by Richard Mead
Boy replied robustly. He was adamant that he would have given the same order if he had his time again and was good enough not to say that Gavin had entirely agreed with him, placing any blame on himself, Montgomery and Dempsey. Not surprisingly Prior-Palmer reported; ‘This has filled Jim Gavin with great delight and he has born down heavily on the civilian historians as a result.’13 Boy finished the letter with the words ‘Give Jim my love and I hope he likes working at an office desk!’,14 making it abundantly clear that the somewhat difficult relationship of the early part of the War was now a distant memory.
The historians’ views were an irritant, but they were no more than that. Other aspects of Boy’s life, however, were before long to cause much more serious distress.
Chapter 29
Breakdown (1956–1959)
In the autumn of 1956 the Duke set out in Britannia on a long tour of the Commonwealth, which included his visit to the Melbourne Olympic Games. He took Parker with him, leaving Boy behind at the Palace to handle his affairs. In February 1957, as Britannia was approaching Gibraltar on one of the last legs of the journey, the news broke that Parker’s wife, Eileen, was suing him for divorce. At the time, the attitude towards divorce in the higher echelons of British society was almost invariably censorious, and divorce suits among those in public positions aroused considerable and occasionally sensational interest in the Press. Parker returned immediately to England, where he was told in no uncertain terms that the Palace establishment would not be standing behind him. He felt that he had no alternative but to resign, a considerable blow to the Duke, who had relied on him not only to perform his various duties, but also to act as a congenial companion and loyal confidant. He had been instrumental in bringing into the Palace what the Duke had described as ‘the fresh air of the Naval Service’ and he and Boy had together made a powerful team.
Parker’s successor was Jim Orr, who had been Guardian (Head Boy) at Gordonstoun in the early part of the Duke’s career at the school. They had renewed their acquaintance when Britannia docked at Mombasa, where Orr was serving in the Kenya Police. He had confided in the Duke that he was unhappy in his job and was thus delighted to receive a letter some months later inviting him to become the new Private Secretary. There was never the same familiarity between Orr and the Duke that the latter had enjoyed with Parker, but he was an effective and popular member of the team and he and Boy developed a warm relationship during the relatively short time that they worked together.
Orr had barely had a chance to get settled in before there was another upset to the Duke’s Household and this time it involved Boy. Early in July 1957, shortly before he and Daphne were to have celebrated their Silver Wedding, he collapsed and was admitted to a clinic just off Harley Street. Daphne, summoned to London, was horrified by the state in which she found him, careworn, terribly thin and distressed to the point of tears. It was abundantly clear that he was suffering from a severe nervous breakdown.
The seeds of Boy’s condition had been sown many years before, possibly as far back as the Great War. He had suffered from nightmares ever since, which were possibly compounded by his experiences in Holland in 1944. There were other causes, however, both physical and mental. He was as inclined as ever to work far too hard. This had been part of his nature ever since he had joined the Army and had led to the spell of nervous exhaustion in the late 1920s which had ruined his chances of attending Staff College. Although he had complained of fatigue at various points in his later career, notably at SEAC, he remained temperamentally incapable of slowing down, even if it meant burning himself out. This had finally happened.
Secondly there was his drinking habit. Whilst he was not an alcoholic, for many years he had consumed more than was good for him, just as his father had done, and this almost certainly contributed to his occasional bouts of depression and to his tiredness over the recent years. There was also growing evidence of damage to his liver. He had recognized his alcohol intake as a potential problem when he was in Singapore, but had shrugged it off at the time. After the War he had if anything stepped up his consumption, his preferred tipple being gin either with lime juice or as a very dry Martini, although he also enjoyed whisky.
However it was something more emotional than physical which had tipped him over the edge. It emerged that Boy had been leading a double life – not the public one in London of which Daphne was well aware, but another which was a complete secret. Boy had always been attractive to and enjoyed the company of women, but he had been faithful to Daphne during the War and for some years thereafter. More recently, possibly because the physical relationship had disappeared from their marriage, he had been diverted elsewhere. One manifestation of this was his attachment to a young girl who worked in a shop in Fowey, whom he used to take sailing with him. She was known in the family as ‘Sixpence’, derived from one of the du Maurier codewords, ‘Shilling’, which meant anything worthless or disappointing. There is no evidence that the liaison with ‘Sixpence’ was much more than a long drawn out flirtation, but he was clearly flattered by the attention. Daphne, for her part, mocked the relationship to his face but was deeply hurt about it, believing herself to be in some way responsible. Whilst she had written herself into Rebecca twenty years earlier as the second Mrs de Winter, with Jan Ricardo as the eponymous first wife, she now wondered if it was she who was really Rebecca, whilst Sixpence was the nameless heroine of the book.
Until Boy’s breakdown however, Daphne was totally unaware of another affair, a real one this time which was taking place simultaneously in London, involving a woman whom Boy had met as a result of his connections with the ballet. Just after Daphne returned from the clinic to Whitelands House, this woman, subsequently codenamed ‘Covent Garden’, called on the telephone to reveal all. As if this was not bad enough, there was actually a second woman, of whose existence and identity Daphne never became aware. The relationship in this case had come about through Boy’s Palace connections, was totally concealed from view and only ever became known to a very small number of people.
