The Riviera Set

by Mary S. Lovell

  In London the declaration of war had immediately precipitated practice air raid alarms which sent terrified people scurrying for shelter. Within days a more laissez faire attitude was adopted and people took such alarms in their stride as they went about their business, wondering how long it would be before the alarms were for real. Things remained quiet on the Riviera, too, during this phoney-war period; the sun still shone, the sea was still blue, the raspy chirrup of cicadas still filled the air. Somerset Maugham recalled how everyone there talked a good deal about the possibility of war, but it still seemed remote to them:

  We continued to bathe and play tennis; the weather remained fine; the new moon appeared one evening when it was hardly yet dark, a pale sickle of light in the evening sky, and we bowed to it three times and three times turned the money over in our pockets. The moon waxed. The peaceful days passed one after another. And then they were over.3

  To coincide with their declaration of war the French had announced a general mobilisation, in which six million Frenchmen between the ages of nineteen and forty-five were conscripted, while an order was issued for the immediate requisition of all property, cars, aeroplanes, private vessels and animals (horses, cattle and other livestock). The effects of this were gradually felt on the Riviera. Cap Ferrat was only a handful of miles from the Italian border; indeed, the area from the border as far as Nice had been governed by Italy until 1860, and it was much feared that Mussolini wished to take it back, despite his promise that Italy would never attack France. Little by little it dawned on the expats who lived on the Riviera, especially in the area nearest to the border, that they were vulnerable and internment in a POW camp was the very least they might expect from the allies of Britain’s now implacable enemy.

  Foodstuffs began to disappear from the shops and markets within days of the declaration of war; mainly hoovered up by army victualling depots. Most adults were only too able to recall the hardships and shortages of the Great War just twenty years earlier, so there was inevitable hoarding. Fear and confusion began to grow. Within weeks banks refused to take cheques drawn on English banks. A friend of Maugham’s who said goodbye and departed for Paris returned from the station reporting that it was impossible to get a place on the Blue Train, even with a reservation! In fact, the last Blue Train left Nice the same week. The roads were bumper-to-bumper with overloaded cars streaming away to the north and west. Before they had gone too far they would meet those who were hurrying south to evade the German armies invading in the north. Armed troops suddenly appeared on Cap Ferrat and were seen guarding a railway bridge, having been moved in by trucks overnight. Maugham’s staff came to him one by one; some were being called up, and others – like the many Italians who had more or less settled in France to work in the service industries – now wished to return home. A staff of thirteen was instantly reduced to two. All owners of sailing vessels, including Maugham, were notified that privately owned craft must leave the harbour within twenty-four hours or be confiscated. Maugham’s long-term partner, Gerald Haxton, was an American and therefore considered neutral, so it seemed safe for him to stay on to protect the house from possible looting. Maugham took the converted fishing boat they used as a yacht and sailed west, making for Cassis.

  On 5 March 1940 Maxine died very suddenly. Fanny had helped her to the bathroom and left Maxine to wash while she remade the bed. On hearing a soft thump she went to investigate and found Maxine dead on the bathmat. There had been no call for help. Paul Brès had looked after her throughout her long illness, often spending several hours with her, so Fanny called him at once. Two hours later the doctor sat down and wrote to Winston. When he had seen her earlier in the day, he explained,

  she was as well as possible – blood pressure normal; heart regular, steady. She was cheerful and for the first time in many months making plans for the spring. We had a nice little chat and she spoke of you in her usually friendly and affectionate way she always had where it was a question of you ... at 7 p.m. she had a brutal seizure and in two seconds she was gone. When I arrived it was too late! I cannot write this without trembling (excuse my handwriting). We have lost a great friend and I know what a terrible shock the sad news will be to you ... There is in the ears her last words said this morning, about you, ‘Winston knows how to take his responsibilities – nothing can frighten him – he should be Prime Minister!’ ... I feel tonight so desperate and lonely. Her dear and beautiful face was so peaceful and radiant – only her splendid eyes were closed forever.4

