by Andrew Rose
From Marguerite’s point of view, she would need to be careful what she communicated to her English solicitor (although recommended by the trusted Dr Gordon), at least during the first days after the shooting. Freke Palmer was something of an unknown quantity. She had not had any dealings with him before. Her trusted Egyptian lawyer, Maître Assouad, was far away in Cairo. If she wanted to bargain with the letters, to make use of that sensitive collateral to help her walk free from the Old Bailey, it might be better to negotiate with the authorities via a third party. All in all, bringing Marguerite’s English solicitor into the equation was to nobody’s advantage.
Given the upper-class backgrounds and attitudes of Thomas and, especially, of Lascelles (with that barely concealed hatred of his old school, Marlborough), there may have been another factor at work militating against contact with this particular solicitor in the sensitive matters of Marguerite, her evidence, and the Prince’s letters.
Frederick Freke Palmer, then 62, was born in India, the son of an army officer. Although Freke Palmer was related to several ‘county’ families and a baronetcy lurked somewhere in his family tree, Lascelles would have marked him down at once as middle class and not entirely sound. The younger son of a gentleman might practise as a barrister, but the profession of solicitor was another matter. Royal solicitors, chosen for their utter respectability and rarefied clientele, might constitute an exception, but attorneys who practised in the rough and tumble of the lower courts were a suspect race.
Freke Palmer had a fashionable practice and was lauded as ‘an expert divorce practitioner’, ‘a sound lawyer’ and ‘brilliant advocate’ in the Police Courts (as today’s Magistrates’ Courts were then known). He was said to have been ‘scrupulously fair and honest with his clients, rich or poor, wise or foolish, and often did wonders for them’.334 Regarded as shrewd and as a ‘smart lawyer’, he had made a name as solicitor-advocate in some sensational, and very sordid cases involving prostitution and ‘White Slavery’.335 A well-read man, Freke Palmer owned a large library and his collection of Chinese porcelain would have sent Queen Mary into raptures. No matter, it seems. Freke Palmer was a ‘hands-on’ solicitor (and had been educated at Marlborough…).
No evidence has been found to show that Freke Palmer took any part in negotiations that led to the return of the letters and in securing Marguerite’s guarantee of silence about her liaison with the Prince. On the basis that for various reasons (including his unsatisfactory professional and social background) Freke Palmer was not deemed a suitable repository for royal confidences, there had to be another means of finding out Marguerite’s intentions. In the Warwick case, Stamfordham had used Arthur du Cros as a go-between ahead of launching legal proceedings against Daisy.
Given the facts of Freke Palmer’s position and considerations of legal etiquette, there was no question of the Royal solicitor attempting to negotiate with Marguerite unilaterally, in the absence of her defence lawyer. Furthermore, one vital lesson learned from the Daisy Warwick affair was the paramount importance of strict secrecy. Stamfordham, an old military man, had shown himself adept at devious manoeuvring in securing this aim, making use of a ‘neutral’ go-between to sound out available options, reducing the risk not only of loose contact but of loose talk.
The choice of someone wholly unconnected with actual or potential legal process was essential. In that patriarchal age, such an intermediary would be male. The man would have to know Marguerite very well. He would have to be trusted by her. He would have to be reasonably intelligent. He would have to speak fluent French. Above all, he would have to be a trustworthy keeper of royal secrets. And, with considerations of class omnipresent, he would have to be one of the Breed.
Major Ernest Herbert Campbell Bald MC, late 15th Hussars, would be the man.