It was little wonder then that Boy, in addition to his purely physical problems, was suffering from deep feelings of guilt at the deception he was practising on his wife, whom he still continued to love. The accumulation of all these tribulations led almost inevitably to the breakdown.
Boy was placed under the care of Lord Evans, the Queen’s Physician.1 The symptoms diagnosed by Evans were both physical and emotional, the former evidenced by some problems with Boy’s circulation and by a hardening of the liver. Drugs were prescribed to thin his blood and he was strongly advised to stop drinking. The psychological aspects of the case were much more difficult to address and the immediate treatment was brutal by modern standards, involving the administering of electric shocks. Boy described it later as torture and it is highly questionable whether it had any benefit to the patient, indeed it may have retarded his recovery.
Daphne immediately enrolled the assistance of Maureen and her husband since 1955, Monty Baker-Munton, whom Daphne had liked at first sight and had already grown to trust implicitly. They were asked to keep Boy company as much as possible, while Daphne returned to Cornwall to cancel the Silver Wedding celebrations and to prepare for his convalescence. Maureen sat by his bed every day, although at the beginning he was in such a bad state that he did not recognize her. The immediate family was told the full circumstances of the breakdown, but the story otherwise put out was that Boy was suffering from mild nervous exhaustion. The timing from the perspective of the Palace could have been worse, as the Royal Family was about to decamp for its long annual holiday in Balmoral, during which engagements would be fewer than normal.
Daphne’s response to the shock of her husband’s infidelity and his desperate physical and mental condition was two-fold. On the one hand, she decided immediately that there would be no divorce and that she would do her utmost to restore Boy to health and their marriage to some semblance of equilibrium. On the other, she was consumed with guilt a
bout her own wartime affair with Christopher Puxley, which she confessed by letter to Boy, and by the impact which her obsessions with Ellen Doubleday and Gertrude Lawrence might have had on their relationship. Her mind was in turmoil, with fantasies about ‘Sixpence’, Jan Ricardo and Rebecca alternating with comparisons of Boy to the character Kay in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen.2 For a while she even became convinced that there was a plot against her, Boy, and even the monarchy, and that his life was in danger: it was Kits who coaxed her out of it by persuading her to see the ridiculous side of her fears and she emerged much stronger.
After three weeks in the clinic, Boy was driven down to Cornwall by Daphne’s cousin, Peter Llewellyn Davies.3 Boy spent the whole of August at Menabilly recuperating from his breakdown before being judged fit enough to return to work in September, after which Daphne spent much more time herself in London. When she was not there, Ken Spence was deputed to keep an eye on Boy and to monitor the situation with ‘Covent Garden’, whom Boy continued to meet on occasion, although the affair was effectively at an end. On the face of it he was fine. He resumed all his duties at the Palace and was even able to accompany the Queen and the Duke on their tour of Canada and the United States in October, which included a visit to his old friend Eisenhower, now the US President. In reality he was far from completely recovered. He still complained of severe fatigue and had slowed down in his work, although this was not immediately evident to the Duke’s staff. More worryingly his bouts of depression continued and on more than one occasion Ken Spence went to the flat to find Boy with his old service revolver in his hand, threatening to commit suicide, although this seems to have been more a plea for help than a serious expression of intent.
Daphne was quick to recognize that he was far from cured, writing to Oriel Malet that November: ‘Moper’s physical health is better, but I don’t think his mind is all right. All he seems to want to do is sit glued to his desk at the office, doing rather routine things, and when at home, he doesn’t know what to do with his time. I think his brain is going on like a kind of machine, but the power has gone, and he’s terrified of relaxing, in case it goes blank.’4 Daphne’s mother had died shortly beforehand and she herself was not in the best mental condition, feeling humiliated by what had happened and loathing her stays in London. She expressed her frustration in a letter to another friend, Evie Williams,5 whilst waiting for Boy to return from Canada: ‘I shall have to be up in this blasted city more than I used to be, because the doctors say Tommy must not exhaust himself by coming down for snatched weekends after a tiring week in London, so I’ve faced up to duty and told myself I must be more of a domestic wife now we’ve turned our Silver Wedding Anniversary.’
By early 1958, life had returned to some sort of pattern. Boy was able to hold down his job without attracting attention to what he himself thought were his deficiencies, but the effort of doing so left him exhausted at the end of each day. Daphne came more frequently to London than she had done before the breakdown, but was also able to resume writing, this time a collection of short stories, eventually published in the following year under the title of The Breaking Point, most of which reflected the emotional turbulence from which she was still suffering. She remained deeply concerned about Boy and eventually summoned up the courage to write to the Duke without Boy’s knowledge, suggesting that it was time for her husband to retire. The Duke replied to say that he did not wish to lose Boy, but he suggested that a sabbatical might be the best thing for him, following which the situation could be reviewed. In mid-July Boy left the Palace on leave and did not return until the New Year.
