He added that he felt ready for marriage. ‘I have never really sown any wild oats & as I never intend to, I haven’t got to get over that stage, which some never have to.’105
He was to be the proud instigator of a new line, now that the name Battenberg had been abandoned and his brother’s children were Milford Haven, and his thoughts were already turning to becoming a parent, buying children’s toys in Malaya. For all his bravado about ‘getting off’ with women, Dickie remained an inexperienced lover. His only previous experience had been a visit to a brothel in Paris in January 1919. ‘Please darling, don’t get fussed or frightened,’ he reassured Edwina. ‘I’m a very patient chap, just out to please you . . .’106
From India, the royal party moved on to Ceylon, where they stayed at the King’s Pavilion in Kandy before going on to Singapore and Hong Kong. On 12 April they arrived at Yokohama, Japan. Traditionally, Japan had been an ally of the British, but the longstanding treaty of friendship had not been renewed, nationalism was on the rise, and Japan had engaged in rapid rearmament. Attempts by the British naval attaché to visit their newest battleship, the Mutsu, had been rebuffed, so Dickie, regarded as simply a royal visitor, was recruited to do a little bit of espionage, producing a detailed report for the Admiralty.107
In mid-June the Renown reached Plymouth, escorted for the last stretch by four seaplanes and a flotilla of destroyers, and the party caught a special train to Paddington where huge crowds awaited, including the King and Queen and most of the Cabinet. From there, a convoy of State carriages took the party to Buckingham Palace and a celebration lunch. Edwina preferred to wait and be reunited that evening at Marjorie Brecknock’s house, where she was staying.108
During the eight-month trip, Dickie had travelled over 40,000 miles and the trip had cemented his close friendship with the heir to the throne, enhanced his naval career and consolidated three great loves – India, Polo and Edwina.
Dickie, who loved organising things, threw himself into the preparations for his forthcoming wedding in deadly earnest. Wedding venue, presents and guests all had to be planned and furniture for their new home together bought, all neatly labelled with its country of origin.109 It was nothing compared to Edwina’s preparations, especially in terms of her wardrobe. To Queen Mary’s shock, even her lingerie was described in the press – each marked with a tiny cypher E and M intertwined in a diamond-shaped frame.
There was also the business of catching up with friends and being entertained. That was how Edwina liked it, but there was little opportunity for them to spend time together alone. It was a pattern to repeat itself throughout their life.
CHAPTER 5
Honeymoon
Most couples return to their private lives after the public spectacle of a wedding, but the Mountbattens’ marriage marked simply the start of a life where private life and public appearances would often be merged. Their first four days of honeymoon at Broadlands was hardly spent alone, with a church fair in the grounds of Broadlands, and a visit to the cinema in Romsey to see the Pathé News film of the wedding. Dickie himself, who liked to be the centre of attention, talked of the wedding being like a movie. The honeymoon was to be no different.
After hosting a dinner party for the Prince of Wales and Fruity Metcalfe, the couple left in the new Rolls-Royce – the chauffeur Rasdill and Edwina’s maid Weller squashed in the back with the luggage – for the first part of their four-month honeymoon.110 Their first stop was Paris, which represented for Edwina freedom and sophistication, and the main suite at the Ritz hotel. ‘It’s marvellous, Mama dear, being married,’ Dickie wrote to his mother, ‘quite the best thing I’ve ever done or am likely to do.’111
But the differences between the newlyweds were already apparent. For Dickie, everything had to be planned down to the last detail, for Edwina, the joy, after years of close supervision, was to run free without plans. Their next stop was Spain, where Dickie had carefully mapped out routes and overnight stops, much to the dismay of Edwina, who would have preferred more spontaneity and consultation. To please her, Dickie cancelled his bookings to find at their first stop, Tours, the only accommodation was a tiny attic room at a small hotel. After a sleepless night, Edwina agreed to let him pre-book in future.
