At Denham the following weekend, July 15, Irene began to wonder if Cimmie’s death really had changed her brother-in-law. His attitude to his children was certainly different: at lunch he talked to Vivien about her school; afterward he played with the eighteen-month-old Micky on the lawn. What struck her most forcibly was that he showed to Baba a consideration and kindness she had never seen him employ toward Cim. Perhaps a close relationship with Baba, even if it seemed temporarily to go a bit too far, was the lesser of two evils. “I pray this obsession for Baba will utterly oust Diana Guinness,” she wrote before driving up to London to watch Tom massing his followers in Eaton Square before setting out on a march.
Baba’s excitement at the coming trip with Tom had not altered either her dominating nature or her belief that her household should be run like clockwork even on a seaside holiday. Just before Irene left on a three-week Mediterranean cruise on the White Star liner Homeric, she was upset by “a rude and peremptory letter from Baba” forbidding her to take her beloved old Sealyham Winks to the house at Angmering, on the Sussex coast, where she was to look after Baba’s children.
Baba, setting off alone with Tom across France in early August, plunged almost at once into a passionate love affair. For Tom, seducing this beautiful, sophisticated woman was part game, part challenge. Domination and sexuality were an intrinsic part of his being. Even his politics were sexualized, with their macho symbols of uniform, marching and insistence on virile youth. The conquest of a woman who herself was a charismatic, dominating figure—whether of her husband, her household, or a dinner table—was especially sweet. Then, too, there was the link with her dead sister, whom he had loved deeply despite his constant betrayals. To this unremitting sexual adventurer, the thought that he was sleeping with his wife’s sister must have added an agreeable touch of forbidden fruit, with its frisson of incest. Then, too, it embodied a full-blown tease of the malicious kind he so enjoyed: poor Fruity, despite his anger, could do nothing to prevent it.
Baba tried to rationalize her behavior by telling herself that going to bed with Tom would get him away from the hated Diana Guinness. But she was too clear-sighted not to realize that to sleep with her dead sister’s husband within three months of her funeral, abandoning her own husband and children to do so, could hardly be justified morally. Internally, she must have been torn apart. The principles of her upbringing had been firmly rooted. Loyalty—which of course extended to her husband—was one of the strongest strands of her nature. Later, she was to exhibit not only guilt but a sense of shame: she was too wordly-wise not to realize that most people were horrified that she should fall precipitously into the arms of the man who had caused her sister such terrible suffering.
Tom had told Cimmie (truthfully) that his endless affairs meant little: such sexual flings, he confided to his new love, Diana Guinness, were tremendous fun, to be treated almost as a joke. What was not a joke was if somebody, somebody of caliber, fell for him seriously. Diana’s own open commitment had not only flattered him enormously but brought him to a degree of commitment himself. Now here was Baba, lovely, clever, desired, deeply in love with him and a constant reminder of the dead wife he had treated so badly. Keeping Baba happy, he could tell himself, was a form of recompense to Cimmie. Besides, there was the sheer delight of enjoying two such trophy mistresses simultaneously.
Irene spent most of September in Angmering while Baba was in Scotland, with her nephews and nieces. The children thought their “Auntie Ni” wonderful: she let them play wild games, took David shrimping and unlike their mother showed them much overt affection. When they looked for hermit crabs David remarked thoughtfully: “Mummy would never carry this seaweed for me.” Irene wrote her sister an eight-page letter about her children’s doings, also noting: “How can Baba go and leave those priceless children when they are so profoundly interesting in their development?”
Tom was now in high favor with Irene, thanks to his apparent change of persona. She supported him in his political efforts, visiting the new headquarters of his British Union of Fascists, which she had promised to spruce up. It was at 122a Kings Road, formerly the Whitelands Teachers’ Training College but now known as the Black House; in it lived the top echelon of the BUF and about fifty young rank-and-file Blackshirts, who drilled and trained under military-style discipline. She was delighted when Tom came to dinner at the end of September and described two successful meetings at Ashford and Aylesbury at which a number of farmers had been enrolled. “We had a wonderful evening of talk but he broke my heart when he said life was over, he wanted to put fascism on the map and he did not mind if a bullet met him,” she wrote in her diary that night. “He says Cim talks to him and is always by his side. We had great talks on Baba and Fruity and their future.”
