A few days after his departure, Poppy sent him an early account of the relationship developing with me. After lunch in the well-known restaurant in Inxent, a village close to Montreuil, we had walked some of the way home. But, “He was dreadfully naughty with me this morning, pied-de-nez, pulled his tongue out etc. I had to get out of bed and threaten. I admire him as he isn’t frightened in the least but holds his own. Il a beaucoup de qualités mais il a besoin d’être dompté [He has many qualities but needs to be brought under control]. I nearly had giggles in the middle of the drama. I am sure you would have laughed if you could have seen us.”
Meidling, the “dear old place” as Mitzi thought of it, must have seemed at a great distance from Montreuil at that moment, and altogether a plaything of fate. On 1 December 1939 an official in Vienna with the title of Head of State Collections had written to the Gestapo to draw attention to what he calls the “rich inventory” and “outstanding things” to be found at Meidling. In his opening paragraph he makes the all-important point that the owner is a “Jewess with English citizenship.” The sheet of paper bears the stamp of the Nazi eagle. Below the typewritten greeting “Heil Hitler!” is an illegible signature.
Six weeks later, on 14 January 1940, almost a year after the Waisenhaus had been taken, the Gestapo duly drove up to Meidling and expropriated everything in it, all the furniture, linen, silver, amassed by Gustav Springer. The full list of stolen pictures comes to 57, carefully inventoried by the Gestapo. A further selection of 22 was made on behalf of the State Collections. One of the paintings listed is a Van Dyck of Saint John, a favourite subject of that artist. The Head of State Collections had his eye on this, and he was particularly disappointed that this picture had gone missing. Within 24 hours of moving into Meidling, he was already recommending an investigation into its whereabouts. To this day, it is still unaccounted for, and the only plausible explanation is that one of these Nazis had been quick enough to lay hands on it for himself. The Head of State Collections was equally eager to acquire several pictures by Rudolf von Alt, and one of these was also not to be found. One Gestapo agent is on record accusing Eduardo of removing this picture. Another Gestapo agent, however, corrects this. He has interrogated the old servants and they inform him that the Pryce-Jones son-in-law had the Alt with him when he last left the house. In the Gestapo dossier is a sheet of paper with Mitzi’s name and an exclamation mark drawn on it in a huge ungainly hand, giving a total estimate for the looted pictures of 33,000 Reichsmarks. Another expert later confirmed this valuation. The house in which I had been born then became a school to train senior Nazi party officials and future Gauleiters. Meidling had meant everything to Mitzi and she can hardly have expected that it would ever be restored but she did not give way to sentimentality or self-pity, merely commenting, “We go on doing our best to be practical and to keep our spirits up.”
(In 1999 the law changed and Austrian authorities were obliged to restore stolen art to rightful owners. One of the paintings missing from Meidling was a small study by the nineteenth-century artist Johann Gualbert Raffalt of a Hungarian shepherd boy. The Belvedere museum now had to confess that since 1945 this painting had been in their possession and on exhibition. Providing the documents to establish our rights to the painting involved a bureaucratic procedure that lasted eleven years. On the day that the picture was finally returned I received a letter from the Belvedere to say that the Raffalt was an important part of the national heritage and they would like to have it back for an exhibition. Making themselves out to be deprived of what was really theirs, the authorities were evidently hoping to cast former owners in the role of grasping and vindictive Jews going to extreme lengths in pursuit of their property and so bent on damaging the nation. All the other paintings are still unaccounted for.)
In the months of the Phoney War members of the family came and went much as they had done in peacetime. At the end of the Spanish civil war Eduardo resumed his diplomatic career as a secretary in the embassy in Paris. To quote from a Harvard thesis written about him by a young historian, James K. McAuley, he proved “a loyal servant of Franco’s Spain and a committed Nationalist … deeply conservative, almost reactionary.” Their marital discord now behind them, Eduardo and Bubbles divided their time between Mitzi’s flat in the Rue de Surène and Royaumont. On 12 January 1940 the Spanish embassy informed the Quai d’Orsay that Royaumont was Eduardo’s “résidence habituelle.”
