The Viceroy's Daughters (33 page)

 

As usual, Irene spent the 1938 season lunching and dining. In August she took a series of “duty” holidays, one with the members of the seven social clubs for boys and girls that had started in different parts of London, a second with sixty-seven girls from the East End on the Isle of Wight, where they camped in tents pitched about a mile from the sea, a third in Switzerland with thirty-six of the older boys and girls. Tucked between the last two trips was a happy holiday at Lake Vyrnwy, in Wales, with Tom and his children.

After Tom's departure came another of the disturbing incidents that always seemed to follow in his wake. On August 24, Tom's old friend Mike Wardell telephoned, asking so urgently to speak to Tom that Irene gave him the Wootton number. Back at Denham two days later, she was greatly perturbed by Andrée telling her that the press had rung and rung again, asserting that Tom was, in fact, married. That weekend, staying with the recently appointed war minister Leslie Hore-Belisha at Warren Farm, she saw a story about Tom and his marriage in the Sunday newspaper
Reynolds News
. Leslie told her that it was alleged to have taken place months ago. What was the truth?

She soon forgot this latest rumor in the steadily worsening news from Europe. Tom appeared and disappeared just as suddenly, once arriving after midnight, when to enter the locked house he put a ladder against the wall and climbed in through Viv's window. The next day they were joined by Baba, back from Tunis with a sheaf of photographs. Irene felt too oppressed by the international situation to stay up chatting and went to bed early, leaving Tom and Baba, as usual, alone together.

The papers were full of the crisis over Czechoslovakia, with reports of the massing of German troops on the border. “Tom says Hitler never strikes when he makes so much song and dance about it. He does his great moves silently,” wrote Irene that night. “I pray he is right.”

On September 14 she drove down to Denham to find Nanny in a state of alarm because Tom had asked if Irene would be “reasonable” and allow the children to be rushed to Wootton in case of war. With reluctance, she and Lady Mosley agreed to think about it. She soothed herself by reading Mick a story, playing tennis, then bathing with the children in the river—“dirty and beastly and the men were cutting the weed. Nanny got back at 5:30 and we had tea.” None of this calmed her fears about the war.

Then, on the news on September 15, came the momentous announcement that the prime minister was flying to Germany to meet the führer. “I wanted to cry at the splendour of the gesture,” wrote Irene that night. Sunshine the next morning lifted her spirits and she went to pray in Westminster Abbey by the Unknown Warrior's tomb before waiting tensely for the six o'clock news. This included the prime minister's recorded remarks on his arrival back at Heston airfield. They were moving, Irene thought, “but I still feel that Hitler has not budged.”

The sight of Fruity looking gaunt and ill as he emerged from his house did nothing to cheer her. Like all those who knew them well, Irene was in no doubt that the Metcalfe marriage was on the point of collapse—and if there was a “crash” it would, she felt, be her sister's fault.

But the looming horror of war overrode all personal feeling. On September 26 she was writing: “How can the Czechs accept these outrageous demands by Oct 1? It seems the two visits of the PM were of no assistance or at any rate the last one as Hitler's demands simply stiffened.” The ten-thirty news was unhelpful, saying only that President Roosevelt had sent a long telegram to Hitler and the Czech president Eduard Beneˇs, begging for a peaceful solution.

As one of Victor Cazalet's friends wrote to him a few days later: “The depression was so terrible one could scarcely rise above it. We prayed and worked constantly . . . The inevitableness of it all—the look on people's faces of inescapable tragedy, everywhere people standing dead still scanning the newspapers, sandbags, ARP trenches, the Green Line buses swung with stretchers evacuating the hospitals, the tenseness, the grimness, the quiet orderliness with which all the preparations were carried out. It made me so proud to be English in my heart.”

At 10
a.m
. on September 28, with Hitler's public ultimatum to Czechoslovakia due to expire at 2
p.m
., the British ambassador to Berlin, Irene's former suitor Nevile Henderson, made a last-ditch telephone call to Göring (second only to Hitler in the Nazi hierarchy). At 11
a.m
., Mussolini telephoned Hitler—would he prolong the ultimatum by twenty-four hours?

That afternoon Hitler's dramatic message to Chamberlain to meet him, Mussolini and Daladier in Munich at 3
p.m
. the following day arrived at the House of Commons. Irene listened to the proceedings on the wireless. “What drama in the House—men crying and cheering when the PM ended his momentous utterance, ‘I need not say what my answer will be.' ”

Robert Bernays, arriving in London from Geneva, found the capital already like a city at war. “Laughter and even smiles have gone from it. We are like a people waiting for the Day of Judgment. Vast silent crowds are everywhere. It is horribly uncanny. Trenches are being dug in the Parks. Sandwichmen tell you where to get your gas masks. There is a dreadful notice in front of me saying: ‘You must not run. Turn left and follow the blue line.' ” Back in his own constituency, Bernays found that children were using their new gas masks to carry home the family fish and chips.

