by Andrew Rose
By whatever means the letter reached Jacques de Breteuil, it contained a strikingly careless reference to the effects of the notorious ‘shell shortage’ of 1915, currently affecting the British front line near Béthune: ‘Tout est très tranquil sur notre front à cause de la famine de munitions qui vont aux Dardanelles au lieu de venir ici!! Mais nous espérons en reçevoir plus tard!!!! ’ (‘Everything is quiet on our front because of the shortage of munitions which are going to the Dardanelles instead of coming here!! But we are hoping to receive more very soon!!!!’)44 German agents were active in northern France and might have ascertained the Prince’s location at 1st Army Corps HQ. Although Jacques was an absolutely secure recipient, wartime conditions heightened the risk that the letter might fall into the wrong hands before it could be delivered. These thoughtless words were potentially of value to the enemy, with grave consequences for British armed forces. In other circumstances, such foolish comments could have resulted in court-martial.
Unhappily, this would not be the only example of indiscreet correspondence by the Prince during the Great War. In one instance, the Prince’s loose words about the state of the conflict in October 1915 seem culpably defeatist from a serving officer: ‘I am a pessimist at the best of times!! I always look facts in the face & now see the Germans beating the Russians & Serbians & absolutely holding up ourselves & the French!!’45 As will be seen, he later wrote a series of dangerously indiscreet letters to his Paris mistress, by no means a safe recipient – a folly that would have dramatic consequences for both the Prince and the Royal Household.
The exquisite boredom of life behind the line among the ‘Red Tabs’ (staff officers) was trenchantly expressed to his French friend. Wistfully recalling pre-war game shoots on the Breteuil estate and on Scottish grouse moors, the Prince complained bitterly: ‘Je suis “absolutely fed up” … La vie ici est bien ennuieuse et monotone…’ (‘I’m “absolutely fed up” … life here is really tedious and dull…’).46 He wrote later of being ‘too bored for words … with a lot of old generals who liked to pretend they were “boxed” [drunk]…’47
Very early in the war, using his knowledge of German, the Prince was briefly allowed to take part in the interrogation of prisoners, a rare practical exercise,48 and occasionally visited the front line, experiencing shelling and gaining some impression of death and destruction. He had a narrow escape in September 1915, after his transfer to XIVth Army Corps HQ, under Lord Cavan (or ‘Fatty’, as the Prince called him, with apparent affection). While the Prince was close to an active sector of the front near Loos, his stationary car was strafed with German gunfire and the driver killed by shrapnel. The Prince, only yards away, was deeply upset by the death of ‘an exceptionally nice man’.49 After this, the bulk of his time was taken up with banal administrative tasks, such as organising the collection of firewood, supplies of ammunition, and carrying out observations behind the lines. Lord Lee, professional soldier and politician, recalled seeing a mud-spattered Prince of Wales tramping the Flanders roads alongside columns of marching men and slow-moving lorries. Arthur Lee found the Prince ‘incorrigibly self-effacing … his main desire appeared to be to get either killed or wounded’.50
Formal parade duties and a few days’ leave (usually spent in London) to a degree enlivened the tedium. Visiting hospitals became an important part of the Prince’s wartime calendar. There is no doubt that he was acutely aware of the privations endured by ordinary soldiers and of the terrible consequences of war. On one occasion, the Prince toured a unit dedicated to the treatment of facial disfigurement, where – understandably – patients were extremely sensitive ‘to any suspicion of curiosity or recoil on the part of a visitor’. One case was thought to be of such a ‘frightful … repulsive character’ that the man’s bed was screened off as ‘it was not thought well to include him’ with the other patients. The Prince took a different view, went straight up to the patient and kissed him, a gesture of humanity that, even to the most sceptical of observers, is deeply moving.51
As to his private life, he remained the Sleeping Prince, lacking adult sexual experience until well into the war. By the summer of 1914, he started going to dances, held during the London Season at the great town houses of the aristocracy. The Buckingham Palace ball, of course, was a stuffy affair. Dancing the ‘royal quadrilles’ (a hopelessly out-of-date hangover from Victorian days), the Prince – ‘a very shy young boy’ – was obliged to partner his stately mother, who ‘firmly piloted’ her unenthusiastic son around the dance floor.52
Once away from the Palace, however, there was fun to be had. The Prince ‘danced without stopping all evening’ at the Devonshire House ball.53 In July, just before the outbreak of war, he told the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, that he ‘had not been in bed more than 4 hours in any night this week’.54 In sharp contrast with the plain, high-minded regimen adopted when staying with the Breteuil family in Paris, he was on the way to developing that notorious taste for entertainment, drink and late hours which would characterise his post-war life.
