So if De László was a spy, why wasn’t MI5 able to prove it? There would have been immediate problems with MI5’s investigation. It was clear from the correspondence (the letter dated 16 July) that Madame G and De László had already felt watched and had been warned to keep their heads down. Any evidence would surely have been destroyed once they thought they were watched. Provided De László had sent his reports by hand to Madame G (whoever she was), they wouldn’t have been picked up by the special supervision exercised over his correspondence. We know, from his own admission, that letters destined for transmission in the bag were taken by hand, usually by Miss Lundquist, and there is only his word as to how many she said she actually took. As a Dutch subject, Madame G would have had every excuse to visit the legation; it’s also possible the Dutch had reasons of their own for helping them out.
Adrienne Van Reimsdyk was sister of the Dutch foreign minister and it’s interesting to ponder whether the Dutch might have been getting something out of transmitting (and reading) the messages De László was alleged to have sent. Holland was caught between a rock and a hard place. It was heavily dependent upon imports, which were strictly controlled by the British in order to prevent re-export to Germany (SIS obtained copies of customs manifests for legitimate exports, which were analysed closely for any sign of Holland breaking her re-export agreements), and yet bounded along most of her frontier by a Germany that had a much larger army and upon which the Dutch were heavily dependent for coal supplies. Maintaining neutrality was difficult and, though Dutch financial institutions and merchants made substantial profits from dealings with both sides, conditions in the country were deteriorating. The British blockade had caused food shortages leading to food riots; fears that Germany would use the winter of 1916–17 to bully Holland by restricting coal supplies had not come to pass, but it remained a distinct possibility as relations between the two countries deteriorated during 1917 as the effects of the German submarine blockade also began to bite.
In April 1917, British double agent COMO reported a meeting he had had with a member of the German general staff who had warned him that there would be war with Holland within a fortnight. There was little doubt that the German army would sweep through the country rapidly. It was important, then, that the Dutch government kept closely in touch with developments and opinions abroad. The admission by a Dutch consul in 1918 that the Dutch Foreign Ministry contained a division ‘for facilitating private communication between people residing in belligerent countries’ suggests that there was a deliberate policy of encouraging private contacts, possibly with the same aim as the British censorship – to use it as a means of gathering intelligence from abroad. De László’s communications and the alleged reports might have proved invaluable to them. It is unlikely we’ll ever know – Dutch intelligence burned their files when Germany did finally invade, in May 1940.
De László, again by his numerous admissions, felt close to his former homeland and deeply regretted its treatment of him as a result of his naturalisation. He felt closer still to his family who remained there. Whether or not he wanted the return of his nationality, he had strong motives for wishing to help his old country. He had splendid opportunity to do so. He was close to the circles that ran the war and to the diplomats in London who could supply, unknowingly, high-level information. Evidence was given that he asked questions about supplies and consumption of ammunition. The alleged means of transmitting the information matched a route that De László was known to use, the Dutch diplomatic bag, and it’s interesting that he only ever sent his personal mail to the legation by hand (meaning a forty-minute walk from his house in Palace Gate to the Dutch Legation in Montagu Place), which conveniently meant it never entered the postal system. MI5 doesn’t seem to have been aware of any propaganda role for him before the French told it, but then discovered that he had talked pointedly to his clients about Britain’s allies, denigrating the Russians and claiming that America’s entry into the war was simply to create a military spirit in preparation for her own war with Japan and Mexico. He had contact addresses for known and suspected pacifists and pacifist propagandists such as Szebenyei, who was interned for a likely connection to Hungarian propaganda; Robert Dell, the Fabian pacifist; Rudolph Said-Ruete, who wrote pro-German booklets; and Countess Helena Pourtales, who supplied English-language German newspapers to America. He had copies of propaganda leaflets and books.
Though he claimed ignorance of the censorship and ‘Trading with the Enemy’ rules he was remarkably adept at getting round them, and despite many of the people ‘in the know’, such as the Board of Trade employees, thinking he should be prosecuted for his breaches of the regulations, he wasn’t. Lots of people, who had committed much more trivial breaches of the same rules, were. Everyone was aware of his connections (he was an inveterate name dropper) and his society friends rallied round to support one of their own. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it was considered not to be in the public interest to denaturalise him because it would undermine the positions of his many friends in the Lords and Commons (including a former prime minister and a serving chancellor).
Kind and loving family man though he undoubtedly was, Philip De László had a strong streak of self-interest running through him. Caught in a difficult situation not of his own making, he tried to play both ends against the middle, toadying to the British establishment and providing help to the Hungarians in the form of propaganda and information. Whichever side lost, he was going to be able to claim he was on the other.
Epilogue
THE SPY WHO
PAINTED THE QUEEN
WITH HIS CHARACTER apparently vindicated by the committee, De László was free to go back to his profession, and he completed twenty portraits by the end of 1919, earning £8,000. He resumed advertising in The Times and in 1920 completed forty-two portraits, earning over £20,000. Prominent sitters gradually flocked to him again and he painted, among many others, US President Harding, Benito Mussolini and Queen Marie of Roumania.
