Country House Society

by Pamela Horn

  In some cases, as with the dukes of Westminster and Marlborough, marriages which had broken up before the war were ended by divorce in its immediate aftermath. To conform to the gentlemanly procedure of allowing a wife to divorce her husband, it was customary for the man to commit adultery by arrangement with a ‘professional’ co-respondent. The Duke of Marlborough, for example, in February 1920 booked into Claridge’s Hotel under the name of Spencer and spent the night with a hired co-respondent, thereby establishing the necessary ‘grounds’ for divorce.47 Usually a chambermaid would give evidence that they had spent a night together, but sometimes a private detective would be hired for the purpose, as was the case with the Duchess of Westminster when she divorced the duke.48 Divorce lawyers, ‘winking at the collusive irregularity, were usually able to fix the husband up with a professional “woman unknown” and with chambermaids’ evidence’.49 Ironically in neither case did the ducal remarriages prove a success. The Duke of Westminster’s second wife was a divorcee Violet Nelson, whom he married in November 1920. But the social elevation this represented seems to have gone to Violet’s head. Her pretentiousness alienated her husband from many former close friends and the marriage ended in divorce in 1924.50

  The Duke of Marlborough married his long-term mistress, Gladys Deacon, in 1921 but they, too, became estranged from one another in less than a decade, with the duchess growing increasingly eccentric and the duke remaining as self-centred as ever. Until the passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1923, a woman bringing a petition for divorce not only had to prove adultery but also to provide some other cause, such as cruelty or desertion, although for a man adultery alone had sufficed. After the implementation of the 1923 Act, however, adultery by either spouse became a sufficient reason for divorce.51

  These social trends in the post-war years were joined by another unsatisfactory development, namely the sale of honours by the Lloyd George government. Although Lloyd George was the coalition’s Prime Minister, after his split with the Asquithian Liberals he lacked a party machine to provide funds to fight elections or to promote his personal political cause. The ‘sale’ of titles, in return for a discreet payment to Party funds, was certainly not new in the immediate post-war period, but Lloyd George carried it through more systematically than had hitherto been the case. This angered his Conservative Party allies in the coalition, who saw funds being diverted from their own party coffers to the benefit of Lloyd George. The coalition’s Liberal Whip, Freddie Guest, distanced himself from the process by employing a dubious character named Maundy Gregory to arrange the transactions. He in turn organised touts, whom Guest described as ‘grubby little men in brown bowler hats’, who also shared in the proceeds.52 Among those taking advantage of these offers were businessmen who had done well in the war and now wished to establish themselves and their families in ‘respectable’ elite society. Knighthoods were said to cost £10,000 to £12,000 apiece, baronetcies around £35,000 to £40,000 and peerages were still more costly. Some shrewd businessmen, however, were able to negotiate a deal for a lower payment. To established members of the aristocracy and gentry this blatant means of boosting Lloyd George’s personal finances was an outrage. In July 1922, for example, the Duke of Northumberland quoted a letter from one tout who claimed, shortly before the Lloyd George coalition fell: ‘There are only 5 knighthoods left for the June List … It is not likely that the next Government will give so many honours, and this is really an exceptional opportunity.’ The recipient was warned that there was ‘no time to be lost if you wish to take it’. However, if he decided ‘upon a baronetcy’, he might have to wait ‘for the Retiring List’.53 In the same House of Lords debate the Marquess of Crewe complained that the number of additions to the Upper House in 1922 had been ‘very large’… the number of distinctions conferred had included 10 Peerages, 32 baronetcies, and 141 knighthoods’. The Times, too, in commenting on a new annual edition of Debrett’s appearing in December 1921, had noted that ‘in its five years of office’ Lloyd George’s administration had ‘made the largest number of peerages created by any Government in modern times’.54 Altogether over the period 1919 to 1922 alone the Prime Minister had recommended thirty-seven peerages. He also created 134 baronets over that period, including forty-four in 1919 and thirty-nine in 1921.55 Knighthoods abounded, with one contemporary declaring acidly that Cardiff was ‘appropriately nicknamed the “City of dreadful Knights”’.56

