Pearls before Poppies

by Rachel Trethewey

  The Canadians were not the only ones to view the war in religious terms. Many people in Britain, France and Germany believed God was on their side. Despite the fact that Catholics, Protestants and Jews – people of all different faiths – were fighting on both sides and that there was an almost complete lack of any clear denominational differences between the Allies and their enemies, these people saw the conflict as a kind of war of religion. The idea that they were engaged in a holy war was exploited by some of the clergy in the different countries to spur their congregations on to ever greater sacrifice.48

  In trying to make some spiritual sense out of the carnage of the battlefield, the devout identified the suffering with Christ’s crucifixion. One army chaplain, the rector of St Giles in Dorset who was serving at No. 42 Stationary Hospital during Holy Week 1918, wrote to a friend explaining that he believed that the Passion of Christ was reproduced in the life of nearly every soldier. On a physical level, he compared the pack each soldier carried to Christ’s cross, claiming that it weighed the same, and each man’s tin hat to the crown of thorns. However, it was the spiritual suffering, the agony and the loneliness of the helpless, wounded soldier waiting to be picked up on the battlefield that most reminded him of the Via Dolorosa.49

  The idea of giving a pearl to the Red Cross often appealed to people who were seeking a spiritual dimension amidst the horror of war. In medieval times, pearls were associated with the purity of the Virgin Mary, Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven, and this sacred symbolism made the Pearl Appeal a particularly apt way to commemorate the nurses killed in May 1918. It tapped in to the same vision of the saintly sisters that Moira promoted in his painting. Pearls were also an appropriate jewel to remember Katherine and her colleagues by because the gems had a long history of being thought to have healing powers. During the Renaissance, scholars promoted the medicinal and magical properties of pearls. Some were pulverised and taken in a drink, while others were worn as amulets that were believed to cure illnesses of the mind and protect patients.50

  Nurses were not only remembered through the pearls, they also gave to the appeal themselves. One of the most generous contributions was a fine necklace of eighty-nine pearls from ‘Blue Bird’ – perhaps she was one of the Canadian nurses who had already given so much.

  Katherine was the first of forty-six Canadian nurses to lose their lives during the war.51 It was right that a pearl in memory of her sacrifice should take its place in the pearl necklaces alongside other jewels in memory of soldiers who died in action. In Katherine’s local paper, her photo appeared next to all the soldiers who had died in London’s Honour Roll. As the Brantford newspaper explained:

  She has fallen on the field of battle, on behalf of the cause of human liberty, just as surely as those who have given their lives on the firing line, and her name will rank with other heroines who have demonstrated their loyalty and self-sacrifice in the time of stress.52

  Seven

  PEARLS FOR TRANSFORMATION

  Not all the pearls given to the appeal had a sacred significance or were donated to remember loss. Since Queen Elizabeth I in the Armada portrait had worn pearls in abundance to signify her purity, chastity and wealth, another layer of symbolism wrapped itself around these jewels. During the Elizabethan age, pearls became associated with female empowerment. In the 1588 painting celebrating the defeat of the Spanish fleet, the queen, resplendent in a jewel-encrusted gown and festooned in ropes of pearls, stands beside her pearl and jewel-set crown, her hand resting on a globe to suggest that she controls even time and space.

  During the Great War, many women found they also had more power and control over their own destinies. Society had to change to adapt to the demands of war and, with thousands of men away, women took on many of their roles on the home front. During the war, 100,000 women were nurses or worked in hospitals, another 100,000 served in the auxiliary forces and 800,000 women worked on making munitions and in engineering. Another quarter of a million had worked on the land.

  Women took on many of the jobs previously done by men, even driving trains and buses.1 In Lord Northcliffe’s War Book in aid of the Red Cross, the press baron wrote about the effect this work had on women. Describing it as one of the great surprises of the war, he suggested that the new jobs open to women released their ‘tremendous pent up energy’. He wrote that before the war thousands of ‘nice girls’ living in ‘dreary, manless suburbs’ did not work because their families thought it was beneath their dignity. They preferred the barren existence of ‘keeping up appearances on small dress allowances to an active participation in daily life’. During the war, women had been able to prove themselves and they had taken on their tasks with ‘joyousness’.2

  His wife’s Pearl Appeal allowed some of these women to express this joy in their new experiences by giving jewels. As one donor of a very beautiful pearl wrote, ‘If “every pearl is a tear”, may this one represent only a tear of laughter.’3 Although they were often working harder than they had ever worked before, the combination of camaraderie and a sense of purpose meant that some women actually had fun in the war.

