Free The Horror of Love by Lisa Hilton Page A

flat with one maid. The status of the Maiden Aunt had remained generally unchanged since Victorian days. She subsisted on an allowance carefully designed to provide minimum necessaries, a sum considered sufficient but not excessive for Unmarried Daughters and Younger Sons of peers. Whereas the Younger Sons were free to supplement their income by going into a profession, the armed services, Empire Building or even Trade, such avenues were firmly closed to the Unmarried Daughters, who as time went on sank into the twilight state of aunthood. 2
    This was quite a realistic possibility to Nancy: a lifetime’s dependence, resented and resentful, on her father and brother. Little had changed for the impoverished gentlewoman since Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility: to Nancy, a lifetime’s dependence on father then brother, resented and resentful, was quite a realistic possibility. Marriage would bring freedom, status and, she thought, a secure social position, and Peter was now her only prospect of acquiring them.
    At first, they both decided to be madly in love. Peter wrote to Hamish, saving Nancy’s dignity with an honourable fiction: ‘It is absurd for me to pretend that I am sorry for taking your Nancy from you, but I know that it is hell for you and I wish it wasn’t, I am so much in love with her that I can understand how you feel.’ To Nancy he gushed: ‘Darling, darling … My darling I am glad this all started as a joke, I love you I love you, my darling … I should like to see your head lying on your pillow. This Peter who loves only you.’
    The Rennells were less convinced. When they read of the engagement in the Daily Telegraph (Peter had not troubled to tell them the news), they found it inexplicable. Lady Rennell suggested that ‘as usual, it was all made up’. But Peter had manfully sat through a two-hour luncheon with Lord Redesdale at Rutland Gate and obtained his consent. He even managed to remain sober for the occasion. ‘Well, the happiness, ’ wrote Nancyto Mark Ogilvie-Grant. ‘Oh goodness gracious I am happy. You must get married darling, everybody should if they want a receipt for absolute bliss.’ Bounding towards the altar on waves of joy, Nancy was even prepared to like her new in-laws, an opinion she was swiftly to revise. When the Rennells came to spend a weekend at Swinbrook, with Nancy in permanent terror lest Lord Redesdale explode, she pronounced them ‘charming’ and Lady Rennell ‘really rather gorgeous’.
    A pretty little house was found for the couple, Rose Cottage at Strand-on-the-Green near Kew. Nancy knew that they were going to be ‘damn poor’ but was clearly thrilled at the prospect of escaping her ageing-deb status and finally beginning life as an adult woman. Peter struck a rather ominous note as to his expectations of his bride when he remarked that Lord Redesdale refused to ‘tie himself up about a settlement. I hope he does his stuff about your allowance even if he sours on the marriage’, but Nancy was too happy to pay attention. She ordered her wedding dress, in white chiffon with narrow frills, which was to be a present from her thoughtful ex-brother-in-law Bryan Guinness, and decided on a bouquet of white gardenias and roses. The eleven page boys were to wear white satin, while the mother of the bride opted for brown velvet and a plumed hat. Lord Redesdale gave his eldest daughter away at St John’s, Smith Square, on Monday 4 December 1933 and, after a reception for over two hundred guests at Rutland Gate, Nancy changed into the dark green woollen coat and skirt and the duck-egg jumper (carefully chosen to ‘go with’ though not to ‘match’ her suit) in which she was to begin married life.
    Peter’s parents lent their apartment in the Palazzo Giulia in Rome for the honeymoon. Although Nancy loved Italy, she never quite took to the Eternal City. To Mark Ogilvie-Grant, she wrote teasingly: ‘I am having a really dreadful time, dragging a sprained