Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  All great jewels have […] dual histories. Their careers as cut and polished gems is only the second part. Infinitely more interesting is the hidden history of each great jewel, from the discovery of the rough stone to the period when it reaches the hand of the lapidary, to be polished and cut for a drawing room existence. What a record of intrigue and knavery, stabbings and poisoning [is] connected with some of the greatest jewels.16

  It was this hidden history of the Red Cross Pearls that made them so precious. With the fashionable world’s obsession with pearls showing no sign of ending, as the jewellers put their final touches to the pearl necklaces there was great anticipation about who would buy them and just how much money they would make.

  Before sending them to Christie’s, the jewellers packed the pearls in specially designed cases of royal blue velvet with a white lining, on the top was shown a red cross. Connoisseurs were unanimous that a finer collection of pearls had never been offered for auction in London.

  Fourteen

  PEARLS OF PEACE

  At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 guns were fired across London to mark the signing of the armistice. A vast crowd gathered outside Buckingham Palace waiting for the king and queen to come out. When they appeared on the balcony looking like two tiny dolls, they were given a spontaneous ovation that was so loud and continued for so long no one could hear a word that the king said. For the rest of the day, a good-humoured crowd swarmed through the capital shouting with joy that the war was finally coming to an end. Adding to the noise was the hooting of horns from cars crammed full of excited passengers. According to Cynthia Asquith, it was a pleasure to see the wide grins on the soldiers’ faces and elderly couples dancing in the street.1

  However, although there was great relief that the fighting was over, there were mixed emotions. For many it was more a day for remembering the loved ones who would never return than rejoicing at the victory. Having lost two sons in the war, Mary Wemyss wrote in her diary:

  It is their Victory – it is also the saddest peace and except for a few Babies in their teens, no one can be light of heart and to most of us almost the hardest part is now beginning. We miss our shining victors in the hour of victory.2

  As they had done throughout the war, Mary and her closest friend Ettie Desborough supported each other through this emotional time. While the jubilant crowds partied in London, they stayed quietly at their homes, Stanway and Taplow, where they felt closest to their lost sons. Without saying a word, they both knew what the other was going through. Ettie told Mary that the thought of her had ‘burnt in her innermost heart’ all day. She echoed her friend’s words, writing, ‘Victory and we look in vain for our Victors.’3 For once, Ettie admitted to feeling a sense of emptiness and sadness. Friends noticed that the war years had changed her. She had become more beautiful, but it was a fragile beauty and her face showed that she had suffered deeply. She frequently quoted a line from Maurice Baring’s elegy to her cousin Bron Lucas, ‘Something is broken which we cannot mend.’4

  However, no matter how broken she felt inside, on the surface Ettie put a positive gloss on events. Perhaps to convince herself as much as her friends, she wrote in November 1918:

  They died for the needs of grace and for the hope of glory, and it has not been in vain – the cause has triumphed that they all sprang out to serve and it is their Peace. I feel as if they were all so proud and glad, and not counting the cost – and that the pain is only ours, still held in mental bondage.5

  As usual, Mary sensitively avoided getting into a potentially divisive debate with her friend about their sons’ sacrifice by replying simply, ‘Darling, I was not going to say anything of all the thoughts and agonies that are surging through our shattered, glory-crested lives – because I hope to see you soon.’6

  Typically selfless, both Mary and Ettie immediately thought of others rather than themselves. When the armistice was declared, Mary wrote to her daughter-in-law Letty Elcho, knowing how difficult it would be for her that her husband Ego would not be returning. Ettie also tried to console the young widow by drawing on her faith in an afterlife. Expressing more grief for Letty than she would for herself, she wrote:

  Oh darling how the thought of you has ached at my heart all through these days […] Only my Letty, I just cannot bear to think of you although I know how nobly you are bearing these days, as you have borne all – Ego must feel so triumphant over you, that look in his eyes that was only there for you – and you know that he is waiting for you, beautiful and young for evermore.7