16
The Go-Between
This galloping major had already enjoyed a colourful life. Ernest Bald was born in 1872, third son of John Bald, a whisky magnate, originally from Alloa in the central belt of Scotland. Ernest grew up in a household with a large cohort of servants, including a butler, footmen, hallboys, several resident maids, and a governess.336 Although the family background was in trade, young Master Bald would receive a first-class gentleman’s education. At 13, after his father had taken a lease of the historic Monzie Castle in Perthshire, Ernest was sent to Eton. Here he had a distinguished sporting career, rowing in the College Eight, playing for the 1st XI at cricket and taking a leading role in the incomprehensible ‘Wall Game’. A popular figure, he was elected a member of the self-elected Eton Society (‘Pop’) in 1890. One good friend from Eton days was George Cornwallis-West, second husband of Lady Randolph Churchill (the couple first met at Warwick Castle during a weekend party hosted by Daisy, Duchess of Warwick).337
After Sandhurst, Ernest Bald was commissioned into the 15th Hussars, a fashionable cavalry regiment, and promoted to captain in 1899 shortly before the start of the Boer War. In South Africa, he began his service with the Pietersburg Light Horse, a cavalry unit hastily created to replace the ill-starred ‘Bushveldt Carbineers’ (BVC). The BVC had been tainted by the ‘Breaker’ Morant affair and the execution of two Australian lieutenants convicted by court-martial of killing Boer prisoners and a German missionary in cold blood.
Bald later served in the Imperial Yeomanry with Bendor, Duke of Westminster, the start of a long friendship. An excellent horseman, Bald was a keen shot and ‘fisher’ (his talents honed on Scottish grouse moors and in highland rivers), an enthusiasm for gentlemanly sporting pursuits that he shared with Bendor.
After the Boer War, Bald – like many other officers in peacetime – found himself stranded on the Reserve List. Although comfortably off, he evidently had a restless disposition and by 1910 was managing a timber forest in Mexico, where he was visited by George Cornwallis-West. The following year, Bald travelled to the USA, planning to visit one of the hugely fashionable ranches in Wyoming (kept by the likes of ‘Buffalo Bill’ and the equally bibulous English remittance man, George Calverley-Rudston) to shoot elk and other unfortunate mammals.338 In the event, he married one Goldia Routt of Chicago in November 1911, but the marriage seems to have lasted only a few weeks, failing shortly after the SS Cedric, with the happy couple on board, docked in Liverpool.339
Once back in Europe, unattached, and with a private income, Bald took pleasure in the casinos and maisons de rendezvous of France, making the acquaintance of Marguerite (then styled ‘Mme Maggie Meller’) at Deauville shortly before the Great War. As a result of his friendship with Bendor, he joined the Machine Gun Corps (Motor), becoming the Duke’s ADC and serving in Egypt. As we have seen, on 21 March 1916, the Duke of Westminster led a squadron of Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars, his gift to the nation (Bendor insisted that his cars should be commanded only by cavalry officers). In a daring night-time raid, the squadron rescued a large number of English sailors kept prisoner in humiliating conditions by pro-Ottoman tribesmen.340 The Duke, nominated for a VC, had to be content with the DSO (though only one rung down on the medal ladder), while more junior officers, such as Ernest Bald, were awarded the MC. Bald subsequently merited a mention in dispatches and was also the recipient of a rather wackier honour, ‘The Order of the Nile, Fourth Class’.341
Towards the end of the war, Bald was attached to the RAF in an administrative post and was finally transferred to the retired list early in 1919. Under the heading ‘Special Qualifications’, his service record states, ‘Can speak French’.342 After the war, Bald divided his time between rooms at the Orleans Club, near St James’s Street in the West End and the family estate at East Haugh, near Pitlochry. Bald, with his outstanding service record and circle of influential friends, is a character that leaps from the pages of a John Buchan novel. Bald’s South American activities give him a touch of Richard Hannay, but the closest resemblance is to Sir Archibald Roylance, the amiable Old Etonian owner of a ‘gentleman’s shooting lodge’ in Ayrshire. Archie Roylance features in several of Buchan’s
‘shilling shockers’, including Mr Standfast, Huntingtower and the sublime John Macnab.
