Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France 0375411313, 9780375411311

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Bad Faith «=» A F o r g o tt en H istory o f F amily , F a th erla n d a n d V ic h y F rance

Bad Faith A

F o r g o tten

H is t o r y o f F a m il y ,

F a t h e r l a n d a n d V ic h y F r a n c e

Carmen Callil

y

*

A lfr ed A . K n o pf N ew Y ork 2006

T H IS IS A B O R Z O I BOO K P U B L I S H E D BY A L F R E D A . K N O P F

Copyright © 2006 by Carmen Callil All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopfj a division o f Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House o f Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Originally published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint o f Random House UK, London. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks o f Random House, Inc. Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publicadon Data Callil, Carmen. Bad faith : a forgotten history o f family, fatherland and Vichy France / Carmen Callil. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-375-41131-3 (alk. paper) i. Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis, 1897—1980. 2. Public officers—France—Vichy—Biography. 3. Holocaust,Jewish (1939-1945)— France. 4. Antisemitism—France. 5. Jews—Persecutions— France. 6. France—History—German occupation, 1940-1945. 7. Vichy (France)— Biography. I. Tide. D C 373.D 354C 35 2 0 0 6 9 4 0 .5 3 * 1 8 0 9 2 — d C 2 2

[B]

2006041029 Manufactured in the United States o f America First American Edition

For PBH

To keep good and bad faith distinct costs a lot; it requires a decent sincerity and truthfulness w ith oneself, it demands a continuous intellectual and moral effort. How can such an effort be expected from men like Darquier? P r i m o L e v i, The Drowned and the Saved

Contents List o f Illustrations Abbreviations Louis Darquier’s Associations and Newspapers Historical Note Family Trees: Darquiers and Joneses Prologue

xi xvii xix xxi xxiii xxv

PART I

COBBLERS & CONVICTS 1. The Priest’s Children 2. The Convicts’ Kin 3. Soldier’s Heart

3 22 32 PART I I

CO CK & BULL 4. Scandal and Caprice 5. Baby 6. Shreds and Patches

49 64 80 PART I I I

H IT L E R ’S PARROT 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

The Street Fame Pot o f Gold O n the Rampage War

95 112 135 152 170

PART IV

VICHY FRANCE 12. Work, Family, Fatherland 13- Tormenting Men 14. Rats i y The Rat Pit 16. Death *7- Having Fun 18. Loot 19. D-Day

>93 217 240 262 *77 300 321 344 PART V

SOM E PE O PL E 20. The Family 21. The Cricket Team 22. Dinosaurs

371 394 416

Postscript

435 A P P E N D IC E S

I. “In Auschwitz They Only Gassed lice.” Interview with Louis Darquier by Philippe Ganier-Raymond, ?Express, 28 October—4 November 1978 439 II. “The Snows o f Sigmaringen” by Louis Aragon 457 III. Louis Darquier’s Baronial Inventions 462 Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography and Sources Index

467 473 367 589

x

Illustrations ■ ■

M a ps

Cahors and environs Tasmania Occupied and Unoccupied (Vichy) France French internment camps

4 54 195 224

I n t e g r a t e d I l l u s t r a t io n s

Le Pèlerin, 3 January 1898 Letter from Myrde to René, 25 March 1933 Maurras’ speech to the medical fraternity o f Action Française, March 1933 Letter from Louis to René, mid-1950s Actionfrançaise, 22 January 1936 Poster, Comité N ational de Vigilance de la Jeunesse, March 1936 PAntijuif, no. 3, 26 June 1937 La France enchaînée, 15 June 1939 La France enchaînée, 1—15 April 1939 Principal authorities dealing with Jews, 1940-44 Jewish carte d’identité Who was and who was not Jewish in the Vichy State Certificat de Non-Appartenance à la RaceJuive “Australia in Danger,” îIllustration, 14 February 1942 Vichy’s Commission for Jewish Affairs Letter from Louis Darquier to Röthke, 11 June 1943 Anne Darquier’s record at Chipping N orton School

16 89 97 119 128 129 155 179 182 209 218 220 233 239 258 349 357

IL L U S T R A T IO N S

I l l u s t r a t io n s

1. 2.