  Barry Dierks was the first of the friends who were left in the area to reach the villa and he broke down at the sight of one of her Chasseurs Alpins – standing guard at the door of l’Horizon, his head bowed over his rifle as an honour guard. Other visitors recalled how tiny Maxine appeared, lying in her bed, all white, with her unique vivacity stilled. Winston wrote to Dr Brès expressing his deep sadness at the loss of his old friend, and his gratitude for the tender skill with which Brès had always looked after Maxine. The lights in the world were being put out one by one, Winston wrote grimly, and as for the happy sunlit days at the Château de l’Horizon, they were ‘gone forever’.5

  They were not gone for ever, of course, but they were gone for a long time, and when it was possible for the survivors to return there would be a new set of people and life would never be quite the same.

  Maxine’s closest friends had already left the Riviera. Many had headed for London, while Millicent Sutherland had moved to Angers and would be forced to make her way to Spain as the Germans overran France, but among the few expats left in the Mediterranean, hanging on by fingernails and a measure of hope, were George and Alice Keppel. Once leaders of society, they had moved to Italy soon after the death of King Edward VII, when the new Queen made it clear they were no longer personae gratae at Court. Rather than be downgraded and shunned they went abroad. They had kept a home in England but had mostly lived in their villa near Florence (once owned by Galileo) since the Great War. In September 1939 they fled from Italy, and spent the winter and spring in a rented villa at Cap Martin. Winston cabled them to request that George represent him at Maxine’s funeral. It was more fitting than Winston possibly realised, for in 1901 it had been George Keppel, with whom she almost certainly had a brief dalliance, who was chiefly responsible for Maxine’s acceptance by the upper echelons of British society.

  With all civilian travel restricted and overseas travel almost impossible, Maxine’s niece Blossom was the sole family representative at the funeral. She and her husband had been able, with Winston’s help, to get permission for a short trip to France. They flew a demonstrator model of their Miles Mentor aircraft‡ to Cannes, where they had a permit to stay for three days.

  Maxine was buried in the Cannes Protestant cemetery with a plain headstone which read simply ‘Maxine Elliott 1873—1940’ and the word ‘Beloved’. Blossom believed this birthdate to be correct, but over the years Maxine had shaved five years off her age, and was actually seventy-three when she died.§ The Chasseurs Alpins sounded the last post and fired a volley of shots over the grave. On the following day Blossom presented the regiment with a fanion which Maxine had commissioned some months earlier, and Blossom was made the marraine (patron) of the regiment in Maxine’s place.

  In the short time she had in France, and conscious of the weight restrictions of a small aircraft, Blossom could only clear the contents of Maxine’s safe and jewellery boxes, and collect any papers that she thought looked important. Maxine had bequeathed virtually everything to her sister Gertrude and her four nieces, including the Château de l’Horizon and its contents, the London house she had bought for Diana and Vincent, her Paris flat, the theatre in New York and her investments. Eventually, the estate was valued at over a million dollars.¶

  Maxine had left explicit instructions that all correspondence from Tony Wilding, Lord Curzon, Lord Rosebery, George Keppel, Churchill, King Edward and other important friends was to be destroyed unread, and this was done at once.# Fanny and Jules
(who seemed to have obtained leave to return to the villa) were to stay on for a while to gather together portable items such as the more valuable paintings and silver, and prepare them for transport out. When it looked as though the villa would be occupied they were to retreat into a village in the hills, taking with them what they could. As Blossom left to fly home none of them knew whether they would survive the coming fight.

  * He proposed to her after he had known her a few days and insisted on their marrying quickly before he was sent off to fight. By a curious twist of fate, although Maxine never met Pamela Digby she would one day become chatelaine of l’Horizon.

  † Millicent’s son, the 5th Duke of Sutherland. He was released from a deeply unhappy marriage by his wife’s death in 1943. Meanwhile, he became a notorious womaniser, and the writer Barbara Cartland claimed that he was one of two possible fathers of her daughter Raine McCorquodale (later Countess Spencer and stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales). Prince George, Duke of Kent, was the alternative candidate.