Their next stop was Spain and a stay with King Alfonso and Queen Ena – Dickie’s cousin – in Santander, followed by Wolfsgarten, near Darmstadt. After that a visit to Dickie’s uncle Ernie, where they saw Heiligenberg Castle, the Battenbergs’ country house, which Dickie’s father had sold two years before. A surprise visitor was Peter Murphy, Dickie’s Cambridge friend who, after entertaining his hosts at Wolfsgarten, disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared. Back in Paris, the young couple were joined at the Ritz by Georgie and Nada for a much more exciting three days of cocktails and nightclubs, before returning to London at the end of August.
Dickie, who had taken leave on half pay until November, was now able to take up the second part of his honeymoon – a trip across America. At the end of September, the Mountbattens left on the Majestic, then the biggest passenger ship in the world, in a huge suite obtained for the price of a single cabin because of their publicity value. Press attention was something they were to generate throughout their American stay. In New York they gave a press conference, dined with the composer Jerome Kern, went to the cinema with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, saw the Ziegfeld Follies, danced to Paul Whiteman’s Big Show Band, watched a baseball game with Babe Ruth, and rode the roller coaster at Coney Island nine times.
Dickie had only briefly been to the United States – a short stop at San Diego with the Prince of Wales – and Edwina never. Their trip had been organised by a wealthy family friend, Robert Thompson, who had put his private railway carriage at the disposal of the honeymoon couple and also joined them with various members of his family. From New York they visited Niagara Falls, a meat factory in Chicago and the Grand Canyon, pulling in at sidings to visit power stations, museums and Colonel Thompson’s friends. Douglas Fairbanks had invited them to use his home, Pickfair, and through Geordie, the Duke of Sutherland, they had an introduction to Charlie Chaplin. ‘He is the most loveable, shy & pathetic little man & yet so full of humour that he can keep one amused by the hour,’ wrote Dickie to his mother.112
Cecil B. de Mille showed them the sets for his new film at Paramount Studios and they even made their own film, Nice and Friendly, centring around Edwina’s abduction by Colonel Thompson and rescue by Chaplin, with bit parts for Dickie as her lover, child star Jackie Coogan and even their own valet Thorogood in the role of a disdainful butler.113
And then it was back to the East Coast with Dickie giving an address at the Navy League dinner in Washington on Navy Day – Thompson was Honorary President of the League – to Florida, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, a brief visit to President Warren G. Harding, and finally ten days with the Vanderbilts at their house at 640 Fifth Avenue, where Edwina celebrated her twenty-first birthday.
It was not only Edwina, but Dickie who had come of age. Both blossomed, learning to work a crowd and politely answer the most inane questions, notably about their wealth and future. ‘Career for Lady Louis? Why, she’s going to be my wife, career enough!’ Dickie told one paper.114 Edwina was happy to go along with the conceit, claiming, without a blush, that ‘Scrubbing floors, dishwashing and cooking . . . are her long suits.’115 They had enjoyed the attention – the Press called them Prince and Princess – the openness and the hospitality, and made many new friends and developed new passions, such as spirituals and jazz. America was, in future, to be another escape from the more curtailed lives in Britain to which they were about to return.
Dickie’s naval future looked uncertain. The First World War had imposed huge financial burdens on Britain and the National Debt had risen from £677 million in 1910 to £7.8 billion in 1922 – larger than the country’s GDP. Something had to be done. Sir Eric Geddes was appointed to look into cutting public expenditure. He recommended reductions in public s
pending of £87 million with much of it falling on defence – the budget was cut by 42 per cent in one year, and especially the Navy. It meant that 350 lieutenants would have to be retired. The view was taken that those with private incomes should be the first to be culled. It looked like Dickie’s career might be over before it had even begun.
Amongst those on the committee deciding who should be retained was Admiral Ernle Chatfield. Dickie had been his ‘doggie’ – ADC and errand boy – and he knew the young officer was serious and ambitious. Other influential supporters included the Prince of Wales, who spoke to his father, and his brother Georgie, who argued that Dickie had the makings of a fine naval officer but, from recent evidence as a director of a gramophone company, was an indifferent businessman.116
On the other hand, many of Dickie’s contemporaries saw him as a rich playboy, a lightweight more interested in accompanying the Prince of Wales on tour and making films in Hollywood than his naval career. By the end of 1923, more than half the officers from Dickie’s year had left the service. Saved by his influential contacts, he was not one of them, but he knew that if he was to survive and prosper in the Navy, he would have to excel.
