The Riviera Set

by Mary S. Lovell

  Meanwhile, at Eden Roc twelve-year-old Bobby Kennedy, son of the American ambassador to Britain, danced and swam with Beatrice Lillie. The Kennedys had found Antibes, liked it and would make several visits during Joseph’s term as ambassador.

  In mid-September, during a speech at Nuremberg, Hitler demanded the right of self-determination for Sudeten Germans, causing widespread panic in Czechoslovakia. Martial law was declared in an attempt to restore order and several leading Sudeten German leaders escaped to Germany. To try to defuse the situation, Neville Chamberlain, with French support, called for a meeting with Hitler, hoping to find a compromise and negotiate an end to German expansionism. The seventy-year-old Prime Minister overcame his fear of flying to attend a conference in Munich whose chief delegates were Hitler and his Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano; Chamberlain; and the French Premier Édouard Daladier. Czechoslovakia was not represented. Hitler did not concede; instead he issued a new set of demands to include the immediate surrender of predominantly German areas by 25 November.

  After a second trip to Germany, this time to the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain returned from Munich on 29 September declaring that there would be no war. He assured the electorate that he had Herr Hitler’s personal signed assurance of this. The agreement reached in Munich, he claimed to great public ovation, celebrations and huge relief, meant ‘peace in our time’. But history would show that the Munich Agreement had simply met all of Hitler’s immediate demands. Germany emerged as the strongest power in Europe, and it was a clear step towards war. Winston and his supporters saw it as ‘peace with dishonour’ and Duff Cooper immediately resigned his post as First Lord of the Admiralty in protest.

  Winston was first stunned by the outcome of Munich and then enraged. He had already cancelled a very lucrative speaking tour in the United States during the coming winter in order to be available to speak in Parliament when the new session opened on 2 November. He had also replied to a query from the Duke of Windsor that he would probably not stay with Maxine that September as usual; anyone could see the reasons behind his decision, he wrote. In a speech in Parliament he bluntly told Chamberlain that he had been given a choice between war and dishonour; ‘You chose dishonour, and you will have war.’3

  Despite the fact that, for most people, Munich had taken the heat out of the situation, Winston was working in overdrive. Maxine, who had been looking forward to his visit, suggested he might still like to spend a few weeks resting at the villa. ‘Can’t you possibly turn up?’ she wrote. ‘Bring a man with you if you like?’ Kitty Rothschild would be there, she cajoled, and the Windsors never stopped asking after him. ‘I am beginning to feel desolate in fearing you might not come.’4 He replied that it was not possible at present, but he would try to fit in a short break later.

  In November the Duke of Windsor met his brother the Duke of Gloucester in Paris. It was his first meeting with a member of his family since the abdication. The British Embassy found they were unable to oblige the Dukes with a room for the meeting, so they met informally at the Hôtel Meurice with their wives. The brothers embraced – they had been good friends in the past having travelled together in the old days a good deal, including several safaris in Kenya (where Gloucester had met his wife). The two duchesses kissed on the steps and a street musician played the National Anthem, causing wide smiles.

  On the Riviera the on dit was Tom Mosley’s surprise announcement that he and Diana Guinness had married in secret two years earlier, at the home of Joseph Goebbels. It was rumoured incorrectly that Hitler had been Mosley’s best man, though the Führer had attended the wedding as guest of honour.

  At the time Winston was trying to finish a book, History of the English-Speaking Peoples, before war began: he was convinced this was imminent, despite the Munich Agreement, and in a letter to Clementine dated 22 December 1938 he told her he expected Hitler to move against Poland in February or March. Clementine was cruising in the Caribbean aboard Lord Moyne’s yacht Rosaura for the winter months so Winston spent the Christmas holidays at Blenheim with Randolph and Mary, after which, helpless to change the political situation, he became bored and dispirited with the ‘unbroken routine’. He loathed the cold and snowy weather, which when it gave way to wet thaw was no better. In London parks the newly dug air raid trenches filled with water and were pronounced a danger to children. Feeling that there was nothing he could usefully do at Chartwell Winston felt he could be more productive working on the proofs ‘in bed, in the sunshine,’ he wrote to Clementine, ‘of that room you know at Maxine’s’.5 So he wrote to Maxine proposing himself as her guest.

