The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm

By Juliet Nicolson

A “sparkling social history” that brings the twilight of the Edwardian era to life (Entertainment Weekly).
 
The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer just over a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. That summer of 1911, a new king was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. But perfection was not for all. Cracks in the social fabric were showing. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes. Temperatures rose steadily to more than 100 degrees; by August, deaths from heatstroke were too many for newspapers to report.
 
Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources and narrated from the viewpoints of a series of exceptional individuals—among them a debutante, a choirboy, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler, and the queen—The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered glimpse of a bygone time and place.
 
“Brimming with delectable information and little-known facts . . . manages to describe every stratum of English society . . . Where Nicolson is especially good, however, is with the royals and the aristocracy, whose country estates, salons, entertainments, and affairs—discreet and indiscreet—she describes with accuracy and humor.” —The Providence Journal
 
“A hugely interesting portrait of a society teetering on a precipice both nationally and internationally . . . As page turning as a novel.” —Joanna Trollope

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781555848705

Juliet Nicolson

Juliet Nicolson is the author of The Perfect Summer: Dancing Into Shadow in 1911 and The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War. She has two daughters and lives with her husband in Sussex.

Book preview

Praise for The Perfect Summer:

Sharp and rangy … Nicolson sets a lively, theatrical pace and makes good use of recurring characters. … [There are] many glittering pieces in Nicolson’s book.

— The New York Times Book Review

Edward VII had died the previous year, and England was peeking out from under the Victorian hem. … Nicolson captures it all, down to the frantic silliness and boredom of the upper classes; she has woven the details of those last days before the Great War into an unforgettable literary history.

— Los Angeles Times

As page-turning as a novel.

— Joanna Trollope, author of Marrying the Mistress and Next of Kin

Brilliant … lucid, entertaining, and fascinating.

— William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart and Restless

A book brimming with delectable information and little-known facts … With a real eye for telling details, Nicolson manages to describe every stratum of English society. … Where Nicolson is especially good, however, is with the royals and the aristocracy, whose country estates, salons, entertainments, and affairs—discreet and indiscreet—she describes with accuracy and humor.

— The Providence Journal

The blistering-hot summer of 1911 … saw the beginnings of the slide from arrogant innocence, for Britons of all classes, that would carry them all three years later into the exercise in mutual mass murder we call World War I. … Ms. Nicolson deftly picks a cast of characters that represents each stratum of society and how those issues broiled along with the weather.

— The Washington Times

Sparkling social history … breezy yet informative … Juliet Nicolson has created the perfect beach reading for Anglophiles.

— The Christian Science Monitor

Evocative, gossipy … profoundly moving … Pour yourself some champagne and revel in the sybaritic trivia that Ms. Nicolson lays out so invitingly before us.

— New York Sun

Meticulous … Nicolson beautifully captures [the] fever pitch, when ‘it was as if time was running out.’ … The Perfect Summer transcends national boundaries: readers don’t have to be British to appreciate her talent. Through rich sensory detail and captivating language, Nicolson’s prose has the power to transport anyone into 1911 England.

— The Harvard Book Review

Stunning … utterly compelling.

— Joanna Lumley

A hugely interesting portrait of a society teetering on a precipice both nationally and internationally.

— The Guardian (UK)

Deliciously evocative … Juliet Nicolson has fashioned for us a treasure-trove, doubly perfect for winter.

— Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded

Rich and marvelously researched.

— The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"An intimate portrait of England’s elite that spares no details of their dress, manners, and social habits … Bathed in the soft glow of nostalgia, it is a love letter to a lost past that luxuriates in the pleasures of what is presented as a simpler, more stable time.

— The Seattle Times

A charming bit of social history about how the rich enjoyed themselves that final hot summer before World War I.

— Chicago Tribune

A stunning piece of social history … What makes Juliet Nicolson’s work outstanding are the portraits it renders of how both the high and the low lived at this turning point in English history.

— The Buffalo News

Juliet Nicolson’s brief, pre-World War I narrative reads much like a memoir, and through a prism of nostalgia tempered with suggestions of political turbulence and sexual dalliance, her book succeeds, ultimately emerging as a snapshot of a culture in transition.

— California Literary Review

A peach of a book … full of good things, sparkling, elegant, and often funny.

— Literary Review (UK)

Juliet Nicolson transports us back to the enchanted and enchanting summer of 1911. She guides us through its four months in company with some of the most delightful people imaginable. It is a wonderful and poignant tour that proved to be a farewell appearance to their world.

— David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer:

Who Started the Great War in 1914?

Detail makes Juliet Nicolson’s portrait of a single Edwardian year such a fascinating read. … I felt transported into what Nicolson felicitously describes as ‘one of the high sunlit meadows of English history.’

