The Mountbattens

by Andrew Lownie

  At the beginning of September 1928, Edwina left for New York escorted by Peter Murphy. Ostensibly she was staying with Grace Vanderbilt on Fifth Avenue and in Newport. Certainly, that’s what Dickie thought. ‘Edwina has written me the sweetest letter of our life & honestly, Mama dear, I can’t see what there is to worry about,’ he wrote to his mother. ‘Almost as soon as she arrived in New York, she went on with the Vanderbilts to Newport, which she would hardly have done if Laddie meant very much to her. Anyway I couldn’t be happier.’138

  It was not Laddie she was seeing but Sophie Tucker, a Ukrainian-born American singer, comedian, actress, and radio personality, nicknamed ‘The Last of the Red Hot Mamas’, known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs. Tucker, who performed with the Ziegfeld Follies, had been a fellow passenger on the Berengaria in August 1924 on a previous trip to the States, and Edwina had recently heard her sing at the Kit Kat Club and Alhambra in London. The plan was that Tucker, who ran her own club, Sophie Tucker’s Playground, would act as Edwina’s escort around the clubs of Harlem, Tin Pan Alley and Greenwich Village. There were even intimations in the press that they were sharing an interconnecting hotel suite.

  Peter Murphy was quick to correct the story, telling the New York Mirror, ‘Lady Mountbatten did not come to the United States with Miss Tucker. She met her on the boat by chance. Miss Tucker has greatly exaggerated her friendly relationship with Lady Mountbatten. She has overdone it. There is nothing more to say.’139 It was not a story the press believed. The caption of the two photographed onboard ship read:

  ‘Just chanced to meet.’ Rah-lly folks, this was only a chawnce [sic] meeting on shipboard between Sophie Tucker (right) and Lady Mountbatten. Enterprising photographer got them to pose together for this picture but – as for Lady Louis going into a nightclub to be opened by Sophie, why the very idea!140

  ‘She took me up in London society,’ explained Sophie to a local paper, ‘and I was the pet of the mob.’141 As she was to learn, the Mountbattens could be ruthless about people they felt might be using or embarrassing them.

  Tucker had shown Edwina the night spots of New York and, in particular, Harlem. Edwina, since her trip to India in 1921, had found herself drawn to people of colour. This was not simply because she delighted in confounding prejudice or because, with her Jewish blood, she was sympathetic to the outsider and the oppressed – though that was part of it – but because she found darker skins, whether dusky Indian or jet black African, attractive. She liked black art and music, especially negro spirituals, soul, blues and jazz, and she enjoyed the easy banter and lack of deference of black people. This American visit was to mark her increasing involvement with people across the colour bar.

  After two weeks in New York, Edwina joined Laddie on Long Island, where she discovered she might again be pregnant. She saw a doctor, who was guarded, and told Laddie. He now forced the matter to a head, asking her to choose between him and Dickie.

  CHAPTER 7

  Divergent Paths

  Overnight Edwina made her decision, told her maid to pack and returned to London. Back not to Malta, but to a further series of tests to see if she had had a miscarriage, had merely suffered some obstetric problem, or was indeed pregnant. The answer came quickly. Her second child was due in May.

  There was, however, time for one more adventure. Dickie’s posting came to an end in June and they would be leaving Malta. When he left in mid-March for the Mediterranean and Atlantic Fleet’s combined manoeuvres, she packed up Casa Medina and, having said goodbye to Patricia, not for the first time, motored with Ainsworth the chauffeur and her maid Harding in the Hispano to Algeciras, where Dickie, Georgie and three naval friends, Teddy Heywood-Lonsdale, Tom Hussey and Charles Lambe were waiting.

  Over a few days’ leave they explored Morocco, where they were received by the Sultan, before chartering a tug to make the five-hour crossing to Gibraltar. As the Fleet sailed, Edwina, eight months pregnant, and Ainsworth took it in turns to drive the 165 miles over rough roads to Ronda and on through the mountains to Malaga, where they caught a train to Madrid and then Barcelona to rendezvous with Dickie at the Ritz.

