The Mountbattens

by Andrew Lownie

  At the end of his posting in June 1937, Dickie was promoted to Captain. He was 37, over five years younger than the average age for such a promotion. It was clear he was heading for the top.

  CHAPTER 10

  Problems in the Family

  In January 1936, King George V died, and Dickie’s best man was finally the King. They met after the funeral: ‘Talked with David til 3 o’clock in the morning . . . very satisfactory,’ Dickie had noted in his diary.222

  Mountbatten had stayed in touch with his old friend and would often visit him when in Britain. Edward’s Windsor home, Fort Belvedere, was only an hour’s drive from Adsdean and during the first part of 1934 Dickie had visited at least twice a month, often staying for dinner and the night. When Edward came to inspect the shell of Brook House in October 1934, it was Wallis who came with him. The couples had briefly been neighbours at Bryanston Court a few months earlier.

  The Mountbattens did not like the new woman in Edward’s life. They had been appalled at the callous way Freda Dudley Ward had been abandoned, when the switchboard was simply instructed to no longer put her calls through. Neither did Wallis like the Mountbattens. In Dickie she recognised a fellow careerist, whilst she was jealous of Edwina, with her upper-class charm and natural beauty.

  In spite of that, Dickie and Edwina saw much of the new king and Wallis Simpson that year. In late May, they had dinner at York House with the Simpsons, the Duff Coopers, the airman Charles Lindbergh, Stanley Baldwin and their wives. In June, Wallis stayed for several nights at Adsdean (bringing a cold chicken from Fortnum & Mason as a present, much to the chagrin of the Mountbattens’ cook, Brinz). In July, they were together at a weekend party at Trent Park, Philip Sassoon’s home just north of London.

  In mid-August the Mountbattens, along with the Duff Coopers and Hugh Molyneux, accompanied the King and Wallis as they cruised the Dalmatian coast for ten days in the yacht Nahlin. Edward’s attempts to travel inconspicuously as the Duke of Lancaster were doomed to failure by the presence of two escorting British destroyers and a Yugoslav torpedo boat, as well as repeated 21-gun salutes. The trip was marred by various mishaps, from crashing into a bridge in the Straits of Chalkis to Edward falling out of a motorboat.

  A consolation was that a professional golfer, Archie Compston, was on hand with 3,000 golf balls, most of which ended overboard, to help the new king’s pitching and driving. After seeing King George II of the Hellenes on Corfu, they sailed on to Athens and Istanbul, before returning by train through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. At the end of September, they were at Balmoral with the King. The Simpsons were divorced at the end of October and the Abdication Crisis began with manoeuvring between the King and his staff, Stanley Baldwin, his Cabinet and the Church. An inside source on the Abdication Crisis as it played out during the autumn was Charles Lambe, whom Dickie had inveigled as Edward’s equerry.

  On 25 November, the day the King put his morganatic marriage proposal to Baldwin, Mountbatten approached Claud Cockburn, editor of an irreverent paper, The Week, offering ‘certain “inside information” of a particularly sensational character’ from Edward. Cockburn agreed to hold The Week’s presses and waited all night, until early next morning a messenger arrived with the news: ‘The situation has developed too fast.’223 One version of events is that Mountbatten and John Strachey, then a Communist, had decided to release the story of Wallis’s affair with the car salesman Guy Trundle to Cockburn, ‘forcing the King to give up any idea of marrying her, and thus keeping him firmly on the throne as the “people’s monarch”. But at the last minute, the conspirators panicked and backed off from the plan’.224

  As late as 7 December, Dickie presented himself as a loyal supporter:

  I can’t bear to be sitting here doing nothing to help you in your terrible trouble. Do you realise how many loyal supporters of all classes you have? . . . If you want me to help you, to do any service for you or even to feel you have a friend of Wallis to keep you company you have only to telephone. I don’t want to be a nuisance but I hate to feel that there is nothing I can do to help except to bite people’s heads off who have the temerity to say anything disloyal about their king – and there are practically none who do so – at any rate in my presence.225

  Edward’s three brothers, Dickie, and the King’s legal adviser Walter Monckton met at Fort Belvedere on 10 December. ‘Dickie down at the Fort all day where chaos reigns,’ wrote Edwina in her diary. ‘Everyone completely sunk except the King who remains fairly calm and cheerful.’226 Dickie’s feelings were torn. Whilst loyal to his old friend, he could see his faults and unfitness to rule. He also had a growing respect for Bertie and recognised that his more low-key qualities, his decency and sense of public service might actually make for a better king. The next day Edward announced he was abdicating in favour of his younger brother George. The crisis was over.

