The Mountbattens

by Andrew Lownie

  After the splendours of Government House, 16 Chester Street seemed claustrophobic. Only Broadlands provided the peace she now needed. She missed the pace of life, the status, the sense of purpose she had enjoyed in India, and tried to replicate it. ‘I have resorted to very hard work as a possible solution to the present situation,’ she told Nehru at the beginning of July, ‘it has helped although it is really only a drug.’513 ‘Feeling quite awful,’ she confided to her diary the following month, ‘general exhaustion and depression, I think.’514 ‘Life is lonely and empty and unreal,’ she confessed to him.515 Above all, she missed India and Nehru.

  She would write to Nehru each day, following Dickie’s habit for confidential correspondence of enclosing her letter in a second envelope. At first this was marked ‘Prime Minister’ and later ‘For Himself’, numbering each letter so each could be accounted for. Nehru, in turn, would write using the diplomatic bag c/o the High Commission. Whereas Dickie’s letters had been prosaic, Nehru’s were like poetry, indeed often quoting poetry – either his own or Yeats, Swinburne, Auden, Joyce and Blake. When no letter was received, like a lovesick teenager, she would call India with the help of half a dozen operators.

  People did what they could to cheer her up. Malcolm Sargent took her to see Laurence Olivier in Hamlet. In August, the whole family went to Classiebawn for five days, staying in the local inn, whilst they brought the house back to life. The fresh air and peacefulness helped restore her good spirits. ‘Scrambled over the rocks and dabbled in the pools,’ she wrote to Nehru, energised. ‘Back by the beach of white sand . . . brilliant sun and sapphire and multi-emerald coloured seas and countryside with its white-washed thatched cottages . . . we shrimped off the rocks and sat about in shorts sunbathing.’

  In September the Mountbattens, with Pamela, stayed with Henri and Yola Letellier in the South of France, where Dickie practised his water-skiing and they saw the Duke of Windsor.516 But Edwina remained dissatisfied. ‘I somehow seem to have grown out of all this, the people, the life, even the scenery,’ she wrote to Nehru.517

  For Dickie it was different. Though he had been offered various jobs, including Governor of Malta, Governor General of Canada, and Ambassador to Moscow and Washington, he just wanted to resume his naval career.518 He had put together an eight-page document headed ‘My Next Appointment’, which laid out all the possibilities and he discussed this endlessly with Peter Murphy and Charles Lambe. His two main options were to go to Bermuda as C-in-C West Indies, generally regarded as a pre-retirement job; or to return to Malta, which might prove politically difficult, given the problems in Palestine, and embarrassing as he would be subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief.519

  Whilst Mountbatten had received praise for the transfer of power, it had been at a price. Dickie recollected how, shortly after their return, Churchill came up to him at a Buckingham Palace reception – ‘“What you did in India, it’s as though you struck me across the face with a riding whip” and he turned his back on me and he didn’t speak to me for several years.’520 Mountbatten, however, continued to take an interest in the subcontinent, especially as many issues from his time played out after his return.

  On 11 September, Jinnah died of cancer, weighing only 35 kilos. The ambulance taking him to hospital broke down and for an hour he lay dying, parked on the roadside. Mountbatten later reflected that if he had known the seriousness of his illness, he might have delayed independence, and there may have been no partition.

  In October, Nehru came to Britain for discussions on the Commonwealth, before going on to the United Nations in New York. Dickie tactfully left the reunited lovers alone for a midnight rendezvous en route from the airport. ‘Too lovely,’ Edwina noted in her diary.521 Whilst Dickie initially stayed in London, the two spent several days at Broadlands, where Nehru entertained Patricia’s sons by ‘getting down on all fours in the drawing room and making lion faces at Norton and his new brother, Michael John, who roared back in absolute delight.’522

  For the next week they were inseparable. They visited Jacob Epstein’s studio, Edwina joined Nehru on the platform at a meeting at Kingsway Hall, they saw Euripides’ Medea, jointly attended the Lord Mayor’s banquet, a reception at the King’s Hall and a dinner for Dominion Premiers at Buckingham Palace, and were photographed at a Greek restaurant in Soho after the press were tipped off by Krishna Menon.