  Lacking Ettie’s Christian certainty, members of the younger generation struggled to come to terms with the slaughter of so many of their contemporaries. On the brink of a brief nervous breakdown, Mary’s daughter Cynthia Asquith wrote in her diary:

  I think it [peace] will require more courage than anything that has gone before. It isn’t until one leaves off spinning round that one realises how giddy one is. One will have to look at long vistas again, instead of short ones, and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war.8

  The armistice changed the situation for the Red Cross Pearl Necklace as well as for the women who had given to it. The appeal came to completion at the same time as the cessation of the war. In these changed circumstances, it was important to keep the public interested in the fate of the pearls if they were to make as much money as possible for wounded soldiers returning from the war. In a letter sent out to local and national papers on 25 November, Princess Victoria and Lady Northcliffe explained that the Red Cross’ need for funds was as great as ever:

  Let no one think that the signing of the armistice brings with it the instant evacuation of our hospitals. Treatment and after-care for thousands of wounded men must be continued for months, and alas! In many cases for years. The public may rest assured that the money which the pearls yield will be applied faithfully to the care of the wounded and to the all-essential task of fitting these gallant sufferers to face the life which lies before them.9

  Emphasising the historic interest of the pearls which had been ‘offered with such glad self-sacrifice’ by so many women, they hoped that at the auction the public would come forward and ‘give not merely what the necklaces are worth, but what the occasion and the cause demand’.10

  The pearls now became part of one of the first post-war acts of remembrance. The jewels were on display for three days at Messrs Christie, Manson and Woods’ King Street salerooms. There was a private viewing on 16 December when the price of admission was 5s including a copy of the auction catalogue. At the private view, most of the visitors were women. According to the Daily Mail, ‘Many of them wore magnificent pearls. But it was notable that even the women with the finest pearls looked wistfully at some of the Red Cross Necklaces.’11

  Admission was free on 17 and 18 December to make sure that the pearls could be seen by as many people as possible. By 10 a.m. on the opening day, crowds were eagerly waiting outside the doors of Christie’s. Describing the scene, The Queen wrote, ‘The thoroughfare was literally besieged; people who had never been in a crowd before waited and jostled with more or less good humour.’12 In the first hour, 300 people inspected the pearls, and throughout the rest of the day the crowd was never less than three deep around the showcases. The pearls were simply displayed in sombre, oblong, black boxes. Prospective buyers asked saleroom officials to take out the necklaces so that they could be more closely examined. Schoolgirls back for the Christmas holidays admired the ‘young’ necklaces made of smaller pearls. However, nearly everyone was speculating about how much money Lot No. 101, the finest pearl necklace with the Norbury diamond clasp, would make. One lady said:

  Whatever it fetches will not matter to the buyer. […] It will be historic as the jewels of Marie Antoinette; it will be an heirloom more famed than the Hope diamond. Other pearls came from the sea. These pearls came from human hearts, and human tenderness and gratitude will run up their purcha
se price.13

  The first day was busy but the second day was even more crowded. Soon after 10 in the morning, the queue became so long that it wound around the outer room and stretched down the stairs across Christie’s’ reception hall and out into the street. The crowds continued all day long and, as so many people patiently and persistently awaited their turn, inspection of the pearls could only be tantalisingly brief. On the final day the crowds were greater than ever and included people of every rank in life. Servicemen, home on leave, and their wives regarded the collection as one of the sights of the town.

  The Pearl Necklace Auction was not the first sale held by Christie’s for the Red Cross. Since 1915 the auction house had been putting on sales free of charge to raise funds. Like other businesses, Christie’s had been greatly affected by the war. When the conflict began, one of the partners, Captain Victor Agnew, and many of the male staff volunteered to fight. In the first months of the war, work for the auction house was in short supply. After the last sale of the summer season in July 1914 not a single work of art came onto the market and the business looked like closing down temporarily.

