Mrs Guinness

by Lyndsy Spence

  Meeting Diana in person intensified Mosley’s memories of her. He thought her ‘tall and slim, with huge blue eyes, beautiful legs and small, graceful hands and feet’, and her physical presence was spectacular but waspish. When Mosley questioned Diana about her politics, she snapped, ‘Lloyd George Liberal.’

  With Mosley absent from parliament that summer, he and Cimmie found themselves more sociable than ever and it was inevitable they would cross paths with the Guinnesses. Diana began to warm to Mosley and his political conversation, and modesty did not prevail when he told Diana he was certain he could solve the unemployment crisis. ‘Lucid, logical, forceful and persuasive,’ she wrote of Mosley’s charisma, and he soon convinced her, as he had thousands of others, to believe in his ideology. ‘From that moment we met everywhere, and I listened to him talk,’ Diana said of the several meetings which followed.

  In many ways, Mosley possessed everything Bryan lacked – he had experience with women and a strong sense of self-assurance. This level of arrogance charmed Diana and manifested a level of trust. She believed in Mosley and was confident he had all of the answers, and sensible ones, too. He spoke of real issues, whereas Bryan was lost in his books, plays and poetry. Mosley’s age also appealed to Diana: he was fourteen years her senior and she was attracted to older, worldlier men. For someone who admired experience and knowledge above all else, it seemed Bryan was too young for her.

  Oswald Ernald Mosley adored women; when he was a young boy his parents had separated and he was brought up by his mother, Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote, and his paternal grandfather, with whom he and his father shared their namesake. But among family and friends, he was affectionately nicknamed ‘Tom’. Growing up in the depths of the Staffordshire countryside was a tough, rural life, where he was exposed to the cruelties of nature and the torture of defenceless animals. Due to his philandering ways in London and the spending of the family’s fortune on booze and whores, Mosley’s father had been exiled from the family seat, Rolleston Hall. Before departing his son’s life, an early lesson of his brutality lingered. He ordered a boxful of two dozen rats and set his hounds on the rodents, while his small son looked on. It was a harrowing lesson, but one Mosley took to heart – to survive, one had to exert brutality, there was no room for cowardice if one were to thrive.

  With no interest in academia, Mosley’s experience at Winchester College was mediocre. He ignored his lessons and dodged the passes of homosexual schoolmates (he had little tolerance for such things), but he excelled at fencing and boxing. He had been taught by his grandfather and father to exploit ‘the good clean English fist’, and this was a tactic he would use throughout his life.

  In 1914, months before the outbreak of the First World War, Mosley entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and was expelled five months later for a riotous act of retaliation against a fellow student. During the war, he was commissioned into the 16th The Queen’s Lancers and fought on the Western Front. He then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, but crashed his plane while demonstrating in front of his mother and sister. The injury left him with a permanent limp, but he defied medical orders and returned to the trenches before he was fully recovered. Consequently, he passed out from the pain at the Battle of Loos. Mosley spent the remainder of the war at desk jobs in the Ministry of Munitions and the Foreign Office.

  At the age of 21, with no university education or practical experience, Mosley decided to go into politics as a Conservative MP. He was passionately anti-war and this view motivated his political career. His title and family background (directly descended from the Baronets of Ancoats) and his war service stood for something in politics, then dominated by the elite.

  Mosley was a desirable politician, and local Conservative and Labour Associations preferred him in several constituencies. He became the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat, and soon distinguished himself as a confident orator and political player. Conflict arose when Mosley disagreed with the Conservatives over Irish Policy when he opposed the use of the Black & Tans to suppress the Irish. The Liberal Westminster Gazette admired his stance and praised him for having ‘human sympathies, courage and brains’.

  During his crusade in politics, Mosley met and married Lady Cynthia Curzon, known as Cimmie. The whispers about Mosley’s roguish reputation were enough for her father, Lord Curzon, to be wary of his credentials as a suitable husband. Curzon suspected Mosley of being motivated by social advancement: politically (he was a respected politician who had served as the Viceroy of India) and financially (Cimmie’s late mother, the American heiress Mary Leiter, had left her three daughters a substantial trust fund). Curzon’s instincts proved correct, though short-lived. He died five years later, during which time Mosley had begun affairs with Cimmie’s sisters, Lady Irene Curzon and Lady Alexandra ‘Baba’ Metcalfe, as well as Curzon’s widow, Grace.