  It was not, however, merely the volume of those so honoured that gave rise to criticism but the quality of some of those recommended. As Douglas Goldring declared, they included ‘men whose surnames stank’ but who ‘concealed them under titles which recalled the chivalry of Feudal England’. Among them were Sir William Vestey (who received a barony) and was described as a ‘wartime tax dodger’; Rowland Hodge (made a baronet) who had been convicted for food hoarding; and Sir Joseph Drughorn, who was also awarded a baronetcy despite being ‘convicted for trading with the enemy’.57 Lloyd George himself justified the procedure to a friend. ‘You and I know that the sale of honours is the cleanest way of raising money for a political party,’ he declared. ‘The worst of it is you cannot defend it in public.’ The scandal gave valuable ammunition to his enemies and was a factor in his downfall, even if it was not its sole cause.58 But these developments came at a time when the landed classes felt themselves under growing threat from high taxation, declining incomes, and political condemnation. That undoubtedly added venom to their parliamentary comments. It is to the response of the landed interest to the political and economic problems they faced in the post-war period that we must now turn.

  Landownership in the Aftermath of the War

  At a time of mounting industrial unrest within mainland Britain and of serious violence in Ireland, where a number of elite families still owned estates, there was a growing sense of unease among the landed classes. That was further fuelled by an awareness of the revolutionary turmoil in Europe, not least in Russia, where the Bolsheviks had first imprisoned and then murdered the Royal Family. Among the more sensitive members of the British nobility and gentry this led to an increasing awareness of the contrasts between the wealth of some of their number and the poverty of many of their fellow citizens. Hence Lord Winterton on 10 July 1919, when he attended the Duchess of Northumberland’s dinner and dance at luxurious Syon House, was struck by

  the contrast between the squalor of Brentford and the great sweep of the Park at Syon all kept by police with a magnificent uniformed porter to salute one with a dignified hat raise at the entrance, left ‘rather a nasty taste’. – As for the dinner party it was like ‘old England before the flood’ or perhaps one ought to say ‘Old France before the Revolution’. Garters were commonplace, medals banal … and the dance that followed was very royal & ancien régime.59

  A few months earlier, when Winterton had dined at D’Eresby House in London with Lord and Lady Ancaster, he had again commented on the wealth and luxury displayed, with the American-born Lady Ancaster ‘looking like I know not what in her very artificial get up. One could not help contrasting this with the seething unrest o’er the realm & with Germany, Petrograd, Vienna & the rest. Is it our 1788?’60 The latter year had marked the beginning of the French Revolution, which had led to the overthrow of the established ruling class in France.

  The government, too, was aware of workers’ anger and discontent within many of the country’s major industries, which had manifested itself in a number of large-scale strikes, as for example on 26 September 1919, on the railways over pay. The government’s reaction to this was to call out the troops in large numbers and to begin to enrol ‘Citizen Guards’. A plan for emergency road transport was implemented, with drivers registered and lorries requisitioned to provide for the distribution of food.61 Initially it was feared that the dispute would lead to a general strike. Indeed, a Foreign Office colleague of Duff Cooper expressed a fear that they were at ‘the beginning of revolution’. Duff himself noticed that St James’s Street was fu
ll of policemen and that the Horse Guards Parade was thronged with sailors and motor lorries. He referred frivolously to ‘rather a pleasant scent of excitement and revolution in the air’.62 Some volunteers, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who perhaps bizarrely was a trained engine driver, helped to maintain a skeleton rail service.63

  Eddie Winterton, coming up to London from his Sussex home, was reassured by the atmosphere of calm that apparently prevailed in the capital. That applied, too, at both the Carlton and the Turf Clubs which he visited. As he observed drily: ‘Neither the plutocratic or aristocratic club seem much affected by the strike.’ He visited the Chapman Estate in the East End of London also, and again calm prevailed. However, he noted that the womenfolk seemed ‘anxious but perhaps no more than they usually do in a quarter where the necessities of life are a perpetual anxiety’. In the end it had been very much a ‘day of contrasts!!’64 The strike ended on 5 October, after the government agreed to maintain existing wage levels for a further year.65

