Daughter of Empire

by Pamela Hicks

  It was in June 1940, when I was told, quite out of the blue, to pack my things at school and sent to meet up with my parents in London, that I knew things were about to change. On leaving school, I had stopped off overnight at Broadlands and thought there was something odd in Hanky’s expression as she waved me off, but wasn’t quite prepared for the look on my parents’ faces as I entered the drawing room in Charles Street. Even though they were doing their best to hide it, they were clearly upset and, more worrying for me, so was my sister. Even Zelle was on the verge of tears. I thought someone close to us must have been killed in the war. They sat me down and my mother held my hand as she explained that Patricia and I were being sent to America until the end of the war. We were going to stay with someone very kind, a Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, in New York. My father asked me to sign passports and other documents and told me that while Zelle didn’t have the right paperwork to come with us just yet, they were doing their best to sort things out so she could join us.

  I was so taken aback that I forgot to ask why we were being sent away, but I did manage to ask whether Lottie could come with us. Later, my sister explained that we were going because our great-grandfather, Ernest Cassell, had been Jewish, which meant that we were one eighth Jewish. I nodded wisely but didn’t really understand why that meant we had to leave our country and my beloved Lottie. I imagined it had something to do with Hitler but I didn’t know for sure.

  After frantic preparations – though my sister found time for a perm and even I was allowed to have my sides done – we said a very sad goodbye to my father, who had been given only a short leave from his ship to see us off. When we stood by our pile of trunks and cases in the hall to say goodbye to our mother, we were very tearful. She told Patricia, ‘When you get there, you must shake hands, the Americans do so all the time . . . and wear a bit of lipstick.’ With that, she pressed a pink lip salve into my sister’s hand. She held us tight. She didn’t need to say ‘Look after Pammy’; it was axiomatic that Patricia would care for me.

  We left late that afternoon on a crowded train. Our parents had booked us passage from Ireland to the United States aboard SS Washington, the last ship to take children across the Atlantic before the crossing became too dangerous. Our distant cousin David – not my favourite little boy after he had bitten me following an argument in which he claimed that I had taken food for his dog and fed it to Lottie – and his Swiss mademoiselle were travelling with us as far as New York, and while at first we weren’t happy about this, it was Mademoiselle who saved us when our paperwork was questioned in the west of Ireland. The officials were convinced only when they got hold of the British Consul in Dublin, who verified our identity.

  The ship was so full that some of the passengers had to sleep in the drained swimming pool. We shared a cabin with two other girls and a boy. The whole experience felt a bit unreal, but it soon turned into a great adventure: the very fact of being on a ship; the deck tennis; ping-pong; shuffleboard and crazy golf. Not to mention all the animals below decks that I could pet and talk to. After a week at sea, Mademoiselle woke us up at dawn so that we could go out on deck as we sailed up the Hudson river. The Statue of Liberty was much taller than I had imagined. I had only ever seen pictures in magazines or on newsreels, so seeing it in reality was thrilling. Clearing customs, I was given my first taste of what being an ‘alien’ meant. Having been born in Barcelona, I was made to stand in a different queue from Patricia and the rest of the English evacuees. The customs official told me – in a voice that I recognised from a hundred Hollywood movies – that under no circumstances could I work in America.

  Cousin David and his mademoiselle left to meet their host family and an extremely well-dressed woman introduced herself as Mrs Vanderbilt’s secretary. Even my childish eyes could see how fashionably she dressed, far better than anyone back home. She guided us into a waiting car and we were whisked towards 640 Fifth Avenue. The façade of Mrs Vanderbilt’s residence was enormous and imposing and the inside was no less so. The hall was cavernous, all marble floors and surfaces, and the huge malachite vase that was even taller than my sister made me feel like Alice in Wonderland. (Years later I was to see it again in the entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) A small queenly form – Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt was quite unlike anyone we had met before – came into view. She wore a long silk dress with a bandeau swathed around frizzy grey curls. ‘Ah, Patricia and Pamela, welcome to New York, my dears.’ Our hands shot out. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Vanderbilt,’ we said. ‘Oh, please,’ she said, taking our hands (but not shaking them), ‘girls, you must call me Aunt Grace.’ I wasn’t sure I would be able to manage that – she seemed so imperious. ‘And this is my niece Anne.’ A glamorous lady in stockings, heels and lipstick stepped towards us with an outstretched hand. ‘Anne is nearly your age, I believe, Patricia,’ Mrs Vanderbilt added. For a second our eyes rounded with surprise. The ‘girl’ could easily have passed for thirty. Beyond Mrs Vanderbilt, at quite some distance, I could see footmen in dark red livery darting here and there. I thought: America is going to be very different.

