Once the war was over, Molly and Robert no longer had the excuse of the Pearl Appeal to bring them together. However, rather than ending their relationship, their love affair developed further. Hudson became a permanent member of the Northcliffe household, joining them wherever they travelled. When Northcliffe went on his world tour in 1921 he was happy to leave his wife in his friend’s care. While he was away, the press baron thought a great deal about his wife and kept three pictures of her in his cabin.5 It seems that both men genuinely loved Lady Northcliffe and were willing to share her. They wrote solicitous letters to each other about Molly’s wellbeing and both openly expressed their admiration for this remarkable woman. Although it seems that Hudson spent the most time with her, he was always tactful, writing to her husband about ‘your lady’. Hudson’s biographer believed that Northcliffe felt genuine affection for his wife’s admirer and his trust in him amounted almost to dependence.6
This strange dynamic was played out with long-lasting consequences during Northcliffe’s final illness. Bizarrely, in 1922 Northcliffe, the scourge of the Germans, decided to tour Germany. It seems that he was already suffering from persecution mania as, during the visit, he went under an alias and carried a revolver for self-protection because he claimed the Germans were after him. After a short while behind ‘enemy lines’, Northcliffe began to question his own sanity, writing to Hudson that he thought he was going mad. At the time, Robert and Molly were staying at Évian-les-Bains with a well-known doctor, so the ailing peer decided to meet them there. Tensions within the ménage à trois mounted as Northcliffe became dangerously ill. Raving and suffering from delusions, he shouted abuse at Molly who was driven from his room in tears. However, he wanted his wife’s lover to be constantly with him, so for days and nights on end Robert only left his side to snatch short intervals of sleep. Writing to a friend, describing the nightmare situation that all three were trapped in, Robert said that he feared Northcliffe’s madness would drive them all insane.7
When the patient was able to travel he was brought back to London by Robert and Molly in a special train arranged by the French premier, Raymond Poincare. During his final weeks, Northcliffe was confined at 1 Carlton Gardens with a team of doctors and male nurses. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Lady Northcliffe retreated to her house in Sussex, leaving the Harmsworth brothers in charge of her husband. Diagnosed as having septic endocarditis, Northcliffe’s blood had become infected with streptococcus which caused periods of delirium, he was often irascible and occasionally violent. When one of his physicians, Sir Thomas Horder, who had recently been knighted by the Lloyd George coalition, came to examine him, Northcliffe called him ‘one of George’s bloody knights’, and pulled a pistol from underneath his pillow as if he was going to shoot him.8
According to some newspaper reports, when Northcliffe was dying, he called in his wife and her lover and, joining their hands across his sickbed, made them solemnly promise to marry after his death. He died on 14 August. On the wall facing his bed was an illuminated portrait of his wife, apparently she had put it there to remind him of her.9
When Robert and Molly married only eight months later in a quiet ceremony, it caused much controversy. While one American newspaper described their love as ‘one of the most beautiful romances of modern times’, some unkind observers claimed Hudson was marrying Molly for her money.10 In fact, he was a wealthy man in his own right and due to a peculiar twist in her late husband’s will, she forfeited most of her inheritance if she remarried. When Northcliffe was in his final illness he signed another will leaving everything to his wife to use as she chose under Robert’s guidance.11 However, the rival will led to a dispute between Molly and the Harmsworth family. Eventually, to prevent a scandal, a compromise was reached in which Molly received £27,000 a year, free of income tax, and a quarter of a million pounds in cash.12