  In January, Dickie was appointed the new king’s Personal Naval ADC and invested with the GCVO. ‘Tea with Queen Mary at Marlborough House,’ Edwina wrote on 9 February and ‘cocktails with the King and Queen at Piccadilly. They only move to Buckingham Palace next week.’227 Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret came to tea at Brook House. ‘Showed them Mickey Mouse films after as we were trying out the cinema,’ confided Edwina to her diary.228

  The Mountbattens were quickly adapting to the new regime, whilst also trying to keep in with Edward, now the Duke of Windsor. In March, after seeing Yola in Paris, Dickie flew to see Edward, staying at Schloss Enzesfeld near Vienna with Fruity Metcalfe. ‘Talking with David and Fruity nearly all day . . . Important talk with David, and possibility of return,’ Dickie confided in his diary.229 ‘Very sad saying goodbye, on both sides.’230 Returning in the aeroplane, he was sick.

  ‘Thank you so much for the very pleasant 2 day visit to Scholss Cuzesfeld [sic]. It was very nice seeing you again & it felt quite like old times, you, Fruity & I being alone together,’ wrote Dickie to Edward on his return, giving him some of the Coronation plans. ‘I went & saw Bertie today & he was very friendly & delighted to have good news of you.’231

  Dickie would later claim that he had twice offered to be best man, but Edward had hoped to have his two youngest brothers, in royal tradition, as supporters. He had certainly given the impression that he hoped to attend. ‘You will have heard that although I succeeded in fixing a date for your wedding that suited Bertie, George etc that other people stepped in and have produced a situation that has made all your friends very unhappy,’ Dickie wrote to Edward. ‘I have made several attempts to get matters put right but at present I cannot even accept your kind invitation myself. I haven’t quite given up all hope yet, though my chances don’t look too good. I will write again when I know finally.’232

  It appears that he and the royal brothers were warned off by royal courtiers, but Dickie sent three Old English pieces of plate, a 1633 wine flagon, a 1718 and 1731 tankard as wedding gifts, writing: ‘I thought so much of you to-day and the great joy it must be to you to be with Wallis again.’233

  * * *

  Edwina, who hated the British winter and had suffered a series of colds as well as neuralgia, now announced she was off to Africa with Bunny, Jack and Nada. Hiring an open Buick with a Ford van for the luggage, they toured Uganda, the Belgian Congo and Kenya, where they mixed with the Happy Valley set. She returned from East Africa in time for Pamela’s eighth birthday on 19 April, bringing with her a three-month-old lion cub. ‘His name is Sabi . . . his mother was shot in the Transvaal for attacking a man and poaching cattle. We simply had to bring him back with us.’234 The cub joined the menagerie of other animals at Adsdean.

  In 1936, Bunny had commissioned a three-masted schooner from a Cornish boat builder, which he and Edwina called Lost Horizon after James Hilton’s bestselling novel. By November it was ready and Bunny with crew left to take it via Lisbon across the Atlantic and from there to the Caribbean. The plan was that the Mountbattens and Yola would join him in the West Indies in January, where Dickie was captai
ning an English team in an international polo tournament.

  No sooner had they arrived than Nada rang with the news that Georgie had been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. ‘I am so utterly wretched and heartbroken – I haven’t been able to think of anything but poor dear Georgie since Nada telephoned,’ Dickie wrote to his mother. ‘I’ve been just like a baby – cry myself to sleep almost every night – a thing I haven’t done since Papa died. Edwina has been a perfect brick . . . Oh! Why does God punish the good & sweet people of this world like George & let the cads & swines like Bobby Cunningham Reid flourish!’235 It was clear that Edwina could not continue her holiday with Bunny. The Mountbattens returned to Britain.

