by Mary Soames
Some public events still stand out in my childhood memories with snapshot clarity. I have told how Sarah and I had been taken by Nana to watch Amy Johnson’s return home at Croydon in 1930 from her heroic solo flight to Australia: early that October the papers were full of lurid pictures of the wreckage of the airship R-101 which crashed into the ground near Beauvais in France on an experimental flight from Britain to India, killing all but seven of the fifty-four passengers and crew. I remember “shock horror” talk among the grown-ups: the possibilities of commercial air travel were still on the drawing board or at an exploratory stage.
Another event which had me glued to the papers and illustrated weekly magazines was the tragic death of beautiful Queen Astrid of the Belgians in summer 1935. Her husband, King Leopold III, was driving and rounding a bend by Lake Lucerne in Switzerland when the car left the road and rolled down the hillside. The Queen died at the scene of the accident; the King was only slightly hurt. The tragic saga went on for days, with heart-rending pictures in the press of their young children, of the Queen’s lying-in-state with a partially bandaged face, and of the bereft, heartbroken, and guilt-laden King following her coffin at the funeral.
A great landmark on our car journeyings between Chartwell and London was the Crystal Palace: removed from its original site in Hyde Park, where it had housed the Great Exhibition in 1851, and rebuilt, it dominated the hill near Penge in southeast London. Nowadays we have real “glass palaces,” but then Paxton’s great construction of panes of glass and massive round corner towers seemed very remarkable and imposing. On the night of 30 November–1 December 1936 the Crystal Palace caught fire and, save for the towers, was utterly demolished.‖
I remember being woken up and going downstairs to join the rest of the family and household, who were gathered on the lawn, gazing in disbelief at the great glow in the sky to the north. I think perhaps this event had the same effect on me as the sinking of the Titanic had on an earlier generation: the unthinkable could happen.
Of the great royal crisis of the 1930s—the abdication of King Edward VIII—somewhat surprisingly, considering how closely my father was involved in it all, I have no particular recollection. My parents were for the most part in London during the crucial days, and, although she held very strong views on the subject, I don’t recall my mother talking to me about it at the time—partly, I think, because I was not meant to know about “mistresses,” divorce proceedings, and all that sort of carry-on!
NINETEEN THIRTY-EIGHT would be an important year for me personally, for I was to sit my School Certificate (somewhere between today’s GCSEs and A levels). At school I worked very hard, but at home was still immersed in the life of my beloved Chartwell. In the week the examination started I wrote to my mother, who was at Cauterets-les-Bains in France, doing a spartan cure after a bout of blood poisoning. After sympathetic enquiries about her health I embarked on an account of life at home:
I am writing this at 6.15 a.m. as I was awake and felt energetic. This afternoon I begin the Certificate with Biology. The examinations spread over about 8 days. Yesterday Papa and I walked round all the lakes, and in the round one below the pool there are about 1,000 little golden orfe! Isn’t it exciting? They are no bigger than this, and pale goldy yellow in colour with here & there a touch of red. They look so sweet swimming about in the weeds. Papa is very much excited, as indeed we all are, and he says their existence is due to the horrible common tenches, pike etc, which would prey on them, having been killed.
These must have been the spawn of the enormous golden orfe which were (despite considerable hazards from herons and even fish thieves) becoming a major feature at Chartwell. I then reported on important garden news I knew she would want to hear: “Mummie darling, the foxgloves [white and ravishing] and the blue poppies are lovely, and the rose garden in a blaze of colour … How I wish you were here to see all this.” After more school and home news, I ended “Please think of me throughout this week ‘specially hard’!” And I added a rather touching P.S.: “I shall try my very hardest in this exam; because I would like to get the Certificate and give it to you in token for my gratefulness for the wonderful life and education you and Papa have given me, and for which I can never hope to repay you. msc.”