  6

  All through that hot summer of 1940 we were shunted between the Long Island summer houses of New York’s kind society hostesses. While we were getting used to our new surroundings, unfamiliar American expressions and new routines, the society hostesses were apparently trying to come to terms with how badly dressed we were. Mrs Deering Howe was so disturbed by our appearance that within a few days several new dresses arrived. Patricia was disapproving – not only was there a war on and we shouldn’t be concerned with such trivialities, but she knew at once that our mother would in no way wish us to accept these gifts. I thought they were divinely pretty and desperately wanted to keep them. But it was not to be. We had to decline the offer and wait for some money to come through from our parents.

  I wrote copious letters from Mrs Vanderbilt’s villa-style residence in Belleview Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. I wrote to my mother and to my father, who insisted that all letters be numbered in case some of them arrived out of sequence or were lost at sea, and also that I should write alternately to him and my mother. This made it difficult sometimes when I was in the mood to tell my news to one before the other, only to find it wasn’t their turn. I also wrote to Grandmama and Hanky.

  As the war progressed, I felt guilty being so safe when our parents were not. My mother’s job involved driving around at night after bombs had dropped, helping people in the shelters as well as improving the facilities available to the emergency services. She wrote that we were not to worry about her as she had become quite ‘nippy’ at avoiding danger. She actually seemed to be enjoying herself.

  I couldn’t unburden my feelings of homesickness to my mother because she was so easily upset and it was always, as in our home life, more straightforward to share our worries with our father. I drew a picture for him and posted it with letter number 14, showing ‘Pamela Carmen Louise’ stranded on a raft – ‘floating to you!’ There were three flags on this vessel: one simply had the word ‘Help’, the second displayed the Union Jack and the third, quite obviously, was a pair of billowing bloomers labelled ‘white pants’. The jolliness was a poor attempt to hide the slight but ever-present feeling that I missed home.

  In turn we received letters from our father and Hanky and Bunny. The King of the Moon was in fine form, lacing his letters with stories and sweet sentiments. As she dashed around our mother sent us several cables with news of her war effort. I was especially pleased to hear from Hanky, who gave us longed-for news of the dogs. I was still feeling guilty that during one of our goodbyes, I had pulled away from her, suddenly unwilling to be kissed by the prickly, almost invisible moustache on her top lip. She had always been so warm and giving, and sometimes before I went to sleep I imagined her back at Broadlands, upset and mystified by my rudeness. I made sure that I wrote to her with a lot of affection in my letters, telling her that I couldn’t wait to see her again.

  The bes
t news came in the form of a cable announcing Zelle’s imminent arrival. Until now, we had been under the care of a Mrs Gertrude Pugh, a thoroughly English, unsympathetic woman who wore long pink boudoir knickers that came down to her knees (hiding from her one afternoon, Patricia and I spotted these under her skirt from our refuge under the bed). It was such a relief when Zelle replaced Miss Pugh, bringing with her news, letters and presents from the family. Being with Zelle did also have its downside – I was allowed to speak to her and Patricia only in French during the day. If I hadn’t spoken any English by nightfall, I was given a cent.