34.

56. 7* 8.

910. 11. 12. i 314.

1516. 1718.

19. 20. 21.

22. *32425-

in

P lates

The Darquier family in Cahors, c. 1906-7 (courtesy o f Paulette Aupoix) Postcard of the sons of the Mayor o f Cahors, 1907 (© Le Lot 1900-1902 Memoir#hier—De Boué) Édouard Drumont, 1901 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Charles Maurras and Léon Daudet (© Collection Roger-Viollet) The Marquis de Morès, 1896 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Anatole de Monzie, c. 1920 Henry de Jouvenal, with his wife, Colette, and their daughter, c. 1920 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Louis Louis-Dreyfus, 1938 (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah) The Jones family, c. 1911 (© Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston) Australia as Terre Napoléon, 1811 Cahors, Boulevard Gambetta, early twentieth century Launceston, Brisbane Street, early twentieth century (from Launceston © M. Simco and P. Jermy, 1997) Jean, Pierre and Louis Darquier, c. 1915 (courtesy o f Yvonne Lacaze) Gunner Harold George Cope, soldier from the same battalion as William Robert Jones (© Australian War Memorial) Statement o f a witness at the Court o f Inquiry into the death o f William Robert Jones (© National Archives o f Australia) Charles Workman, with his son Roy, c 1905 (© V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum) Charles Workman as Ben Hashbaz in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke, 1896 (© V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum) Louis and Myrtle, court case 32 at Marylebone Magistrates Court, 1930 (© The City of London, London Metropolitan Archives) Anne,c. 1933 (courtesy o f Alistair Rapley) Anne with May Brice, c. 1936 (courtesy o f Alistair Rapley) Louis and Myrtle, London, 1931 (from ^Express, 14—20 February 1972) The riots of 6 February 1934 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) The removal o f the wounded from Place de la Concorde (from ^Illustration^ 10 February 1934) The funeral of Luden Garniel (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Colonel François de la Roque, 1935 (© Gaston Paris/Roger-Viollet)

xu

IL L U S T R A T IO N S

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

The nationalist leagues on the streets of Paris, 1934 (© Snark Archives/ Photos 12.com/Oasis) François Coty (© Harlingue/Roger-Viollet) Eugène Schueller (© Photos 12.com) Pierre Taittinger, 1942 (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah) Pierre Taittinger’s league. Jeunesses Patriotes, 1928 (© Harlingue/RogerViollet) Charles Trochu, 1941—43 (© Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Guerre et Sociétés Contemporaines) Louis’ campaign leaflet for his 1935 election to die Paris City Council (© Archives Municipal de Paris) One o f the covers o f The Protocols of the Elders of Sion, c. 1934 (from Warrant for Genocide by Norman Cohn) Louis Darquier in court, July 1939 (from La France enchaînée, 15—31 July !939) José Felix de Lequerica Louis Aragon, c. 1936 (© LAPI/Roger-Viollet) Léon Blum, c. 1936 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Édouard Daladier, February 1934 (from front cover o f FIllustration, 3 Feb­ ruary 1934) Bernard Lecache, c. 1930 (© Martinie/Roger-Viollet) Jean Boissel (© Photos12.com/Ullstein Bild), Louis-Ferdinand Céline (© Photos 12.com/Keystone Pressendienst), Henry Charbonneau (from Dic­ tionnaire commentédela Collaborationfrançaise by Philippe Randa), Henry Coston (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah), Pierre-Antoine Cousteau (fromDictionnairecommentédelaCoUaborationfrançaisè),Yvtrte. Gaxotte (© AlbinGuillot/Roger-Viollet), Henri Massis (© M artinie/ Roger-Viollet), Thierry Maulnier (© Martinie/Roger-Viollet), Bernard Fây (© LAPI/Roger-Viollet) Joseph Darnand (© Harlingue/Roger-Viollet), Philip Henriot (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah), Paul Sézille (from FAntisémitisme du Plume, 1940-44, ed. Pierre-André Taguieff), Georges Montandon (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah), SS Hauptsturmfiihrer Theodor Dannecker (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah), O tto Abetz (© Photos12.com/Oasis) Franco and Pétain, Montpelier, 1941 (© LAPI/Roger-Viollet) General Maxime Weygand, Paul Baudouin, Paul Reynaud and Marshal Pétain, May/June 1940 (© Sigma, London)