For Sir Robert and the new Lady Hudson, the Red Cross Pearls symbolised happiness in marriage. The couple had waited patiently for fifteen years to be together and they were determined to enjoy their married life to the full. They went to Italy for their honeymoon and as a wedding gift Robert bought his new wife an ancient Italian villa. An authority on architecture, he drew up plans for its restoration. After the capricious outbursts Molly experienced with her first husband, she thrived in the harmonious atmosphere of her second marriage. As they had discovered while fundraising together, Robert and Molly were very compatible, sharing similar tastes in politics, art and philanthropy. As she now held the same Liberal political beliefs as her new husband, it was even rumoured that Molly might run for Parliament.13
However, their ‘serene companionship of mature minds and interests’ was all too brief. After a few idyllically happy years together, Robert died of pneumonia in 1927.14 Molly lived on until 1963, dying when she was about 95 years old. In later life, she preferred talking about her second husband than her first.15
The success of the Pearl Necklace Appeal was a lasting memorial to this very unusual ménage à trois. The sale of the pearls had raised £96,033, and once the expenses for administration, printing, stationery, advertising and stringing of the pearls had been paid £94,044 remained.16 It was a magnificent achievement. To put the amount in perspective, it cost £9,585 to run all the Red Cross convalescent homes in France and Belgium from October 1918 to December 1919.17 During the same period, the expense of housing relatives of the wounded in hostels in France and Belgium was £8,122.18 Funding the enquiries for the wounded and missing cost £3,047, while the cost of caring for the war graves was £1,538.19 However, the real purpose of the Pearl Appeal had been to help former soldiers rebuild their lives, and one use for the money was to provide provisional artificial limbs for soldiers who had lost one or both arms or legs. By the end of the war, many men were waiting for long periods for permanent artificial limbs to be fitted, and in the meantime they needed temporary substitutes. To help fill this gap the Red Cross began supplying provisional artificial limbs made of plaster or fibre pylon – by 1919, they had given out 11,750 limbs.20
During the war, the Red Cross had already started to run rehabilitation projects. In 1915, Sir Arthur Stanley, chairman of the Joint War Committee, who was a major supporter of the Pearl Appeal, recognised the urgent need for suitable accommodation for men disabled during the war. At this time, the Red Cross had received many letters from hospitals explaining that they had been given orders to discharge paralysed patients, but they had no place to send them except the work-house infirmary.21 Queen Mary shared Sir Arthur’s concern about the long-term welfare of these servicemen, and they agreed that something must be done to help.
In the autumn of 1915, the Auctioneers’ and Estate Agents’ Institute raised money to buy the historic Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond, Surrey. Dominating the skyline on Richmond Hill, the turreted hotel boasted spectacular views over the Thames as it snaked towards Windsor. The Victorian hotel had once been the height of fashion, Charles Dickens had celebrated the publication of David Copperfield there, while William Makepeace Thackeray had used it as a setting for a scene in Vanity Fair, but it closed in 1906 and was now almost derelict.
Once the money was raised to buy the Star and Garter, it was given to Queen Mary who asked the Red Cross to equip and run it as a ‘permanent haven’ for disabled ex-servicemen. Donations poured in from across the world. The British women in Nyasaland sent £562, while the Chinese community of Jamaica donated £100. People could also sponsor a room or a bed. Typically, Molly Northcliffe was one of the first to help this Red Cross project and soon ‘the Lady Northcliffe Bed’ could be found beside ‘the Canton British Women’s Memorial Bed’ and a ‘Women of Umtali Bed’.22
By January 1916 the home was ready to receive its first sixty-five residents. Their average age was 22 and all of them had been paralysed by being shot through the spine or brain. They had been released from hospital because it was thought that nothing more could be done to improve their condition. However, the staff at the Star an
d Garter were not willing to give up on them. Although out of 112 admissions, twenty deaths occurred in the first year, in the caring environment many of the young men improved.23 Everything was done to make them as comfortable as possible. The ballroom was converted into a ward and, with its elegant arched colonnades, grand piano and aspidistras still in place, there were echoes of pre-war hotel life – with immaculately dressed nurses in the place of the waitresses.