  In 1924, Mosley abandoned the Conservatives ‘who mistrusted brilliance’ in favour of the Labour Party, who had just formed a government. It was a daring move on Mosley’s behalf and it spawned his infamous phrase: ‘Vote Labour, sleep Tory.’ Cimmie supported Mosley’s new ideology and she, too, became vocal in left-wing politics, once remarking: ‘Titles are a bit of a joke. I cannot get rid of my title, though I don’t think much of it.’ It was a literal statement that further infuriated her father when Mosley made light of her comment and referred to her in an official letter as ‘the wife’.

  Livid at his son endorsing any form of socialism, Mosley’s estranged father spoke freely to the press:

  My son has not done a decent day’s work in his life. He has money from the Mosley family and money from his wife … My son was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, he was brought up on the fat of the land … I am sorry, exceedingly sorry, that my son has joined the Socialist Party.37

  Mosley joined the Independent Labour Party and allied himself with the left. The party soon dissolved and he used his time out of parliament to develop a new economic policy that continued to form the basis of his economic beliefs until the end of his political career.

  When Labour won the 1929 general election, Mosley was certain that Ramsay MacDonald would appoint him to one of the great offices of state. He was disappointed and embittered when MacDonald gave him the lowly post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, where he was responsible for solving the unemployment problem. Mosley’s ideals proved too radical for the Labour Party and many of his proposals were blocked by the Cabinet. Cimmie encouraged his plans, and with her support he devised the document that he called the ‘Mosley Memorandum’.

  The ‘Mosley Memorandum’ appealed for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, state nationalisation, suggestions for early retirement pensions to free up jobs for the younger generation, a publicly funded road building scheme to provide jobs for the unemployed and a programme of public works to solve unemployment. He also proposed that the government should form a small inner-Cabinet modelled on Lloyd George’s 1917 War Cabinet, where they would ‘possess almost military powers’ to fight against unemployment.

  The ‘Mosley Memorandum’ was rejected by the Cabinet and in May 1930 Mosley resigned from his ministerial position and left the Labour Party. His sensational exit mattered supremely to himself and his half a dozen followers, but very little to the party itself. Ambition still motivated his political beliefs and in ‘an amazing act of arrogance’ Mosley formed his own party, the New Party.

  Having gained a disappointing third-class degree from Oxford in the summer of 1931, James Lees-Milne felt adrift with no real prospects and no hope for the future. A welcome distraction presented itself to Jim when the sister of his recently widowed Aunt Dorothy asked him to help with the campaign for her son’s political party. Her name was Maud, the adoring mother of Sir Oswald Mosley. ‘Aunt’ Maud took Jim under her wing and his job predominantly consisted of ‘going from house to house in the backstreets begging for votes from impoverished and bemused citize
ns, usually wives in soap suds up to their elbows with babies clutching their pitiable skirts’.38

  Witnessing Mosley in action had inspired Jim to summarise his early attempt at leadership: ‘He was a man of overwhelming egotism … He brooked no argument, would accept no advice. He was overbearing and overconfident.’39 The entire campaign and party was ‘a political abortion’. The final result of the 1931 election delivered the inevitable news that the New Party and Mosley had lost their previously held seats and had failed to win any new ones.

  Later in the year, Mosley travelled to Rome to study the movements of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, ‘a man who had brought order out of chaos in Italy’. Observing Mussolini’s brand of fascism left little doubt in Mosley’s mind that Britain could prosper from a similar regime. From this idea, Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists.

