Beautiful heiress, accomplished flirt, aristocratic hostess, tragic
mother, and Edwardian icon, Ettie Desborough is a fascinating but
forgotten figure. She has been celebrated in countless memoirs but
this is the first biography of her, based on private family
archives and letters. Ettie Fane was born in 1867 and orphaned at
three. At 20 she married Willie Grenfell, later Lord Desborough, a
genial sportsman. Beautiful, rich, charming, and clever, she soon
became the center of the group known as "the Souls" and a leading
hostess at two magnificent country houses. She was the intimate
friend of powerful leaders including Balfour, Curzon, and
Churchill; the writers that she entertained included Wilde,
Kipling, Wells, Yeats, and Sassoon. This is a portrait of a life
which personified the last epoch of aristocratic glamour, elegance,
and power that ended in 1914. But tragedy was not far away. In 1915
her son Julian died in France of war wounds. Six weeks later her
second son Billy was killed in action. Her youngest son Ivo would
be killed shortly after the war. Other deaths on the Western
Front--of lovers and younger admirers--hurt her terribly too. But
despite intense private misery, she reacted with outward courage
and self-mastery. Grief revealed the greatness of her spirit. In
the 1920s and 1930s she continued to collect new types, especially
gifted young men, relishing people of all ages up to her death in
1952, a redoubtable survivor from a vanished age.
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