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In the '30s Cliveden was in the news for very different reasons. A born hostess, Nancy loved to bring together weekend guests of all nationalities, religions and political convictions. Nonetheless, because the Astors' most frequent visitors included top Tories and the editors of the two Astor newspapers, the London Times and the Observer, the Cliveden set became a sinister synonym for the forces in Britain that believed in making a deal with Hitler. Though actually Prime Minister Chamberlain fervently believed in appeasement with no persuasion from his hostess, Nancy Aster's failure to accept the final futility of his policy caused her to be attacked as godmother of Munich and a Nazi sympathizer.
Resounding Belle. She took the abuse with gallantry and grace. In fact, as she said, "I abhor Hitler and Hitlerism." On one occasion when Hitler's Ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, greeted her with the Nazi salute, she snapped: "Stop that nonsense with me!" During World War II, she ran Cliveden as a 1,600-bed hospital for wounded Canadian soldiers, also assisted her husband in his duties as Lord Mayor of Plymouth, which was savagely bombed. "You can kill us," she challenged the Nazis, "but you can't scare us."
After her retirement from politics in 1945, she described herself as an "extinct volcano"—but it was not quiet for long. Until very recently, Nancy Astor remained her animated, voluble, rapier-tongued but warmhearted self.
When the resounding Virginia belle died last week of the complaints of old age, her lifelong battle for women's rights had long since helped to win her English sisters a valued and creative role in male-dominated Britain; in Parliament alone, 53 women now take their seats as a matter of unquestioned right. Her prowess in that and every other cause she espoused may be gauged by the reaction of another Tory backbencher when she walked into the House of Commons one day with a black eye suffered in a golfing accident. "My word, Nancy!" he marveled. "What must the other bloke be like!"