In early 1925 the Home Office received an enquiry from the Lord Chamberlain asking whether De László was suitable to be received at Court. A two-page memorandum was drawn up which set out the basics of the events that had led up to his internment and the appearance before the Revocation Committee. It concluded:
The Committee found that the continuance of his naturalization certificate was not inconsistent with public good and reported that its revocation was not desirable. After these findings the internment order against László was revoked by the Home Secretary Mr Shortt in July 1919.
Mr De László is therefore now a British subject and is entitled to all political and other rights, powers and privileges to which a natural born British subject is entitled. Under Article 213 of the Treaty of Trianon Hungary recognised any new nationality acquired by her nationals under the laws of the Allied Powers, and it is clear that Hungary has no longer any claim in regard to Mr De László.
There would seem to be no reason now, so far as the Home Office point of view is concerned, why Mr De László should not be received at Court. He is of course a well-known person socially and is I believe an intimate friend of Mr Austen Chamberlain, who has known him for a good many years.
The memo is initialled by ‘H R D’ and dated 9/2/25. Another official has hand written beneath, ‘I have written to the Lord Chamberlain accordingly.’
Shortly after this enquiry he had painted Rosemary, the daughter of Lord Cromer, the Lord Chamberlain, and had received a letter of gratitude and appreciation from Lady Cromer. He painted Lady Cromer herself a few weeks later and there followed, shortly afterwards, an invitation to a Buckingham Palace garden party, which delighted De László, who had not been invited to a Court function since his release from internment. Here he was presented to the king by Lord Cromer himself.
The return to Court circles removed any potential problems from De László painting members of the Royal Family, and in 1931 he painted the Duke and Duchess of York (later,
of course, to become King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother). Further contact with the family led to him painting the 7-year-old Princess Elizabeth, already heir to the throne, in 1933. The finished piece went on display at Knoedlers of Bond Street that June, and reproductions in black and white and in colour proved very popular. The Illustrated London News ran a full-page image of the portrait in its issue of 30 December 1933, describing it as ‘charming’. It is a nice portrait. Of Princess Elizabeth, De László was quoted as saying, ‘She is the most amazing child I have ever painted – I have never met such an intelligent child. She talks as easily and as wisely as a grown-up.’
He continued to paint and to travel, visiting the USA, Spain, Morocco, France and Italy, and was fêted on a visit to Hungary in 1935. He continued to work hard and painted the Archbishop of York, the Duke of Kent and, in 1936, the mistress of the King of Roumania.
De László died, following a heart attack and after a long and slow descent into ill-health, on 22 November 1937. His memorial service at St Margaret’s, Westminster, was attended by a host of society names – though, perhaps surprisingly, few of the really highest in the land. His friend and witness Austen Chamberlain had died earlier in the year. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, gave the blessing. The Times obituary described him as ‘the most fashionable portrait painter of modern times’, but appeared to imply that part of his success was due to his ability to flatter his sitters. Of his artistic style, the obituarist said:
His work was large and broad in style but lacked subtlety, both as regards characterization and form and colour, and for all his command of the picture space he was weak in construction. He succeeded by his power of generalizing a conception of the sitter which was both complimentary to the individual and suggestive of the environment.
His estate, on death, was valued at £141,000 gross – the equivalent of almost £9,000,000 today.
Appendix 1
THE ONE-ARMED MAN
IN MAY 1933 De László wrote to his friend István Bárczy, permanent under-secretary in the Hungarian prime minister’s office, regarding a court case pending against him in Paris brought by one Frederic Decseny. He wrote:
[Decseny] is a miserable specimen of humanity who tried to blackmail me. I have never seen or heard of him … Now that he cannot get money out of me, he continues to be unpleasant. You can imagine what it means to me to be dragged through the French newspapers associated with such a scoundrel.
De László’s French lawyer was looking for some official Hungarian documentation confirming the reason Decseny had been imprisoned, and De László asked Bárczy for help in obtaining it. Whether he did or not is unknown, but De László definitely thanked him for his efforts and, as his biographer says, ‘the matter was definitely closed on 2 June 1933’.
On 22 April 1933 the Daily Mail had run a short story headed, ‘Mr P A De László – Lawsuit sequel to spy case’. It read:
Mr P A de László the famous painter who lives in London, was sued yesterday for £36 compensation by Frederic Decseny, said to be a Hungarian, who alleged that he had been imprisoned for two years during the war as a British spy following his denunciation by Mr de László.
Decseny, a one-armed man, waved his remaining arm excitedly when the judge asked him his nationality. Dashing up to the Judge’s dais, he shouted ‘I am a man without a nationality.’
