The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money and the Marriage of Doris Delevingne

I'm honestly not sure why either British author Lyndsy Spence or her publisher thought writing a biography of Doris Delivigne - a minor member of English society between the wars - was a worthwhile task. And I'm not sure why I felt compelled to read the book, "The Mistress of Mayfair: Men, Money, and the Marriage of Doris Delevigne". Spence, a noted biographer of the Mitford family, has a subject who seems not worth the effort on anyone's part. Doris Delevigne was an uninteresting woman, from a middle-class background, who felt that ambitions and a great set of gams would take her to great heights in British society.

Delevigne - who is the great aunt of two current society girls, Poppy and Cara Delevigne - knew what she wanted early in life, and went after it. Money and power was her goal and while in pursuit of both, she became intertwined with Valentine Browne, Viscount Castlerosse and heir to the Irish title and estate of the Earls of Kenmare. Castlerosse was as rotund as Doris was slender and they had a masochistic love affair that included a short marriage for 20 or so years. They couldn't live without each other...and they couldn't live with each other. Like magnets, they repelled each other even as they attracted each other. Their savage fights in both private and public embarrassed all within eyesight or earshot. Delevigne had many lovers but Castlerosse remained the one man she always went back to. She was "associated" with Noel Coward, Winston Churchill AND his son, Randolph, as well as Max Aitken and others in government and social power.

I don't know if Lyndsy Spence is a bad writer or she just didn't have much to work with when trying to make Jessie Doris Delevigne in any way interesting to the reader. I suspect the latter as she has written quite well of the Mitfords. Of course, the Mitford sisters, brother, and parents were fascinating people who contributed to society, or at least made it a bit more interesting. Doris Delevigne and Valentine Castlerosse were the antithesis of the Mitfords, their contemporaries. They were dreary people who led dreary lives, full of fury, but signifying nothing.

If you're an American chances are good that you have never heard of Doris Delevingne. That having been said, once you read Miss Spence's biography of her, you will feel like you know her fairly well. Doris was not necessarily the sort of person one would want to know in real life, but she certainly makes for interesting reading! She was a sexually liberated woman at a time when even the least indiscretion could ruin a woman's reputation. What is more, she was linked to some of the most powerful men in the interwar United Kingdom. She led an absolutely scandalous life that in the end is a bit of a cautionary tale. Lyndsy Spence sheds a good deal of light on a figure who today is not very well known, with a lively writing style that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.