The rest of the crew began to find this pair ever more insufferable, even when they were not toxi-boo, and their resentment tended to focus on Dickie. Even the otherwise loyal Piers Legh started to refer to the prince’s cousin as ‘Dirty Dick’ and ‘the Hun’ in letters home.48 By 18 April, the situation had reached crisis point. A deputation from the staff went to the Admiral with a lengthy list of Dirty Dick’s many transgressions. The Admiral duly gave him a talking-to, though, as his crimes amounted to little more than having an annoying personality, it is hard to imagine what he might have done about them. David was distraught, and attributed the crew’s complaints to jealousy. He began to worry about what the crew would say about his new best friend once they were back. ‘I don’t want my “little brother” Dickie badly spoken of at home!!’ he declared. ‘I’m so fond of that boy & he means so much to me when I’m away from TOI, far more than Bertie ever has or ever will.’49
By the time the tour arrived back in Portsmouth on 11 October 1920, Dickie Mountbatten’s social climb was complete. He was now, without doubt, the closest friend of the Prince of Wales and future king – closer even than the prince’s own brother. David and Dickie’s next and most important challenge was already set up. They were to be sent to conquer India.
CHAPTER 4
DREAMING OF THE EAST
ON 29 JUNE 1920, THE PRINCE OF WALES WROTE TO HIS LOVER Freda Dudley-Ward about his planned trip to India the following year. ‘I’m intent on Dickie coming again!!’ he wrote. ‘I just couldn’t do without that boy on the next trip & the Admiral likes him & wants him too & it won’t harm his naval career, in fact he’ll benefit by it!!’1 When he looked back over his royal career thirty years later, David’s enthusiasm for cousin Dickie was not so obvious; though the influence of his ghost-writer was. ‘It was my impression at the time that his interest in the manifold problems of India was confined to that part of the country bounded by the white boards of polo fields,’ he mused, with the haughtiness that only the pot can muster for the kettle. ‘However, not so many years were to elapse before he was to be established in the Viceroy’s House at New Delhi, engaged in the process of liquidating the immeasurable Imperial trust he and I, each in our own way, had endeavoured to defend in our youth.’2
The peak of the British Empire’s extent and influence is often said to have been in the early 1920s, and thoughts of it ending at that time were widely considered to be absurd. The New York Times had stated boldly on 10 July 1921 that ‘British imperialism would be compelled to evacuate Great Britain itself before it would willingly evacuate India’,3 sentiments with which the future King-Emperor and his retinue would doubtless have agreed. Perhaps they did not realize how close the imperial trust was to being liquidated – without their consent.
On 26 October 1921, Dickie and David left Portsmouth on the battlecruiser HMS Renown. On 12 November, they came ashore at Aden on the south coast of Arabia, the westernmost British colony ruled from Delhi. The pair of them drove past large gatherings of black spectators hemmed in by the occasional white man in a pith helmet. Union Jacks fluttered in the sky, and a huge banner was unfurled. It addressed the Prince of Wales with a loyal exhortation: ‘Tell Daddy we are all happy under British rule’. And it was from this acceptably loyal outpost of his future empire that David embarked finally for the Jewel itself.
For months, the pages of English-language newspapers in India had filled up with advertisements selling printed portraits of the prince for two rupees, and advising ladies to purchase abundant wardrobes of new gowns for the myriad social events during his stay. But the greater part of the excitement was generated by fear: a very real fear that Gandhi’s call for ‘civil revolution’ might explode into a revolution of the more usual, uncivil type.4 If anything were to happen to the Prince of Wales while he was in India, the consequences would be unthinkable. As the Renown drew closer to Bombay across the Arabian Sea, the British administrators, and the media, seemed to hold their breath.