— The Mail on Sunday (UK)

A fast-paced commemorative of the social antics of the English upper class as well as the financial woes of dock workers and household servants … A highly entertaining and knowledgeable introduction to a world that was changed forever by World War I.

— Hannah Pakula, author of An Uncommon Woman—The Empress

Frederick: Daughter of QueenVictoria, Wife of the

Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm

The Perfect Summer

The Perfect Summer

England 1911,

Just Before the Storm

JULIET NICOLSON

Copyright © 2006 by Juliet Nicolson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by John Murray (Publishers), a division of Hodder Headline

Quotation from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman is reproduced by kind permission of the Society of Authors (as the Literary Representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman). Quotation from The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling is reproduced by kind permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. (on behalf of The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty).

Quotations from Royal Archives material: p. 19 RA/GV/CC/25/100 7 May I am dressed in grey; p. 19 RA/GV/CC/25/100 7 May tiresome trousseau; p. 20 RA/GV/CC/25/100 7 May the fashions of the season … so hideous; p. 34 RA/GV/QMD/1911 15 May Most amusing; p. 38 RA/GV/QMD/1911 19 May It began at 10 and was over at 1; p. 38 RA/GV/QMD/1911 20 May a great success; p. 188 RA/GV/QMD/1911 9 August heat perfectly awful; p. 190 RA/GV/QMD/1911 10 August At 11:00 a.m. we heard.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nicolson, Juliet.

The perfect summer : England 1911, just before the storm / Juliet Nicolson.

p. cm.

Originally published: London : John Murray, 2006.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4870-5

1. Great Britain—Social life and customs—20th century. 2. Great Britain— History—George V, 1910–1936. 3. Social classes—Great Britain—History—20th century. 4. Great Britain—Social conditions—20th century. 5. Social structure— Great Britain—20th Century. I. Title.

DA566.4.N54 2007

942.083—dc22

2006048854

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Clemmie and Flora

contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Summer of 1911

2 Early May

3 Late May

4 Early June

5 Late June

6 Early July

7 Late July

8 Early August

9 Late August

10 Early September

Epilogue

Dramatis personae

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

1. Junction of Holborn and Kingsway in London

2. Queen Mary out on a drive in Hyde Park with her daughter

3. The Memorial to Queen Victoria

4. F.E. Smith

5. George V and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany

6. Winston Churchill

7. The entrance to the Savoy Hotel in 1911

8. Three women at a garden party

9. Lady Diana Manners and guests at the Savoy Ball on 17 May 1911

10. Advertisement for beauty treatments from 1911

11. The Marchioness of Ripon with her husband, chauffeur and butler

12. Sergei Diaghilev, creative force behind the Ballets Russes

13. Vaslav Nijinsky, the greatest ballet dancer of all time

14. Brian Calkin, chorister at St Paul’s

15. Brian’s special entry ticket to Westminster Abbey

16. Peers leaving the Abbey after the Coronation service

17. Rupert Brooke

18. Rudyard Kipling

19. Siegfried Sassoon

20. A footman at Blenheim

21. Beer kegs at Chatsworth

22. Dewar’s advertisement

23. Ben Tillett of the National Transport Workers’ Federation

24. Herbert Henry Asquith

25. Strike action at Pink’s jam factory

26. Augustus John, painter

27. A. L. Rowse, writer

28. Fashionable promenaders taking the sea air

29. Swimmers at Scarborough

30. View of Brighton

31. Elinor Glyn, romantic novelist

32. Schoolchildren inspired by strike fever

33. Lady Diana Manners, photograph taken by her brother

34. Dress design by Lady Diana Manners

35. T.W. Burgess swimming the Channel on 6 September 1911

The author and publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: Plates 1, 5, 8, 16 and 23, Getty Images; 2, 3, 4,10, 22 and 28, The Illustrated London News Picture Library; 6, Topfoto/Public Record Office/HIP; 17, Topfoto; 7, The Savoy; 9, 33 and 34, Artemis Cooper; 11 and 13, V&AImages/Victoria and Albert Museum; 12 and 19, Bettmann/CORBIS; 14 and 15, Calkin Family; 18, E.O. Hoppé/CORBIS; 20 and 21, Adam Nicolson; 24, 26 and 32, Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS; 25, TUC Library Collections; 27, The Royal Institution of Cornwall; 29, The National Archives (ref.: COPY 1/559); 35: The National Archives (ref.: COPY 1/560); 30, NRM/Science & Society Picture Library; 31, The de László Foundation.

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to Her Majesty The Queen for permission to quote from HM Queen Mary’s Diaries of 1911 and from HM Queen Mary’s letters to her Aunt Augusta, Princess Augusta Caroline, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Miss Pamela Clark, the Registrar at the Royal Archives, has been most helpful.

