In reality, their worlds were moving ever further apart. Of all the siblings, Mary and Pamela saw each other the least. They were ‘widely unlike’, and while Cincie Charteris diplomatically tried to attribute their prolonged absences from each other to ‘their very different ways of life’ – Mary ‘was at everyone’s beck and call’ while Pamela ‘exercised a certain thrift in the spending of her time’1 – the fact was that Mary often found Pamela difficult and remote. Mary was ‘devoted’ to Mananai (‘as well she might be’ said Cincie2) but with the perspective given by an age difference of a decade, she recognized her youngest sister’s flaws better than the rest of her family, and was capable, on occasion, of a ‘heated … skirmish!’ with her, something that faithful Mananai would never do.3 Publicly, Mary maintained her support of her difficult sister: ‘I know you’ll forget any little hardnesses of speech about your Pamela. I could not bear you to think me stupid enough not to see her extra out-of-the-way cleverness,’ Margot wrote to Mary in 1900 – a rare enough apology from Margot, suggesting that Mary must have defended Pamela quite forcefully.4 ‘It is the fashion to abuse Pamela,’ Mary remarked almost twenty years later to Lady Desborough (as Ettie Grenfell became after Willie’s elevation to the peerage), thanking her for understanding her sister as she did.5 In 1902, however, Mary and Pamela were united by the common bond of pregnancy, giving birth just weeks apart in May.