Whenever Mitzi was in Paris at this time, she stayed in the Hotel Lancaster. Once she took Max, Poppy and Cécile de Rothschild to a Sacha Guitry play. In early February Poppy went home to York Gate, never imagining that she would not be able to return to Montreuil. In the Ritz on another occasion, Mitzi was displeased to see “the Windsor woman,” as she dismissively called the Duchess of Windsor who was lunching with the Polignacs. On the walls of the house of her old and Jewish friend Marie-Thérèse de Croisset, she could not fail to notice the daubed slogans “Mort aux Juifs” and “Méfiez-vous des Juifs.”
In the Lancaster Hotel on 8 May Lily had tears in her eyes when she told her mother that she was engaged to Elie de Rothschild – she was about to be twenty-three, he was a year younger. They had known one another since childhood. “I hugged her and told her that as it had not been that awful Guy de Rothschild I was delighted.” Elie’s father Robert de Rothschild had been Eugène’s great friend, only to have a row with him that was never made up and now Robert’s youngest son was marrying Eugène’s youngest daughter – “How queer life is!” she concluded with a favourite exclamation of hers. Robert de Rothschild came round to the hotel to celebrate with her. “They are impossible, these Rothschilds!” but she then does not explain what had given rise to this no doubt heartfelt outburst. After a course at Saumur, Elie himself had just been commissioned in the Onzième Cuirassiers, an elite cavalry regiment. When he reported for duty, however, the colonel commanding said that he was not prepared to accept Jews in the regiment. After the war, Elie would often speak about this rejection. The colonel of the colonial Moroccan regiment that he finally joined on the contrary called his officers together and told them he would not tolerate anything anti-Jewish. Elie was unable to accompany Liliane or his father that day of the engagement because he was in the field in the north of France.
At Montreuil we were issued with gas-masks. The air-raid sirens had turned out to be false alarms. The so-called “dream house” that had attracted Eugène and Frank in the first place had served no purpose since the building of the new house. French officers back from Poland were now billeted in it. Mitzi did not like it that General du Ranguet was sleeping in what had been her bed there. Poppy had explained that she and Alan had left York Gate for the time being and were staying at Rockley Manor, on the edge of the Marlborough Downs. This house belonged to Mary Loder, a relation of Alan’s because her mother, Lady Wakehurst, otherwise Cousin Cuckoo, was born Grey. Enlisted in the French air force, Max was stationed at Soissons within range of the Maginot Line. Wing Commander Hesketh DFC, commanding 150 Squadron, gave him a testimonial that also served as a pass: “His excellent command of the French and English languages has proved invaluable to me, and I wish, if possible, to retain his services permanently as an interpreter.”
As luck would have it, Mitzi was in Paris on May 9 in order to take to the Hungarian Legation the documents proving that Frank was Aryan. The blitzkrieg had opened when Bubbles telephoned at ten o’clock the next morning, a Friday, to say that Max had arrived at Royaumont in the middle of the night. In his view, Montreuil was not safe and we should all flee from the war zone as soon as we could. Charras is a small town near Angoulême, and Dr Metzl had a house there. He would take us in. The children were to leave at once. Already for Mitzi, “The news of the greatest battle of all time was not good.” The tempo of the German army was “terrific.” And also, “Every moment, you have to be saying goodbye to everyone around.” Since Frank could not drive, Mitzi arranged for René Dupas, the deputy managing director of the factor
y, to take them that Sunday one last time to Montreuil. To be travelling towards the fighting was frightening. She imagined the Germans bombing everywhere as they had bombed Rotterdam. “It is a wonder we were not killed. It is queer to be alive and wonderful not to have gone mad.”
In the crisis, Frank was drinking. The husband whom she habitually referred to as “My angel,” said things that “made me not care what happened.” She praised herself for keeping “calm and peaceful” about Frank, but there was more. “At dinner Frank was awful, screaming that Jews are terrible people, they run about town with pessimistic news, all of it false. Just as bad are the Spaniards, they are the last people who should be told anything. Eduardo was always anti-English.”