I owe a huge thank-you to the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has allowed me unlimited access to the Chatsworth Archive, and also to Charles Noble, Keeper of the Collection, and to Helen Marchant and Andrew Peppitt, who have willingly answered my many questions.

I am indebted to Artemis Cooper for her memories of her grandmother, Lady Diana Manners, and for the loan of the photographs from her private family albums. I am most grateful to Richard Shone for allowing me to quote from his private letters from Duncan Grant, and also to Kevin Brownlow, who illuminated 1911 for me through his marvellous archive of film.

I would like to thank Paul Calkin, and particularly Ian Calkin, for their generosity in sharing their heroic relation Brian Calkin’s papers and photographs with me, and also for permission to quote in full the last letter Brian wrote.

The staff of the London Library have, as always, been extremely helpful, as have the staff at the British Newspaper Library at Colindale and the staff at the Churchill Library in Cambridge, who gave me the opportunity to read the Churchill papers concerning the summer of 1911.

I am grateful for the picture research of Clemency Humphries in the V&A Images Department, and also for the research of Heather Vickers. I thank Luci Gosling and Marcelle Adamson at the Illustrated London News Picture Library for their enthusiastic assistance.

I would like to thank Christine Coates, the Trades Union Congress Library Collections librarian, for all her help, and Susan Scott at the Savoy Hotel archives for her interest and support. I would also like to thank the staff at the Royal Opera House Archives for the chance to see the Marchioness of Ripon’s albums and the Royal Opera House’s collection of ballet and opera programmes from 1911.

During the writing of this book, I have been given an amazing amount of advice, encouragement, clarification of facts, and guidance on fashion, and have been told some fascinating contemporary stories. Among those to whom I owe so many thanks are Patricia Anker, Lady Anunziata Asquith, Antony Beevor, Georgie Boothby, Susan Boyd, William Boyd, Charlie Boxer, Piers Brendon, Aly Brown, Adam Chadwick (Curator MCC at Lord’s Cricket Ground), Catrine Clay, Caroline Clifton Mogg, Pedro Da Costa, Sophie Dundas, Susannah Fiennes, Lady Antonia Fraser (for telling me about the distant rumble), Lord Glenconner, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, John Graham at Tatler, Christopher Hawtree, Alexandra Hayward, Lucy Johnston (Curator in the Fashion and Textile department of the V&A Museum), Sandra de László, Katie Law, the late Patrick Lichfield, James Macmillan-Scott, Philip Marsden, Brian Masters, Rebecca Nicolson, John Julius Norwich, Mollie Norwich, Harold Pinter, Paul Raben, Sarah Raven, Hon. Lady Roberts, Julia Samuel, the staff at John Sandoe, Rebecca Servito, Jane Shilling, Foni Shann, Suzanne Sullivan, Kathleen Tessaro, Henry Wyndham, Rachel Wyndham, Philip Ziegler, and especially my late, much-loved, father Nigel Nicolson.

I consider myself most fortunate in my agent Ed Victor, who understood the point from the very beginning and has shepherded me through the process of writing my first book with such care. I would also like to thank Philippa Harrison for her invaluable comments and Maggie Phillips, Hitesh Shah and Linda Van at Ed Victor’s office.

At John Murray I would like to thank Roland Philipps, my editor Gordon Wise, and Cathy Benwell for their wonderful enthusiasm and commitment, and also Nikki Barrow, James Spackman and Caroline Westmore for their energetic support. Thanks are due to Douglas Matthews too, for his superb work on the index.

At Grove/Atlantic I have been blessed with the perception and commitment of my editor Joan Bingham and the indefatigable enthusiasm of Elizabeth Johnson.

I would like to thank Charles Anson for his loving patience and sustaining encouragement even when absorption in the book threatened to remove me entirely from everyday life.

Clementine Macmillan-Scott and her assistant Flora Macmillan-Scott have been model researchers and have never complained once how the demands of the book have consumed the attentions of their mother. The book is for them with my deep love.

Above all I would like to thank my brother Adam, whose unflagging wisdom, generous sharing of his time, and belief in the book and in me have been more precious than I can begin to quantify.

Introduction

This is a biography of a summer, a particularly lovely English summer, for some the most perfect of the twentieth century.

THE SEASON FROM May to September 1911 was one of the high sunlit meadows of English history. It was a time when England – rich, happy, self-indulgent and at least slightly decadent – felt most contentedly itself. And yet the exuberance and self-congratulatory spirit of those few months was in many ways illusory. Osbert Sitwell, friend of the Prime Minister’s wife Margot Asquith, and one of Society’s most glamorous escorts, observed some time later that ‘an air of gaiety, unusual in northern climates, prevailed. Music flowed with the lightness and flash of water under the striped awnings and from the balconies; while beyond the open illuminated windows in the rooms, the young men about to be slaughtered, feasted, unconscious of all but the moment.’

