The Mountbattens

by Andrew Lownie

  ‘We loved having Bunny in our home,’ remembered Lady Pamela Hicks:

  Quite simply, he made my mother easier to be around and he genuinely loved being with my sister and me. He had the imagination for wonderful games into which she would also be drawn. When he was away, he wrote us warm, affectionate letters addressing each of us ‘The Weewaks’, one of many pet names he invented for us . . . Bunny brought great joy to our lives and I loved him deeply. He was a core part of my rather eccentric family, and although he was our mother’s lover, they never displayed more than a friendly affection in public. He would stay with us for long periods of time and, to us children, he was just a part of our everyday life.201

  It was time for another expedition. Adsdean and the children were in good hands, Dickie was focused on his career and Yola, Brook House was still being built, and Edwina wanted time with her new man. At the end of January 1934, she set off with Bunny to explore South America accompanied, as chaperones, by Marjorie Brecknock and Jack Evelyn. Travelling by train to Lisbon and then boat to Brazil – during which Edwina was so drunk from the captain’s planter’s punch, she was only able to present the prizes for the games tournament after some fortifying cups of black coffee – in time for the Rio Carnival. From there they flew to Porto Alegre and Buenos Aires.

  They crossed the Andes by horse, sleeping rough before returning up the coast of Chile, where they caught a train to La Paz in Bolivia. Here, they became caught up in a local uprising, when cadets from the military college took over the police headquarters and they were besieged in their hotel. ‘Sat gloomily inside playing games until they had forgotten about us and we were able to emerge again,’ wrote Marjorie in the diary she kept of the trip.202

  It was then on to the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu before returning to the Mayan civilisation in the Yucatán, where they came across Katharine Hepburn. ‘Very disappointing off the screen, with very untidy, lanky, reddish hair,’ noted Brecknock disapprovingly.203 ‘We have covered 5,771 miles in the air up the West coast of South America, across Central America and from Merida to Miami, and about 1,500 miles down the East coast from Rio to Buenos Aires, making 7,271 miles in all,’ was one triumphant entry in Marjorie’s diary.204

  * * *

  In the spring of 1934, Dickie had achieved his first command, the very modern destroyer HMS Daring. He was well prepared, having learnt by heart details of the full crew of 140, so he was able to speak to every man as if he knew him intimately. He proved to be ‘a fine seaman, of tireless energy, intense curiosity and unremitting drive,’ one former officer remembered. ‘In addition, he was very human and approachable . . . We were a thoroughly happy Wardroom under him and this atmosphere radiated throughout the ship, so that not only were we a happy ship but an intensely active and confident one.’205

  Peter Murphy (who had just opened a Communist bookshop in London) and Noël Coward had come out in June with King Alfonso of Spain and a 13-year-old Prince Philip. They went out in Lizard, water-skied, swam and picnicked on the rocks at Gozo. The flirtatious, slightly camp, relationship that Coward maintained with Dickie is apparent from his thank-you letter:

  Dear dainty Darling,

  I couldn’t have enjoyed my holiday more . . . Please ask Peter not to foul the guest cabin in any beastly way because I do so want to use it again . . . Please be careful of your zippers, Dickie dear, and don’t let me hear of any ugly happenings at Flotilla dances, Love and kisses, Bosun [sic] Coward.206

  * * *

  In August 1934, Edwina was off again, this time to South East Asia. First stop was Canada with Noël Coward, where they stayed with the Governor General, before being reunited with Bunny and Ted Phillips in California. Edwina pretended in her letters to Dickie and her diary that she was part of a larger party.207 In fact, she and Bunny travelled alone, visiting ruins and temples and the ancient site of Angkor Wat, watching Cambodian dancers and riding in rickshaws. In Hanoi, they rented a Chinese junk for a three-day cruise, swimming by moonlight and sleeping on deck. From Bali and Java, they flew to Singapore and from there caught a ship to Borneo and Sarawak. Then it was back via Bangkok, Calcutta, Jodhpur, Baghdad, Cairo and Budapest, where she caught up with Szapary.

