The Viceroy's Daughters

by Anne de Courcy

  But all’s well that ends well and I’m every bit as pleased and excited over your engagement as I was a week ago. It really is marvellous and despite what I’ve said it must be nicer for you that you pulled it off after you’d left me officially. But I know you’ll never leave me really, not as a friend—but no more sob stuff and I must dress for a public dinner tho there’s a good party arranged for later. I hope the one in the white hat will be there!

  To Mountbatten he wrote: “It is splendid about Fruity and Baba—I rather despaired of his pulling it off. You must tell me all about it when I get back.”

  A fortnight later the prince wrote again, this time from the train to Southern Rhodesia, asking Fruity to look out for a couple of point-to-point horses for him before the newlywed Metcalfes set off for India in September and also to arrange to sell some of his horses at Melton so that other, better ones could be bought. “Then I’ll be able to start hunting in October with, so to speak, a clean sheet and free of all debris . . . it’s too bad you’ll be gone to India. I would have liked to have seen you again, and married, and it’ll be another year at least. Must stop now for a stunt [the prince’s name for the public duties he had to perform]; and the mail goes next station too.”

  In the hectic months before the wedding Fruity escorted Edwina to parties while Baba was staying at Hackwood or dined with both Mountbattens and their friends. “Dined with Peter, Mary, Dickie and Fruity and we went to see Mixed Doubles,” reads the entry for July 20, the night before Fruity and Baba’s wedding.

  They were married on July 21, 1925, at the Chapel Royal. Baba was given away by Grace, though escorted to the church by her stepbrother Hubert Duggan. She had half a dozen child attendants, including Cimmie and Tom’s children, Vivien and Nicholas, four and two respectively. Also present were the couple’s dogs: Baba’s wire-haired terrier puppy John Willie held on a ribbon by a footman a few yards away from the bride, Fruity’s more obedient terrier, John, near by. Though it was a small, ostensibly quiet wedding, there was a crowd of two thousand outside St. James’s Palace and magnificent presents. Fruity gave Baba a gold-and-tortoiseshell dressing case, a diamond ring and a diamond-and-sapphire ring. The bride bought herself the tiara deemed necessary by all married women of her social standing: although Mary Leiter had had three diamond tiaras, Curzon had left all these to Grace.

  From Grace came a sable wrap for Baba and a walnut dining table for Fruity. Cim and Tom gave Baba long ruby-and-diamond earrings; Irene gave Baba a diamond corsage ornament and Fruity a large pearl pin; from the Queen of the Belgians there was a pearl-and-diamond bracelet set, in the latest fashion, in platinum; from the Mountbattens came a gold cigarette case for Fruity and an ivory one with a sapphire-and-diamond clasp for Baba (all, of course, from Cartier). From Sir William and Lady Birdwood there was a handsome Persian carpet—Fruity was going to join Sir William’s staff in India as his aide-de-camp.

  The Metcalfes left for India at the end of September, setting off overland, accompanied by Irene as far as Marseilles. Here they took ship on the thirtieth. With them went a mountain of luggage and Baba’s beloved car, a unique, cream-colored custom-built Baby Rolls that she had bought from the Mountbattens. Irene returned home the following day.

  12

  Cimmie and Tom: Early Married Life

  Cimmie Mosley’s married life had begun blissfully. Ahead of her stretched a future filled with promise. She was passionately in love with her husband, who constantly told her of his adoration. She believed, moreover, that he was destined for great things and that her part was to help him. Their daily life, filled with ease and friends, was happy; Tom was a charming, witty companion and his expert, experienced lovemaking after any quarrels—for Cimmie could not help noticing his open approaches to other women—quickly smoothed over disagreements or hurts. Constantly, he reassured her that she was the only one who mattered to him. The Mosleys’ large house, 8 Smith Square, was within easy reach of Parliament, while for weekends and holidays they rented houses in the country or abroad.

  Their first child, Vivien, was born on February 25, 1921. The following year, during the winter of 1922–23, they took a house on Cap Ferrat, inviting Baba to stay with them. Tom had to return early to speak in Parliament; it was the first time they had been apart for more than two nights in their marriage. “I am so terribly unhappy at leaving you—nothing would have made me go if I had realised what it meant and nothing will again,” he wrote to Cimmie, now five months pregnant with their second child, on February 12, 1923. “Please please do not be too sad and look after your wonderful darling self for your T who adores you.”

