That is all I can say. Your life is your own and you can throw it away if you so wish—it is your choice. But remember you are the mother of three children.
A few days later, the windows of Irene’s house were blown out again.
As the raids trailed off, work in the shelters diminished and Irene, with her experience of public speaking, began giving talks. She spoke on Abyssinia at various army camps and depots, lectured on East End shelters and Christianity at Malvern College, and addressed the joint annual meeting of the Lincoln branch of the National Council for Women and the Central Girls’ Club on the need for a religious faith as powerful as the German people’s belief in Hitler. She always tried to look smart and when, on June 1, clothes rationing was announced in the Sunday papers, she could not help regretting the number of clothes she had given to the maids at the Dorchester.
Gossip about Halifax in Washington filtered back through their friends. While Dorothy, warm, charming, tactful and hardworking, had become a favorite, Halifax’s reserved, patrician manner gave the appearance that he was standoffish and uninterested. As he was known as a foxhunting man, he had been invited to have a day with a pack in Pennsylvania about which he had written enthusiastically to Baba (“a very nice-looking pack, huntsman an Englishman who used to be with the Warwickshire, whipper-ins American, all very well turned out, a great many people in red coats”). No doubt this enthusiasm had made a sharp contrast with his usual rather aloof persona, for the press had lambasted him for indulging in such a luxury pursuit in wartime.
Victor Cazalet unhappily confirmed this. “He will never slip into the easy ways of P. Lothian, who was beloved by everybody,” he wrote in his private diary; and he urged Halifax one evening to ring up Roosevelt “just for a chat. Americans love this.”
Whether or not the ambassador did attempt such an out-of-character move is not known, but his long letters to Baba continued, filled with news and comment as well as plans to see her again. When Hitler invaded Russia he wrote, “I hope that as in the past, Russia may prove an unprofitable investment for invaders.” In another letter he noted presciently: “The U.S. Navy is all ready, as they think, for a scrap and most of them are just longing for some incident that will settle it. I shall be surprised if they don’t get it.”
At home, Irene had driven down to Eton on June 28 and, after watching cricket, had taken Nick to Denham, where Colonel O’Shea walked them around the house and garden. Everything was in apple-pie order: O’Shea’s men were making a trout farm in the gravel pit, the lawns were mown, and where two bombs falling nearby had hurled debris all around Cim’s sarcophagus the holes had been filled in and everything smoothed away.
A few days later she went to a dinner at the Dorch given by Mrs. Ronnie Greville. They were joined by Victor Cazalet, who had arrived back a week earlier from the U.S. after a ten-hour flight from Gander, Newfoundland, in a converted Liberator bomber. After dinner he took Irene back to his room, where they discussed his proposal of marriage. For the romantic Irene, who longed for love if not passion, what Victor offered seemed an unhappy substitute: it appeared that he was yet another of the men who saw her as a powerful aid to his career rather than as the love of his life.
“He said such bald cold things: that he knew he would get a governorship if he had a wife. But he was scrupulously fair about his side of the bargain—one’s freedom, etc. I asked God to give me ten days over it.”
Less than a week later, after she had presented the prizes and certificates at Parson’s Mead School, given them a talk and retired to bed weary, her mind was made up. Victor appeared in her room at 11 p.m. in his dressing gown; when he attempted the mildest physical contact she felt repelled. “Sickness when he wanted to shake my hand and offer me some small kiss of affection. It is no good. It cannot be done. I was frozen stiff. I could scarcely touch him.” Next day she wrote a final letter of refusal to Victor, then went out to Harvey Nichols and bought two hats.
With the Blitz over, London was much safer. Baba reappeared, having called Irene to ask her to fix a dinner party for her, and then went to visit Tom at Brixton. As often after she had seen him, she returned uncommunicative. Her emotions on seeing this ex-lover who had so grossly deceived her must have been a jumble of remorse, longing and guilt; and when he told her he hoped to go to France with Diana after the war “to achieve some measure of happiness” it must have struck deep.
