Permission to Resign

by Ann Bridge

  I only had a few minutes to speak in, and, by now, thanks partly to Walford, the next step was taking shape. Van took it a stage further. Since Sir Warren might later be moving on our behalf the first thing was to get the Zinoviev Debate over without either the P.M. or Sir Austen saying anything in the course of it which would result in their digging in their toes publicly about Owen. I explained shortly to Van my points, one or two. Little was necessary, for he had spent most of the day with Sir Warren. I asked him to let me see the P.M. next day before the Debate. Walford had already promised me an interview with Sir Austen at eleven on Monday. Van would do his best, but asked whether, failing an interview, a guarantee through him, Van, from the P.M. would do? I had to say it would. And then I had to go. Van said very little, but I felt that I had left a friend in that room.

  Walford had been very apologetic in advance about his cold mutton, but he gave me an excellent supper (which I was more than ready for), and opened the iron ration of champagne which is always left out when his cellar is locked. During supper, he told me some facts of material importance about our appointment to Peking. When Don Gregory had proposed to make O.O’M. a Counsellor there over the heads of several others, Walford had told him emphatically that guarantees previously given by himself made it impossible for Owen to be given substantive seniority over Campbell and Cadogan. It was in the face of this declaration that Don had come down to Bridge End, taken me for a walk, and made a bid for my support of the Peking scheme by pointing out to me that if we went, O.O’M. would be promoted over twelve people’s heads, would be the youngest Counsellor in the Service, and that this would make him a ‘marked man’, and would be the best investment that I could make for the children’s future. I told Walford of this.

  ‘But he couldn’t do it!’ he said. ‘He knew at the time that he was offering what he could not fulfil.’

  There remained the Debate to consider. Labour questions might be expected. I said I knew that Captain Crookshank intended to raise Owen’s case from the Conservative benches. I had told Van this, and Van had been emphatic that he must be stopped. Walford was equally emphatic, but said that he could not possibly do it himself. I asked if I should, and was urged to. So I rang up Captain Crookshank and told him that, much as we appreciated his intention, this was not the moment, and would he refrain? He promised to, though with reluctance. Then, Walford again promising to summon me next morning from Dean’s Yard as soon as Sir Austen was ready to see me, I took my leave.

  Monday the 19th was rather a nightmare. All the morning I waited for a summons from Walford. Mr Vansittart rang up about noon to say that the P.M. had given a solemn promise not to so much as mention Owen’s name in the Debate, but was too busy to see me. Hope was struggling to get tickets for the House out of Mrs J. C. C. Davidson, but only got a card bespeaking the good offices of a Mr Jupp or Mupp, who would get us in, she alleged. At 1.30, Walford at last rang up. Sir Austen had given similar guarantees to the P.M.’s, but was too busy to see me before the Debate. But would I go round and see him, Walford, in the Secretaries’ Room at the House after it? I would, of course. At 2.30, Hope and I were waiting in the Lobby with Mrs J.C.C.’s card.

  But I never heard the Zinoviev Debate. Mr Mupp or Jupp, who wore a wig, was all kindness and zeal, but there was not a seat or a corner anywhere. Mrs Baldwin, the Prime Minister’s wife, was alleged to be sitting on a kitchen chair in a corner of the Press gallery. We waited in vain till 4, and then I crept miserably away to Albert Napier in the House of Lords for a cup of tea and consolation.

  Albert was in a curious mood, I thought. He asked me a lot of what seemed rather irrelevant questions about Owen’s transactions with his stockbroker in the matter of francs – about his father’s income, the terms of his father’s will, the latter’s holdings in French bonds and so on. He asked me about the Report, and, as before to Walford, I made my four or five points. He wrote down all my answers. Finally, he asked me if I thought I could get a copy of the memorandum, and of Owen’s evidence? I felt perfectly at liberty to tell him that Owen himself had been refused a copy of the minutes of his evidence; Albert, a trained lawyer and in fact No. Two in the permanent secretariat of the Lord Chancellor’s Department, was greatly startled by this very original application of the principles of British justice. A copy of the memorandum I could easily have given him, but I was not sure that I ought. The Lord Chancellor’s Office lies quite outside the F.O. beat, and everyone so far had impressed on me the need for secrecy about everything. So I would not promise to do either of these things, and I wondered at Albert’s curiosity.