  Maxine had spent Christmas 1938 at Roquebrune, in a villa next to Coco Chanel’s La Pausa, but when Winston wrote to take up her standing invitation she made plans to return home at once and cabled him that he was welcome. On 7 January he flew with Prof Lindemann in thick fog to Paris and late that morning they met his secretary Mary Penman at the Ritz. Leaving her with enough dictation to keep her occupied all day, Winston disappeared off to Versailles for a series of meetings with various French leaders, as well as Sir Eric Phipps and Sir Charles Mendl at the British Embassy. He roared back into the hotel at 7.30 p.m. looking pleased with himself, to find his secretary and the Prof, who was not travelling south with them, waiting anxiously with the luggage packed and ready to be loaded into two taxis. They raced to the Gare de Lyon, arriving with only minutes to spare for the overnight Blue Train to Antibes. The description of Winston’s day – little more than a half-day, really – in Paris, recorded by his secretary, reads breathlessly; a typical day for Winston, probably. He merely noted that after a good dinner he ‘slept blissfully’.

  For Winston it was a thrill to leave Paris on a dark mid-winter evening and wake next morning to radiant sunshine on the Riviera, even if there was a slight winter nip in the air. All his life he loved sunshine; it energised him and enabled him to work at an even higher rate. Maxine’s chauffeur Jules was waiting, as always, to whisk them to the Château de l’Horizon.

  Maxine had been overjoyed to see him, Winston wrote to Clementine, and there was hardly anyone visiting the Riviera out of season, just local residents. The Windsors were expected to dine at l’Horizon on the following evening, and as usual there was much discussion about curtseying to ‘the lady’, he wrote. ‘Feelings run high on the point. But all accounts show them entirely happy and as much in love with each other as ever.’6 A few weeks earlier there had been a small furore in the press over a reception in Paris when Lady Diana Cooper and Mrs Euan Wallace* had curtsied to the Duchess of Windsor. Diana Cooper declined to comment, but Mrs Wallace said it was a very informal occasion and she had done it purely to please the Duke. It had become common practice in the South of France: certainly the newspapers reported that women had curtsied when the couple, with the Duchess glittering in diamonds and emeralds, saw in the new year at the Sporting Club Monte Carlo with Lord and Lady Brownlow and a small party of guests. The Windsors’ circle there were pragmatic about the matter. It gave much pleasure to the former King, and most people considered it a small thing to do.

  At Maxine’s dinner, the HRH courtesies were again extended to Wallis. And Maxine and her house-guests (including Diana and Vincent Sheean, who had become regular visitors) were invited to dine at La Croë the following week. The Windsors’ dinner was ‘very grand’, Sheean wrote, the guests consisting of

  assorted notables from up and down the coast, mostly English people of high rank. My Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook had been prevented from attending by colds. (Lord Beaverbrook recovered sufficiently to attend the Casino, where we saw him afterwards.) When some of the more overpowering guests had departed after the long and stately meal in the white and gold dining-room, the Duke and Mr Churchill settled down to a prolonged argument with the rest of the party listening in silence. The Duke had read Mr Churchill’s recent articles on Spain and the newest one (out that d
ay, I believe) in which he appealed for an alliance with Russia. We sat by the fireplace, Mr Churchill frowning with intentness at the floor in front of him, mincing no words ... declaring that the nation stood in the gravest danger in its long history. The kilted Duke in his Stuart tartan sat on the edge of the sofa eagerly interrupting whenever he could, contesting every point but receiving – in terms of utmost politeness ... an object lesson in political wisdom ... The rest of us sat in silence; there was something dramatically final, irrevocable about this dispute.7

  Winston also commented on this dinner at La Croë, to tell Clementine how ‘extremely well done’ it all was with the staff in red livery behaving as though they were in royal service. He marvelled at the Duke’s formal Highland evening dress, recalling how, at the Fort when he was Prince of Wales, it had been difficult to get him to wear a dinner jacket and bow tie.