  Georgie died on 8 April. He was 45. Dickie was devastated: ‘The sweetest natured, most charming, most able, most brilliant, entirely lovable brother anyone ever had is lost.’ Eight years younger, he had worshipped his brother, with his charm, quick intelligence and an engaging sense of humour. He had inspired Dickie’s own interest in a career in the Navy as well as in electronics and film. He was the sort of person who, instead of reading detective stories, would ‘read problems of higher calculus and solve them in his head’.236 Reputedly, he did The Times crossword in ten minutes.

  In spite of being one of the youngest commanders in the Navy, Georgie, deciding he needed to make some money, had left the service in 1930. After a period working in a brokerage house on Wall Street, he became chairman and managing director of the British Sperry Gyroscope Company – an electronics company specialising in advanced aircraft navigation equipment – and director of Electrolux (where his brother-in-law Harold Wernher was chairman), Marks & Spencer, and various other companies.

  His chief interest, however, was his model railway system, with its two miles of track, built in a converted barn at his home Lynden Manor, near Maidenhead, which was finished in 1929. He spent over £60,000 on it, with hills of papier mâché, goods sheds, forests and mountain ranges made from imitation ice. He had also inherited from his father one of the most comprehensive pornographic book collections in Europe. The library contained albums of photographs of various individuals and groups having sexual intercourse in every possible position, as well as books on sadomasochism, bondage, whipping, thumbscrews, and racks.237

  Georgie had hitherto largely been responsible for the education of his nephew Philip. Now the duty of looking after him fell to Dickie. Philip’s father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, had gone into exile in France in 1922, shortly after his son’s birth. In 1930, Philip’s mother Alice had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to a Swiss sanatorium, where a fellow inmate was Vaslav Nijinsky, the ballet dancer and choreographer. Though eventually recovered, she had separated from her husband (who preferred the company of his mistresses in Monte Carlo).

  Philip had been sent to prep school just outside London, before going to Gordonstoun in the north of Scotland. He had hitherto divided his holidays between his grandmother Princess Victoria, Georgie, Harold Wernher, and sometimes Dickie. ‘Dickie was very good at that time, too,’ Philip remembered. ‘I used to see a lot of him, though he was often away for a long time.’238 It was he who persuaded Philip to join the Navy rather than the Air Force. ‘Philip was here all last week doing his entrance exams for the Navy,’ Dickie wrote to Edwina. ‘He had his meals with us and he really is killingly funny. I like him very much.’239 This was the son Dickie had never had.

  * * *

  The winter of 1938–39 saw Mountbatten embark on a series of fast-track staff courses at the Royal Naval War College at Greenwich and the Higher Command Course at Aldershot, studying alongside seven major-generals and Claude Auchinleck of the Indian Army. For years, he had been socialising with senior naval officers and politicians, but the course provided a more structured opportunity to network with senior personnel across all the Armed Services.

  Though, on paper, only a junior captain, Dickie wielded influence that was disproportionate to his rank. Not only did he socialise with senior service officers, but also important politicians, notably Anthony Eden and Alfred Duff Cooper. He had never been shy about using his connections to promote his own career, but increasingly now it was directed at shaping government policy. He had congratulated Eden when he resigned in February 1938, in protest at the proposed settlement with Mussolini over Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia, and a few months later Eden drove to Broadlands to discuss a letter he was intending to send to The Times.

  When Duff Cooper resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty over the Munich Settlement, Dickie, a critic of Appeasement, wrote to congratulate him: ‘I fear this is a long-winded letter, the first I have ever written on a political event, but your behaviour has been a real inspiration to me,’ though he couldn’t help adding, ‘Next time I see you I must ask you who is likely to the next C-in-C in the Mediterranean, as I hope to go out there next year.’240

  * * *

  The worsening political situation in 1938, with growing tensions in Germany and Italy, had galvanised Edwina – who had rewritten her will after Munich. Her travels had opened her eyes to the suffering in the world and she increasingly wanted to do something more useful with her life. She started to learn first aid and approached the Red Cross about turning Adsdean into a hospital ‘and running it as commandant myself’.241 She joined the Red Cross Committee, run by her friend Eileen Sutherland, did six months’ auxiliary nursing in wards, theatres and the out patients’ department of the Westminster Hospital, and passed her first-aid examinations. Dickie had his vocation, and now Edwina was finding hers, too.

