The Dark Side of the Sun by Elizabeth Palmer

Author:Elizabeth Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466876552
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

19

Taking up the pen again two days later.

The year I’m about to write about is 1911. At this point it occurs to me that perhaps it would be as well to start with a description of the other members of the household.

Rank dictates that I begin with Grandmother, Mrs Laetitia Adare, Grandfather having died two years prior to my arrival in England. I suppose Grandmother was the driving force behind retrieving me from Italy. Oddly enough, having succeeded in this aim, she hardly appeared to notice me unless, as constantly happened when I first arrived, I said the wrong thing. For example the day I asked whether either of my aunts smoked. Truly I had not realized what a heinous breach of manners this was. In Rome most of the women in my parents’ circle did. As it was I thought Grandmother was going to have a fit.

‘Ladies do not smoke,’ she pronounced, very rigid. There was no room for debate. It was stated as a fact. And then, as if to clear up one more possible source of embarrassment, ‘Nor, NOR, do they paint their lips, Sibyl!’

My mother, of course, had done both.

In the drawing-room there was a painting by Sargent of my grandmother in evening dress, bustled and stayed. Despite its grandeur, it had a wooden quality, I noticed, indicative of the artist having been bored by his subject. Nevertheless, in it she was as beautiful as jewellery and couture could make her (which was not very) and still could not hold a candle to my own eccentric parent. Even at my age, I recognized style when I saw it. Sargent would have enjoyed immortalizing Mama!

Grandmother did not exactly bully Aunts Margaret and Dorothea but she left them with no doubt as to who was in charge. In Rome, they would have had admirers, in England, I was beginning to think, nobody was allowed to admire anybody. Margaret and Dorothea r were up-to-date versions of Grandmother. Grandmother herself was clothed in the fashions of yesteryear. The wonderful clothes of Paul Poiret had passed her by though she could well afford them. They had passed by Margaret and Dorothea too. With all their money, not one of these women knew how to dress. Here I am conscious of sounding like my critical mother. Miss Buckley showed me pictures of Monsieur Poiret’s fashions and they were like nothing I had seen before. He had introduced a walking skirt called a trotteur which showed the ankles (!) and culottes(!!). And his evening cloaks were sumptuous. Just looking at them made me think of Mama. If I managed to write to her, I wondered if she would write back. Though even if she did send me a letter I would probably never have received it for I’m sure my post would have been opened and read by Grandmother before being passed on to me. Or not passed on to me, as the case may be. So far as I was aware no

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