It was there where she met Sir Robert "Bertie" Abdy, 5th baronet,[3] an art dealer whose vast fortune derived from the family's ownership of large parts of London Docklands.
The couple lived in a duplex flat at 55 Eaton Square and at Newton Ferrers, a 17th-century country house in St Mellion, Cornwall, that Abdy had acquired in 1936 and then renovated in the Art Deco taste.
She was one of the first art dealers in modern times to appreciate the portraits of Jacques-Émile Blanche and Giovanni Boldini and also promoted the cat studies by Théophile Steinlen and innovative colour posters of Jules Chéret.
She entertained in her terraced house opposite Noël Coward's in Gerald Road, Belgravia, where her drawing room was dominated by Winterhalter’s near life-size portrait of Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg.
[1] As well as producing exhibition catalogues, Lady Abdy co-authored The Souls (1984, with Charlotte Gere) which profiled the members of the late-19th century elite social group of that name.
[3] 8 Pelham Place is famous as the London home of her friend Cecil Beaton from 1940 to 1975, where in 1967 he photographed the model Twiggy wearing a yellow velvet dress[5] for an editorial for Vogue.