by Mary Soames
Owing to the pace and pressure of his work, I saw somewhat less of my father in these hectic days when we were still living at Admiralty House, for his duties kept him largely at No. 10; but I listened spellbound to his broadcasts, and was thrilled when my mother took me to hear him in the House of Commons, which she did on 4 June, when he reported to a packed and anxious House the dramatic tale of the Dunkirk evacuation. This speech contained the first (albeit somewhat oblique) warning that Britain might be left alone to face the storm, and he spoke of our determination and ability to “defend our island home … if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”
It was now that my love and admiration for my father became enhanced by an increasing element of hero worship. I saw how people turned to him in confident hope; and my own daughterly affection became inextricably entwined with all the emotions I felt as a young, patriotic Englishwoman. And of course, it was enormously exciting being so near the hub of haute politique. My mother confided in me a good deal, and when I became aware that there was a real and growing fear that France might make a separate peace, having been brought up in an ardently Francophile family I was plunged into anguish, finding this prospect scarcely believable. On 22 May my diary records: “College … Papa had left early by aeroplane for Paris. It was terrible flying weather, and I was so anxious. The news is unbelievably bad—one can only hang on by praying it will come all right.” On 13 June, he flew to Tours for what would be the last time before Reynaud’s government collapsed: “Papa went to France. I do hate it when he goes. We all have a ghastly premonition that the French are going to give in. O God! France can’t do it! She must go on—she must go on.”
By 17 June we had moved into No. 10 Downing Street (accompanied by Nelson, the black cat we had acquired at Admiralty House, who promptly made himself disagreeable to the resident No. 10 cat, dubbed by us Munich Mouser). As is well known, Prime Ministers and their families live “over the shop.” On the ground floor are the Cabinet Room, the Prime Minister’s private office, and a series of other offices; on the first floor are the beautiful and dignified state rooms, communicating with each other, including a magnificent dining room and a delightful (then white-panelled) passage room, where we always lunched and dined when we were not more than eight. Upstairs from these official rooms was (in our time) the bedroom floor:§ with its eggshell-blue passages, tomato-coloured carpeting, and pleasantly sized rooms with sash windows looking out over the garden and Horse Guards Parade, it gave one the impression of a country house. I was ecstatic with joy at the charming bedroom (with a clothes closet I described in my diary as “most Hollywood!”) and sitting room allocated to me by my mother quite near my parents’ rooms.
Later, when there were air-raid warnings—false alarms or the real thing—one sometimes found oneself in distinguished company in the air-raid shelter. Awakened one night about one a.m. by my mother who told me the sirens had sounded, I descended with her (both of us in our dressing gowns) to find a selection of Cabinet ministers—Sir John Anderson, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, and Mr. Clement Attlee—also in the shelter. That occasion was uneventful, and about 3:15 a.m., after having some tea, we eventually returned aboveground—and my mother and I to our own beds.
During the spring and early summer of 1940, my parents and I spent a number of weekends picnicking in Orchard Cottage at Chartwell, but when the bombing of London started these visits became rare: Chartwell was on the direct target route and, standing on its hill above the lakes, was easily identifiable. Moreover, Winston soon had Chequers, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire—the official country residence of the Prime Minister—at his disposal. We spent our first family weekend there from 21 to 24 June: as would be the pattern throughout the war, the party was a mixture of family (Diana and Duncan) and some official guests, plus the private secretary on duty.‖ We were of course delighted to discover the possibilities of Chequers, and make the acquaintance of the charming, efficient, and diplomatic Scottish curator, Miss Grace Lamont (Monty), who ran the house, and who was to become a great friend of us all.
But this weekend was overshadowed by the dire course events had taken in Europe. On 10 June Italy had declared war on France and Britain; on 14 June the Germans had entered Paris; two days later Reynaud resigned as Premier and was succeeded by the aged Marshal Pétain, whose defeatist counsels had been much in evidence in the last tortured days of the French government; and on 17 June Pétain sought peace terms from the Germans.