His departure came as something of a surprise to the Duke’s Household and to nobody more than David Alexander, one of the extra equerries, who was summoned at short notice to London to take on the duties of Acting Treasurer. A young Royal Marines captain, Alexander had been appointed an extra equerry nine months earlier on the strength of a recommendation from the Commandant-General and because he was already known to the Duke and the Queen.6 He was ordered to join the Household in a full-time capacity on 17 July and immediately accompanied the Duke on a tour of Wales and the West Country. The only time he had met Boy was when he had attended his interview as an extra equerry, although they had talked subsequently on the phone. Alexander was given the full authority of the position and was able to go anywhere and do anything on the Treasurer’s business as if he held the permanent appointment himself. He was the first to recognize, however, that it was Boy’s influence, standards and style which still permeated the Household.
A month after beginning what they still believed would be a temporary break, Boy and Daphne went on holiday, their first together for several years. It took the form of a driving tour of France, the main objective being to watch the filming of Daphne’s novel The Scapegoat which had been published early in 1957. The trip was not a success. Daphne was disappointed with the screenplay, which was substantially different from the book, and Boy remained depressed. On their return to Menabilly, she had the local doctor look at him and was pleased when he recommended a sensible approach involving a building back of Boy’s physical reserves and a complete absence of stress.
The next few months passed uneventfully with Boy untroubled by the Palace and taking every opportunity to go sailing. On the family front, Kits had left Eton that summer and was looking for a job. Unlike his own father, Boy did not approve of National Service and was pleased that Kits was just young enough not to be called up. To his credit, he was wholly encouraging about his son’s choice of career, which was to go into films. Daphne had bought Kits a cine camera and projector and he made a short film at Menabilly called The Saboteur in which Boy starred as the ‘baddy’, wearing a trilby hat and a white trench coat and acting particularly enthusiastically in the scene in which he was directed to shoot Tod! Daphne then secured Kits some work experience on the filming of Our Man in Havana, which was being directed by her old friend and one-time lover, Carol Reed.7 Boy was thrilled to find that the actor Burl Ives was one of the stars as he adored westerns and one of his favourites was The Big Country, released only that year, in which Ives had played a major part.8
By the end of 1958 Boy believed that he had recovered sufficiently to be able to hold his own again, even if he was not restored to full health. He duly returned to work in the New Year, but it was not a great success. Although as usual he managed to keep up appearances, he realized that he had slowed down considerably and now found it difficult to make decisions. The Duke, as intensely loyal to his staff as they were to him, was reluctant to let him go, but accepted the inevitable. The news of Boy’s retirement and the name of his successor, Rear-Admiral Christopher Bonham-Carter, were announced on 10 April.
Boy’s last public duty was to take part in a procession during the state visit of the Shah of Iran on 5 May. Five days later his grade in the Royal Victorian Order was advanced to Knight Grand Cross,9 a sign of particular esteem by the Sovereign, and on 14 May he was received privately by the Queen, both to be invested and to take his formal leave of her. Waiting in Whitelands House, Daphne wrote to Evie Williams: ‘I am standing by while Tommy does his “hand-over” – today is his last day at the Palace, and it’s rather emotional and trying for him, after so long. But it was no good his struggling on, he really could not keep it up. Actual organic health OK but his nervous system is worn out and he needs months of no responsibility, and relaxation. So we head for home and sailing, hoping this will do the trick.’10
Chapter 30
Finale (1959–1965)
Boy was aged only sixty-two when he left the Palace and he and Daphne should have had every expectation of a long retirement. For the first time since 1940 they were living together and this proved initially to be a strain. Boy was still deeply depressed, believing himself to be useless to anyone: on one occasion Daphne found him with a gun, much as Ken Spence had done, threatening to blow his brains out. Even if the threat was not serious, Daphne knew that her own indep
endence would be profoundly affected by the need to look after him, especially as he tended to take a downward turn whenever she was absent. There were a number of reasons for her to be away, such as the birth of Flavia’s son Rupert in August 1959 and her research for a new book, a biography of Branwell Brontë, but every time she left she had to make arrangements for someone else to stand in. Happily for the peace of the household Tod was no longer there, having gone to London to look after Kits, who was now living in Whitelands House. The gap was eventually filled on a permanent basis by a new housekeeper, Esther Rowe. She was only twenty-eight, pretty and vivacious, and her presence helped to lift some of the dark clouds hovering over Boy.
Boy had one project to carry out over the next year, which provided a welcome distraction. He was writing an account of the Queen’s life between her marriage and her accession, with the full cooperation of the Palace. A letter to his sister Grace indicated that his old sense of humour had not completely vanished. ‘It is curious’, he wrote, ‘how directly I started writing all the early days with her came back to me and I am really enjoying it. Thank goodness I have got my old secretary Molly Miller (now married and retired) to do the typing as (a) she is completely trustworthy and (b) is able to jog my memory if I’m stuck e.g. the names of the blasted Korgis [sic] we had at Clarence House and were always attacking the luckless sentry in the garden!’1 The account was not meant for publication, but was lodged in due course in the Palace archives.