Although it took many years for Letty to come to terms with her grief, she did eventually marry again. In 1921 she married the artist Guy Benson and they had two more children. It was seen by the family as a good marriage, but it is clear that Ego still came first in her thoughts. When she remarried Letty told Mary that she was wonderfully happy as Ego would want her to be. Nor did she forget what her mother-in-law had done for her. She told Mary, ‘You are my “Mama” aren’t you? And my dear counsellor and beloved friend and helper and thank God you always will be. And I shall always be your “daughter” and shall always come to you as of old.’ Using the phrase Ego used in his letters to Mary, she told her she loved her ‘till all is blue’.85
Mary Wemyss was a very different woman from Letty’s real mother, the Duchess of Rutland. Pragmatically, Violet had decided early in the war that she would rather save her son than see him suffer a similar fate to that of so many of his contemporaries. She did not feel she had done the wrong thing, she believed that she had to fight to protect him. Other mothers did nothing, and what did they get for their bravery? The worst.86 Although, in one way, this was true and many modern mothers would do the same as the Duchess of Rutland, in her own era her behaviour was seen as unacceptable. There is no record of what Letty or Mary thought of Violet’s actions, but a gulf divided them. Mary had a depth of integrity that Violet lacked and Letty recognised this. The Duchess of Rutland had saved her son, but she had lost her daughter to her oldest friend. Her gift of pearls to the Red Cross appeal symbolised the complex deal she had brokered with fate.
Four
MOTHER OF PEARLS
Although Mary Wemyss found solace sharing her sorrow with her daughter-in-law, in their relationship she always had to be the strong guiding hand, and so when she needed someone to comfort her she turned to her female friends. A camaraderie grew up among the mothers who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The Red Cross Pearl Necklace embodied this solidarity, their pearls strung together in the necklaces symbolised the close links that united mothers, irrespective of class. A letter from Edith Fielden of Twickenham, sent on 21 April with her pearl, eloquently expressed the feelings of all the bereaved mothers. She wrote:
It is not a perfect pearl, but it is the only one I have. I send it in memory of a pearl beyond all price already given, my only son, and I feel that perhaps one pearl in that great historic necklace from me may hang side by side with those of greater beauty, even as the mothers of only sons stand side by side with those who, richer, could give more.1
Mrs Fielden’s son, Granville John Henry, had joined the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders in August 1914 and was sent to France the following month. He was killed at St Julien in the Battle of Ypres on Sunday, 25 April 1915. He was just 19 years old.
The Red Cross Pearl Appeal became a dignified way for mothers to remember their sons and express their grief. In April, the first gift ‘in memory’ of a soldier who had sacrificed his life in the Great War was given. Soon, many pearls were sent in with simple messages, which in a few words spoke volumes about the feeling behind the gift. One from Mrs E.H. Villiers recorded, ‘In memory of my Son-Heart’s 21st birthday. July 21st 1918. Killed Feb. 4th, 1917.’ There were hundreds ‘in memory of my beloved son’, or even more poignant, ‘in memory of my only son’. The fact that many of the fallen were fresh-faced youths just out of school was emphasised in a gift from ‘a mother and sister in memory of two boys’.
In the public consciousness, no woman represented war mothers more powerfully than Ettie Grenfell, Lady Desborough. When she became a patron of the Red Cross Pearl Appeal many other women followed; her example of uncompromising courage in the face of adversity was legendary. After she lost two sons, Julian and Billy Grenfell, within two months of each other in 1915 on the Western Front, a photograph of her sitting very upright and proud in her pearls and picture hat between her tall, athletic sons appeared in Tatler. Above the picture, a quotation from Rudyard Kipling said it all, ‘If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha’ paid in full’.2
Ettie became the face of stoic war mothers across the country. This was the image she promoted, but behind this potent mythology of idealised motherhood lies a more complex story. With Ettie, things were not always what they seemed. She used her strong will to create an image for herself and her family which merged fantasy with reality. Ettie was shaped by her childhood and the brave face she showed to the world during the First World War was first constructed many years before.