  Even though the weather had turned grey, damp and cold, the cossetting that Maxine ensured Winston received at l’Horizon allowed him to remain contented and focused, enabling him to exceed his daily target of a thousand words.† Dressed in the brightly coloured silk dressing gown that Clementine had given him for Christmas, and looking like an extravagant peacock,8 he sat up in bed every morning, his papers and books strewn around him while he dictated to Miss Penman until it was time for lunch. In the evenings, when not playing cards with Maxine, he admitted he had been gambling – it was unusual to confess this to his wife for, having lost her brother to suicide because of his gambling debts,‡ Clementine strongly disapproved. But as he was unusually successful on this occasion he felt able to tell her that he had been several times to the Casino at Cannes, where he had played hard and had built up a substantial advantage. He had even, during evening sessions, attempted to learn a new dance from a couple who performed there. The dance required the dancer to take three steps and give a hop. He tried his best but he kept hopping in the wrong place, which, he grumbled, provoked ‘small-minded people to laugh’.9

  Maxine invited enough people to amuse Winston, and more to his taste the once-glamorous chit-chat of former years was now interlaced with stories of the situation in Germany and how German Jews were being treated under Hitler. When they were alone Winston discussed investments with Maxine, for he lived habitually beyond his income while she was known to be an astute manager of money. After two weeks at l’Horizon, Winston left by train for Monte Carlo, where he was to stay overnight with Lord Rothermere at his villa La Dragonnière – so called because local legend had it that a dragon had once lived on the site before being slain by a brave local lad.

  Rothermere, originally Harold Harmsworth, was the immensely rich proprietor of the Daily Mail, which he began publishing in 1896 under the slogan ‘a penny newspaper for half a penny’. It was the first daily newspaper aimed at the working classes, and rapidly became the most popular newspaper in the country when its circulation reached over a million during the Boer War. In 1903 he and his brother Alfred (later 1st Viscount Northcliffe) launched the Daily Mirror, which was aimed at women readers and filled with pictures – a brilliant innovative move. The brothers gradually took over less successful publications such as the Sunday Pictorial and the London Evening News, and eventually the business became the newspaper empire Associated Newspapers Ltd. After the death of his brother in the early Twenties Rothermere became sole proprietor – the ‘other bookend’ to Lord Beaverbrook of the Daily Express – and between them these two press barons more or less controlled popular public opinion in the United Kingdom between the wars.

  Harold Harmsworth’s elevation to the peerage had not brought him much happiness.§ Two of his sons were killed in the First World War and he never recovered from their loss, although he had another son, Esmond, who eventually succeeded him. After his marriage failed he spent increasingly long periods in the South of France, where he was a passionate and successful gambler at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club. The amounts of Rothermere’s wagers became as legendary as the name of his villa, and he had a series of mistresses, the most notable of whom was an Austrian princess (Stephanie von Hohenlohe) who introduced him to Hitler and was eventually unmasked as a German spy.

  For years Rothermere paid Princess Stephanie an annual retainer of five thousand pounds. In 1938, however, he dropped her when MI5 made known to him that she was regarded as a very dangerous person; shamelessly she took him to court for alleged breach of contract, but did not win her case. Fiercely anti-communist following the Bolshevik revolution, Rothermere adopted a right-wing stance that initially – due to the influence of his glamorous princess – had led him to support Hitler, and caught him up in a web of intrigue. He was not alone: many educated people looked to the right during the Thirties as an antidote to Bolshevism, without realising that with Hitler the pendulum had swung too far. Only with war pending had the scales dropped from Rothermere’s eyes.

  No politician of any era would turn down the opportunity of a personal relationship with a newspaper magnate such as Rothermere, and Churchill was no exception. Furthermore, the old myth of the slain dragon somehow lent an air of enchantment to Rothermere’s villa, basking in its peaceful sunny acres of orange groves, scented flowering trees and shrubs on Cap Ferrat, overlooking Monte Carlo and the sea. Whenever he visited La Dragonnière Winston was inspired to get out his easel and start painting. Usually he also enjoyed the mix of guests his remarkable host gathered to his dinners, but on this overnight stay in January 1939 he dined with only Lord Rothermere and the Duke of Windsor, in order to discuss the ducal couple’s return to England in the event of war. The establishment wouldn’t like it, Winston confided to Clementine, but they had no power to stop it, and if anyone could help to ease the way for the Windsors it was Rothermere.

