Hello, Monica:
I suppose it’s appropriate to this thread that Bob calls you "Mon." He’s so cheeky that one!
Thanks for the info on Barbara Cartland the "track bunny." Evidently she went anywhere fun could take her. I know she loved flying, too, and even piloted gliders, carrying mail for which she was later awarded some sort of prize. Your family seems to have had a good time at Brooklands — or rather they did and you were just there!
Your mentioning old Barbara reminds me of my correspondence with her some years ago; she was quite a trooper, answering questions about her "deb" days and giving me permission to quote from her books (several of them mention Lucile). She was fairly upright for her class, as you say, never getting much past the tea cups with men in her youth. But I suspect it was because she was shy, not because she was so terribly moral. Her first novels were racy, whether or not her own life was, she wrote a play that was kicked out by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, and her gossip column was peppered with naughty innuendo. Of course, in time she became this crusader of virginity, the defender of sugary sweet romance in a cloud of pink. But then that was after she became the mother of a daughter. And don’t you bet she had her hands full reigning Raine in?!
When I met her in 1999-2000 the old warhorse was slowing down but she was still remarkably astute and lively for her 97 years. She wasn’t dressed in pink but she was wearing high heels that made her unsteady and I was afraid she was going to trip over her dogs as she showed me around her place. She gossiped the whole time, scolding me about "your naughty prime minister" (referring to Clinton and "Monicagate") and putting down the royals who "are just as awful," she said. She also told me she’d been asked to endorse a lesbian romance novel. "I suppose the cover will have two girls kissing!" she laughed. "Can you imagine it?" I didn’t dare tell her I could!
Anyway, obviously she was a lot of fun, and that day in Hatfield pouring tea for Dame Barbara (she wasn’t able to lift the pot) and listening to her stories is a fond memory. Old Babs died soon after my visit so it was sad and a little weird because, while waiting for my taxi, she and I stood at a window in her living room watching the rain, and she pointed to an old oak tree not many yards away. She said Queen Elizabeth I had planted it, that its acorns were magical and that she was going to be buried there.
