SIBYL COLEFAX
Lady Colefax began decorating in 1930. She was
well-connected and also ahead of her time: her circle of friends and
acquaintances provided her with clients and she became a very successful
businesswoman. British diplomat Harold Nicholson wrote in his diary: ‘Lunch
with Sibyl Colefax at Boulestin. She tells me that she has made £2,000 last
year by her own efforts. She gets up by candle-light and fusses till midnight.
A brave woman’.
Sibyl’s talent for creating comfortable interiors that were
stylish but never pretentious was the secret of her appeal to her influential
clients. She was friendly with royalty, including the Duke of Windsor and
Wallis Simpson, with entertainers such as Charlie Chaplin and Cole Porter, and
with much of the British aristocracy. When, in 1938, her services were so in
demand that she needed to expand, she asked a rising young star of interior
decorating, John Fowler, to join her in her business at Bruton Street in
Mayfair. In 1939, the company name was changed to Sibyl Colefax & John
Fowler.
Sibyl, Lady Colefax (née Halsey; 1874 – 22 September 1950)
was a notable English interior decorator and socialite in the first half of the
twentieth century.
She was born in Wimbledon into a noted family in society and
lived in Cawnpore, India, until the age of 20 when she went on the Grand Tour.
In 1901, she married patent lawyer Sir Arthur Colefax, who was briefly the MP
for Manchester South West in 1910. They set up home at Argyll House, King's
Road, Chelsea and at Old Buckhurst in Kent. Widely admired for her taste after
she had lost most of her fortune in the Wall Street Crash she began to decorate
professionally, using her formidable address book for contacts. She was able to
purchase the decorating division of the antique dealers Stair and Andrew of
Bruton Street, Mayfair and established Sibyl Colefax Ltd in partnership with
Peggy Ward, the Countess Munster. On her 'retirement' (following a family
tragedy) Peggy Ward advised her to take on John Fowler (1906-1977) as her
partner, which she did in April 1938. The advent of war cut short this
partnership. During the Second World War, she organised a soup kitchen and
continued to entertain. She often held small lunch parties at The Dorchester
known as 'Ordinaries' after which the guest would receive a small bill.
In 1944 the business, managed by John Fowler, took a lease
on 39 Brook Street, Mayfair where it remains to this day. Also in 1944 Sibyl
Colefax sold the business to Nancy Tree (Nancy Lancaster as she became in 1948)
for a sum in the order of £10000. She renamed the business Sibyl Colefax and
John Fowler Ltd, the name continuing today as the decorating division of the
Colefax Group Plc.
Sibyl Colefax died at her home in Lord North Street,
Westminster on 22 September 1950. Harold Nicolson penned an affectionate
tribute that appeared shortly after in The Listener.
Lord North Street is a short street of Georgian terraced
housing running between Smith Square and Great Peter Street in Westminster, the
political heartland of British government. As such they have always commanded
high fees and featured in many dramatic storylines.Past residents include the
socialite Sibyl Colefax, founder of the Colefax and Fowler fabrics and
wallpaper company,and Harold Wilson, twice Prime minister who in November 1974
alleged that renegade MI5 operatives had broken into his home.More recent
residents include Jonathan Aitken and Theresa Gorman. The street is named after
the 2nd Earl of Guilford, who was known for most of his life under his courtesy
title Lord North, and was Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782.
A Passion for Friendship by Kirsty McLeod. Michael Joseph,
London, 1991.
Sibyl Colefax (1874-1950) was a society hostess of 1930s
London; remembered, too, as the founder of the interior design company, Colefax
and Fowler. This is a portrait of her life and her association with the
personalities she brought together. This book explores Sibyl's friendships -
with Harold Nicolson, Diana Cooper, the Windsors, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Max
Beerbohm, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West,
Bernard Berenson, Thornton Wilder and many others - providing a view of the
celebrities of the period. She also analyzes Sibyl's unique nature that drew
her to them: though some criticized her for "collecting" famous
names, others found behind the relentlessly social personality a genuine and
loyal friend, full of kindness and love of life. The author also wrote
"The Wives of Downing Street", "Drums and Trumpets" and
"The Last Summer".
Great Hostesses by Brian Masters. Constable, London, 1982.
