The Great Silence Read online

  The Great Silence

  Also by Juliet Nicolson

  The Perfect Summer

  The Great Silence

  Britian from the Shadow of the First World War

  to the Dawn of the Jazz Age

  JULIET NICOLSON

  The lingering emotional effects of the war illustrated by a portrait entitled

  ‘Grief’ by Hugh Cecil, Tatler, November 1919, a full year after

  the Armistice had been signed

  Copyright © 2009 by Juliet Nicolson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by John Murray (Publishers),

  a Hachette UK company

  Extracts from ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘Morning at the Window’ by T. S. Eliot

  reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

  ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ and ‘Blighters’ reproduced from copyright Siegfried

  Sassoon by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon.

  Quotations from Royal Archives material:

  p.110 RA/GV/QMD 1919 21 January ‘Awfully sad and touching’;

  p.110 RA/GV/QMD 1919 22 January

  ‘Missed the dear child very much indeed ...’;

  p.204 RA/GV/QMD 1919 1 December ‘very cheery’;

  p.204 RA/GV/QMD 1919 1 December ‘George made a charming speech

  and David made a charming reply’.

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9704-7 (e-book)

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  For my brother Adam

  il miglior fabbro

  and for my daughters Clemmie and Flora

  luces meae vitae

  and for my husband Charlie

  sine qua non

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1 Wound

  2 Shock: 11 November 1918

  3 Denial

  4 Acknowledgement

  5 Anger

  6 Hopelessness

  7 Performing

  8 Honesty

  9 Silence: 11 November 1919

  10 Release

  11 Expectation

  12 Yearning

  13 Dreaming

  14 Surviving

  15 Resignation

  16 Hope

  17 Trust

  18 Acceptance: 11 November 1920

  Dramatis Personae

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  1. Plaster casts at the studio of sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd

  2. Chinese workers brought in to clear up the battlefields of France

  3. A prosthetic mask used to cover up facial scarring

  4. Drawings of facially damaged men prior to reconstructive surgery

  5. Soldiers at Roehampton Hospital

  6. Disabled and unemployed veterans turned street vendors

  7. The ‘thousand-yard stare’

  8. A bus being sprayed against infection during the flu epidemic of 1918-19

  9. Harold Nicolson at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919

  10. Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra and King George V going to watch the London Peace Parade

  11. Lady Diana Cooper

  12. Pablo and Olga Picasso in London, summer 1919

  13. Lawrence of Arabia

  14. Sketch of the Cenotaph by Sir Edwin Lutyens

  15. The Great Silence: Piccadilly Circus, 11 November 1919

  16. Tommy Atkins and his fiancee Kitty

  17. Pam Parish aged three with her mother

  18. Doris Scovell and Will Titley at Brighton

  19. Tom Mitford as a pupil at Lockers Park Prep School

  20. Nancy Astor, after her election to Parliament, 1 December 1919

  21. The Prince of Wales, December 1919

  22. Demobbed troops protesting about their treatment by the British government

  23. Policemen in Whitehall pushing back unemployed workers

  24. Cover of Tatler magazine, 26 November 1919

  25. Advertisement for the new Hammersmith Palais, October 1919

  26. Lillian Gish, in a still from Broken Blossoms, 1919

  27. Coco Chanel

  28. A Savoy ‘button boy’

  29. Dame Nellie Melba poised to sing ‘Home Sweet Home’, 15 June 1920

  30. The ninth Duke and Duchess of Devonshire

  31. Joseph Paxton’s Great Conservatory at Chatsworth

  32. Edna Clarke Hall, self-portrait

  33. Lady Ottoline Morrell by Simon Bussy, 1920

  34. Lionel Gomme, photograph by Lady Ottoline Morrell, June 1920

  35. Winifred Holtby

  36. Vera Brittain

  37. The coffin of the Unknown Warrior carried through the streets of London, 11 November 1920

  Picture Acknowledgements: Photograph documenting Anna Coleman Ladd’s creation of cosmetic masks to be worn by soldiers badly disfigured during World War I, ca. 1920 / 1 photographic print: silver gelatin; 12 × 18 cm. Courtesy of the Anna Coleman Ladd papers, ca. 1881–1950, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: 1. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees: 8 below right, 13 above and below. © Mary Evans Picture Library: frontispiece page vii, 6 above, 9 below, 11 above. © Getty Images: 3 below, 4 below, 6 below right, 7 below, 10 above and below, 15 below right, 16. Dr Andrew Bamji, Curator, Gillies Archives, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup: 2 above right and below. Imperial War Museum London: 3 above (Q108161), 4 above (EAUS7I5). National Portrait Gallery, London: 15 above right. © Popperfoto/Getty Images: 6 below left. Private Collection: 5 above, 7 above, 8 above left and right, 8 below left, 11 below, 12 above left, 14, 15 below left. Redferns: 12 below right. Courtesy of the Savoy Archives: 12 below left. © Tate, London 2009: 15 above left. © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images: 5 below, 9 above, 12 above right.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, Grove Press will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printings or editions.