On 23 June 1915, however, the Prince gloomily described his 21st birthday as ‘a sad & depressing occasion … it didn’t interest me at all & did my best to forget it!!55 Emotionally immature, he was ill-prepared to face the normal challenges of adult life, let alone the awesome responsibility of a King-To-Be. His childhood and adolescence have been described in painful detail by biographers and by the Prince himself, in books and magazine articles.
Although the Prince claimed to have endured ‘a wretched childhood’,56 his early upbringing in the unlovely York Cottage at Sandringham, little more than an overgrown suburban villa, was in many ways conventional for an upper-class child. He had a Nasty Nanny, who would pinch the little boy till he cried, but the Prince was not alone in such Victorian sufferings. A generation earlier, George Curzon (destined to provide vital evidence for this book) was the victim of a sadistic governess, who delighted in beating and humiliating her small charges.
Customarily in those days, such parents saw little of their offspring and it was not at all unusual to be packed off to boarding school or junior naval college, as was the Prince, at the age of 7. His father, successively Duke of York, Prince of Wales, and King George V, was an upright man of limited intelligence, who felt it was his duty to play the role of a stern parent towards his firstborn son. George was not a completely cold, unfeeling father, but he was a remote figure, a martinet, and certainly not the Prince’s ‘best friend’ as he claimed to be.
His mother, the future Queen Mary, was kind and affectionate in a rather remote way, but was an unreliable ally, always deferring to her husband. Although the Prince undoubtedly found happiness with his younger siblings, poignantly evidenced in family photographs of the period, he lacked a full measure of love from his parents, remote figures in his landscape. Spoiled to an extent by his indulgent grandfather, Edward VII, who died in 1910 when the Prince was 15, he found for a time a grandfather substitute in the Marquis de Breteuil, whose kindly manner and relaxed family life were clearly much appreciated by the adolescent Prince. By 1915, however, the Marquis was a sick man. The European War had been a terrible blow, adversely affecting the health of a man who had worked so hard to promote harmony between nations, and by the following year he was dead.
At first the Prince seems to have obediently accepted his royal destiny, but the war brought enormous changes in his life. The ribaldry of the officers’ mess, perhaps even ‘the rough male kiss of blankets’57 (army issue, of course), prompted a growing coarseness, exemplified in correspondence with brother officers, accompanying a measure of selfishness in his private life. As will be seen later, long-serving courtiers, such as Regy Esher, were increasingly sidelined. Unfortunately, the Prince’s self-effacing nature rendered him susceptible to unwholesome influence exerted by rackety men older than himself, though junior to the Esher generation of High Victorians. The Duke of Westminster, a hardened roué, became a close wartime friend. Later on, in the 1920s, Brigadier Geral
d, ‘G’, Trotter (born 1871) and Major Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe (born 1886) would become ill-chosen accomplices in sexual adventure.
Back in 1915, the Prince was still very much an innocent abroad and that year saw a series of seemingly platonic involvements with women, celebrated in wildly romantic letters. Unmarried girls of his class and age group were constantly chaperoned and, although dances, tennis-parties and the hunting field were useful social occasions, more intimate physical contact was rarely possible before marriage. Married women, paradoxically, had greater freedom to indulge in sexual adventures. There were rigid conventions, the breach of which could result in social excommunication. On the other hand, within this framework – provided that secrecy was maintained – a married woman could take a lover of her own social class.
Even King Edward had a slow start to his private life. In 1861, aged 20 and then Prince of Wales, he had not yet slept with a woman. Brother officers smuggled Nellie Clifden, an ‘actress’, into his bed at an army camp at The Curragh in Ireland and Edward’s world suddenly became a much brighter place.