IL L U S T R A T IO N S 44.

45*

46. 474950. 51525354* 55* 56. 5758. 5960. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

C.nfHinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier, with Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval, 1942 (© LAPI/Roger-Viollet) The 2ème Régiment d’infanterie Coloniale marches past Marshal Pétain, Admiral Darían, Pierre Laval and Louis Darquier, 1942 (© Médiathèque Municipale Valéry Larbaud/Ville de Vichy) The men of the second Vichy government, 1940 (© Getty Im ages/ Hulton Archive) General Charies de Gaulle, 1940 (© A FP/G etty Images) Jacques Doriot, 1944 (© Snark Archives/Photosi2.com/Oasis) Léon Degrelle with Pope John Paul II, 11 December 1991 The Métro advertises Louis’ l’Institut d’Etude des Questions Juives, c. 1942—43 (© Klarsfeld Collection) Louis with Reinhard Heydrich and Helmut Knochen, 1942 (© Klarsfeld Collection) Louis Darquier on his appointment as Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, 1942 (© Collection Roger-Viollet) Xavier Vallat, 1941 (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah) Joseph Antignac (© Klarsfeld Collection) Monseigneur Mayol de Lupé, 1944 (© LAPI/Roger-Viollet) René Bousquet with Karl-Albrecht Oberg, SS chief Helmut Knochen and Herbert-Martin Hagen (© Klarsfeld Collection) François Mitterrand, dining with René Bousquet in 1974 (© M. Bidermanas/ANA) The Schloss Collection (© A. Vemay) Nazi and French services oversee Jewish arrests (© Klarsfeld Collection) Jewish men, women and children in Drancy concentration camp, 1942 (© Klarsfeld Collection) Jewish women and children at Drancy on the same day (© Klarsfeld Collection) Louis and Myrtle dining (© Archives du CDJC—Mémorial de la Shoah) Louis launches his Institute o f Anthropo-Sociology in Paris, December 1942 (© LA PI/ Roger-Viollet) The Falkland Arms pub, Great Tew, Oxfordshire (courtesy o f Alistair Rapley) The wedding of May Brice to Gilbert Rapley, 1948 (courtesy of Alistair Rapley) Elsie Lightfoot in 1961 (courtesy of Alistair Rapley)

x iv

IL L U S T R A T IO N S

67. 68. 69. 70.

Anne aged twelve (courtesy o f Alistair Rapley) Louis in Madrid (from FExpress, 28 October—4 November 1978) Louis Darquier, 1978 (©Juana Biamés) 59 Weymouth Street, London W i, where Anne died

Every effort has been m ade to trace and contact copyright holders. T he publishers will be pleased to correct any mistakes o r om issions in future editions.