  Many of the patrons of the appeal not only donated their gems, they also gave their time to the Red Cross. Working for the first time, they found a fulfilment and freedom they had never known before. One woman who experienced this transformation was Constance Edwina, Duchess of Westminster. Known to her friends as Shelagh, her metamorphosis from society butterfly to a woman with a mission is recorded in photographs.

  Posing provocatively, playfully stretching her long string of pearls across her cleavage to accentuate her waspish waist, Shelagh stares knowingly at the camera. Her hair is coiffed into a hundred curls and a tassled brooch is pinned strategically just below her low neckline to draw attention to her pert bust. This photograph, taken in 1906 at the fashionable Lafayette Studio in New Bond Street, could not be more different from the one taken eight years later. In her 1914 photograph, the seductive diva has vanished to be replaced by a demure nun-like woman in a high-necked nurse’s uniform and apron. Every bit of hair, except her fringe, is concealed in a nurse’s white hat while, reflecting the practical requirements of her new role, all her jewellery has been removed. The sexually knowing look has gone and, in its place, her eyes express a deeper, sadder knowledge.

  Before the war Shelagh had led a hedonistic life. Married to one of the richest men in England, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, known as Bendor (after his grandfather’s chestnut Derby winner), she had been one of the most envied women in society. It was estimated that the duke’s income was the equivalent today of almost £47,000 per day. However, her wealth did not bring Shelagh happiness. Her mother, Patsy Cornwallis-West, was a manipulative matchmaker who taught both her daughters that they had to marry for money and position rather than love. Patsy’s eldest daughter, Daisy, married the German Prince of Pless. Upon the death of her husband’s father in 1907, Daisy became the chatelaine of Furstenstein, a palace in Silesia with more than 600 rooms, and the Castle of Pless, which had an estate larger than an English county. A trendsetter, Daisy was responsible for changing the fashion in pearls. In 1900 the height of sophistication was the bayadére, composed of several strands of seed pearls plaited together and often decorated with a pendant or tassel. From around 1910, its place was taken by long sautoirs, modelled on the Princess of Pless’ string of pearls, which was more than 7m long.

  After Daisy’s marriage, Patsy’s next mission was to snare an equally eligible husband for her second daughter. Bendor and Shelagh had been childhood sweethearts. As children, they took part in a mock wedding ceremony with Daisy officiating as the vicar. For years afterwards they called each other ‘my darling wife’ and ‘dearest husband’.4 Once Bendor came of age, Patsy was keen to turn the play acting into a reality.

  At a house party at Blenheim Palace, Patsy persuaded the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) to speak to Bendor and suggest that, having been discovered alone in the garden with Shelagh, the
only course of action for a gentleman was to marry her. Bendor later claimed that Patsy had orchestrated it all by sending the two of them into the garden for a walk, with the intention of accusing him of compromising her daughter’s reputation. Whatever the truth, her machinations worked and in February 1901 Shelagh was married to Bendor. Although the ceremony was scaled back because the country was in mourning for Queen Victoria, it was still one of the grandest society weddings of the season. Shelagh was swathed in Brussels lace, while the pages wore satin ‘Blue Boy’ costumes copied from Gainsborough’s portrait. The reception was held in Park Lane where the centrepiece was a huge wedding cake topped with replicas of the bride and groom’s ancestral homes. On the wedding day, Princess Daisy noted that her new brother-in-law showered presents ‘not unworthy of an Empress’ on his bride’.5

  At first, the couple seemed compatible as they shared a love of hunting, polo playing, yachting and motor racing. They also enjoyed entertaining on a lavish scale at Grosvenor House in London and Eaton Hall in Cheshire. The young couple were at the heart of Edwardian society. Bendor’s widowed mother, Lady Sibell Grosvenor, had married George Wyndham, Mary Wemyss’ brother, so they were leading members of the Souls. However, Bendor and his bride were also close to the less intellectual Marlborough House set. At their house parties at Eaton Hall, the two groups mingled. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Alice Keppel and Lady Sarah Wilson visited, as did the Duchess of Rutland and her daughters.

