The Spy Who Painted the Queen

by Phil Tomaselli

  John Fillis Carre Carter

  Carter remained as head of G Branch until March 1918, when he transferred to the Intelligence Mission in Rome, which liaised closely with Italian intelligence. He left Rome in February 1919 and joined the Metropolitan Police where he was deputy assistant commissioner, in charge of Special Branch 1922–38, and assistant commissioner, Metropolitan Police, 1938–40. He resigned in September 1940. It’s likely that Carter was the policeman whose application for the post of chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in late 1939 caused the three armed services to settle their differences and agree to the appointment of the soldier, Stewart Menzies, to the post. Carter died on 14 July 1944.

  Henry Honywood Curtis-Bennett

  Curtis-Bennett left MI5 in October 1917 to become an assistant to Basil Thomson at Scotland Yard, but remained an RNVR officer until he was demobilised in February 1919, when he returned to his legal practice. He was elected Conservative MP for Chelmsford in 1924 and served until 1926. He defended some of the most high-profile cases of the day, including Herbert Armstrong, the Hay solicitor accused of poisoning his wife (1922); Ronald True, the drug taking murderer (1922); and Sir Almeric Fitzroy, on charges of annoying women in Hyde Park (1922). He was defending barrister in the Irish sedition trial of 1923, and in 1929 he defended ‘Colonel Barker’, a woman charged with having married another woman whilst disguised as a man. When Basil Thomson was charged with the indecency offence in Hyde Park in 1925, Curtis-Bennett appeared for him. In 1933 he defended former SIS officer Compton Mackenzie at his Official Secrets Act trial.

  He died on 2 November 1936 aged 57, dropping dead immediately after finishing a speech at the Dorchester. Basil Thomson wrote of him:

  As one who worked closely with Sir Henry Curtis Bennett throughout the war, I can testify to his great gifts as an examiner of suspects. He sat with me at Scotland Yard practically throughout the war, and almost all the suspects taken off ships or travelling through England came before us. It was interesting to note that when he was most dangerous to the guilty was when his manner was most suave and gentle. I came to know those danger signals when I turned an examination over to him. He was a delightful colleague to work with, and had a quiet humour about him that was most refreshing.

  Charles Clive Bigham

  Bigham remained with the Paris Intelligence Mission until 1919 when, after the Treaty of Versailles, ‘Our archives had to be gone through in detail before they could be sent out to a huge incinerator in the fortifications and burnt; and then I handed over what remained of my business to the Military Attaché and to the War Office.’ In 1929 his father died and he became a member of the House of Lords and, in 1945, Liberal chief whip in the House. He sat on numerous public bodies and wrote several books, including a two-volume autobiography A Picture of Life and Journal and Memories. He died in 1956.

  Madame Gompertz

  Whatever the exact nature of Mr and Mrs Gompertz’s non-return visa, it obviously didn’t apply after the war because by 1921 they were back in London. Leopold died on 26 January 1922, resident at 15 Warwick Square, London. Henriette was his executor and he left an estate worth £728 10s 10d. She returned to Holland and died there in 1940.

  Frederic Decseny

  In March 1941 Decseny, described as a former Bucharest correspondent of the Detroit Free Press and the London Daily Mail, was among the prisoners held by the Vichy regime in a prison camp for aliens at Le Vernet, where he had been sent without charge or trial. By 1944 he was back in Paris, living in the 10th District, when he was rounded up and sent to Auschwitz in convoy number 76 out of Drancy on 30 June 1944.

  SOURCES

  Two key sources, which do not appear to have been examined by other authors, are De László’s Home Office Naturalisation file, which is at The National Archives (TNA) under reference HO 144/4238, and the Treasury Solicitor’s file, also at TNA under reference TS 27/69, ‘Philip Alexius Lászlós de Lombos: proposed denaturalization’. These files have not been digitised so a visit to TNA at Kew will be necessary to examine them. They are thick and the contents are frequently duplicated, but they present the basics of the case against the artist. Between them they contain enough correspondence from MI5 to enable a reconstruction of the basics of their investigation to be made.