On September 29, in a last-ditch attempt to halt the tide of war, the hastily convened conference of the Four Powers took place in Munich at the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters, and after almost ten hours of talk, agreement was finally reached at 2:30
a.m
. on September 30.

Germany emerged the clear winner strategically, with the reacquisition of all her former Sudeten territories. These contained Czechoslovakia's most heavily armed frontier defenses, leaving that country virtually defenseless. The Munich Agreement had bought time—but sealed Czechoslovakia's fate.

In Britain, where so many had either fought through the horrors of the 1914–18 war or had sons or daughters of an age to suffer in a new one, there was an overwhelming sense of relief at a reprieve that might—just might—prove to be permanent.

With Viv, Irene drove down to Heston on October 1 to welcome the prime minister on his return from Munich. Unable to get into the airfield without tickets, they sat on the curb opposite the entrance from early afternoon, buying newspaper after newspaper to shield their heads from the rain. They watched hundreds of people arrive by car—reporters, Royal Air Force officers and their wives and, a few moments before the arrival of the prime minister's airplane, the cabinet ministers. Lining the drive were a number of boys from Eton.

At about 6:45
p.m
. the prime minister's plane was seen circling above. Irene and Viv were invited to listen to the radio in the car that had brought the boys from Eton. Though they did not see the premier famously waving the piece of paper on which the Munich Agreement was written, they heard him read out this pact of nonaggression, signed by both himself and Hitler. With the boys, they rushed to the drive as he came down it in a small car accompanied by Lord Halifax (who had arrived moments before Chamberlain's airplane touched down).

For Irene, it was a moving experience to be surrounded by the very schoolboys who might have been sacrificed in a long war. A rainbow on the way back to London seemed a symbol of hope. At home, changing for a party at the Astors, her first euphoria gave way to disillusionment. “I had felt all day that the Dictators had secured a triumph. That Hitler once again had fulfilled another page of Mein Kampf,” she wrote with an accuracy that escaped many.

Irene was not alone in her doubts. Duff Cooper, the first lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the government and Harold Nicolson made a speech bitterly condemning Britain's “capitulation,” saying that the Munich Agreement meant not peace but a respite for six months.
The Week
put it even more bluntly, saying that “Mr. Chamberlain had turned all four cheeks to Hitler.”

But life had to go on. Irene went to see a play by Bryan Guinness, former husband of the dreaded Diana (“though full of charming thoughts and poetic lines it was too static”), listened to a debate at the House of Commons, bought Elinor Glyn a sapphire paste powder box for her seventy-fourth birthday on October 17 and saw Baba, who she thought seemed close to a nervous breakdown over her marital unhappiness. Nevertheless, Baba appeared to have had an enjoyable dinner (without Fruity) with Lord Halifax and Nevile Henderson, listening to them discuss Germany and the crisis.

At Cliveden that weekend, Irene was pleased to learn from Alec Cadogan that Nevile Henderson was considered to have done his job well—but that Chamberlain's attitude was another matter. Cadogan told her that the prime minister had said to him after the preliminary meeting at Godesberg that he thought Hitler was absolutely sincere, which frightened him. “I always felt [this] would happen to the PM: that he would fall under that spell,” wrote Irene in her diary. “It confirmed what Nevile had felt at those last two meetings [prior to Munich].”

Both the Curzon sisters made plans to travel while this was still possible. Baba was taking her daughters to Switzerland and Irene herself sailed for America on the
Normandie
on November 5. In New York she saw friends—Condé Nast, Mrs. Kahn, Neily Vanderbilt—and spent mornings at Saks buying Christmas presents. On November 27, after being royally entertained, she left for Washington, to be greeted by the news that she and Baba had dreaded for so long.

In the last days of the month the news broke that not only was Tom married to Diana Guinness but that they now had a son (born on November 28). While the papers were full of allegations and denials, Irene waited apprehensively. Then, when she came home after dancing at the Waldorf with Douglas Fairbanks, she found a cable from Baba. “What we heard is true, will be published Thursday: birth of son Saturday. Children's position won't change.” She felt rather sick.

Back in London on December 22 she hurried at once to lunch with Lady Mosley, who was as appalled as Irene by Tom's secrecy and his method of breaking the news of his marriage. Both his older children had learned it from the press, as had Baba, still at that time his mistress, and all three were devastated by the deception.