Abbreviations

AF: A ction Française, the m ovem ent. N ew spaper: Action française AJA: A ssociation des Journalistes A ntijuifs, A ssociation o f Anti-Jewish Journalists CATC: C oopérative d ’A pprovisionnem ent, de T ransport et de Crédit, C ooperative for Supply, T ransport and C redit CD P: C entre de D ocum entation et de Propagande, C entre for Inform a­ tion and Propaganda C G Q J: Com m issariat G énéral aux Q uestions Juives, the Com m issariat for Jew ish A ffairs ERR: E insatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, untranslatable, always called ERR. A lfred R osenberg’s plundering office. O ne o f R osenberg’s offi­ cial titles was C ustodian o f the E ntire Intellectual, Spiritual, Training and E ducation o f the Party and o f all C oordinated A ssociations G estapo: G eheim e Staatspolizei, secret state police o r political police LICA: Ligue Internationale C ontre l’A ntisém itism e, the International League A gainst A nti-Sem itism , now called LICRA (Race has been added). N ew spaper: Le D roit de vivre, The Right to Live LVF: Légion des V olontaires Français, an idea o f Jacques D o rio t’s b u t founded A ugust 1941 by M arcel D éat w ith D eloncle as president. T hese w ere French units, wearing G erm an uniform s, w ho fought for the G erm ans on the Russian front. Integrated into the SS W affen Charlem agne in A ugust 1944 MBF: M ilitärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, the m ilitary com m and o f France, provided by the G erm an army, the W ehrm acht MSR: M ouvem ent Social Révolutionnaire, a Pétainist group founded by Eugène D eloncle, w hich provided m ost o f the troops for the LVF OAS: O rganisation de l’A rm ée Secrète PPF: Parti Populaire Français, fascist party o f Jacques D oriot P Q J: Police aux Q uestions Juives, Police for Jewish Affairs, o f the C G Q J RHSA: Reichssicherheitshauptam t, the Reich C entral Security O ffice

A B B R E V IA T IO N S

SCAP: Service de C ontrôle des A dm inistrateurs Provisoires, D epartm ent o f Provisional A dm inistrators o r T rustees (for Jew ish enterprises) SD: Sicherheitsdienst, intelligence service o f the SS SEC: Service d ’E nquête et de C ontrôle, Investigation and Inspection Ser­ vice, and “police” service o f the C G Q J SOL: Service d’O rdre Légionnaire, created by Joseph D arnand in 1941, a paramilitary elite devoted to the service o f Pétain, later to becom e the Milice SS: Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo, Security Police, w hich had various subsec­ tions, one o f w hich was the G estapo STO: Service du Travail O bligatoire, C om pulsory L abour Service U G IF: U nion G énérale des Israélites de France, G eneral U nion o f French Jews

Louis Darquier’s Associations and Newspapers ---------- ------------------

A ssociation des Blessés et Victim es du 6 Février: A ssociation o f the W ounded and the V ictim s o f 6 February Club N ational: N ational Club Club S portif des Ternes: Les Ternes Sports Club R assem blem ent A ntijuif de France: A nti-Jewish U nion o f France l'A ntijuif, the Anti-Jew, sequel to the Bulletin o f his Club N ational L a France enchaînée. France in Chains U nion Française: French U nion CahiersJaunes: the Yellow N otebooks Les Vieilles Souches: A ncient Roots U FD R: U nion Française p our la D éfense de la Race, French U nion for the D efence o f the Race Chaire d ’Ethnologie: Chair in Ethnology, at the Sorbonne Chaire d ’H istoire du Judaïsm e: Chair in Jew ish H istory, at the Sorbonne Com m ission Scientifique pour l’É tude des Q uestions de Biologie Raciale: Scientific C om m ission for the Study o f Racial Biology LAS: In stitu t d ’A nthropo-Sociologie, Institute o f A nthropo-Sociology IE Q J: In stitu t d ’É tude des Q uestions Juives, Institute for the Study o f Jew ish Q uestions IE Q JE R : In stitu t d ’É tude des Q uestions Juives et Ethno-Raciales, Insti­ tute for the Study o f Jew ish and E thno-R acial Q uestions