Yet she continued to do her best to achieve his release, or at least secure better conditions for him in prison, attempting through Halifax to reach the prime minister and Herbert Morrison. Though Halifax had been thoroughly in favor of Tom’s detention—“I am glad to say we succeeded in getting a good deal done about fascists, aliens and other doubtfuls, Tom Mosley being among those picked up,” he had written in his diary in May 1940—his devotion to Baba meant that he commiserated with her over not being able to get Tom’s situation improved.
Irene found staying at Little Compton difficult. Baba’s authoritarian approach jarred on her, especially when it came to dealing with Nanny—a friend and virtual member of the Curzon family for over forty years. Baba wanted Nanny to stay at Little Compton and look after the Metcalfe children as well as Micky, and Andrée to get a job for the duration of the war; Irene felt Nanny should do as she wished. Neither wanted to stay at Little Compton, though they agreed to do so for the moment, and Irene’s maid Ida also gave notice, saying “she did not like the Compton atmosphere”—Irene felt it was because too much work had been piled on her.
She also found it difficult to still the undercurrent of envious resentment when Baba read extracts from the letters sent by Halifax and Dorothy. “Why does she get all this priceless and exquisite adoration, in its richness and splendour, but it does not come my way? I must be at fault somewhere. She gets the best of both worlds, even though her life with Fruity is misery.”
There was no doubt about the adoration. Halifax was—for him—in a fever of anticipation at the thought of seeing Baba again. “I just can’t imagine what it will be like when I first see you again in the old Dorch,” he wrote from Washington on July 27, 1941. “Do pray very hard that nothing may interfere.” A week later he was telling her: “I shall aim at getting off with a Friday night at Chequers and spending Sunday with you. Unless I arrive Saturday or Sunday I shall go straight to London and hope to find you in the Dorch!”
Baba’s relationships were a dominant theme in the lives of those who knew her well. Like the rest of the world, Irene and Nanny were mystified as to the exact nature of her friendship with Halifax. “We could not fathom the Halifax–Baba thing. Baba was in a secret glow of delight as the Foreign Office phoned her Lord Halifax was coming in a bomber and would arrive today and stay in London [Halifax’s return was in fact delayed for several days].” When Irene dined with Leo d’Erlanger, a Little Compton habitué, they spent hours talking about her sister—d’Erlanger said that Baba “should have grabbed Jock Whitney and got a good settlement for Fruity.” And when Irene drove the brilliant lawyer William Jowett to London after a weekend at Little Compton Baba’s situation came up again. Jowett’s advice was that if Baba really wanted a legal parting of the ways she should offer her husband a two years’ separation and, if he refused to cooperate, cut off his money.
Baba, meanwhile, was seeing as much of the Halifaxes as she could and, Irene felt, keeping them unnecessarily to herself. Once again, she felt hurt, this time when Baba refused to allow her to accompany their party to see the air-raid shelters at Bermondsey—Irene’s stamping ground—saying it would make too many. Even Victor Cazalet recognized Baba’s proprietorial attitude to the Halifaxes, and when he asked them to dine invariably asked her too—often without Irene. Despite their failed romance she was seeing as much of Victor as ever. In August she stayed with him at Great Swifts, his country house at Cranbrook in Kent, and in early September dined with him to meet the Chaim Weizmanns as well as often seeing Victor informally.
The Dorchester was still centra
l to all their lives, more so now that Sibyl Colefax, for whom entertaining was as much a part of life as breathing, had hit upon the simple but effective idea that became known as “Sibyl’s Ordinaries”—dinners, generally on a Thursday, after which guests would receive a discreet bill the following morning. As the war drew on, the cost of the Ordinaries rose from ten shillings six-pence to fifteen shillings, the wine served was Algerian and, eventually, sherry ceased to be offered before dinner.
The first of these paid dinners was on September 18. Around the table at the Dorchester was Lady Colefax’s usual eclectic mix of politicians, writers and personalities. Irene, Adrienne Whitney, Juliet Duff, Gladwyn Jebb, Thornton Wilder, Mrs. Gilbert Russell, Sir Roderick and Lady Jones (the writer Enid Bagnold), Roger Senhouse and Robert Montgomery. Harold Macmillan failed to turn up and Baba, also invited, turned her down in favor of an evening with Victor Cazalet and the Halifaxes, soon to return to America.