Buchan’s description of Archie Roylance’s den in Huntingtower encapsulates the tweedy world of Major Bald, to be richly savoured when back on his native heath and well away from the grime of London. Like the fictional ‘Mains of Garple’, East Haugh (a neat granite house with a large turret on one side) could have sported ‘a fair-sized room … a bright fire … [with] the scent of peat’, its walls adorned with ‘the horns and heads of big game, foxes’ masks, the model of a gigantic salmon, and several bookcases … with books and maps … mixed with decanters and cigar-boxes on the long side-board’. With The Field and ‘a pile of new novels’ on display, Archie’s drawing-room created ‘the very shrine of comfort’.343
Bald too moved in upper-class circles and his name can often be found in the Society columns of The Times. His sister, Mary Verena Bald, married Algernon Hay-Drummond (known as Algernon Hay), a kinsman of the Earl of Kinnoull and Bald’s close contemporary at Eton. Ernest Bald and the Algernon Hays were very close, often forming a threesome at Society weddings, as when ‘Captain Ernest Bald and Mr and Mrs Algernon Hay’ gave a ‘silver tea kettle’ to a newly affianced pair in 1909, joining aristocratic fellow-donors such as the Earls of Cawdor and Mansfield and the Hon. Mrs Keppel, then mistress of Edward VII.344
Bald’s friendship with the Duke of Westminster, an intimate of the Prince of Wales, is an important connection in this story. The family relationship between Algy Hay and Ernest Bald establishes another link in the chain of circumstance. Examination of Hay’s background also discloses a yet further connection, this time with Godfrey Thomas.
After Eton, Hay had joined the Foreign Office and, during the Great War, worked closely with Godfrey Thomas, who was first deputy head, then head, of the ‘cipher room’, in charge of King’s Messengers. In 1919, Thomas left the Foreign Office to become the Prince’s Private Secretary. Hay succeeded him in charge of the King’s Messengers, already exercising the highly confidential responsibility of ferrying the private correspondence of the Prince of Wales to destinations in the United Kingdom and in Continental Europe. Lucky recipients had included Marguerite (‘Maggie Meller’) and Fredie Dudley Ward.
Thomas was highly regarded during his years at the Foreign Office. Hay too had qualities that marked him out from the common run. ‘Wily old Algy! He knew how to talk … to anyone, from a Royal Duke to a scullery-maid. He never let anyone down or gave anything away.’345 Hay was in a position to give sound advice to his brother-in-law as go-between on a delicate mission.
Whether or not Bald was aware, before the hullabaloo of the Savoy shooting, that Marguerite had come to London, he is on record as having ‘frequently visited’ her from the very first day of her committal to prison on 10 July until at least mid-August, a period of over five weeks.346 These journeys wrenched Bald from the comfort of clubland and the West End, away to the much less agreeable neighbourhood of Parkhurst Road, N. Here stood Holloway, Marguerite’s gaol, a Victorian Gothic monstrosity of the dreariest kind.
In making these visits, Major Bald surely had motivations beyond those of mere past acquaintance, fond memories of an old flame last seen in wartime Paris and Deauville. He was an ideal candidate, from the point of view of the Royal Household, to sound out Marguerite’s intentions. Properly briefed, he would be discreet and his sterling qualities would enable him to manage the mercurial personality of the Prince’s former mistress.
With Bald’s London club so close to York House, there was no problem in walking the few steps to York House, where he could convey Marguerite’s demands to Thomas and Lascelles, returning to Holloway with whatever response the Royal Household saw fit to make.
Judging by the frequency of Bald’s visits and the lengthy period over which they were made, negotiations appear to have been protracted. The dearth of French speakers among the staff at Holloway has been noted earlier.347 Discussions could be carried on in French without risk that a sharp-eared prison wardress would understand. Sitting either side of a cheap deal table, in a bleak whitewashed room with barred windows, Marguerite and the Major discreetly horsetraded the most intimate secrets of the Prince of Wales.
Marguerite knew that Bald was close to the Duke of Westminster and that Bendor was close to the Prince. It is impossible to rule out a demand for money. Although she was a rich woman in her own right, Marguerite had a highly acquisitive streak. Financial arrangements between the Royal Household and awkward claimants are not unknown. A substantial sum is said to have been paid a few years later to a mistress of the Duke of Kent, younger brother of the Prince, on condition that she left the country.348
Marguerite, despite the considerable difficulties facing her as she prepared to go on trial for her life, is likely to have been a tough negotiator. She must have known that the Prince was desperate to get his letters back, with no idea of what Marguerite might say in court in the course of what promised to be a sensational trial. She also had the support of some powerful friends, receiving visits, flowers and scent from the Baroness Émile d’Erlanger and la duchesse de Westminster (although Marguerite did not specify which of Bendor’s two deeply wronged wives had beaten a path to her Holloway door).
