Tom’s politics were leading him into ever deeper water. With every fresh Nazi outrage, public hostility grew toward the British Union, and its continued marches and parades served as a focus for disturbance and, increasingly, violence. According to Thomas Jones, Sir Samuel Hoare (the newly appointed minister for Home Affairs) was “bothered by the Mosley processions but does not want to squash them in a hurry because the Civil Liberties group in the House is numerous and vocal.” At a meeting in Liverpool on October 10, Tom was hit on the head by a brick thrown at him and was so badly injured he had to remain in the hospital for a week.
While he was there, the result of a libel case brought against his newspaper, Action, was announced. He had lost. As Irene accurately put it, “Tom’s paper has to pay £20,000 to Lord Camrose for calling him a Jew and putting his interests before [those of] the Crown. I was amazed Tom has not got it in the neck before, his articles are such filth but Beckett has merely turned traitor to him in Court, having edited the paper at the time of the libel.”
John Beckett had not been called as a witness but had asked if he could make a statement. He said: “When I wrote that article I believed it to be true because the information in it was given by people on whom, rightly or wrongly, I placed great reliance. To me, to tell a man that he is a Jew and that his financial interests are far greater outside the country than in it are two of the greatest insults that can possibly be offered to any man. When I discovered that so far from the information my titled friend gave me about Lord Camrose being a Jew being true, he was a Welshman—and, if I may say so, an obvious Welshman—I did not want to go into the box to justify that.”
The “titled friend” was obviously—or so the jury thought—Tom. Lord Camrose was awarded twenty thousand pounds and costs; Beckett was unable to find the money and Action, owned by a company with a capital of one hundred pounds, went bankrupt. To the great relief of Irene, who feared the loss of Denham, Tom could not be held liable.
On October 12 the Kents asked Irene to lunch again, at their house in Bryanston Square, this time to meet her old admirer Nevile Henderson. There were only the four of them, and Henderson held the floor about his German experiences. Almost certainly they would also have talked of the visit of the duke of Windsor to Nazi Germany, which had begun only the day before, and about which no one had known anything until the duke’s office released a statement nine days earlier.
Despite the duke’s best intentions, the visit was of course used by the Nazis as a propaganda coup. For the Windsors, it was a serious faux pas, as their meetings with the Görings, Himmler, Hess and Goebbels, their gala dinner in Streicher’s Nuremberg house and, finally, the meeting with Hitler at which the duke sketched a half-hearted Nazi salute were duly chronicled—and photographed.
“There can be no doubt that his tour has strengthened the regime’s hold on the working classes,” said the New York Times, adding that the duke had lent himself “perhaps unconsciously, but easily, to National Socialist propaganda.” Herbert Morrison, in the Labour magazine Forward, put it more strongly, saying first that the duke had always failed to realize that in a constitutional monarchy neither the heir to the throne nor the king can publicly express opinions on controversial matters.
“If the Duke wants to study social problems he had far better quietly read books and get advice in private. What he is going to do with his knowledge I do not know, for he cannot be permitted to re-enter public life—in this country at any rate. The choice before ex-kings is either to fade out of the public eye or to be a nuisance. It is a hard choice, perhaps, for one of his temperament, but the Duke will be wise to fade.” Unfortunately, this was not advice the duke wished to follow.
The American tour never took place. Bedaux’s drive for greater efficiency in the workplace had made him so unpopular with organized labor that an attack on him was planned, while the publicity given to the German visit had turned much of the British press and public against the Windsor visit. This time, the duke listened to advice, and on November 9 wrote to Bedaux from his temporary base, the Hôtel Meurice in Paris, regretting that he had to cancel his trip. “If you have been embarrassed in any way I am sorry that I should have been the cause, but, as you know, I only had one aim and object from the outset, which was shared by yourself, that of learning something of the housing and industrial conditions in America today. Please let me know what expenses have been incurred that are my liability.”
