Chicago.
At some point, Esmond hit upon Hollywood as a place where he might have strong earning potential, either as the foreign correspondent for the London News Chronicle or as a screenwriter. Roughton suggested they look up Walter Arensberg, “an elderly millionaire, very good natured with a magnificent collection of contemporary paintings and a belief that Bacon wrote Shakespeare.” He also encouraged them to meet homegrown artists like left-wing actor Lionel Stander, experimental filmmaker Ken McGowan, and Edward Weston, who “is very nice indeed, with a character much like Henry Moore’s.” In Carmel, “Bloomsbury on the Pacific,” the person to see was Ella Winter, “an English communist who was married to Lincoln Steffens. She knows a lot of people in Hollywood and will give you many introductions.”
Decca and Esmond knew they needed a reliable form of income that would work in all locales and weather. What had they to sell? They had their inexhaustible energy, the benefit of their intense though brief life
experiences. How to use their resources, wit, and prolixity and the accident of their birth to turn the (assumed) American weakness for British aristocracy to their advantage? Someone suggested a lecture tour; others had tried it and made out like bandits.
A letter they received from acquaintance Walter Starkie of Dublin lit a fire under that plan. His advice:
In America what they want is originality and unconventional ideas. They must always hear something for the first time, if they have ever heard what you tell them before, they look on you with contempt. The easiest prey for the visiting lecturers are without question the Women’s Clubs. You should do well with your companions if you give them talks on “England’s gilded youth,” and “how the British Army gets recruits.” You must remember that in some of the God-forsaken towns of the Middle West you and your party will become the sensation of the week. This is flattering at the time, but do not expect them to remember you after you have left because memories like emotions are short lived in U.S.A. There is a great deal of snobbery among American women and you would do well to cultivate it, so I should keep handy your subject “how to meet the King.”
Decca and Esmond thought this through and strategized accordingly. They recruited three co-lecturers. Sheila Legg (the same Sheila who recommended Decca’s abortionist) would discuss various types of men in her lecture “Men from the Ritz to the Fish and Chips Stand.” Philip Toynbee would offer the titillatingly titled “Sex Life at Oxford University” and, as a Father’s Day special, “Arnold Toynbee: Historian but First and Foremost ‘Dad.’” Decca would draw on her early observations in “The Inner life of an English Debutante.” And as manager of the lecture series, Esmond would offer “The Truth About Winston Churchill.”
They eventually had to junk the lecture tour idea when all their traveling companions dropped out. The start-up expenses deterred Legg, who
couldn’t raise her fare to America. Then Toynbee fell in love and promptly lost his hunger to escape England. The world was unpredictable and lumbering toward war, but under Esmond’s demanding management, his “fellow lecturers” might have felt themselves already in service. In his memoir, Toynbee later admitted that what he feared was the couple’s “undeliberate but crushing domination.”
Once Decca and Esmond actually started to meet the Americans they had only fantasized about, they were pleasantly surprised. Decca noted early on that New Yorkers elaborated whenever they had the chance and seemed incapable of giving a simple reply. Americans in general rarely seemed suspicious, didn’t hold the couple’s youth against them, and actually liked engaging strangers—going as far as to invite them into their homes (an act Decca thought would particularly shock her parents). Such universal friendliness
At some point, Esmond hit upon Hollywood as a place where he might have strong earning potential, either as the foreign correspondent for the London News Chronicle or as a screenwriter. Roughton suggested they look up Walter Arensberg, “an elderly millionaire, very good natured with a magnificent collection of contemporary paintings and a belief that Bacon wrote Shakespeare.” He also encouraged them to meet homegrown artists like left-wing actor Lionel Stander, experimental filmmaker Ken McGowan, and Edward Weston, who “is very nice indeed, with a character much like Henry Moore’s.” In Carmel, “Bloomsbury on the Pacific,” the person to see was Ella Winter, “an English communist who was married to Lincoln Steffens. She knows a lot of people in Hollywood and will give you many introductions.”
Decca and Esmond knew they needed a reliable form of income that would work in all locales and weather. What had they to sell? They had their inexhaustible energy, the benefit of their intense though brief life
experiences. How to use their resources, wit, and prolixity and the accident of their birth to turn the (assumed) American weakness for British aristocracy to their advantage? Someone suggested a lecture tour; others had tried it and made out like bandits.
A letter they received from acquaintance Walter Starkie of Dublin lit a fire under that plan. His advice:
In America what they want is originality and unconventional ideas. They must always hear something for the first time, if they have ever heard what you tell them before, they look on you with contempt. The easiest prey for the visiting lecturers are without question the Women’s Clubs. You should do well with your companions if you give them talks on “England’s gilded youth,” and “how the British Army gets recruits.” You must remember that in some of the God-forsaken towns of the Middle West you and your party will become the sensation of the week. This is flattering at the time, but do not expect them to remember you after you have left because memories like emotions are short lived in U.S.A. There is a great deal of snobbery among American women and you would do well to cultivate it, so I should keep handy your subject “how to meet the King.”
Decca and Esmond thought this through and strategized accordingly. They recruited three co-lecturers. Sheila Legg (the same Sheila who recommended Decca’s abortionist) would discuss various types of men in her lecture “Men from the Ritz to the Fish and Chips Stand.” Philip Toynbee would offer the titillatingly titled “Sex Life at Oxford University” and, as a Father’s Day special, “Arnold Toynbee: Historian but First and Foremost ‘Dad.’” Decca would draw on her early observations in “The Inner life of an English Debutante.” And as manager of the lecture series, Esmond would offer “The Truth About Winston Churchill.”
They eventually had to junk the lecture tour idea when all their traveling companions dropped out. The start-up expenses deterred Legg, who
couldn’t raise her fare to America. Then Toynbee fell in love and promptly lost his hunger to escape England. The world was unpredictable and lumbering toward war, but under Esmond’s demanding management, his “fellow lecturers” might have felt themselves already in service. In his memoir, Toynbee later admitted that what he feared was the couple’s “undeliberate but crushing domination.”
Once Decca and Esmond actually started to meet the Americans they had only fantasized about, they were pleasantly surprised. Decca noted early on that New Yorkers elaborated whenever they had the chance and seemed incapable of giving a simple reply. Americans in general rarely seemed suspicious, didn’t hold the couple’s youth against them, and actually liked engaging strangers—going as far as to invite them into their homes (an act Decca thought would particularly shock her parents). Such universal friendliness
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