It is impossible to know the exact detail of what passed between the Royal Household, Major Bald and Marguerite, but by mid-August 1923, it appears that a settlement had been reached, in terms satisfactory to both parties, ‘and his [the Prince’s] name will be kept out’, as Lord Curzon later reported. Marguerite’s past life would not be the subject of dissection before the jury. In return, Marguerite would not breathe a word about her princely affair during the Great War.
For the Royal Household, the primary task was to recover the incriminating correspondence, which was housed far away in Egypt. Marguerite agreed that the letters would be surrendered to the British High Commission in Cairo.349 As we have seen, Maître Michel Assouad, Marguerite’s able lawyer and confidant, most probably took charge of the letters brought over by Marguerite in November 1922. There could be no question of Assouad or some other ordinary civilian – Egyptian, French or British – travelling from Egypt to England with such correspondence. The possibilities of loss, general skullduggery, or seizure by some officious or corrupt customs official, ruled out that idea completely. On the other hand, a British official, armed with a diplomatic laissez-passer and free from the risk of arbitrary seizure of documentation, could safely transport the precious cargo from Egypt to an expectant York House in London.
Marguerite was allowed to send letters abroad (although, as has been shown, Special Branch intercepted all her correspondence, reading the contents before onward dispatch). She would have been able to give Maître Assouad, by letter or wire, instructions to hand over the letters in his possession. The authorities could then be sure that she was keeping her side of the bargain.
Always a cute operator, Marguerite knew that the bundle handed in to the British Residency would contain most – but not all – of the correspondence. She knew that after five years there was every chance that the Prince was not likely to remember exactly how many letters he had written. As noted earlier, Marguerite extracted some samples from the pack, left for safe keeping in Paris.350 Here they would remain, out of the hands of her former lover – whether as the Prince of Wales, King-Emperor, or Duke of Windsor – for nearly fifty years.351
On 15 August, Bald had a meeting at Holloway with the Deputy Governor and made a curious request, immediately relayed to the Prison Commissioners and Scotland Yard. ‘Application was made to me today by a Major Bold [sic] … that a teacher of languages might be permitted to attend here in order to teach [Marguerite] the English language.’ Cronin noted that, according to the Major, ‘the prisoner herself had wished that the suggestion made could be carried out’ and the ostensible reason was to help Marguerite understand the trial proceedings.
The Prison Commissioners, seemingly forgetful of the lack of French speakers in the system, m
inuted their agreement to Cronin ‘provided that you can arrange for the necessary supervision to ensure that nothing improper passes and that you satisfy yourself as to the character and bona-fides of the teacher’.
Bald returned two days later with a ‘slip’ (probably a letter of introduction) which gave details of the proposed tutor, a Mrs M. Barton. Cronin asked the Commissioners to make enquiries, ‘nothing being known of her here’, adding that ‘Major Bald proposes that the lessons should be given three nights weekly from 4.30 to 5.30 p.m. This could be arranged without great difficulty.’
The date of Major Bald’s last recorded visit and interview with the Prison Commissioners may help explain why Mrs Barton came into the picture. Five days before, 12 August 1923, was ‘the Glorious Twelfth’, the day when grouse-shooting begins. The major, a keen shot, perhaps felt that he had done his duty by Marguerite, the Prince and his good friend the Duke of Westminster during five weeks’ attendance at Holloway. In the earlier part of August, Bald might have told Godfrey Thomas or Tommy Lascelles, each equally familiar with the timetable of the London Season, of his anxiety to get back to the grousebutts. Now he could return to East Haugh, his comfortable shooting-lodge, happily rejoining fellow ‘guns’ on the Perthshire moors only a few days into the grouse season and happily in time for blackgame shooting, which started on 19 August.
At this point, Major Bald disappears from Marguerite’s story, but his friendship with Bendor continued, as noted by Winston Churchill in a letter to his wife, Clementine, written in 1928. Churchill described a fishing party in Scotland, on the Duke of Westminster’s Rosehall estate, with ‘Only Benny [Bendor], Coco [Chanel] & one of his ADC’s Ernest Ball [sic].352