Ten minutes before [I was] going out for a ride, the President rang me up from the White House to say that the Japanese were bombing Hawaii and asked me to pass it on to London as quickly as I could. So that’s that. If war was to come with Japan I can’t imagine any way in which they could have acted more completely to rally, unite and infuriate American public opinion. The report is of pretty severe damage to ships and aeroplanes but most of the fleet was at sea already and none of their newer ships in harbour.* I have no doubt we shall all have some ugly surprises but I also have no doubt that the Japs will learn that they have made the biggest mistake in their history. It will be interesting to see whether Germany follows suit in declaring war on the U.S.
Four days later, Hitler did exactly that.
In the same letter, Halifax showed how aware he was of Baba’s own concerns, putting aside his personal feelings about Tom Mosley to advise her to tackle the prime minister direct. Then, at Christmas, he was able to give her some welcome news: at last, something was being done about Tom. “On December 23 Winston led us apart in the White House in the evening to say that he had settled up Tom Mosley’s business, he had had to have a special meeting of the War Cabinet and read the riot act to H. M[orrison] and that he (Winston) had had to assume his most ‘puppy dog’ attitude. He said he had not written to you but wished me to tell you! I hope it really is an improvement. It was not very clear from what he said exactly what had been done.”
What had happened was not the release Baba had hoped for, but Tom’s reunion with the woman she still continued to detest.
Churchill, for whom imprisonment without trial or charge was, as he later put it, “in the highest degree odious,” had written a strong note to Morrison stating that “internment rather than imprisonment is what was contemplated” when Defence Regulation 18B was put into effect. The result of this was that those internees who were married were, at last, allowed to be together. For most of them this meant the Isle of Man (where many of the wives were already). For Tom Mosley this was not an option—it was felt that to place the Leader among his devoted flock would only lead to trouble—but it was clearly unfair to keep the Mosleys apart when other couples were allowed to be together. Accordingly, on Sunday, December 21, Tom was taken from Brixton to Holloway Prison, where he and Diana, and another couple, were accommodated in a small separate block. It was, wrote Diana later, “one of the happiest days of my life.”
At Little Compton, New Year’s Eve was celebrated in the traditional way. Friends came to dinner and afterward everyone happily played “the Game,” a version of charades. “Baba doing the Immaculate Conception was a scream and Viv Great Expectations with a cushion up her tummy was wonderful,” wrote Irene. “Then suddenly [Colonel] Ted Lyon got up and did Every Dog has his Day by crawling round the room and lifting his leg on us and the furniture. Just before midnight we went outside and saw the New Year in with Auld Lang Syne. So ended a dreadful year of stress and strife.”
As 1942 opened, the hail of letters from Lord Halifax continued. “An interesting visit this morning from Steinhardt, the late US Ambassador to Moscow,” he wrote on January 1. “He said that the Russian cold didn’t really begin before January and expressed his opinion that unless the Germans could get out fairly quickly, they were in for what he called as ghastly a disaster as history had ever seen. It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but I devoutly hope he is right.”
His next letter described how he had cheered himself up when he had flu—a remarkably aggressive fantasy for a man of such devoutly Christian principles. “If and when we are winning I am bound, I think, to realize my great ambition of seeing Hitler shoot himself or be shot! For flight is impossible, apart from the fact that it is discreditable for a Dictator. Where can he fly to? Do let us pray we live to see him having to make his horrible choice of method of suicide.”
On December 2, 1941, Ernest Bevin, the minister for labor, announced a massive mobilization of womanpower (something which Nazi Germany, extraordinarily, never contemplated even when calling up boys and old men): all single women between twenty and thirty were to be conscripted for some form of war work. Vivien wanted to work in a factory and left Little Compton to live in a comfortable hostel with two girlfriends doing similar work, taking with her Andrée, who would look after them all. Baba too was leaving: as the Blitz had virtually stopped, she had decided to return to London to nurse in Bermondsey. Before she left, she received an unexpected letter—an olive branch from the duchess of Windsor, who wrote on January 31, 1942:
Dear Baba,
I have been sorry not to have had a word from you all these months. Even if the Duke and Fruity have agreed to disagree I hoped we haven’t. I am afraid British Mission No. I was never Fruity’s affair—from the moment he looked it over and returned to Harefield House with the reports of the personalities there, and I am happy he has been fortunate in finding a suitable and interesting job.
