Hats off to Lady Anne and those toff tales
Lawks. One’s eyes were on stalks at the revelations from Lady Glenconner in her marvellous new book Lady In waiting, which was serialised in the Mail this week.
Those who had been expecting the lavender-scented memories of a privileged aristocrat were in for a shock. Born Lady anne Coke (pronounced Cook, here we go), she was the daughter of the Earl of Leicester and grew up at Holkham Hall.
she was just a sweet lady-inwaiting from Norfolk when she married another grand aristo — Colin Tennant of Mustique fame — in 1956.
she was a virgin, who was anxious about her wedding night. Best ask mama for some advice? Best not.
‘all that my mother had told me about sex was: ‘Do you remember Daddy’s Labrador getting on top of Biscuit? well, that’s what happens when you get married, except you’ll probably be lying down.’
You may not be surprised to hear that things did not go well on Lady anne’s wedding night in Paris. The next evening, Tennant took her to a brothel to watch two strangers having sex.
‘I found it perfectly disgusting,’ she writes. when asked to join in, she said politely: ‘That’s very kind of you, but no thank you.’
since then, she was never able to relax in the French capital. ‘The next time Colin and I went there, he took me to a stage show featuring a man making love to a donkey.’
In every dream home, a heartache. The couple went on to have five children at a time and in a society where it was expected that the husbands would have affairs and the wives should just lump it. Not anne.
‘Once I knew that Colin had changed the playing field, I levelled it,’ she said, finding comfort with ‘a very good friend’.
she may have led a ritzy life, but I like her quiet bravery in somehow conquering all that casual cruelty.
Biscuit, anyone?