Much to my own family’s surprise I did very well in my exam: as my mother recounted vaingloriously to her friend Streetie in Australia:
[Mary] is my comfort & my glory. She is as tall as me & is going to be very handsome. She passed her School Certificate brilliantly winning ‘credit’, ‘goods’ & ‘Distinctions’ in every subject except Geometry which however she ‘passed’—As a reward I have given her a chestnut mare called Patsy which she rides all the hours she is not at school. She is now in the VIth Form. Next Autumn [1939] she is going as a Day girl to Queen’s College [Harley Street, London] to do Domestic Subjects for one year after which she will (we hope) have a diploma—She is so sweet and loving to me—She has been hunting with the local pack & I have been out with her on a hired horse several times.
After news about the rest of the family, Clementine added: “According to this ‘programme’! Mary will not be presented [at Court] till the Spring of 1941 when she will be 18½.”
These letters show how much better the relationship between my mother and myself had become: the “skiing holidays strategy” had attained its main objective!
In the same letter Clementine wrote: “Life here is very wearing. One crisis after another. If after all we have to fight think of all the ground lost by our repeated retreats & loss of face.” Nevertheless, despite her consciousness of the grave situation politically, it is interesting to see that she was making plans quite a way ahead: in the event, while I did go to Queen’s College for two terms, in 1941 I would be enlisting in the army, not being presented at Court!
From about 1937 I started to follow public events in Britain and Europe—which were now succeeding each other at an alarming rate—in earnest and with keen interest. The Anschluss of 11 March 1938, when German formations crossed the Austrian frontier, and Hitler entered Vienna incorporating Austria into the Reich, shocked Europe and the world, but was unhappily accepted as a fait accompli by the League of Nations, and also by Britain and France, which had already acquiesced in the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 through vacillation and lack of unity of purpose. In February 1938 in the House of Commons, Churchill had warned that Czechoslovakia might be threatened with the same fate as that which hung over Austria, and on 14 March, again in Parliament, he told members that it was now economically and militarily exposed.
I had become keenly interested in the “Czech question” ever since Shiela Grant Duff had visited my parents at Chartwell in the summer of 1937. A distant cousin of my mother’s—whom, however, she had hitherto never met—and always interested in the political issues of the day, Shiela had become a journalist on leaving university, at first working for the Chicago Daily News in Paris, under whose editor, Edgar Mowrer—himself expelled from Germany in 1933—she became keenly aware of the menace presented by Hitler. Between 1935 and 1938, now in her twenties, she was a frequent visitor to Czechoslovakia, where she made many politically active friends, among the most significant of whom were Hubert Ripka, the diplomatic correspondent of a prominent Czech newspaper and himself a close friend and collaborator of President Beneš; Tomáš Masaryk, the founder President of Czechoslovakia; and his son Jan Masaryk, who was ambassador in London during these years. Through her reports in the Observer newspaper, Shiela tried to alert its readers to the plight of the Czechs under the ever-increasing pressure of German expansionism, taking advantage of the ethnic problem posed by the Sudeten Germans, and to the threat this situation must inevitably represent to peace in Europe. Desperate at the British government’s and public’s indifference and inertia, at Ripka’s instigation Shiela wrote to Winston Churchill, describing the increasingly acute tension between Germany and Czechoslovakia, and begging him to exert all his influence to make our govern
ment adopt a firm and unfaltering stance: “The crisis has never been so great,” she wrote, “and I am convinced that only a stand on our part can overcome it. Czechoslovakia is, for the moment, almost entirely dependent on us.”1 On receiving this letter, Winston and Clementine at once invited my mother’s brilliant and impassioned cousin to luncheon at Chartwell. The occasion was a great success all round: Shiela had excellent talks with my father, and my mother and I also took to her immediately—indeed, I presented her with one of my goats!