  When the summer came to an end, we returned to Manhattan with Mrs Vanderbilt. While, of course, we lived a privileged life at Broadlands, I wasn’t quite prepared for the relentless grandeur and ostentation of Mrs Vanderbilt’s lifestyle, this manifestation of the excesses of New York ‘society’. There was nothing she liked more than to talk of the British aristocracy, and I think our link to the royal family really thrilled her. One morning, when we had just started school, she pulled us both out of lessons to see the sumptuous lunch table she had arranged for the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. An enthusiastic Mrs Vanderbilt escorted us into the large panelled dining room, allowing me to take a sugar-dusted marshmallow from one of the ornate silver bowls, utterly convinced that seeing her table setting was an essential part of a young girl’s education. My parents were horrified at a newspaper headline about ‘royal refugees’ going to the races with Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the gossip columns ran a story about how, morning and evening, you could spot the ‘well-born evacuees’ walking down Fifth Avenue. In fact the walk to our schools each morning was the highlight of my day for, if it wasn’t raining, Zelle would buy us a brioche and a slab of chocolate that we would eat on a bench in Central Park, while the pastry was still warm.

  School in America was an eye-opener. After fielding such questions as ‘Do you have electricity in England’; forcing myself to tolerate the endless mimicking of my accent; convincing the girls that Patricia and I did not shorten our names to ‘Pat’ and ‘Pam’; and history being turned upside down – from the American Revolution to the War of Independence and finding that all the goodies had become baddies – I was astonished that during ‘recess’ my fellow classmates undertook a ferocious shoplifting competition at the local ‘drugstore’. I would rather have died than steal something, so I removed myself to the soda fountain. As at school back home, I found it stressful being with so many girls each and every day, until during an afternoon game of tag – the sole aim of which seemed to be to push over as many people as possible – I noticed another girl, Anne de Rothschild, who seemed to prefer to play on her own. We became firm friends and played happily and quietly together. After a couple of weeks I was taken aside and told it really might be better for me not to play with her. I racked my brains as to why until I realised: however wealthy you were at this school, if you were Jewish you would always be seen as different. They obviously did not know that I had Jewish ancestors and I continued to play with Anne.

  Despite attending school, being with Patricia and Zelle, and receiving the kindness of the impeccably behaved New Yorkers, I couldn’t settle, especially as news of my father’s ‘adventures’ – family code for life-threatening events – reached us. Southampton had been heavily bombed, as had Brook House again (luckily no one was there at the time and all the main furniture, pictures and even the Whistler panels in the boudoir had been put into storage at the beginning of the war). I felt bad, here in what seemed like another world, as if I should be back at home suffering like everybody else. I wasn’t exactly unhappy to begin with – there were too many new experiences and things that made Patricia and me laugh. For example, it was important for Mrs Vanderbilt to be seen at the opera and she decided to take Patricia with her – that is, to some of the opera. Eager to make an entrance, Mrs Vanderbilt would never arrive until the end of the first act, whereupon she would enter her box with the diamonds of her sumptuous Cartier necklace ablaze as the lights went up for the interval. After she felt that she had been noticed sufficiently, she would take her seat. At the end of the second act, Mrs Vanderbilt felt she had done her bit and would go home, so Patricia got to know only the second act of the operas. But what made me chuckle even more than this was the story that Mrs Vanderbilt had once given a dinner party when the Royal Shakespeare Company were playing in New York. A young man at her table had apologised and asked whether he might be excused from the table because he was going to see Hamlet. Mrs Vanderbilt had looked slightly nonplussed and so he explained, ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ whereupon her face lit up and she exclaimed loudly, so that everyone could hear, ‘Oh, do give the dear boy my good wishes. I knew his father so well.’