  NOTES

  37 The Glasgow Herald, 22 September 1928.

  38 James Lees-Milne: The Life, Michael Bloch.

  39 Another Self, James Lees-Milne.

  20

  THE DEMON KING

  While the dictators Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler were emerging in Europe, Sir Oswald Mosley was in transition. Through Toryism, socialism and fascism, he had run the gamut of political ideologies. Diana loathed Toryism, and she viewed socialism as a facade which concealed Ramsay MacDonald’s incompetence as prime minister of a Labour government. Fascism, she surmised, ‘had all the answers and sensible ones, too’.

  Having witnessed Churchill in action during the General Strike of 1926, Diana was intrigued by the political debates taking place at Chartwell on how to deal with the striking miners – all very heavy-handedly, she thought. At this point in her political views, and up until she first met Mosley, Diana maintained that she was a Lloyd George Liberal. Under the influence of Mosley, this liberal ideology soon wore off. Lloyd George, Mosley explained, had no sense of the dramatic (Mosley was a talented orator) and furthermore, he felt no twinge of responsibility. His statement was backed up when Mosley reminded Diana that Lloyd George was one of the co-signatories of the Treaty of Versailles. This information would become relevant during Diana’s future visits to Germany, where she witnessed first-hand how unfair the Treaty of Versailles was to the country – a view shared by many at the time.

  Mosley’s blatant disregard for both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, having served as an MP for both, appealed to Diana’s nonconformist nature. Having been privy to the policies of both parties, she agreed that Mosley heading his own political party, the British Union of Fascists, was a logical response to Britain’s economic crisis. Diana admired originality and gumption and, to her, Mosley possessed both.

  Still troubled by the poverty gripping the working classes, Diana’s thoughts were focused on Ramsay MacDonald’s inability to stabilise the economy and to provide British workers with a decent wage or ‘meagre dole’ to live off. Mosley vowed to use himself on the disposal of hereditary wealth, beginning with an investigation into the lives of those who had contributed nothing for the good of the country. In essence, Mosley was appealing to the working classes who felt victimised by the government and he promised to rid society of the bone idle – to him this meant immigrants. It was a short-sighted statement on Mosley’s behalf, for most of the bone idle belonged to his own class.

  Diana was besotted by Mosley’s life experience, as he was different from her cultured and artistic friends, whom she had begun to view as shallow. His appeal lay in being ‘the best of companions; he had every gift, being handsome, generous, intelligent and full of wonderful gaiety and joie de vivre’. He appeared to her as ‘the cleverest, most balanced and most honest of English politicians’.40

  Critical of Mosley’s swashbuckling looks, James Lees-Milne thought him more likely to ‘appeal to Mayfair flappers than to sway indigent workers in the potteries’. And drawing on his experience as campaigner for the calamitous New Party, Jim summarised Mosley’s charisma: ‘His eyes flashed fire, dilated and contracted like a mesmerist’s. His voice rose and fell in hypnotic cadences. He was madly in love with his own words …’41

  Mosley and Diana met frequently. They took walks in London parks, dined together at fashionable restaurants – the Ritz, the Devonshire or Boulestin – and each social invitation presented Mosley with the opportunity to talk of politics. As soon as he had convinced her of his ideals, he veered on to the subject of personal matters. Diana learned of Mosley’s participation in the war, something he used to affirm his respectability in society. And, appealing to her naivety, he emphasised that when she was still in the nursery, he had been to the front line, where he witnessed the devastation of war first-hand.

  Proof of Mosley’s experiences convinced Diana that he knew what he was talking about and that he must be right. Bryan, aside from their travels and artistic friends, had experienced very little. Bryan chose to live vicariously through the characters he wrote about in his (then unpublished) novels, and his use of poetry to express his feelings could hardly compare to Mosley and the real world.

  As he had done with numerous young women before, Mosley slowly reeled Diana in with his tales, and then his charm. Diana was so enthralled with him that she cared little of concealing her growing infatuation. And she hardly spared a thought for Bryan when she accepted Mosley’s offer to visit his flat at 22A Ebury Street. ‘That bloody, damnable, cursed Ebury [Street] how often does she come there?’ In a rare outburst of jealousy, Cimmie had bombarded Mosley. She was usually so tolerant of his indiscretions; he often had affairs with beautiful, young society women.