In 1915, the first target of the Prince’s affections was Viscountess Coke, known as ‘Marion’, a married woman twelve years his senior who became for a time his closest confidante. As with many other women in his life, the Prince turned nasty when relations cooled. By early 1920, he was repeatedly referring to her in correspondence as ‘that little bitch’.58
Much the same treatment was meted out to ‘P’, Lady Sybil (‘Portia’) Cadogan, a rather lumpy girl who throughout most of 1916 seems to have shared his attentions simultaneously with Marion Coke. When Portia’s engagement to his old friend Lord Edward Stanley was announced the following year, to the surprise of many in Society, the Prince commented ‘alas it’s not me that’s engaged to Portia, but old Edward’. Since the Prince already knew that the couple had been ‘spieling [romancing] … for some months now’, the effect of the supposed disappointment was rather diminished.59 As with Marion Coke, he turned against Portia (including her sister, Lady Hillingdon, in his rogues’ gallery), writing darkly of ‘that gang’ and of having once been ‘in their clutches’.60
The Prince found some relief from his boredom by frequenting The Globe in the Grande Place at Béthune, a café reserved for British officers and French civilians. Sometimes billetted in the Hotel de France nearby, the Prince made use of the nearby public swimming baths, where the writer Robert Graves, then a junior officer in the Royal Welch Regiment, once shared a ‘bloody cold’ shower with him. ‘We were very pink and white,’ Graves remembered, ‘and did exercises on the horizontal bar afterwards.’
The Prince did not make use of other forms of horizontal exercise available in Béthune. The Red Lamp, a British Army brothel, could be found just off the main street. Graves once saw a queue of 150 men outside, patiently waiting for a few minutes with one of three resident prostitutes, each of whom had served nearly a battalion of men every week ‘as long as she lasted’. Three weeks seems to have been the limit, after which the woman ‘retired on her earnings, pale but proud’.61
Mingling with other ranks was contrary to the Army Act amounting to ‘conduct unbecoming the character of an officer’, so separate arrangements were made for the pleasure of the officer class. Robert Graves, like the Prince at this time, was reluctant to lose his virginity, partly on moral grounds, partly from fastidiousness (some of the women were ‘pols’ (prostitutes) or otherwise distinctly shopsoiled, having passed through many hands), and partly from fear of a ‘dose’. Sexually transmitted diseases were, of course, widespread. Antibiotics were decades away. Syphilis was an omnipresent risk, treatable only with the recently discoversed neosalvarsan, an arsenical compound with uncertain side effects, including liver damage. Less serious, but equally common, was gonorrhoea. Silver nitrate-based preparations, with such alarming labels as ‘Protargol’, ‘Collagol’, ‘Albargin’ or ‘Collosol Argentum’, were applied to the affected member in the hope of a cure.62
Despite the temptations offered in nearby towns, the Prince continued to lead – perhaps even slightly to enjoy – a quiet, undemanding existence. ‘La vie à Calais quoique monotone est toujours confortable’ (‘Life in Calais though dull is comfortable’), he wrote to François de Breteuil in November 1915, adding breezily ‘Au revoir mon cher François et “Best of Luck”.’63
Comfortable conditions at XIVth Division HQ were in sharp contrast to the damp and muddy accommodation of the trenches. On one evening in late November, Raymond Asquith – the Prime Minister’s son, a Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards – was the guest of ‘Fatty’ Cavan. (Asquith, one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, was killed on the Somme later that year.) The Prince’s presence in the mess went largely unremarked by Asquith, who quietly damned with faint praise the shy, intellectually undemanding, young man. The Prince gave Asquith a good cigar – ‘his only contribution to the evening’s sport, but a sufficient one.’64
In February 1916, Jacques de Breteuil joined the Prince, Lord Claud Hamilton (the Prince’s new equerry), Lord Edward Stanley and other friends for dinner in the Hotel Continental at Calais. ‘The Lord Claud’, as he was known, was the youngest son of the Duke of Abercorn and a tall, spare man with a round face embellished with a handlebar moustache. Hamilton, five years older than the Prince, had been a career soldier and had a robust personality, not afraid to give the Prince unpalatable advice when necessary.65
Escaping from the tedium of his administrative duties in France, the Prince visited Egypt, braving a Mediterranean infested by German U-boats. Unknown to him at the time, the young Frenchwoman who would become his first mistress had made a similar journey the previous year, spending several weeks in Cairo as ‘guest’ of Cherif pasha, a redoubtable public figure, before her return to Paris.
