Sometime in the ’80s, Colin Tennant, or Lord Glenconner as I think he prefers, suggested selling his half of the island of Mustique to my husband and me – it was a balmy night and we were at dinner in our beach house where Harding [Lawrence] and I lived while building the terraces, a kind of palace on a hill. Colin had tears in his eyes, Harding was stunned and I was delighted at the idea. Colin and I are friends. I have always appreciated him. He has an eccentric and theatrical side that annoys some people — not me — but he comes up with creative ideas all of us have thoroughly enjoyed. It was his idea to turn Mustique into a beautiful and charming place to live, a good idea if there ever was one.

Click here to see Mary’s photos of Mustique.

Colin is a Scottish lord and he bought the island thinking that Princess Margaret, who he was close to and adored, would have privacy there with her new husband, Tony. For a few years, that privacy was delicious and probably deliciously naughty for Princess Margaret and some of the other royals who needed occasional release from the English leash they were on. Tony’s uncle, Oliver Messel, was a famous stage designer and he created a pretty house on a point we used to say was “out of town,” although it was about a ten-minute drive from the few other houses there at the time. 

We went to Mustique after giving up a winter weekend house we had in Acapulco. Colombians were trying to take over Acapulco at that time and one of them barged into our house when we were not there with guns ablaze and terrified the people working there, locking them up in the kitchen. The Colombian took over the house – but Harding had been so helpful to the Mexican government by ruining Acapulco, flying millions of tourists from the United States there on Braniff Airlines and by building big hotels for them, that the president came through and forced the Colombian to leave our house. I wouldn’t go back after that. Acapulco was great when it was little and sexy, but Harding did ruin it for me when he made it big and successful and rich. I wanted to find a new place that was little and sexy and, when I heard about Mustique, it sounded like my dream of a private island, and perfect. Life is a circle.

My very good friend, John Calley, was offered Mustique for $50,000 before Colin decided to turn it into an island for Princess Margaret. I think Colin had paid $45,000 for it and maybe he thought a $5,000 profit would do. John didn’t buy it and I couldn’t persuade Harding to buy half of it either. We were having incredible problems, then, building the palace on the hill. Harding had retired and had time to build such a house, but he had to bring almost everything from France and Italy to build it with. He had to bring the builders, too. The local men were good at masonry. But Harding brought experts from Italy to teach them about tile and roofing and molding and floors – a group from Ireland came to plaster – and a man came from France to paint everything and liked Mustique so much he stayed. I was running an advertising agency all over the world and rarely got to Mustique the four and a half years it took to build the house. In fact, I gave up on it and one day chopped one wing off the plans. "It’s hopeless," I told Harding. But Colin and Brian Alexander, his managing director of the island, were warm and welcoming to Harding. And when others saw the investment we were making on top of that hill, more people began building more serious houses on the island.