The prince set foot in his future imperial domain at 10.20 in the morning of 17 November 1921 at Bombay. A royal barge ferried him from the Renown across the silver waves to the half-finished, roseate arches of the Gateway of India. He emerged from his barge, a slight, golden-haired figure in a neat white naval uniform, amid clouds of spent gunpowder from the massive salute afforded him by the fleet of British warships anchored just offshore. Preceded by three chaprasis clad in scarlet, the prince progressed to a garlanded pavilion on the quay. There he inspected the guards of honour, and sat on a gilded throne to read out King George V’s message to the Indian Empire. That done, he was put into a state carriage, and drawn by four horses to Government House for a formal luncheon.5 The Times of India estimated that 200,000 people lined the route between Apollo Bunder and Sandhurst Road.
The prince’s itinerary had been planned according to long-established royal tradition. He was to progress around India attending interminable parties, opening buildings, killing as much wildlife as possible and only interacting with the common people by waving at them from a parade. The sentiments of the royal party were made plain in the booklet of Hindustani phrases produced by Dickie and Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, and circulated on board HMS Renown. It comprised a list of basic numbers and verbs, plus a few everyday expressions. These included:
Ghoosul teeyar kurro – Make ready the bath
Yeh boot sarf kurro – Make clean these boots
Peg do – Give me a whisky and soda
Ghora lao – Bring round the horse
Yeh miler hai; leyjao – This is dirty; take it away
Tum Kootch Angrezi bolte hai? – Do you speak any English?
Mai neigh sumujhta – I don’t understand
The words for ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are nowhere to be found.6
So far, it seemed, so good. But a smooth disembarkation could not allay fears that the prince’s four-month tour would end in disaster – and the probable culprit was obvious. Gandhi, according to the prince, ‘was regarded as a sinister if somewhat ludicrous figure’ in government circles. This was perhaps an understatement. The year before, Winston Churchill had astonished a dinner party by suggesting that he have Gandhi bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and let the Viceroy sit on the back of a giant elephant and trample the Mahatma into the dirt.7 Most of the government kept their opinions rather less forthright, and the prevailing mood appears to have been trepidation rather than vengeance. ‘Would he try to spoil my show?’ asked the prince.8 In fact, Gandhi was just as concerned by the possibility of mob violence as were the British. He called for a hartal to mark the prince’s arrival in Bombay, but specifically and repeatedly stated that it should be peaceful and dignified.9
But Gandhi’s hold over the masses was feebler than his reputation suggested. As the prince sat down for his luncheon and the crowds that had greeted him dispersed, celebration turned swiftly to anger. The effect was immediate and terrifying, as the city which had looked so serene only an hour before erupted in violence. ‘From Government House, one could hear the sounds of distant rioting and occasional shots,’ the prince noted.10 For once, Hindus and Muslims were united, as both ganged up on Parsi and Indian Christian communities. Shops were looted. Tram cars were pelted with stones. The police station at New Nagpada was set upon, and three Indian constables were brutally murdered by a howling mob.11 Meanwhile, the royal tour attempted to continue as normal, and the shaken prince was taken to watch some polo at the Willingdon Club. He then returned to Government House for a reception in a very stuffy room, at which he had to shake hands with three thousand people while attempting not to perspire too noticeably. (One guest at the reception was so struck by the frequency with which the prince mopped his reddened brow that he wrote a letter to the Times of India complaining about it.)12
Gandhi appealed for an end to the carnage. ‘The Swaraj that I have witnessed during the last two days has stunk in my nostrils,’ he wrote. ‘I invite every Hindu and Mussalman to retire to his ho
me and ask God for forgiveness and to befriend the injured communities from the bottom of their hearts.’13 The Mahatma’s words did little to calm the situation. By the time that the prince returned to Bombay the following week, several parts of the city had been devastated. A mob had set fire to a barrel of alcohol at the Null Bazaar and burnt the whole building down, causing damage estimated at 100,000 rupees. Errant Gandhians had smashed up liquor shops, and one such establishment had been raided by a marauding band of Pathans. A group of Parsis had attacked a motorcar and forced the Hindu occupants to remove their Gandhi caps. The Hindus fled, leaving the Parsis to tear the car to pieces. Amid reports of attacks on anyone wearing Western dress, seven Europeans were admitted to the General Hospital with injuries over the weekend, and one was killed. The official estimated death toll stood at 36, with between 150 and 200 more lying injured in hospital.14