  Still she continued to travel – ten days with Bunny and Yola in October 1938 in Hungary, and then in February 1939 to Asia with Bunny. From Burma, they travelled to Northern Sumatra and Batavia, where they hoped to tour the islands in the Flores and Timor Seas, west of New Guinea. But when no boat could be found, she decided to drive along the new 700-mile road being built between Burma and South West China. Much of it could only be managed by lorry ‘not more than 10 to 15 mph being possible for hours on end,’ she told Dickie, ‘bottom gear being used for long stretches.’242 She would be the first woman to drive it.

  At Batavia, she learnt that a small ship was leaving from Celebes to the islands in Dutch New Guinea, ‘so cannot resist it as among the places are some I particularly wanted to go . . .’ It meant she would be away for Pamela’s birthday, Easter and the holidays, ‘but having come all the way out it seems a pity to miss it . . .’243 She returned at the beginning of May, bringing with her a pair of wallabies – Dabo and Bobo – to replace Sabi, who had died shortly before she left.

  Almost immediately, she was faced by a family crisis. Her father Wilfrid, now in his seventies, announced he was leaving Molly to go off with a Frenchwoman. Again, Edwina counselled him to stay in the marriage, but what most shocked her was not his behaviour, but his appearance. He had Parkinson’s disease and looked very ill. A few weeks later, he was dead.

  ‘Terribly sad losing Daddy,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘and really heartbroken but feel for his sake it was for the best as he could never have stood a long illness and invalidism.’244 She had never been that close to him, but she was now an orphan, and his death was a break with the past. It had brought on fresh responsibilities with the ownership and management of the entire Broadlands Estate.

  * * *

  Another family problem was her sister Mary, who now had two sons with Bobby Cunningham-Reid.245 On marriage, they had moved to The Hall, Six Mile Bottom, with 8,000 acres, a swimming pool and tennis court, so they entertained widely – all captured on cine films – including Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and Neville Chamberlain.246 Bobby had set up Criterion Films with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, which brought a ready supply of attractive young women. This, and the fact that on their honeymoon Mary had insisted they share her wealth, because ‘no decent woman likes to have a man live with her in charity’, was to be the cause of their problems.

  In December 1936, Mary had left Bobby, citing his adultery wi
th three different women, and moved with her lady’s maid, Elenor Smith, into Brook House. Thirteen months later, Bobby brought an action against his wife in the Chancery Court, claiming he was entitled to income under deeds signed when they had first married. Mary decided to go to court in order to revoke some of the arrangements. Cunningham-Reid defended the action, instructing the Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps, whilst Sir Patrick Hastings acted for Mary. Eventually the case was settled, probably to save more dirty linen being washed in public. Cunningham-Reid became one of the first men to be paid alimony, receiving £10,000 a year, as well as the house in Upper Brook Street and the yacht. He did not, however, have it index-linked. In June 1939 they secured a decree nisi, made absolute in March 1940, not on the grounds of his adultery, but of hers with the French film star Henri Garat, in Antibes in August 1938. It is said Bobby himself had taken the incriminating photo.247

  * * *

  Throughout the spring and summer of 1939, refugees streamed into Britain. Edwina was keen to assist whom she could, enlisting Dickie’s help to write letters to various British authorities. She sent money to various organisations and, in particular, the German-Jewish Aid Committee, the Federation of Czechoslovakian Jews and the Jewish Refugees’ Committee, as she began to take a closer interest in her Jewish heritage.

  In mid-August, Bunny had arranged to take his Talbot to be serviced in France and Edwina decided to join him. Friends thought them mad, but she felt there was time for one more adventure. They dropped off the Talbot in Paris, hired a Peugeot and meandered around the Loire, looking at châteaux and staying in small hotels. Suddenly Bunny, who had been appointed ADC to General Lloyd, was called up and they darted back. Whilst he took up his new responsibilities, she frantically arranged for valuables, including the Whistler murals from Brook House, to be sent to Broadlands, and herself moved from the vulnerable penthouse to Kensington Palace with her mother-in-law. The Rolls and Hispano were replaced by a more practical Austin Twelve.