ACC
You subscribed also anonymously to the Council of Loyal British Subjects of German and Hungarian birth?
PAL
Yes. I did that almost against my will. I had no connection with them, but a man came to me one day with his card and asked for money, and I said, I cannot help you, as I give so much to other charities; but I will give you £10 and no more.
ACC
You also subscribed to Sokobow, I think. We have a letter from him from the Regent Palace Hotel.
PAL
It is an old friend who was twenty-five years British Embassy Chaplain. He is a pensioner who comes to our house and he asked me to help do something for the Jews, so I gave him £5 or £10.
ACC
I think you told me last time that your brother is in business in Pesth.
PAL
Yes.
ACC
And you told me he had seen Count Andrassy?
PAL
Yes, once or twice as I understand from his letters.
ACC
Why should he have visited him?
PAL
I understand from his letter he was called by Count Andrassy who knows he is my brother, because I understood from the letter from Forster that he was not quite on my side. They called a meeting, of which Forster was actually the president, but he wrote very little about it. He only mentioned it in the first letter: the one that came through Switzerland. Count Andrassy said ‘We cannot decide on taking down his pictures until we hear from him that he only naturalised because war broke out.’ Forster and Andrassy are great friends. He evidently invited my brother to give him some explanation as to his naturalisation, for my brother wrote and said ‘Luckily enough I have found a letter I received from you in which you speak of your naturalisation.’ My brother showed him this letter showing that I had had the idea for a long time: Baron Forster must have told him the same thing for when I painted him in 1913 I told him about it and he said to me then ‘I think anyone in your position would do the same thing.’
ACC
Now, we have a good deal of experience here in the matter of naturalisation and of course you know that certain people, Baron Schroeder, for instance, were naturalised let us put it, for technical reasons. It was a convenience for them, and perhaps to other people, that they should be described as British subjects.
PAL
When I applied for naturalisation I never thought of war, then war broke out and I did not think there would be any difficulty. On the second or third day we saw a placard that all Germans not naturalised had to be registered or something of the kind. I said to my wife ‘It is very annoying; probably it will come in to Austria-Hungary too.’ When I saw that I wrote immediately to Mr McKenna whom I met once, asking why I had not yet received my papers, and I got my naturalisation two or three days later.
ACC
You never did register as an enemy alien?
PAL
No.
ACC
When were you actually naturalised?
PAL
On the 29th August.
ACC
That was after the date of the Austrian declaration of war. Then when did you hear that this naturalisation had been looked at in a hostile way in Buda-Pesth?
PAL
When a man came and visited me in September bringing me a letter of introduction from an old friend of mine. Through that letter I received him and then he went home to Hungary and made trouble, because it came out in the papers that I was naturalised. That was about the end of September 1914 that he took the news to Hungary that I had been naturalised.
ACC
On the 19th October you received a letter from Madame Van Riemsdyk saying ‘Your Hungarian friend has not been to see us so far?’ Was that the same man?
PAL
Yes, it must have been. He said he would probably stay in Holland, and I said ‘If you go there you can call on the van Riemsdyks.’
ACC
It was a great shock for you at first that this attack had been made on you in Hungary?
PAL
It was a very nasty attack. I wrote in that pamphlet that I had always done honour to my native land in the past, and my colleagues ought to have had the consideration to ask me first how I was naturalised.
ACC
The point at issue was really this, that there was their country actually at war, or on the eve of war, and that one of their countrymen suddenly divested himself of his nationality.
PAL
But I’m a human being, and it took me two years to decide.
ACC
What I meant was that the difference between you and the Hungarians was one which there was no getting over, for you cannot explain away to the Hungarians the fact that you did become a British subject.
PAL
I wrote to Forster and to my brother saying I was going to be naturalised. I love to be English. I want to live in a big world where all art is centralised and where my children were born.
ACC
You had no interest in Hungary: that is what you wanted to convey to them.
PAL
I was interested in Hungary and I shall always be very grateful for what I have received there. I had all the honour in Hungary that a man can have.
ACC
But I suppose you said to yourself when you got naturalised, ‘I have got all these honours and distinctions in Hungary, they must all go.’