Mr de László’s counsel, Maitre Yvonne Menjaud, a pretty woman, asked that the case be adjourned for a fortnight, to which the court agreed.
Frederic Decseny (sometimes spelt Decsenyi or Deczeny) had been born in Volocz, Hungary, in 1885, emigrated to the USA in 1902 and, having lost his arm in an accident while working for the Erie Railroad Company, took up work as a clerk in New York where he became naturalised on 1 June 1907. He had left the USA in 1909 and spent some time in England and then in Belgium and Hungary. He applied for an American passport at the United States consulate in Budapest on 25 August 1914 with the intention of returning to America within six months. As an American and therefore a neutral he was capable of travelling more or less freely around the continent and was even able to visit and leave Britain.
In 1924 he applied to the US consul at Coblenz for papers, asserting that he had been imprisoned in Germany during the First World War. As the Daily Mail report confirms, this, he asserted, was because De László had told the Hungarian authorities that he was a British spy.
Prior to the court case, it’s known he had approached the British Embassy in Paris and been rebuffed, because he wrote to the Home Office complaining about its attitude to him. It, in turn, approached the Foreign Office seeking further information and specifically saying, in its request, that his visit to the embassy had been to ‘give some information about Mr De László’s activities during the war’and asking that the embassy provide more information about the allegations.
The Foreign Office, in answer to a Freedom of Information request, confirmed that its file (reference C 5659/3359/21) had been destroyed during its normal weeding process, but provided a copy of its file summary, which confirmed the story as given above. The Home Office file reference number on the summary proved to be De László’s naturalisation file, which has clearly been weeded (section 113 was noted as ‘Confidential – This sheet and the dummies for the subnos. to which it refers must not leave the registry’ has been removed and the Home Office claim no record of it). The register of correspondence (HO 46/286) for 1933 confirms that a copy of the unspecified allegation against De László, which was received on 31 March from Decseny himself, was passed by the Home Office to MI5. It was also, presumably, passed to the Foreign Office for its comments on the allegations against the Paris Embassy. MI5 replied to the Home Office on 21 April, but the surviving note reads, ‘Report unable to find any trace of a (the next word is unclear but seems to read) liaison.’ Liaison presumably means meeting, so Decseny seems to be suggesting that, at some stage, he and De László had met.
If Decseny and De László had met (which De László categorically denied), when might it have been? In his interrogation of 15 August 1917, he did mention meeting an unnamed Hungarian in 1914. He said:
When the war broke out a Hungarian who I had never seen before came over to England because he thought it was the safest place for a Hungarian to be. He brought me a letter of recommendation from an old friend of mine. I was so pleased to learn from this letter that my mother was still alive that I gave him a letter to take back, which was, however taken away from him. He was the very man whom I invited to lunch with me. He went home and made a big story out of it. He asked me what my position was and I said ‘I am a British subject.’ (This was not then known in Hungary, it came out afterwards.) Then this man went back to Hungary and made a terrible row in the papers …
Later in the interview, De László said that his visitor was ‘Sbenenyei’ (presumably the journalist Szebenyei, Hungarian correspondent for the Morning Post whose name appeared in his address book), but in the second interview he said the man was ‘Professor B’, whose name he could not remember. It seems unlikely a Hungarian could have travelled freely between the two countries once they were at war. Britain had declared war on Austria-Hungary on 12 August 1914. De László’s application for citizenship had not been made until 15 August and wasn’t granted until the 29th. He didn’t take the oath of allegiance until 2 September. Decseny was in Budapest on 25 August as he applied for an American passport at the US consulate there on that date. With such a passport (passports were rarely required before the outbreak of the war but rapidly became necessary), Decseny could travel across Europe, enter Britain and return. He certainly fancied himself as a journalist, describing himself in later life as a correspondent for both the London Daily Mail and the Detroit Free Press. He is surely the same person referred to in a letter from Adrienne van Riemsdyk dated 19 October 1914, which said, ‘Your Hungarian friend has not been to see us so far – perhaps he went straight through to Pesht.’
If it was
blackmail that Decseny was attempting, it seems curious that he had gone to the British Embassy with his allegations before launching his claim through the courts. The Foreign Office file summary sheets say that he had written complaining about his treatment there on 29 March. The sum of £36 (worth £2,250 today) seems trivial and more like a token sum designed to get the case into a court for publicity purposes.
The curious thing is that De László seemed to think that the story was well covered in the French press, but searches of the online versions of Le Figaro, L’Echo de Paris, L’Humanité, Le Matin, L’Ouest-Éclair, Le Petit journal, Le Petit Parisien and Le Temps make no mention of it. It doesn’t even receive attention in an article in Le Temps of 2 May 1933 (while the trial was supposedly taking place), which mentions De László’s art briefly in a general article.
Decseny knew something about De László’s wartime activities – that seems clear. Unfortunately it has not (yet) proved possible to discover what it was.
The Spy Who Painted the Queen Page 22