Six Minutes in May

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Her upbringing had been sumptuous. At Simla’s Viceregal Lodge, there were said to be as many native servants as days in the year. One man brought the bathwater, another heated it, a third poured it into the tub, a fourth emptied it. A dairy cow shipped out from England provided her with milk.

  Baba’s mother, the Vicereine, died when Baba was two. Mary Curzon had been a singularly gentle and kindly woman. She had none of the headstrong imperiousness of her youngest daughter, who would turn down a proposal from the Duke of Kent in favour of the son of an Irish prison inspector, a charming but penniless polo player seventeen years her senior, Major Edward Metcalfe, popularly known as ‘Fruity’.

  Louis Mountbatten was best man at their wedding at the Chapel Royal in 1925. Soon after, Baba returned to live in India, where Fruity had been appointed to General Birdwood’s staff. Invited to stay at her old home by Lord Irwin, as Halifax then was, Baba was disappointed not to find her childhood kingdom intact. On 5 September 1926, she wrote in her diary: ‘We left Simla this evening by the rail motor.85 I hadn’t one pang about leaving. It is an odious place, the people not too good and the weather past description.’ She came to feel the same about Fruity, who jovially admitted: ‘I have no money and I’ve got no brain,’ and who set her neat white teeth on edge with his daily request: ‘Which tie shall it be this morning, Babs darling?86, 87 D’ye think it should be the blue? Or would you say the red?’

  Another ten years passed before an intellectually starved Baba stayed again with Halifax, in Berlin. In November 1937, Irene wrote in her diary: ‘Baba rang up full of news.88 She had a great time staying with Nevile Henderson with Lord Halifax there.’

  This was the weekend when Halifax met Hitler, ostensibly in Halifax’s capacity as a Master of Foxhounds during a visit to an International Hunting Exhibition. The German for ‘Tally-ho!’ being ‘Halali!’, Halifax was nicknamed ‘Lord Halalifax’ as he posed beside antlers while a gramophone played the roar of a stag. Poland won first prize with a giant stuffed panda. Asked to broadcast a few words on air, Halifax could think of nothing to say ‘except how wonderful it was’.89 He then went off in a special train provided by Hitler, with white-coated attendants, to Berchtesgaden.

  Baba was in Berlin as a guest of the British Ambassador, Nevile Henderson, who had wanted to marry Irene, and was present at the Residence on Wilhelmstrasse when Halifax returned. She was one of the first to learn how, as his car drew up at Berchtesgaden, Halifax had observed through the car window a pair of black-trousered legs, finishing up in silk socks and pumps, and was poised to hand his coat to the helpful servant ‘when I heard von Neurath or somebody throwing a hoarse whisper at my ear of “Der Führer, der Führer”, and then it dawned upon me that the legs were not the legs of a footman, but of Hitler’.90

  Halifax told Baba about his three-hour lunch at which Hitler ate vegetable soup and walnuts, while drinking a hot concoction out of a glass in a silver holder; how Der Führer liked to watch two films a night, preferably featuring Greta Garbo; how one of his favourite films was The Lives of a Bengal Lancer; and how, speaking through an interpreter, since Hitler did not understand more than a few words of English, he had chastised Halifax over the failings of British policy in India. Hitler’s solution was to ‘Shoot Gandhi’ and to go on shooting the Congress leaders until peace was restored.

  Baba was also at the British Residence when Halifax returned from his meeting with Goering, ‘a great schoolboy’ dressed in brown breeches, a green leather jerkin and a green hat with a chamois tuft. Goering’s tame elks had eaten out of his hand. Halifax’s wife was patron of the Elk Hounds Club.

  And Baba was present for the tea party next afternoon with Joseph Goebbels, when the Nazi Propaganda Minister tried to persuade Halifax to order the cartoonist Low to tone down his anti-Hitler rhetoric. Baba introduced Halifax to Low’s employer on their return to London, the first of several instances when Baba – ‘that indefatigable young lady’ Herbert Morrison called her – acted as a conduit.91

  Baba was in touch with Halifax at important moments over the next two years. On St Valentine’s Day 1938, she wrote to congratulate him on becoming Foreign Secretary. In his answer, there was the reluctance of a man who accepts promotion, but only after initially turning it down – as he had declined the Viceroyalty when first offered it in 1925, and the Foreign Secretaryship once before, in 1931. ‘My dear Baba, Thank you so much.92 At this moment I am not actually FS, but I fear I shall be tomorrow! It’s not a very pleasant thing to look forward to: but I couldn’t well help myself! And I think it’s the biggest thing to have a shot at all!’

