Free Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks Page B

to see the sumptuous lunch table she had
arranged for the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. An enthusiastic Mrs Vanderbilt escorted us into the large panelled dining room, allowing me to take a sugar-dusted marshmallow from one of the
ornate silver bowls, utterly convinced that seeing her table setting was an essential part of a young girl’s education. My parents were horrified at a newspaper headline about ‘royal
refugees’ going to the races with Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the gossip columns ran a story about how, morning and evening, you could spot the ‘well-born evacuees’ walking down
Fifth Avenue. In fact the walk to our schools each morning was the highlight of my day for, if it wasn’t raining, Zelle would buy us a brioche and a slab of chocolate that we would eat on a
bench in Central Park, while the pastry was still warm.
    School in America was an eye-opener. After fielding such questions as ‘Do you have electricity in England’; forcing myself to tolerate the endless mimicking of my accent; convincing
the girls that Patricia and I did not shorten our names to ‘Pat’ and ‘Pam’; and history being turned upside down – from the American Revolution to the War of
Independence and finding that all the goodies had become baddies – I was astonished that during ‘recess’ my fellow classmates undertook a ferocious shoplifting competition at the
local ‘drugstore’. I would rather have died than steal something, so I removed myself to the soda fountain. As at school back home, I found it stressful being with so many girls each
and every day, until during an afternoon game of tag – the sole aim of which seemed to be to push over as many people as possible – I noticed another girl, Anne de Rothschild, who
seemed to prefer to play on her own. We became firm friends and played happily and quietly together. After a couple of weeks I was taken aside and told it really might be better for me not to play
with her. I racked my brains as to why until I realised: however wealthy you were at this school, if you were Jewish you would always be seen as different. They obviously did not know that I had
Jewish ancestors and I continued to play with Anne.
    Despite attending school, being with Patricia and Zelle, and receiving the kindness of the impeccably behaved New Yorkers, I couldn’t settle, especially as news of my father’s
‘adventures’ – family code for life-threatening events – reached us. Southampton had been heavily bombed, as had Brook House again (luckily no one was there at the time and
all the main furniture, pictures and even the Whistler panels in the boudoir had been put into storage at the beginning of the war). I felt bad, here in what seemed like another world, as if I
should be back at home suffering like everybody else. I wasn’t exactly unhappy to begin with – there were too many new experiences and things that made Patricia and me laugh. For
example, it was important for Mrs Vanderbilt to be seen at the opera and she decided to take Patricia with her – that is, to some of the opera. Eager to make an entrance, Mrs Vanderbilt would
never arrive until the end of the first act, whereupon she would enter her box with the diamonds of her sumptuous Cartier necklace ablaze as the lights went up for the interval. After she felt that
she had been noticed sufficiently, she would take her seat. At the end of the second act, Mrs Vanderbilt felt she had done her bit and would go home, so Patricia got to know only the second act of
the operas. But what made me chuckle even more than this was the story that Mrs Vanderbilt had once given a dinner party when the Royal Shakespeare Company were playing in New York. A young man at
her table had apologised and asked whether he might be excused from the table because he was going to see
Hamlet
. Mrs Vanderbilt had looked slightly nonplussed and so he explained,
‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ whereupon her face lit up and