During the long hot summer of 2003 I had been reading, for the first time in many years, L.P. Hartley’s wonderful novel of class conflict and heated adolescence, The Go-Between, and I began to wonder whether there was a real English summer like that – and whether I could write about it in a way that would bring the reality of that half-forgotten time to life. I wanted to evoke the full vivid richness of how it smelt, looked, sounded, tasted and felt to be alive in England during the months of such a summer.

I began with the weather itself. The almost uninterrupted sunshine of 1911 classified the year as one of the hottest of the twentieth century and all previous records were broken when in the middle of August the temperature hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The summer itself suggested my title, but the closer I looked, the more I realised the title could be misleading: ‘perfect’ maybe, but for whom?

The English are famously bad at dealing with high temperatures, and for those alive in the summer of 1911, even the rich, conditions became intolerable. Just as the petals of an English rose in June prepare to fall at the very moment when the flower is at its loveliest, so the apparently flawless beauty of the summer weather wilted in its own heat. A succession of cloudless days had given people confidence in an unbroken pattern of continuing sunshine. Yet there were unmistakable signs of perfection overreaching itself, as the rumble of thunder and several dramatic storms interrupted the sunny constancy of those months.

And as the unpredictability of the summer weather unfolded, so the country was brought to a near-standstill by industrial strikes and the breadth of the chasm between the privileged and the disadvantaged became ever more obvious. It was a summer when, as the Countess of Fingall put it, ‘We danced on the edge of an abyss.’ There was a sense of urgency about that summer. Socialites crammed in their gaiety as intensively as the poor made their grievances apparent. It was as if time was running out.

The country had not known war at first hand for many years, and people were growing both restless and complacent. Artistic, sexual and political boundaries were being breached. The under-privileged were no longer willing to accept their lot. Imaginative, emotional, practical and human needs were being expressed, and sometimes with violence. Political questions such as the vast gulf between the rich and the poor and the needs of women and of the British work-force to fight for their rights all added to the tensions of 1911. The lives of the disadvantaged as well as the materially blessed, their hardship, and their glamour, were clasped together in a single drama.

In choosing a single season, I gave myself the luxury of space to focus on the minutiae of day-to-day routines, and in the tight lens of these months appear queens and politicians, debutantes and women trade unionists, poets and jam-makers, ballet dancers and painters, shop keepers and landowners, butlers and schoolboys. They are England in 1911, but governing the whole story is another character, the one that links them all: the almost unbroken, constant, sometimes wonderful and sometimes debilitating heat of the summer itself.

1

The Summer of 1911

The only drawback of an English summer is that it lasts so short a time.

Country Life, 1 May 1911

ON THE FIRST day of May 1911 temperatures throughout England began to rise, and everyone agreed that the world was becoming exceedingly beautiful. The cold weather of April had held back the flowering of many of the spring bulbs, and with the warmth of the first week of summer there had been a sudden burst of growth. The verges of the country lanes were frothing with cow parsley while late primroses still dotted the roadside banks. Top-hatted men strolling in the London parks had decided it was warm enough to abandon their scarves. Straw-bonneted women had gathered up country bluebells to sell in wilting bunches on street corners in the smarter parts of London, and window boxes were already spilling over with scarlet geraniums and marguerites. Tiny pink flowers covered the branches that would later produce crab apples, while the ocean of white blossoms produced by other fruit trees had prompted Country Life to declare that ‘few people can remember any parallel to its profusion.’ England was plump with promise.

The unaccustomed warmth coincided with the lifting of official Court mourning, a relief after the constraints of the preceding black-edged year: Edward VII had died in the spring of 1910. A few months before his death the poet Wilfrid Blunt had watched him take his seat in the Royal Box at Covent Garden. The King reached for ‘his opera glasses to survey the glittering women’, and Blunt saw ‘a man who looked, I thought, extremely genial and satisfied with his position in the scheme of the world.’ But on 6 May Edward fell suddenly and severely ill with bronchitis and ‘smoker’s throat’. He managed, between puffs on a final cigar, to take in the news that his horse Witch of Air had won the 4.15 p.m. at Kempton Park, and died later the same day, moments before midnight, at the age of 68.