  On 19 April, shortly after she arrived, Edwina suddenly went into labour. She was five weeks early, a shock to Dickie, who was a stickler for correct timekeeping. The child was named Pamela Carmen (after a close friend, the Duchess of Peneranda) Louise (after Dickie’s younger sister). Writing to his mother shortly afterwards, Dickie explained, ‘She came to within 5 minutes & asked for me & her first words were “I’m so sorry it isn’t a boy” and though at any other time I should have been disappointed I was so truly thankful all was well that I could tell her in real truthfulness that I didn’t care what the baby was so long as they were both well.’142

  It had not been an easy birth, but it had helped bring the couple together. ‘I think it takes sometimes a crisis like this to make one realise just how much one cares for a person,’ wrote Edwina to her husband. ‘I don’t think there can be anything seriously wrong if we feel like I think we both did, during this last week.’143

  Whilst Dickie remained in Malta, Edwina returned to London, where her health continued to be uncertain. In June 1929, she spent three weeks being treated at a spa in Normandy, where Dickie joined her. They also took the opportunity of looking, as Dickie wrote to his mother,

  at a rather nice looking tiny flat Edwina is thinking of taking under the enormous impression that it will be cheaper than always stopping at the Ritz. Actually I do not think this will be the case but as she goes to Paris for 3 or 4 days quite 8 or 9 times a year it will be much more comfortable for her & enable her to do her shopping without perpetually having to dine out.144

  But further troubles lay ahead. The following month, the High Court heard a petition for divorce from Marjorie Hall Simpson against Henry Anthony Simpson, naming Lady Edwina Mountbatten as the co-respondent and alleging that he had ‘frequently committed adultery with Edwina Cynthia Annette, Lady Louis Mountbatten’, including in October 1926 at Brook House and December 1928 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.145

  Tony Simpson was a naval colleague and friend of Dickie’s in Malta. Awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1917, he was a lieutenant commander serving as a naval aviator. It was simply blackmail, as Simpson had not lived with his wife for some time and she was, in any case, having an affair with an Italian aviator, Colonel Luigino Falchi. Eventually, again through Charles Russell, Simpson’s wife was paid off – Beaverbrook and Marjorie Brecknock acted as intermediaries – and in November the petition was dismissed: but it had cost Edwina £13,000 with the legal expenses. Simpson was embarrassed and offered to pay back the Mountbattens, but for Dickie the money was immaterial. It was the scandal which counted, and Edwina seemed unconcerned about that.146

  In the summer of 1929, Dickie was posted to Portsmouth as the Signal School’s chief wireless instructor, where he showed himself to be a natural and conscientious teacher, able to convey complex ideas in a straightforward manner.147 He updated the curriculum, created a single definitive instruction manual from a series of previous handbooks in loose-leaf form so it could be updated with clearer electrical diagrams, introduced sub-focal flashing lamps to speed up Morse transmission, and typewriter keyboards to complete the mechanisation of semaphore signalling. When the Admiralty claimed coloured illustrations were unnecessary and expensive, Dickie bought a colour-printer and produced his own.

  ‘He had a marvellous way of clearly explaining things on this somewhat complex subject and he took the greatest possible trouble,’ remembered one of his students. ‘He also made it amusing and fun, which was a great thing in a course which was a hard grind for the students.’148 It was a view shared by the captain of the signals school: ‘Full of ideas, most of which are excellent . . . He has a great future in the service.’149

  * * *

  In August 1929, Edwina was again off on her travels. Beaverbrook had taken a shine to her, paying for a stay in Paris and including h
er in his fiftieth birthday party in May, when he had given his five principal female guests – Sheila Milbanke, Venetia Montague, Diana Cooper, Jean Norton and Edwina, £100 – some £6,000 in present value. Now he invited her to join him on the Arcadian for a Baltic cruise. The party included Jean Norton, Arnold Bennett, Venetia Montague and Mike Wardell. It was the first passenger ship to visit Russia since the Revolution and the Russian government did all they could to create a warm welcome. The party saw the Winter Palace in Leningrad and met the politician Maxim Litvinov, whose wife, Ivy, noticed Beaverbrook ‘purring around’ Edwina.150

