Pearls before Poppies Read online

  For Mum,

  for inspiring me.

  First published 2018

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  © Rachel Trethewey 2018

  The right of Rachel Trethewey to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 7509 8717 2

  Typesetting and origination by The History Press

  eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1 Tears Transformed to Pearls

  2 Famous Pearls

  3 Pearls for Souls

  4 Mother of Pearls

  5 Patriotic Pearls

  6 Pearls for Heroic Nurses

  7 Pearls for Transformation

  8 Pearls for Marriage

  9 The Pearl Exhibition

  10 The Pearl Poems

  11 The Pearls in Parliament

  12 The Kitchener Rubies

  13 Pearl Mania

  14 Pearls of Peace

  15 The Pearl Necklace Auction

  16 Pearl Rivals

  Dramatis Personae

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Like the Red Cross Pearl Appeal itself, writing this book has only been possible thanks to the support of many people. When I first started my research, Jane High for the British Red Cross and Lynda McLeod at Christie’s welcomed me into their archives and were so generous with both their time and knowledge, their continuing interest in the project has been a great boost.

  I am also particularly grateful to the many descendants of the women who gave pearls. Without access to their papers it would have been impossible to get a real insight into what motivated the donations. It was thanks to the Great War Exhibition at Port Eliot that I first had the idea for this book and when I told Lady St Germans my idea she was very supportive, providing me with colourful details about the family. Other relatives of Blanche and Mousie St Germans have also shared their memories with me; David Seyfried, Lord Herbert and Sir Michael and Lady Ferguson Davie sent me photographs and Blanche’s diary of her flying adventure, which showed just what a resilient woman she was.

  The Wemyss/Elcho family tragedy lies at the heart of my story and so one of the most special times was visiting their timeless home, Stanway, in the Cotswolds. As I looked through the dusty files of letters and diaries in the muniment room, Mary Wemyss and Letty Elcho really came alive for me. Being shown around the house, sitting in Mary’s drawing room, looking at her photo albums and at the sketches of Letty and Ego Elcho by John Singer Sargent in one of the bedrooms made me even more aware of how the war destroyed their way of life. I cannot thank Lord Wemyss enough for his hospitality and for allowing me to use the family papers and pictures in my book. Mary Wemyss’ story is closely intertwined with her friend Ettie Desborough’s, and I would like to thank Viscount Gage and the British Library for allowing me to quote from her writing and photographs in her Pages from a Family Journal, which is a heart-rending memoir of a mother’s experience of the First World War. Similarly, I am grateful to the Trustees of the Bowood Collection for permitting me to use the papers of the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne and a photograph of him with his grandson, George Mercer Nairne, which so poignantly illustrate a father’s grief for his lost son. Bowood’s archivist Jo Johnston has been a sounding board for my ideas and has pointed me in the right direction for the material I needed.

  Another highlight of my research was spending a stimulating afternoon with Philip Astor discussing his grandmother, Violet Astor. I am most grateful to him for allowing me to quote from the letters written to her about her remarriage and for the stunning photograph of her in her pearls which he sent to me. I would also like to thank Lady Emma Kitchener for a wonderful lunch and for showing me the photographs and belongings of her ancestor Lord Kitchener. Her enthusiasm for the human stories behind the great moments of history made her immediately understand what I was trying to do in my book. She provided me with just the information I wanted and, by telling me about her family’s love of animals, she helped me to crack the meaning of a donation which would otherwise have remained an enigma.

  Noël, Countess of Rothes’ granddaughter, Angela Young, kindly provided me with information about her grandmother and the Leslie family. The Duchess of Westminster’s grandson, Dominic Filmer Sankey, was also very helpful, telling me about the complex dynamics of the Grosvenor family after his grandparents’ divorce. I was given an insight into life in the wards at the Duchess of Westminster’s Hospital through reading Nurse Martha Frost’s scrapbook and I am grateful to her nephew, Ian Broad, who has agreed to me quoting from it.

  With the Duke of Rutland’s permission, Peter Foden, the archivist at Belvoir Castle, gave up his time to try to find out the history of the pearls which the Duchess of Rutland gave to the Red Cross appeal. Lord Rowallan and his aunt, Fiona Patterson, also tried to discover what had happened to the pearl necklace bought by their family at the Red Cross Auction. Emma Clarke at Mikimoto, London, provided me with additional information on Kokichi Mikimoto and the history of cultured pearls. Otley Museum and Archive Trust’s Margaret Hornby sent me Legacies of War: Untold Otley Stories and Barbara Winfield looked into Ada Bey’s role in Otley during the First World War.