In January 1923, Dickie was posted to the battleship Revenge – part of the International Fleet in the Dardanelles – to deal with any problems in the Balkans. Edwina, Peter Murphy, John and Marjorie Brecknock accompanied him by train to Paris, where they spent a few days visiting the night spots of the capital. Presenting his wife with a toy rabbit called Bun, Dickie then caught another train to Constantinople. It was the first time they had been apart since marrying six months earlier.
The captain of the Revenge, Gilbert Stephenson, had initially asked the Admiralty not to post Mountbatten, concerned he was not serious about his career:
Directly I saw the man at work I realised how tremendously intelligent he was, how full of life and vivacity. He had the gift of getting on with people; people, in other words, wanted to do what he wanted them to do. And, after all, that’s a very valuable gift in anybody, especially an officer. He was, in fact, the most successful of all my officers when handling difficult men, though you would hardly have expected him to afford them the time they needed.117
Dickie made a point of knowing all 160 men in his division, preparing details of each with their career and background. He gave prizes for good shooting (until it was pointed out that other officers could not afford to do the same), introduced mah-jong and wrote a script for a black-and-white Pierrot show. The Communist Len Wincott, later ringleader in the Invergordon Mutiny, remembered that when Dickie ‘left the Revenge . . . he received such a send-off from the men that I doubt any captain ever was so spontaneously or sincerely bid bon voyage.’118
The newlyweds missed each other enormously. On the first anniversary of their engagement, he wrote her a 24-page letter recapping their life together since they had first met and confessing to dreams about her slim legs encased in soft leather riding boots. Edwina also faced uncertainty and a need to prove herself. She had rushed into marriage not knowing what else to do and now faced long periods apart from Dickie, as he single-mindedly pursued his naval career. She had no obvious purpose and around £50,000 a year after tax (when £1,000 before tax was a generous income) to pursue it.
Stella Underhill largely ran the Cassell bequests, trust and charities, and Brook House, so Edwina simply occupied herself by sleeping late, shopping, playing bridge, seeing friends, attending parties and country house weekends and, where possible, following Dickie on his naval postings. A particular pleasure was revue and cabaret shows, especially ‘jerky syncopated dance music, sentimental love songs and the sound of a wailing saxophone’.119 She was painted by the society painter Philip de László, but she felt bored and restless, her sharp brain and competitive nature not fully exercised.
She had already redecorated Brook House, papering and carpeting her bedroom in pale grey and installing a vast bath of Italian marble flanked by an enormous double washstand. Amongst her jars of cream and perfumed oils was a small bottle containing the blackened nerve of Dickie’s left front tooth, damaged in a hunting accident in 1920, and a parting present before he left for Constantinople.
Dickie’s bedroom had also been redone to resemble an officer’s cabin, complete with regulation bunk, brass rail, folding washstand, the simulated noise of the throb of a ship’s engine, and a porthole trompe-l’oeil, which, at the flick of a switch, presented a diorama of Valetta harbour by either day or moonlight. Against a painted background was a collection of cut-out ships at 50 feet to an inch that, when darkness fell, twinkled real Morse signals to each other. In one corner in a glass case was the comforting presence of his father’s hat, uniform and decorations as First Sea Lord.
In April, the Revenge docked at Plymouth and the Mountbattens, reunited at the Grand Hotel, began their next joint operation – a child. Shortly afterwards, Edwina announced she was pregnant.
Another task that summer was to find a country house near Portsmouth where Revenge was now based. In May, Edwina took a six-week lease on Maiden Castle House, near Dorchester, a square, substantial brick villa with eight bedrooms and plenty of room for Dickie’s polo ponies. At the same time, they cut back on their expenditure by renting out Brook House to Mrs Vanderbilt. The Revenge was now at Devonport and Edwina returned to London, where she danced every night with an old flame, Hugh Molyneux, heir to the Earl of Sefton, at a succession of nightclubs – the Riviera Club, the Grafton Galleries or the Blue Lagoon.