  More serious was the coal strike which occurred in 1921, when the economy was already moving into recession, after a brief post-war boom. On 31 March in that year the government had ended its wartime control over the mining industry, and sharp wage reductions were proposed for the now deregulated sector. On 1 April the coal strike began, and again there were fears that this would lead to a general strike. Once more that did not occur but already on 31 March the government had declared a state of emergency. Once more the armed forces were mobilised and public parks, including Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, became huge vehicle depots. Motor vehicles were requisitioned for the distribution of food and essential supplies, and a special Defence Force of volunteers was created, with 75,000 recruits coming forward in ten days. Fortunately the Defence Force, with its overtones of civil conflict, was never deployed.66

  But this time, unlike during the brief rail strike, the dispute impinged more seriously on the lives of the social elite. With fuel supplies restricted, the Courts for the presentation of débutantes were postponed, and many balls and other celebrations cancelled. The Bystander of 22 June 1921 consoled itself with the fact that Royal Ascot at least was to be held and theatregoing had begun to recover. The strike eventually ended on 1 July, with the miners having to accept defeat.

  These disruptions within Britain itself, however, were insignificant when compared to the violence which had broken out in parts of Ireland. The struggle for Irish independence had entered a new phase, with the Irish Free State finally established in 1922. But already in January 1919, following the general election held the previous December, Sinn Fein members meeting in Dublin had adopted a declaration of independence and had set up their own Parliament. If necessary independence was to be achieved by a resort to violence, perpetrated by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which represented the militant wing of Sinn Fein.67

  The British government responded by recruiting unemployed ex-servicemen as auxiliary policemen. They were quickly labelled the Black and Tans on account of the khaki uniforms and black berets they wore. As Anne de Courcy comments, ‘Their reprisals to IRA outrages were as brutal as those of their opponents’, and the feelings of bitterness and hatred intensified.68 Houses owned by Protestant Anglo-Irish landowners were burned down towards the end of 1921. In one case, masked men entered the house of Lady Una Ross at Strangford and forced her and her maids into the garden and made them watch the burning of the house and its contents. At nearby Castle Ward, the home of Lord Bangor, he and his family were defended by B Specials, volunteers enlisted for that purpose. Even Lord and Lady Londonderry at their palatial home, Mount Stewart, were guarded by B Specials and Lady Londonderry slept with a set of day clothes by her bed and a revolver in a bedside drawer when she stayed at Mount Stewart. However, the Troubles did not prevent her and her husband from visiting their Irish property and entertaining guests there.69

  Even when, in December 1921, articles of agreement for a treaty between Great Britain and Ireland to establish the Free State were drawn up, the unrest continued within Ireland as substantial sections of the political leadership there repudiated the treaty.70 In the meantime, before the Free State was set up, more than three-quarters of the land previously owned by large landlords had been voluntarily disposed of to tenants. However, under a new Act of 1923 passed by the freshly installed Irish government, the remaining land not yet tenant-owned was vested in a Land Commission which compensated the former owners at a standard price. By the 1920s, therefore, there were virtually no great estates left in Ireland. At best, ‘the patricians held on to their ancestral mansion and perhaps the park … “Landlordism” had disappeared from Ireland.’71

  It was against this post-war background, therefore, that landowners in mainland Britain considered their options. Although the violence suffered in Ireland was not anticipated, there were other factors causing disquiet and encouraging them to consider diversifying their wealth away from a concentration on land. Foremost among these was the fact that despite a government commitment to guarantee the prices of cereal crops and potatoes under the Corn Production Act of 1917, introduced at a time of serious wartime food shortage, landlords had not benefited. Only the farmers had gained and that remained the case when the guarantee system was renewed under the Agriculture Act of 1920. This led to a willingness on the part of some tenant farmers to consider buying their holdings, should the opportunity arise, rather than continuing to rent. At the same time landowners, who had been prevented from raising rents during the war, had only raised them by about 15 per cent on average after 1918, at a time when their outgoings were increasing sharply.72

  Then, in 1921, as the disruptions to food production and distribution during and immediately after the war were slowly eliminated, the price of cereals fell rapidly, dropping in the case of wheat from 18s 10d a hundredweight in 1920 to 16s 8d in 1921. For barley and oats the decline was still more severe.73 The government, fearing it would be faced with a bill of some £20 million under the guarantee system, hastily ended it by passing the 1921 Corn Production (Repeal) Act. Among farmers there were feelings of angry betrayal, and as food prices continued to slide, landowners were obliged to reduce their rents once more, to keep their tenants in business. Sometimes these dropped by as much as 25 per cent during the 1920s. In other cases rents were remitted altogether, in order to ensure that the land remained under cultivation.