  At the end of October, the Mountbattens returned to Malta, Nehru seeing them off from Northolt and Edwina in dark glasses to hide her tears. Dickie, who had been appointed as Commander of the First Cruiser Squadron, now reported to Manley Power, who insisted on continuing to call him ‘sir’. It must have been a huge adjustment, from having ruled a subcontinent to an island just over 300 square kilometres; from having given orders to now being a subordinate. Power, initially wary, grew to respect his new colleague:

  We saw eye to eye on most important matters. I found him an endless source of entertainment with his peacock Mountebankery which kept popping up at unexpected moments in sharp contrast to his normal sane and statesmanlike person . . . By the end of my time with Mountbatten I had reached the conclusion that, in spite of several failings, he was a great man and a statesman. He was dynamic, easy to deal with and always open to argument, with a tremendous gift of charm and inspired leadership.523

  Their old house, Casa Medina, had survived the war, but was now converted into flats, so they first stayed at the newly opened Phoenicia Hotel before moving, shortly after Christmas, across the road from the Case Medina to the Villa Guardamangia. Royal Marine Ron Perks was assigned as Mountbatten’s driver and lived at the Villa Guardamangia whilst it was being decorated.524

  Perks would often drive Mountbatten to his scuba diving or to polo practice, ‘where he spent hours practising on a stationary horse in an enclosed area with the ball ricocheting round. You could be very relaxed with him. He never stood on ceremony.’525 He recollected how once driving through a 40-mph area, Mountbatten, who loved to drive fast, told him to ‘Step on it’:

  I explained about the speed restrictions and he insisted we swop places which we did. A few minutes later the military police, who we called Snow Drops on account of their white helmets, stopped us. After saluting me in the back they proceeded to give the driver a bollocking until they realised who he was. We then swopped places again and I drove to our function.526

  Whilst Dickie quickly threw himself into his new responsibilities, Edwina felt trapped. ‘One feels one’s brain and even one’s energy shrinking to fit the tiny island,’ she told Nehru.527 She continued to work for St John Ambulance and Save the Children, and Pamela became a case worker for the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen Families Association. Eventually she settled into a routine. ‘You will be pleased to hear that Edwina has been quite relaxed & very sweet & we never have a cross word – more like 1928 than 1948,’ Dickie wrote to his mother. ‘Still I think it a very good thing that we should have good long periods apart for we have been on top of one another for too long’.528

  Whilst he was away on a winter cruise from January to April, Edwina returned to Britain, where Malcolm Sargent joined her at Broadlands and she spent a night at Sandringham (‘quite the ugliest house I have ever seen’) to see Philip and Elizabeth’s new baby, Charles. She felt out of place, telling Nehru, ‘I always feel most bogus in this kind of circle . . . I always feel I am about to say something which will surprise and shock them most terribly!’529

  Only in India did she now feel fully at home. In mid-February she returned for five weeks, chaperoned by Pamela, to stay with Nehru. She continued to tour refugee camps and hospitals, saw old friends and visited refugee settlement projects. Nehru took her, Pamela and various members of his family for four days to Orissa in eastern India, where the two lovers walked on the white sand at midnight and swam at dawn.

  In the third week of April, Nehru was back in Britain for a meeting of Commonwealth prime ministers and, after a meeting with Attlee and lunch with George VI, was immediately driven t
o Broadlands where he stayed for the next two weekends.530 ‘You have brought me all I was yearning for,’ she wrote to Nehru, ‘happiness, balance, misery even! But we know the reason (and we would not change it) and there is infinitely more power and purpose to life.’531 But deeply in love as she was, she knew her duty was to be with her husband. That did not make it any easier. Quite the contrary. She was feeling angry, trapped and resentful and took it out on Dickie.

  In these moods, Dickie had no idea how to deal with her except to give in. A particularly furious row broke out in June 1949, after he told her of his promotion to Vice-Admiral and Fourth Sea Lord. He opened his heart to her:

  Although I did not do anything unkind intentionally, I fear that my own misery made me a poor companion and a thoughtless one who must have caused you pain. Believe me, darling, I never want to cause you any pain because I always have been and I always will be far too fond of you for that.

