HAS YOUR RICHER-THAN-YOU PARTNER MADE YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT PAYING THE WAY?

I seems that most women I know expect the male of the species to have the money to pay for dates, but also feel funny about not contributing in some way.  That means something like, she throws some money in for a tip, or soon invites him to do something she can afford to spend on.  I won't pretend that feminist values or not, I was raised to be what is now called conservative but which was basically how everyone seemed to live. There was little emphasis on education or careers, the assumption being that marriage, being a stay at home wife and mother, was the expectation - even if you had other ideas. Women who did not work for money outside the home didn't want to change that because they thought their husband's might stop supporting them and the children if there was a divorce and divorce -especially before the children were grown up and launched - was rare.

But now?  Friends report having dates - and boyfriends - that have other expectations.

One man I had not heard from for over a year since I met him out with friends and became a friend of sorts to a group of us phoned me after having been asked to leave by his partner of a year. He had by her invitation moved in with her in the condo she had purchased and was paying the mortgage on. When he failed to find a better job than the one he had she decided it wouldn't work.  He had to move back into his parent's house.

Another man I met in a class told me that he had met a woman he wanted to marry but she said up front that she would only do that if he got a job that paid at least $65,000 a year.  He had returned to college hoping that someday he would qualify for such a job, but graduation was a way off and he feared loosing her.  Should he quit school and become a car salesman?

You can take pride in your education, your work, your ability to support yourself without a partner, but is that realistic?  As housing becomes unaffordable for many, and home ownership impossible for many more, it seems as if the women with children who have been abandoned is also a crisis.

Are you in a relationship in which your partner is the one who has or earns more money?  Much more? Does that person make you feel bad about paying the way?  I would like to hear from you!

Missy

LISTEN!

 

WHY MISTRESSES OF EQUAL STATUS THREATENED THE SOCIAL ORDER

Why had her mother, and women of aristocratic status - members of Jamaican society and of the British peerage, accept that men were possibly not capable of fidelity.  For that matter, why did men also accept that the woman they married would not be the only one for them?  Is sex really meaningless?

From Chapter 7 again, page 59

It always futile to judge people by the rules of another time, and the values of that age certainly seem breathtakingly hypocritical  and unreasonable from a contemporary viewpoint, until one examines what motivated them and realizes that their objective was preservation of the family unit and conservation of the social fabric. Divorce was still something to be avoided at all costs, not only because of the disruption to family and social life, but also because it usually undermined the financial foundation of a divorced couple. As few marriages were conducted across class and colour lines, choice was also restricted, and there seemed little merit in 'swapping a black dog for a monkey' , as Jamaicans used to say. Therefore a mistress like Miss Khouri (her relatives's mistress of equal status to the family), being wife material, was a living, breathing, throbbing threat to the social order, while a girlfriend like Mrs. Powell (her fatther's supposed mistress) was not.

Commentary: Lady Colin Powell states in her book that her father, Michael, often openly declared that he had never looked at another woman other than his wife, their mother, though many knew of his sexual adventures. However, she realized that he was also signaling to his wife, Gloria, that he was not contemplating actually divorcing.

Page 60

,,, Gloria's ascendancy over Michael was reinforced by the fact that he was more emotionally involved with her than she was with him...

GLORIA ZIADIE, LADY COLIN CAMPBELL's MOTHER and HER EQUALS TOOK THEIR HUSBAND'S OTHER WOMEN IN STRIDE

In this memoir, Lady Colin Campbell recalls that her mother, Gloria, and father, Michael, were abusive to their children, her mother especially, which she credits to her mother's personality disorder, Narcissism. Her parent's were not happily married and her father was one to make sexual demands of the house servants and women who worked at his office as his natural right. But one woman emerged as his mistress, a woman from the office called Mrs. Powell who was thirty-some years younger than him.

In this passage from Chapter 7, she explains her mother's attitude about Mrs. Powell, who, in my opinion, might have been a relief to her mother, Gloria, considering that Michael, her husband, might have settled on one other woman.