London went into a temporary but immediate state of gloom. A Jermyn Street grocer filled his window with the famous black Bradenham hams. A society hostess sewed black ribbons onto her daughter’s underwear. Crowds outside the gates of Buckingham Palace were delirious with shock. There was a Lying-in-State at Westminster Hall, and on 20 May Margot Asquith, the wife of the Prime Minister, stood on a red carpet outside the door of the medieval Hall waiting for the funeral procession of eight visiting kings and an emperor, on its way from the Palace. At the door of the Hall the Archbishop of Canterbury received the dead King’s widow first, followed by her son George. Soon afterwards the King’s brother the Duke of Connaught arrived with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Margot Asquith observed the Kaiser with his ‘observant eyes and immobile carriage’, and could not help thinking ‘what a terrifying result a bomb thrown from Big Ben would have had upon that assemblage.’

Society had breathed a sigh of relief when, days after Edward’s funeral, the new King and Queen announced that Royal Ascot would not, as had been expected, be cancelled. The race meeting of 1910 had been a surprisingly beautiful if sombre occasion. Gazing down from the stands above the racecourse, the Countess of Fingall thought that all the large black feathered hats made it look at first glance as if ‘an immense flight of crows had just settled’, but as she continued to watch the crowd move in monochrome synchronicity she concluded that ‘when you came close to them, never in their lives had the beautiful women looked more lovely.’

In certain circles, those that had formed the inner court of Edward VII, some anxiety persisted about whether the new King was quite up to the job. This man now ruled over the four hundred million subjects of the British Empire. Short and red-faced, he seemed a distant and nervous figure, and was accompanied in his new role by an unsmiling, aloof and – let it be acknowledged only in a whisper – less beautiful woman than his glittering mother, the Dowager Queen, Alexandra. That day there was much hushed talk on the racecourse and in the packed stands that had witnessed some of Edward VII’s most spectacular sporting triumphs. Conversations about change predominated. Lillie Langtry, one of the dead King’s first mistresses, was ruined by debt; Alice Keppel, one of his most recent mistresses, had fled to China. The grieving widowed Queen refused to move out of Buckingham Palace to make way for her son. For some it seemed as if a world had come to an end. People ‘anticipate a good deal of change’, George Cornwallis-West, stepfather of Winston Churchill, wrote to his daughter, and some alarmed race-goers even questioned whether the unshakeable confidence of upper-class Edwardian England had disappeared forever. With withering sarcasm they spoke of ‘a sweeter simpler reign’.

Although the Age of Edward was over, among the privileged, with their servants, their houses, their money and the convenient rigidity of the class system, there was an unspoken determination that a supremely enjoyable way of life should not alter, as the crown shifted from one head to another. Hopeful that the momentum generated by Edward would remain powerful enough to ensure their untroubled existence, by May of 1911 the aristocracy was looking forward to a glorious summer dominated by the Coronation of George V and filled with an unprecedented number of parties.

Mrs Hwfa (pronounced Hoofa) Williams, wife of the manager of Sandown racecourse (Sandown had been Hwfa’s brother’s estate, the racecourse Hwfa’s idea), a committed socialite and an impressively dedicated social climber, was keeping notes for a book for which she had already chosen the title: It Was Such Fun. Mrs Hwfa (she was always referred to by her husband’s Christian name rather than her own) seldom ran short of material. ‘The London Season was always strenuous,’ she wrote, with no reason to expect that 1911’s would be any different. And though she was well into her sixties, her sense of fun guaranteed her an invitation to every smart party of the season. Her engagement diary confirmed her popularity: ‘Throughout the week practically every night people were at a dinner party, or a ball or the theatre or opera,’ she wrote. ‘I do not say we were busy in the daytime but there was always something to do and combined with a succession of late nights, the end of the week inevitably found me exhausted.’

Osbert Sitwell had a particular affection for Mrs Hwfa, observing that ‘at every dance to which she went, she was surrounded by a crowd of young men, waiting for her arrival, and they always addressed her as Madam.’ Sitwell knew how much effort she had to put into these parties: Mrs Hwfa was extremely deaf. ‘It is not easy’, he sympathised, ‘for someone afflicted with deafness to be amusing; it calls for unceasing alertness which must be a great tax on energy.’ Sometimes, he noticed, she lost her way, and with only the odd word to guide her did not always guess correctly when trying to assume an expression suitable for the moment. She would hazard ‘a smile for the whimsical, a laugh for the witty, a striking look of interest for the dealer in the dramatic, a tear for those who wore their heart on their sleeve.’ One small comfort was the knowledge that the Dowager Queen herself, Alexandra, suffered from a similar disability.

In line with Mrs Williams’s expectations, The Times Court Circular on 1 May 1911 overflowed with announcements for the coming months, including balls and weddings, race meetings and Royal investitures. Mrs Cornwallis-West was planning a spectacular Shakespeare Costume Ball. Under the patronage of Lady Ripon, Diaghilev was to bring his Russian dancers to Covent Garden to make their English debut in June. Over the last few years militant suffragettes, led by Mrs Pankhurst, had been campaigning for the vote for women and lobbying the Government with varying degrees of aggressive persuasion. But the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, had pledged to address their demands immediately after the summer recess, so they had promised to lay down their window-smashing bricks and hold a truce for the Coronation summer. And members of the House of Lords were hoping that they would defeat the Liberal Government’s proposed bill for a Parliament Act that would if passed place significant restrictions on their voting powers.