Born Ethel Fane, she came from a wealthy aristocratic background – on her father’s side, she was a Westmorland while her mother was the daughter of Earl Cowper. As a child she experienced more than her fair share of loss. Her parents had died by the time she was 2, her adored brother when she was 8 and then the grandmother upon whom she depended when she was 13. Instead of wallowing in grief, she learnt to hide her true feelings behind a carefully cultivated façade and appear happy. This mask was essential to her and an act of will because there was a strong strain of melancholy running through her family. Many of her relatives on the Cowper side suffered from depression and one cousin committed suicide. Throughout her life, Ettie battled against acute attacks of depression. To overcome these episodes, which she condemned as ‘a kind of blasphemy against life’, she was determined to enjoy every moment of her existence, however adverse the circumstances.3 Her friends described her ‘gospel of happiness’ as ‘Ettyism’.4 It was partly based in her strong Christian faith, but it was also a reflection of her dominant personality that fought fate with sheer willpower.5
As a vivacious heiress, Ettie attracted many suitors. Friends described her as having ‘a genius for life itself and for human relationships’.6 Although she was not classically beautiful, she had the patrician air of a Gainsborough portrait as she was tall and elegant with heavily lidded blue eyes. It was more her compelling personality than her looks that drew people to her. Her immense vitality made every occasion exciting. She enjoyed intense discussions in which she would seamlessly switch from profound subjects to trivial gossip. She had a seductive way of lowering her eyelids when she was listening intently and then replying in her melodic drawling voice.7 Her great gift was to make whoever she was with at that moment feel that they were the only person in the world. She was able to charm without seeming to flatter, to flirt without compromising her virtue and, once a man fell in love with her, the infatuation often lasted for life.
In 1887 she married the handsome, athletic Willie Grenfell. A year later, the couple had the first of their five children. Unlike many of the women of her era, Ettie was determined to be a hands-on mother. At seaside summer holidays at Swanage she gave up the whole of her time to her children, spending every moment doing things with them, either walking, butterfly-catching or yachting. Within the Souls, she became known as a model of motherhood, but this alone was not enough for her – she also had to be a femme fatale.
Although on holidays she devoted herself to her children, back home at Taplow, her turreted, mock-Gothic mansion between Windsor and Henley, her social life took up much of her time. She created an idyll for her friends; at her summer parties, beautiful women dressed in flimsy muslins and straw hats, and strolled in the balmy night air in gardens fragrant with the scent of ripe peaches, verbena and sweet geraniums.8 As Ettie stood at the end of her long lawn surrounded by acolytes, it was often hard to get close to her. She needed to be adored by everyone and her children were always competing for her attention against her many admirers.
She demanded a great deal from those she loved. She wanted to be the centre of her children’s world and she also expected them to always be the best. At times, these dual demands became too much for her sons. Just two years apart in age, Julian and Billy Grenfell were like twins; although they often fought, they were passionately attached to each other. First at Eton, then at Oxford, they were expected to succeed, not just academically but in sport and their social life. To their mother’s delight, they grew up to lo
ok like tall, curly haired Greek gods. They were both exceptional sportsmen who enjoyed riding, rowing and boxing. However, friends noted there was something primitive, almost savage, in them which meant they were happiest in the elemental world of nature – hunting, shooting or fishing.9
By the time Julian was in his late teens, strains had developed with his mother. He became increasingly critical of her social life, which he considered superficial and hypocritical. They would have ‘vehement discussions’ which often ended with both of them in tears. Ettie wrote that they both held very strong opinions and could not bear the other not to agree absolutely. She admitted to feeling ‘mildly depressed’ about these arguments and thinking how dreadful it would be if anyone heard them, as there was ‘very plain speaking on both sides’.10 It was mortifying for her when Julian made their differences public in a series of essays he wrote attacking her world. He argued that the conventional values of the society he had been brought up in were based on fantasies, it crushed any individualism and hid reality. He believed that it was heading for disaster.11