Pages 58 - 59

Towards the end of her life, I discovered, while speaking to another member of our family whose husband had always had mistresses, Gloria's true attitude towards marital infidelity. 'She makes a fool of herself carrying on the way she does.  As long as the wife's position isn't threatened, or he doesn't bring home unwelcome presents in the form of venereal diseases, it doesn't really matter what a man does. And men, let's face facts, will always be men,  They can't help it. All men are unfaithful. A wife who even acknowledges that her husband is being unfaithful lowers herself in his eyes. If I had created a scene every time your father had another woman, I would have spent my life ripping my hair out. Where would that have got me?  I had far too much self respect for that."

'So you really didn't mind?"

"When you're young and impressionable, you mind those sort of things, but, as you get older and learn the ways of the world, you realize there is little point in letting things like that bother you. As long as it wasn't done under my nose and I could ignore it with grace, it wasn't an issue. Women today make far too much fuss about infidelity, but seem quite happy to tolerate things that my generation would have never done.'

'Like what?'

'Men who don't know, and don't want to know, how to take care of their wives. Whatever your father's faults, he always took good care of me. Man was made to protect women and your father was a real man, not one of those namby-pamby freeloaders whom one meets so often nowadays.  Believe me it is better to be a man's darling - even an old man's darling - than any man's slave. Whether or not they've been my slave or not is something else,' she laughed.

Commentary: Lady Colin Campbell goes on to say that the discussion exttended to what if the mistress was of the same status or class.  A relative of theirs had such a mistress and the entire family supported his wife in the matter, so it seems that the attitude that taking a mistress in stride for these British-Jamaican aristocrats, seeing them as Other, keeping them separate, had much to do with a man taking a lower status woman as a mistress.

What is your opinion on that?

 

MESSAGE TO ALL YOU GOOD DADS OUT THERE

I want to say hello to the father's out there - the loving ones - who put that love into action and have earned the right to be called Dad. Sadly, too often these days we hear about the fathers who are nowhere to be found. I'm still betting most dad's are Good ones!

KATHLEEN "KICK" KENNEDY, SISTER OF J.F.K., BRIDE and WIDOW OF BILLY HARTINGTON aka William CAVENSIH, then MISTRESS OF PETER WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM, 8th EARL FITZWILLIAM

KATHLEEN "KICK"  KENNEDY, SISTER OF J.F.K.,   BRIDE and WIDOW OF BILLY HARTINGTON aka William CAVENSIH, then MISTRESS OF PETER WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM,  8th EARL FITZWILLIAM

First Published March 2 2017

Go to the archives to read the whole month!

This book is the primary reference for this month's

Mistress of the Month post!

KATHLEEN "KICK"  AGNES KENNEDY CAVENDISH, LADY HARTINGTON

(1920-1948)

The story of Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, one of children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, and sibling of John Fitzgerald Kennedy who one day became President of the United States, has long been repressed.  Maybe that's because her behavior was scandalous.  Or maybe it's just that her other siblings lived longer, did more, or became more famous that she.  Paula Byrne, author of the book that is the primary reference for this post, had access to Kick's own diaries and other materials not previously seen by a biographer, and brought the lively, self depreciation good sport that Kathleen was to life, noting that her unusual nickname was based not only on the use of the term 'kick" to mean fun, but because she had a habit of kicking off her shoes at staid parties and dinners, and once had to wear a mismatched pair of right-foot shoes when her English companions hid the rest of her shoes in one of those huge mazes created out of shrubbery on a great estate. She was a good sport.

When her father Joseph Kennedy became Ambassador to the Court of Saint James,  London, England in 1938, during the Roosevelt Administration, World War II loomed.  Kathleen and her sister Rosemary, who was "slow" probably due to oxygen deprivation at birth, took their bows before the Queen that year as the British press and Life Magazine in the United States took interest in the  American family. In 1938, the 18 year old Kathleen was voted England's Most Important Debutant!