  Acknowledgements

  During the writing of this book I have had the privilege of talking to several people who remember life in Britain at first hand ninety years ago. Mrs Doris Tidey was an effervescent 105 when she described her life below stairs both during and after the First World War. My aunt (by marriage) Pam Leigh, now 93, has spent many precious hours making me laugh and cry at her childhood memories. Miss Elaine Rafter’s stories of work in a department store just after the Great War remained undimmed when she spoke of them, at the age of 101, with infectious humour. Mary Stearns’ memories of her parents and her Kentish childhood were gol
d dust. Jeremy Hutchinson and Geoffrey Woolley, both now aged 94, provided the smallest and therefore most absorbing details of two specific days, 11 November 1918 and 1919.

  There is one other person who cannot quite remember those events, as she was born in the spring of 1920. However I am indebted to the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire for her acute sensibility of the period and for allowing me to read the wonderful letters of her then schoolboy brother Tom Mitford who was killed in the Second World War.

  I am indebted to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for allowing me access to the Royal Archive at Windsor and for permission to quote from Queen Mary’s Diaries. I am also grateful to Miss Pamela Clarke and her staff at the archive.

  The generation born to those who lived through the events I describe have been most generous with their time and their private family archives. I would like to thank Ronald Atkins for the background material on Tommy Atkins, and Dame Eileen Atkins for giving me such a vivid portrait of her father. I am grateful to Fiona Clarke Hall for talking to me about her mother-in-law Edna and her husband Denis. Ginny Coombes took infinite trouble in trusting me with the papers and the story of her great-uncle Edward Tester. I am grateful to Michael Ann for the valuable memories of his father, the entrepreneurial owner of Drusilla’s Zoo in Sussex, and to John Leigh Pemberton for early memories of conversations with his mother. Adrian Goodman, grandson of Ottoline Morrell, was illuminating about his grandmother and I am grateful to Rosalind Ingrams for showing Garsington to me. Conversations with the Marquess of Lansdowne and Hugh Myddleton brought their ‘Granny Vi’ Astor to life and Philip Astor kindly lent me many moving letters written to her during the war. I was delighted to speak to Peter Jones, the nephew of the splendid but hitherto elusive butler Eric Horne. Mrs Titley’s daughter Dorothy Ellis has been most generous with her time since the death of her mother in 2008.

  There are others without whose professional understanding I would not have been able to tackle this period of history. I have been given unparalleled insights into the nature of grief by Patricia Anker and Julia Samuel. The wisdom that shines from them both is shot through this book. Kevin Brownlow’s knowledge of the early movie industry is unparalleled. Andrew Bamji has answered innumerable queries about the history and technique of plastic surgery and about Harold Gillies’s life. Roger Neil knows everything about Nellie Melba and practically everything else that happened in this period. Alison Thomas has been more than generous with the private papers as well as her knowledge of Edna Clarke Hall. Richard Shone has told me a great deal about art, artists, ballet and ballet dancers in England in the years immediately following the First World War.

  Both Andrew Peppitt and Helen Marchant have been their wonderfully helpful selves and thanks also to Hannah Obee and Diane Naylor at the Chatsworth Archive.

  I would also like to thank individuals at public and private libraries and archives, among them: Anthony Richards and Richard Slocombe at the Imperial War Museum; Rachel Freeman and Jamie Andrews at the British Library; Bret Croft and Harriet Wilson at Condé Nast library; Sophie Basilevitch at Mary Evans, Oriole Cullen at the V&A, Susan Scott at the Savoy Archive, Steve Jebson at the Meteorological Weather Records Office, the staff at the London Library and the Fulham and Hammersmith Library.

  The lonely business of researching and writing has been greatly cheered by the information and the suggestions, insights and encouragement of so many individuals and friends, among them Nigel ô Brassard, Kitty Ann, Philip Athill, Peter Bidmead, Georgie Boothby, Sarah and Kildare Bourke-Borrowes, Charlie and Arabella Bridge, Simon Brocklebank Fowler, Paul Calkin, Linda and Brian Clifford, Artemis Cooper, Richard Crook, Dee Daly, Andrew and Ellie Davidson, Atul Doshi, Sophie Dundas, Max Egremont, Jean Claude Eude, Sabina ffrench Blake, Lady Antonia Fraser (always the best of enthusiasts), Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Kevin Gordon, Ian and Victoria Hislop, Philip Hook, Glenn Horowitz and Tracey Jackson, Dr Jonathan Hunt, Brian Huntley Builders, Kathryn Irwin, Diana Kelly, the Hon. Mrs Charles Kitchener, Fiona Lansdowne, Katie Law (aka Marie Rose), Caroline Levison, Brian Masters, Charles Moore, Charlotte Moore, my lovely nieces Molly and Rosie Nicolson, my sister Rebecca Nicolson and my cousin Vanessa Nicolson (both such loyalists), Mark Norman and his staff, Cate Olsen and Nash Robbins (indefatigable champions of the written word), Mary Pearson, the late Harold Pinter, Shirley Punnett, Faith Raven, David Robinson, Stephen Robinson, Marilyn Stanley, Suzanne Sullivan, Kathleen Tessaro, Joanna Trollope, Aly Van Den Berg, Louisa Vertova, Claire Watson, Claire Whalley, Maggie White, Fred Windsor Clive, Gordon Wise, Wendy Wolfe, Joanna and Richard Woods, Henry Wyndham and the unmatchable duo Hugh Harris and David O’Rorke.