  He did love her—but at the same time he was having an affair with a mutual friend with whom they had been in Venice the previous summer. For Cimmie, who found out before long, this was to become a familiar pattern. So, too, would be her forgiveness. Unable to arm herself with the cynicism that would allow her to play the same game or the indifference that would prevent hurt, she could not reconcile herself to her husband’s unfaithfulness. It was always Cimmie who ended up apologizing. “Dear heart, I am so sorry for the way I harry and worry you—have made too high a mountain out of the molehills of your faults . . . No one has ever had a sweeter man and I do appreciate everything, all you give me.”

  The Mosleys’ second child, Nicholas, was born on June 25, 1923. Within weeks, they had set off for their annual summer holiday in Venice, leaving Vivien and the new baby, who had been ill almost from the moment he was born, in the care of Nanny Hyslop, who had been Cim and Baba’s nursery maid when they were children in India. Tom’s belief was that the upbringing of children should be left to “professionals,” and Cimmie’s total allegiance was to Tom. For the children, Nanny Hyslop would be their lifesaver.

  Politically, Tom was shifting direction. He disagreed violently with the government’s policy in Ireland. To counter the Irish Republican Army’s guerrilla warfare, with its accompanying atrocities, the government had covertly formed groups of mercenaries, known as the Black and Tans from the color of their uniforms. These men, neither police nor army, fought back in similarly ruthless style, matching savagery with savagery. In the House of Commons, Tom spoke out forcefully against this policy, and was greeted by boos and jeers from his own side.

  His response was to leave the Conservative benches. In the general election of 1922 he stood as an Independent—though backed by the local Conservative Party. Steadily, he was moving leftward. His feeling for the working man was genuine, but beneath it lay a far more powerful emotion: ambition. As he had told Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Liberal MP for Caithness and Sutherland (later Viscount Thurso), he was determined to be prime minister in twelve years’ time. The Labour Party seemed to offer the greatest opportunities both for high office and for social improvement.

  Cimmie, whose belief that her husband was destined for great things never wavered, encouraged this new direction. She entertained the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald; he was charmed by her and they formed an easy friendship. When Baldwin called another general election at the end of 1923, Tom’s majority at Harrow fell to four thousand six hundred as his old Conservative supporters dropped away. Labour emerged from the election as the strongest party, with 191 seats, and a Labour government was formed. It was time for Tom to declare himself.

  In March 1924, three months into the first Labour government, he made a formal application to join the Labour Party. Ramsay MacDonald, now prime minister, welcomed him warmly; his mother wrote a letter praising his “amazing courage and self-sacrifice” in this radical step. In 1924 the Labour and Conservative Parties were divided almost entirely on class lines and a member of one who crossed the floor of the House to join the other was regarded as a class traitor and renegade. “He is the most accomplished speaker in the House,” noted the social reformer Beatrice Webb in her diary that month, “and hated with a quite furious hatred by the Tories whom he has left.”

  As for the party itself, though many regarded Mosley as a “c
atch,” especially for his powers of oratory, others mistrusted the arrival of someone from his background. How could anyone brought up with money, servants, foreign travel and a Winchester education understand the problems of working men and women?

  The first Labour government lasted less than a year. Doubts about Tom Mosley’s suitability did not stop Labour Associations all over the country from offering him the chance to stand in the general election to be held in October 1924. Of the seventy constituencies he could choose from, he settled on Ladywood, in Birmingham—then a fief of the Chamberlain family and the seat of the future prime minister, Neville Chamberlain—asking its voters to “overthrow the false gods of reaction which have dominated the city for the last generation at the cost of so much suffering.” It was in Birmingham, too, that he met two of the men who would for a time become his most ardent followers: Allan Young, the Borough organizer of the Labour Party in Birmingham, and John Strachey, son of St. Loe Strachey, the editor of the Spectator, and a cousin of the writer Lytton Strachey.

