Tatler UK - 08.2019

BYS TA NDE R

CULTURE

Be it in the Commons or

at Cliveden, Nancy Astor

reigned, says chatelaine

Natalie Livingstone, 100

years after the first-ever

female MP took her seat

the

par t y

girl

tatler.com Tatler August 2019 43

Above, Natalie Livingstone

at Cliveden. Left, John

Singer Sargent’s 1906

portrait of Viscountess Astor

hangs in the Great Hall

PHOTOGRAPHS: LOTTIE DAVIES; ANTONY CROLLA

everyone from Gandhi to Charlie

Chaplin, by way of Churchill and the

Asquiths, as well as such literary

lions as HG Wells, JM Barrie and

Rudyard Kipling – all stalwarts of

the grand salons Astor held, served

by liveried footmen with their hair

powdered by flour and water. Today,

her portrait by John Singer Sargent

hangs proudly in the Great Hall of

Cliveden, her chin slightly aloft, her

hands folded behind her pale blue

silk dress.

But Astor’s life was not all gloss.

She may have sparkled as a hostess

and a politician, but underneath

the wit and the passion, she could

be cruel. She was notorious for her

temper, and her children frequently

bore the brunt. One of her sons,

the Hon David Astor, wrote that

his elder siblings were ‘shockingly

treated’ by their unpredictable

mother. Even when she was not in

one of her most vitriolic moods,

her conversation was barbed, and

her own thick skin meant that she

failed to consider the damage caused

by an insult. Perhaps the most troubling

aspect of her character – one that

I found difficult to digest while

researching my book, The Mistresses

of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal,

Power and Intrigue in an English

Stately Home, was her bigotry, and in

particular her anti-Semitism, which

was fierce enough to stand out

against upper-class prejudice in

Thirties England.

There’s no escaping the fact she

was a woman of contradictions and

controversy – but who, despite her

flaws, advanced female emancipation,

invigorated High Society and cham-

pioned the arts. The atmosphere here

was electric; under Astor’s sway,

Cliveden was at the beating heart of

the English social scene. (It still is:

the Duchess of Sussex stayed here

the night before her wedding.)

One of my aims for Cliveden has

been to bring back that intellectual

electricity by reviving the literary

salons so loved by Astor. And so

together with the historians Andrew

Roberts and Simon Sebag Montefiore,

and former Tatler Editor Catherine

Ostler, I launched the Cliveden

Literary Festival three years ago, to

evoke the spirit of the Astors’ weekend

revelries. Once again this wonderful

house is full of writers and politicians,

the contemporary heirs to Cliveden’s

thrilling guests.

It’s now a century since Astor put

on that velvet hat and changed the

world for British women. I very much

hope that, were she able to join us at

Cliveden now, she would find herself

very much at home.

Cliveden Literary Festival is on 28-29

September. clivedenliteraryfestival.org

A

s the minute hand of Big

Ben ticked towards four

o’clock on the afternoon

of 1 December 1919, Nancy Astor

smoothed her black suit, straight-

ened the velvet three-cornered hat

that rested on her fair hair, and

began to walk along the corridors of

the Palace of Westminster. The 40-

year-old American-born mother of

six, slight at five-foot-two and with

piercing blue eyes, was walking into

the history books, too: she was

about to take the oath of office to

become the first female British MP

to sit in the House of Commons

alongside 706 men. (A Sinn Féin

woman, Countess Markewicz, had

been elected before, but refused to

take her seat.) A leading suffragette

declared that Astor had made all the

pain and suffering worthwhile.

The splendid peculiarity of her

position must have struck her all the

more profoundly that evening when

Astor returned to the Italianate neo-

Renaissance mansion in Berkshire

she called home – Cliveden, rebuilt

by Sir Charles Barry in the 1850s,

some years after he’d finished the

Palace of Westminster. She was, after

all, mistress of one great house and

pioneer in another.

The Astors were the last family to

use Cliveden as a private residence,

finally leaving it in 1968. In 2012,

my husband and I acquired the

landmark mansion and turned it

into a luxury hotel. And though I

have always been captivated by Astor’s

brilliant, colourful and controversial

character, being at Cliveden has

brought her vividly to life. Over the

years I have walked its many corri-

dors where her indomitable spirit

pervades, wandered through the

rooms in which she once entertained

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