The expedition, said to have been the Prince’s own idea, seemed ‘a glorious picnic after Flanders’,66 although he felt ‘such a swine having a soft comfortable time out here while the Guards Division is up at Ypres’.67 The official reason for his six-week visit to the Middle East was to report on the defences of the Suez Canal, though his contribution must have been modest, and one historian has condemned the visit as ‘unnecessary’.68
On the other hand, there is evidence that his appearance raised the morale of ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand forces), who had been evacuated from Gallipoli. The expedition had been a disaster, with heavy loss of life, and the military authorities feared disaffection. True to their reputation, the antipodeans were a rumbustious and at times ill-disciplined crowd. Writing from Ismailia, the Prince reported that ‘various filthy shows’ were to be seen in ‘a hot quarter of the town’ and that he had heard that an Australian had shot dead a donkey during a particularly revolting display. ‘Not such a bad effort!!’ was the Prince’s wry comment.69
Much of his time was spent in the vicinity of Cairo. Although the Prince expressed ‘every intention of spending an unofficial 24 hours there’,70 official duties inevitably took up most of his time. Ronald Storrs, at that time Second Secretary at the British High Commission, escorted the Prince on a decorous tour of bazaars and of the old quarters of Cairo, including an ascent of the famous minaret of Sultan Hassan. Storrs, a shrewd witness, was greatly impressed by the Prince’s ‘quick, human directness’ and considered that he had not previously acted as cicerone to ‘any person who entered more swiftly into the spirit of the place’, even to the extent of haggling with a Jewish merchant, seemingly unaware of the buyer’s royal identity, for a ‘Qubba’ rug.
Later, Storrs joined the Prince at Atbara, travelling on the royal dahabeeyah (private riverboat) from Wadi Halfa to Luxor. At Abu Simbel, the Prince astonished his perspiring British companions by going for a two-hour run, in intense heat, accompanied by ‘four tall Sudanese guards’. He left Egypt for Italy on HMS Weymouth, escorted by a destroyer and an aeroplane, a measure of insurance against attack by ‘Turco-German’ aircraft, which had recently bombed Port Said.71
/> Back in France, the Prince settled unwillingly into life at XIVth Corps HQ. Among the English recipients of the Prince’s many letters was his counsellor, ‘Regy’ Esher. For years he had written fairly regularly to Esher, but as war progressed a subtle change crept into the Prince’s attitude to his elders. When in England for a short period of leave in March 1916, he avoided meeting the ageing courtier at Buckingham Palace. He had delayed replying to one of Esher’s gushy letters, eventually giving the older man a gently worded but firm discouragement by writing ‘I am very busy just now & so can’t be sure whether I shall be free tomorrow evening between 6 & 8.00PM. I should hate for you to come & find me out!!’72
In May 1916, the Prince was posted to Chateau Louie, near Poperinghe. ‘2 miles N of “POP”,’ he wrote, ‘& [we] are most palacial [sic]; I live in a hut in the grounds!!’73 He was nearly 22 now. The war, the sights he had seen, and his slow progress to maturity were causing profound changes to his personal life and attitude to sex. He had visited a Calais brothel as one of a party of officers, but felt only disgust at the sight of naked prostitutes on display, his ‘first insight into these things’.74 Other items of Calais merchandise prompted a good-humoured ribbing in a letter to a brother Grenadier officer. ‘Do you remember when my sister [Princess Mary] caught you looking at those filthy Calais photographs. I’ve never laughed so much…’ The Prince declared to his friend that he was not experiencing ‘sexual hunger’, adding, a little inconsistently, ‘that doesn’t prevent me hankering after fair women, not a bit!!’75