  There are other reports and correspondence relating to De László scattered throughout TNA’s Foreign Office files for the period. FO 372/1027 contains, in file 192024, a brief report of a conversation between the Dutch ambassador and Lord Hardinge, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, on abuse by De László of the diplomatic bag. FO 372/1109 and FO 372/1217 contain 1919 correspondence relating to attempts to obtain originals of De László’s correspondence from abroad. FO 372/1257 discusses whether the case justified demanding the recall of the Dutch ambassador.

  Portrait of a Painter: The Authorized Life of Philip de László by Owen Rutter, which was written with De László’s help, was published in 1939 (Hodder and Stoughton) and paints a picture of a charming, intelligent, romantic and gifted man, one who made friends easily and stuck by them. Only occasionally, in De László’s quoted notes and reminiscences, does a rather less pleasant man slip through, though some of this is almost certainly just as a result of our changed attitudes towards class and authority.

  A more recent biography, as seen from his personal papers at least, Philip de László: His Life and Art by Duff Hart-Davis, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons (Yale University Press, London, 2010), is invaluable.

  The full transcript of De László’s Denaturalisation Committee hearing is in his Home Office naturalisation file (HO 144/4238), but it was extensively covered in the national and local press, much of which is now online. There is a more general file on the work of the committee at TNA in HO 144/13376 Certificates of Naturalisation (Revocation) Committee: appointment, duties, interim reports, general report, list of cases, etc.

  Full texts of both the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) and the Aliens Restriction Act can be found online using the London Gazette website.

  MI5 files that have been made public are available at TNA in their KV series. On MI5 staffing levels, methods and procedures, KV 1 series is invaluable, though there is nothing specific on the De László case. The whole KV 1 series can be downloaded, free, from TNA website via their digital microfilm service at http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/digital-microfilm.htm. The MI5 Game Book (based on the record books held by large estates of animals shot hunting) is in KV 4/112 – KV 4/114, providing figures and case histories of men and women convicted of espionage, but it doesn’t include details of those, like De László, who were interned by committee on MI5’s advice.

  There are two reports, written in 1919 by Booth, Brodie and (presumably) Fetherston in KV 4/16 at TNA, which give some details of the Special Section and its work, though it doesn’t (unfortunately) give any details on their secret methods.

  There are interesting and extensive reports on cable censorship and postal censorship at TNA in DEFE 1/130 and DEFE 1/131. They give histories of the sections involved, the legal framework behind them, methods, information that was gathered and what it was used for. Both mention the De László case.

  Censorship Department reports are scattered throughout the Foreign Office files, but the reports quoted revealing the parlous state of the Austrian population in 1916 come from FO 382/1140, FO 371/2862 and FO 382/1767 among others.

  For a general history of MI5 during the First World War, the official history The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (Penguin Books, 2010) is a valuable starting point, though it makes no mention at all of the László case.

  The War Office doesn’t seem to have released its copies of MT1(b)’s intelligence reports but, fortunately, copies sent to the Royal Flying Corps (part of the army at the time) were later passed to the Royal Air Force who have released them. AIR 1/550/16/15/27 – Home Defence Intelligence Summaries: Aliens, etc – contains these reports for
late 1914 and early 1915, from which many of the cases mentioned in Chapter 1 are derived.

  There are references to the espionage work of the Austrian Consulate in Berne in The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 by Holger H. Herwig in the Bloomsbury Modern Wars series and The First World War: And the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918 by Manfried Rauchensteiner, as well as in an article ‘The Regi Carabinieri: Counterintelligence in the Great War’ by Alessandro Massignani (Journal of Intelligence History, Winter, 2001).

  Basil Thomson’s indecency trial was widely covered in the press and the Metropolitan Police file on the case is at TNA in MEPO 10/10. Basic details of his career have been derived from Who’s Who, as have details of several of the other more prominent persons referred to in the book, and there are files on Thomson in HO 144/21176, HO 144/1590/380368 and HO 286/136, which provide more information. Though most files created by Special Branch (in MEPO 38 series) are retained, large numbers of reports are scattered throughout HO and FO series but require a lot of work to locate.