The young, energetic Irish-American woman's introduction to English society was also fostered by one of the most famous American Ex-Patriots, Lady Astor, who was into English politics.  Soon Kick was attending house parties on Great Estates owned by outstandingly anti-Catholic British peers and became friends with other Catholic girls who were in love with Church of England aristocrats. 

Due to their Irishness and Catholicism, both in America (Boston) and in England, Joseph and his family had experienced social exclusion.  Maybe that's one reason the many children of Joseph and Rose became such good friends with each other. Joe Senior's elite college education, his amazing career in banking, his investments in Hollywood film making, and the many connections he had made in business and in politics, including President Roosevelt, hadn't made the Kennedy family acceptable in Protestant- American  WASP circles.

Joseph and Rose taught their children to be competitive, to not cry in response to tragedy but get on with it, to exceed the high expectations placed on them, and to stand out. Defying the stereotype that the Irish were all drunkards, no alcohol was allowed in their home. As the Kennedy couple continued to be married and procreate, they also came to live separate lives, an arrangement that Kathleen didn't realize was strange until she was older. Joseph having more influence on the sons and Rose on the daughters, both young Joe Jr. and Jack had affairs with married women, while Kathleen and her sisters were sent to convent schools and expected to conduct themselves as devout Catholics. One of her favorite ways of gifting someone was to go to Masses, say rosaries, and do good deeds in their honor.

Kick was great friends with her brothers and in the know about their affairs. While she personally held back from sexuality, and was considered prudish, her warm personality gained her many admirers and several marriage minded suitors on two continents. Could it be that she was thinking, "if it's OK for them, why not me?"  Would the devout, convent educated young woman really sell her soul for a title or become a Dollar Princess, one of those wealthy American girls who were pursued by broke nobles?

After her debut and introduction to the wealthy aristocrats and royals in England, Kick came to love the country and the people, feeling she had experienced her true home.  When she married Billy Hartington aka William Cavendish*, she had been in love with him for six years and likely he felt the same.  After the family returned to the United States at the onset of the war, Kick had spent four years away from Billy.  She was popular and pursued but she had not forgotten him and endeavored to find her way back to England.  She joined the Red Cross where some gritty work awaited. 

Then, there were difficulties in which the couple and their families wrestled with the issue of their incompatible religions. As time went by, Billy's family had come to love Kick and believe in her.  Even his Catholic-hating father who had a mistress, Lady Dufferin, came around.  Kick's mother, Rose, was the hold out.  Billy's parents had the feeling that this long ordeal, for which there never were any easy answers, had proven the young couple's sincerity and that they would make it as a couple.  From the beginning the two of them had easy conversation, sometimes long into the night.

Through those years Billy had also matured. As England was targeted by the Germans and the bombings of London began, he wanted to fight for his country and became a war hero.  As an officer of the Cold Stream Guards who stood out, Billy was killed by a sniper with single bullet through his heart. Kick and Billy had married in May at a humble registry office, he had left for the war five weeks later, and he was killed in September. Now the 24 year old "Widow Hartington," Kathleen would have to step aside for her debutant friend Debo, married to his younger brother Andrew, and was left with the title Lady Hartington and a small inheritance. Yet Billy's parents, the Duke and Duchess did not abandon her, not ever.  After grieving with them and being supported by them, which would continue until her death, living here and there, she got herself an apartment, and with that Kennedy view of life, knew she had to move on somehow. She threw herself into Red Cross volunteerism again.  She also spent time with her family in the United States where they had homes in Hyannis Port, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida.  Her time in America seemed to only reaffirm that she belonged to England.

KICK AS A RED CROSS VOLUNTEER IN ENGLAND

picture from FIND AS GRAVE

FIND A GRAVE- LADY KATHLEEN HARTINGTON - GRAVE AT CHATSWORTH ESTATE

(Though she died with the married man she was Mistress to,

she was given the burial of the wife of Billy Hartington.)

