Those Wild Wyndhams
Page 46
29. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 10 October 1919, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/229/1 f. 3r.
30. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, n.d. [11 August 1911] (Letters, pp. 269–70); Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 14 August 1911 (Letters, pp. 270–1).
31. Jenkins, Mr. Balfour’s Poodle, pp. 252–3.
32. The Times, 11 August 1911; HL Deb. 10 August 1911, vol. 9, col. 1000.
33. HL Deb. 10 August 1911, vol. 9, cols 1003, 1014.
34. Quoted in Adams, The Last Grandee, p. 254.
35. Marr, The Making of Modern Britain, p. 113.
36. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, n.d. [11 August 1911] (Letters, pp. 269–70); Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 14 August 1911 (Letters, pp. 270–1).
37. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 8 October 1911 (Letters, p. 278).
38. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 7 November 1911 (Letters, p. 282).
39. George Wyndham to Sibell Grosvenor, 10 August 1911, quoted in Egremont, The Cousins, p. 278.
Chapter 28: 1911–1914
1. F. W. Bain to Pamela Tennant, 6 September 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/37.
2. Pamela Tennant to unknown correspondent (as before), 3 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/35 f. 22.3r.
3. Pamela Tennant to Charles Tennant, 3 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/41 f. 14r.
4. Pamela Tennant to unknown (as before), 3 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/35 f. 22.3r.
5. F. W. Bain to Pamela Tennant, 1 May 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD/510/ 1/37.
6. Pamela Tennant to Charles Tennant, 3 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/41 f. 14r; Pamela Tennant to unknown (as before), 3 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/35 f. 22.3r.
7. Elizabeth Asquith to Mary Charteris, 27 December 1914, quoted in Blow, Broken Blood, p. 143.
8. The Times, 4 March 1911.
9. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 101.
10. Pamela Tennant to Charles Tennant, 7 October 1908, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/41 f. 5r.
11. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 22 March 1911, Stanway Papers.
12. Edward Tennant to Margot Asquith, 8 April 1910, Bodleian, Asquith Papers, MS. Eng. c. 6676 f. 160.
13. Bodleian, Asquith Papers, MS. Eng. 6676 f. 163 (n.d.).
14. Margot Asquith to Edward Tennant, 5 November 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/42 f. 12r.
15. Edward Tennant to Margot Asquith, 15 January 1917, Bodleian, Asquith Papers, MS. Eng. c. 6697 ff. 164–5.
16. Pamela Tennant to Sidney Cockerell, 26 February 1911, BL Cockerell Papers, vol. CXLVII, Add. MSS. 52769 f. 174.
17. ‘Fantasia – of a London House Closed’, in Glenconner, The White Wallet, pp. 211–12.
18. Asquith, Remember and Be Glad, p. 192.
19. Ibid.
20. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 2 June 1923, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/229/3 f. 4r.
21. Blow, Broken Blood, p. 125; and see The Times 13 June 1913, reporting on Bosie’s bankruptcy that year, in which it is explained that, in 1907, Eddy had created a company, Wilsford Press Ltd, and had immediately then assigned all its shares to Bosie for a nominal sum.
22. Belloc Lowndes, A Passing World, p. 178; Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand (New York, Arcade Publishing, 1998), pp. 20–1.
23. Susan, Lady Tweedsmuir, The Edwardian Lady (Duckworth, 1966), pp. 87–8.
24. Blow, Broken Blood, p. 172.
25. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 234.
26. Ibid., p. 235.
27. Edward Grey to Pamela Tennant, 18 December 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/35 f. 12r.
28. Pamela Tennant to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 25 January 1912, George Wyndham Papers.
29. F. W. Bain to Pamela Tennant, 1 April and 18 August 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/37.
30. Edward Grey to Pamela Tennant, 23 March 1913, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/60/3 f. 10r.
31. Edward Grey to Pamela Tennant, 8 December 1911, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/35 f. 12r.
32. Ibid., and 5 March 1913, ibid., f. 22.7r.
33. Edward Grey to Edward Tennant, 25 February 1912, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/60/2 f. 8r.
34. Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, p. 72.
35. Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 17.
36. Clare Tennant to Edward Tennant, 25 February 1912, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD 510/1/42 f. 18r.