“Sweet Nick had noticed Mrs. Guinness's huge size at Wootton in August,” wrote Irene, “and gallantly had never breathed to a soul though agonised at the situation. Oh! why did Tom not tell us all at Lake Vyrnwy. And poor Ma with the child born on a Saturday—Tom only came in to see her on the Monday when the Press started suggestions! She looks a liar to all the BUF who will never believe she did not know. She said Baba had been like a raving lunatic.”

Baba, who had read the news in the train on a brief visit to Paris, was so shattered that she took refuge in Gstaad. A sense of being thoroughly and humiliatingly duped must have been intolerable to someone as conscious of her own dignity as Baba. Her mortification was such that she even omitted the conventional courtesies—she did not write a formal note of congratulation on Tom's marriage or on the birth of his baby.

Irene, by contrast, and for the sake of his children, made the best of this fait accompli. She felt a little happier when Zita James, one of Cim's great friends, called on her. “Of all amazing things she [Zita] feels this marriage of Tom's and the child may relegate Cim's children more and more to me. Pray God it is so.”

28

Fruity Speaks His Mind

The shock suffered by Mosley's children on learning that their father had secretly married the woman so disliked by their aunts brought out the best in Irene. There was no criticism, no repining. She encouraged Vivien's natural loyalty to her father, listening to the girl she thought of as a daughter explain, in words she must have heard from her father, how inevitable the marriage was. Diana had given up so much for Tom, said Vivien, and her services were so necessary to him—“besides, she adores him.” Viv was showing great sensitivity and unselfishness, thought Irene. It must have been worse for Nick, surrounded by everyone at school. When Tom arrived at Denham, dinner passed smoothly as Irene chatted about her recent U.S. trip; afterward, she took advantage of the moment to discuss Vivien's debut—Vivien wanted to “do” the season thoroughly, from presentation at court to coming-out ball.

After the Mosley children had gone to bed, it was impossible to avoid the subject of Tom's marriage to Diana any longer. Irene told Tom that all she wished to say was that the loyalty of his children after the cruel shock they had received was amazing and he must never betray it. Tom took this well-deserved reproof calmly and went on to talk about Denham. He had never wanted Diana to “butt in” there, he said; he simply wanted everything to go on as before. “I think he feels ashamed how it all came out and took place,” she wrote that night. “I definitely know God kept me in the USA away from Baba so I could come back calmly and talk it all out with Tom and get matters settled whilst she is out of the country.”

Tom was grateful for Irene's rational approach, as his mother told Irene when she arrived at Denham on Christmas Eve. Tom himself only arrived after lunch, in time to do his Father Christmas act and join in the Christmas tea and carol-singing.

Against all the odds, she felt that their Christmas had been a happy one—she had never known Tom so amenable, or so sweet to the children, or so sensible in planning for the future. He even agreed to relinquish Cim's bedroom to Viv, who longed to have it as her own.

When the meeting with Diana took place, on December 27, 1938, Irene was psychologically prepared to meet her brother-in-law's new family. Her first impressions were not of Diana's beauty but of the affectedness of her voice: the Mitford drawl, with its up-and-down inflections, prolonged vowels (“orfficer” and “lorst”) and idiosyncratic “exclamations” was at its most pronounced when Diana was nervous. Irene was surprised that Diana called Tom “Kit” (Diana had done this almost from the start, because her brother was called Tom) and how bad the tea was (“just bits of bread and butter and a tiny Xmas cake”) for what was after all an important meeting. But they chatted easily about Wootton, Diana's new chef, shooting and, of course, the baby.

As always, Irene's heart was softened by the sight of a child. Alexander, she thought, looked big and strong for his age, more like a baby of nine weeks than one just over a month old. When Diana's mother, Lady Redesdale, joined them later the surreal aspect of the encounter struck her forcibly. “How that battered washed-out woman could have produced those six hooligan girls I do not know,” wrote Irene. “What a curious picture of Tom—wife, baby, mother-in-law and monthly nurse, very domestic but somehow not fitting.”

Irene and Nick both thought the meeting had gone well; buoyed up, Irene wrote to Baba in Gstaad, exhorting her to put her own feelings behind her and accept the situation. She read the letter to Lady Mosley and, at midnight, had a long and satisfactory talk with Nanny, who told her how Micky, now almost seven, had reacted. When he read the announcement in the evening paper he said, “This must be some rot or else Daddy would have told US.” When Nanny explained that it was in fact true he said philosophically: “Well, I am no longer his youngest son.”