  Later, he took me through into the House of Commons again, and at 7.30 or thereabouts piloted me into the Secretaries’ room. The Debate was over – we passed Baldwin on the stairs.

  At the door I met William Strang. He started, ‘Hullo, Mary Anne! You here?’

  ‘As you see, William, I am.’

  ‘Well, come and see me.’

  ‘I will tomorrow.’

  Inside, Walford was fussing about with boxes, with the telephone, with Captain Eden (later Lord Avon).

  ‘Well, Mrs O’Malley, it went very well! Not a word said: Splendid!’

  I said I was glad – and now, when was I to see Sir Austen? Tomorrow, perhaps? Walford looked blank. Did I want to see him, now that the Debate was over? What for? Surely all was right now?

  ‘But you promised!’ I stammered, beginning to lose my nerve in this official atmosphere.

  Bzzzz! went Sir Austen’s bell. With an exclamation of impatience Walford went in to his room.

  He came out a few minutes later. ‘Sir Austen doesn’t want to see you,’ he said – ‘he can’t think what you want to see him for – and to tell you the truth, nor can I!’ he added rather crossly.

  I ought of course to have left it, but I was worn out with the efforts of the last three days, I was childishly disappointed over the Debate, and nearly in tears.

  ‘I just want to see him,’ I said absurdly, trying to steady my voice – ‘only for five minutes. You promised I should. Can’t I see him tomorrow?’

  Walford raised his hands despairingly and went in again. He came out two minutes later. ‘It’s no good, Mrs O’Malley – he won’t! He says “What does the woman want to see me for? There’s nothing new for her to say.” And I can’t tell him there –’

  ‘Tring!’ went the telephone.

  With a stifled ‘Damn!’, Walford lifted the receiver.

  ‘Yes! Yes, speaking. Yes. Now take down the Secretary of State’s engagements for tomorrow, will you? Eleven a.m., the French Ambassador, Twelve, Sir John Tilley. One o’clock –’

  But I stopped listening. Sir John Tilley was in town, and would be seeing the S. of S. at twelve next day. This was a chance of a sort and I must do something about it. When Walford rang off I thanked him, and took my leave. It was useless to press further. Walford was irritated, Sir Austen adamant. The latter promised later to see me before any final decision was taken. He never did. I cannot applaud Sir Austen’s behaviour. I find it hard to acquit him of a serious failure in pity, in courtesy, in common humanity in the matter.

  Some time that day Sir Warren Fisher had rung up to say that he had ‘come down on one side – the side you would wish. Do you understand?’ I did, and was grateful. I wrote him a little note some time over the week-end, as follows:

  ‘Dear Sir Warren

  I have realized by now that thanks make you a little restless. But gratitude is not a burdensome emotion to me – when I feel grateful it gives me pleasure to say so, and I am sure you would not wish to deny me any pleasure just now. So I hope you will let me say that I am grateful to you for yesterday – for the amount of time you allowed me, for one thing; for your sincerity, which helped me to be sincere; for your patience and goodwill.

  And you will remember, will you not, what this means to us? And that I trust you?

  Yours sincerely

  Mary O’Malley’

  Next morning, on Tuesday t
he 20th, I went to breakfast with Vincent Baddeley. He greeted me with great gaiety.

  ‘Well, my dear, you are a wonderful woman!’

  ‘What’s all this, Vincent?’

  ‘You’ve done what no one else living could have done, that’s all.’

  He had seen Van and heard what was afoot the day before, and he proceeded to explain how only on the previous Thursday he had spoken to Walford Selby, asking if there was no chance of doing just what had been done – suspending the whole thing to give time for re-consideration. Walford had said that it was utterly and totally impossible. Six months hence, perhaps – but now, hopeless. ‘And now you come home, and sail in to lunch with the head of the Board of Enquiry, and in one afternoon turn him completely upside down!’