  Private and Official by Nourah Waterhouse and Ronald Dockray Waterhouse (J. Cape, 1942) contains two stories relating to her late husband’s time with MI5, which appear to suggest that the service was interested in breaking into diplomatic bags during the First World War.

  King’s Counsel: The Life of Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett by Roland Wild and Derek Curtis-Bennett (MacMillan, New York, 1938) has some interesting stories of his time with MI5 and details of his more unusual later cases. It also backs up one of Nourah Waterhouse’s stories about breaking into a diplomatic bag.

  MI6 and the Machinery of Spying (Philip H.J. Davies, Frank Cass, 2004) is invaluable in understanding the organisation of SIS and in particular giving information on N Section.

  Though relating only to the Second World War, TNA file FO 1093/143 contains plenty of evidence of the extensive breaking into neutral diplomatic bags during that war.

  Details of the Italian secret service break-in at the Austrian Consulate in Zurich are contained in a report within the Templeton Papers in Cambridge University Library.

  Maundy Gregory’s War Office file, mentioning his early secret work for the authorities and containing his rejected application to join the intelligence services, is at TNA in WO 339/124709.

  The War Office file on Harold Spencer, the man whose bizarre allegations prompted the Pemberton Billing libel case and which details some of his own peculiar habits, is in WO 339/41960.

  There are papers on the von Horst case at The National Archives in FO 383/143 file, FO 383/144 and CAB 24/4, and there’s a masterful exposition of the case in Thomas Boghardt’s ‘A German Spy? New Evidence on Baron Loius von Horst’ which appeared in The Journal of Intelligence History 1 (Winter, 2001).

  Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England, probably the most famous of William Le Queux’s collections of spy tales, was republished in 1996 by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd and has an excellent introduction by that master debunker, Nicholas Hiley.

  Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain During the First World War Era by Thomas Boghardt (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004) is a much more sober and well-researched examination of the realities of the situation based on German records. It also touches briefly on the von Horst case.

  Intelligence and Imperial Defence: British Intelligence and the Defence of the Indian Empire 1904–1924 by Richard J. Popplewell (Frank Cass, 1995) is invaluable on the early career of MI5 official Robert Nathan and on the reach of British intelligence globally. It also mentions the use of a successful double agent, Victor Krafft.

  Queer People by Basil Thomson (Hodder & Stoughton, 1922) is available free online via the Canadian National Library at https://archive.org/stream/queerpeople00thomuoft#page/n0/mode/2up.

  My own book Tracing Your Secret Service Ancestors (Pen and Sword, 2009) contains lots of information about the early days of MI5 and how to research individuals connected with both it and Special Branch.

  PLATES

  Vernon Kell in ‘civvies’ in 1904.

  Barrister and MI5 officer Henry Honywood Curtis-Bennett who sat in on De László’s interrogation and later worked for Basil Thomson at Scotland Yard.

  The Old Bailey trial of German spy Carl Lody in October 1914 that resulted in him being shot in the Tower of London. Prosecuting Counsel (standing) is Archibald Bodkin, who also prosecuted in the De László denaturalisation hearing.

  Assistant Commissioner Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard who led the police investigation and carried out De László’s interrogations.

  Headquarters of MI5 in 1915, Watergate House, York Buildings, Strand, known by the staff as ‘Watertight House’.

  Many MI5 officers had been wounded in the trenches but most retained their sense of humour about it!

  Portrait of a suspect as a street artist. Gladstone’s tongue-in-cheek homage to a fellow artist. ‘Our Mr. N.’ refers to Robert Nathan, who was heading the early investigation.

  Philip De László.

  Philip De László.

  Malcolm Brodie, Frederick Bosworth Booth and John Barr Fetherston, the three expert Post Office investigators, as portrayed by Gladstone when they formally joined MI5 in 1915.

  ‘A Billet from Basil.’ MI5 tended to think that Thomson was a bit too big for his boots and mocked his tendency to be unnecessarily mysterious.

  COPYRIGHT

  First published in 2015

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