A moment later he asked what he should call his father's new wife. If he addressed her as Lady Mosley, they would think it was Granny, if Diana, it would be too like friends of his own age, and she couldn't be Mummy because she was not his mother. Nanny also told Irene of a revealing incident. Micky, already in bed when Tom called at Denham for dinner on his way to Wootton one evening, was told by Nanny Hyslop to call out a greeting to his father but refused, saying it would be an embarrassment as he had only seen him about four times in his life.

Having discussed with her solicitors Tom's proposal to ask the court for fifteen hundred pounds a year more and to request a further sum to pay for Viv's coming-out expenses, Irene returned to America early in 1939, accompanied by the future Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk, who was an old friend. Both were desperately worried at the threat to Poland's three million Jews and were to discuss the question of emigration. Before leaving she put a notice in the papers to say that she would be bringing out her niece, Miss Vivien Mosley, from 10 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park.

With family plans settled, Irene seized the opportunity to enjoy what she felt might be a last season's hunting. It was brought to an abrupt end when her horse came down with her on slippery mud after jumping a post and rolled on her, breaking her collarbone and four ribs. When found by one of the field staff she was hanging head down and unconscious from the saddle—fortunately her horse was standing still or she would have been badly dragged and possibly killed. By January 14 she was back in Cornwall Terrace, bruised all over and suffering pain from her broken ribs, but delighted to be home.

In Switzerland the unhappy atmosphere between the Metcalfes was more noticeable than ever. “Fruity with us grumbling endlessly about his life and Baba's unkindness to him,” wrote Georgia Sitwell early in January. “Tea with Metcalfes in their villa, which is absurdly small—poor Fruity.” “Sach, Reresby and I drove in sleigh to see ski jumping. Very exciting. Talked about Metcalfes, of course.” And again on January 10: “Fruity came down and talked sadly for ages.”

Baba's return in mid-January brought the inevitable family disruptions, as she now immersed herself in the business of Vivien's coming out, disputing everything from the financial aspects to Viv's clothes, which, she said, were not “right”—a judgment that caused the eighteen-year-old Vivien much anxiety. Even Georgia Sitwell, fond though she was of Baba, commented, “She is spoilt, irritatingly self-assured and bossy,” though she added, “but not intentionally.” The fact that Irene was conscious that Baba's taste was far superior to hers did not help matters. However, she was soon in command of the field again as Baba went off on a trip to Tunisia with the Sitwells (“I resent being treated as Baba's lady-in-waiting,” wrote Georgia crossly, though when Baba actually arrived, on February 15, all was forgiven).

The “small” dance for 150 which Irene gave for her niece on February 10 (there would be a big ball in the season proper) came off well. Viv looked superb in a dress of oyster-gray satin, its short jacket embroidered with red; Gracie Curzon wore black velvet and Irene, supervising from a wheelchair, was resplendent in rubies. The second-floor ballroom at Cornwall Terrace was decorated with white tulips and white irises; there was supper in the Chinese room on the ground floor and a bridge room for the chaperones at the top of the house. The party ended at 2:30
a.m
., with a wild race by the young men and girls from room to room, leaping over sofas and chairs. Two days later, the effort caught up with Irene: her right lung collapsed and two pints of fluid had to be drained from it.

It was back to bed, nurses and doctors again. Tom visited her, spending an hour discussing the international situation. “He said the Italians were very inflammable and might ask for a lot but that Musso could not stand a war and it depended if Hitler could control him,” wrote Irene. Tom also told her that he found Hess the supreme party technician, that Diana was greatly impressed by Himmler but that they all hated Streicher—and that what Hitler enjoyed about Goebbels was his wit. Since Diana had been visiting Germany regularly, and had numerous tête-à-têtes with the German leader, this obviously came straight from the führer himself.

A few days later Irene was visited by Nevile Henderson, recovered from an operation for cancer of the tongue and preparing to return to Berlin. The reason Chamberlain was so insistent that Britain would always come to the aid of France, he thought, was partly to frighten Mussolini, whose alignment with the Nazi regime was becoming ever clearer. Grandi was summoned to Rome for a few days at the end of March to be told he had lost touch with Italy and fascism, and reproved for not wearing the new fascist uniform designed by Il Duce himself.

Irene's injuries took a long time to heal. She was too ill to go to Melton to present the bouquets to the principals in
The Student Prince
(she was still president of the Melton Operatic Society) and by the end of February she knew she should give up any thought of hunting that year—and possibly forever.

