The Amazing Mrs Livesey by Freda Marnie Nicholls

Author:Freda Marnie Nicholls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

25

MR BEECH & THE WEDDING OF THE CENTURY

Just a month after arriving in Sydney, Ethel was introduced to a middle-aged civil servant by the name of Rex Beech.

A divorcé, James Rex Beech had originally come to Australia in 1912, hoping to seek his fortune as a miner. He had then fought in the Great War, married and divorced in short succession, and was now working for the Federal Treasury in Sydney. He was from a fairly well-off family back in England, and like Ethel spoke with a clipped British accent.

Mr Beech and Mrs Livesey were often seen together over the next month. When it was decided they would marry, her new friends were happy for the wealthy widow.

With all her new money, Ethel decided to have a wedding that would be talked about for years to come. She certainly succeeded.

Her engagement to Rex Beech was celebrated in style with an elaborate party at the Australia Hotel for her closest group of society friends, where she spent over £300 (nearly $20,000) in one evening, gleefully showing off to all her platinum engagement ring, set with 43 aquamarines and diamonds.

Her wedding ring was being especially designed and contained another 32 diamonds, costing over £150. She also had an extravagant wedding dress made by Edward Molyneux, designer to the stars and creator of royal wedding gowns, and was having it flown in from his studio in Paris. Cattleya orchids in shades of mauve, purple and cyclamen were being specially grown in a hothouse outside Sydney for her bridal bouquet, which was to cost £50 alone, as well as bouquets for her four bridesmaids; the church and the reception were also to be filled with extra large and expensive floral arrangements. Doves were to be released from the magnificent sandstone All Saints Church in Woollahra as the bride and groom emerged, and the wedding service itself would feature a full choral ceremony, with Australian soprano Miss Jean Hatton and world-renowned Australian flautist Neville Amadio performing. The Australia Hotel was booked for the reception, with an unlimited supply of the best French champagne; an enormous four-tiered wedding cake topped with another elaborate floral arrangement was to be the centrepiece of an extravagant buffet, the likes of which had not been seen since well before the war.

The tabloids got a decent whiff of the wedding, which was being touted as the society wedding of the year, and ran exclusive stories about the twenty-stone bride to be.

Ten days before the December wedding, Ethel was sitting in the garden of her Edgecliff flat with her secretary Miss Dick in tow, speaking with a young guest reporter with the Daily Mirror, who was a society lady herself brought in by the editor to find out more about the wedding and its bride. The editor thought her perfect to interview the wealthy cotton heiress everyone was talking about. The accompanying photographer snapped photos of Mrs Livesey and her secretary, in the courtyard of her Art Deco flat, and had to suppress a smile as the large lady before him tried to hold her new toy Pekinese puppy.

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