With both Gandhi and the British authorities railing against the masses, the prince was packed off on his train, heading north towards the deserts of Rajputana. In Bombay, the people had looked poor, the city dirty and crowded, and the atmosphere bleak. In Baroda, the opposite of each of these was true. The prince was greeted with six garlanded elephants, bearing jewelled silver howdahs; a line of silver carriages, drawn by caparisoned oxen with gilded horns; and rows upon rows of plumed horses ridden by Baroda’s state guard. He was driven through vast crowds of people, said to comprise the entire population of the state, to the Nazar Bagh palace. The prince walked on a carpet of cloth-of-gold all the way from his carriage up a magnificent flight of stairs to a hall with a silver sofa, where he and the Gaekwar of Baroda held court for the local dignitaries.15
The Indian states would have many more chances to impress the disoriented Prince of Wales as he travelled on through Udaipur to the extraordinary blue-painted town of Jodhpur. It was there, on 30 November 1921, that the prince got to stick his first pig on a dawn hunt, and then his second soon afterwards. The ladies of the party, spectating from towers built at the edge of the open ground, were disappointed that he stuck both of his pigs out of sight in the jungle. They had to be content with listening to a ‘piercing and long-drawn squeal’ from deep in the undergrowth, the cry of a beast skewered by a princely spear.16
David enjoyed pig-sticking so much that he and Dickie went again the next day. This time, Dickie’s luck was in. ‘It was one of the best mornings I have ever spent anywhere,’ he wrote effusively in his diary.17 Unwary researchers in the Mountbatten archive may still shake out an envelope bearing the emblem of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and be confronted by a decaying, matted lump of hair and skin. It is proudly labelled: ‘Tip of tail of Boar speared by me at Jodhpur 1st Dec 1921 – D’.18
If the elephants at Baroda had impressed the prince, the welcome at Bikaner would astound him. For two miles before the palace of Lalgarh, the road was lined with thousands of steeds of the Ganga Rissala Bikaner Camel Corps, bearing the sumptuously robed and jewelled nobility of the state. The prince spent an arduous day inspecting Boy Scouts and, that night, he and Dickie saw an elaborate programme of entertainment at the Junagarh Fort. The inner court was lit with thousands of coloured fairy lights, which were dramatically extinguished as fourteen exquisite nautch girls appeared, bearing lit candelabra on their heads. Dickie burnt himself while inspecting a piece of glowing charcoal that a performer had held in his mouth during a fire-dance. Another performer danced barefoot upon swords, spear-points, saws, and a heap of delicate shells which he left perfectly unbroken.19
It would have been easy for the Prince of Wales to forget about the nightmare he had glimpsed briefly in Bombay – that is, until he got to the United Provinces. The provinces, in the north-east of India between Delhi and the Himalayas, were one of India’s most politically sophisticated regions. This was the home territory of the Nehru family, and would be the scene of the best-organized protests against the prince’s visit. The royal party first arrived in Lucknow on 9 December. It was a destination with particular resonance, having withstood two lengthy sieges by rebel sepoys during the Mutiny. The prince gamely joined in a polo match, and was allowed to win; the Raja of Jahangirabad presented him with the cup.20 But, beyond the white boards of that particular polo field, support for the tour was proving hard to drum up. The royal party blamed Gandhi personally for a range of dirty tricks which they believed had been employed to keep the crowds away. It was said that Congressmen had told the people that they would be shot by police if they went too near the prince’s procession; further, that the prince had been so horrified by India’s poverty that he had poisoned the customary free food, in order to effect a mass cull of the poor.21 Such rumours may have been spread, but not by Gandhi. He went in for far more straightforward persuasion. Meanwhile, David was tickled to see trucks driving around Lucknow painted with the slogan ‘Come and see the Prince and have a free ride’. It was, he admitted, ‘a form of enticement that never had to be employed when my father travelled about India’.22
That night, David was encouraged to dance away his woes at Government House. ‘I am afraid that I prefer native states to British India,’ Dickie complained,23 but the evidence suggests that he had a good time – his card for the evening reveals that he danced with so many new girls that he could not remember all their names. There was a foxtrot with ‘Red Ostrich Feather’, a one-step with ‘Pink Gray Stockings’, and two more foxtrots with ‘Miss Slim Ankles’.24 Despite appearances, though, the girl-crazy days of 1920 were behind him. Miss Slim Ankles was destined for disappointment, for he had been writing to the Hon. Edwina Ashley all tour.