  ‡ Blossom, together with her husband Miles (Frederick G. Miles), owned and ran a company building aircraft designed by the husband-and-wife team. It became the Miles Aircraft Company in 1941, and produced a large number of training aircraft during the war.

  § Not only the date was incorrect: the mason misspelled Elliott as Elliot (see photo in plate section).

  ¶ Now worth about three times that much in cash, although the property values would be around twenty times that amount. Maxines theatre was demolished in 1960 after Maxine’s family had sold it; the Paris flat was somehow appropriated by the tenants, a family of White Russian semi-royalty. Despite a lengthy law suit Diana was never able to gain repossession after the war.

  # A few letters between Maxine and Winston that were not at l’Horizon survived.

  PART THREE

  10

  War on the Riviera

  In early April 1940 Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, and within four weeks German forces began an invasion of Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. On 10 May Belgium declared a state of emergency. Germany looked unstoppable, and as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French army steadily retreated, there appeared to be very little to prevent an invasion of the United Kingdom. Neville Chamberlain, having lost the confidence of both the nation and of Parliament, was forced to resign and sixty-five-year-old Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Immediately, he began to form a coalition government. Three days later he gave his famous ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ speech which gave the nation great heart; how proud Maxine Elliott would have been had she lived a few weeks longer.

  Anthony Eden’s first task as Secretary of State for War was to form a Home Guard from men exempted from serving in the forces. It may – thanks to TV sitcoms – be considered an amusing anachronism seventy years on, but invasion seemed almost inevitable, and in the desperation that prevailed even old men and boys armed with pitchforks felt like a better option than standing by to allow the enemy a walkover victory, as was happening in France. Anyone suspected of being a fifth columnist was arrested under hastily written new regulations and thrown into prison for the duration. Among them, on 23 May, was Oswald Mosley, followed a month later by his wife Diana. She had been denounced as the more dangerous of the couple by – among others – her sister Nancy, her former father-in-law Lord Moyne, and Baba Metcalfe, who was in love with Mosley herself and deadly jealous of Diana, despite herself being involved with Lord Halifax at the time. After Belgium capitulated, the British spent eight days evacuating the BEF from the beaches at Dunkirk.

  Following the declaration of war the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, accompanied by Fruity Metcalfe, had left Antibes and made their way to Paris and then Cherbourg. They had been advised by Sir Walter Monckton,* who flew down to Antibes in a three-seat De Havilland Leopard Moth to discuss their return to England, that there would be no official welcome for them, and that contrary to the Duke’s insistence they would not be offered any royal residence in England. The house he considered his own in England, Fort Belvedere, was unfit for them to live in as the building had been unheated and uncared for since the abdication. So, Monckton told them, they would have to make their own arrangements for accommodation. He further warned that the Duke would be offered only two insignificant posts – face-saving roles in effect – to choose from, one in Wales and the other in Paris. The Windsors felt they had little option but to leave France, however, for there was concern that if they remained they might be captured and used as hostages. After much discussion they set off from La Croë by car, declining the use of the Leopard Moth, since Wallis was petrified of flying.† At Cherbourg, courtesy of Winston Churchill, who was at that time First Lord of the Admiralty, they were met by Randolph in the uniform of the 4th Hussars‡ and piped aboard the K-class destroyer HMS Kelly, commanded by a faintly hostile Lord Mountbatten, for the journey across the Channel to Portsmouth.

