her younger sister Avie, and her best friend Barbie
Lutyens, the daughter of noted architect Barbie Lutyens. Barbie,
whose family was constantly trying to make ends meet, set her cap
for Euan. By the time, Idina was feeling well enough to join her
husband in his social rounds, the damage to their marriage was
done. Idina threw herself into an affair with Charles Gordon and
when the war was over, told her husband that she wanted a divorce.
But her decision came at a terrible cost.
Her husband demanded custody of their sons, as well as insisting
that Idina was never to contact them again, feeling that it would
confuse them to have their mother coming in and out of their lives.
Indina agreed never to see her young sons again, probably thinking
it wouldn't be permanent, and high-tailed it off to Africa to live
a Bohemian life style, ripe with intrigue, freewheeling sex and
other adventures that a lady of good breeding may dream about, but
would never entertain if she valued her family. She soon realized
her mistake when her second marriage fell apart. Unfortunately, her
ex-husband remarried to Barbie, who had been waiting in the wings.
They soon had three sons of their own, and Barbie took Idina's
place as her sons mother.
Soon Idina was causing more scandal in Kenya. There, she swiftly
acquired a racy reputation, possibly not unconnected to her habit
of receiving guests while stark naked in a green onyx bath. Idina
turned up the heat in Kenya with after-dinner games, including a
sort of 'blind man in the buff' where you had to identify body
parts through a hole in a sheet. Idina wasn't beautiful, but she
knew how to make the most of the attributes she had. She was
impeccably dressed for all occasions, the type of woman who still
looked cool and collected despite it being 100 degrees outside. Her
second husband couldn't take her infidelities and another marriage
bit the dust.
But Idina wasn't finished yet. Her third husband was Josslyn Hay, 8
years younger. Heir to the Earl of Errol, one of the oldest
peerages in Scotland, Josslyn was cash and land poor since the
ancestral estate Slains Castle had been sold. Josslyn and Idina
fell madly in love, although Idina knew that the only way to hold
him was to not require fidelity. When Idina and Joss met, he was
already having an affair with an American heiress, Alice de Janze.
Idina and Alice soon became good friends, and Idina turned a blind
eye to their affair. Joss and Idina married in 1923, and moved back
to Kenya. They bought a farm that they called Slains, and had a
daughter Diana, who inherited the earldom after her father's murder
in 1941.
Upper-class society of Twenties Britain was scandalised.
Respectable married women were allowed to take lovers after they
had provided 'an heir and a spare', but acquiring new husbands was
simply not playing the game. Idina became a social outcast. And in
Kenya, the British settlers who were not part of the Happy Valley
set of drug-addicted, wife swappers were outraged, feeling that the
publicity embarrassed them all, and made them laughing stocks. It
was hard enough dealing with the growing unrest among the natives
of Kenya against the white settlers without having a group of
decadent aristocratics mucking things up. However, Idina, while she
may have partied as hard as the rest of them, truly loved Kenya.
She took life on the farm seriously enough, since it was her only
real means of support. She had very little money of her own, and
unfortunately apart from her first and fourth husbands, neither did
the men she married.
But thats what makes this such a juicy ride. Osborne's great
grandmother is driven to lead a reckless wild life with few
regrets. While she does eventually meet her young adult sons, the
meeting is just that, not a reunion, but a bit of a reality check.
She has to settle for being their friend, since she abdicated the
right to be their mother. Frances Osborne does a remarkable job of
writing about her great grandmother. She doesn't judge her life but
just lets it unfold for the reader to decide how they feel about
this rather intriguing woman who traveled the world with a black
pekingnese called Satan. The book is compulsively readable, the
reader can certainly understand why Osborne found her great
grandmother so amazing, despite her bad behavior.
If Idina had lived in the sixties and seventies, a more open period
of sexuality, her life would have been different. Instead, she
lived in an age, when sexual hypocrisy reigned. Part of her problem
was that she married every man that she fell in love with! It
doesn't take Dr. Phil to realize that she continued to marry men
who were very like her father. Ironically the unconditional love
and happiness that she was seeking, she finally found with her
children. Unfortunately she found it too late, both of her sons
died during World War II, and her daughter Diana, who had been
brought up in England mainly by her sister, Idina briefly
reconnected with before her tragic early death in 1953.
Idina never got over her love for her first husband, she kept his
picture by her bedside until her death.