During the next fourteen months Shiela came several times to Chartwell, bringing with her Dr. Ripka and Edgar Mowrer; on several occasions Jan Masaryk was also invited. (It has to be admitted that my genuine concern for the Czech people was intensified by the latter, who was very good-looking and full of charm!) Later also came Edvard Beneš, after he had resigned the presidency and left his country in the wake of the post-Munich debacle. Present myself at many of these occasions, I became gripped by the week-by-week unfolding of the Czech crisis, up to its culmination in the Munich Agreement at the end of September 1938, in which Britain and France agreed to the dismembering of Czechoslovakia.
During the weeks leading up to what Winston Churchill and his colleagues regarded as a shameful “solution” to the threats posed by Hitler, war seemed a real likelihood—trenches were dug in the London parks, and gas masks were distributed. Then, after his third meeting with Hitler, at Munich, the Prime Minister returned home on 30 September, waving a piece of paper bearing his signature and that of Hitler, and declaring he brought “peace with honour … peace for our time.” Only too soon it would prove to be neither.
Neville Chamberlain was hailed as the saviour of his country and European peace by the vast majority of people in Britain: but those who, like Churchill and his colleagues, saw the Munich Agreement as utterly shameful, and the mere deferring of the now inevitable challenge to Hitler’s power, continued to express vociferously, in the press and in Parliament, their opposition to the continuing policy of appeasement.
In his war memoirs my father wrote of the passions which raged in Britain about the Munich Agreement.
It is not easy in these latter days, when we have all passed through years of intense moral and physical stress and exertion, to portray for another generation the passions which raged in Britain about the Munich Agreement. Among the Conservatives, families and friends in intimate contact were divided to a degree the like of which I have never seen. Men and women, long bound together by party ties, social amenities and family connections, glared upon one another in scorn and anger.2
On one occasion at Chartwell about this time, Admiral Sir Roger Keyesa and his wife had been luncheon guests: “Munich” had inevitably been a topic of discussion, and Eva Keyes had shown herself to be supportive of Mr. Chamberlain. I remember that my mother set upon her with fury, reducing the poor lady to tears.
At school too I sensed tension among both the staff and the girls—the latter reflecting clearly the opinions of their parents. Miss Gribble—no doubting where her sympathies lay—led us in prayer and thanksgiving for Mr. Chamberlain: I was outraged, and declared that it would have been more appropriate had we prayed for the poor Czechs whose trust we had betrayed so shamefully: my emotional outburst was not received well by my peers.
World events apart, the summer and autumn of 1938 were happy months for me: after we received my School Certificate results I basked in the sunshine of parental approval, and I started my last year at the Manor House in an aura of success. As sixth formers, my companions and I had a most stimulating curriculum, created for each of us from our chosen subjects and taught by some remarkably able mistresses with strong personalities. There were many expeditions to London for plays, concerts, and exhibitions. We also enjoyed our first taste of elitism: a special “un-classy-roomy” place for our work in a cottage in the grounds, necessitating voluminous, deliciously warm green cloaks for the walk there, and a special room near the main dining hall where our tea was brought to us by some wretched third former (as a punishment for being late or idle); we could walk up the street to the Limpsfield village shop without seeking prior permission. These were some of the headier fruits of seniority which came our way (along with, of course, some tedious monitoring duties) in our last lap of school life.
My reward from my parents for my academic prowess was, as my mother had told Streetie, a lovely chestnut mare, Patsy, who was my pride and joy. She resided at livery at Scamperdale Farm near Edenbridge (about three miles from Chartwell), the establishment of Mr. Sam Marsh, a celebrated personality in the equestrian world who had retired from competing to run a riding school and stables, and who was a much-sought-after master of equitation. Many and happy were the hours I spent with Patsy at Scamperdale Farm, and going to gymkhanas and hunting as often as possible.
That winter my mother went for another cruise as the guest of Lord Moyne in Rosaura—this time to the West Indies. My father and I kept each other company at Chartwell; there was an exceedingly cold spell just before Christmas, which made progress on Orchard Cottage (the small house he was building at the bottom of the orchard, intended as a possible retreat in any crisis) very difficult, and Winston complained to Clementine: “There is a sharp cold spell: the temperature is bloody: Snow covers the scene: the mortar freezes: I envelope myself in sweaters, & thick clothes & gloves.” We went together for our annual treat to Bertram Mills Circus at Olympia, and to the hospitable Marlboroughs for another glowing Blenheim Christmas.