PAL
No, I never thought of that.
ACC
I will read you what purports to be a translation of a cutting from ‘The Star’ dated November 17th 1914 (this was read to him).
The Star was a London newspaper and the letter in question, which had been discovered by MI5 early in its investigation (and which may have prompted its original interest) read:
My hand trembles when I think in how serious an hour I write these lines, and I fear that while I sit quietly here at my table and write, already perhaps many brave people will have lost their lives on account of the predatory SERVIAN nation. Another serious thing has also happened, I have signed the papers relating to English citizenship and for three weeks past have been a BRITISH SUBJECT. The customary witnesses who testified that for five years they had known me as a ‘Gentleman’ were my friends the members of Parliament Lord Balfour, Lee, Lord Devonport and Guinness. It has cost me a severe mental conflict, but on account of my five sons I had to do it.
De László responded:
PAL
It is all absolute nonsense what they are saying there. I keep those papers because so many ridiculous things have been written. I never wrote that letter. [Next to this someone had added a pencil note: ‘I think he did HO paper p 150’.]
ACC
This is said to be a letter received by your relations in Buda-Pesth. Is it not possible that this is one of the letters your brother showed to Count Andrassy?
PAL
No, I do not think so; that letter was dated in 1912.
ACC
How could they have got these details about your sureties? Would they have forged those, and also about your five sons, to damage you?
PAL
They did many things like that, but I could not have written that letter to him, because – I must come back now to the unfortunate fact that I sent some letters through the Dutch Legation – I would not have dared to write a letter like that, for someone would probably have seen it and gone home and told lies about it. My idea was to keep these things to how my native people behaved so badly and to show them how unjust they were.
ACC
In fact you were keeping them to rehabilitate yourself with the Hungarians after the war. Why should your brother have gone to see Count Andrassy unless it was to rehabilitate yourself with the Hungarians?
PAL
Certainly he did it for that, because the outcry was that I did it when the war broke out, and they would not believe I thought of it before the war.
ACC
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Quite so, but the fact would remain that you had before the war wished to wash your hands of the Hungarians.
PAL
It never came into my head.
ACC
Did you never wish to do that?
PAL
I had only one idea, which I still have, and that was to show them that I did not do it during the war. If I had, they would have been quite right to speak of me as they did.
ACC
As a matter of fact you did not want to wash your hands of any country; is that so?
PAL
Yes.
ACC
When you became naturalised you took a solemn oath of allegiance and my point is that you had a divided allegiance; you wanted to get the advantages of being a naturalised British subject and you took the oath of allegiance, but in your heart you made reserves. You did not want to stand badly with the Hungarians.
PAL
No, it was simply a point of honour; I never did anything wrong in my life. A long time before I got married I did think of living in Hungary and I built a beautiful home there which still stands. Now for four years I have had the intention of building a house there [sic]. I sold my house in Hungary.
ACC
Mr László, did you write your own biography in Who’s Who?
PAL
Yes, I was asked various questions when I came to live in England and they write to me every year and add to it.
ACC
So you did not get rid of your Hungarian status when you assumed British nationality?
PAL
No, I have a legal right to my name.
ACC
I am not disputing your right, but only suggesting that you were trying to keep a foot in both countries.
PAL
The title is equal to that of a British Baron which gives the children the right to keep the name forever. I cannot lose that.
ACC
But the Buda-Pesth paper suggests that this should be done.
PAL
I do not think that can be.
ACC
You do not want that done?
PAL
Well, I never thought of it.
ACC
Many British holders of foreign titles have divested themselves of them.
PAL
If it is necessary I am willing to do that.
ACC
It is not a question of that; I am trying to get at what your mind is.
PAL
My point is that I got the honour in an honourable way through my work.
ACC
But when the Buda-Pesth paper said it should be taken away you thought it better for your brother to see Count Andrassy.
PAL
No, because Count Andrassy had I know a very great feeling for me, for he bought my very first picture from me when I was twenty. I only know what my brother wrote to me.