  Again, Cimmie did all she could to promote Tom’s cause. She became a member of the Labour Party herself, she made a speech on behalf of John Strachey when he was readopted as a Labour candidate in December 1924, and she appeared on platforms with her charismatic husband. A contemporary account of a meeting at the Empire Hall in London records: “Suddenly there was a movement in the crowd and a young man with the face of the ruling class of Great Britain but with the gait of a Douglas Fairbanks thrust himself forward through the throng onto the platform followed by a lady in heavy, costly furs.” The writer notes Tom’s emotional appeal, then continues: “Suddenly the elegant lady in furs got up from her seat and said a few sympathetic words . . . she spoke simply and almost shyly, but yet like one who is accustomed to be acclaimed and, without stagefright, to open a bazaar or a meeting for charitable purposes.”

  Tom Mosley’s brilliant oratory, the sense of idealism and purpose that he conveyed to the Ladywood audiences while speaking passionately and fluently without notes, almost won him the seat—he was beaten by a mere seventy-seven votes. It was a staggering achievement in the heart of Chamberlain country and he felt deservedly pleased and confident that a by-election would soon give him another chance.

  In the meantime, he went with Cimmie on a trip to India and, with John Strachey, began to write a book to be called Revolution by Reason (published in 1925). When Tom’s great friend Robert Boothby, the newly elected Conservative MP for East Aberdeenshire, visited the Mosleys in Venice at the end of the summer of 1925, he found the two co-authors discussing their opus on the Lido every morning. Often Tom, a powerful swimmer, would swim far out into the lagoon to think and brood by himself.

  At home, 1925 saw Irene embarking on the love affair that would distort her life for a decade. In the close-knit hunting society to which she belonged, adulterous liaisons were common. Fit, healthy, emotions heightened by the adrenaline of excitement and danger and with no preoccupation in the world save to enjoy themselves, the members of the smart hunts were known to lead lives as racy off the hunting field as on it. A wealthy, titled young woman living an independent life with no visible family protector was soon a focus of masculine attention. Irene’s dark good looks and figure, set off to perfection in one of her well-cut sidesaddle riding habits in dark blue or black, drew many admirers. Warmly emotional herself, it was not long before she was deeply in love. Unfortunately, her passion was for a married man.

  He was Gordon Leith, a dashing, good-looking hunting man married to a pretty wife nicknamed “Cuckoo.” Irene, well aware that such a liaison ran counter to her own deep religious and moral scruples, struggled against her feelings. It was partly to escape from Gordon and, simultaneously, to distract herself that she set off on a world cruise soon after Baba and Fruity had left for India.

  She was met in Colombo, Ceylon, on January 9, 1926, by the newlyweds. From then on, their progress was viceregal: staying in Government House in Madras, fetched by Rolls-Royce for dinner at various palaces, polo, shooting, the Horse Show and Delhi Week, tennis, lunches, bridge, dinners. Fruity, as a good aide-de-camp should, partnered Lady Birdwood in a tennis tournament; Irene watched an investiture in Viceregal Lodge, Delhi, before she and Baba went to hear the outgoing viceroy make his final speech on February 9.

  Her relationship with Baba, a girl of twenty-two to Irene’s more worldly thirty, was still fond and indulgent. “Baba looked marvellous in lace with orange flowers over her ears,” she noted in her journal. “Baba looked divine in blue velvet pajamas and a wreath on her head.” When she left them on March 28 she was seen off with roses “as if I were the Ex,” there was “a last delicious talk with Baba,” and in Calcutta “sweet letters from Baba” await. There she was shown around the Victoria Memorial. “Everything breathed Daddy.” For one who had been so decisively thrust away by her father it must have been poignant indeed.

  The tour continued by ship to Rangoon, Mandalay and Penang, then on to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo, where Irene changed to the Empress of Asia to sail to Vancouver and then traveled by train to Los Angeles to stay with Elinor Glyn, arriving on September 1. Here Hollywood high society was at her disposal: “Elinor, John Wyman and I dined at the Chaplins.” “Elinor and I dined with the Laskys in their Early American beach house. Mary [Pickford] and Doug [Fairbanks] came. Also there were the Harold Lloyds and Adolphe Menjou and his brother. We saw a ghastly film after and all the husbands and wives sat side by side!!” She went to Cecil B. DeMille’s studios; as a dog lover she fell for Rin Tin Tin; she dined with the Sam Goldwyns, watched Walter Pidgeon dancing the Charleston and took advantage of American dentistry to have her teeth crowned and capped.