The Duke has not been as fortunate—this gift from the “gods” was anything but welcomed and was in fact most heartbreaking for both of us. The story of Lisbon is too bad, but I am afraid our book will be filled with chapters like that as long as we have anything to do with officialdom and naturally the war has placed us in that position. However we have accepted the exile and have tried to do the small and trying, due to its very provincialness, job as well as possible with the motto “Do thy part—therein all honour lies.”
It was divine to get away from here but the trip to the U.S. was spoiled by crowds everywhere—though they were most agreeable we longed for a private life. And then the press, always so really terrific and following one everywhere and whether one is kind or rude to them, they invent more lies and silly notions—however that is the great U.S.A. and one must learn to take it.
I am afraid Ld Halifax has had quite a beating from them, also the Embassy from the Washington press where he is certainly far more popular than the members of his staff. He was magnificent with the eggs and tomato throwing in Detroit and only the throwers were ridiculous. Now that the U.S. is at war however all these things will cease as we are now really allies . . .
Baba replied immediately, in terms that made it clear she had neither forgotten nor forgiven the duke’s appalling behavior to Fruity.
Dear Wallis,
I know nothing about the Duke and Fruity agreeing to disagree and I’m sure this explanation would come as a complete surprise to Fruity. Anyway, between friends of 20 years that friendship is not broken because they “disagree,” especially when on one side so much devotion and loyalty has been given. True friendship is very rare and I feel it calls for better treatment than this. Although it does not directly affect me I can’t help feeling sad and shocked that the Duke should have felt it unnecessary to communicate with Fruity in any way since the day he motored out of Paris in June 1940. He did not even warn him he was going the night before.
Perhaps my views of the obligations of friendship and what it involves are too high. I am surprised you should not understand my feelings and where my loyalties are bound to lie as I thought we rather agreed on these matters.
Baba
The war news was appalling. Germany was pushing back the 8th Army in the Western Desert, the Allies were unable to halt the advance of the Japanese through Malaya, and on February 15, 1942, the “impregnable” fortress and great naval base of Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. Irene, dining with Victor Cazalet, heard of his visit to Malta, which had suffered over two thousand raids by Nazi bombers and where Valletta harbor was full of wrecks.
At the same time, there was a glimmer of hope: the first American soldiers had arrived (in Northern Ireland), Britain had signed a treaty of alliance with Russia and, in the air, was at last able to go on the offensive with a devastating raid on the shipbuilding Baltic port of Lübeck.
The country was tightening its belt. Losses from convoys across the Atlantic to Hitler’s wolf pack of U-boats were huge and people were doing what they could to alleviate food a
nd clothing shortages. On the government-issue utility clothing, skirts rose and cuffs on trousers disappeared, while women were using beet juice as lipstick and gravy browning to tint their legs to save on stockings, the seams drawn in with eyebrow pencil (Halifax thoughtfully sent Baba some American nylons).
Nor was Buckingham Palace immune; here a five-inch “hot-water line” had been painted around bathtubs and, as Halifax informed Baba: “I got a letter from the King last week, who ended with a P.S. to the effect that they were getting rather short of a certain class of paper; generally sold in packets of 500 and beginning with B.* Signed G.R. I think that would make an interesting footnote for future historians!”
“Carrying on” had become the great British virtue, covering everything from growing vegetables and keeping livestock, making wedding dresses from parachute silk and painting cardboard wedding “cakes” to attempting to stick as closely as possible to known patterns of life—for Irene, this meant taking her niece Vivien to the annual Queen Charlotte’s Ball, still featuring the pulling of a giant “cake” and a procession of debutantes and giving a Dorchester luncheon for the grand duchess of Luxembourg.