  Redesigned in the Victorian era by Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of the Natural History Museum, Eaton Hall was a Gothic palace which unkind observers compared to St Pancras Station.6 With unlimited money to spend, Bendor developed his estate to his own taste, creating a boy’s paradise with a steeplechase course, nine-hole golf course, hunting, shooting, cricket, tennis and croquet. The highlight of the year was the annual polo tournament when ten teams and ninety-two polo ponies descended on Eaton Hall for a week.7

  The Westminsters entertained with equal extravagance in London. In 1902, the duke and duchess gave a ball at Grosvenor House for the coronation. It was the height of Edwardian glamour as royalty and aristocracy, glittering in evening dress and jewels, filled the ballroom. The supper hall was decorated with blue hydrangeas and white lilies and the finest silver. It was the culmination of Patsy Cornwallis-West’s social ambitions, as her two daughters and their extremely rich husbands took centre stage, but then an unfortunate incident ruined Patsy’s evening. Somehow, she managed to break her string of pearls and, as the orchestra stopped playing and guests crawled around the floor to collect her jewels, someone whispered that the pearls were not real. Soon the gossip had spread throughout the party and Patsy’s moment of glory was ruined.8

  The duke and duchess’ marriage was also not what it outwardly seemed. In the first years the young couple had a daughter, Ursula, followed by a son, Edward, but increasingly Shelagh was away from home, living a fast life in every sense of the word. In 1907, a month after she was featured looking flirtatious in a large picture hat on the front cover of The Car magazine, she appeared in court on a charge of dangerous driving. She admitted to having driven her car at up to 11 miles per hour and was fined £5.9

  Still under the influence of her sister and mother, she was often away from home visiting Daisy at her palaces in Pless and Furstenstein. As their marriage deteriorated, husband and wife were unfaithful to each other. Bendor had an affair with Gertie Millar, the daughter of a Bradford millworker who had become one of the most popular musical comedy stars of the era. Their relationship continued until she found out that Bendor was being unfaithful to her with the ballerina, Anna Pavlova.10 Retaliating, Shelagh surrounded herself with handsome, unmarried men and it was soon rumoured that she was having an affair with the urbane Duke of Alba. Already a regular guest at house parties held by the Desboroughs at Taplow, Jimmy Alba was soon top of Shelagh’s guest list for Eaton Hall. In 1908 Shelagh and Daisy went to visit him at his luxurious home in Spain. While the duchess enjoyed her holiday, she left her young children with their grandparents for three months.

  Shelagh immersed herself in a decadent lifestyle, but it did not satisfy her. She was looking for something more meaningful to give purpose to her life. Strong-willed and with a complex personality, the shallow existence of a society hostess did not stretch her. Although she always appeared outwardly cool and poised, she often seethed within when her spoilt husband flew into a rage if he did not get his own way. Clashes between the couple were inevitable as Shelagh could also be difficult to handle.11

  The final blow to the Westminsters’ marriage came in February 1909 when their 4-year-old son, the heir to the dukedom, died from septicaemia following an appendix operation. Shelagh was too distraught to attend her son’s funeral. She wrote to her sister of the ‘big blank he has left in my life; I feel as if the world had grown suddenly dark, and I am groping to see and touch a little light’.12 Later that year she wrote again, saying how she missed Edward’s little footsteps and thought she heard them all the time.13 Bendor was equally bereft, the sorrow of not having a son to succeed him was to pervade the rest of his life. However, rather than turning to his wife in his grief, he blamed her for the tragedy, claiming that she had neglected their son.14

  For a time the duke and duchess kept up appearances, attending and hosting events together. During this period, Shelagh seemed to be living her life in fancy dress and going to endless parties. Typical of this time, there is a photo of her in 1910 at Lord Winterton and Lady Birkenhead’s ball at Claridge’s. Shelagh is dressed as a Gypsy, with a rose pinned in her hair and her ubiquitous pearls around her neck.