His letters to her at this time reflect their complicated relationship and often it is hard to tell whether he was being ironic or deadly serious. In 1909 he wrote, ‘Madam – On mature consideration I have come to the conclusion that our differences of view with regard to the moral sanction, Good and Evil, and social conventions are such as to make further intercourse impossible between us.’12 However, the silence did not last long and he was soon back in touch, writing, ‘I am longing to complete my newly established supremacy over you in argument. How are you? I am longing to see you, you are so much greater fun than anyone “besides being my mother”.’13 In another letter he wrote, in a tone worthy of one of her admirers:
You are wonderful; your wonder is inexhaustible, and keeps coming on me with a shock of newness every time, and your dark depths and your surface fun […] I want to see you again directly, because you are so far far better than anyone else, and I don’t want to see you again ever, because everyone else is like flat soda-water afterwards.14
Hardly surprisingly, the oedipal dynamic between mother and son affected Julian’s relationships with women. His brother, Billy, described him as ‘a splendid creature, as beautiful as a panther, and no woman can resist him for ten seconds. I wish I did not feel such a centipede beside him.’15 However, when Julian became interested in girls Ettie was jealous. He was particularly attracted to Marjorie Manners, the Duchess of Rutland’s dark-eyed daughter and one of the three exhilarating Manners girls nicknamed ‘the hot house’. Like Julian, Marjorie wanted to become independent from her dominating mother and be a singer. Ettie resented her rival and, for a time, refused to invite Marjorie to Taplow.
Similarly, Julian found it difficult to accept his mother’s many flirtations. Particularly challenging was Ettie’s intense emotional attachment to Archie Gordon, a friend of Billy’s who was only three years older than Julian. When Archie was killed in a car crash in 1909, Julian could not cope with his complex emotions – already suffering from depression, he had a complete nervous breakdown. For a time he left university and spent hours just lying on the sofa in Ettie’s sitting room fingering a loaded shotgun which rested beside him. During this difficult year, he wrote to his mother about his search for a purpose in life:
I utterly realise that what I am doing now is only secondary, and I’m longing for a real ‘end’ – I am truly, though you think I’m bolting, and barring, and banging. […] I agree that an ultimate end must satisfy all the needs of the soul; it must do more than that, it must be far far far above and beyond all those needs, a pure ideal, something wholly unattainable, you must have millions of miles of outlook. I think too that ‘dedication and devotion and service’ are very near to the roots of it […] Honestly I can’t understand love at present, I can’t think it, and I’m sure no ideal will come to me through love, though love may come through an ideal.16
Julian knew that to survive he had to separate from his mother. He described their arguments as his ‘fight for life’.17 After recovering from his breakdown he joined the army and went abroad to India and then South Africa.
Following in Julian’s footsteps, Billy went to Oxford, but like his elder brother he became depressed when his academic achievements did not live up to his mother’s exacting expectations. When he failed to get a first in his degree in ‘Greats’, he wrote to Ettie in August 1913:
You must believe, my darling, that all your great love has not been wasted, though God knows you have got little enough tangible return for it; but it is there in the form of seed, and may flower some day, if you will continue to have faith in me and will me to be better.18
When war was declared, both Julian and Billy could not wait to fight. Like Raymond Asquith, until the war came they lacked motivation, but at last they seemed to have found their vocation. Julian now had a purpose in his life that had been lacking before. He wrote a letter full of excitement to his mother in August 1914 setting out his vision of what the war was all about. Steeped in ideas of honour, duty and self-sacrifice for his country, both at home and at Eton, he wrote:
Don’t you think it has been a wonderful and almost incredible rally to the Empire? […] It reinforces one’s failing belief in the Old Flag and the Mother Country and the Heavy Brigade and the Thin Red line and all the Imperial Idea, which gets rather shadowy in peace time.19
It was not just the imperial ideal which appealed to Julian, he adored the whole adventure of being a soldier. When the Royal Dragoons arrived in France in early October, his letters home constantly repeated that he had never been so well or happy before. He wrote, ‘Isn’t it luck for me to have been born so as to be just the right age and just in the right place – not too high up to be worried – to enjoy it now.’20 He described the excitement and independence of his life. He liked having no personal property to tie him down and even enjoyed sleeping on straw in the bottom of a trench rather than a bed. He was pleased that he did not have to be well-mannered and clean, recording his pleasure in getting really dirty and only taking his boots off once and washing twice in ten days. He enjoyed the camaraderie with his men, admiring their courage under fire, their filthy language and humour.