Once again, Irene’s drinking had become a problem. She was reasonably good at handling it, usually withdrawing to her room at the Dorchester when she realized she had had more than was good for her. But several times recently she had been so drunk in public that Vivien was seriously worried. Not only did she often take Viv and her friends to parties or restaurants where there was dancing; she was shortly giving a twenty-first birthday party for her—and Vivien was terrified that her aunt might become embarrassingly tipsy.
Not daring to tackle Irene about it herself, Vivien told Baba, who had no such reservations and was in any case extremely scornful of her sister’s weakness. “I simply can’t understand why Irene just can’t stop,” she would say. Now she wrote Irene a severe letter about her “failure.” Chastened, Irene replied that she was giving up alcohol for Lent. A week later she was able to write with satisfaction that “my dinner for Vivien’s 21st went off beautifully. Baba had decorated the cake with sugar roses, candles and a silver key. Viv cut it half way through the evening. When they had all gone Baba and I had a most helpful and non-critical chat about my failings and sadnesses and she was really quite human.”
Irene’s summer began with a visit to Victor Cazalet at Great Swifts. It was looking marvelous, its walls clad with wisteria above beds of wallflowers and forget-me-nots and rhododendrons in full bloom. Except for the damage to the park by tanks, and the troops under canvas in the woods, it would have been easy to forget the war, but as Victor pointed out, it was better than having the Germans there.
Halifax’s letters now contained the constant theme of his return. “It was nice to hear you speaking of the end of June, which is only a short way off,” he wrote at the end of May. “Do you remember our dripping walk together, back from Harold Nicolson’s odd tea party?” And on June 4, “We have just been having a large Fourth of June dinner here and I have slipped away from it on plea of work to write to you. One didn’t feel very much like a riotous 4 June dinner as you may guess with this Libyan fighting in full swing.*
“The Windsors have descended on us—really on Dorothy—for a night on Monday. They are very silly I think to keep on showing up here. Much wiser for them to give everybody ample time to forget. Goodnight my dearest Baba, I can’t tell you how I look forward to seeing you.”
Irene spent much of June traveling around Wales, Plymouth and Swansea, talking at meetings on behalf of the Anglican Church, speaking at a youth rally at the Congregational church in Pontypridd, and even giving sermons. She returned to London on June 13, saw Micky (“my loved one came up from St. Ronan’s with Nanny and had tea with me in Victor Cazalet’s sitting room he kindly lent us”) and went with Victor to an Allies Club reception. At Sibyl Colefax’s dinner the next day she met the usual literary and political figures—the novelist L. P. Hartley, the Gladwyn Jebbs, Roger Makins—and “a badly burned pilot, Hillary, who has written a much talked of book.”*
One June evening came an unsettling hint of more family trouble. Walter Monckton, who knew everything, ran into Irene in the hall of the Dorchester as she returned from an outing. He told her that he had had bad news of Fruity in Cairo—the actual words he used were “he’s up to no good.” For the moment, Irene kept this item of news to herself—in any event, all Baba’s attention was focused on the imminent arrival of the Halifaxes. They arrived by air on July 5, 1942, to be met by Baba, who spent the evening with them in their suite at the Dorchester, which only occasional other visitors were allowed to use.
Irene found it hard to stifle her envy of a sister who effortlessly had a central place in the affections of one of the most distinguished and influential men of the age. So when, ten days later, Victor Cazalet gave a big dinner for the Halifaxes, she was delighted to be seated in the place of honor between Halifax and Ed Morrow (“a position I fear coveted by Baba”). But when Baba began to talk of the coming weekend, which she was to spend with Victor Cazalet and Halifax, Irene was disturbed: as well as more unworthy feelings, she was genuinely worried about her sister’s reputation. “This going round with Edward H. I don’t like it.”