  On 1 October 1938, Baba drove with Irene to Heston airfield to see Halifax welcome back Chamberlain from Munich; and when news broke of the Soviet–Nazi pact on 22 August 1939, it was with Baba that Halifax elected to dine. She wrote in her diary: ‘Edward entrancing and charming, might have no cares, after politics we discussed every kind of ordinary subject.’ In the same month, Baba served as intermediary between Halifax and the Duke of Windsor, to whom Fruity had been best man.

  Looking back on their summer evenings of 1939, when they had dined in the Dorchester’s Spanish-decorated Grill Room or ‘in the big window of the Hyde Park Hotel’, Halifax confessed that ‘I was rather frightened of you in those days …’93

  Once war was declared, Halifax learned to master his fear.

  The signature tune of the Dorchester hotel band was ‘The Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven’. Baba’s diary entry for 6 October read: ‘Dined with Edward tête-à-tête. My idea of a perfect evening.’ Nothing was off the table, from her marriage troubles with Fruity to Halifax’s reservations about becoming Prime Minister – which he had first aired to her in August. On that occasion, she had written: ‘The Eden, Churchill type is the politician devoured with ambition for power.94 Edward totally devoid of the wish for power and always more and more amazed at finding himself caught up in the machine doing the job he is doing. Would gladly forsake it all for a country life of sport and reading with a few intelligent friends.’

  Two months on, the subject of power still preyed on him, and it occupied much of their dinner conversation. ‘Edward said he would not take on the Premiership if offered, his reasons being that not being in the Commons makes the position too difficult.95 The leader of the House of Commons, say Winston, would have the difficult job of being the leader without the cachet of P.M. Situations would be bound to arise in which the P.M. in the Lords got irritated by what was being said in the Commons. The question of posts to be filled would have to be done by Edward without knowledge of the proper men available, therefore he would be dependent on other men’s advice, and if those difficulties were surmounted by an act giving him a safe seat in the Commons he felt he was too tired to start that racket again.’

  A paragon of self-abnegation, Halifax appeared yet again to be positioning himself in order to turn down an important promotion. ‘He thought Kingsley Wood would do better!’ And if not the Air Minister, there were other willing candidates.96 Deflectingly, Halifax told Baba of a friend recently back from Harvard where a group of highbrows had asked who would be Prime Minister if Chamberlain went, to which he had replied, without hesitation: ‘Lady Astor.’97

  The more serious question: would Halifax accept if pressed, as had happened before over the Viceroyalty, and also the Foreign Office?

  In October 1939, Halifax closed his large house in Eaton Square and went with Dorothy to live in a suite on the sixth floor of the Dorchester hotel, newly constructed, according to the brochure, out of ‘almost indestructible concrete’ – and equipped to resist air and gas attacks. ‘No disturbance can penetrate through the walls. Below every floor is a thick layer of dried seaweed such as is used by the BBC for deadening sound.’ Here the Halifaxes established themselves ‘in a flat with a good deal of our own furniture and some of our own pictures’.98 ‘Dowothea’, as Halifax called his wife, whom he had first met in the refreshment room at Berwick-on-Tweed station, was often
away at Garrowby. In her absences, Halifax begged Baba ‘to come & cheer my solitude’.99 They were soon dining together two or three times a week.

  Ida and Hilda Chamberlain were sibling repositories for what the Prime Minister felt unable to share with anyone else. The unhappily married Baba provided an outlet for Halifax’s confidences and frustrations as Churchill continued to pester Halifax to mine the entrance to the waters off Narvik.