This book gives in detail the excruciating Protestant and Catholic clergy diplomacies that Kick and Billy went through, looking for some way for him to keep to his Church of England legacy and familial anti-Catholicism, while in love with a devout Catholic woman whose mother would check herself into the hospital when word reached her that the compromise of a simple civil marriage had taken place. Kick's brother Joe Jr., was the only familial representative of the Kennedy's there. This detail, the crisis that was occurring as Kick attempted to marry into one of England's oldest, riches, and most Protestant families, was surprising to me.  This detail comprises most of the book, with the story of Kathleen's Mistresshood taking just a small end portion of the book. Yet, because of all that struggle with religion and grief, the story of her Mistresshood would not be as interesting or understood. 

Unlike the many years of waiting for marriage to Billy, the Widow Hartington, while chairing the Commando's Benevolent Fund Ball in June of 1946, was seduced by Peter, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam. Peter had been a Commando, which was an independent army company, and had completed twelve missions, and came back a decorated war hero himself.  Peter was married with a young daughter, and so unlike Billy Hartington.  He was a gambler, fond of fast cars, fast horses, fast women. He had been around in society for some time and she'd been introduced to him at the end of the summer season in 1945 when they both attended a fall hunt in County Wichlow. If people had doubted that Kick and Billy were made for each other, but had been won over...

"Kick's friends were horrified when they learned about the romance.  Nobody could understand the relationship as she and Peter appeared on the surface to be so different." 

(page 271)

Rose Kennedy was furious with her daughter and went to England to confront Kathleen personally. 

Revealed in this book, and also surprising to me, was that Joseph Kennedy, Kick's father, while gone a whole lot on business, wrote heartfelt and advisory letters to his children, showing support for them, and that even younger brother Robert Kennedy wrote letters of encouragement to his big sister. I came away from the book thinking of Joseph Kennedy, as a much more loving, wise, and involved father than I'd ever imagined.  He was far more wise to the world than his wife, Rose who seemed to hold to high ideals while ignoring her husband's womanizing, that included hitting on Kathleen's friends. It was to her father that Kathleen would now appeal to, after hiding the More-Scandalous-Than-Billy  affair from her family, and easing the truth that she wished to marry yet another Protestant, this time after he got a divorce. So while mother Rose attempted to prevent her daughter and family from any further scandal, it was her father Joseph who said he would try to help, and agreed to meet the couple in France, where it was planned that Peter, not divorced, would ask her father's permission to marry her.

Here is where my own sense of Kathleen emerges after reading the spare pages in this book about her affair with the married Peter. First, Kathleen went to several convent schools, and when she was at the school in Paris, where she studied French literature and needlepoint, in my mind nothing more than a finishing school for rich Catholic girls destined to marry well, the nuns called her "Mademoiselle Pourquoi"  meaning "Miss Why" because she was such a questioner.

I believe that Kathleen had come to question her Catholicism and did not think religion should or did matter so much, though it was her upbringing and the only religion she had known or come to depend on. I think she was torn, knowing the high profile of her Catholic family and the discrimination that people from her heritage had experienced.  She had been raised a privileged young woman, far removed from the earthly poverty of her Kennedy ancestors in Ireland who still lived without an indoor toilet. She had been a media darling. She had received hate mail after marrying Billy. 

At 26 she was a woman of independent means, beautifully dressed with some important jewelry, capable of chairing charity events in high society, intelligent, college educated, though not as well as her father and  Harvard alumni brothers. She was not expected to be in mourning or stay a widow forever. She was expected to remarry. 

I think the death of her husband and brother and the war in general had informed her that life was not to be taken granted, but seized.  She had but a brief  month of sexuality in her marriage. Having been married, she was no longer expected in English society to pretend to be a virgin.  Billy's parents and sister, her brother Jack, and several close friends were aware that she was in a full-on affair with Peter.  It was a whirlwind.  Peter was as keen.  Maybe he had never much been into the glamorous woman he had married and cheated on during their honeymoon. World War II was an era in which women stepped outside the roles of wife and mother, even to do hard physical labor in factories for the war effort.  It was a step ahead in the liberation of women from traditionally expected roles.