To avoid being crushed by boredom the privileged classes who made up one per cent of the population and owned sixty per cent of the country would go to impressive lengths. According to Lucy Masterman, the observant wife of a Liberal minister, the upper class consisted of ‘an aggregation of clever, agreeable, often loveable people trying with desperate seriousness to make something of a life spared the effort of wage earning.’ Men sat about for much of the day in their clubs; ladies spent the early part of the morning in consultation with the cook over the dinner menu, followed by a shopping expedition to the new ‘department stores’ Selfridges and Whiteley’s (which boasted a staff of 6,000) or a dress fitting at Lady Duff Gordon’s fashionable Mayfair salon which traded under the name ‘Madame Lucille’. A meeting on a Tuesday with a friend involved in the same charitable cause and an amusing diversion to the gallery of Sir Francis Jeune’s divorce court on a Thursday helped to while away the hours. In spare moments they wrote anonymous letters to The Lady, a magazine which offered them detailed advice on servant management, home decoration, wigs, superfluous nasal hair, and flatulence control.

And yet the upper classes were still bored. Osbert Sitwell’s sister Edith, aged 23, watched her parents’ friends at play and saw them with the contempt of youth as ‘semi animate persons like an unpleasant form of vegetation or like dolls confected out of cheap satin, with here and there buttons fastened on their faces in imitation of eyes.’ Semi-animate they might be, but most of these dolls mustered the energy to fill the empty spaces in their lives. Bridge was a passion, played not just at home but in the new women’s clubs, including the Army and Navy in Cork Street and The Empress in Dover Street. Carriages came to the house in the afternoon, the driver having earlier in the day dropped off small white cards (stiff for gentlemen, flimsy for ladies) at selected addresses to give advance notice of their employer’s intended visits. Since the house telephone was often positioned in a frustratingly public hallway, a call in person was imperative if any urgent society scandal were to be passed on discreetly. Other people’s love lives were endlessly fascinating (that May Lady Cunard was caught in flagrante with a man not her husband). Cinq-à-sept appointments – the late afternoon and early evening hours allocated for sex – thrived under the complicit though theoretically unseeing gaze of the servants. The servants’ hall, it was said, was privy to more secrets than Asquith’s Cabinet. The actress Mrs Patrick Campbell was reassuring. ‘Does it really matter what these affectionate people do in the bedroom,’ she asked, ‘as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses?’

The fashions of the time positively invited flirtation and dalliance. For grander evening occasions married women displayed erotically low-cut décolletage, and the innovative French couturier Paul Poiret had recently brought his sheer evening gown ‘La Vague’ across the Channel. The dress fell straight from the bosom to swirl seductively and wave-like round the body, allowing a tantalising glimpse of the natural feminine curves beneath. A new form of underwear, the brassière, permitted the full form of the body to be defined more clearly.

Dinner parties, eight-course affairs with handwritten menus that might be inscribed on the shiny surface of a water-lily leaf or on the sail of a miniature boat, were so elaborate that they became a triumph of presentation and slick teamwork between the cook and the butler. People still spoke of the summer when Mr Hector Baltazzi was so overcome by winning the Derby that he instructed his chef to float a pearl in every plate of watercress soup served at dinner that night. At 10 p.m. carriages would arrive to carry their bejewelled occupants to one of the great Mayfair residences – Devonshire House, perhaps, or Londonderry House or Spencer House – where the grand staircase leading to the ballroom would be wound around with thick garlands of lilies, the musky-sweet scent filling the candlelit space. Dance music was usually provided by a band, but the rich, golden voice of Enrico Caruso had started to resound from crimson enamel horns, the huge metal tropical flowers of a thousand gramophones. New dances accompanied the new music, and couples took to the floor in the turkey trot, the bunny-hug and the chicken scramble.

No one referred to ‘weekends’. The term was considered ‘common’ or, in the current vogue term, ‘canaille’. The rich would leave London not on a Friday but for a ‘Saturday-to-Monday’. On Saturday ‘The Noah’s Ark’, a huge domed trunk containing enough clothes for six changes a day, would be loaded into the car or, for more distant destinations, a train and transported to country houses belonging to families whose names would have been familiar to Shakespeare. The Northumberlands welcomed their guests to Alnwick, the Salisburys to Hatfield, and the Warwicks to Warwick Castle. Between arrival on Saturday and departure on Monday morning, a sequence of pleasures would unfold. There were tennis parties and croquet matches, bicycle rides followed by picnic lunches, their charm enhanced by white lacy

Reviews for The Perfect Summer

[merrymary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An evocative book about one single summer - 1911 in England, just before the world changed forever.As the narrative shows, so many threads of world-changing events were already in existence just waiting for the spark to set them off. The book tracks the weather, the Royal Family, the servant class, the striking workers, the potential for trouble from the King's cousin Kaiser Wilhelm, the decadent young rich, the opulent "monied," and the newly-rich-but-crude middle class. Fascinating and most highly recommended.