  But there was plenty to remind her of the absent Gordon—it was the same story of unrequited love everywhere: Bea Lillie silent, white and wretched when John Gilbert failed to arrive at a party, Charlie Chaplin confiding in her about his coming divorce from Lita, Pola Negri dressed in black and screaming like a banshee at Valentino’s funeral, of which Irene wrote: “Thousands lined the streets. We got to the cemetery and over the mausoleum an aeroplane plunged and whizzed dropping roses. It filled me with horror—all the plaques and cubicles and vases of flowers, wicker chairs and settees made of it a lounge for a garden party. The pall bearers, all the great directors and Charlie Chaplin, carried the coffin in to the shrine where poor Pola kissed it for the last time and wept and screamed and swooned. The coffin slid into a marble cupboard and the door closed and we all dispersed. Pola was carried out into her car, overcome.”

  For Baba in India, there was the first meeting with a man who would later assume such importance in her own life. This was the incoming viceroy, Lord Irwin (better known later as the first earl of Halifax) who arrived in Bombay in April 1926. Born in 1881, he had been happily married to Lady Dorothy Onslow, daughter of the earl of Onslow, since 1909.

  The new viceroy was a tall, imposing figure with a high domed forehead over an ascetic face and an imperturbable manner (during the whole of his viceroyalty he is said to have lost his temper only once: when a favorite, disreputable hat was thrown away by a member of his staff). As Baba was the daughter of a former viceroy and Fruity the friend of a prince, the Metcalfes were quickly invited to lunch at Viceregal Lodge. Another bond was the affection in which the Irwins held Naldera, the small encampment after which Baba was named. They would escape here from Viceregal Lodge in Simla as often as they could.

  As for Fruity, the prince’s friendship showed no sign of diminishing, with a regular correspondence on both sides. The prince had just given up polo and now he flung himself with his usual ardor into golf. One letter from him (on August 25, 1926), written from Sandwich Bay in Kent, where he was staying near Mrs. Dudley Ward, described this new passion. “I must say I do like this golf game—am just crazy about it. I’m improving, only very slowly, but surely. It is difficult and of course not a quarter the fun polo is.”

  For Fruity it was warming to realize the strength of
the prince’s affection—and reassuring when he concluded with a hint that the life they both loved at Melton would resume. “I’ll hunt full out just as long as I still want to jump fences in front of other people,” wrote the prince. “The moment I don’t I’ll stop and take to big game hunting and more intensive golf, and indoors sports!! But I hope that won’t happen in years and that you’ll be hunting season after next. Love to you both from EP.”

  Irene, back from her world tour, found a world even more frenetically gay than when she had left it in November. Fashion followed fashion—ostrich-feather fans, headache bands, bangs, pearl chokers, Venetian glass lamps, painted furniture and, that November, the first bottle party. In tune with the zeitgeist, Maud, wife of Sir Bache Cunard, rechristened herself Emerald and launched into three decades of entertaining—endless lunch, dinner and supper parties and, later, gatherings in her opera box and after-performance entertainments.

  A year’s absence had not achieved the break from Gordon Leith that Irene had intended. He came right away to see her at Claridge’s, where she was staying. Her first full day in London, November 16, gives a flavor of her London life at that time. She had a reunion lunch with Cim, saw Gordon at three-thirty and the hostess and decorator Sibyl Colefax at four-thirty, and accepted an invitation to Cliveden from Nancy Astor. Cim brought her children to tea at five and at seven Gordon came again to see her before she left for Tom Mosley’s birthday dinner at Smith Square. After it she, Cim, Tom and his agent went to Charlot’s Revue and on to the Gargoyle nightclub, where they met Bob Boothby, Amabel and Clough Williams-Ellis, John Strachey and others.

  Two days later, Irene canceled the Cliveden visit in order to lunch with Gordon at the Embassy Club. The following day, she saw another admirer, Arthur Rubinstein, the pianist whom she had met so many years earlier at Hackwood. After attending his concert, she dined with him and the Jowetts, talked until midnight and then went on with Rubinstein to a party given by Sibyl Colefax in his honor. “We disbanded at 2:45 after a perfect time. Arthur had left Paola de Medici behind and was just as stimulating and vital as ever.”