As Rose Kennedy threw a fit, Kathleen's maid couldn't believe her ears, that a 28 year old woman who was widowed would allow her own mother to talk to her that way.  Kathleen's sister Eunice Kennedy had come to visit for a couple months in the fall of 1946 and had not been aware that her sister had become a Mistress.

In a small plane, on the way to meet her father for that respectful moment in which the married Peter would, cart in front of the horse, ask permission to marry her, Kathleen and Peter were killed when it crashed. Joseph Kennedy found himself in France identifying her body instead.  Much has been made of the fact that with her she had lingerie and what could be used (in those pre Pill days) to prevent pregnancy - another sin for a good Catholic girl - in her suitcases.  Her worldly father was supposedly stunned to realize. I have to wonder.  This was, after all, a married man who was not sexually faithful to his often pregnant wife, and who had the actress Gloria Swanson as a mistress for some time.

Quoting Angela Lambert on Kick, on page 265, '"Gaiety, like honesty, is a kind of social courage.  It is not easy to be unfailingly charming, lively, and original.  It requires energy, and generosity, always to make the effort to be on one's form."

We may never know if it was love at first sight for the "hard smitten" Kathleen AND Peter, the seducer. What we do know is that the young woman took risks and had ambitions of her own, like so many of her siblings and the Kennedy Family, but hers were of the heart.

C 2017  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights
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DON'T FORGET WHAT I TOLD YOU

 

WAS MRS. POWELL MICHEAL ZIADIE'S MISTRESS AT THE OFFICE? LADY COLIN CAMPBELL as GEORGIE MEETS MRS. POWELL, HER FATHER'S SUPPOSED MISTRESS

 

This passage is from Chapter 7 of her book. In it, Lady Colin Campbell, called Georgie here by me, revealing that her father was a sexual predator who had his way with the servants, also had liaisons with women employed at his office. Her mother had no control over that aspect of his life.  It strikes me that perhaps her father, Michael, was not only a a sexual predator but a sex addict. Learning that he might have had a mistress who he mostly saw at the office gives the possibility that he became more civilized. The excerpt begins with the office, her father and his brother, Solomon...

Excerpt page 58

.,,Doubtless the majority of their contacts were casual, but both also formed enduring relationships with members of their staff.  In their scheme of things it was perfectly alright to have a mistress who remained out of sight of their family and friends. There was apparently no problem and no conflict, so long as there was no overlap between the two worlds.

Commentary:  In 1979 Micheal was shot in a store. Two serious gun shots done, Mrs. Powell put herself between the gunman and Michael.  She called him "Mas Mike," as in Master Mike. Georgie told her brother that she thought Mrs. Powell had to be their father's mistress or she would not have risked her own life to shelter him. Her brother, Mickey, did not believe it, preferring to think of the woman as a loyal employee. Georgie thought not only was this employee her father's mistress but that the woman loved him. 

Excerpt page 58

The following year, Mickey and I were in Jamaica for Easter when I witnessed for myself the delicacy with which my parents avoided the true nature of his relationship with Mrs. Powell...

Commentary: At one point Georgie got to witness her father and Mrs. Campbell together, when they entered a hospital room together to visit a family member. She said the "ease" between the two was the tell-all.

Excerpt page 58

To say I was surprised by her presence would be an understatement. There seemed to be no good reason to justify her attendance - if he needed her emotional support, he should be doing without it until a more appropriate time - and I was somewhat offended on my mother's behalf that he was trotting his mistress out in a place where decorum precluded her admittance. This, after all, was a purely family occasion, and where interlopers of any kind were simply unacceptable. Of course, I was also intrigued to meet the woman who had saved my father's life, though I would have preferred to do so somewhere else than a hospital while my cousin was dying. 