Somehow, Irene had managed to convince herself that “sweet Tom” and her sister were the injured parties in the emotional triangle of the two Metcalfes and Mosley, and that poor jealous Fruity was the one who should see reason. She told her brother-in-law that, Tom or no Tom, it was his tantrums that were damaging their marriage. For eight years, she said, warming to her theme, Baba had been sweet to him and spoiled him, but her intellect was starved, so no wonder she blossomed with Tom. If Fruity did not accept their friendship, it would cause a deep rift.
When, in early October, Irene went with twelve-year-old Viv to Smith Square to pack up Cim’s treasures, her heart was further wrung. The flood of misery when she looked at the photographs of her sister, so fresh and young and alive, turned to sympathy for Tom when he had to lie flat on his back in his Ebury Street flat with lumbago, and for several days she sent him all his meals. (She herself was having back trouble at the time, visiting the famous Dr. Cyriax almost daily.)
Harold Nicolson also thought Tom had changed, writing in his diary for October 11, 1933: “Whenever anything happens to remind him of Cimmie, a spasm of pain twitches across his face. He looked ill and pasty. He has become an excellent father and plays with the children. Cimmie’s body is still in the chapel at Cliveden and he visits it once a week. It is to be buried at Denham in a high sarcophagus in a wood. Irene said that the children said to her: ‘We don’t cry when you talk to us about Mummy, but we always cry when we talk about her among ourselves.’ ”
By the fifteenth, however, Tom had recovered sufficiently to lead the fascist march past the Cenotaph in Manchester, watched by Irene, though because of his bad back he only walked a short distance. At 8 p.m. there was a big meeting at the Free Trade Hall for which Prince Paul of Greece and the Mosleys’ friend Zita James arrived to stay at the Midland Hotel. Outside the hall stood a huge crowd, some of whom were communists. Inside were about nine thousand people, hedged about with two thousand Blackshirts. Tom entered in his usual dramatic fashion, marching down the main aisle with a powerful floodlight on him and mounting the rostrum amid tremendous cheering. The meeting, save for two fights in the middle when five people were ejected, went smoothly.
Irene’s public work and good causes continued. She was the first woman to speak at the annual gala in commemoration of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, she had been the only white woman to attend the emperor of Abyssinia’s coronation in November 1930 and she was as active as ever in her East End club work. She was also involved with the Shilling Theatre Company, which aimed to bring good plays and performances within reach of the poor—a growing number in that era of unemployment. Seats cost only one shilling and three pence (the three pence was entertainment tax), there were two performances a night and a new play was put on every week with well-known actors. The company played in the Fulham Theatre by Putney Bridge, where Irene, who subsidized it heavily, organized the painting of the interior in a bright grass green to set off the heavy gilt ceiling, ready for its opening date on the twenty-third.
Her main concern was Tom’s children. She was the one to drive Nick back to school—lunching afterward with her old beau Arthur Rubinstein—who took Micky and Viv to the Metcalfe twins’ birthday party, who sympa
thized with Tom when he had a return of his old enemy, phlebitis. She herself was suffering from the rheumatism that had attacked so many of her hunting friends after their numerous falls, but recovered in time to spend the following weekend at Cliveden. It would bring Fruity further cause for jealousy, and Baba another lover—Mussolini’s ambassador to London, Count Dino Grandi.
Ironically, it was Irene who met him first, sitting between the count and Walter Elliot at dinner. On Signor Grandi’s other side was Nancy Astor’s sister Irene Gibson, famed for her beauty twenty years earlier but extraordinarily irritating to Irene for the “garrulous Langhorne fluffy stuff” that she talked to Grandi while Irene longed for some serious political discussion. When she and Grandi did begin to talk she found him full of charm and distinction. “He was thrilling on Tom. He watches every move of Tom’s and as the press gives no fair verdict of his speeches, writes home himself the truth. He predicted the spread of fascism here after a Labour government. He spoke reverently of Cim and asked to go to the chapel.”