[kraaivrouw · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this, but I didn't love it. The author had access to lots of different sources in telling the story of the end of the Edwardian era and chunks of the book are riveting, but lots of it rambles around in a random kind of way that detracts from the overall arc.It's probably difficult for Americans to really understand what WWI meant to a generation of Englishmen. The casualty figures are staggering - 880,000 from the UK plus another 200,000 from other countries in the British Empire - essentially an entire generation was lost to the trenches.There are moments in this book where the author deftly captures the tenor of the times, but too often the clarity is muddied and the sense of what was lost is, well, lost.

[panopticon2_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Superb. This is historical storytelling at its best, in my opinion. There are far more detailed, in-depth studies of the period out there, but this isn't one of those (nor does it aim to be). A beautifully and skilfully-woven assemblage of vignettes from a long, hot summer of the Edwardian prelude. I relished every word.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a kind of haunting study of the summer of 1911 in England. The reader feels as if he knows so much more than the people who are being discussed, since the forthcoming Great War is not mentioned but one is acutley aware that Rupert Brooke, Seigfried Sassoon, Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipting, Raymond Asquith, George V, and all the others we are told about are going to undergo the trauma of the Great War. I confess I did not enjoy the book as much as I was reading it, even though one was fully aware of the great shadow the people did not see coming, but after I finished the book I look back on it as poignant brooding account.

[whiskey3pa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not too deep but an enertaining series of anecdotes giving snapshots of the summer in question. The author gives a nice feel for the people and the society of the day, less than the gov't. While there are certainly deeper and more extensive looks at this period this book still warrants reading.

[liz1564 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Perfect Summer is Nicolson's light and frothy look at the Coronation Summer of 1911 when George V was crowned. Nicolson concentrates on the upper classes and their antics during the celebrations leading up and following the coronation. One chapter is devoted to the deb of the year Diana Manners (later Lady Duff-Cooper), a stunning and witty beauty who cut a swath wherever she went. Diana and her fellow debutantes attend elaborate themed balls in costumes that would house a working class family for a year. During the three-day house parties in the country, guests were expected to change as much as six times a day for the various activities and meals. A woman needed the all-imported personal maid to strap her into a bone-crushing corset and to make sure the artificial hair pieces stayed firmly attached to her hapless scalp. Shoes were dainty and small, even if the unfortunate wearer had feet used to hiking the highlands and riding to hounds.There is servant gossip and social scandal, plays where the goers are more interesting than the drama, and the first visit of Diaghilev and Nijinsky to London. All this described in loving detail as the the people with money attempted to avoid the plague of boredom. Nicolson hints in the early chapters that possible trouble might be brewing with the trade unions and, after the coronation, strikes occur across the country. But only one chapter is devoted to the strikers and the trials of the poor who are unable to leave the cities and are becoming overcome by the exceptional heat of the perfect summer.But for most readers it is much more fun to read about the antics of the aristocrats than the plight of a family starving because the breadwinner is on the picket line and Nicolson delivers her chosen topics with charm and humor. Still, there is the cloud of a war looming, even in 1911, as Germany lauds its new 20th century navy. Privileged life, as lived in 1911, will soon be only a memory of costume balls, six dress changes a day, and house parties with delicious secrets.

[ficusfan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am reading it for my RL Fiction group - we do non-fiction as well.It was interesting, had lots of details, a narrow focus, but needed a bit more context. It is subtitled 'Just Before the Storm' , but the only thing I can come up with is WWI. It was 3 years off however, so not really 'Just Before'. They were going through social change and conflict over it on several levels, but I imagine that is true all the time everywhere. If not the society would be dead.I thought she could have set the stage a bit better at the start too. I had some familiarity with the time period, not sure if someone who is new to the subject would be lost or not.It is a look at the summer of 1911, and the people mentioned are used as examples of the classes, incidents and the tone she was including in the book, their stories are not the point of the book. Have seen reviews were people are confused about that, because it does move around and people and their stories pop in and out.