XIX

Historical N ote

F r e n c h R e p u b l ic s

Before the Occupation: First Republic: 1792 to 1804, when N apoleon declared him self Em peror Second Republic: 1848 to 1852 Third Republic: 4 Septem ber 1870 to 10 July 1940 A fter the Occupation: Provisional Republican Governm ent: 1944 to 1947 Fourth Republic: 1947 to 1959 Fifth Republic: 1959 to present T he T hird Republic, brought to an end by parliam entary vote on 10 July 1940, was a tw o-cham ber parliam ent w ith a president and a prim e m inis­ ter, called the P résident du Conseil des M inistres. T he C ham bre des D éputés, today the A ssem blée N ationale, equiva­ lent to the British H ouse o f Com m ons, is the low er house o f the French Parliam ent. U nder the T hird Republic it consisted o f six hundred m em ­ bers elected by universal m ale suffrage every four years. Its official seat is the Palais B ourbon. T he three hundred Sénateurs, the upper house o f the French Parliam ent, w ere elected by mayors and councillors in départements throughout France. T he Sénat sits in the Palais du Luxem bourg. M arshal H enri-Philippe Pétain, installed as head o f l’É tat Français w ith full governing pow ers, was authorised to produce a new constitu­ tion. T his was never done; instead, for the first tim e since the Revolution o f 1789, France had no representative national body in the Vichy state. Pétain ruled through his personal entourage and his Council o f M inisters until A pril 1942, w hen m uch o f his authority, though n o t his position, passed to Pierre Laval. French regions and departm ents havé changed over the years. As o f 2005, France is divided into twenty-six regions— tw enty-tw o m etropolitan and four overseas— and the régions are divided into a hundred départements. xxi

H IS T O R IC A L N O TE

T he state’s representative in a région or département is called the préfet^ his office the préfecture.

G er m a n O f f ic e s

in

F rance *

H einrich H im m ler was in charge o f all police and security services for the T hird Reich, including death camps. In 1943 he also becam e M inister o f the Interior. T he G eheim e Staatspolizei (G estapo) was the secret state police, founded in 193 3 by G oering, then controlled by H einrich H im m ­ ler and his deputy Reinhard H eydrich. T he R eichssicherheitshauptam t (RHSA), the Reich C entral Security O ffice, controlled by the N azi Party, was created in 1939 through a m erger o f the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, the G estapo and the K rim inalpolizei. H im m ler placed Reinhard H eydrich in charge o f the RHSA. A fter H eydrich’s death in May 1942 E rn st K altenbrunner replaced him . T he RHSA com prised the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service o f the SS; the Sicherheitspolizei (SS, SiPo), the security police, w hich had various subsections, one o f w hich was the G eheim e Staatspolizei (G estapo), the secret state police o r political police.* W ithin the RHSA was E ichm ann’s O ffice Section IV B4, w hich ran the Judenreferat, the Jew ish Section o f the SD. Later, the A bw ehr, the intelligence service o f the army, also cam e under the RHSA.

* In France— and elsewhere— most people used the word “Gestapo” for all these branches o f the RHSA, except for the Judenreferat. I have used “SS” to include the Gestapo, but have often used the general word “Gestapo.”

M a rtel Guillame Avril m. Françoise Laymarie

M ists o f Tim e

The D a rq u ier F am ily

I Tournait in the G ers Antoine Darquier (or Darquié) m. Jeanne Casteres

Bernard Avril 1761-1839 (priest) x. Marie Anne Fazilhot 1768-1838

I

“ Pétronille Judiéis 1789-1822 m. - -Joseph Constanty 1782-1857

Toulouse Barthélémy Darquier m. Magdelaine Dassieu/Dadeu Joseph Darquier 1765-1806 (cobbler and chair porter) m. Elisabeth Marquet (or Latche or Latger) 1767-1808

Jean Joseph Darquier 1796-1841 — (gendarme) Henri Darquier 1838—1856

Guillaume Darquier 1832-? (cobbler)

Many o f these ancestors had many other children, not noted here. As most o f them could not write, there are many variations in the spelling o f their names.