At the end of the month, largely to further Baba’s efforts on behalf of Tom Mosley, the Halifaxes gave a small dinner party consisting of the prime minister and Mrs. Churchill; the chief whip, David Margesson, and Baba. “Winston started by coming and plumping himself down on the sofa at once and speaking of Tom,” runs Baba’s account of it. “I had asked Edward to talk to him about the prison and efforts to get them moved to the country. This had been done and Winston was charming, most ready to listen and saw no disadvantages in putting the couples together but Herbert Morrison [the home secretary] will be the stumbling block. He is hard, narrow-minded and far from human in a matter like this, and in any case he has a special dislike of Tom.
“One rather telling remark I thought was when I said it was awful to see someone like T in prison and Winston said: ‘Yes, and it may be for years and years.’ ”
The Halifaxes returned to Washington on September 20, 1941, flying first to Lisbon, where Halifax wrote to Baba, “I so long to hear your news, and your voice on the telephone at Bristol seems a terribly long time ago. But I build my castles for February [when they hoped to return to England].”
Back in Washington, the long, numbered letters resumed, with their adoring messages. “I long to get your first letter and I am marking off the days again until the time comes for my next trip over. I am keeping your last note for a little longer until I know it all by heart. Then it shall be destroyed!”
With the Halifaxes gone, Victor Cazalet had more time for his other friends. On October 10 Irene again went to stay with him at Great Swifts, where they were joined by her other admirer, Leslie Hore-Belisha. After lunch Hore-Belisha and Irene had a long walk, discussing Victor. “I sniggered inside to think of two beaux in one weekend whom I might have ‘taken unto myself’ but I am sure God guided me not to. Victor says Leslie is only absorbed with himself but I am not sure that criticism could not be applied also to the person who made it.”
Victor, unaware that Hore-Belisha was a rival, summed him up more prosaically. “Leslie can be very agreeable but he is getting far too fat,” he wrote in his diary. “I was rather doubtful if I had enough of the right food for him. However for one dinner he had soup, two goes of chicken, two helpings of pie and all the butter and biscuits he could collect.”
After dinner all of them were depressed by listening to Lord Haw Haw telling them how the German army was advancing, it seemed inexorably, on Moscow. Gloomily, Hore-Belisha predicted a great victory for the Germans in the Middle East, after which, he said, “They will then switch to us.”
Irene was still doing all she could for the Mosley children: discussing his future with eighteen-year-old Nick and entertaining for Vivien, now twenty. That October she took a party of Vivien and her friends to the Lansdowne to dine and dance, followed by a nightclub. She felt that she should visit Tom in Brixton Prison, but when she suggested it, both Nick and Baba failed to respond—though they took her car to visit him the following day.
Balked of a visit, on October 26 Irene sent Tom a long letter full of the news she had meant to tell him in person of Nick’s future plans and about Micky who had started at St. Ronan’s that term. Four days later, she received a brutally brief reply. It was a single line, written by Tom’s solicitor Oswald Hickson, saying only that a year at Oxford was better than a half [a term] at Eton.
Irene was disgusted both at Tom’s rudeness and his lack of interest in his children. “I shall take no more trouble with him,” she wrote in her diary, underlining the words heavily.
33
The Halifax Letters
The threatened Windsor visit to the U.S. took place in October 1941. The duke and duchess were accompanied by the duke’s valet; two lady’s maids; a chauffeur and secretary; their comptroller, Gray Phillips; their three cairn terriers, now so bellicose that the Halifaxes’ dog, Franklin, had to be shut away to avoid attack; and seventy-three pieces of luggage, too much even for their sumptuous suite at the Waldorf Towers, New York, so that the passage outside was lined with half-unpacked trunks. Their visit to the Washington embassy was marked by a similar lavishness. “They were both most amiable and—except for their ridiculous amount of luggage, of which the papers were so critical—behaved most decently and ordinarily,” wrote Dorothy Halifax, adding: “I was a little outraged by being presented with a bill for £7.10 for hire of a lorry to take their luggage to and from station—it did seem a little unnecessary for a 24-hour visit.”