  I am also indebted to the many archives and museums which have granted me permission to quote from letters and reproduce illustrations in their collections:

  The Canadian War Museum, for the letters of Katherine MacDonald, her family and friends, the photographs associated with her and the painting of No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital at Doullens by Gerald Moira; the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies for the Desborough Papers; the Somerset Archives and Local Studies Service (South West Heritage Trust) for the de Vesci Papers; the Devon Archive and Local Studies Service for information on the Kekewich family; the Imperial War Museum for a letter from Lord Kitchener’s sister and one from his cousin written in 1916 – we have been unable to find the current copyright holders of these letters but every reasonable effort has been made to seek permission. Thank you to the British Red Cross Society for the letters between Sir Robert Hudson and Lord Northcliffe, which are held at the British Library, and the Grafton Galleries Red Cross Pearl Exhibition poster which is held at the Imperial War Museum; the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, for Arthur Percival Marsh’s letter about the Duchess of Westminster’s Hospital; the Parliamentary Archive for letters to Andrew Bonar Law, David Lloyd George and Hansard. My thanks also to Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Collection Trust for their photographs of Princess Victoria wearing pearls, and Queen Mary and Queen Alexandra’s visit to the Pearl Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries; the Lafayette Negative Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum for photographs of Lady Northcliffe and the Duchess of Westminster; the National Portrait Gallery for a portrait of Blanche St Germans.

  The Mary Evans Picture Library kindly supplied photographs of many of the people written about in the book, and Christie’s Archive provided two cartoons, one entitled ‘For the Wounded�
� and the other by Max Beerbohm of the Red Cross auctions. The British Library supplied a photograph of the Countess of Cromer which appeared on the cover of The Queen newspaper.

  As well as manuscript sources, I am also grateful to have been allowed to quote from printed sources. My thanks go to Rosalind Asquith and Tom Atkins at Random House for the use of Cynthia Asquith’s books, her writing evocatively captured the experience of her society. To Sophie Scard of United Agents who, on behalf of Jane Ridley, agreed that I could quote from Jane Ridley and Clayre Percy’s book, The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho 1885–1917. My understanding of what it was like to live through the war has also been enhanced by reading many contemporary newspapers. The accessibility of online sources including The Times, the Daily Mail and The Spectator archives, the Illustrated First World War and the British Newspaper Archives made my task much faster and easier.

  I would also particularly like to thank the people who shared my belief that this was a story worth telling. My agent, Heather Holden-Brown at hhb agency, has been immensely supportive from when I first came to her with the embryonic idea. Her assistant, Jack Munnelly, has also been a great help. My publisher at The History Press, Sophie Bradshaw, has had the same vision for the book as I have and this has made it an exciting project to work on together. I would also like to thank Lucy Keating at the British Red Cross, whose enthusiasm for the idea in the initial stages was energising.

  Finally, I want to thank my friends and family who have patiently put up with my obsession with the Red Cross Pearls for several years. Christopher Wilson, Andrew Wilson, Marcus Field, Kay Dunbar and Stephen Bristow have helped me with their experience of the literary world. My husband, John Kiddey, joined me on my research trips, photographed countless letters and discussed what we found – he has been the perfect person to share those experiences with. My son, Christopher, helped me with technical challenges or any computer related problems, while my sister, Rebecca Trethewey, was a great proofreader. My last thanks, which should really come first, go to my mother, Bridget Day, who inspired me in so many ways to write this book.

  INTRODUCTION

  I have always been a pearl lover. For me, their natural lustre is more alluring than the glitter of diamonds. Worn next to the skin every day, not just for special occasions, they are the most intimate of jewels. My grandmother told me that pearls reflect the health of the woman who wears them and that, when my great-grandmother was dying of cancer, all her pearls turned black. It was just one of the stories she shared with me when, as a child, I spent many spellbound hours sitting on her bed looking through her jewellery box with her. For me, a string of pearls has always represented the links between one generation of women and another, as mother to daughter, grandmother to granddaughter, they pass on stories of family celebrations, happiness and sorrow, love and loss. When my grandmother died, she left me her two-strand pearl necklace with a sapphire and diamond clasp. It is my most precious piece of jewellery and I wore it on my wedding day as a tangible connection between my old and new life.

  I am still attracted by the subtle seductiveness of pearls, so when I went to Port Eliot Festival in the summer of 2014 it was not the eclectic mix of bands, books and bohemians that stuck in my memory but a story about those jewels. As I went around the exhibition about the effects of the First World War on the St Germans family and the tenants on the Port Eliot Estate, one line on the large storyboards particularly fascinated me: In 1918, Emily, Countess of St Germans gave a pearl, which had belonged to the Empress Josephine, to the Red Cross Pearl Necklace Appeal. Intrigued, I wanted to know more.

  Emily had a special reason for donating one of her most precious jewels to the British Red Cross. At the beginning of the war, her son John Cornwallis Eliot, 6th Earl of St Germans, known as ‘Mousie’, became a captain in the Scots Greys. Tall, athletic and handsome, he was ‘an amateur comedian of no mean ability’, who often entertained his friends. After fighting in the Battle of the Somme and at Ypres, he was awarded the Military Cross in recognition of several acts of gallantry. He was severely wounded and sent home. Fortunately, unlike so many of his comrades, he survived. When the countess gave her pearl, she was giving thanks for her son’s survival while also remembering the loss of so many other men from the estate who had died in the war. In March 1918, as she sent her gift, Emily had another cause to celebrate. ‘Mousie’ had got engaged to Blanche ‘Linnie’ Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort. With their wedding planned for June, Lady St Germans could at last look forward to the future with hope.