C ahors Antoine Baptise Laytou (builder) m. Catherine Cagnac

Elizabeth Avril 1752-1830 m. Léonard Judicis 1747-1819

4 children

Antoine Laytou 1816-1855 (printer) m. Antoinette Delsol 1823-1877

C ahors Bernard Vayssade 1756-1826 m. Marie Bastit 1792-1858

I m .----------------- Marguerite Avril 1804-1865 I Pierre Darquier 1829-1895 (soldier)

Marie Catherine

Jean Hyppolite Darquier------- m .----- ... Eugénie Marie Joséphine Vayssade 1828-1888 1843-1910 (tax collector)

Pierre Cyprien Marie Eugène Darquier 1863-1881

Jean Darquier 1896-1975 (doctor) m. Jeanne Riu (Janot) 1903-1997 (doctor)

Pierre Eugène Vayssade 1816-1854 (tobacco worker) m. ___ Marie Adélaide Constanty 1816-1899 (shopkeeper)

Jean Henri Pierre Darquier 1869-1942 (doctor)

Geneviève (mistress)---------- Louis Darquier 1897-1980 I m. Teresa 1946Myrtle Marian Ambrosine Jones 1893-1970 i

Antoine Aimé Marie Louis Laytou 1843-1898? (printer, journalist) m. Eugénie Victoria Olympe Françoise Puel 1853-1907 from Lyon

m .---------------- Louise Emilie Victoria Laytou 1877-1956

René Darquier 1901-1967 m. Lucienne Losson

Anne France Darquier 1930-1970 (doctor)

Françoise Felix Victor Antoine Laytou b.&d. 1875

i

William Saggers 1776-1845 (convict, arrived VDL 1820) m. Mary Shea / Shey ? I 786- i 857 (convict, arrived VDL 1820)

Matthew Kirk ? i 76 i - i 8j 3 (convict, transported to VDL 1807) m. (Elizabeth) Sophia Edwards ? i 769- i 836 (convict, arrived VDL 1803)

Farquhar Alexander

Sophia Maria 1806-1867 m. Britton Jones 1800-1856 (convict, arrived VDL 1820)

I

I

Britton Robert Tasmania Webb

Farquhar MacLeay (crofter, N orth Uist) & Ann MacLeay*

Murdoch

Margaret

Mary Martha

James

The Jon es F am ily

Ann 1835-1916 m.

Colin

Donald M orrisont 1814-1889 (free setder, schoolteacher, arrived VDL 1840)

I

5 or 6 children

I

I

I

Frederick

James

Harriet Hector

Mary—

Mary Ann?

Julia

Willina

Richard Eliza

William

William “Tiger” (1825-1898) Britton William

Hannah Davis. Six more children, o f whom only Percy William, Margaret Ruby, Ivy Rosetta and Marjorie Vera grew to adulthood.

Elizabeth 1826-1871

— r Emily Robert Mary

Webb

* Ann MacLeay, crofter’s widow, arrived in Tasmania with three o f her children in 1856, as an assisted migrant during the Highland Gearances o f 1846-185 5. f Descended, according to family papers, from the MacLeans o f Bore ray in the Western Isles and Trumisgarry in North Uist. f f Van Diemen’s Land was renamed Tasmania in 185 5, but the new name was often used before this date.

—

James

i—

—

William Trevallyn

Hector Gordon b. 1892 (dentist)

1

i—

Harriet Elizabeth Ernest Edwin Maria Henry R ichard____ 1864-1929

I

Alexandrins 1871—1958^

I

Myrtle Marian Ambrosine 1893-1970 m i. James Roy Workman, 1902-1970

William Robert 1895-1919

m2. Louis Darquier, 1928

■Geneviève

Anne France Darquier 1930-1970 (doctor)

Teresa b. 1946

T

I

Norm an Harold Vernon Alexander 1897-1984 b. 1899 (Headmaster, (farmer) Launceston Grammar School)

I

Colin Trevor 1902-1934 (dentist)