ACC
Bearing on that, I should rather like to call your attention to a series of newspaper cuttings that have been found. They do not refer, as one would expect, to art or Hungarian politics, but they do refer to air raids, sinking of a cruiser, revolution in Russia, trouble in Greece, peace pamphlets etc. It is curious that this little hoard should be made of things that are hostile to this country. I want to know why they were kept.
PAL
You mean I kept these papers on purpose?
ACC
Yes, I suggest it. They were in the interests of Hungary and against the interest of this country.
PAL
I remember two or three articles which appeared in the “Globe” in favour of Hungary.
A packet of documents discovered at his Datchet home was then shown to him.
PAL
I know who brought me that (uklenftucke zum Ariegsausbruch) it was old Professor Haeckler.
ACC
Who is Professor Haeckler?
PAL
He was at the British Embassy in Vienna for about twenty-five years, when I lived in Vienna, which was only for a year and a half.
ACC
Here is a nice little collection which it would interest me to know how you got and why. [Thomson seems to have been indicating the left-wing British pacifist documents such as National Labour Press.]
PAL
I never bought these things: they were brought to me by Professor Haeckler. He brought me some and I told him not to bring me any more.
ACC
Where is he now?
PAL
He lives at Barnet. He is British born, and comes to my house very frequently.
ACC
Is he a Socialist?
PAL
No.
ACC
But he goes to these meetings.
PAL
I give you my word I have never read these. They were all brought to me by that old man and when we went into the country they were packed up together.
ACC
Why did you keep them?
PAL
They were packed up there.
ACC
But some were found at Datchet.
PAL
They must have been sent to me.
ACC
Who sends them?
PAL
I am engaged with that Company.
ACC
The cuttings that are sent by a company are always clear cut at the edges and stuck on a paper, like these, but the cuttings I am referring to are not; they have been cut out by yourself.
PAL
I remember now that one or two papers have been sent to me to read and to my wife by my sister-in-law, Miss Guinness. There is a pamphlet here by a Unitarian Bishop. Mr Hankinson wrote to me lately asking me to help with money a Hungarian lady and he sent me these pamphlets, which I never read.
ACC
Why did you keep that? (‘Pacifism in England – Through German Eyes’.)
PAL
I do not know.
ACC
You are a pacifist are you not?
PAL
I am not a pacifist, but I would like Hungary to become absolutely independent out of this war.
ACC
I know from what people who have sat for you have told me what you say. Shall I give you an instance?
PAL
Please.
ACC
One particular one was about the coming in of America, that it was futile to count on America, that America was only using this war as an excuse to arm against Japan and Mexico; they did not mean or would not provide any real help. That I know you said, and I suppose you meant it.
PAL
I am in an awful position in my studio. I see so many people and one talks.
ACC
I will give you a little more. That it was of supreme moment to Great Britain to make peace at this moment: that she had got all she wanted and that it was of supreme moment that she should make peace. If the Russians had stood firm they would have come in like a wedge between her and her eastern powers. Did you say that or not?
PAL
If you have heard it: probably there was some talk of war.
ACC
This was a talk you introduced.
PAL
I had a talk with Colonel Repington (the noted war correspondent for The Times) and we lunched at the Ritz Hotel with two ladies and talked about the war.
ACC
This was not Colonel Repington. The point is, will you deny that you ever said words to that effect – that this was the moment to make peace?
PAL
That I never said, but I remember saying once to someone that whatever happens, no nation will come out morally so great and well as England.
ACC
Do you deny ever saying to anybody that this was the moment for England to make peace?
PAL
I never remember saying that.
ACC
Could you have said it?
PAL
No, I will give you my word of honour
that I never said any such thing.
ACC
I am afraid that your memory is a little defective on that point. That is not so material, it was only that I wanted to test your memory, and I want to test your memory in one respect. There are a number of people who quite genuinely think that from a political point of view it would be best to make peace, but it had a peculiar bearing in your case for reasons that you have already gathered, that we have reason to think that your allegiance is divided between the two countries.
PAL
You cannot expect it from me; I can prove it through my friends in France that it is impossible for me to go back; on the other hand, I cannot suddenly turn my back on a country or curse it, or anything like that. It was not Hungary who caused the war; it is of no interest to her; her one interest would be to become free of Austria.
The Spy Who Painted the Queen Page 9