  However, then Christie’s’ fortunes changed.14 Many people who could not afford to send money to the Red Cross started sending gifts instead, the fundraisers asked Christie’s to auction them and Alec Martin, the firm’s managing director, generously agreed to give their services and the use of their staff and salerooms free of charge. The auction house received and acknowledged all gifts as well as cataloguing the lots, publishing the catalogues, storing the lots, taking the sales, taking payment from successful bidders and then packing the lots in readiness for them to be taken away with their new owners.

  The first Red Cross sale held in April 1915 was an experiment. Running for twelve days, it generated a great deal of interest. Under the headline ‘Selling Household Goods for Charity’, the Illustrated London News ran a full-page painting of the first day of the auction.15 In the picture, ladies in plumed picture hats or elegant toques are crammed into the auction room with men in glossy top hats and bowlers. Beside the elegant auctioneer on the rostrum, a man in a cloth cap and tweeds holds up a seventeenth-century sporting rifle which had been donated by the king to be auctioned. Pencils in hand, ready to mark their auction catalogues, the keen bidders are all straining to get a view. The newspaper reported that as the bidding began there was a round of applause and after seven bids this unusual lot sold for 350 guineas.16

  The king’s gun was one among an eclectic range of 1,867 lots on offer. Another royal donation was a life-sized bust of the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler made out of terracotta by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, which sold for 75 guineas. One of the most poignant donations were two Irish silver potato rings belonging to a young flying officer, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, who had been killed in Egypt. They were bought for 1,000 guineas by Lord Newlands, who immediately returned them to the officer’s parents in memory of their son. Although the artist John Singer Sargent had abandoned portrait painting, he was persuaded to do one more as a donation for the Red Cross Auction. Sir Hugh Lane paid £10,000 for this portrait. However, the question of the sitter had not been decided at the time and Sir Hugh died just a month later in the sinking of the Lusitania. It was finally agreed by his trustees that the portrait should be of the American President Woodrow Wilson.17

  The most flamboyant figure at the auction was the wealthy widow, Lady Wernher. Over the next few years she became known as the heroine of the Red Cross sales. At the first one held in 1915 The Sketch recorded:

  Lady Wernher marked her Christie catalogue with much more spirit than most other women can muster when they make a book for Punchestown or see their programmes filled at a country dance. She treated the great sale as if it were the sporting event of the week, took any number of risks and enjoyed herself despite the somewhat gloomy company surrounding her.18

  When her neighbour asked if she was interested in the next lot, she said with a laugh, ‘Do you think I really want anything?’

  The question needed no answer. As the widow of Sir Julius Wernher, the South African financier and gold and diamond mining magnate, Alice (known as Birdie) had more than enough of everything. Partly of Polish origin, Birdie was petite, bright-eyed and blonde. Famous for her glamorous pre-war parties, her lavish tastes had always been indulged by her husband. She rushed into events like a human dynamo, swathed in furs over her Worth gowns and magnificent jewels. Although with her husband’s business she could have worn the finest diamonds in the world, she often chose to wear pearls.

  During the Edwardian era, the Wernhers lived in considerable style in Bath House, a mansion on Piccadilly, opposite the Ritz Hotel, and at their Bedfordshire estate, Luton Hoo. Famed for its grand belle époque interiors, semi-Palladian exterior and its Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown park, Luton Hoo was more a palace than a country house. On their estate, the Wernhers employed fifty-four gardeners, twenty or thirty house servants and ten electricians. Every aspect of their lifestyle was on the grand scale, in their conservatory alone there were 4,000 potted carnations.19

  The Wernhers’ opulence was criticised by some as vulgar and materialistic. After dining at Bath House, the Fabian and socialist Beatrice Webb wrote that there might just as well have been a goddess of gold erected to overtly worship.20 She described Birdie as badly bred and too talkative. Although Beatrice conceded that her hostess was a clever woman, she complained that she was too aware of her wealth and talked of nothing except her possessions. The socialist even criticised Birdie’s style, disliking the extravagance of her jewels and her clothes. She considered her to be ‘essentially ugly’, both in her person, manners and speed, because she was always frenetically rushing from one place to another.21