  It was not only the Mountbattens who had their personal problems. Edwina’s father Wilfrid and younger wife Molly had never been that compatible. Having served as Minister of Transport, Wilfrid had been elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Mount Temple and accordingly was less busy. He now wanted to leave Molly, but Edwina backed her stepmother and told him he should stay.

  Nada and George also had their difficulties. In October, a custody battle, Vanderbilt v Whitney, opened in New York. It centred around who should have responsibility for the ten-year-old heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt. On one side was Gertrude Whitney, on the other her sister-in-law, also called Gloria Vanderbilt and the child’s 29-year-old mother. The six-week trial was a fascinating window into the lives of the ultra-rich in Depression-stricken America. Young Gloria’s father, Reggie Vanderbilt, had died of cirrhosis of the liver when she was one, leaving nothing except debts. The young child had been brought up by her mother, who had moved in the same circles as her twin sister, Thelma Furness, mistress of the Prince of Wales.

  During the trial, a chauffeur had testified about the elder Gloria Vanderbilt’s several lovers, whilst her maid had given testimony that she had seen Gloria ‘in bed reading a paper, and there was Lady Milford Haven beside the bed with her arm around Mrs Vanderbilt’s neck and kissing her just like a lover.’208 Gertrude was awarded custody.209 Rumours had long circulated about Nada’s colourful sex life and her love of lesbian bars in Paris and the South of France, but here was public evidence. Gloria had been a frequent visitor to Nada’s home, Lynden Manor, near Bray, and of course Nada was close to Edwina.210

  * * *

  The same month, the end of October 1934, Dickie left for Singapore as part of a plan to improve the quality of destroyers serving on the China station, where he would exchange Daring for a much older destroyer, HMS Wishart, launched in 1919. Accompanying him was his pet tortoise, Andrew, and Peter Murphy. Initially disappointed, Dickie began to look on the positive side, telling his crew: ‘Our ship is called after the Almighty himself to whom we pray every day: “Our father Wishart in Heaven . . .”’211

  One of his first tasks was to restore the morale of his men, which he did with on-board competitions, shows, a band led by Peter Murphy, a ship’s newspaper and films. He set the challenge of winning every prize at the flotilla’s annual regatta in September 1935, most notably by setting a shorter, faster stroke of 38.5 strokes a minute in the rowing, which he did, being declared ‘Cock of the Fleet’. It was not an approach that won him much favour in other ships. ‘He took all the fun out of Fleet Regattas,’ one former colleague remembered, ‘because he never left anything for the other chap. He had to have every trophy and then crowed about it.’212

  He encouraged the value of gunnery practice as a means of relieving the tedium of long periods at sea. Rather than rapid but unfocused firing, Dickie stressed the importance of conserving ammunition and precision targeting. He invented a new torpedograb, replacing the previous system of a sling, and the ‘Mountbatten Station-Keeping Equipment’ that helped ships keep their distance when advance abreast, which was eventually installed in three classes of destroyer.

  His tactics were not always regarded by other ships’ companies as playing by the rules and suspicions remained about his wealth and playboy lifestyle. But Dickie always stressed he played simply to win, and his own crew loved him all the more for it. Few other commanders knew everyone’s name, kept chameleons and a bear in his cabin – Edwina had picked up a black female honey bear, Rastus, on her travels for him to collect in Singapore – or asked for a jazz accompaniment to hymn tunes on Sunday mornings. A hard taskmaster and disciplinarian with the highest standards for himself and the company, he enthused the company with his own will to win. His innate qualities of leadership and initiative wer
e at last being given full rein.

  * * *

  Edwina continued on her travels. After seeing her husband off at Sheerness, she left the next day for four months in the South Seas with Bunny, their third long trip together, returning via Java, New Zealand and Australia. To avoid any press comment they travelled separately, arranging to meet up in California, where they stayed at Pickfair and met Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire.

  Edwina invented a story of travelling with two couples, the Tobins and Robinsons, who were planning to charter a copra boat and sail round the Marquesas and the other Society Islands, mapping and doing survey work. As mail was difficult and cables expensive, Dickie should not worry if he did not hear from her for a while. It was a story Dickie chose to believe to avoid any more scenes.

