Ettie: The Intimate Life And Dauntless Spirit Of Lady Desborough

by Richard Davenport-Hines

The life of Lady Desborough - beautiful heiress, aristocratic hostess, unfaithful wife, tragic mother, Edwardian icon.

Born in 1867 and orphaned at three, Ettie Fane was brought up by a beloved grandmother and then two adoring, almost incestuous, bachelor uncles. At twenty she married Willy Grenfell, later Lord Desborough. Beautiful, rich, charming and clever, Ettie soon became a leading hostess at the two magnificent country houses she had inherited. Leading politicians, writers and artists were very much part of her circle.

But there was a dark side too, as this book will reveal. Ettie could be manipulative and cruel. Her eldest son Julian, after a nervous breakdown at Oxford, rejected her world and values. Nemesis and tragedy were not far away. In 1915 Julian died of war wounds. Six weeks later her second son Billy was killed in action. Her youngest son Ivo would be killed shortly after the war. But despite intense private misery, she reacted with outward courage and self-mastery. Grief revealed the greatness of her spirit. In the 1920s and 1930s she continued to collect new types, especially gifted young men, relishing people of all ages up to her death in 1952, a redoutable survivor from a vanished age.

• ISBN10: 0753825953
• ISBN13: 9780753825952
• Publish Date: 20 August 2009 (first published 28 August 2008)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 March 2013
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

On one level she lived a golden life, Lady Ethel (normally to everyone Ettie) Desborough, mixed with high society, lady in waiting at court, entertainer of politicians, princes and poets and confidant and correspondent with many of them. On the other hand she was an orphan from an early age, lost all three sons, two to World War I and one to a tragic accident; suffered from something like depression all her life and died in a crumbling mansion barely able to move and missing many of her friends.

She was a woman of spirit, a woman who knew her role in life and embraced it as bes she could but also worked ways around this role to influence people and ease things for everyone. The biography themes parts of her life; The Orphan - her youth; The Soul - where she builds her first coterie and finds friends, mostly for life; the Flirt - where she comes out and lands a husband; the Mother - she marries and has children; the Edwardian - where her morals and mental landscape is challenged by modern thinking; The Mourner - where world war I and subsequent years rob her and many of her friends of their children; The Grande Dame - where she rules her social circle; the Mother-in-Law - where her daughters marry; the Courtier - her relationship with the royal family and the Dowager - where her houses are taken for the war effort and she ages and her life comes to an end. If I every manage to cram in half of what she accomplished in my life, I will be happy.

I found it an interesting read, it brought the character to life and would be an invaluable tool for authors looking to create a character during her lifetime.