Lady Halifax was too charitable to mention that a luncheon for twenty-two had to be canceled at the last minute, the duchess preferring to send out for food and the duke to drink tea and eat fruit in his bedroom. But a dinner party went well and their general comportment was praised. Both, it was thought, behaved impeccably, with particular kudos going to the duchess at one gathering where she refused the offer of tea or cocktails and drank a glass of water instead—“tea would have been too English and cocktails too fast!” noted Halifax approvingly of this subtlety.
Halifax sent Baba a full description of a tête-à-tête with the duke, who had asked himself to luncheon and stayed until five-thirty. They talked generalities for some time, and then the duke launched into a discussion of his own position.
Whatever people thought of the Abdication, that was bygones, and if it had not been for the attitude of his own family—whom he never wanted to see again—things might have worked quite smoothly [wrote Halifax]. The Bahamas was exile, etc etc. He would stick to them for the war but then? He had thought he could have lived in England but he was not going to expose himself or the Duchess to insults and humiliations from the family. And so on. You know it all by heart.
I said that I well knew all the difficulties and tried to be as sympathetic as I could—but I thought he ought not to mistake the friendly welcome that he received from people here. Different feelings were still smouldering and excessive prominence before the public would quickly bring them out. People had thought, rightly or wrongly, that he had “quitted” on his job, and quite apart from that were very critical of her. In what way? he asked. Because of their feelings about divorce, said I, and so we talked for two hours.
He made it pretty plain that he does not look any more, unless his family have a change of heart, to settling down in England. He thinks France will be pretty difficult after the war but likes the New World if it wasn’t so expensive! He said that he was, as he looked, extremely happy and “had a wonderful wife.”
I must say I was very sorry for him and thought he was a very pathetic figure. Not that I change my general feeling either about his coming back to England or her being HRH.
As to the duchess, reported Halifax, she was very agreeable and very anxious to justify their abandonment of Fruity in Paris. He conceded her chic, but thought her hands, “always a most revealing test of quality, dreadfully common, stumpy and coarse. No, I wouldn’t have given up my Empire for her!”
The Halifaxes had been worried in case the duke talked indiscreetly to the wrong people, especially about his future prospects. “We were all on tenterhooks,” Dor
othy wrote to Baba. Halifax, who had always believed the visit would be a mistake, had his opinion confirmed by the unfortunate publicity which the couple generated. “The general press roundup on the Windsor visit has come out pretty badly and I think the visit certainly did harm. Extravagance [the duchess had fallen on the shops]; pleasure; England being bombed; where did they get the dollars from? Lease Lend money? I hope it may not become a biennial affair, sorry as I am for them in their St. Helena.”*
In November Fruity was posted to Cairo. Irene gave him a farewell lunch at the Savoy Grill, where Fruity, fifty-four, out of the second job he had really loved and surrounded by younger men sporting decorations, wings, crowns or red tabs, admitted that he felt “a bit down” at still being only a flight lieutenant, overtaken by younger men who seemed to become squadron leaders with ease. Irene’s sympathetic heart was touched and she sent a collection of the best new books to Claridge’s Hotel, where he was staying. He left the following day, after saying a brief goodbye to Baba and fourteen-year-old David, who had come up from Eton.
When Baba dined with Irene that evening, the old irritation surfaced. Irene was by now a considerable personality on the wartime “talk” circuit, lecturing, doing some broadcasting and speaking to schools on subjects like “Youth in Wartime,” so her younger sister’s automatic dismissal of her views did not go down well. “I am maddened by the cocksure way Baba downs anything one ever says about Charles Peake, the P.M. or anyone as if one’s own views were puerile and not worthy to be pronounced.”
Baba’s assumption of superior knowledge was, as ever, founded on the confidences of her devoted admirer in Washington. Halifax wrote to her almost within minutes of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941:
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 41