My curiosity got the better of my rectitude, however, and as Michael introduced Mrs. Powell to me, I eyed her up and down, assessing her with genuine interest. I noted that she was attractive, personable, a civil and civilized woman whose goodness of heart shone through her countenance. She was also a good thirty-something years younger than he was, Then she demonstrated how lucky my father was to have a mistress like her by greeting me with just the right amount of respect. She did not make the mistake of fawning, as so many other people did when meeting people like us. The she walked over to Gloria (Gloria is Georgie's mother - married to her father Michael) and, while ostensibly sympathizing with her for the horror of having seen her niece by marriage collapse in front of her, treated her with the reverence royalists reserve for regnant empresses. 'She has the tact and decorousness of a true courtier,' I thought, 'She's also sensible. She sees that the way to maintain her relationship with Daddy is to be respectful and non-threatening to Mymmy as possible. And she has natural dignity.'  I liked her immediately. 

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LADY COLIN CAMPBELL : HER FATHER and MEN OF HIS STATUS TOOK THE "LORD'S RIGHT" AS THEIR DUE

(Warning: Possibly explicit words here.)

This excerpt is from Chapter 7 of Lady Colin Campbell's book. I read it on Hoopla and my settings could change the page number/count.  In the book she calls her mother Gloria and her father Michael. This passage begins with her father's resistance to travel outside of Jamaica or with his wife.  But that changed and he began to do both when his wife insisted.  Sometimes her mother still traveled without her husband. She well positions her mother as a wife married to a husband who may have tolerated her - mutually. Was it that Michael wanted his wife to travel alone so he could womanize? 

Excerpt: Page 57

His risk aversion aside, two others aspects of Michael's personality would have made living with him a rough-ride for any woman. Like all men of his station and background, he saw nothing wrong with availing himself of the plenitude of available 'pum pum' - as Jamaicans called the female organ - which was always on offer. It is a fact of life that well off men will always be attracted to poorer girls, even if the men themselves are not sexually appealing - which Michael, according to just about every woman who knew him - was. It was also a fact of life that the wives of rich men know that there is a queue of hundreds, if not thousands, of girls who will happily jump into their shoes, if they should vacate the position of wife. The divorce laws in England and America have gone some way towards readdressing the balance in favour of the wife in the latter part of the twentieth century: but even so, the rule of thumb that moneyed men will always find it easy to replace a wife with another - or with a stream of girlfriends -still applies. It keeps wives on their toes and gives them a tolerance towards infidelity that the wives of poorer men rarely have.

Like most of his relations and friends, Michael never saw any reason to deny himself the pleasures of the flesh. To all of them, morality had nothing to do with sex. Indeed, Michael went further than many of his sexually-liberated peers and lived by the rule of droit de seigneur in a way that would be totally unacceptable in today's world. 'As soon as Mrs. Ziadie was out of the house,' our Butler Edward told Joyce, his last nurse, 'Mr. Ziadie would go to the servants quarters and demand to be let in by whichever maid had taken his fancy. He would never take no for an answer. They had to give him what he wanted. Once one of the girls said no and locked the door with a key. Mr. Ziadie kicked down the door."

Commentary:  Eventually Gloria refused to hire any female servants other than a laundress who was shared with another family member. She hired males, including gay males.  However lousy this situation of having a husband who was a sexual predator was for Gloria - or the elite woman of Jamaica in the 1950's and 1960's (for Georgia was born in 1949 and this is about her childhood) - this in it self would not be the origins of her personality disorder of Narcissism. 

Droit de seigneur means Lord's Rights in French. For many centuries the Lord of the Manor (or the royal men and that of the aristocracy) had the right to have sex with women under their rule. This was such an assumed right that it was not fought by law. In recent Me Too Movement days, it is often the boss, owner of he company, or someone powerful in an industry, that wishes to assume the "right." We call it sexual harassment or rape. The sex these men had with women of lower status to them did not imply romance or a willingness to marry women, even if the sex resulted in pregnancy and the man was unmarried.

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GARLAND LILLIES

 

TOGETHER FOREVER - MY CUP RUNNETT OVER WITH LOVE : CONNIE FRANCIS

I had not heard any version of his song in so many years, but while reading Lady Colin Campbell's book about her parent's marriage, it came to me. Simple but beautiful it is. 

