GREAT BRITAIN: Seducers & Spaniards

With no faintest hint of scandal, the Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry are now said to have “seduced” Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald. It is they who enticed the silver-haired Scot out of dingy surroundings in which he moved even three years ago, launched him in Mayfair’s glittering swim.

Low-heeled, apple-cheeked Miss Ishbel MacDonald will always be an adequate housekeeper. But Lady Londonderry is the No. 1 political hostess of the Empire.

For generation after generation statesmen and monarchs have mounted the grand curving stair of Londonderry House to pompous festivities in the historic rooms above. The present 7th Marquess of Londonderry is also Viscount Castlereagh. Prominently in Londonderry House hangs a portrait of his ancestor of whom Thomas Moore riddled venomously:

Why is a pump like Viscount Castlereagh?
Because it is a slender thing of wood,
That up and down its awkward arm doth sway,
And coolly spout and spout and spout away, In one weak, washy, everlasting flood.

During the War the Londonderrys with drew upstairs into their own attic, turned the rest of Londonderry House into a hospital. To the Marchioness and to her arch-Tory husband in those days J. Ramsay MacDonald was “that Pacifist!” — the lowest of socialist scum. As late as 1929, Lord Londonderry publicly hoped that Prime Minister MacDonald would lose his parliamentary seat in Seaham, where his miner constituents dig Londonderry coal. Two years later Lord Londonderry exploded that the last Labor Cabinet headed by Scot MacDonald “is clinging like limpets to office . . . unfit to govern.”

When harassed Mr. MacDonald accepted the King’s mandate to form a National Government, Lord Londonderry embarrassed the man who still claims to be a Socialist for the last time by declaring: “It is our duty to destroy the Socialist Party!” From that period on Lady Londonderry took a hand. Soon her husband was such a friend of the Prime Minister that he was appointed Secretary for Air.

The “seduction” of the Scot continued until his whole outlook on life has come to parallel that of the Londonderrys. Fortnight ago Viscount Snowden revealed in his tart autobiography (TIME, Nov. 5) the Prime Minister’s humorous admission that because of his metamorphosis “every Duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me.” In what a Canadian paper promptly called the hen-run of British society dowagers the Marchioness of Londonderry is undisputed No. 1 hen to Scot MacDonald’s chaste Chanticleer.

Though the Prime Minister is probably the most successful product of their patronage in two generations, the Londonderrys do not confine their politico-social interests to the Empire. Last week they were faced with an eruption of discord in an entire family of Londonderry proteges, the ex-Royal Family of Spain.

Within a period of a few hours Spanish Monarchists were thunderstruck by three despatches: 1) The rich and curvesome young Cuban wife of Spain’s sickly one-time heir to the throne, Alfonso, who abdicated his rights to marry her, had just deserted him. 2) Alfonso XIII was rumored to have made in Rome the first move in his long-rumored project of obtaining from Mother Church an annulment of his marriage to ex-Queen Victoria of Spain, first cousin of George V. 3) Prince Juan, on whom Spanish Royalists now pin their hopes as “the only available son of Alfonso XIII,”* was declared to be engaged to none other than Lady Helen Stewart, beauteous third daughter of Lord and Lady Londonderry.

Since Lady Helen is not of royal blood Prince Juan, under the strict Bourbon rules of the Spanish Royal House, could not marry her without first putting aside his rights to the Throne. In Mayfair the Londonderrys have long been supposed to be the most potent partisans in Britain of a Spanish restoration. Would they let their daughter make a marriage which would wipe out the last real pretender to Spain’s Throne?

To Londonderry House rushed correspondents. “Lord and Lady Londonderry advise me to say,” intoned their butler at the door, “that they do not know anything about the matter and deny the report.” When Lady Helen emerged, the correspondents swarmed around her. “I cannot understand how the report originated,” said she. “It is ridiculous.” But she did not specifically deny it.

In Paris a “source” close to Prince Juan affirmed: “He is madly in love. There is no doubt whatever that he is resolved to marry Lady Helen.”

*Prince Jaime, Alfonso’s only other living son, on whom the succession would normally descend, is a hopeless deaf-mute.