  Only Winston’s fondness, and sense of what was proper for his former King, ensured a dignified return to England for the Duke of Windsor. The ship was met by Baba Metcalfe and Walter Monckton, who went aboard briefly for a glass of champagne in the ward room. Although it was almost 10 p.m. and very dark on a cloudy, cool night in a blackout, Winston had arranged for a red carpet, a guard of honour of one hundred men and a military band to play the National Anthem as they disembarked. No official car was provided, but arrangements were made – again by Winston – for the Duke and Duchess to spend the night at Admiralty House in Portsmouth Dockyard, rather than the hotel the Metcalfes had been obliged to book for them. On the following day the party left for South Hartfield House, the Metcalfes’ grey stone house at Coleman’s Hatch in the Ashdown Forest, about forty miles south of London, which was to be the Windsors’ base. The couple motored up from Sussex every day to the Metcalfes’ London house at 16 Wilton Place; it had been closed up, was unstaffed, sparsely furnished and unheated, so they more or less camped out there with sandwiches and flasks of coffee brought in from a nearby hotel while the Duke attempted to arrange what he was to do for the war effort.

  The King saw his brother on one occasion, in private, but neither Queen Elizabeth nor the Duke’s mother, Queen Mary, would receive him. The Duke had fully expected to play a major role in the war but this was considered inappropriate given his abdication, and there was the disclosure by the Intelligence Service that Wallis was giving information (intentionally or otherwise) to friends in the German Embassy. This was later revealed as low-level material which might have easily been read in London gossip columns, or mentioned at any dinner table of those in government. However, no one at the time knew for sure what she might be passing on and Wallis was regarded as indiscreet, at the very least, and therefore a danger, since everyone knew the Duke confided utterly in her. After much discussion, traumatic to him, the Duke accepted a posting to the British Military Mission in Paris with the rank of major-general (he had previously held the honorary rank of field marshal) and he, Wallis and Fruity returned to Paris on 29 September 1940. The trip across the Channel was rough and Wallis reported that she spent most of her time on the floor of the captain’s cabin not knowing whether to cry or be sick. Her relief that the voyage was over turned to horror when she saw that there was a crowd of British troops on the dock waiting to receive them. Every woman will feel sympathy for her immediate reaction: ‘I regretted my sallow appearance,’ she wrote, ‘realising that several hundred men and a goodly smattering of nurses were wondering “How could he have done it?”’1

  They did not go to their house on Boulevard Suchet, which had been closed, but to the Trianon Palace Hotel, so that Wallis could be within hailing distance of Elsie Mendl, one of her few close women friends. The Duke was away a great deal of the time, on duty at the Mission headquarters at Vincennes, where he came under the orders of Major-General Sir Richard Howard-Vyse. His position was deeply unsatisfactory to him, and to officers serving under him, and the Duke lost much sympathy when at a parade he unconsciously acc
epted the salute intended for his commanding officer. He also had a constant need to see Wallis, when of course he told her what he had been up to while they were apart. The perceived dangers of his passing on information about the dispersal of French troops which might (and did) end up in the hands of the enemy, and his total inability to accept that he was a relatively unimportant officer and could not simply operate as he wished, made the situation hopeless.

  The Windsors were watched continuously by the British Secret Service for the months that this arrangement continued, but eventually on 1o May the Germans invaded the Low Countries, broke the French lines and swarmed into France. It was now obvious the Germans could not be held and that Paris was lost. The Windsors were ordered to leave at once. The Duke drove Wallis to Biarritz, returning to Paris alone twelve days later. He stayed only a short time: within a few days he left very early one morning, their two cars loaded to the roofs – the chauffeur Ladbrooke driving one and the Duke driving the other – in such secrecy that he did not even tell Fruity Metcalfe, who had worked loyally without pay as the Duke’s aide-de-camp since the abdication. Fruity was left stranded in Paris with no transport, and when he eventually returned to England to join the war effort he was understandably nursing a massive grievance.

  The Duke collected Wallis and they drove to Antibes, arriving there on 29 May. They remained at La Croë for some weeks, enjoying what Wallis described ‘days of peaceful calm’.2

  On 10 June Italy declared war on France and Britain and invaded France. Within hours Monaco emptied as more than half its population fled westwards. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were entertaining Maurice Chevalier that day, in the hope of lightening the gloomy mood that prevailed. When the declaration was announced on the radio Chevalier left without finishing his lunch to join his lover, the cabaret singer Nita Raya, in his Cannes home.§