  Letters from home were becoming less frequent and they often arrived in a mixed-up order. Our mother wrote to tell us that the baby wallaby had died and then we received another from her that said he was doing very well. A week or so later a third letter arrived to tell us that it had been born. It was a very difficult time for everyone, and perhaps the fact that there seemed to be no end in sight to the conflict prompted both Bunny and then my father to write tender words of advice to me. Bunny’s letter was particularly touching. He wrote: ‘Darling Plonk, I have just got a new job in London – I am now more or less in charge of this WAR so it should be over very soon. I saw your Papa last night for the first time in some months. He is looking very well, your poor Mama on the other hand has had a bad cold in di noze. I have sadly not seen any of yours or Plinks’s masterpiece letters lately but I hope to next weekend when I go to Broadlands. Getting your letters has made all the difference to the happiness of your doting parents during these long months since your departure. Wasn’t it a tragedy that this babe died [here, Bunny had drawn a picture of a wallaby]. You have never seen anything so sweet as it was. I do hope Babo produces another soon. Everyone misses you both so very much and longs for your return. Remember to get all the fun that you can out of your trip, as you may never get such a carefree time again. I will try to write a little more often . . . Bless you and tons of love from H M Rex Luna.’

  On 27 May 1941, Zelle came to take Patricia and me home from school as usual. What I didn’t know was that Zelle had already broken the news to my sister that our father’s ship, HMS Kelly, had been bombed in Crete and half the crew were missing, presumed dead. Patricia had managed to let out her first wave of tears before I came out of school and composed herself before meeting me. I was terribly shocked when Zelle told me, while we were travelling home on the bus, that my father was missing. I let out such a loud wail that the bus came to a stop. By the evening I was numb with terror. In the middle of the night, Zelle came and woke us with the news that he had survived. My mother had sent a cable as soon as she heard. I got up at once and wrote her a thank-you letter. I was so relieved that I forgot to put a number on the letter but thought my father wouldn’t mind just this once.

  By some miracle, my parents were able to visit us that summer. When I heard this news, it seemed too good to be true and the heartache of the last twelve months lifted. I looked out of the window from my summer bedroom on Long Island, at the great yachts and little sailing boats bobbing on Oyster Bay, and as the lights twinkled from the buildings opposite the shore, I realised that for the first time in a very long while, I was happy.

  My parents arrived in mid-August and we drove out to upstate New York and took up temporary residence in a flat lent to us by friends. We all noticed how Patricia was now taller than our mother but were careful not to draw attention to it. Mummy, however, seemed not in a mood to be offended. We spent six glorious days together, catching up on our news, visiting places and talking about how we would all be together as soon as the war was over. Then my parents had to get on with their work. My mother was about to depart on a speaking tour of the US, ostensibly as a goodwill gesture to thank the American Red Cross for all their help, but her intention was also to inform the Americans about what was really
going on in Britain. Lady Louis Mountbatten was a big enough name to pull in a crowd, and she had a lot of first-hand experience of the horrors of the Blitz. The night before she left she produced a speech that she had carefully written out by hand and was planning to read. My father shocked us all by tearing it up. ‘No, Snooky. You’ll bore them all rigid.’ Instead he persuaded her to learn it and showed her how to make prompting notes. ‘You’ll be terrific,’ he said, kissing her. She did as he said and later we learned that the tour was an unqualified success. She always attributed her ability to speak in public to the confidence my father placed in her, and was acknowledged as a fine speaker.

  My father, meanwhile, was to travel down to Norfolk, Virginia, to inspect the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious before he took command of her. Before that he paid a flying visit to Pearl Harbor and was not impressed by the poor state of readiness and general lack of co-operation between the US Navy and the US Army. He lamented the absence of a joint HQ, and on his return he described something that had shocked him – all the American aircraft had been lined up in rows, leaving them vulnerable to attack. When he pointed this out to those in command, his advice fell on deaf ears. He was so agitated that at the breakfast table he couldn’t stop until he talked himself out. Once he had done so, he dispatched his fried egg in two gulps and gave me a sort of consolation pat on the shoulders as he left the table. My father’s plans changed when he was suddenly called back to England. He gave us no indication of what he was up to and we were terribly sad to see him go. Later, in one of his many letters to us, he explained that Churchill had ordered him to return to take over as Chief of Combined Operations. This was a complex job – co-ordinating all the top naval, military and air experts and chiefs of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force in planning, equipping and training for offensive operations.