Through the Spanish Embassy Eduardo was in touch with the latest news of the disaster now in the making. He agreed with Max that we should go south. He took charge. We were to assemble at Royaumont. Max lent them his old Peugeot, and through friends Frank and Mitzi heard of a chauffeur called Whitworth, a sixty-three-year-old Englishman who seemed to have no objection to driving away from the Channel; we went in convoy with Dupas. Perhaps the château was shut or there were no servants; at any rate Jessie and I slept in the laiterie. From then on, I am in the hands of Jessie. Poppy had no means of knowing our whereabouts or circumstances except what Jessie was able to communicate.
From Royaumont, Jessie wrote: “Things look very black just now but no doubt we shall tide over it all. You see, the Germans are so deceitful, dishonest, crafty, fake, dishonourable, that it is like fighting a white lie. Anyway we must not look on the black side, but believe that right must prevail over might…. I know you must be very anxious wondering where Alan might be sent…. Now my dear, courage and stay there until Alan makes a move.”
Without warning, I was woken up one night and had to dress. This was unprecedented. It was exciting to hear that we were about to go on a long journey running away from the Germans. We would be driving to a place called Charras. A miniature pigskin suitcase, about twelve inches by eight, contained my treasures – toy soldiers, the stamps I had begun to collect – and made me feel grown-up. From Charras, Jessie described our flight to Poppy. “Your brother came home at 3.30 A.M. Thursday morning, saying it was wiser to send the children here, he himself went off again at 4.30, so, as children always complicate everything we made a move, and were off at ten o’clock that same day, arriving at about 7.30, time for bed. They were very good but towards the end they were rather tired and slept all night; now Propper and Co will feel more free to do, and go, as they like.” She finishes, “Make no mistake, we are going to win this war, or if we don’t and it’s the Germans that gain, then it is the end of everything, religion and everything it stands for, falls to the ground, and if England falls, then every other nation falls also, so you see, think, and know, also pray, that the Allies come through victorious, right must win, and will. I’ve implicit faith in my country. Now! Your son is quite well and having a fine time here where it is not so nerve-wracking for them as at Royaumont or Paris although myself I would rather be there to see what’s going on, but, children first is the order of the day.”
On that drive to Charras, I had sat in the back of the car next to Elly. Millions of panicking people for days on end fled from the Germans in this exodus which set the seal on the defeat of France. I retain an image of the Spanish flag fluttering on the front mudguard; also at some point when the throng on the road obliged the car to slow down a woman dressed in black stared in at the window. At Charras, Dr Metzl’s extremely pretty eighteenth-century house gave on to a street. Jessie didn’t see fit to tell Poppy about my mishap there. Somewhere round the side of the house there was a patch of gravel and groundsel sprouting up through it. Persuading Elly that we should clear out these unsightly weeds, I found a piece of sharp slate to serve as a tool. Hacking too hard at the groundsel, I cut myself inside my left arm, just at the joint of the elbow. I hadn’t known I had so much blood. I was convinced that now the Germans wouldn’t need to catch me, I’d done myself in.
Jessie reassured Poppy that she still had 3,000 francs left, and later received another 3,000 francs via Granny and Maisons-Alfort. She kept repeating that Poppy shouldn’t leave Alan until they knew where he was going to be sent. “I think you will find it difficult to get over, as all regulations are changed, but we’ll hope for the best. The struggle will be long and many valuable lives lost, but the Allies will win through at terrible cost; keep well and don’t worry needlessly.” Every other day she wrote a letter on the grounds that some at least would be delivered. “Never mind about the things I asked you for,” runs the letter of 24 May. “All that matters is to win this war. I hear Mosley has been arrested, good job too…. I don’t suppose we shall ever see Montreuil again, and Royaumont? Your little man is quite well and happy, thank God, it was quite touching the way he received your two sisters when they came, I thought he would never let them go…. I would like to know you are out of London, because they will surely pepper a bit over there and my Poppy, be sure to believe we shall win, and I hope God willing one day we’ll all meet again, even if in poorer circumstances.” On 31 May, a Sunday, Jessie and I went walking in the fields, picked a poppy and enclosed it in a letter. I was putting on a piece of strap from an old pram and calling it my Sam Browne belt. She thought I would turn out “very self-willed and determined which is a good thing. You can laugh but he will make a fine man and you will be proud of him…. Your place is by your hubby, and your boy is alright here.”