  If I have avoided having talks with you I am sure it is the sub-conscious wish to avoid another scene which has hitherto followed my attempt to ‘have things out’ . . . When we had that row in the boat yesterday . . . I became so violently unhappy that I really felt physically sick, and greedy, as I usually am, I could eat no lunch, and talkative, as I usually am, I could find nothing to say.

  Let me begin by criticising myself. I am terribly self-centred and rather conceited and full of the vainglory of uniforms and decorations. I am bad with women as a whole and of course particularly bad with you . . . I believe that early failures caused me to despise myself – and to feel (perhaps without justification) that you shared this view of myself . . . please believe me when I say that the one thing I’ve always looked for is complete family love and friendship. That love and friendship can grow and become the most vital thing in the lives of the 4 of us provided we do not start trying to impose restrictions on one another or harbour unkind thoughts.532

  He continued, addressing Edwina’s jealousy of his girlfriends:

  As for Yola, we are all such friends that it is fun being together – but there are times when it is fun being alone. Just as you wept with disappointment when circumstances meant that I was going to be home the first evening that you and Jawahar were going to be together, I sometimes also feel I’d like to be alone with Yola . . . I never minded your seeing Malcolm and Jawahar alone, as you know.533

  Edwina had suggested they not meet in Cyprus when his ship docked.

  But then the old, old miracle happened: ‘You pressed my hand and caught my eye and gave me that divine smile which I like to think you give to no one else and which I can assure you I get from no one else and I kissed the back of your hair and the old heart fluttered in the same ridiculous way in which it has fluttered for 28 years, ever since I first met you at that divine dance of the Vanderbilts, and I realised that if you came to Cyprus in that mood, my mood would meet you more than half way and we could have a wonderfully happy time.534

  And they did, Dickie writing to his mother that they had ‘never had a happier ten days than our time in Cyprus & Rhodes.’535

  In October, Nehru was back with Edwina at Broadlands. It was a relationship that suited them well. Politically, emotionally and intellectually compatible, they drew support from each other. He brought her small exotic gifts, welcome in a Britain still in the grip of rationing, such as mangoes from India, cigarettes from Egypt, a Gruyère from Switzerland, but he brought much more. Where Dickie had been too gauche, busy or casually dismissive, here was a man with whom she felt comfortable and an equal, who respected her mind and knew how to appeal to her feelings.

  She had been able to channel her love in the past to her animals or strangers such as the sick, the dispossessed or poor. Now she had found a soul mate. For Nehru, the lonely widower and public figure bowed down by the pressures of office, here was a woman who asked nothing of him, with whom he could relax and who brought long-lost domesticity.

  Each saw the relationship as pure, whether it was or not. ‘I dislike vulgar stories and cheap books and films based on crude sex appeal,’ she wrote to him. ‘I am even rather disgusted by them and I know in consequence am thought sometimes to be rather boringly prudish!’536 ‘I think I am not interested in sex as sex,’ Edwina wrote to him. ‘There must be so much more to it, beauty of spirit and form and in its conception. But I think you and I are in the minority! Yet another treasured bond.’537

  A few months later, she joined him in India where she continued her work with the Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, which she had set up after Partition, but also visited museums and galleries. ‘He was so knowledgeable about his country’s past, and on that trip he brought Indian history and art alive for us,’ remembered Pamela Mountbatten. ‘My mother seemed to flourish in his company, so happy and fulfilled in his presence.’538

  The Mountbattens’ finances had been stretched with all the entertaining and travel in India and they continued to give generously to charities, support family retainers and live extravagantly. In Malta they employed a staff of 19, including a butler, housekeeper, two housemaids, two cleaners, three cooks, six stewards, two drivers and a valet – which Dickie thought was ‘not too grossly overstaffed’.539

  However, with income tax and surtax at 19s 6d in the pound, Edwina’s trust income from her grandfather had dropped from £45,000 in 1939 to £4,500 in 1948. Unable to touch capital –protection against unscrupulous husbands – her only option was a government bill to let her draw on capital. By March 1949, ‘The Mountbatten Estate Bill’ had successfully gone through three readings in the House of Lords with no opposition, but it then encountered opposition after a press campaign orchestrated by Beaverbrook. The obvious solution was to bring in a bill that covered all women in her position and the Married Woman (Restraint upon Anticipation) Bill duly became law in November.