Grandi had that quality essential in a successful diplomat: the gift of saying exactly what all those to whom he wished to appeal wanted to hear. At thirty-eight he was young for an ambassador; he had joined Mussolini early on in his career and was one of the four fascist leaders who had led the march on Rome in 1923. Two years later he became a minister in the Italian Foreign Office, where he showed great skill as a diplomat, communicating Italy’s keenness on disarmament to the League of Nations while at home convincing Mussolini of the need to build up her military strength. His success brought him a title and Italy’s highest decoration, the Order of the Annunciata. When, in 1932, he became ambassador in London, he saw his job mainly as a propagandist for fascism.
Grandi was intensely social, charming, and a convinced anglophile (his first thought on arriving in England was that he was in the country which had beaten Napoleon). He quickly became London’s most popular ambassador and the darling of what became known as “the Cliveden Set.” He entertained frequently at his sumptuous embassy in Grosvenor Square, the former home of the Fitzwilliam family, where guests marveled at the eighty-two rare museum pieces—tapestries and mirrors from the court of the Medicis, six of them from the Uffizi Gallery, silver candelabra made for the Bourbon kings of Naples. The fifty pictures included two Titians and some rare works of the primitive school; in the entrance hall stood an agate-and-lapis-lazuli table from the Barberini Palace flanked by a two-thousand-year-old statue of a boy riding a seahorse.
Women loved Grandi. He was tall and good-looking, with a pointed beard and dark flashing eyes that lit up with pleasure at the sight of a pretty woman. His approach to his marriage was Latin rather than the model of domesticity favored by Il Duce’s fascisti: his petite, elegant wife, Antonietta, and his children were at the center of his life, but, as a traditional Italian male, he took it for granted that he could play away from home. He marked Baba down from the start and took the first opportunity to make her acquaintance. Fruity, who quickly spotted that Grandi found his wife attractive and that Baba appeared to be responding, would not settle down but played the gramophone most of the evening “and nearly drove us mad,” commented Irene.
The next day when Irene came down for tea, Baba and Grandi were nose to nose on the sofa again and Nancy and Phyllis (another of Nancy’s sisters), for whom he had been asked as a beau, were angry. Irene stood up for her sister. “Leave them alone,” she said. “It is the first time she has talked to a good brain in years.”
Grandi’s effect on the women of the party was pronounced. “Nancy foamed over dinner as Baba had her teeth into him and Nancy had to talk over Baba and Grandi to Eddie on Baba’s right and they were quite oblivious,” recorded Irene jubilantly. After dinner, while the men were downstairs drinking port, the women vied with each other over the intimacy of their conversations with him. Baba won easily when she reported that he had confided in her that he and his wife were so exhausted after the summer diplomatic season that they had had to give up their double bed for a while. Her status as Grandi’s favorite was confirmed when the men came in after dinner and he made straight for her, sitting with her all evening.
Later, playing bridge, Irene and her four got the giggles when this time Fruity’s retaliation took the form of reading a hunting novel aloud to Mrs. Pakenham (later Lady Longford) until, recorded Irene, “he started that awful gramophone again with Mrs. Eden.”
It was clear that Baba was drawing away from her husband. A week later she worried even the loyal Irene by saying that Tom looked so wretched that he ought to go on a cruise. As he refused to go alone she suggested taking him halfway to Kenya. For Fruity, who by now detested Tom, this would be the last straw, thought Irene. Fortunately, Baba dropped the idea. She herself was still depressed after the break-up with Miles, though she cheered up a bit when Signor Grandi called to see her on December 14.