  Over a 5-shilling war economy dinner at the Dorchester, Halifax described how he had complained to Chamberlain about Churchill’s broadcast on 20 January against the position taken by neutral countries, all hoping, said Churchill, to be the last one eaten by the crocodile. ‘Really, it is intolerable that Winston should come floundering into my department.100 What would he say if I made similar excursions into his?’ Baba felt it ‘incredible that a man in his position should make such gaffes.101 His bragging about the war at sea is followed every time by some appalling loss … and his voice oozes with port, brandy and the chewed cigar.’ Churchill ‘terrified’ Baba, despite his flattering comment at her father’s funeral, at which he had been a pallbearer: ‘What better monument can a famous man leave behind him than a beautiful daughter.’102, 103 Another entry in her diary reads: ‘Winston is causing endless trouble as he absolutely refuses to disgorge even the most essential facts till hours too late.’104

  At their intimate dinners and in letters, Halifax discarded his chilly aloofness. ‘Baba dearest.105 I can’t tell you what your letters mean. Do take every care of yourself for you are very precious to me …’ In case of their correspondence being steamed open by one of Joseph Ball’s agents, they concocted private nicknames. Lloyd George was ‘Corgi’, Anthony Eden was ‘Draughty Mouth’, Churchill was ‘Pooh’. Emphasising that she must ‘for heaven’s sake keep all this to yourself’, Halifax wrote to Baba about ‘the Pooh’: ‘With all his faults of egocentricity, total lack of the right sort of humility and utter inconsiderateness for anybody but himself, I do take my hat off to the sheer confidence, vitality and vigour of the man.’106

  Through Halifax, Baba had prior secret knowledge of the evacuation from Namsos. But the Foreign Secretary’s transgressions passed beyond oral confidences. She wrote on the same night, 2 May: ‘I saw a letter to Winston from Roger Keyes in which he blamed Dudley Pound and said that the handling of the situation had been lamentable and the Navy disgraced etc., and when was he going to be given the chance of leading the Navy to victory etc.’ This was not the first occasion when Baba had been privy to Halifax’s ‘FO papers’, which at night he handed to the hotel manager to put in the safe. ‘He showed me his day to day, in fact hourly account of the weeks previous to the declaration of war.’107 In another diary entry, Baba writes of ‘an evening of sheer delight reading bits of Ed’s speeches, telegrams from the FO …’ When Halifax gave a speech at the Sheldonian in February – ‘by far the best speech he has ever made’, Stuart Hodgson wrote – it was Baba who read the first draft.108, 109 Her response: ‘It lacks strength and firmness.110 I told him this and he said, “You mean I’m floppy and you want me to be more virile”!!’

  Baba summarised her feelings for Halifax after a drizzly morning during which she had first walked with him to ‘early church’, then sat with him while he worked, and then walked two further miles with him in the rain.111 ‘Ed unbelievably sweet – our companionship is perfection, he seems to get as much enjoyment and happiness from me as I do him. We discussed the reason and strangeness of our friendship for ages. He never tires of asking why I like him and I answered “because you make me feel sunny all through”. I asked him why and what he liked about me and he said “I can’t put it into any crisp phrase as that, but I love you very much.”’ In another letter, he struggled to explain. ‘It is perfect being with someone like you who shares everything and with whom one has not reserves or lack of understanding.112 A very perfect companion, you are.’

  It was during the Norway Campaign that their relationship broke surface, thanks to Charles Peake, at the time head of the Foreign Office News Department. During the Supreme War Council Meeting on 28 March, Peake had needed to see Halifax at short notice, following the leak by the French agency Havas that the Royal Navy was about to mine Norwegian waters. Peake had telephoned the Dorchester and requested that they should dine together. Halifax refused. ‘I have to go to the French Embassy at nine and have to say something, so must have time to think.113 Come round at 8.30 p.m. and I’ll give you a quarter of an hour then.’ Peake, now being hounded by journalists, went up to Halifax’s suite at 8.15 p.m. and rang the bell. Halifax came to the door. ‘You’ve come too early.’ Peake explained. Then Halifax took him in. There was Baba, who winked at Peake. Halifax said: ‘Talk away, Lady Alexandra is one of us.’ While Peake was talking, the telephone rang. It was Lady Halifax. Peake could hear every word. ‘Edward, haven’t heard from you for two weeks.’ Halifax replied: ‘Been very busy.’ Lady Halifax: ‘Oh nonsense, I’m sure you have that charming Baba with you at this very moment.’ Baba winked at Peake again, according to Peake.