“We are all unhappy to know you are still in London, and you must really make a move for somewhere,” she repeats herself in a letter on Tuesday 2 June. “The beast’s movements are always very sudden and one never knows where the brute will hit next … however he may want to dominate the world, we must must win and for him ‘Great will be the Fall thereby.’” A week later, she credits me with saying, “Where is God? Why does he not kill the Germans?” And then, “I hear the vermin are not far from Paris, God help poor France, but where is he? If we have to make a move from here I’ll wire at once, so don’t worry, for this state of affairs can’t go on for long. What worries us much more is to know that you are still in London. Calm is the order of the day and we shall win. Getting to Paris does not win the war. England’s might has still got to show what she can and will do, to defend the right; and her shores, so as in Nelson’s time, ‘England expects’ etc. Come they from the three corners of the earth and we shall shoot them etc.” In a final letter from Charras she says that I will want for nothing in the way of clothes until the winter. About 300 children are arriving in the village from Angoulême. Passport in hand, she is off to fetch what she calls “sugar cards” for herself and me. “Goodbye my duck, useless to tell you, you are never out of my thoughts … look on the bright side … we’ll give Adolf on land what we have already given him in the air and on sea. So chins up and we’ll pull through. It’s marvelous how they got all those men over to England from Dunkirk. She still rules the waves.”
“Every day one wakes up wondering in what a state of misery one will be on going to bed.” Mitzi was furious and despairing when King Leopold of the Belgians capitulated. The mood changed daily. “Can we resist on the Somme and the Aisne? I believe so, I think the German losses are terrific, worse even than ours.” The French government fled from Paris to Bordeaux. Arriving at Charras at this moment of national collapse, Eduardo insisted that his duties took him to Bordeaux and we all had to move there.
Next morning, “We left at 8.30 in four cars – packed and how! Oh what tears.” The cars reached Bordeaux at half past twelve. “Indescribable!” is Mitzi’s word for what she found. This was sauve qui peut, especially for Jews. The Hotel Splendide had no more room for anyone. Spotted by Frank, the Splendide bar was the one quiet spot in Bordeaux. After lunching there badly and quickly, Mitzi sat talking for a long time to Nelly de Rothschild, wife of Robert, and their daughter Cécile. There was no news of Elie. “Nelly is the portrait of misery. She
tells us that Mrs Kramer, mother of Alix de Rothschild’s first husband, has just killed herself. Suicide. Perhaps the first Jewish suicide in France.”
Everybody was asking questions, but they did not await or expect answers. “Most of those asking questions are Jews of course. It’s understandable but not pretty to see. Poor things, they never have peace.” In a Rolls-Royce were Eric Goldschmidt-Rothschild, his wife and son, and mother-in-law. At three in the morning, they were to leave by ship for San Domingo, hoping later to go to America. Lily was to spend the night at Lafite, the famous Rothschild vineyard. Bubbles took the nannies and children to a château taken over as the Spanish embassy. Remembering her former wine merchant, Mitzi telephoned him and he was willing to let her sleep in his daughter’s bed. The house was “big, cold, dusty, dark, Dickens-like,” and yet “I couldn’t help laughing as I sat on her bidet that tragic evening.”
Refugees leaving France with papers that allowed them to escape via Spain or Portugal to foreign destinations still were required to obtain Spanish transit visas. In a bureaucratic bind evidently designed to keep such refugees out of the country, these were issued in very moderate numbers. Frightened either to grant or to withhold these visas, the Spanish consul in Bordeaux had shut the consulate and made himself scarce. Mostly Jewish, refugees frantic at this extra last-minute impediment to survival and freedom were milling outside the building. Without authority to be doing so, Eduardo opened the consulate and set about issuing visas. At the request of the French government, his ambassador, José Félix de Lequerica, was engaged in negotiating the terms of the armistice with the Germans. A former mayor of Bilbao, Lequerica was known for his political influence and his anti-Semitism. A note from him to Eduardo survives and it ought to have covered him. “Eduardo, do whatever you think you should, and let me know before you start.” Years later at a dinner party in London, I happened to meet Maurice Ohana, who ran an art gallery. A Moroccan Jew, he told me with emotion that Eduardo had saved his life by issuing him the indispensible transit visa.
Faul Lines Page 16