My diary records that I spent the Saturday morning touring the house and garden with one of our guests, General Alexander,a whom I thought “so charming & the morning passed very agreeably.” Later that afternoon my father was woken out of “his rest by very urgent and distressing news & rushed immediately back to London … news bloody awful” (no doubt concerned with the French capitulation).
Sunday, 23 June, started badly: “A wrathful & gloomy breakfast downstairs. Church. Papa returned for lunch. French peace terms announced in the evening. They are SHAMEFUL & cruel.” All in all it was hardly a “peaceful country weekend”! Happily, our times at Chequers were not always so fraught—but they were always liable to interruption, and business very much came first.
A THRILLING NEW PERSONALITY now entered upon our scene—General Charles de Gaulle. Winston had first met this unusual, taciturn man on 9 June in London, when de Gaulle, hitherto a brigadier and tank warfare specialist unheard of outside military circles, recently appointed as Under Secretary of National Defence, had been sent by Reynaud to report on various developments and to ask for more help. Churchill reported to his colleagues that he had given “a more favourable impression of French morale and determination,” and on visiting Briare two days later, he had noticed de Gaulle’s air of “confidence and self-possession” in contrast to the other Frenchmen present.3 On his final visit on 13 June to the rapidly crumbling French government, by then at Tours, he recounted how, as he was leaving, “I saw General de Gaulle standing stolid and expressionless at the doorway. Greeting him, I said in a low tone, in French: ‘L’homme du destin.’ ”4 And so, when a week later General de Gaulle arrived suddenly in London, Churchill had already formed a good impression of him, and gave him every support as he raised the standard of Free France—inviting Frenchmen everywhere to join him in continuing the war with their allies.
The British public quickly warmed to de Gaulle and were enthusiastic for the concept of a resurgent France which he embodied. I had to wait till nearly the end of July before meeting “the General,” but I had already heard a lot about him from my mother, who from the first took a liking to, and came to admire, this dour man. She was quite unafraid of him, on one occasion reproaching him roundly for uttering sentiments which ill became either an ally or a guest in our country: the General had apologized profusely—and the next morning an enormous basket of flowers arrived for her. He liked and respected Clementine very much, and after Winston’s death wrote to her every year on the anniversary.
I first met General and Madame de Gaulle when they lunched with my parents at No. 10 on 25 July. Beforehand I was much excited by the prospect of at last meeting this intriguing character; afterwards I noted in my diary: “The General is a stern, direct giant. We all thought him very fine.” Madame de Gaulle was a dignified figure, but not light in the hand; she must have had a lonely time of it, speaking little English, and living at that time out in Hampstead with their three children and not seeing much of her husband. Elisabeth, the elder daughter, was about sixteen, very shy (and also very clever: she was to do very well when she found her feet and went to Oxford): we asked her to luncheon one day, and afterwards I took her to see a film starring Sacha Guitry, Ils étaint neuf célibataires, which I thought extremely funny, but which, I was afterwards informed, would not have been thought in the least suitable for a jeune fille bien élevée to have seen. We ended the afternoon with tea at Gunter’s, which was always a treat—and noncontroversial! Elisabeth and I were to meet again years later, and cement our warm acq
uaintance.
I would next meet the General and Madame at Chequers, early the following year, when they came one Sunday to lunch and dine. Lunching with us was also a great friend of mine, Lucia Lawson, who was very beautiful, with black hair, an ivory complexion, and wonderful dark eyes. I was much intrigued to observe that the General could not take his eyes off her—and pleased to learn that this stern man was not at all indifferent to beauty. I myself found him most alarming, and it was not until thirty years later, when my husband was ambassador at Paris, that I had a coherent conversation with Monsieur le Président de la République—as he then had become.