37. Asquith, Diaries, 8 May 1915, p. 17.
38. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 31 October 1912 (Letters, pp. 291–2).
39. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 30 October 1912 (Letters, pp. 290–1).
40. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 24 February 1913 (Letters, p. 294).
41. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 16 September 1912 (Letters, p. 288).
42. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 12 September 1912 (Letters, p. 287).
43. Ibid.
44. Philip Ziegler, Diana Cooper (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1981), p. 41. Diana was the child of her mother’s affair with Harry Cust, and was the infant born at the time that Harry first started courting Pamela in 1892.
45. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 15 October 1907 (Letters, p. 242).
46. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 29 March 1922, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/229/2 f. 5r.
47. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 19 March 1913 (Letters, pp. 297–8).
48. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 12 September 1912 (Letters, pp. 286–7).
49. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 24 February 1913 (Letters, p. 294).
50. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 24 January 1913, Stanway Papers.
51. Ibid.
52. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 24 February 1913 (Letters, p. 295).
53. Kathleen Tynan Hinkson, The Middle Years (Constable, 1916), p. 233.
54. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 24 February 1913 (Letters, p. 294).
55. Ibid.
56. George Wyndham to Hilaire Belloc, 4 June 1913, quoted in Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 2.749.
57. Ellenberger, ‘Constructing George Wyndham’, p. 501. For a more colourful account see Joan Wyndham, Dawn Chorus (Virago, 2004), pp. 12–13.
58. Perf Wyndham to Sibell, Countess Grosvenor, 10 June 1913, Stanway Papers.
59. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, n.d. [1913], Blunt Papers, FM 673-1975.
60. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 390.
61. Mackail and Wyndham, Life and Letters, 1.126.
62. Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 390.
63. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 2 August 1914, Stanway Papers.
64. The Times, 29 July 1914.
65. Asquith, Diaries, 23 August 1915, p. 71.
66. Ibid.
67. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 28 September 1914, Blunt Papers, FM 719-1975.
68. The Times, 4 August 1914.
69. Simon Blow says that this was Eddy Tennant (see Broken Blood, p. 134). It seems more likely that it was, as claimed by himself, John Spender, Editor of the Westminster Gazette (see J. A. Spender, Life, Journalism and Politics, 2 vols (New York, Frederick A. Stokes, 1927), 2.14–15.
Chapter 29: MCMXIV
1. The Times, 5 August 1914.
2. Davenport-Hines, Ettie, p. 180; Wemyss, Family Record, p. 240.
3. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 241.
4. The terminology was alien to people at the time. In 1918, Pamela reminded Margot of ‘your [Margot] exclaiming one early day in the War “‘B.E.F.?’ What does ‘B.E.F.’ mean?”’ (Pamela Glenconner to Margot Asquith, Bodleian, Asquith Papers, MS. Eng. c. 6676 ff. 144–8).
5. Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (Penguin Books, 1999), p. 198.
6. Newspaper cutting dated 1 December 1913, reporting Eddy’s address to the Liverpool Liberal Federal Council on Home Defence, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/51 f. 1r.
7. Asquith, Diaries, p. xvi.
8. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, August 1914 (Letters, p. 311).
9. Ibid.
10. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 28
September 1914, Blunt Papers, FM 719-1975.
11. Conversation with Mrs James Adeane, November 2013.
12. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 72.
13. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. vi.
14. Wemyss, Family Record, pp. 240, 242.
15. Asquith, Diaries, 16 October 1915, p. 88.
16. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, pp. 73–4.
17. Julian Grenfell to Ettie Desborough, 24 October 1914, quoted in Nicholas Mosley, Julian Grenfell: His Life and the Times of his Death 1888–1915 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 239.
18. Lady Angela Forbes, Memories and Base Details (2nd edn, Hutchinson, 1922), p. 153.
19. Ibid., p. 171.
20. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 1 January 1915 (Letters, pp. 315–16).
21. Ibid.
22. Forbes, Memories and Base Details, p. 171.
23. Ibid., p. 76.
24. Ibid., pp. 174–5.
25. Ibid., p. 171.
26. Ibid., p. 161.
27. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 73.