  Bunny and Edwina pottered around the South Seas for three months, living off sea snails, lobster, fish and sharks that they could spear or shoot. ‘I think the Pacific a perfect Paradise,’ she told Dickie in the second of only two letters sent to him between December 1934 and March 1935.213

  By the end of April, she was back in Malta, having been one of the first commercial passengers to fly the Sydney–London route. She had been away six months. ‘Lovely having the old girl back,’ Dickie wrote in his diary. ‘Looking sweeter than ever.’214 But Edwina was restless. ‘Malta saps all our energy and ambition,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘particularly in this weather and we all become completely gaga!’215 She disliked entertaining Dickie’s colleagues and hankered after the freedom of the South Seas. Soon afterwards she disappeared to Rome with Bunny.

  Though they were reunited for their thirteenth wedding anniversary, Dickie was soon on his own again. At the end of the summer, worried about the growing political crisis in the Mediterranean – Italy had left the League of Nations over her territorial ambitions – Edwina decided to take the children to Hungary, where she thought they would be safer. At Kekes, 100 kilometres from Budapest, she found a hotel amongst pine trees and mountains that she thought suitable and, having settled them in with Nannie and their governess, drove to pick up Marjorie in Rome and bring her to Malta for a holiday.

  ‘The place is thick with barbed wire entanglements and the ships at war stations, with warheads on their torpedoes,’ Edwina wrote in the autumn of 1935.216 Two rooms in Casa Medina were made gas-proof and, on 2 October, the Mediterranean Fleet was placed on a war footing after Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. Whilst most of the Fleet left for the less vulnerable harbour of Alexandria, Dickie remained as part of a small defence force. Edwina refused to be evacuated and, at the invitation of the Port Wireless Officer, was invited to read the London news bulletins. She quickly warmed to her task, combining it with trips to polo matches and cocktails. She was beginning to feel that she could contribute and compete with her high-achieving husband.

  At the end of November, alerted by the hotel owner that it was closing for the winter and the bill needed to be paid, she and Yola set off to pick up the girls, still in only their summer clothes, having forgotten exactly where she had left them. As the Abyssinian Crisis worsened, she decided not to bring them back to Malta, but send them to stay with Uncle Ernie in Darmstadt.

  From Darmstadt, she left for China. In Germany, she told Dickie, she had met ‘some charming people called Ritter’, who had invited her to accompany them to Moscow, and were persuaded to join her and Bunny in a luxury car on the Trans-Siberian railway to China. ‘I tell you all this as I like you to know and you’re so understanding,’ she added.217 Dickie knew the truth and teased her that his German professor had met some Ritters in London. ‘They must be impostors,’ she retorted.

  ‘It’s fascinating being here again and seeing the progress everything has made since 1929,’ wrote Edwina to Dickie at the height of Stalin’s purges. ‘It’s gone ahead by leaps and bounds . . . I gather shorter hours, higher wages, and lower prices (not only from what Intourist tell one!) and the people on the whole are contented, and the young ones happy and enthusiastic.’218

  From Manchuria, Bunny and Edwina wound their way to Peking, before catching a ship from Shanghai to the Philippines. For seven weeks they travelled on small cargo boats, calling at Bali and Java, returning via Hong Kong, Japan and the west coast of America. She had been out of Britain for almost two years. Alone in Malta, Dickie’s poignant diary entry for Christmas Day read: ‘Had a bit of the servants’ Xmas dinner on a tray.’

  * * *

  Dickie accepted his wife’s wanderlust, her desire to pack in experiences of people and places, her need to escape domesticity and him – her unplanned arrangements were in direct contrast to his meticulous plans and, in some ways, he preferred it, leaving him alone with the children, free from her jealousies. ‘She was very prickly, and we all had to be very careful of what we said in her company,’ remembered her younger daughter:

  Sometimes it was as if we were treading on eggshells – she would be hurt by the most unlikely things and then sulk for hours afterwards. In contrast you could say anything you liked to my father, and I adored sharing a house with him once more. He was so inventive, constantly thinking up things that would make Patricia and me happy.219