Another visit from Nevile Henderson, soon after the invasion of Czechoslovakia on March 16, 1939, seemed to confirm her fears of war. “He was sad, disillusioned and could see no daylight. He definitely felt the out-and-out lefters, Goebbels, Streicher and Himmler, had rushed Hitler into this,” wrote Irene that night. “Though he realises all about honour, obligation, etc, he is very chary of having several million Englishmen killed for Rumanians, Slavs etc, to resist wars of different nations who could be run over by Hitler in a few hours—long before we could gather strength.”

The visit of the French president in March duly emphasized Franco-British solidarity. Robert Bernays, attending the gala performance of an opera in cocked hat and ministerial uniform in the place of Walter Elliot, wrote of one of the last diplomatic flourishes of peacetime: “It was like pre-War Vienna. The incomparable Opera House was blazing with uniforms and tiaras. There were rows of scarlet-breeched footmen on the grand staircase and the loveliest women in England.”

The bickering over who would “run” Viv's season continued. Baba was determined to have the final word, saying that she knew best—an unkind dig—through having children of her own. Irene comforted herself, and gathered her strength for the forthcoming season, with her usual remedy: a cruise, visiting Greece, Istanbul and Italy.

Shortly after her return at the end of April she went down to Denham, to find a dozen fascist drummers, young women who traipsed up and down in the pelting rain, rehearsing for forthcoming marches, while their clothes got soaked and their high heels sank in the mud. The drums were a mild irritation compared with what came next: a request from Tom that Diana and their new baby should spend the month of July at Denham. Irene took advice from Andrée and Nanny before finally deciding that Cim would have probably wished this, if only to ensure Tom's continuing good relations with his two elder children.

With the start of the season and her niece's debut, Irene's life was packed, her days full of dressmaker fittings and luncheons as well as a succession of committee meetings and concerts. In the evenings were the parties: Queen Charlotte's Ball on May 17, where each girl was presented with a red satin heart on a ribbon and a bottle of scent, Sibyl Colefax's party for the American novelist Thornton Wilder, her own supper party, with the band of the Four Hundred, attended by many of her old beaux like Bobby Digby and Miles Graham.

On June 8 came the event for which Irene had been planning for months: Vivien's ball. At ten-thirty the guests began to swarm into the flower-bedecked rooms. Baba arrived on her own, as Fruity was having a hernia operation. The duke of Kent arrived at twelve-fifteen and after one dance with his hostess settled down to discuss with her first Baba and Fruity, then Tom and Diana, and finally the king's speech versus that of the duke of Windsor. The ball ended at 4
a.m
. “Baba, Viv and I came home in her car, jubilant and happy at the glorious success of the party.”

The social events seemed more numerous than ever as the last season of peace unrolled. Irene took her niece to Paris for another round of parties: racing with Sir Charles Mendl at Longchamps and a huge ball given by the immensely rich Daisy Fellowes. There the duke of Windsor came to talk to her. “He chatted a lot about Fruity and said he would never get a job because he would not be serious and concentrate on anything,” wrote Irene, apparently oblivious of the fact that exactly the same charges could be leveled at the duke.

Back in London, the season wound to its frenetic climax. There was a dance at Londonderry House, its Rembrandts, Raeburns and Gainsboroughs looking serenely on as the debutantes shook their hips to the latest craze, the Big Apple; a ball at Sutton Place, floodlit for the occasion; a weekend at Walmer Castle in Kent; the Henley Regatta; Mrs. Clifton Brown's ball in Eaton Square; the Cubitt ball at Holland House, where the pile-up of guests' cars in Kensington High Street was such that Irene and Viv walked the final mile through drizzle, clutching their trains and tiaras.

The ball at Blenheim a few days later was so wonderful that Irene was thankful Viv had come out that year—perhaps the last time that anyone would see such a spectacle. Guests danced in the huge library, with its organ at one end; the floodlighting, which could be seen for miles, turned the facade of the palace a glowing amber, illumined the cedars, the stone water garden with its two Cleopatra's Needles, the borders of rambling roses and the lake faintly gleaming through a pearly mist. Small supper tables were set on the flagged terrace, where chefs grilled food to order and any chill was dispersed by two large braziers; inside, there were powdered footmen in red velvet, the beautiful duchess of Kent surrounded by a mass of young men, and supper in the Painted Room.

Four days later Viv was presented. As only married women (who had themselves been presented) could in turn present a debutante, this had to be done by Baba, to Irene's frustration. The pair set off at 7
p.m
., equipped with sandwiches, brandy and smelling salts and, for Baba, elegant as ever in gray organza and aquamarines, her Red Cross examination books, so that Vivien could question her during the long wait in the Mall. With the threat of war increasing daily Baba, with her usual thoroughness and efficiency, was training to be a nurse.