The plight of the French people occupied our anguished interest during these weeks after the collapse of France. There was a real fear that the French fleet might fall under German control, which would crucially—perhaps fatally—alter the balance of power at sea. Then, on 3 July, occurred a dramatic event which echoed round the world: the destruction by the British navy (after fraught parleyings) of capital ships of the French fleet lying at Oran in North Africa, with the loss of 1,300 French sailors. No single act did more to convince friend and foe alike that Britain was in deadly earnest, and that we would stop at nothing in our fight for survival. That evening we were a small party—the only outside guests the Prof and Brendan Bracken—and during dinner news kept on coming in about the events at Oran: “It is so terrible,” I wrote in my diary, “that we should be forced to fire on our own erstwhile allies. Papa is shocked and deeply grieved that such action has been necessary.”
The next day my mother took Pamela and myself to the House of Commons:
It was a very sad day for Papa—he who has always loved & admired the French so much & worked so hard for the entente cordiale.
His statement was sombre—sorrowful but resolved & encouraging. He explained the situation & the government’s action to a gloomy, crowded attentive House. When after nearly an hour he sat down—the House began to cheer—the cheering grew & grew, until the House was on its feet—Tories—Liberals—Labour.
Reading some other reports of this historic parliamentary occasion, I find I had given a good account of it. It was indeed extraordinary and moving: my father was heard by Jock Colville to say to a Member as he was leaving the House, visibly affected: “This is heartbreaking for me.”5
Some weeks later I went with my mother to the White City, where temporary (and no doubt somewhat spartan) accommodation had been provided by French servicemen, most of whom had been taken off the beaches at Dunkirk with our troops after their gallant rearguard action in holding the perimeter against the Germans while the BEF were embarking for home. Now they were in a painful quandary, facing the choice of returning to France or joining the Free French Forces which were being recruited here. General de Gaulle was, at this moment, largely unknown, and for many of these men Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun and now head of the French government in unoccupied France, was a figure much venerated, especially in Catholic families. Many of them may have believed that the British forces had abandoned their allies, and the searing events at Oran only just over a month past had been a bitter pill for the French to swallow. The sight of the men my mother and I saw milling about aimlessly in the White City stadium shook me profoundly, and I wrote in my diary: “It was terrible to see how lost they all look.… Here we saw men who had lost their country, their faith, their amour propre—miserable, disaffected. It made a most profound impression on me.… I was quite overcome by the misery of it all.”
My life in these months was a veritable roller coaster of contrasts: on the one hand were the occasions such as I have described when I saw some of the war drama close to, and felt emotionally deeply involved; on the other, I had at the same time an intense capacity for enjoyment with my contemporaries—and opportunities were not lacking for us to indulge our (often noisy) high spirits. I was beginning also to savour the zest that flirtations added to life—and to experience the gamut of high hopes and disappointments, dazzling, fleeting moments of success, only too often to be followed by darkest despair, that characterize one’s earliest experiences of “that thing called love.” We were all, I think, pretty innocent—certainly I was—and I was still not allowed to go out alone with a young man.
Even before the Blitz, rationing and the departure of younger servants into the forces or war factories made dinner parties in private houses fewer and further between; the pleasures and opportunities of country house weekends were much curtailed for the same reasons, in addition to which many people’s houses had by now been turned into convalescent homes, or were sheltering evacuated schools, with the family confined to a wing. Moreover, the hazards of wartime travel needed to be reckoned with. In mid-August I set off for Minterne in Dorset, where I had been invited to stay with Pamela’s parents, Lord and Lady Digby; my experience of the journey, as recorded in my diary, was not untypical. “Journey from Waterloo to Sherborne scheduled to take 3 hours, in fact took 5 hours, owing to line being blown up between Andover & Basingstoke; the train was diverted & it went to Salisbury & Sherborne via SOUTHAMPTON!! We had a raid warning & had to pull the blinds down—but it was a false alarm. Saw wreckage of 2 planes.” However, eventually I arrived safely!