28. Forbes, Memories and Base Details, p. 161.
29. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, August 1914 (Letters, p. 311).
30. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 285; Pamela Adeane to Mary Elcho, 1 October 1917, Stanway Papers.
31. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 286.
32. Ibid.
33. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 April 1915 (Letters, p. 323).
34. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 7 October 1915, Stanway Papers.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, pp. 119–20.
38. Ibid., p. 118.
39. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 9 October 1914, Stanway Papers.
40. Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, p. 125.
41. Pamela Tennant to Charles Tennant, 25 February 1909, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD 510/1/41 f. 8r.
42. Pamela Tennant to Edward Tennant, n.d. [post-war], Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/51 f. 16r. The child was an artistic prodigy – Pamela had hung some of her paintings in Queen Anne’s Gate. Pamela took her down to Wilsford: ‘my idea is to put the child at the Bishops school in Salisbury for the winter as her surroundings in London are very objectionable. She is a nice mannered quiet little child. She draws all day long,’ she told Eddy.
43. Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, pp. 115, 128.
44. Ibid., p. 120.
45. Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 13.
46. Ibid.; Blow, in Broken Blood, notes that his grandmother had adopted a child who ‘had run away to sea in his early teens’, but gives his date of adoption as nearer that of Stephen’s birth, and his name as Barnaby (p. 173).
47. See Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, and Blow’s version in Broken Blood.
48. Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, p. 128.
49. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 85.
50. For an account of this episode see Hermione Baddeley, The Unsinkable Hermione Baddeley (Collins, 1984), pp. 54–8.
51. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 18 September 1914, Stanway Papers.
52. Ibid.
53. Edward Wyndham Tennant, ‘Percy Wyndham’, Stanway Papers.
54. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, 17 September 1914 (Letters, p. 312).
55. Asquith, Diaries, 20 October 1915, p. 91.
56. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, September 1914 (Letters, p. 313).
57. Madeline Adeane to Mary Elcho, 29 September 1914, Stanway Papers.
58. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, n.d., Blunt Papers, FM 724-1975.
59. Ibid.
60. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 256.
61. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 April 1915 (Letters, p. 323).
62. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 292.
63. Asquith, Diaries, 26 May 1915, pp. 29–30.
64. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 28 September 1914, Blunt Papers, FM 719-1975.
65. Mary Elcho to Hugo Elcho, 7 October 1915, Stanway Papers.
66. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 17 May 1915 (Letters, pp. 324–5).
67. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 287.
68. Ibid., p. 252; Asquith, Diaries, p. xvii.
69. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 264.
70. His real name was Algernon Walter, but he was known always as Tom.
71. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 263.
72. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 18 November 1915, Blunt Papers, FM778-1975.
73. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 13 April 1915 (Letters, p. 322).
74. Arthur Balfour to Mary Elcho, Easter Saturday 1915 (Letters, p. 320).
75. Ridley and Percy (eds), Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, p. 326.
76. Quoted in ibid., pp. 325–6.
77. Pamela Tennant to Margot Asquith, 12 March 1918, Bodleian, Asquith Papers, MS. Eng. c. 6676 ff. 144–8.
78. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, pp. 119–20.
79. Asquith, Diaries, 19 October 1915, p. 90.
80. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 119.
81. Ibid., p. 118.
82. Ibid., pp. 157–8.
83. Quoted in Ziegler, Diana Cooper, p. 80.
84. Duff Cooper, The Duff Cooper Diaries 1915–1951, ed. John Julius Norwich (Phoenix, 2006), 9 January and 18 February 1916, pp. 24 and 25.
85. Asquith, Diaries, 15 September 1915, p. 79.
86. Sibell Adeane married Edward Kay-Shuttleworth in December 1914. Madeline Adeane married Denis Wigan in October 1915.
87. Pamela Tennant to Margot Asquith, 12 March 1918, Bodleian, Asquith Papers, Add. MS. Eng. c. 6676 ff. 144–8.
88. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, pp. 121–2.
89. Tennant, Waiting for Princess Margaret, p. 119; see also Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 12.
90. Edward Grey to Edward Tennant, 7 August 1915, Glenconner Papers, NRS GD510/1/60/4 f. 18r.
91. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 303.