The day ran to a rigid routine: breakfast was served at 8 a.m., followed by lunch at 12 noon, tea at 3.30 p.m. and supper at 7 p.m. All patients had to be in bed by 9 p.m. unless they had been issued with a special late pass, and only one pass was allowed each week. No gambling, wine or beer were allowed, and so when several patients were caught drunk or fighting they were expelled for misconduct. However, genteel entertainment was provided. Concerts were held three times a week and there were day trips on the river to Sunbury. Occasionally there were even sports days where the ‘sports’ included a ‘smelling competition’, ‘needle threading and button sewing’ and ‘an obstacle race’. After careful nursing, by the end of the first year eighteen men had improved enough to move back to their homes or nearer their families, while five were able to walk out of the front door. Taking pride in their work, the staff never ceased to boast about this ‘famous five’.24
Although the old building had character, by 1919 it was decided that a new purpose-built home would better serve the needs of its residents. Like the Pearl Appeal just a few years before, the money for the rebuilding and equipping of the home was provided by contributions from the women of the Empire through the British Women’s Hospital Committee. Just like the pearls, it became a women’s war memorial which was to alleviate the suffering of the men who had sacrificed so much.
While the new home was built, the seventy veterans were moved to Enbrook House, near Sandgate in Kent, which became known as the ‘Seaside Branch’.25 Giving his services free of charge, the architect, Sir Edwin Cooper, created ‘a building of beauty combined with every facility for the rapid and easy movement of disabled men’.26 One newspaper claimed that with the combination of red brick and Portland stone and Doric colonnades, the new building ‘has the dignity and charm’ of Hampton Court Palace.27
The new Star and Garter Home was opened by the king and queen in July 1924. Although the home had become an independent charity, many of the people who had been involved in the Red Cross Pearl Appeal were at the opening. Sir Arthur Stanley, now chairman of governors of the home, welcomed the king and queen, while Sir Robert Hudson and his new wife were also in the party.
Levels of care were of a high standard in the new home, with the 180 patients cared for by sixty members of staff. The aim was to give patients as much freedom as possible, with the use of ‘self-propelling’ wheelchairs and plenty of space to move around in the spacious grounds. To entertain the men, a cinematograph hall and gymnasium was set up and social events were put on. As well as therapy, training was provided and, under the guidance of skilled professionals, many of the ex-servicemen became proficient craftsmen. They took pride in their work and produced high-quality goods for sale. One year they embroidered an altar frontal for St Paul’s Cathedral and to thank them for their hard work they were sent a large case of tobacco and cigarettes. From 1924 an annual exhibition and sale of their work was held which was visited by prestigious guests, including the Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth.
However, not everyone believed that an institution like the Star and Garter Home at Richmond was the best place for disabled soldiers. One critic, Leonora Scott, wrote to The Times, commenting that no matter how well designed the Star and Garter was, it could not be as good for them as their own home where they could enjoy ‘in some degree, the natural life’. Describing even the best institutions as ‘gilded prisons’, she also queried whether sending men from other parts of the country to Richmond to live was best for them. As an alternative, she proposed that disabled soldiers should be given the choice between a sheltered ‘home’ or a pension which would be enough to pay a relative or friend to look after him and pay for a daily visit from the parish nurse. She explained, ‘What I plead for is variety in the offers which the nation is to make, so that, as far as may be, each man may have the kind of assistance which will best promote his happiness.’28
After the war, Red Cross branches across the country tried to do this. Paralysed discharged soldiers who were no longer under the care of the War Office were passed on to Red Cross county branches, who contacted the local military hospital to arrange for patients to be transferred as close to home as possible. The local branches also ran orthopaedic clinics for disabled people. King Manuel of Portugal became the representative for these clinics and visited each one as it was set up throughout the country. He championed the importance of ‘curative work’, making sure that part of the recovery process involved men being trained in a craft of their choice which ranged from electrical engineering to shoemaking. The Military Orthopaedic Hospital, Shepherds Bush, became a model for other centres. The Red Cross provided £10,000 for them to set up treatment departments including operating theatres, hydrotherapy, electrotherapeutic massage and plaster departments.29
The returning soldiers were coming home to a very different world to the one they had left behind. Although some of the class barriers broken down by the war were soon built up again, the old, rigidly hierarchical pre-war order seemed outdated. In his War Book, Lord Northcliffe had predicted that the bravery and camaraderie of the officers and men had altered class feeling forever. He wrote:
Our millions of men abroad are changed communities of whose thoughts and aims we know but little […] so will the men I have seen in the trenches and the ambulances come home and demand by their votes the reward of a very changed England – an England they will fashion and share; an England that is likely to be as much a surprise to the present owners of Capital and leaders of labour as it may be to the owners of the land.30
Northcliffe was right – power and property were changing hands. Following the Representation of the People Act in 1918, Britain was becoming more democratic. From 1918, men of all classes over the age of 21 had the vote and thus a say in who governed Britain.