On 14 February, Dickie, cruising with the Atlantic Fleet at Madeira, received a signal informing him of the birth of a daughter born exactly two years after his engagement.120 She was named Patricia (after her cousin and godmother, Lady Patricia Ramsay) Edwina Victoria (after Dickie’s mother). He immediately wrote to Edwina:
I could hardly hold myself in when I got the wireless message this morning saying that our daughter had been born. For a few days past I felt convinced it would be a girl and was praying it would be as I think it’s so much nicer to have a daughter as one’s first child. That I am a father I simply cannot believe, and oh! My dear, I am so excited I can hardly wait until I come home to see her. It is thrilling, isn’t it, my dear? Bless you sweet – if anything could make me love you more dearly than I already do, it will be our baby.121
Edwina, having done her duty, quickly resolved to go back to her life of pleasure and the baby was handed over to Nannie Woodard. Shortly afterwards, she left for dress fittings and fun with Nada in Paris and then to stay at the Château de la Garoupe at Antibes. Amongst her new friends were Paula Gellibrand, a Vogue model, and her husband, the Marquis de Casa Maury. Bobby Casa Maury, known as ‘The Cuban Heel’, had been born in Cuba but brought up in Britain. A racing driver by profession, a playboy by inclination, he and his wife dazzled Edwina.
Dickie was granted leave for the christening in April at the Chapel Royal, attended by her godparents, who included the Prince of Wales. Immediately, Dickie was besotted, but Edwina was slower to appreciate her first child. Whilst her photograph albums of 1924 have scores of pictures of her friends, there are only nine of Patricia for the first months of her life. It sometimes appeared as if the infant was simply an ornament with whom her mother was occasionally photographed for society magazines.
Edwina continued her frantic social life – Wimbledon for the Ladies’ semi-finals, Ascot for tea with the King and Queen, Cowes with the Vanderbilts and Barings. There were tennis parties when the weather was fine, mah-jong when wet, visits to the movies with friends such as Jean Norton and Hugh Molyneux, the occasional charity function and, every few months, shopping trips to Paris for shoes at Tetreau, hats at Reboux and dresses at Chanel.
She ate little and exercised frantically – golf or tennis daily, for which she had professional coaching, and then several hours dancing each night – with the result she remained fit and slim. She was desperate for new experiences and felt trapped by domesticity. Above all, she craved her own independence �
�� having been denied it in her youth.
In August 1924, Dickie left the Revenge and after a week playing polo at Deauville and Le Touquet on the French coast, he and Edwina joined the Prince of Wales on the Cunard liner Berengaria to New York. Ostensibly, the purpose was to watch an international polo match between Britain and the United States on Long Island. Others on board included: Georgie and Nada; her sister Zia and husband Harold Wernher; the Duchess of Westminster; Jean Norton and her husband Richard, the heir to Lord Grantley; Diana (returning to appear on Broadway) and Duff Cooper, and Ivor Novello’s mother. Indeed, so popular was the crossing that it had a waiting list of 500 – mainly marriageable daughters.
Dickie and Edwina spent much of their time with the Prince, who was travelling incognito as Lord Renfrew, playing mah-jong or swimming in the liner’s swimming pool, a vast cave lined with marble columns and mock-Pompeian mosaics. Dickie organised a tug-of-war team from amongst the Prince’s staff, who naturally were allowed to win. Edwina and Jean danced the night away in the ship’s nightclub.
The royal party was staying on Long Island with James Burden, president of Burden Iron Works, the largest horseshoe and nail-producing concern in the world, and spent their time at polo meetings, dances, dinners and trips into New York, either by road or boat. The Prince of Wales conducted an affair with Pinna Cruger, the actress wife of a New York haberdashery millionaire, whilst Fruity Metcalfe took up with an 18-year-old dancer, Virginia de Lanty.122
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