  From this point dates Beaverbrook’s vendetta against Dickie, which was to last until the 1960s. ‘I regard Mountbatten as the biggest menace to the Empire,’ Beaverbrook told Tom Driberg. ‘He has perpetrated one outrage after another. He was responsible for the present position in Burma. His conduct in Malaya is indefensible. He damaged the Dutch suzerainty in Indonesia, thus weakening the whole Middle East [sic] structure . . . He should never be given power or authority.’540 His view henceforth of the couple was ‘Mountbatten is vain, not clever. The woman is clever, not vain.’541

  It was not just public opposition, but a very private fight. When Janey Lindsay, who had married Beaverbrook’s son, wanted to make Mountbatten godfather of her first child, the press magnate refused. The Express journalist Graham McKenzie was tasked:

  to dig up dirt on Mountbatten. Graham recalled how he was dispatched with a photographer to stake out a rural hideaway that Beaverbrook believed Mountbatten used when meeting his lovers. Graham and the photographer hid in a ditch for days observing Mountbatten’s comings and goings, but they failed to come up with any juicy material.542

  A series of critical articles by Sefton Delmer were suppressed by a contact within the Beaverbrook camp on grounds of inaccuracy in the early 1950s, but many others followed, questioning Mountbatten’s misjudgements on Dieppe, South East Asia and India. Finally, in 1953, Mountbatten, who had been collecting examples of his negative coverage, considered legal action, but was dissuaded by lawyers and Peter Murphy.543

  Nevertheless, he continued to be irritated by the feud. Michael Wardell, Edwina’s former lover and an Express journalist, was asked to intervene and reported back to Dickie with:

  a statement signed by A.J. Cummings, an independent journalist of high reputation that he had examined all the Express cuttings on you and found them fair comment . . . I begged Max to see you personally, and I asked you to come round to Arlington House to talk to him but you and Edwina both decided against this course.544

  What was really behind this animosity? One Beaverbrook biographer, Tom Driberg, believed it was because Mountbatten had told Jean Norton to break a dinner engagement with the increasingly
controlling Beaverbrook, whilst another, A.J.P. Taylor, thought, ‘Something about Mountbatten touched Beaverbrook on a raw nerve.’545 Yet another biographer, Anne Chisholm, felt it was more than that:

  George Malcolm Thomson reflected the view of people inside Express newspapers at the time when he said, with confidence, though forty-five years after the event, that the cause of the vendetta was personal. After Jean Norton’s death in 1945 at her cottage on the Cherkley estate, Beaverbrook learned from her papers that, while she was his mistress, she had also had an affair with Mountbatten. This coincided with the view of Edwina Mountbatten’s friends, who remembered an earlier time when both the Mountbatten marriage and the Beaverbrook–Norton relationship had been under strain, and the two had seen much of one another.546

  It is a view that was shared by Jean Norton’s daughter, Sarah Baring, Mountbatten’s goddaughter and confidante, and also Beaverbrook’s daughter, Janet, who later wrote, ‘by far the most likely reason for their feud, was that Father found a stack of passionate love letters Lord Louis had written to Jean Norton.’547

  * * *

  The Duke of Edinburgh had joined the Mediterranean Fleet in October 1949 and for his first month stayed with the Mountbattens, though there were tensions as the young naval officer fought to establish his independence from his controlling uncle. Shortly afterwards, Princess Elizabeth came to Malta for a month and she too stayed with the Mountbattens whilst their home was being prepared. Edwina, who gave up her room and instead took Dickie’s bedroom, wrote ‘It’s lovely seeing her so radiant and leading a more or less human and normal existence for once.’548

  The young couple joined the Mountbattens on picnics, on the naval barge, at the polo and at various dances. In Malta, Mountbatten had taken up a new hobby of scuba diving with a harpoon gun and he had introduced Philip to it, as well as polo. When asked whether he preferred polo or scuba diving, he paused for a moment before answering, ‘Well, polo is only a game.’549