The journey made by the Red Cross Pearls symbolised the change in British society. They had been emblems of the privileged pre-war world, but nearly all the pearls sold at the Christie’s auction had gone outside aristocratic circles. The splitting of heirloom necklaces to give to the charity foreshadowed the breaking up of aristocratic estates after the war. The conflict had weakened the social and political influence of the great landowners and they now faced increased taxation and death duties.
Many of the women who gave pearls watched as, after the war, their husbands sold swathes of land that had been in their family for generations. In 1919 the Earl of Rothes put Leslie House, twenty farms and 3,552 acres on his Fife estate up for sale.31 By the end of that year, more than 1 million acres of English and Welsh land had been auctioned. It altered the balance in the countryside because, in many cases, these sales allowed tenant farmers to own land for the first time.32
Things were changing in London, too. In 1920 the first of the great private palaces, Devonshire House, was sold off by the Duke of Devonshire to two businessmen for 1 million guineas. It was demolished five years later and replaced with an eight-storey block of flats.33 In 1927, Grosvenor House, where Bendor and Shelagh the Duke and Duchess of Westminster had lived so lavishly, was sold. In its place, another block of flats and an American style hotel were built.34
The Times was one of the first newspapers to analyse what was happening. In May 1920, it announced that ‘England is changing hands’ and grand houses were being bought by war profiteers or turned into schools or institutions. However, the article added that this was a quiet revolution:
For the most part the sacrifices are made in silence […] the sons are perhaps lying in far away graves; the daughters secretly mourning someone dearer than a broth
er, have taken up some definite work away from home, seeking thus to still their aching hearts, and the old people, knowing there is no son or near relative left to keep up the old traditions, or so crippled by necessary taxation that they know the boy will never be able to carry on when they are gone, take the irrevocable step.35
Although selling estates that had been in the family for hundreds of years was demoralising, the aristocracy’s loss of property could not compare to the loss of their sons. As Mary Wemyss wrote to Ettie Desborough, after what they had been through, houses and material possessions mattered so much less. Their whole perspective on life was different, she explained, ‘Everything looks the same and everything is different, everything is changed – because we are different, we shall never be the same people again.’36
The pearl necklaces were also entering new incarnations. In early 1919, the most famous Red Cross Necklace, Lot 101 with its perfect pearls and Norbury diamond clasp, made a new appearance. Arranged in the shape of a heart, and set within a gold frame complete with rococo scrolls and the Royal Coat of Arms with ‘By Appointment’ strategically placed beneath, it starred in an advertisement for Carrington & Co. in the Illustrated London News. Not one to hide his benevolence, Mr Carrington Smith had written beneath, ‘The Red Cross Pearl Necklace purchased at Christie’s for £22,000. By Carrington and Co. Pearl Merchants and Jewellers to Their Majesties the King and Queen.’37 No doubt Mr Carrington Smith was hoping to entice customers into his shop to buy either this necklace or some of the other pearls he had bought in the auction. The advert informed readers that they could view the Red Cross Pearls at Carrington & Co. in Regent Street. Such blatant self-promotion was a reflection of the post-war climate, where jewellers like Carrington could no longer rely on an exclusive clientele. In the modern world, they had to appeal to a mass market, and after all the publicity of the Red Cross Appeal few jewels could be more alluring than the most famous pearl necklace in the world.
Pearls before Poppies Page 27