Пол Престон – Doves of War: Four Women of Spain (страница 5)

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 Officers’ Training Corps. In consequence, at the beginning of November, they were able to join the Nationalist forces. However, Franco considered that Prince Ali himself was more useful to his cause in London. There he was able to facilitate the delivery of Ford trucks to the Nationalists. Moreover, Princess Bea was carrying on effective propaganda on behalf of Franco in establishment circles in Britain. She was also raising significant sums of money for food and hospital supplies for the Nationalist cause. Alfonso Orléans y Coburgo was killed on 18 November 1936. Flying as observer, his Italian Romeo Ro37bis biplane crashed while flying from Seville to Talavera de la Reina. The aircraft flew into a mountain at Ventas de Culebrín near Monesterio in the south of the province of Badajoz. In consequence, his younger brother Ataúlfo immediately volunteered.²⁶ Pip was devastated when, at a dance in New York in January 1937, she had been told of Alonso’s death.²⁷

In November 1936, Pip had sailed with her father for New York to stay with friends, a Mrs Wagner and her daughter Peggy. The trip would expand her horizons considerably. ‘I wonder what this year will bring me. I have a feeling lots. I hope so. I do wish Touffles would write.’²⁸ He was constantly on her mind. ‘Last night’, she wrote on 3 January 1937, ‘I dreamed Touffles was terribly ill and all tied up in bandages and as white as a sheet. Oh dear oh dear. I wish he was not out in Spain in the war. God how foul wars are. Every time I think of Alonso it makes me feel sick and think of the cruel futility of it all. What a mess human nature is.’ The ‘divine’ Tyrone Power in a movie reminded her of Touffles. ‘I don’t suppose even if Touffles gets back from Spain alright he would ever want to marry an unattractive fool like me so I might as well stop wishing.’ Letters from him merely left her miserable and worried.²⁹ She wrote on 22 January, ‘I have put my new photo of Touffles up on my bed table and simply adore it. I am silly to let myself go on pretending he might love me one day because I know he won’t but I can’t stop myself being nuts over him so I might as well enjoy it as much as I can.’ New York was a regular round of cinema, theatre and nightclubs, punctuated by having her fortune told at the Gypsy Tearooms. As always, she maintained her interest in music, attending a concert by the violinist Josef Szigeti. Among several historic performances at the New York Metropolitan, she attended Rigoletto with Lawrence Tibbett in the title role, Die Walküre with Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior, and Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila with Gertrud Wettergren, as well as a Cavalleria Rusticana and Le Coq d’Or.30 Nevertheless, she was restless. ‘Life here is so idle and pointless that I am pining to have some work or something to occupy me. We just do nothing.’ She managed to persuade the Wagners that she had to leave in case Touffles returned from Spain.³¹ While waiting for her passage home, she worried about her weight, and danced and flirted with an eligible young Cuban called Alvaro García.

Her passion for Touffles was boosted by the flirtation with García whom she had met at the Wagners’ home in New York. On 26 January 1937, the twenty-year-old Pip wrote in her diary:

I am so shocked at myself by my behaviour tonight and so bewildered by it all that I don’t even know if I enjoyed it. I went out with Alvaro to a Cuban place where we danced mambas (sic) until 4 o’clock in the morning. He dances divinely and it was grand fun. He made violent love to me the whole time and kissed me and I kissed him in the taxi home. But then he saw me up to the apartment and made such passionate love to me I was scared stiff. He even pulled down my dress and kissed my bosom which horrified me but I could not stop him. He did everything under the sun and I let him. I am certainly gaining experience but I don’t know if I like it.