6.4.12: Man about town | New York Social Diary

Man about town

Taxi driver. 1:40 PM. Photo: JH.

Monday, June 4, 2012. Off and on rainy weekend in New York; mostly sunny with cool breezes preceding the rains that mainly never came.

Today we’re running another one of those fascinating obituaries from the Daily Telegraph of London of David Metcalfe, an Englishman who was known in his day as a “man about town” and a member of English society.

I knew David Metcalfe, although most casually, the way you know people you see frequently and have passing conversations with, as he was often here in New York and was, indeed, a man who got around.

Lord Curzon in his robes as Viceroy of India (1899-1905).

Lady Curzon, the former Mary Leiter of Chicago, in her famous peacock gown designed for her role in India by Worth of Paris.

Most striking on meeting was his height and and his lanky angular features which you can see in the pictures of him. He looked the part of an aristocratic Englishman, but despite his Britishness, he had a strong American connection. His maternal great-grandfather Levi Leiter, who lived in the 19th century and died at the beginning of the 20th, made his fortune in Chicago in the “dry goods” business, partnering with two others – Potter Palmer and Marshall Field. All three became very rich, Field now being the most famous of the names. All, especially Palmer and Leiter, expanded their considerable fortunes in real estate when the nation was a-building.


	Lady Alexandra ("Baba") Curzon at her marriage to Edward Dudley ("Fruity") Metcalfe at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, July 21, 1925.

	The viceroy in a flush of glory, along with wife, posing with the body of his victim.

David’s maternal grandmother, Mary Leiter, was famous in her day (during the Gilded Age) as one of the American “dollar princesses” who crossed the Atlantic to marry English aristocrats. The husband in her case was Lord Curzon (later the 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston) who after his marriage to Mary, became Viceroy of India at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria through 1905 during the reign of Edward VII.

Unlike her contemporary Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was “forced” to marry the Duke of Marlborough, Mary Leiter consciously prepared herself for just such a marriage. When she married Curzon her father settled millions on them. Mary Leiter Curzon died in 1906 at age 36, leaving three daughters, the youngest of which was two year old Alexandra – known all her life to friends and family as Baba, later the mother of the subject of today’s obit.

When Baba Curzon, Lady Alexandra, was 21, she married Edward “Fruity” Metcalfe, then 28, a captain in the Indian cavalry and a friend of the Prince of Wales (who later became Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor). Although Metcalfe was outside of what made up “Society” in London (his father had been Head of Prisons in Ireland), he was a charmer, with a kind and spirited personality.

The Prince of Wales was immediately enthralled and the two became friends, in the fashion that the heir to the throne befriended people. Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin and close associate of the Prince also liked him, describing him to his fiancée Edwina Ashley: “Fruity Metcalfe, the nicest fellow we have. Poor, honest, a typical Indian cavalryman.” That likability as well as his horsemanship propelled Fruity into the upper echelons and eventually into the marriage with the heiress Lady Alexandra Curzon.

There is an excellent biography, The Viceroy’s Daughters; the Lives of the Curzon Sisters, by Anne De Courcy published 12 years ago in the UK by Weidenfeld and Nicolson about Baba Metcalfe, her sisters, her family, as well as all their lovers. Baba had several affairs, which also included her brother-in-law at the time, Oswald "Tom" Mosley (who later left Baba's sister for Diana Mitford Guinness, grandmother of the present day Daphne Guinness) and Jock Whitney, who was then married to his first wife, Liz Altemus.

All three of the sisters had active, dynamic personalities and, although they were brought up as British, the money was American and so were many of the personality traits and characteristics.

At the Metcalfe's house Little Compton in the Cotswalds after the War (1948), l to r: Wallis, Davina, her twin Linda, the Duke, David and Fruity Metcalfe.

Baba had three children with Fruity Metcalfe, including, besides David, twin daughters Davina and Linda, who later married an American member of the Mortimer family and lived here in New York.

Fruity Metcalfe became famous to Americans during the sensational Abdication of the Edward VIII when he accompanied the ex-King into exile and was present at the marriage to Wallis Simpson. This “special” relationship was advantageous to him when the duke was PoW and then King, but afterwards, Fruity’s position in relationship to the new King and Queen and the Royal family as well as the society around the royals, was altered forever, and not in his favor. Furthermore, his relationship with the ex-King also was altered – he always suspected – by the new duchess.

Although David Metcalfe moved in the international social circles and was, like his father, well-liked, he was a child of Edwardians, and grew up in that realm like many children whose prominent or celebrated parents overshadow their children who were “seen and not heard.” Perhaps that is what gave him his ease with all people he came in contact with.

Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire. The estate has been in the Curzon family since the end of the 13th century. This house was commissioned in 1759, loosely based on a design by Andrea Palladio.

From the Daily Telegraph of London

David Metcalfe, who has died aged 84, was a “man about town” celebrated by diary columns for his high society connections; the Duke of Windsor was his godfather, and his wives included the beautiful widow of a British film mogul and a French countess.

The son of Edward “Fruity” Metcalfe, best man to the recently abdicated Edward VIII at his marriage to Wallis Simpson, David Patrick Metcalfe was born on July 8 1927 in the splendour of Carlton House Terrace, home of his grandfather George, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India and imperious Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. His mother, Lady Alexandra “Baba” Curzon, was a 1920s “It” girl whose closest friends included the Prince of Wales and his brother George.