More controversial to modern listeners is his attitude to killing. He was not squeamish about shooting Germans. He wrote, ‘The first time one shoots a man one has the feeling of “never point a loaded gun at anyone even in fun”, but very soon it gets like shooting crocodile, only more exciting, because he shoots back at you.’21 One night, he crept over to the German trenches and shot one of their soldiers who had been sniping at the British troops. He was awarded the DSO for his bravery. On another occasion, a German shell landed within 10 yards of him and knocked him off his horse, but he just got up and laughed – it had not even knocked the cigarette out of his mouth. He wrote of the war in his usual half ironic tone, ‘It just suits my stolid health, and stolid nerves, and barbaric disposition. The fighting – excitement vitalizes everything, every sight and word and action. One loves one’s fellow man so much more when one is bent on killing him.’22
For once, Ettie was able to give her son just what he needed. She kept him supplied with a Burberry mackintosh, lamp refills, pipe-lighters, whisky, copies of the Daily Mail and tins of café au lait. More importantly, she kept any fears she had for his safety to herself. Their relationship had never been better. He wrote to her, ‘You are a really great War Mother. All emotion is fatal now.’23 At last he knew that he had become the hero she had always wanted.
In May 1915 Julian’s regiment was involved in a major action near the Ypres–Menin road. At 4 a.m. on 13 May the Germans started a heavy bombardment of the trenches. Julian went up what he called ‘the little hill of death’ to try to take some observations. He was knocked over by a shell but it only cut his coat and bruised his shoulder. He took his findings back to his colonel, who was pleased with him and got him a whisky and soda. Julian then volunteered to take a message through to the
Somerset Yeomanry. He walked very coolly through heavy fire to deliver his message. When he returned, he went up ‘the little hill’ again with General Campbell.
At about 12.30, Julian was hit in the head by a splinter of shell. At first his feet felt cold and he said to the general, ‘Go down, Sir, don’t bother about me, I’m done.’ However, the general helped to carry him down and while doing so was slightly wounded himself. Julian put on a cheerful front, but he said to a brother officer, ‘Do you know, I think I shall die.’ When his comrade said, ‘Nonsense!’, Julian replied, ‘Well, you see if I don’t.’24 Julian was one among many of his regiment seriously injured or killed in the encounter; out of his fifteen brother officers only three survived.25
The following Sunday morning, a bloodstained letter arrived at Taplow from Julian, explaining what had happened in his usual light-hearted way, ‘I stopped a Jack Johnson with my head, and my skull is slightly cracked. But I’m getting on splendidly. They said I did well. Today I go down to Wimereux, to hospital, shall you be there? All all love, JULIAN OF THE HARD HEAD.’26
Pulling strings with friends in the Admiralty, his parents travelled to France overnight on an ammunition boat and were able to be with him in hospital. Julian had an extensive fracture of the inner skull and severe laceration of the brain; a splinter had penetrated 1½in into the brain and an immediate operation was necessary. Julian was in good spirits when he saw Ettie and Willie, but he told his mother that the journey down from the Front had been terrible to endure.
Billy had just been sent to France and, on 20 May, he came to visit his brother. He was overcome by seeing him looking so ill. However, Julian was delighted to see him and said afterwards, ‘I am glad there was no gap.’ It was thought he meant that just as he had to give up serving his country his brother stepped in to take his place.27
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