For the moment, the worry of Fruity put it out of her mind. In Cairo, it appeared that he was drinking too much; Halifax had heard that he often had to be carried home. Baba, who could not bear the thought of scandal, was anguished. With Irene, she discussed three possibilities: that he should be encouraged to return to some kind of life in London or nearby, warned in solemn terms by letter of the consequences of his excessive drinking—or left to suffer the consequences.
Never one to be borne along passively by the current of events, Baba acted decisively. She first sought the helpful advice of Fruity’s sister Muriel, after which she wrote a long letter of warning to Fruity. Then, feeling slightly sick at the speed of events, she took the plunge of sending the twins to boarding school before going to stay with the Halifaxes at Garrowby. Here she spent much of the time walking and going for long rides with Edward. “I feel more than ever dependent on him and he seems even fonder of me and is touching in his wish and longing to help,” records her diary on August 3. “But what can help: nothing! Irene rang up in the evening and broke my only thread of hope.”
Irene had telephoned because Louis Greig had told her that Fruity was being sent home to receive his dismissal from Sir Archibald Sinclair, the air minister. Baba left Garrowby at once. Back in London, she wrote to Sir Archibald, whom she knew, and as she informed Irene a few days later, “had a most odious conversation about Fruity with Louis G at Air Ministry.” Louis had been inadequate and offhand on the telephone: he had said, she reported, that from the first Fruity’s commanding officer had found him hopeless. Baba’s reaction was instantly to leap to the defense of her husband against what she described to Irene as “unjust attacks.”
Greig, aware that Baba had rejected everything he had said outright, came to see Irene at the Dorchester on August 11. To her he explained that Fruity had only been taken on in the Cairo job because of his, Louis’s, influence and that he could not help him anymore. Nor could Archie Sinclair, at the Air Ministry, interfere.
But for Baba all was not doom and gloom. One of her admirers, the American general Cliff H. Lee, in charge of all service supplies for the American army, told her that he could put in for Little Compton as a leave and rest center for American officers if it helped her. Baba agreed gratefully: this constant, well-paid supply of up to half a dozen presentable young officers at a time requiring accommodation meant that she could keep on not only her butler, cook and lady’s maid but also employ a parlor maid and housemaids—a staff almost unheard of in wartime.
A few days later came another boost to Baba’s morale. Jock Whitney, the rich and glamorous American she had contemplated marrying, arrived in England as intelligence officer to the Eagle Squadron.* Jock had recently remarried, but his wife, the former Betse
y Roosevelt, was in America so it was not long before Jock, too, was one of the men circling her.
Halifax, now back in Washington, gave Baba what comfort he could, as well as his usual avowal of undying affection. “It is not at all nice having to begin this writing business again,” he wrote on August 26. “It is a poor substitute for the other. And I long hungrily for the first of yours. One other thing, I want you to send a telegram when anything definite occurs about Fruity’s return or dates. I would like to be with you in thought at the time.”
At the beginning of September the duke of Kent, who had been another ardent admirer of Baba’s—so much so that marriage had been in the air—was killed in a plane crash in Scotland. “Your account of Marina [the duke of Kent’s wife] is very shattering,” wrote Halifax. “The bed business sounds like Queen Victoria and Albert. Poor woman. Is it really the fact that his head was cut off? Who told you that? And how do they know about the plane hitting, bouncing, etc.? Has the solitary survivor been able to tell them much? They will never know I suppose why they were there at all.”
Fruity arrived home at the end of September and Baba’s first action was to wire this news to the Halifaxes. Edward responded immediately, writing on October 10, 1942:
I can’t tell you, darling one, how great a relief your letter was saying the first 48 hours had at least gone off smoothly. The important thing you have got to do if things get difficult is to harden yourself against minding what is said from the other side, discounting it in advance, so that when and if it comes its hitting power is diminished.
And secondly, keep your own temper under very firm control. No one can work up a successful quarrel if the other party won’t play! You know, I think, my dearest, how much love surrounds you as a kind of moral armour plate protection and there is much more to be called into service as you need . . .
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 42