A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME

 

THE ECCENTRIC and HIGHLY OPINIONATED LADY COLIN CAMPBELL (GEORGIE ZIADIE) : MISTRESSES WERE UNDERSTOOD A CERTAIN WAY

LADY COLIN CAMPBELL

(Georgia Arianna Ziadie)

Hello!

I know my followers are wondering why I'm featuring British-Jamaican aristocrat and BabyBoomer Lady Colin Campbell here at Mistress Manifesto.  I admit at first thought it's a stretch but hear me out. No, I do not think she has been a Mistress. Yes, I think she has some important things to say.  In fact I have arrived at respect for this eccentric and highly opinionated - and rational - woman. 

One of the purposes of this blog is to explore the real lives of past and recent Mistresses - Kept People - Courtesans - an Alternative Lifestyle that may no longer depend on women not being allowed to be educated or unable to financially support themselves another way. This lifestyle no longer depends on adultery for its definition. Nor is it always a heterosexual relationship. No, while we use the term Mantress with fragility, we also realize that men, both gay and straight are experiencing being Kept, even when gay marriage is legal. Sometimes a Mistress (or Mantress) of 2024 is supporting themselves but accepts "help" of some sort from her or his person rather than be the Classic Mistress who is entirely supported financially - sometimes very well - by  a man. We also know that a person who has become a Mistress can also be transgender.  

Lately, as it seems that Democrats and Republicans take opposite sides to the question of medical and psychiatric treatment of children who believe themselves to be born into the body of the wrong gender, we tend to think that this is a modern issue. Well, Georgie was born intersex and the decision was made to raise her as a boy which she was until the early 1960's. She felt she was a girl and the issue emerged again as she went through puberty.  

And her dad - her uncle - and other men like them - had a mistress.  And her mother knew it but accepted it.

I was following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex controversy and drama. I noticed that among those with strong opinions about them was Lady Colin Campbell, born George William Ziadie, eventually changed to Georgia Arianna Ziadie, and is called Georgie or Lady C.  She has a distinct way of speaking,  forthright, creative with words, detail oriented and thought provoking. It's fair to say that she does not think well of the Sussexes. Though I do sometimes listen to BBC as well as some of the more tabloidish publications and broadcasts on YouTube, Lady Colin Campbell is an especially fascinating character herself. She is not only considered one of many "royal experts" and the guest on various televised programs but runs her own YouTube station.  (The link to it is below.) She says that she gets her information from people she is connected to within the aristocracy. 

When I discovered that she was a book author noted for the book The Real Diana, a 1992 New York Times Best Seller List title, that was the first to reveal Diana's unhappy marriage, I searched my Hoopla subscription for her books. I discovered Daughter of Narcissus, a memoir that focused on her childhood as part of the British elite of the island of Jamaica, which has much to reveal about what race relations were there. Perhaps when it comes to the question of the British Royal Family being racist, she might know quite a bit about racism having been raised on an island where white people and people of color most often had employer-employee relationships.

Lady Colin Campbell's memoir proved to be a powerful, can't put it down read.  I cancelled plans to keep reading.

She was raised by abusive parents who were not challenged by other family members or those in their employ. She knew her father and his brother and men of their status were what we call today predators, sexual harassers, even rapists, outside the immediate family. Inside it, as she and her three siblings were being raised to adulthood, there was tremendous physical and psychological abuse. Her mother was what we would call today a Malignant Narcissus, lacking empathy, plotting, attention seeking, turning every story around so that they could be the star. Her father went into rages - beating servants - breaking doors down.  Both parents were excessively concerned with their public reputation.

As I will reveal in excerpting this book, the primary reference for this month's posts, Lady Colin Campbell's father likely had a mistress named Mrs. Powell, and, well, Lady Colin Campbell liked her. In fact, Lady Colin Campbell thought that the mistress, a much-younger-than-her father employee she calls Mrs. Powel, may have provided a respite from his marriage and a sense of actual civilization to the errant Michael Ziadie.