  I would like to thank Linda Van for her unfailing helpfulness as well as all the other staff at Ed Victor Ltd, especially Charlie Campbell, Sophie Hicks, Maggie Phillips and Hitesh Shah. As an agent Ed himself devotes more time and encouragement to me than I could possibly deserve. He is the best.

  Once again I have been more than lucky with my publishers at John Murray to whom I am immensely grateful, especially to my editor Roland Philipps, and to the indefatigable Nikki Barrow, Caro Westmore, James Spackman, Shona Abhyankar, Helen Hawksfield, Amanda Jones and Sara Marafini. And I am grateful to Douglas Matthews for his masterly work with the index.

  The enthusiasm and initiative of my researcher, Clementine Macmillan Scott has been exemplary. And I cannot imagine where I would be without the invaluable encouragement and friendship of Sarah Raven and Rachel Wyndham.

  It is a rare thing for a writer to be lucky enough to have a brother who bestows the level of practical and emotional guidance that I have been blessed with in Adam. And when my preoccupation with the written word threatened to become overwhelming, the loving support of my daughters Clemmie and Flora did not waver once. I am indebted to my husband Charlie who has cherished this author unconditionally throughout the writing of the book. The book is for Adam, Clemmie, Flora and Charlie with my profound love.

  Slowly, slowly, the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.

  D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

  Introduction

  This is a book about silence, the silence that followed the ‘incessant thunder’ of the four years and four months of the First World War. At the heart of the book are three specific November days in which silence predominated: the day the guns fell silent in 1918; the day the two-minute silence, then known as the Great Silence, was first observed in 1919; and, a year later, the day when in 1920 the Unknown Soldier was lowered into silence beneath the floor of Westminster Abbey. But this book is also about a more general silence – the silence of grief – that crept into every corner of life during the two years that followed the Armistice of 1918, a time when vitality and youth had been swept aside by a massive, unanticipated mortality.

  In one way this is a book about the relief that is brought about by the absence of noise: silence as balm, as a time for reflection and contemplation. But it is also about another kind of silence, the silence of isolation and fear, of the failure and the terror of attempting to articulate misery. It is a book about the silence of denial and of emptiness, of endings and of death. Silence can bring with it a vacancy that in its turn craves the distraction of the human voice or the obscuring impact created for example by music. These distractions can help to stifle the terror of being abandoned to the silence of the noisy mind. Even the silence of sleep can carry with it an added dread, for sleep ends in wakefulness. And as Siegfried Sassoon said, ‘to wake was to remember’.

  During the summer of 1911, a record-breaking hot season three years before the outbreak of war, the strength of the sun had been sufficient to bleach out the pattern of purple pansies on newly married Ethel Harrison’s dress. Already social fragmentation had started to make itself felt in a peacetime society t
hat on the surface seemed ordered and secure. Women, trade unionists, both Houses of Parliament, the servant class, the poor and the rich were all either seeking or resisting change. Some said that the twentieth century did not begin until 1914, that the extended Edwardian idyll had lulled the English into a sense that not only was everything all right with the world, but that it always would be.

  In fact the structure of society had been shifting, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes, as the reign of George V got under way in 1910, with some drama. The suffragette movement had become increasingly volatile and disturbing. The force-feeding of imprisoned women, whose crime had been to fight for votes for the unrepresented half of society, had become more prevalent. Stones were thrown through windows of municipal buildings across the land; one suffragette tried to push the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, beneath a moving train, and in June 1913 the campaign for the voice of women to be heard in the democratic process resulted in tragedy. During the Epsom Derby Emily Davidson, at the age of 39, had thrown herself beneath the hammering hooves of Anmer, the King’s horse, her skull smashed, her brains – so it was reported – spilling out on to the grassy track, as Anmer did a complete somersault in full view of his owner. Just over six years later women would be voting and one of them, an American divorcee, would be representing a constituency in Parliament.

  The outbreak of war had brought with it a healing unity; domestic problems were suppressed, while the country joined together to fight side by side against a common enemy, experiencing a new sense of community across the classes with so many suffering the loss of someone they loved. But with the end of the war, after the immediate relief experienced when the fighting stopped, divisions returned with renewed intensity. In moments of honesty many questioned whether the golden summers of the pre-war world had been as golden as memory willed them to be, or whether instead they had been the mere product of hindsight.