  It was not, however, merely the unsatisfactory level of rentals that encouraged landowners to contemplate selling at least part of their estates. Rising taxation was another factor. During the war income tax levels had risen inexorably, and a new super tax had been introduced on incomes in excess of £10,000 per annum. This was retained and increased thereafter. Furthermore it was levied on gross income rather than net, thereby proving especially disadvantageous to landowners who had large outgoings on property maintenance and improvement, to say nothing of their wider philanthropic obligations within local communities.74 Another factor encouraging the sale of land was the raising of death duty in 1919 to 40 per cent on estates valued at £2 million or more, compared with the pre-war levy of 15 per cent. Still more seriously from the point of view of the landowner, an estate was to be valued at the current selling price of land rather than, as had previously been the case, on its rental value. At a time when land was still very much under-rented and land prices were buoyant, in the immediate aftermath of the war, this made the potential burden of death duties still greater.75

  Then, too, many owners wished to boost their personal income by investing in assets other than land. The immensely wealthy Duke of Westminster, for example, despite his ownership of valuable real estate in London,

  was sure that the secure future of the Grosvenor fortune must be safeguarded outside … of England. Every decision he made was to protect long-term interests: all the proceeds from the property to be sold and the assets he liquidated went to pay off mortgages and family obligations – £900,000 worth – or to buy land abroad that he thought
in fifty or 100 years would still return a safe profit.76

  He foresaw a continuation of high taxation on landed property and although he was condemned by some critics for his large sales of inherited land and his purchase of property in Australia, South Africa, Canada and elsewhere, he was not deterred. A part of the Eaton estate in Cheshire was sold for £330,000, while in London a number of properties he owned in Pimlico were disposed of for £1.1 million. Nor did he confine his sales to bricks and mortar, accepting a price variously put at between £200,000 and £750,000 for Gainsborough’s famous painting The Blue Boy, Sir Joshua Reynolds’ work, Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse and a lesser-known Gainsborough painting, The Cottage Door. They were disposed of through a well-known contemporary art dealer, Sir Joseph Duveen, who was acting for an American client.77

  The pressures of taxation, rising costs of estate maintenance, and uncertainty as to the future status of landownership which had encouraged the Duke of Westminster to diversify his assets affected other owners, too. As the 17th Earl of Derby, the so-called ‘King of Lancashire’, declared ironically in 1923, ‘taxation at the present moment is so high that I may call myself a tax collector for the government. At present I am not living on my income. I am living on my capital.’ Likewise Lord Clinton in 1919 estimated that on a group of estates with an average gross rental of £20,000, expenditure on income tax, tithe and rates had absorbed £15,800, leaving the owners with an income of just 4s 6d in the pound out of which they must pay for the maintenance of the estate and other fixed outlays. This he compared with 10s in the pound that could be obtained on an equivalent income derived from government bonds or similar securities.78 Significantly, the Duke of Devonshire, who retained several core estates and four large country houses, was by the 1920s earning more from stock dividends than from agriculture.79

  These comparisons, drawing attention to the heavy tax burdens faced by landowners, continued to be made over the following years. In July 1921, for instance, in a leading article headed ‘Landowners Bled White’, Country Life examined a number of ‘typical’ estates selected from different parts of Scotland. In one case the figures showed that whereas parish and borough rates, land tax, heritor’s assessment, and other public and parochial burdens had amounted to £2,320 in 1911–12, by 1920–21 they had climbed to £4,838. The costs of management had similarly grown from £1,210 in 1911–12 to £1,677 in 1920–21, while renewals, repairs and improvements had risen from £3,069 at the earlier date to £4,983. Income tax had nearly quadrupled, from £636 in 1911–12 to £2,342 in 1920–21. No personal expenses, according to Country Life, were included in these figures.