Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. Paul Preston
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twelve, was Pip – to her delight – sent away to Benenden.14 Pip was a sensitive girl and the consequence of this upbringing was that, for all the protection provided by money and class, not to mention her indisputable bravery, she was always rather insecure and eager to please. She could be easily humiliated by the verbal cruelty, or simple thoughtlessness, of others. Nevertheless, as her voluminous diaries show, she was an indefatigable optimist. Her brother remembered her as always ‘of a cheerful and jolly disposition’.15
The patrician atmosphere in which Pip was brought up was characterised by a degree of paternalism towards the less privileged. Both Tommy and Margot were active patrons of hospitals. Tommy, however, was, outside the arts, a considerable snob. He once reprimanded Margot after a visit by the Prime Minister, the Conservative Stanley Baldwin, and his wife. Tommy commented to Margot: ‘You really should not ask those sort of people.’ That was an indication of his snobbery rather than of his political orientation which was inevitably very right-wing. In early May 1926, during the nine days of the General Strike, the ballroom of Seaford House was home to about two hundred undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge who had volunteered to join a special police force. Effectively, they were engaged in strikebreaking. From 4 to 12 May, for twenty-four hours every day, they were on call. Telephoned news of a demonstration or clashes with pickets would see lorry engines roar to life. The enthusiastic scions of middle-class families, armed with truncheons and well fed by Margot’s caterers, would set off for some sport.16 Similar attitudes underlay Pip’s later involvement in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1932, during holidays from Benenden, Pip had learned to fly in a Gypsy Moth bought by her mother. Nervous because Pip was already showing signs of the wanderlust that would characterise her later life, Margot prevented her taking her pilot’s certificate.17 She remained at Benenden for a year and two terms before going on to a finishing school in Paris in the autumn of 1933. When Pip left Paris in early 1934, her already good French was much improved. After skiing at Mürren in Switzerland, she spent time with an Austrian aristocratic – and anti-Nazi – family, the Harrachs, in Munich. In 1931, before going up to Oxford, John had gone to Munich to learn German. On his first day, driving his car, he ran over a man who turned out to be Adolf Hitler. The future Führer was, unfortunately, unhurt. Shortly afterwards John met, and fell in love with Irene ‘Nucci’ Harrach and in 1934, they were married. Elizabeth, Pip, Gaenor and Rosemary were all bridesmaids at the wedding.18 Pip’s first interest in boys was focused on a handsome young flyer called William Rhodes Moorhouse. They went out together a few times but her adolescent crush on him was not reciprocated. In any case, Pip was about to become involved in a relationship with the Orléans Borbón family that would erase thoughts of William and dramatically affect the remainder of her life.
Alfonso de Orléans, who had established a friendship with Margot van Raalte during the summers that they spent at Brownsea, was married to a beautiful German princess, Beatrice Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Prince Ali, as he was known in the family, was an intrepid aviator and also a cousin of the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. His wife was a cousin of Alfonso XIII’s consort, Queen Victoria Eugenia. Prince Ali was a fitness fanatic and an enthusiastic military man who was determined to prove that being of royal blood imposed an iron duty to be useful to his country.19 From 1909 until 1914, and then again from 1917, he and Princess Bea – as the family knew her – spent their summers at Brownsea Island with the Van Raalte family. After Margot married Tommy Scott-Ellis, the children of the Orléans and the Scott-Ellis families spent summers together at Brownsea.20 Prince Ali and Princess Bea had three sons, Álvaro (b. Coburg, 1910), Alfonso (b. Madrid, 28 May 1912) – known always as Alonso to distinguish him from the several other Alfonsos in the Royal Family, and Ataúlfo (b. Madrid, 1913). When in Spain in 1924, they lived in their palace at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in the province of Cádiz. The Palacio de Montpensier consisted of three different buildings combined in the mid-nineteenth century into a pseudo-Moorish palace. About half a mile away, the family also had a huge English garden called ‘El Botánico’ within which there were two houses.21 Alfredo Kindelán, the head of the Spanish air force and a close friend of Alfonso de Orléans, was a frequent visitor.
After the flight of Alfonso XIII on 14 April 1931, Alfonso de Orléans Borbón regarded it as his duty to resign his commission and accompany the King on his painful journey from Madrid, via Cartagena, into exile in France.22 Prince Ali’s properties having been confiscated by the Republican Government, his family settled in Switzerland. He reconciled himself to living on his wits – and his not inconsiderable talents as an aeronautical engineer and a linguist (he spoke fluent English, French, German and Italian as well as Spanish). For Alfonso de Orléans, it was always a matter of principle to demonstrate that royal personages were not all effete and useless. Energetic and resourceful, remembering that he had once met Henry Ford, he wrote and asked him for a job. While awaiting a reply, he worked sweeping up in bars. The American magnate replied quickly and instructed him to report for work at the Ford factory at Asnière, outside Paris. He did so first as a cleaner, then as a salesman. Then he was soon transferred to the Ford headquarters at Dagenham in England where he worked variously, under the pseudonym Mr Dorleans, in stock control, accountancy and public relations. Within four years, his dynamism and initiative saw him made director of the company’s European operations. Princess Bea had moved from Zurich to London and kept in close touch with the Howard de Walden family. During this time, the Howard de Waldens commissioned Augustus John – who had set himself up as a kind of artist-in-residence at Chirk – to paint a portrait of Princess Bea.23
Pip had inherited from her mother a passion for the opera although her own violin studies had not borne great fruit. Wherever she went, she was always accompanied by a gramophone and a box of records. That Pip was a cultured and witty girl is amply illustrated by her diary. The extant part dates back to August 1934. She describes a stay in Salzburg with her mother and her sisters Gaenor and Elizabeth who, at the time, was being wooed by the great cellist Grigor Piatigorski. There Pip revelled in a performance of Don Giovanni conducted by Bruno Walter in which the Don was sung in Italian by Ezio Pinza. She was also entranced by the playing of Piatigorski when he serenaded Elizabeth. The family was en route to Munich for the wedding of Pip’s brother John to Nucci Harrach.24 In 1934, Princess Bea and her son Prince Ataúlfo stayed at Seaford House when they came over for the marriage of the Duke of Kent to Princess Marina. Pip also made her début in 1934. It was probably at this time that she began to notice Ataúlfo – or Touffles as he was known in the family, seeing him not as the child with whom she had played at Brownsea but as a charming young man. Both Gaenor and Pip’s cousin Charmian van Raalte recalled Ataúlfo as ‘definitely not goodlooking’. He had a round and podgy face but women liked him for his gentle manner and his amusing conversation. He played the piano and danced with extraordinary delicacy. If to some this denoted effeminacy, Pip did not notice.25 At this time, Pip was gawky and unattractive. She was worried about her weight – nearing thirteen stones (83 kilos). A photograph of her at a ball in May 1935 shows her looking frumpy, nervous and ill-at-ease.
When the military rebellion of 18 July 1936 precipitated the Spanish Civil War, Prince Alfonso de Orléans Borbón was in Bucharest on Ford business. He hastened to Burgos where he arrived on 2 August 1936. He offered his own and his sons’ services as pilots and was bitterly disappointed to be told that General Mola wished to avoid the uprising having a monarchist character. He was ordered to leave Spain. He then wrote to his friend, General Alfredo Kindelán, who had been named head of the rebel air force, and to Franco himself, pointing out that his two elder sons, Álvaro and Alfonso Orléans y Coburgo, had earned pilots’ licences in England in the