  This account in Robert Bruce Lockhart’s diary is virtually unique, even though Halifax’s extremely close relations with Baba Metcalfe were common knowledge, says David Dilks. ‘Everyone knew, but in those restrained days most diaries would not have recorded such material.’ Neither Cadogan nor Lawford, Halifax’s closest assistants during these months, make any mention of Baba in their diaries (but then nor does Lawford mention his own homosexual life); and Peake’s diary contains but a single reference to Baba, in which Dorothy wonders whether Baba might be tight. ‘“Not tight, but perhaps tiddley,” Edward corrected.’114

  A valuable exception is the journal kept by Baba’s sister Irene, ‘a large buxom woman with an obsession for hunting and a voice like a foghorn’, according to their nephew Nicholas Mosley.115 At the Dorchester, Baba moved into Irene’s room, leaving Irene to witness with stupefied amazement the way in which Britain’s enamoured Foreign Secretary, one floor below, could behave in time of war. Once the Blitz was on, Baba and Halifax would regularly shuffle downstairs in their dressing gowns and pyjamas, and sleep in the Turkish baths on beds laid out in little cubicles. Irene wrote with some bitterness in her diary: ‘Lord Halifax can seldom keep off Baba.’116

  Rumours of Lord Halifax’s crush on Lady Alexandra Metcalfe spread beyond the reinforced walls of ‘the Dorch’. At a lunch with Churchill, Harvard University’s President caused a roar of laughter when he said that since Claridge’s was not of steel construction, he was thinking of moving to the Dorchester. It was then explained that though his life might be in greater danger at Claridge’s, his reputation would be in greater danger at the Dorchester. On an occasion that became notorious, Churchill telephoned Halifax late at night at the hotel – only to be put through to Baba.

  A friend of Irene’s muttered how ‘unfortunate’ it was for Baba to telephone Halifax ‘in the middle of dinner with others present who might talk’.117 When Baba started accompanying the Foreign Secretary to Mass at the Grosvenor Chapel, Irene cautioned her sister that ‘it was not fair on him to be seen going to early service with him, people in the hotel could so easily put the wrong construction on it’.118 Baba retorted that ‘it was Lrd H. who had given her a faith and belief and everything was on the highest plane.’

  An embarrassed Irene raked over the matter with Bessie Hyslop, nanny to Baba’s nephews and nieces – ‘We could not fathom the Halifax–Baba thing.119 Baba was in a secret glow of delight.’ Irene pored over it with another of her suitors, Victor Cazalet, Conservative MP and director of the Dorchester, who had offered Irene the use of the twin room on the seventh floor. ‘Discussed with Victor Cazalet Baba’s extraordinary power over Lord H and that she rang him at any moment over minor things and that he always responded and that it was always Baba first and then his family.120 That Dorothy Halifax was the saint, not him.’

  Mary Curzon, mother to Baba and Irene, had felt the same amorous passion for their father. �
��The sweet test of affection is not if you can live with a person, but if you cannot live without him, and if you feel that when Mr X comes into a room, that the room is glowing with pink light, and thrills are running up and down your back with pure joy, then it is all right.’121 This described Baba’s behaviour – and it captured Halifax’s mesmerised state. ‘I can’t tell you, darling one, what a great relief your letter was … You know, I think, my dearest, how much love surrounds you as a kind of moral armour plate protection, and there is as much more to be called into service as you need … you are really never out of my thoughts.’122 When Halifax left for America in January 1941, with her gift of a miniature dachshund in his pocket, he was as stricken as Baba. ‘All I have had of you since then is your photograph kept on my desk which looks at me as I write, and your last note which I keep locked up but look at from time to time.’123 Whatever messages her letters contained, they were too incendiary to be read by others. ‘I am keeping your last note for a little longer until I know it all by heart. Then it shall be destroyed.’

  The inevitable moment came when Irene grew sick and tired of finding Baba’s clothes strewn over her room, Baba dressed in a ‘lace brassiere and black chiffon drawers’, Baba always on the telephone to her ‘beau’.124 ‘I said she loved comfort and ease and was very selfish and that if it had not been for one or two friends to protect her, her name would be mud over Edward Halifax.125 She hit me savagely in the face.’