  In February 1930, Edwina sailed to New York with Marjorie and her husband Brecky, criss-crossing the country via Chicago to California and Mexico to New Orleans and Florida.151 She now had two new film-star admirers, Ronald Colman and a good-looking friend of Douglas Fairbanks, called Larry Gray. Gray was then at the height of his career as one of Hollywood’s leading men, playing opposite Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, Marion Davies and Norma Shearer, and it was he, rather than Colman, who captured Edwina’s heart and accompanied her when she stayed with Randolph Hearst – whose mistress was Marion Davies – at his fantasy home, San Simeon. ‘Italian villas, French chateaux and Greek Temples all thrown into one,’ as Edwina told Dickie.152

  She returned to Britain in April energised by the stimulus of a new country and social circle, but it had all been too much. Dining one night with Laddie at Brook House, she collapsed and started haemorrhaging. Her consultant concluded she had a severe internal infection, that there was a risk of septicaemia and that, without an operation, she might die. Dickie raced up to see her – but she refused to see him.

  Septicaemia was avoided, but neuralgia and pernicious anaemia were diagnosed. After three weeks in bed, the Royal Family’s doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn, was summoned but he ‘talked a lot of nonsense’, Edwina decided. ‘So I took matters into my own hands and sent to Paris for a doctor.’153 The French doctor gave her a transfusion and prescribed a diet of raw liver to cleanse her blood. After another month in bed with electrical treatment, ray therapy and massage, she was able to manage some public appearances – but it was not until Christmas 1930 that she was fully recovered.

  Dissatisfied with her family life, Edwina continued to crave new experiences and excitements – but social life no longer held the same attraction. Now partly in search of winter sun and partly in a spirit of adventure and inquiry – she had become interested in archaeology – in January 1931 she joined Marjorie, the Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Mary Grosvenor on a cruise to the West Indies. In Havana, the party joined up with Geordie Sutherland and Larry Gray, but it was another member of the group, the handsome Spanish-speaking Ted Phillips, six years Edwina’s junior, who caught her eye and replaced Larry in her affections. In the photos taken in Mexico City, Ted sits with one arm around Edwina, whilst Larry has been relegated to sit at her feet.

  From Mexico City they moved on to the Yucatán Peninsula, studying Mayan art and civilisation, and Guatemala and Honduras. They visited Indian villages, archaeological sites, pyramids, temples and floating gardens. From there she returned to New York via California, where she saw Laddie. ‘Lunched in town with Larry very late having driven in with Ted at 90 miles an hour and been arrested on the way . . . Laddie came for dinner . . . to the Cotton Club and only got to bed very late.’154 Edwina’s behaviour on their travels had shocked the Brecknocks and Brecky felt he had to write to Dickie. Back in London, Mountbatten pondered what to do, had a ‘long and vital heart to heart’ with Peter Murphy, and wrote in his diary: ‘Worst night since Papa died.’155

  There was worse to come. One of Edwina’s stops had been Cuernavaca, a resort south of Mexico City, which allowed divorcing couples to speed up the qualifying period of separation, and the newspapers had jumped to their own conclusions. For months, papers had been hinting that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford would separate, with Edwina as the other woman. Now they declared Edwina was seeking to divorce Dickie. ‘Heart to heart afternoon,’ Dickie wrote in his diary after greeting Edwina on her return, but she did not want to face up to the reality of her marriage.156 After cocktails with Peter, Brecky and Mike Wardell, she left to spend the evening with Laddie. The following nights were spent with Laddie at Ciro’s and Hugh at the Embassy. Then she left for Paris.

  Dickie had finally had enough of her infidelities and his humiliation. After taking advice from his mother, Peter Murphy, Teddy Heywood-Lonsdale and Jean, he decided to confront Edwina. As she sat weeping in the bath, she told him that she accepted they had to part. Dickie had finally stood up to her and discovered, as he told her, ‘you had lost that devastating ability to frighten me which only resulted in my being meek or rude.’157 He agreed to leave the next morning. Later that night, she made an excuse to come to his bedroom and return a book.

  The marriage had been saved.