  In fact, Birdie had far more depth than Beatrice imagined. A talented pianist, she invited the leading musicians of the era, Feodor Chaliapin, Richard Tauber and the Menuhins, to play at her musical soirees. Both husband and wife were avid art collectors. Sir Julius had one of the finest collections of medieval ivories, Renaissance jewellery and bronzes, as well as some superb old master paintings by Rubens, Titian and Reynolds. Many of his pictures were of the Virgin and Child and it is thought that these were bought largely to please his wife. Birdie’s own collection of English porcelain, which began as a hobby, grew into an obsession until it was rivalled only by the royal family and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Although Sir Julius was born in Germany, during the Edwardian era, he became a well-respected member of British society who was known for his probity and philanthropy. Unaware of Beatrice Webb’s attacks on his wife, he gave generous donations to her pet project, the ‘Charlottenburg Scheme’, which became the present-day Imperial College of Science and Technology.22

  In 1912 Sir Julius died leaving more than £11 million, which was the largest South African fortune on record. At first Birdie was too bereft to attend her husband’s funeral. However, she gradually acclimatised to widowhood. She was left an exceptionally wealthy widow; Luton Hoo and Bath House went to her for her lifetime, she also received income from a £1 million trust.23 Making the most of her new independent status, Birdie reinvented herself. She dyed her hair, keeping a distinctive, stylish white streak down the middle and even daringly wore trousers to play tennis.24

  Although, Birdie did not need, or even really want, any of the items on sale at the Red Cross Auction, she was determined to raise as much money as possible for the cause. Whenever the price of a valuable lot needed hoisting she started bidding large amounts to encourage others. One of the most prized donations was a Stradivarius violin from Lord Newlands. Birdie bought it for £2,500, then she called out, ‘Be quick! Tell the auctioneer to offer it again.’ Auctioned for a second time, it raised another £1,400 for the charity. She did not stop there, later in the day she also bought a manuscript chapter from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and a Jane Austen manuscript which she gave to the British Museum.25

  As less exciting items came up, she went
on buying. ‘Heavens, its mine!’ she would say to her neighbour as the hammer fell. No doubt she had visions of Luton Hoo piled with packing cases full of bric-a-brac, but she did not mind.26 Her enthusiasm energised the atmosphere at Christie’s, as The Sketch explained, she showed ‘a genius for seeming extraordinarily gay over endless unnecessary additions to the already endless list of her superfluous possessions’.27 Her liveliness was so essential that when she left her place for just five minutes a gloom fell over the auctioneer on the podium and her neighbours seated near her. Their spirits flagged until her return.

  It was generous benefactors like Birdie that made the 1915 sale a success. The final sum raised at the auction was almost £38,000. Recognising how much the charity owed her, the former librarian of the House of Lords and poet, Edmund Gosse, who had been sitting next to her at the auction, felt she should have a memento of the sale. ‘Your catalogue is shabby,’ he said to her. ‘I’m going to buy you another and bind it in morocco – red morocco.’ With her usual charm, she replied, ‘And write in it,’ acting as if this was the greatest gift she had ever received.28

  When Birdie encouraged an encore of the Red Cross Auction at Christie’s the following year, the gossip columnists described her as ‘nothing less than heroic’.29 Perhaps she spotted an opportunity to recycle some of the unwanted items she had bought in the previous sale by donating them to the 1916 auction, however, she also gave some valuable items from her own collections. She donated exquisite pieces of old lace, silver, jewels and a seventeenth-century enamelled badge with views of castles, flowers and the Cross of St John of Jerusalem in white on a blue background on one side and a male saint and angels on the other.30