In January Winston also sought the sunshine, and stayed with Maxine Elliott at the Château de l’Horizon near Golfe-Juan. The weather at home was odious, and I reported to him: “Chartwell still stands intact despite rain, frost and gales, and the woodwork in the cottage [Orchard] seems to be getting on well. The parrot [a singularly disagreeable African Grey] is in the highest spirits, and has bitten me once since you went away.”
Clementine came back earlier than planned from her cruise. Political tensions invaded even sophisticated company under blue skies, and having suddenly decided “East—West—Home is best,” taking typically instant action she booked herself on a homebound ship from Barbados and arrived back in early February. Naturally we were all delighted, and, acquiring a hireling, she joined me and Patsy for several days’ hunting at the end of the season.
On 14–15 March 1939, Hitler completed his destruction of Czechoslovakia by annexing such territory as had remained independent after Munich: German troops marched into Prague and assumed total control of the state. The Protectorate of Czechia was proclaimed, and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Even to those who cherished no illusions, the suddenness of this latest outrage came as a shock. A few days after these searing events, on Sunday, 19 March, Shiela Grant Duff and Dr. Ripka came to luncheon at Chartwell: it may be imagined how like a tragic postmortem that meeting was.
During these increasingly fraught months, Winston would often recite a verse he had gleaned as a schoolboy of eight or nine from a volume of Punch cartoons he had seen at Brighton. The poem had been inspired by a recent railway accident caused by the train driver falling asleep:
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
For the carriages sway and the couplings strain,
And the pace is fast, and the points are near,
And sleep had deadened the driver’s ear.
And the signals flash through the night in vain
For DEATH is in charge of the clattering train.
I was always gripped by it, and I think, almost more than anything else, it gave me a sense of the real and increasingly imminent danger we faced as a country.
Nineteen thirty-nine is the first year for which I have a more or less continuous diary. It is largely dominated by detailed accounts of my riding activities—instruction and work in the stables at Scamperdale (Mr. Marsh featuring very largely), and hunting days, described in detail. My various “crushes” with their somewhat hysterical ups and downs are also recounted, demonstrating the apparentl
y inescapable syndrome of myself fancying those who did not fancy me. The Grant Forbes family and the Saunders and Scamperdale circles provided me with most of my social life. There is a good deal of religious introspection—and there are quite frequent, if spasmodic, references to the succession of crises which marked the ineluctable course towards war. On 24 March I wrote: “Rumania has signed a trade agreement with German [sic]. Things look very, very grave. Yet people do not seem so worried as at last crisis.”
On Good Friday, 7 April, Italy invaded and annexed Albania. I had gone to a three-hour service at St. Andrew’s, and afterwards the Saunders family, some other friends, Nana, and I all went primrosing and picnicking in woods nearby: “on returning home from such a peaceful, beautiful day—after such carefree joy we hear Italy has attacked Albania. Is all the world as I know it breaking up? Must all the world go mad again? Must Christ hang in vain—O God lighten our darkness!” On Easter Sunday I recorded a fulfilling church service and a luncheon at Chartwell, and noted: “Outlook gloomy. Situation very serious.”
On looking back, the late spring and early summer of 1939 seem to stand out with an almost three-dimensional clarity. We were on a countdown—and more and more people were beginning to realize it. There were increasingly strong calls for Churchill to be included in the government; men were joining the Auxiliary Air Force and the Territorial Army. In early June the country was gripped and anguished by the loss of the submarine Thetis during trials: ninety-nine men—all but four of those aboard—perished from carbon-dioxide poisoning when a tragic error led to the bow end of the submarine becoming flooded and plunging to the seabed.