Another dimension to my life was getting used to being “the Prime Minister’s daughter”: people in all sorts of situations were friendly and kind to me and did me favours because of their admiration for my father (and some, no doubt, out of snobbishness). I also began to be invited to undertake minor public engagements, such as giving the prizes at a local preparatory school, and opening Westerham’s War Weapons Week: good training, as it would turn out, for the future—but the cause of much personal alarm and fuss to me at the time.
One particularly thrilling and glamorous occasion for me in early July was when I went up to Liverpool at the invitation of the directors of Cammell Laird to launch a new destroyer, HMS Gurkha, built at their shipyard on Merseyside. I had watched my mother at the launch of the Indomitable earlier in the year, so I knew the form, and also the emotion and excitement of a launch. It was a beautiful day, and I waved the new vessel away most proudly.b It was at that time customary for the shipbuilders to give the sponsor of a ship a present: my “prize” was a lovely Victorian diamond necklace. After this fairy-tale twenty-four hours I came down to earth with a bump—“Long hot dirty journey home”—but was able to record at the other end: “Mummie & Papa knocked endways by my diamonds!”
On 10 July what is now known as the Battle of Britain began when the Germans launched massive air attacks on our convoys in the Channel and on our airfields. For the rest of that summer, over two months, the German and British air forces would be joined in daily conflict. My second and last term at Queen’s College had just ended, and inasmuch as it was possible to make plans in such uncertain times, it was decided that when the “holiday” months were over I should do a full-time war job, working from home (which was now No. 10). To this end I was interviewed by the very splendid (and, to me, awe-inspiring) Stella, Lady Reading, head of the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service), who said she would take me on at their headquarters in Westminster, working at first in the Registry. With this settled, I spent the rest of this most fateful—but also most beautiful, weather-wise—of summers between London, Chartwell, Chequers, and Breccles in Norfolk (my cousin Judy Montagu’s home).
A “peaceful” weekend at Chartwell staying with Nana Whyte in her cottage while my parents were at Chequers was disturbed and enlivened one night by several violent explosions: they turned out to be bombs dropped at Edenbridge several miles off, but they shook the cottage. Nana and I in our dressing gowns watched the brilliant fingers of the searchlights probing the night sky, while planes droned overhead. I reported to my diary that I “felt frightened but excited & robust!” This was a mild initiation.
I spent much of the rest of the high summer at Breccles. Two other girls were also staying, Rosemary Scott-Ellis and Kathryn Stanley; we justified our existence by helping in the mornings
with the evacuees, pupils, and teachers from a junior school from London. This involved supervising playtime and working in the kitchen and garden, salting down runner beans, picking fruit, and so on. But that left plenty of time for riding picnics to the Mere, bicycling miles to local cinemas, playing tennis, and entertaining RAF pilots stationed at one or other of the airfields in the neighbourhood—Mildenhall, Honington, Watton (the nearest to Breccles), and Lakenheath—from where they flew in their Blenheim bombers on the now-frequent daylight raids on Germany.
I now appreciate (which I didn’t as much as I should have at the time) the generosity of Cousin Venetia’s hospitality. She was such a curious personality—formidably gruff and intolerant of our teenage foolishness in some ways; yet (as I discovered later), having herself been a devotee of the “pleasure principle” for most of her life, she was eager to give all the help she could to her younger friends and relations in their zest for fun. She was also strongly patriotic, and more than ready to help the “boys in blue.” Despite rationing, her table was well and plentifully supplied: she was knowledgeable about food, and cultivated a prolific vegetable garden as well as producing rabbits, pigs, and game in season. Meals were delicious, and drink flowed freely. The domestic staff was somewhat reduced, but the cook remained, catering both for the household and the evacuees—as did the marvellous Mr. (to us) Clements, Cousin Venetia’s long-serving butler, now well over military age. We girls cleared the table and helped with the washing up, but I think Clements, traditionally dressed in striped trousers and tails in the evenings and weekends, scorned our amateur lack of proficiency in these matters, and certainly would not entrust us with the skilled task of “laying up.” Both Mr. Clements and Mr. Fit, the somewhat gloomy head gardener, were members of the local Home Guard.