But Bedaux had had enough. Terrified of the hostility, worried about his businesses, he fled to Canada and thence to Europe, never to return to America until he was flown there in 1943.*
On October 24 Irene and Baba received one of their regular invitations to Cliveden, both enjoyed and dreaded by many of those closest to their hostess. Nancy was still, as Victor Cazalet had jotted in his diary the previous year, “a very remarkable woman. Lives on her nerves. Possesses every contrast possible. Good, bad, full of angles, incredible insights and unbelievable bad judgment. One minute offering deepest confidence, next saying most insulting thing she can think of. Very religious. Terrific energy.”
She displayed many of these qualities on this occasion. It proved to be one of the most famous of the Astor house parties, its guests numbering many of those later dubbed “the Cliveden Set.”
As well as two Astor sons, Bill and David, and relations such as Nancy’s niece Alice and her husband, Reggie Winn, also there were Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and his wife, Beatrice; the speaker of the House of Commons, Captain Edward FitzRoy, and his wife; the editor of The Times, Geoffrey Dawson; Nevile Henderson; Tom Jones (deputy secretary of the cabinet until 1930, trusted counselor to Baldwin and a great friend of the Astors); Nancy Astor’s adored Lord Lothian, the Liberal peer who was appointed ambassador to the U.S. in 1939 and already known for his internationalist, anti-war stance; Mrs. Lionel Hitchens, Philip Nichols; Sir Alexander Cadogan (permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office) and his brother Eddie (MP for Finchley until two years earlier), and Robert Bernays, now parliamentary secretary to the minister for health. Like the Curzon sisters, Bernays was such an intimate of the Astor family that he spent weekends alone with them, likening himself to “a sort of father confessor to these poor little rich boys (£25,000 a year each before they are 21).”
With both the foreign secretary, the ambassador to Berlin, senior Foreign Office men and the editor of The Times among the guests, the talk of course was of Germany. That night Irene wrote: “I talked to Nevile and Bob Bernays before dinner. Sat between Nevile and Eddie Cadogan at dinner. Late in the evening, Nevile Henderson, Bill and David Astor, Philip Nichols and I, joined by Baba (after a chat with that impossible rabbit-toothed Eden) talked on Germany till 1:00 a.m. and Nevile was very interesting to the degree Baba wondered if I had been wrong in refusing him.”
After dinner Alice Winn, who shared Nancy’s love of mischief, informed Irene that Nevile Henderson had proposed three times to a South American heiress. Beatrice Eden chimed in to say that he had even written to the Foreign Office from Buenos Aires to ask if he could marry an Argentine dancer.
Tom Jones wrote a description of the weekend that points up the differences between the foreign secretary and one of his most senior ambassadors:
Thirty to lunch today but this includes three boys from Eton. The Edens are the highest lights and Nevile Henderson the newest. Politics all day and all night. Eden has aged since I saw him six months ago and is dog-tired at the start of the Session. I sat between him and Henderson after the ladies left last night and found they differed widely in policy. Henderson struck me as sensible and informed but without distinction. He has lived in the countries we talked about and Eden has not and this was apparent.
Eden himself thinks the Cabinet very weak and the armament programme far in arrears. On the other hand, he seems to argue that we can’t do business with Germany until we are armed—say about 1940. This assumes that we can catch up with Germany—which we cannot—and that Hitler takes no dramatic ste
p in the meantime, which is unlike Hitler. We have spurned his repeated offers. They will not be kept open indefinitely. His price will mount and he will want the naval agreement revised in his favour. It is believed that Mussolini has sold Austria to him at the recent meeting in return for what, I don’t know. All this the P.M. sees and says, but I think it goes no further and that meanwhile Vansittart is trying hard to bring N.C. round to the secular F.O. view.
Grandi has been the cleverest person on the non-Intervention Committee and has put flies all over Lord Plymouth. Seems to be a duel between Grandi and Maisky [the Russian ambassador] who each try to rig the press.
Baba, who had made the most of meeting Nevile Henderson at Cliveden, was going to stay at the British embassy in Berlin after seeing Viv in Munich. Fruity, suspicious that she would meet yet another admirer, wanted to follow her there, but Irene, who knew perfectly well what Baba’s reaction would be, managed to dissuade him.