  Daddy was in a particularly happy mood, sharing memories of his own childhood days in Malta when my grandfather was commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. We explored the island with him and he showed us the beautiful blue lagoons where we could swim, and he gave me a donkey to ride. My sister and I were also given a chameleon each. I named mine Casper and could watch him for ages, endlessly fascinated as to how he changed from yellow to dark green.220

  By June 1936, the Mountbattens were back in London and able to move into their new penthouse above Brook House. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, with interior decoration by their friend Mrs Joshua Cosden, their new home had 30 rooms, and was served by a highspeed lift from a tiny private entrance hall on the ground floor. At the top were Edwina’s and Dickie’s bedrooms, bathrooms, dressing-rooms and private sitting-rooms looking out over Hyde Park, with rooms for staff and visitors on the side.

  The floor below comprised a morning-room, drawing-room and dining-room, again facing the park, linked with doors that could be opened for cocktail parties, a ball or to be used as a cinema. On the south side was the children’s wing, on the north the kitchen and more staff quarters, together with offices for Stella Underhill and her deputy Nancie Lees. There were balconies on three sides, floodlit at the touch of a switch, the lower one accommodating 120 guests, the upper one taking half that number.

  The two floors were linked by a double curved staircase in glass and polished chrome. Edwina’s bedroom had been decorated by Rex Whistler, who had created 60 panels painted on canvas with fruit, flowers, cupids and goddesses, in grisaille against a background of delicate greyish blue, as well as representations of Broadlands, Adsdean, the old Brook House, Dickie on a polo pony and a naked Venus, with Edwina’s features, watched by Father Time.221

  In July, after two months leave, Dickie had joined the Naval Air Division in the Admiralty as Assistant Director, the first of his jobs in Whitehall. He had first learnt to fly in 1918 and had always been a proponent of the importance of air power for the Navy and he was delighted.

  A primary responsibility was to bring full control of the Fleet Air Arm, shared since 1924 with the RAF, back to the Navy. Mountbatten enlisted the help of Winston Churchill, now the most important figure outside the government, sending him an 11-page memorandum on the subject in March 1937. His lobbying was successful, with the Navy achieving almost all it wanted – Coastal Command remained with the Air Force. In July 1937, a Fifth Sea Lord was created to head the Naval Air Service. Though the decision was a political one, Mountbatten had played an important part in making the case.

  Another campaign was to persuade the Navy to adopt a new quick-firing anti-aircraft gun, designed by Anton Gazda, and constructed at the Swiss Oerlikon Works. The Oerlikon gun could fire a shell able to penetrate the armour of a U-boat.
Dickie had first recognised the potential of the gun against dive bombers, especially the Stuka dive bombers, in 1937, but the Gunnery School Experimental Department remained wedded to the British-made Vickers multibarrel, two-pounder pom-pom, seeing Gazda as just another foreign arms dealer. Dickie took Gazda round Whitehall, including to the First Sea Lord, Sir Roger Backhouse, but it was only in 1939 that the Admiralty ordered 500 of them – alas too late for the Norwegian campaign and Dunkirk evacuation.

  He also advocated that the Navy should, like the Royal Air Force, use Typex enciphering machines, which were faster and more secure than the ones they currently used, though it was not until 1942, under American pressure, that Typex was widely taken up. His experience on Daring and Wishart had stimulated an interest in improving destroyer design and he had become friendly with the naval designer A.P. Cole. Now at the Admiralty, Mountbatten was able to lobby for changes that included an all-covered bridge across the ship with a deep drop covering the catwalk, a slanting roof and a windscreen, which meant, for the first time, those on the bridge stayed dry.

  He had always realised the morale-boosting benefits of being able to show films at sea and many ships, partly through his efforts, now had sound projection, but the supply and quality of films was erratic. It was clear an organisation was needed to source and supply films and so in April 1939 was born the Royal Naval Film Corporation. He had already deployed Noël Coward around the Mediterranean and Home Fleets to establish the sort of films the men wanted to see, and now he used his various connections to ensure they received them. The Duke of Kent was brought in as Patron and a series of lunches held at Brook House to introduce the Naval hierarchy to film distributers and producers such as Alexander Korda and Darryl Zanuck. The result was that many now offered films for free.