  That weekend at Adsdean, they discussed the past and their future together. ‘I offer you all my sympathetic understanding about Laddie, and will really . . . try,’ Dickie told her, adding that he had been ‘the cause of pretty well all the unhappiness I have known.’158 In future he asserted that Laddie would no longer be welcome at Adsdean or Brook House. ‘I suppose my affairs with Hugh and Laddie were what you would call serious,’ she confessed, ‘but as they never in any way altered my affection and respect for you I don’t myself think of them as such.’159

  In early June, Dickie tried to map out the future. ‘I want you to be as great a friend to me as I am to you, easy going and with no secrets,’ adding the most interesting person he knew was ‘the lovely Edwina Mountbatten . . . I find her quite different to the Edwina Ashley I knew, the girl I idealised for 9 years: but I find her far more fun, far more sweet and can understand why all the world loves her.’160 Edwina was moved:

  No one could have been sweeter or more tolerant of me than you during the last years and you’ll never know how much your devotion and long sufferingness have meant to me. Now that we understand each other better and are such true friends I feel sure things will be so much easier and I feel so much happier about everything. I do too feel you’re my best friend in all the world and a good deal more.161

  They came to an arrangement. She would support him in his career and he would recognise her need for emotional and physical fulfilment elsewhere, as long as she was discreet. They would stay together, but in an open marriage. Edwina’s infidelity and accusations of failure had deeply upset Dickie, but the unhappiness in his private life had at least one consequence – to spur on his ambitions in public life.

  CHAPTER 8

  A Terrible Scandal

  In August 1931, Dickie returned to Malta as Fleet Wireless Officer, against the backdrop of the deepening sterling crisis and formation of Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government. On 15 September, sailors of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon mutinied in protest against cuts in pay, but the Mediterranean Fleet had already commenced its autumn cruise, making communication between ships more difficult.

  Dickie, responsible for monitoring communications and any sign of unrest, was later to claim that he had prevented the Mediterranean Fleet following suit by stopping all communications and warning Sir Ernle Chatfield, the C-in-C’s chief of staff, of murmurings of discontent; but if true, Chatfield made no reference to it in his memoirs and it looks like the myth-making to which Dickie was increasingly prone in old age.

  As the fleet wireless officer, Dickie was responsible for radio communications throughout the 70 ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. Based either aboard the Fleet’s flagship or in the Castille on Malta, he set up a sophisticated communications centre, which allowed all wireless communications of the Fleet to be monitored and analysed, and created a system whereby all ships were able to acknowledge receipt of a message within a minute. He recognised that efficient communications remained essential to any naval operation and that in signals intelligence, wireless discipline was essential in evading detection, and to coordinating a large strike f
orce.

  He improved training, insisted that ships were constantly tested in decoding and that pay was improved. Above all, he fostered a strong esprit de corps and personal loyalty amongst his telegraphists, whom he regarded as the unsung heroes aboard ship. He made a point of visiting every ship in the Fleet – uniquely in his own private motorboat – and for each ship and individual he kept a card of successes and failures, encouraging competitiveness through a series of competitions. At weekends, he would take groups of midshipmen out on his boat to swim and generally relax.

  One of his stunts was to ensure all 70 ships were able to hear King George V’s first address to the nation on Christmas Day 1932. It encouraged him to press for all the silent-film projectors in the Fleet to be converted into sound projectors, so that they could show sound films, designing a loudspeaker system himself that was cheaper and therefore financially possible.

  Another was a demonstration staged over several days to every officer based in Malta on the importance of wireless communications. Linking the high-powered transmitters from the naval station in Rinella and the receivers on the roof of the Castile to the lecture room, the lecture culminated in a simulated Fleet action with the messages distributed to the audience as they might be to the Admiral’s staff on a flagship. There was even an officer on an imitation destroyer bridge, who added to the excitement by receiving orders from the captain and relaying them to an imaginary flotilla of destroyers. This was Dickie in his role of showman, a role he was to play many times over in his career.

  Whilst Dickie settled into his new job, Edwina remained in London. Now that Dickie was prepared to turn a blind eye to her lovers, they did not hold the same attraction. She broke off the relationship with Hugh, and Laddie returned to America. But soon there was a new man in her life. Bobby Sweeney was ten years younger, a six-foot-three American Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, who had just been selected with his brother Charles to play golf for the university – he would win the 1937 Amateur championship. With his easy charm, movie-star looks and wealth – he divided his time between homes in London, Palm Beach and Long Island – he was an important catch.162