  Well, all this, even allowing for Vincent’s affectionate exaggeration, was very cheering, and I needed cheering after my failure and rebuff of the night before. Vincent went off to the Admiralty, and I remained to try to get hold of Sir John Tilley’s address. I rang up Mary Palairet. She didn’t know it, but gave me the address of someone who might. I got it at last and bundled off to 7, Wilton Crescent. Sir John was kind and sympathetic. He hadn’t seen the Report and was completely vague about the whole thing. I did not waste any time on putting him au fait. I just told him of Owen’s memorandum, and what was being attempted, and asked him, if occasion offered, to put in a kind word with the S. of S. that day.

  He was not very hopeful of getting a chance – ‘One doesn’t talk much oneself on these occasions.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I know that Sir Austen will probably spend fifty-five minutes out of the hour telling you all about Japan!’ (Sir John was Ambassador at Tokio.)

  He laughed at that, but promised to lose no opportunity.

  I was close to Grosvenor Crescent, so I ran into the League of Nations Union to report progress to Will Arnold-Forster. Will was fearfully pleased and excited. We walked up and down outside, talking.

  He paused on the pavement and said suddenly, ‘Mary Anne, if you were to pull this off ...!’

  ‘We mustn’t hope,’ I told him. ‘It’s fatal to hope.’

  ‘No, don’t hope, Mary Anne,’ he said slowly. ‘It isn’t really possible, you know – they couldn’t do it.’

  I lunched with William Strang at the Ship. We had a long talk. He was pleased at what I was attempting, but like everyone else thought it hopeless.

  ‘You’re enjoying yourself, Mary Anne!’ he told me presently. I admitted to liking a fight. Well, for a fighter I had ideal conditions, he said – ‘Things are so bad that you can’t make them worse, and so desperate that you’re justified in going all out.’

  As we were walking back down Whitehall towards the Foreign Office he asked if I had seen Wellesley? (An Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office.) I said No. Would I like to? I said would he like to see me? William would find out, but thought he would, so we went into the F.O. together and waited on that tidy sofa which is outside the Secretary of State’s room, till William came back and took me in to see Sir Victor.

  I stayed an hour. Sir Victor was very kind, and spoke warmly of Owen and his work. Him, also, I primed on the main points of controversy in the Report. He asked me to write them down for him, and I promised to. I mentioned Owen’s memorandum in passing.

  Sir Victor’s eyes opened wider than ever, behind his glasses. ‘What memorandum?’

  He had not seen it, any more than Walford Selby, and a slight irritation slowly manifested itself. He was surprised that he had not seen it. Tyrrell – he checked himself. He had better see Tyrrell. He looked at his watch – perhaps he could just catch him now. Secretly delighted at having apparently laid the astute Sir William a second stymie in the matter of the memorandum within twenty-four hours, I left. It seemed only too clear that, for reasons of his own, Sir William Tyrrell had sat as tight on that memorandum as he possibly could. His reasons were not far to seek. Don Gregory was like him a Roman Catholic, and his dear friend. Don was irretrievably ruined. It would be Catholic nature to have no great desire to emphasize Don’s ruin by assisting in the rescue of a Protestant who was no friend of his own.

  I went back to William to report. William was busily engaged in thinking out a memorandum that he would write to show what Owen had done for his juniors, and what his departmental work had been. Like everyone else, on finding that there was hope, he was prepared to do what he could to help. I encouraged him in this good work and departed.

  Sir Warren rang up later that day. He was distinctly more hopeful. I was not to tell Owen, but he was more hopeful. And he was very emphatic as to the rightness of his decision, now that he had taken it.

  ‘I am doing this because I have come to think it right,’ he said – ‘I am not doing it for anyone’s beaux yeux.’

  He thanked me for my letter.

  ‘Oh, you did get it?’

  ‘Yes, I got it all right,’ said Sir Warren. ‘It’s in my drawer here now. I didn’t answer it, but I’ve answered it often enough in my mind.’

  And on that I went back to Pendell, considerably encouraged.