[jaylia3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fun read set in England just before WWI. There was so much that interested me--young Winston Churchill, King Edward and his reluctant queen, etc--that the to-be-read pile by my bed got bigger and bigger the farther I got into the book.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm with the majority on this one: the book was interesting but not extraordinary, and depending on the focus of individual chapters, I was either intrigued or bored. Nicholson's subjects change from the Coronation to labor strikes, from the arrival of the Ballet Russe to hop-picking vacations, from the debut of Lady Diana Manners to a butler's memoirs. She covers all aspects of society and events in the last summer before the outbreak of World War II. The pages are scattered with the stars of the age: Nijinsky, Nellie Melba, Winston Churchill, Rupert Brooke, Rosa Lewis ('The Duchess of Duke Street'), Virginia Stephen later (Woolf), Augustus John, Emmeline Pankhurst, and a bevy of royals and aristocratic socoialites. While Nicolson does give a strong sense of what daily life must have been like for the various classes in that relatively carefree summer, the book at times becomes repetitious, partly because of its overlapping structure. Recommended for those with high interest and some prior knowledge in this period, but it may not be enjoyable to others.

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

An alternate title might have been What the Aristocracy Did in the Long Hot Summer of 1911. This proves that it takes more than being the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West to be able to write a good book. Disappointing.

[rubyscarlett-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first half of the book could be called The Rich at Play, really. It's an overview of everything the rich would do during that summer to keep boredom at bay a snapshot of the coronation, it's entertaining but gets redundant. The book becomes a bit more than just fluff later on when the author focuses on the country at large, the massive series of strikes motivated by poor wages and appalling poverty and quotes heavily from What the Butler Winked At in an attempt to report on the condition of domestic staff at that time. Very readable as always but there are better, more well-rounded and comprehensive books out there. The author tries so hard to make it seem like the summer of 1911 embodied the Edwardian era before the storm of WWI and to an extent she succeeds in proving that but I feel that her topic was a little too narrow so she felt the need to pack the first half with one too many details. Juliet Nicolson is a very good author if you're interested in the period, though, but her other book post-WW1, The Great Silence, is infinitely better (and I'm saying that while being more interested in pre-WW1 Edwardian era myself).

[pennsylady · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In The Perfect Summer...England 1911, Just Before the Storm, the storm can be defined as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo and the beginning of World War I.We have a glimpse of the sundown of the Edwardian era, as we're privy to four months of summer storytelling in England.These are times before irrevocable change and in a period where upheavals are sometimes subtle, yet continual.We're told we are viewing through the eyes of "a debutante, a choirboy, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler, and the queen. "That should pique your interest...And, bear in mind, we're tracing the crowning of George V, aristocracy dealing with a full season of parties, as well as the standstill effects of industrial strikes and deleterious temperatures.4 ★I'm hoping to locate a subsequent look at Britain through The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson

[staramber · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alright, this was a perfectly enjoyable book and a nice break from the snippets of history I’ve been reading about lately but it was a break. Rather than a book about the summer of 1911 I felt like I was reading an extended article. Nothing really went into enough detail, the snippets of personal histories may as well have been a list, and cheeky asides and knowing glances to the reader got irritating after the 20th page. Yes, we do know what happens next which was a good job as the epilogue didn’t even cover half the cast of characters. Not to mention the massive jump that was made from 1911 to 1914. Overall it was an enjoyable read but for me it just didn’t take me there. I felt like history was being related through the celebrities and comments of today rather than for the amazing, interesting time it was

[kasthu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Perfect Summer chronicles the summer of 1911—one of the hottest summers of the 20th century in England. The coronation of George V took place in June 1911, and the summer was characterized by multiple strikes. It was one of the last few summers before WWI, one of the last summers of the Edwardian period, and a summer in which everything seemed idyllic.The book is arranged chronologically, from May to September 1911, and tells the story from the point of view of many different people—from queens to choirboys. Because of this method of organizing the book, it sometimes seems a little disorganized; there’s no central theme to any of the chapters (which are divided into the months of summer) and as a result they seem a bit unfocused. The book covers a lot of ground, too, from political events to social goings-on and beyond. I did like how Nicolson focused on the stories of various movers and shakers of the summer, among them May of Teck, Virginia Stephen and Leonard Woolf, Winston Churchill, and the bestselling novelist Elinor Glyn.The content itself is interesting, and I learned a lot about the social niceties of the period, but there didn’t seem to be a theory or theme to this book. Because the author has a personal attachment to the story (she’s the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson), she manages somehow to insert her ancestors’ names and ancestral home repeatedly into her narrative (despite the fact that Vita Sackville-West was only a teenager in the summer of 1911), so that was a bit jarring for me. I thought the idea behind the book was interesting, especially since it’s been exactly a hundred years since the events in the book took place. I just wish the author’s execution of it had been better!

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting look at a record hot summer on the eve of WWI. This time was a clash of the old and new both in technology and in social order.