Her mother's personality disorder damaged everyone's lives. Her father was an older man with a personality disorder himself who allowed his wife to be treacherously abusive and was cooperatively and independently abusive himself. Lady Campbell was raised in a family in which she and her siblings were unfairly and cruelly punished by parents who gave one impression as members of high society and a drastically different one where matters were considered to be private. I suspect that as the girl Georgie, being raised as a boy, was already invested in getting to the truth of every situation. Since divorce was not generally considered an option, her parents settled into their dangerous domesticity. Lady Colin Campbell, while advantaged materially, is a survivor of much.

One review of this book from Goodreads was: "Daughter of Narcissus is a stunning analysis by the author of the serious personality disorder of narcissism through her own dysfunctional family, positioned at the heart of international society from the middle of the 20th century to present day. Dr Anna Brocklebank considers it one of the most significant and inspiring books ever written on the subject of narcissism and believes it should become a medical reference book as well as a popular best seller."

If you are the child of a parent or parents who were so mentally ill that they took it out on you, this book may be a must-read.  (And if you realize you are abusing your own children, or you're letting your partner or their parent do so, I beg you to have courage and get psychological treatment first for yourself.) 

Now, before we begin this month dedicated to her, I want to mention more fascinating things about Lady Colin Campbell.

Born in 1949, she is now in her 70's. Lord Colin Ivar Campbell, her now longtime ex-husband, was a son of the eleventh Duke of Argyll. Lord Colin Campbell has said he wishes she would stop using her name - which is unlikely. Well, she obtained it fairy, through marriage, even if their marriage was brief, and either way she was born into the aristocracy. They married after knowing each other only five days but it took months before they started divorce.  She had met him because she was great friends with his sister. He too was severely abusive, even bashing her face in requiring corrective surgery, and then focusing on her body. He was an alcoholic and addict and mentally ill. He took from her financially. He and his lawyers - his family - threatened to ruin her reputation and more thoroughly out her as having been born intersex.  Lady Campbell kept the name thinking she would remarry in a year or two, for she was quite a young woman when she divorced, but that never happened.  She had boyfriends but was hesitant because of all the abuse.  Fortyish with a best seller that earned money and some independent income, she decided what she lacked was her own family. She adopted two sons from Russia and raised them. (The boys are not biological twins as has been reported elsewhere,)

The story of her understanding of her birth defect and resulting gender issues and the horrors she went through with her parents and doctors is something anyone who is interested in today's issues of transgenderism needs to read. The decision that she be raised as a son had been made at her birth and until she reached puberty it seemed as if her siblings and other relatives in the know and the doctors were accepting of that decision but she was considered an effeminate boy. She was given hormones to masculinize her as well as shock treatments circa 1963. She felt that her mother in particular had set her up to be her lifelong companion rather than correct her gender so that she couldn't marry: She references instances in British Royal Family that may have been the same issue.  By 1967 she was threatening suicide if her parents did not allow her to correct her gender to female and was being promised treatment in the United States.

Trouble with teenage classmates lead her to skipping school and applying to Fashion Institute in New York before the age of 18, not only because she loved fashion but to escape. Her father wanted her to stay home as company to her mother. He warned her that no one would want to marry her siblings when they found out that their sister was a "freak." They were selfishly emotionally blackmailing her. 

Being a woman who did want to earn her own living, but also compelled by socio-economic and class considerations unique to her status at birth and sexism in general, she worked in fashion for a while, but turned to writing.  Now she is a commentator. 

Are you ready for the excerpts from her book that focus on the attitude towards mistresses - and the husbands who didn't consider sexuality outside of their inescapable marriages to be anything worth divorcing over? Not even the cruelty of a mother to her children?  Well, consider yourself a member of my unofficial womens study college class here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot!

Missy

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Here's the link to her YouTube Station! https://www.youtube.com/@LadyColinCampbellYouTube