After reading Sheila by Robert Wainwright and then Daughter of the Empire by Pamela Hicks about her life as a Mountbatten, this one is more about life of the upper caste set in England, with a lot of same names and the same general lives of theirs in that era, of parties ad cruises and affairs and so on, especially when it came to heiresses and other rich women - household and children concerns were taken care of by professionals, with little personal contact generally between parents and children, and adults who did not have enough to occupy them being on the whole wasted leading lives of trying to find pleasure and excitement, and so on. This waste of life wasn't limited to women, one way or another - men were often just as wasted, as exemplified by more than one character in the society described in the three books. Thus Sheila's first husband, Lord Loughborough, wasted his life in gambling and so forth, while others described in this book or the other two conducted affairs and did little else that could be construed positive so as to set off against the negatives.
But this book goes more into details of the personal lives, problems, details of relationships and unhappy lives, not only of daughters of Lord Curzon but generally of the whole set, and makes one even more disillusioned with any thought of money bringing happiness by setting one free of cares and worries. What's more, it goes further, to bring one to despise several characters central and peripheral - beginning with Curzon who stole his daughters' money, especially the eldest one Irene, and then severed relationship with her when she eventually demanded probity of accounts, and all this not because he wished to save them from spending at young age and so forth, but sheer selfishness to the point well beyond theft. He gave much of their inheritance away, including the personal jewellery willed by their mother, and the monies from their mother's father, to his second wife, only to be cheated in almost every way - she not only had another lover, but managed to avoid him most of their married life, by travelling to another place wherever he happened to be, and writing to the effect that while she missed him the children were happier in the other place.
Not that she didn't repeat his mistakes at that - having taken the girls' inheritance, and kept most of the houses and castles Curzon kept buying with their money, after his death she gambled it away by heeding her lover's inclinations, and was reduced to economies too!
And this pattern, of the virtuous coming to grief and being ill treated by those that are not so virtuous, repeats in the lives of the daughters too - Irene leads and independent life and uses much of her life for works of charity, and takes up caring for the children of her sisters, while the youngest one goes about merrily with several love affairs conducted simultaneously with various members of their set of society of aristocracy and glitterati and so forth, and is not just thankless to the elder one but positively abominably rude, over years - and this is indeed inexplicable except when one realises that it is based on the caste system imposed on (and accepted by most) women, that of married and young and sexy being always the ones that get away with any despicable behaviour while those not married are used, looked down on and treated abominably.
Divorce being seen as taboo in such social system where affairs conducted discreetly are seen as norm, and by discreet it doesn't mean secret and unknown but not seen explicitly in public, is about as hypocritical as impeachment of a president of US for an affair, or the muck thrown at Charlie Chaplin for that matter for an allegation of a child out of wedlock. Still, this was the way they lived then, and perhaps a lot many societies still do too - Princess Diana was after all denied the HRH title post her divorce, while the replacement merely has a lesser than Wales title.
This being the state of west, one can only set the graph of other social systems as amount of distance they keep from stoning of those women that are independent, wear clothes not prescribed by the particular region or not necessarily hold every male as one to simper and kowtow to. Most societies, such independence and daring to hold oneself human on par brings a woman brickbats from men and women alike, not all but most, unless she happens to be of what is perceived as "upper" strata, by power and wealth and race.
And Irenes of this world die lonely.
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The real shocker to those unfamiliar with the facts before reading is about Mosley - and about how close the social set skirted to fascism, despite knowing it won't do, not in England. Even in personal life he is one of the most unsavoury characters and one wonders how and why people put up with such conduct, his using his wife so ill and even apart from affairs galore, being a wolf in the sense of hunting women for the sake of power, and being a true successor to Curzon in stealing the money in that he uses homes and money paid for by his wife's fortune for his purposes, plans to deprive his children and insists his sister in law pays for the home his children live in! And yet, even post several instances of his misbehaviour, his paramour and the younger sister in law uses her influence with various males to get him a better deal with his imprisonment, even getting him free!
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But for Irene this book would leave a reader completely disgusted, and her having to play subservient to Mosley or Alexandra Metcalfe despite their ill treating their very loving and nice partners does not leave a good taste either.
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