  Discovering Emily’s story made me want to find out which other women gave pearls to the Red Cross and what were the stories behind their gifts? As celebrations of the centenary of the Great War reached a crescendo with the Poppy Appeal at the Tower of London, I thought more about the pearls. I discovered that before the sea of poppies there was an ocean of pearls. I also found out that using these jewels to commemorate the sacrifice made in the First World War pre-dated selling artificial poppies as a symbol of remembrance for charity. A French woman, Anna Guerin, originally had the idea, which was then adopted by the British Legion, who held their first poppy appeal in 1921.1

  The Red Cross Pearl Appeal had been launched three years earlier, in 1918, to raise funds for the wounded while paying tribute to the brave servicemen who had fought for king and country. Each pearl represented a life. No jewel could have been more appropriate. For thousands of years pearls had been symbolically linked to mourning. In Greek and Roman mythology it was believed that pearls were formed from teardrops of the gods falling into oysters. The link between these miracles of nature and grief was expressed by Shakespeare in Richard III, ‘The liquid drops of tears that you have shed, Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl’.2 However, although associated with loss, pearls also represent hope and resurrection. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to 2100 BC, pearls were described as ‘a flower of immortality’. In the Bible, they symbolise purity and perfection and are associated with Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Kingdom of Heaven. In Matthew 13, Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a ‘pearl of great price’.3 Pearls also feature in the description of the new Jerusalem in Revelations, ‘The twelve gates were pearls, each gate was made from a single pearl.’4

  Like the 2014 Poppy Appeal, the 1918 pearl necklace collection developed a momentum all its own. At first, the Red Cross had wanted to gather enough pearls to make one necklace, but the appeal captured the public imagination and jewels poured in from around the world until there were nearly 4,000, enough to make forty-one necklaces.

  This book interweaves the story of the Pearl Necklace Campaign with the personal stories behind individual pearls. Like the pearls that make up a string, each story is complete in itself but when joined together with the other wartime experiences it creates a wider picture. Through the pearls we gain an insight into a world that was changing forever. The pre-war certainties of the pleasure-seeking Edwardian era were shattered by the Great War. Heroic young men, who saw themselves as riding into battle like medieval knights in a Christian Crusade, lost their lives in the industrial-scale carnage of modern warfare. Although this book describes their valour, rather than being about the battlefields of the Great War it is primarily about the home front. It does not aim to provide a social history of all sections of society, since only women from the higher strata of society could afford to give pearls. However, bereavement was a great leveller, and the grief experienced by a mother, wife or lover cut through class barriers.

  The pearls were a uniquely feminine way of paying tribute to the fallen. Some mothers who donated had lost two or even three sons in the war. Many of the young widows who gave were left with small children who would never remember their fathers. Their grief was often overwhelming, but so was their courage in facing bereavement. Instead of surrendering, they showed an indomitable spirit worthy of their men and carried on. The pearls provided an evocative outlet for their grief. Amidst the horror and devastation o
f war, these very personal gems represented more than just jewels; their beauty was a reminder of gentler pre-war days and they showed that civilisation would not be destroyed by the barbarism of the Great War. Using them to raise funds for the Red Cross emphasised that humanitarian values would not be beaten.

  In this book there are many tragic stories, but there are also tales of joy, new love and transformed lives. For centuries, pearls have been associated with female empowerment, both Cleopatra and Elizabeth I used pearls to symbolise their power and status. The Red Cross Pearls also reflect dauntless female strength of character and they remind us of what women can achieve when faced with the most extreme circumstances. The Countess of Rothes rowed a lifeboat to safety from the Titanic and went on to donate one of the pearls she was wearing on that fateful night to the appeal. The selfless sacrifice of the young Canadian nurse Katherine MacDonald, who lost her life while caring for the wounded, was also commemorated by a pearl.

  Although the Red Cross Pearls have been largely forgotten by history, in 1918 they were the talk of society. They were discussed over candlelit dinners in country houses, in the senior common rooms of universities and in newspaper newsrooms. By the summer, their fate was even debated in Parliament. What began as a collection among an interconnected elite spread across the country, and eventually the world, to touch the hearts of women from many different backgrounds. Pearls poured in from Egypt, South America and Singapore. They were given in memory of soldiers and nurses, not only from Britain but from Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In the final necklaces each pearl became anonymous, a gem from the queen could be next to a jewel from a poor widow, but each one was of equal sentimental value.

  Although the Pearl Appeal was predominantly a tribute from women, it was supported by powerful men. Tracing the history of the pearls takes us behind the public façade of some of the most influential men in the war to reveal their human side. It shows the newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe mourning for his nephews, the politician Lord Lansdowne grief-stricken about the loss of his favourite son, and the icon of the army, Lord Kitchener, devastated by the death of his protégé Julian Grenfell. Examining this intimate history gives an additional dimension to understanding their attitudes to the war.