When Baba returned from Germany, she was full of news. She had had a wonderful time staying with Nevile Henderson, she told her sister; also staying there was Lord Halifax, whom they had met (as Lord Irwin) briefly in India during his viceroyalty. Earlier that year he had become lord president of the council and would (in February 1938) become foreign secretary.
Halifax still believed that the Nazis were basically reasonable men with whom negotiation was possible and had persuaded the reluctant Eden to allow him to meet Hitler in Berlin under the pretext of accepting an invitation to attend a hunting exhibition and—which must have made this master of the Middleton Hunt shudder—shoot foxes. Neither he nor Baba could have guessed how closely their lives would entwine in the future.
Less happy was Baba’s disclosure a few days later that Tom did not propose to spend Christmas 1937 with his children at Denham because, wrote Irene, “Mrs. G was kicking up such a fuss. And still hangs the Sword of Damocles over our heads as to whether he is or is not married to her.” Baba, equally anxious to wrest Tom away from the Guinness influence, did her best to persuade him and soon reported success. “T. now seems to think he might manage Denham.”
But this triumph was short-lived. A few days later, Lady Mosley told Irene that Tom had been called abroad for Christmas. “D. G. won,” wrote Irene furiously. “May their Xmas be black with bickerings and recriminations.”
Neither reflected that, from the unpaternal Tom’s point of view, Christmas with Diana—beautiful, serene, gay, funny, adoring and gifted with the ability to produce a near-perfect home and food—might be preferable to one spent in a household riven by quarrels, jealousy, tensions and dramas.
When fourteen-year-old Nick realized that his father was not coming he wept, Irene was told when she arrived at Denham two days before Christmas. When the children were comforted and safely in bed, she and Nanny filled their stockings. “I had a quiet hymn of hate at T’s selfishness at going off for Xmas,” she wrote on Christmas Eve. “But for me I was blissful.” On Christmas Day Nick performed their regular Father Christmas routine.
As the holiday wore on the simmering emotional tensions in the Metcalfe marriage resurfaced. Fruity, who had been diagnosed as suffering from a depressive illness, was planning to take a break in Switzerland but did not really want to go and talked of canceling his hotel room; Baba wept and said nothing mattered, she would like to die if it were not for the children. Irene was relieved when they all left. That night she wrote: “Not one word, even for New Year, from Tom. He is the utter limit.”
27
At Home with the Duke
The Curzon sisters’ petty squabbles were soon forgotten in the growing tension of the international situation. The Anschluss in March, when German troops invaded Austria to the cheers of the crowd that shared their language and racial background, might have had a certain logic; the threat to Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, with its German minority, was something far more menacing.
Over the weekend of March 26, 1938, there was another of the house parties that gave the Cliveden Set its name. Staying in the huge house were the prime minister and Mrs. Chamberlain; Lord Lothian; the House speaker, Captain Edward FitzRoy, and Mrs. FitzRoy; the Conservative whip, David Margesson; Sir Alexander and Lady Cadogan; Nancy’s niece Alice Winn and her husband, Reggie; the actress Joyce Grenfell and her husband, Reggie; Ronnie Tree; Lady Worsley; Bill Astor; Lady Wilson (the wife of Gracie’s onetime lover Scatters); and the observant Tom Jones.
As soon as she arrived, Irene found herself drawn into a discussion of the international situation. As she strolled past sweeps of crocuses, the first daffodils and the magnificent Cliveden magnolia trees with her host Waldorf Astor and the American financier Sir Clarence Dillon, they spoke of nothing but Hitler; after tea, walking with Ronnie Tree, there were the same questions, the same discussions of what the führer intended. So unnerving was the conversation that Irene slipped off to the chapel in which her sister’s body had lain to pray that the sacrifices of 1914–18 had not been in vain and that the lives of the children she now regarded as her own should not be put at risk.
She felt uneasy at the composition of the party. “I am not sure the PM should stay at the moment in a house notorious for talk with the owner of big papers and all the chat and gossip about the Cliveden group running the PM and dragooning England,” she wrote in her diary (the Cliveden Set had already been attacked by the Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps, and Frank Owen had written an article about it in the Daily Express that month).