92. Asquith, Diaries, 23 August 1915, p. 71.
93. Ibid., 9 September 1915, p. 77.
94. Forbes, Memories and Base Details, p. 201.
95. Wemyss, Family Record, pp. 305–6.
96. Forbes, Memories and Base Details, p. 201.
97. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 190.
98. Asquith, Diaries, 9 September 1915, p. 77.
99. Forbes, Memories and Base Details, p. 201.
100. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 307.
101. Ibid.
Chapter 30: The Front
1. Madeline Wyndham to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 6 October 1915, Blunt Papers, FM 772-1975.
2. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 281.
3. Sir Alan Lascelles, End of an Era: Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles from 1887 to 1920, ed. Duff Hart-Davis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 12 July 1912, p. 128.
4. Those grandsons include my father: his mother is Tommy’s eldest daughter.
5. Lascelles, End of an Era, p. 162.
6. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 312.
7. Ibid., pp. 315–16; Edward Wyndham Tennant to Pamela Tennant, 18 August 1915, quoted in Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 127.
8. Ibid., p. 130.
9. Yvo Charteris to Hugo Elcho, 6 October 1915, quoted in Wemyss, Family Record, p. 322.
10. Yvo Charteris to Cynthia Asquith, 7 October 1915, ibid., p. 324.
11. The Times, 21 June and 7 August 1915.
12. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 190.
13. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 172.
14. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 190.
15. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 326.
16. Ibid., p. 312.
17. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 191; Asquith, Diaries, 24 October 1915, p. 93.
18. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, p. 145.
19. In September 1915, Bim had written to Pamela of the generals commanding his Guards brigade, division and army corps and the First Army, ‘respectively … Brigadier General Hayworth, General Lord Cavan, General Haking, and Ha
ig at the head of the list. They are all very fine generals and I could wish for no one else.’ Just a month later, from Vermelles, Bim wrote in his poem ‘Á Bas la Gloire’ of those:
who didn’t die
Although they were in France – these sat in cars,
And whizzed about with red-band caps, awry,
Exuding brandy and the best cigars,
With bands and tabs of red, they could defy
The many missives of explosive Mars
(Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, pp. 134, 151). The contrast shows the change wrought in Bim, or at least the extent to which he concealed his true thoughts from his parents in favour of the cheerful, trusting son they wished to see.
20. Asquith, Diaries, 22 October 1915, p. 92.
21. Ibid., 19 October 1915, pp. 90–1.
22. Ego Charteris to Mary Elcho, 25 October 1915, quoted in Wemyss, Family Record, p. 352; Asquith, Diaries, 3 July 1916, p. 186.
23. Asquith, Diaries, 20 October 1915, p. 91.
24. Davenport-Hines, Ettie, p. 202.
25. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 8 December 1921, Whittingehame Papers, NRS GD433/2/229/1 f. 29r.
26. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 5 December 1915, Blunt Papers, FM 779-1975.
27. Davenport-Hines, Ettie, p. 202.
28. Mary Elcho to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 5 December 1915, Blunt Papers, FM 779-1975.
29. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 22 December 1915 (Letters, p. 322).
30. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 9 June 1916, Stanway Papers.
31. Glenconner, Edward Wyndham Tennant, Appendix III.
32. Ibid., p. 184.
33. Ibid., p. 189.
34. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 9 June 1916, Stanway Papers.
35. For an illustration, see Dakers, Clouds, p. 175, plate 94.
36. Ibid.
37. Hoare, Serious Pleasures, p. 13.
38. Pamela Tennant to Mary Elcho, 9 June 1916, Stanway Papers.
39. Asquith, Diaries, 22 April 1916, p. 158.
40. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 372.
41. Asquith, Diaries, 22 April 1916, p. 160.
42. The Times, 25, 26, 27 April 1916.
43. Mary Elcho to Evelyn de Vesci, 26 September 1916, De Vesci Papers, DD/DRU/87.
44. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, p. 194.
45. Wemyss, Family Record, p. 372.
46. Asquith, Diaries, 19 May 1916, p. 166.
47. Mary Elcho to Arthur Balfour, 7 May 1916 (Letters, p. 337).