  To repair their marriage, the Westminsters tried for another child. However, when in June 1910 a girl, Mary, was born instead of a male heir, the marriage was over. At first Bendor did not even bother to visit the new baby. For the following three years, although living in the same house, the duke would rarely see or speak to his wife. In 1913, the duke requested a separation and offered Shelagh an allowance of £13,000 each year and the use of his yacht. She rejected the offer as derisory and wrote to her husband appealing for ‘restitution of conjugal rights’. Bendor refused and informed her that Eaton Hall and Grosvenor House would no longer be available to her. On 30 June, a legal separation was finally agreed upon, which was very similar to Bendor’s original offer. Their two daughters, Lady Ursula and Lady Mary, were made wards of court.15

  For both Shelagh and Bendor the war provided an escape from their unhappy private life. While the duke joined his regiment and introduced the first armoured cars into battle, the duchess sailed to France with a group of friends, her faithful wolfhound and a copy of Longfellow’s poetry to start a new and very different life. Within weeks she had founded a military hospital at Le Touquet which became known as the Duchess of Westminster’s Hospital. Run under the auspices of the British Red Cross, the organisation insisted that a fully trained nursing staff should be appointed.

  A highly qualified team of surgeons and nurses who had been trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital agreed to join the Duchess of Westminster’s Hospital. Under the military Commandant-in-Chief Major Douglas, there was the senior surgeon, Major Charles Gordon Watson, and five medical officers. A trained matron and assistant matron were appointed to oversee the nursing department.16

  Before the war was declared, the duchess had been invited to be a guest aboard the entrepreneur Sir Thomas Lipton’s yacht Erin to watch the America’s Cup races. Using her considerable charm, Shelagh persuaded her host to convert his luxury yacht into a hospital ship instead and bring her entire field hospital, including doctors, nurses, orderlies and medical equipment, to France.17 Once across the Channel, the unit was temporarily housed in the Hotel de France at Choiseul, in Paris, while it awaited the allocation of a hospital. However, Paris was very different from the fun-loving capital Shelagh had known before – in fear of what the war had in store for them, many of the Parisians were now dressing in black.18

  Shelagh
did not just lend her name to the hospital, she took a hands-on role. On 24 October 1914 the duchess and her team received a telegram from British Headquarters ordering them to start for Boulogne in twenty-four hours. The duchess, the matron and one of the medical officers went ahead, but were disappointed to find that there was no building available for the hospital in Boulogne itself and so Shelagh travelled to Le Touquet and used her contacts to find a suitable site. Fitting the duchess’ previous incarnation as a playgirl, she chose the local casino to become her hospital. It was a picturesque building, with its turrets and colonnades giving it a fairy-tale appearance. The gossip was that Shelagh had been in competition with Lady Dudley who wanted the casino for her hospital, but the duchess had won against her rival.19

  The next morning, the whole unit gathered at the Gare S. Chapelle. It was like a military manoeuvre to get to Le Touquet, with the hospital equipment alone filling a dozen railway trucks on the train.20 There was a festive atmosphere as the team gathered. The sixty orderlies, from a Bristol unit of the St John Ambulance Association, arrived garlanded with flowers which had been presented to them on their march to the station. The men and women of Paris had greeted them with gratitude, kissing them, calling them ‘les braves Anglais’ and even singing ‘God Save the King’.21

  At 1.40 p.m. on 28 October, the duchess’ team set off on the train. The journey took almost nine hours as the Chantilly route had been disrupted by the blowing up of the bridges along the Oise. Looking out of the train windows, they saw houses burnt by the Germans. After arriving at Étaples, the team travelled by tramway to the casino at Le Touquet and then moved into the Hotel des Anglais nearby. Le Touquet had the feel of a seaside holiday resort off season, there were the famous sand dunes, the woods and the smart golf club where the flags were still flying and the groundsman was rolling the grass.22 However, the holiday atmosphere did not last long as there was urgent work to do.