  In the beginning there was nothing unique about Mosley’s involvement with Diana, whose profile had grown in stature in the three years that she had been married. With her beauty and reputation as a society hostess, Diana was seen as a catch. To those a generation above her, in the same circle as Mosley and Cimmie, the liaison was viewed as nothing more than pleasure seeking in what had surely become a dull, upper-class marriage. When Cimmie discovered Mosley’s infidelity – as she always did – he consoled her with the explanation that none of the women had meant anything to him.

  In her autobiography, Diana glossed over the complexities of their affair and those who were hurt in the process of their infidelity. It was not as clean-cut as she believed. That summer, Cimmie was pregnant with her third child and was forced to spend three months in bed due to illness. She tried to convince herself that Diana was one of her husband’s ‘sillies’, but behind the flippancy Cimmie was aware that Diana was different. Until Diana, Mosley had never fallen in love with any of them. ‘If you had said you would like to take Diana out for the day Sunday, I would have known where I was. Oh, darling, darling, don’t let it be like that. I will truly understand if you give me a chance. But I am so kept in the dark.’42

  As though to make up for keeping Cimmie ‘in the dark’, Mosley sat her down and confessed each and every affair to her. About three dozen in their thirteen years of marriage. He did not confess his liaisons with her two sisters and stepmother. That, he decided, would have been too cruel.

  Bryan was a patient man, but he was not a fool. In the beginning of the affair between Diana and Mosley, Bryan had generously opened Cheyne Walk to Cela Keppel, who was doing the season for a second time. Cela was Diana’s friend, but she had grown fond of Bryan during the three years in which she had known him. Cela found it uncomfortable when Diana returned to the marital home, giddy with praise for Mosley and confiding the intimate details of their affair. ‘Isn’t the Leader wonderful?’ she implored Cela to agree with her. Mosley, by then, had adopted the title of ‘Leader’. Unsure of how to respond to Diana’s conversation of her lunchtime liaisons with Mosley and of his ‘marvellous lovemaking’ in comparison to Bryan and ‘his inexperienced advances’, Cela remained silent.

  Bryan thought Mosley arrogant and ‘a self-worshipping atheist’. Prior to Diana’s growing obsession with the ‘Leader’, Bryan remained blind to any signs of her ruthless streak
. He did not sense the same ruthlessness when she rejected his marriage proposal, leaving him heartbroken, only to reconsider the following day. Bryan tried to muster enough courage to forbid Diana from lunching with Mosley. But she used his traditional views to belittle him and with a cruel laugh she said: ‘Who’d ever heard of such a thing?’ She was drawing on the custom, so fashionable at the time, for husbands and wives to lunch separately.

  Unable to confront Diana in person, Bryan decided there was only one thing for it. He wrote Diana a letter, painfully expressing his concerns should she carry on with Mosley. He could not bring himself to accuse her of being unfaithful, but the thought lurked in his mind. He begged her to consider their marriage, the children and the devastation it would cause.

  Loyal friends who sided with Bryan tried to distract Diana from such meetings with Mosley. ‘You can’t – you mustn’t see him. Come and lunch with me instead,’ they begged her, to no avail. Diana echoed the same sentiments she had once told the crestfallen James Lees-Milne – monogamy was pointless and unrealistic. Nothing could deter her, even when Mosley confessed to breaking off his affairs with Paula Casa Maury and Georgia Sitwell, both of whom were her friends, and both of whom were sleeping with him while he openly pursued her.

  Rather than doubting her decision to continue on with Mosley, Diana admired his honesty. She was in love with the Leader and it seemed Bryan would have to take on the role of an understanding husband if he was to remain in her life. ‘If you’re going to mind infidelity, you better call it a day as far as marriage goes. Because who has ever remained faithful?’ she was apt to say.

  NOTES

  40 A Life of Contrasts, Diana Mosley.

  41 Another Self, James Lees-Milne.

  42 Extracted from Lady Cynthia Mosley’s letter in Mosley, Nigel Jones.

  21

  TURMOIL