Tactfully he praised Irene’s bravery over a recent small operation and then, with equal tact, managed to slip into the conversation a reassuring phrase or two about how much he loved his wife—perhaps because he knew that “lovely Baba” would arrive to whisk him away at six-thirty before they both went to the same dinner party an hour later. The same thing happened the following week, only this time the nature of the relationship was more apparent: when Grandi called on Irene for a cocktail Baba turned up and demanded to know how long he had been there. At a quarter to seven she looked at her watch and said imperiously: “Come on, give me a lift to Lancaster Gate.” Grandi stood up, Irene quickly handed him some books she had promised to lend him and the couple departed.
Irene did her best to see that the Mosley children had a happy Christmas, spending most of the holidays with them. For part of the time, Cimmie’s friend Zita James came down to help in the absence of Nanny, whose father had died. Just before the holiday itself Tom and Baba arrived. Irene, though conscious that her duty lay with her bereaved nephews and niece, was unhappily aware that the people doing least well were her own servants, who could not have the usual day off after receiving their presents from her because they were needed at Denham. She was in no doubt who had caused all this. “It is Baba and her affairs that have ruined and corrupted the last weeks at Deanery Street and she never seems to mind,” she wrote bitterly on Christmas Eve 1933.
21
The Blackshirt Phenomenon
Irene took her duties toward Cim’s children very seriously. Instead of returning to Melton and her hunting life there, she stayed on at Denham into the new year, spending much of the day with them. This usually ended with hearing the prayers of the youngest, Micky, as he sat on her lap, when she did her best to keep his memory of his mother alive by showing him her photograph.
To add to Irene’s unhappiness her little dog Winks was, at fifteen, clearly at the end of his life. Even a new suitor, the fifty-one-year-old diplomat Nevile Henderson, was no solace. Telling him about Winks, whom she had loved almost like a child, she had to put the telephone down and run to her room because she could not stop crying. By January 13 she could postpone Winks’s end no longer. Irene’s diary entry that day reads: “My love lay with his paws and head dozing on my lap and he looked up at me and pressed his wet nose up against me and I kissed him and kissed him goodbye in Audley Street.” Thoughtfully, Nevile took her out to lunch at the Dorchester but neither this nor knowing that Winks was going to his final rest unsuspectingly in his own basket was any comfort.
Nevile’s quiet but persistent pursuit of Irene continued. He was eminently suitable: good-looking, tall and slim, with fine features. He was head of the mission in Belgrade,* from which he was home on leave, and no doubt he was another who thought Irene was cut out to be the wife of a future ambassador. The problem was that she found him boring (“How minds like Tom’s, Grandi’s, Stokowski’s, Israel’s ruin one for slower ones”). Eventually, one day, she lashed out at him and told him how his slowness maddened her. He replied by calling her selfish, to which she responded tartly: “Why not?
”
Nevile stood her angry denunciations quietly. “He ended by saying that although he would want to murder me ten times a day he still would want to live with me—it certainly would be stimulating. Oh dear! oh dear!” Fortunately, the drama with Nevile, and discussing it later with her niece Viv, distracted her a little from the loneliness of her bedroom without the comforting presence of Winks in his basket.
Once again, Irene decided that the only way forward was a cruise. This time it would last for three months—time to make up her mind about Nevile and get over Winks. The faithful Nevile went down in the train with her to Southampton (“In those last moments his company was charming”) and on January 17 she set off on the Stella Polaris first for the Americas and then the Far East.
In Colombo a letter arrived from Baba to tell her that “Tom was livid that she [Baba] went to Ireland for Easter and deliberately asked Diana Guinness to Denham. Ugh!” Clearly, the danger from the dreaded Diana was not yet over. She also heard that her theater had gone broke and had had to be closed for three months and, finally, Nevile Henderson wrote to say that he was coming to think she would not make him a good wife—a ploy that fell completely flat with Irene.
The Stella Polaris returned by way of Suez before finally docking at Monte Carlo, from where Irene went by train to Paris. While she was there, on April 21, 1934, Tom held a huge fascist meeting at the Albert Hall. It was in every way a triumph; even those whose political views nowhere coincided with Tom’s acknowledged his brilliance, as this entry from the diary of the MP Robert Bernays makes clear:
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 23