Edwina Ashley was a year younger than Dickie Mountbatten. Her maternal grandfather was Sir Ernest Cassel, an enormously successful banker and close friend of King Edward VII – who had stood as her godfather and after whom she had been named.25 Sir Ernest bequeathed to his first granddaughter the greatest portion of his estate. This included properties in Mayfair, Bournemouth, Newmarket and Switzerland; a considerable collection of art treasures and valuable furnishings; and a trust fund worth something close to £3 million (equivalent to over £100 million today). From her father’s side, Edwina would ultimately inherit even more money, along with the estates of Broadlands in Hampshire, and Classiebawn in Sligo. It was from that side that she also inherited a colourful family tree, ranging from Prime Ministers Melbourne and Palmerston to the Algonquin princess Pocahontas.
Despite all this gilding, Edwina had endured an austere and lonely childhood. Her mother had died in 1911, after which her father, Lord Mount Temple, had taken a new wife – described later by Dickie as ‘a wicked woman, a real bitch’.26 Because Edwina and her sister could not get on with their stepmother, they were doomed to a youth of freezing showers and endless lacrosse at a hearty girls’ boarding school in Eastbourne. Edwina was bullied on account of her grandfather being rich, German and Jewish, and later described school as ‘sheer hell’.27 She was afterwards subjected to an internment at a domestic science college in Suffolk, where wealthy young ladies had to wear mob-caps and long green overalls while learning to cook, clean and sew. These privileged girls would never be expected to use their accomplishments in a vocational context: they were being taught how to supervise their future staff, and instilled with a suitably soul-destroying sense of ‘traditional’ femininity.28 Edwina kept writing to Sir Ernest about how unhappy she was. Finally, after six months of button-sewing, table-laying and learning to comport herself, she was rescued by him and packed off to travel round France and Italy. Edwina was to have a grand tour, seeing for herself the art, culture and society of Europe, under the watchful eye of Jane Cranston, a chaperone who was under strict instructions not to let Edwina attend evening parties or befriend bachelors. But Miss Cranston would soon find that her pretty young charge had already had enough propriety to last her a lifetime. Edwina’s photograph albums from the trip juxtapose a few improving classical ruins with a lot of brooding young men in well-tailored breeches.29
Dickie and Edwina had met in October 19
20, at a dance given by Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt at Claridge’s Hotel in London.30 They met again at Cowes during the Regatta Week of 1921, when the keener-eyed society doyennes noticed the pair dancing together every night. Mrs Vanderbilt was among those doyennes, and invited them both on a ten-day cruise around Belgium and France on the Vanderbilt yacht. Edwina had several suitors, but Dickie was trying so hard to get her attention she could hardly fail to notice. One evening they slipped away from their maids to dance at a seaside cafe called the Omar Khayyam. On their last night, Dickie seized an opportunity offered by Edwina’s seasickness, convincing her that the way to conquer it was to sleep on deck in a lifeboat in which, so it happened, he too would be spending the night.31
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