Nor was she impressed by the prime minister, sitting opposite her at dinner. “I thought the face mean, undistinguished, dead tired eyes, no vision, an ordinary cautious man whom no one could move to flights of greatness or to take any known risk for the future of the world, a very common type. Nancy lectured him through dinner as if she were running the world.” Mrs. Chamberlain she found “nice, cosy, slow, gentle but entirely devoid of the personality to make a great wife of a PM.”
After dinner, Nancy insisted upon her favorite game of musical chairs. Irene, conscious of the terrible gravity of the international situation, could not make herself join in (“What would the Nazi leaders say if they could see the PM, Nancy and others fighting and cheating for chairs? They could not believe we could ever be serious about anything”). No such scruples hindered the prime minister, who successfully fought David Astor for the last chair and won the game.
The indefatigable Nancy then organized another party standby, the acting out of a phrase, word or book title to be guessed by the others. Like Irene, Sir Clarence Dillon could not bear to join in at this critical moment; they watched bemused as Mrs. Chamberlain crawled along the floor, to be followed by Nancy with another of her set pieces: the clapping in of the false teeth she always kept by her in a small silver bag before launching into her two comic speeches—that of a Primrose League member and a hard-riding woman to hounds—into which she incorporated digs against the cabinet and the speaker.
“Are we all mad or what?” Irene asked herself miserably. She was deeply depressed at the latest round of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda, this time aimed at the Jews of Vienna in the days following the Anschluss. “This volatile, irresponsible, tactless creature is the hostess for our PM in these agonising days. May God watch over it all for the best.”
Her apprehensions were realized when the party again got into the gossip columns in the Daily Express. Later it was discovered that the source of the leak was Lady Wilson, who had talked about it to Randolph Churchill, then working on the Evening Standard Londoner’s Diary.
Irene’s lack of faith in the prime minister appeared to be shared by Tom Jones. Giving Jones a lift back to London, she discussed with him Chamberlain’s previous wartime role in charge of the voluntary recruitment of labor under Lloyd George and how this had only lasted seven months (Lloyd George had conceived a violent dislike for Chamberlain within days of the appointment and gave him such minimal support that he resigned). “And this is the man we now turn to in the worst crisis since the war,” thought Iren
e.
She spent much of the spring of 1938 visiting Denham, on one occasion finding Tom there—“very pleasant and friendly with the children”—before going on a driving trip to France in April. A month later she installed Vivien in Paris with a vicomtesse who took English girls for a final polish before their debut the following season. Before returning to London, she and Viv met Baba at the Paris Ritz—the Metcalfes had been invited to stay with the duke and duchess of Windsor for the weekend at their temporary home in Versailles and Baba stayed on afterward to take her niece clothes-shopping.
Scarcely was Irene back in England and the nursery routine reestablished than another of Tom’s suggestions threw the Denham household into a flutter. Lady Mosley telephoned to say that Tom wanted Irene’s permission to take Micky to Wootton, “as Mrs. Guinness was not there, only her children. Nanny and I were distraught.” Irene asked for time to decide.
It was not simply that Diana Guinness and the Wootton ménage represented all she did not want for her sister’s children; it was more that she felt it to be, as she put it to herself, the thin end of the wedge. If the principle was established of allowing Micky to spend time at Wootton whenever Diana was absent, they would inevitably, sooner rather than later, overlap—and Tom would have good grounds once again to question the point of keeping Denham, their family home. Not trusting herself to speak on the telephone, Irene sent a message saying no to Lady Mosley and went off with friends to a concert at the Queen’s Hall, where she was soothed by Verdi’s Te Deum and Requiem.
A few days later she went to see Baba and did her best to commiserate with her over Fruity’s “nerves,” for which he was going to seek treatment at the well-known spa Divonne-les-Bains, on the French–Swiss border near Lake Geneva. The unhappy Fruity clung to Irene when they said goodbye. Loyal and straightforward, he found it difficult to understand why, despite the three children who should have brought them even closer together, his wife had thrust him aside in favor of a string of lovers.
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 32