Not Behind Lace Curtains: The Hidden World of Evan, Viscount Tredegar

Nestling snugly in a well proportioned bath tub in a room embroidered with Italian mosaics by Boris Anrep, Evan Tredegar mused upon how wondrous the decorations were in this, his new home of 13, South Audley Street, Mayfair. Pride of place was a plaque of Gideon from Della Robbia, Such sophistication compared well with the stunning bathroom surrounds of his previous London residence at 40, South Street, Mayfair which had included  fabulous  wall  pictures in grisaille, with a set of priceless panels of  The Loves of Cupid and Psyche painted about 1780.  Oh, how Evan prized the perfection of the master craftsman who had created these wonderfully rich images : a born aesthetic, he appreciated the finer things in life.

Evan’s thoughts turned swiftly to how wittily his deceased acquaintance, the novelist Ronnie Firbank described the twice daily plunge into the bath tub as “sublime sanitization for the well brought up English gentleman.”

Firbank had immortalised the scene of Evan   :

“…Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his manservant deftly bathed him, [and he fell] into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance.  Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed with Kiki, [Evan] was St Sebastian, and as the water became cloudier, and the crystals evaporated amid the steam, he was Teresa…and he would have been most likely, the Blessed Virgin herself but that the bath grew gradually cold.”

Emerging slowly, dripping and trembling from the tub, Evan gasped in irate tones to Alfred Arthur Lucker, (his handsome seventeen-year-old valet), about the bitter quarrel with Ronnie Firbank over a very silly book dedication.

Sighing, Evan mused at how all this reflection and contemplation was needless folly, ancient history. Alas, poor, ridiculous Firbank who’d expired abruptly in Rome in 1926; “imagine dying of self-inflicted starvation, from an excess of champagne, brandy and tuberculosis.”

Ronnie’s last message to his friends from the Hotel Quirinale was an indulgent ploy to attain posterity by warning others not to visit him on account of the dreadful state of the wallpaper.

“Damn the wit of that blasted Firbank, that rake: that Sherlock Holmes like figure who’d once dared to call me a little fool, me Evan Morgan, at the time an Honourable, the son of a bona fide noble Lord and his gracious Lady.” 

It was now the end of July of 1937, Evan was a  noble Lord  in his own right, a  Peer of the Realm, with the rank of Viscount of the United Kingdom,  a “Right trusty and Cousin”  to his Monarch,  the stammering King George VI, and irresistible to foolish men anywhere they chose to party. Evan adored to party, as did his entire generation of The Bright Young Things. He was once ranked a leading figure of that clique, along with his dear friend Noel Coward, the enormously talented playwright, composer and actor. Noel  was to write and record a song to celebrate one marvellous party they’d attended together in the South of France!

Evan had plans to find himself an equally marvellous party that night, after turning up for a charity dinner at the Savoy Hotel, his second fund-raising event of the week.

 “Eccentric, perverse, unpredictable, arrogant, and outrageous” : Evan Tredegar could switch his personality; one minute a witty companion, an open-handed, generous patron of all good causes, but then suddenly change from the placid Dr Jekyll into the terrifying monster, Mr Hyde. 

Hastening Alfred to complete his delicate personal manoeuvrings Evan eyed up the invitation card to a reception and dinner at the Savoy Hotel in the heart of the London’s Strand.