Siân Evans’s enjoyable account of the lives of leading
British female socialites overstates their influence
Lara Feigel
Sun 11 Sep 2016 09.00 BST Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018
23.59 GMT
In 1931, Nancy Astor, owner of one of the most expensive
houses in England, accompanied George Bernard Shaw to the Soviet Union. Armed
with enough tinned food for two weeks, she embarked on the trip with the
entitled confidence of the English aristocracy, though she was an American by
birth. “When will you stop killing people?” she asked Stalin, who’d granted her
a two-hour interview. “We are living in a state of war,” he replied. “When
peace comes we shall stop it.”
With sufficient wealth and privilege, English women could be
anywhere and talk to anyone. Siân Evans’s new book is an account of six English
hostesses (three originally American and one Scottish) who flourished in the
interwar years. Nancy Astor, Mrs Laura Corrigan, Sibyl, Lady Colefax, Lady Emerald
Cunard, Lady Londonderry and Mrs Margaret Greville all lived in houses that are
difficult to conceive of as domestic residences now, when most of them are
owned by the National Trust. The grandest was Cliveden, the Astors’
Buckinghamshire home, where at the end of Nancy’s life the Profumo affair
began.
Evans is too anxious
to defend her subjects to scrutinise their place in history
For Evans, this is more than an escapist tale of privilege.
She claims both that “to be a great hostess was a career choice for those
resourceful and energetic women” and that her six “queen bees” had “profound
effects on British history”. Neither claim is convincing. Being a great hostess
is not a career choice and it demeans the pioneering women who did manage to
have jobs in this period to call it one. Indeed, some of these hostesses also
had careers, which took up more time than their hostessing.
When her husband inherited a title and was debarred from his
political seat in 1919, Nancy Astor stood for election. As the first female MP
to take her seat, she managed to weather male disapprobation and to influence
the law, pushing through an act in 1923 banning the sale of alcohol to those
under 18. “When you took your seat, I felt as if a woman had come into my
bathroom and I had only a sponge with which to defend myself,” Churchill
complained. “You are not handsome enough to have worries of that kind,” Astor
retorted. Meanwhile, Sibyl Colefax set up a successful interior-decorating
business, starting her 12-hour days at 7am so that she could finish in time for
the daily round of drinks and dinner, changing her clothes in the back of her
chauffeur-driven Rolls on the way.
Did these women have much influence as hostesses? Certainly
between them they managed to entice most of the social, political and artistic
elite to their competing salons. But ultimately, this was a series of parties.
Reminiscing about Emerald Cunard, Oswald Mosley looked back on her house as a
place where “the cleverest met with the most beautiful and that is what social
life should be”. No doubt it was all “enormous fun”, as he recalled, but surely
Astor had more influence as an MP than she did at home. The suggestion that
they influenced art also seems overstated. Though their houses were popular,
they were not especially respected by serious writers and artists. Mocking
Colefax, Virginia Woolf coined the term “Colefaxismus” for casual remarks
intended to imply privileged knowledge of a subject. Emerald Cunard’s influence
in the opera scene was acquired chiefly as a result of the financial support
she gave her lover, the conductor Thomas Beecham. But this was an increasingly
humiliating affair with a serially unfaithful man.
Most of them lost face in the lead up to the second world
war, when all but one were sympathetic to Hitler. The Londonderrys made their
final visit to Germany in June 1938 and insisted afterwards that Britain should
“extend the hand of true friendship to the Third Reich” for the sake of world
peace. The hostesses did their best to regain prestige by aiding the war effort
and some were impressive in their sacrifices and achievements. Laura Corrigan
remained in Paris once it was overrun by Nazis, managing to sell her jewellery
to Goering in order to support wounded soldiers in France.
There are important historical questions to be asked here,
but Evans is too anxious to defend her subjects to scrutinise their place in
history. She also doesn’t seem especially interested in analysing her cast as
individuals. The portraits are done with a broad brush and I found that I
didn’t know these women intimately enough to care what happened to them and was
frequently inclined to agree with Harold Nicolson, complaining that “the harm
which these silly, selfish hostesses do is immense”. Nicolson didn’t turn down
their invitations, though, and I didn’t stop reading about them. Insofar as
it’s always pleasurable to read about the quirks and feats of eccentric and redoubtable
women, the book, like their parties, is often “enormous fun”.
.webp)
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