  From La Dragonnière Winston went to stay with the Fellowes for two nights at nearby Les Zoraides, and lunched on their yacht in the bay below their villa. Winston and Daisy went on to the Casino at Monte Carlo on at least two occasions. He assured Clementine that he did not gamble large amounts; he could not afford to, but Daisy could and she played big (although on one occasion even she pulled out when the stake reached forty thousand francs).10 Winston treated the casinos as though he was an errant schoolboy enjoying a treat of which he knew his parents would disapprove, corroborated by Miss Penman’s account of how, as they were driven to the station at Monte Carlo to catch the Blue Train to Paris, they had to pass the Casino. To Miss Penman’s dismay, for – as usual – they were already short of time to catch the train, Winston ordered the driver to stop. He leapt out and ran off into the Casino, his coat unbuttoned and flapping. A few minutes later he reappeared, still running. He jumped in beside her and told the driver to push on to the station. Then he told her that he had just won enough to cover their fares home. What do you think of that?’ he asked her, grinning.

  Winston found a letter from Maxine awaiting him at Chartwell: ‘What a sweet little note you gave me at the station, Winston dearest,’ Maxine wrote. ‘I am so happy that you enjoyed your all-too-brief visit. Never have I seen you in such good form and our jaws ached with laughter continually – your joie de vivre is a wonderful gift and on a par with your other amazing gifts – in fact you are the most unusually gifted creature in the whole wide world.’11 He had, she said, quite literally taken the sunshine with him for it had been dull and overcast ever since, but she was so glad that he had decided to return at Whitsuntide. Maxine was looking forward to it for she had been ill in bed almost since he left. L’Horizon was now filled with her women friends, such as Lady Portarlington; her Adamless Eden’, she called it, and she complained that men are rare birds on the Riviera. Only pansies grow here, and they are not my favourite flowers’.12 It was a curious, unkind remark when some of her most constant visitors and good friends were Barry Dierks, Willie Maugham and Noël Coward.

  Before Winston departed he had chatted with Maxine about building a small house in a wooded hilltop site at Chartwell, overlooking the Weald of Kent. It was to be a small family hom
e for a man and wife, and maybe two or three children – it would cost about three thousand pounds to build, he thought, if he did a lot of the work himself. If he could sell it for six thousand pounds it would provide him with a profitable occupation once the latest book was off his hands. He enjoyed bricklaying. He stressed that of course he would not begin it unless he was convinced that there was no danger of imminent war. Winston being Winston, he planned to ask the distinguished architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to pop down and have a look at the site. But the basic design of the house was Maxine’s, and she turned to Barry Dierks, who was not used to designing houses for working men in England, to set down her ideas. There was a flurry of correspondence on the subject and the first plans showed a small mansion with en suite bathrooms in each bedroom and an integral garage (an unbelievable luxury in England at the time), but at Winston’s request Maxine had them redrawn on a more practical scale. ‘The Riviera is a dull place without you,’ she wrote, and we miss you more than I can say.’13 Still, she looked forward to Whitsuntide when she would see him again. Neither knew it yet, but his visit in January 1939 was to be Winston’s last to the Riviera for some years, and he would never again see Maxine or the Château de l’Horizon.

  Other members of his family visited the Riviera, though, for that February, while convalescing from a nose and throat operation, Sarah stayed at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and lunched with Maxine in order to discuss her ambition to become a serious actress. A worry to her parents, she had gone onto the stage as one of Mr Cochran’s Young Ladies and she had shown a real aptitude for it. It was not what Winston and Clementine wanted for her, but they might have come to accept it had Sarah not then fallen in love with the Jewish-American comedian Vic Oliver, who was the star of the show in which Sarah was a member of the chorus. Winston forbade the marriage, so Sarah ran away and married Vic on Christmas Eve 1936. The Churchills managed a veneer of acceptance but the marriage did not work out. By February 1939 Sarah had begun to get some half-decent parts in stage productions but at the time she visited Maxine she knew her marriage was in deep trouble and she wanted advice about this and her career. She also visited Daisy, but in letters to her sister Sarah disparaged these ‘elderly’ women who were friends of her father.