  Chapter VII

  To make this record clear, I must now forestall my own information, and mention what was going on behind the scenes, unknown to me. Everyone to whom I had access found it necessary, for reasons which I do not pretend to understand, to preserve the utmost reticence as to what was being said, done, or attempted. Fisher said, ‘Trust me.’ I had less reason for trusting him than anyone living, but I did make a real venture of faith and decided to trust him absolutely. Walford and Mr Vansittart had only one piece of advice between them: ‘Leave it alone, now.’ This ignorance made it extraordinarily hard to make up my mind to any fresh course of action, and it was really sheer amazing luck that I did not perpetrate some quite shattering floater at this stage. But what had so far happened was this:

  Owen’s memorandum and resignation were sent in on 2 or 3 March, and certainly reached the Foreign Office by 5 March. The memorandum was seen by Nevile Bland and Sir William Tyrrell and I believe the Secretary of State also at that stage – but not, as we have seen, by Walford Selby or the Assistant Under-Secretaries. This appeal, like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, was referred back to the very tribunal whose justice it impugned, and on 13 March, the Board of Enquiry met again to consider it. They apparently made it plain that they had not intended to imply ‘moral turpitude’ by the phrase ‘he well knew what he was doing’, but apart from this, declared that they found nothing in the memorandum to cause them to modify in any way the substance of the Report. The appeal for reconsideration they simply did not refer to. Thus minuted, the whole dossier went back to the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was on its way to the Prime Minister when stopped by Sir Warren. On Saturday the 17th, I lunched, as we know, with the Chairman of the Board. On Monday the 19th, Sir Warren Fisher saw Sir William Tyrrell, who forthwith asked the Board to reconstitute themselves to consider the final paragraph of the memorandum, that containing the appeal for mercy and reconsideration. Having thus met at his instance on Tuesday the 20th (the dates are interesting), they reported that they would not consider it in any way inconsistent with the findings of the Report if the Secretary of State now saw fit to mitigate Mr O’Malley’s sentence.

  And it was on this Report, which he signed with his two colleagues, that Sir Warren Fisher sent me that encouraging message over the telephone.

  But there were fresh difficulties ahead. Next day, Wednesday the 21st, there was a meeting to consider the matter at the Foreign Office. Sir William Tyrrell, Nevile Bland, and Walford Selby were all present; with Sir Hubert Montgomery, Sir Victor Wellesley (fully primed the previous day), and Mr Vansittart. The three members of the Board of Enquiry were, of course, present too. (Behold how great a matter a little lunch kindleth!) Sir Warren Fisher harangued them for an hour and a half. He made the point that two new facts emerged: I. the definite mistake in the Report on the facts of O.O’M.’s se
niority; II. that his evidence as to his failure to discuss francs with Sir Eyre Crowe might be taken in two ways – as evidence of a guilty or a clear conscience. Sir Warren pleaded that my statements corroborated Owen’s as to his having a clear conscience, and laboured at the theme. I had made, in his view, a thin thread into a stout rope. But he said that he found the meeting very sticky. (Since Walford Selby and Mr Vansittart were warmly for Owen, Sir Victor friendly and Nevile Bland certainly not inimical; I assume that this meant that Sir William Tyrrell was the one who stuck. When I said this to Sir Warren, he giggled.)

  Later that evening he told me over the telephone that he was less hopeful. ‘Yesterday I should have said that there was a fifty per cent chance,’ he said, ‘but now it looks rather black. Don’t raise your hopes, whatever you do.’

  Besides these events, other things happened for which I can give no exact dates. A deputation of juniors – Walford, Van, and Nevile – waited on Sir William Tyrrell and begged formally for O.O’M.’s reinstatement. William Strang was prevented from presenting his memorandum because Sir Victor Wellesley was presenting one in the same sense.

  But I knew nothing of all this at the time. It was many weeks later that I pieced together what I have just written, for almost all of which, however, documentary evidence exists. I spent that Wednesday at Pendell, resting and talking to Owen. I concealed from him alike Sir Warren’s hopeful and depressing messages, and kept a dull grey level of 100 to 1 against success. William Strang came down to Pendell for the night. He told us that buzzing had now become general. It was impossible to walk along a corridor in the Foreign Office without coming on Van talking earnestly to Walford Selby, or Walford colloguing with Nevile Bland, or Sir Warren Fisher popping in or out of Sir William Tyrrell’s room. We spoke of his letter to me and of the whole business endlessly. I happened to mention that Sir Warren had said to me, apropos of my contention that ‘coming into a going concern’ was not a fair use of words in the Report (since there cannot be a ‘going concern’ of one) that there was ‘an atmosphere of gambling in the whole department.’