Fruity Metcalfe, a charming and impecunious Irishman, was one of the most colourful members of the Prince of Wales’s staff. Having originally been recruited to look after the Prince’s polo and other equine diversions, the pair soon became best friends. At Balmoral and Buckingham Palace, however, Fruity was considered a thoroughly malign influence. “Metcalfe is not at all a good thing for HRH,” Edward’s private secretary, Godfrey Thomas, wrote to the Queen. “He is always cheery and full of fun but far, far too weak and hopelessly irresponsible.” George V eventually ordered his son to give Metcalfe “the push” but in later life the two were reunited.


	The Duke and Duchess of Windsor at their royal wedding, June 3, 1937, at the Chateau de Candé, Mont, France, with Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe, right, and A.G. Allen, left.

David Metcalfe reputedly bore the signs of his family’s royal connection throughout his life – his bent nose was rumoured to have been broken when his godfather, the Prince of Wales, dropped him head first on the terrace at Cliveden. When the Duke of Windsor died in 1972, he left David a pair of cufflinks.

David was educated at Eton, where, according to diarists, his greatest claim to fame was that “he was excused wearing shorts owing to a larger-than-life lunch box”. The uniform of the Irish Guards proved an adequate fit, however, and in 1949, by the end of his three-year commission, he was a second lieutenant.

Metcalfe then joined the insurance broking industry, having turned down an offer to work for Lord McGowan, chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) for £249 per year.

Like his father, David Metcalfe was charming and moved easily in society circles. In the post-war years, he threw “warm whisky parties” in his Motcomb Street garret where guests included Vivien Leigh and Margot Fonteyn. He met and, in 1957, married Alexa Korda, the widow of Sir Alexander Korda, the flamboyant Anglo-Hungarian film producer who sought to challenge the dominance of Hollywood with his company British Lion Films.

Alexa (née Boycun), a great beauty of the period, was a Canadian of Ukrainian extraction. Described snootily in press reports as “the daughter of a Toronto market gardener”, she had married Korda in 1953 when she was 25 and he 60. When he died three years later, she inherited his fortune and his superb art collection – including works by Degas, Canaletto, Renoir and Monet.

Metcalfe and Alexa lived in a grand house in Swan Walk, Chelsea, in a Britain still coming to terms with post-war hardship. In 1962 they put up at Sotheby’s what was then labelled “the largest single collection of Impressionists to be sold in one go”, a sale that prompted headlines when the proceeds reached nearly half a million pounds. The Daily Mirror ran a picture of Alexa Metcalfe under the headline: “£465,000 richer!” A Van Gogh in particular caused harrumphing over inflated prices because it sold for more than £80,000 (equivalent now to a bargain £1.4 million).


David Metcalfe with his third wife, Sally Cullen Howe.

The couple had two sons and a daughter, but divorced in 1964; two years later Alexa died after taking what a pathologist at the time suspected was “a sleeping draught”. Their children, including Julian Metcalfe, the future founder of the Pret A Manger sandwich chain, moved back to live in great style with their father. “We had powerful people to dinner all the time,” Julian Metcalfe later recalled of his childhood.

In 1968, David Metcalfe married Anne Marie Jeanne de Chauvigny de Blot, daughter of Comte Jacques de Chauvigny de Blot, and stepdaughter of Dani Courtois, owner of the champion French racehorse Taj Dewan.

In keeping with the times, she wore a white minidress to the wedding. But the marriage was not a happy one and ended after five years. He then, in 1979, married Sally Cullen Howe, from New York. The ceremony took place in the Bahamas and was witnessed by the recently deposed Shah of Iran and Henry Ford II, among others, and proved to be the longest and most successful of Metcalfe’s unions. Back in London, at their splendid Belgravia home, the couple became famous for parties and dinners. Friends celebrated Metcalfe as “the last man about town with a bit of style”. At his home in Wilton Street, he was host to “everybody who is anybody”.

In particular Metcalfe had a flair for pairing New World entrepreneurs, ambassadors and tycoons with Old World aristocrats, intellectuals, royalty and social commentators. His dining table was frequented as much by dukes and royalty as it was by Detroit and Texas tycoons and politicians from across the political spectrum.

One evening in 1982 Metcalfe brought together the blue-blooded directors of Sotheby Parke Bernet — including the Earl of Westmoreland and Angus Ogilvy, husband of Princess Alexandra — with a selection of Michigan high-rollers willing and able to rescue the teetering auction house from falling into the clutches of an aggressive and unwanted takeover. That night three billionaires — Alfred Taubman, Henry Ford II and Max Fisher — agreed to buy Sotheby’s, with Metcalfe proving himself the perfect society-business matchmaker.

Metcalfe himself held various positions in insurance and investment banking, where his talents as a broker made him a much-watched figure. As well as spending decades at Lloyd’s, he held directorships of Stewart Smith, Sedgwicks, and Marsh & McLennan.

Though a man who appreciated traditional style and values, Metcalfe was not tiresomely nostalgic. His charm and loyalty were accompanied by a talent for wicked social commentary. He enjoyed shooting and he continued to waterski, play tennis and windsurf into his eighth decade.

David Metcalfe is survived by his wife and by the daughter and two sons of his first marriage as well as two stepdaughters. Another son, from his second marriage, predeceased him.

David Metcalfe, born July 8 1927, died April 21 2012