Hazel Heather Mary Olive Etheline Gatenby 1914Edeline 1905-2000 1905—1998 m. Thomas Murdoch m. TD . Room

i

Colin Room

Prologue < o > ---------

to make one w retched on this earth. In my case my childhood was my purgatory, o r rather, I saw m yself as the Litde M erm aid in H ans A ndersen’s fairy story, condem ned to eternal suffering in retu rn for becom ing m ortal. “Every step you take w cause you pain all b u t unbearable— it will seem to you as if you w ere walk­ ing on the sharp edges o f swords— and your blood will flow,” says the w itch. A nd so the L itde M erm aid, “her heart filled w ith thoughts o f death and annihilation, sm iled and danced w ith the others, till past m idnight.” In i960, w hen I was tw enty-one, my adventures took m e from the place w here I was born, M elbourne, Australia, by way o f ships and boats and planes to E urope, and then, a year o r so later, to the day at the Villa d ’E ste o n Lake Com o, in Italy, w hen I swallowed a large bottle o f inade­ quate sleeping pills. T he good m an w ho was w ith m e at the tim e took m e back to L ondon and found m e a doctor. T he person carefully chosen for m e, because she was half-A ustralian— n o t th at you w ould know it, for all her thirty-three years had been spent entirely in E ngland— was called D r. A nne D arquier, and she lived in L ondon W i. For three days a week, for seven years, from eight o ’clock in the m orning I w ould spend an hour w ith her, and I started to live in the w orld, like other people. A nne D arquier was a doctor and a psychiatrist. She was b orn in 1930 in O ld W indsor, just outside L ondon. I knew her during the last decade o f her life, and she told m e stories about her A ustralian m other w hom she never really knew, and her father, living in E urope— som etim es I thought in France, som etim es in Spain. O nce she said m atter-of-factly while speaking o f them : “T here are som e things and som e people you can never forgive.” O ne Monday, 7 Septem ber 1970,1 rang the doorbell o f Flat 38, 59 W eym outh Street. She had arranged the tim e, b u t there was no answer. L ater th at day, som eone rang to tell m e th at A nne D arquier was dead. Ten days later I w ent to her funeral at G olders G reen C rem atorium , and there I found th at she had another nam e: she was to be buried as A nne D ar-

T

h e re a r e m an y th in g s

xxv

PROLOGUE

quier de Pellepoix. This was odd, b u t it w ould have rem ained only an odd­ ity had I not, by chance, w atched a docum entary o n television a year o r so later: M arcel O phuls’ Le Chagrin et la pitié-— The Sorrow and the Pity: The Story of a French Town in the Occupation. As I read the E nglish subtides I saw A nne’s full surnam e again, attached to one o f the officials o f the Vichy governm ent, trotting up to Reinhard H eydrich, thè head o f the Reich Central Security O ffice, to shake his hand respectfully. W ho was this man? Eventually, A nne’s b irth certificate told me. T he Vichy official, Louis D arquier de Pellepoix, was her father. E verything I had learned about A nne in the years I knew her— little, b u t enough— seemed to be shrouded in silence, buried beneath injustices to her w hich I sensed but could n o t com prehend. I had thought she was a child o f the war, m otherless and fatherless, like m illions o f others o f her generation. In the decades that followed A nne’s death, delving into archives and doc­ um ents and bothering people in France, Spain, G erm any, A ustralia, E n ­ gland, I became an expert on the lies and secrecy and the silence to w hich A nne felt condem ned. Louis D arquier and M yrtle Jones, A nne’s m other, w ere b o th archconfabulators, and those w ho knew them , o r m et them , often w ished that they had not, and for good reason w ere wary o f m y interest. So it w ould not be true to say th at everything I have discovered is the only tru th , o r that I have n o t speculated; b u t w hen I have, my speculation stem s from extensive research and considered analysis. I started w ith A nne’s story, which as the years w ent by becam e th at o f her parents, and o f E urope at war. I searched for Louis D arquier in histories o f France o f the Second W orld War. A nd I found him — always given his entirely fictitious nam e o f D arquier de Pellepoix. H e had been Com m issaire G énéral aux Q uestions Juives, Com m issioner for Jew ish A ffairs, in Vichy France, and was know n as the French E ichm ann.1 W hen I began this quest D arquier was still alive, living in M adrid, happily ensconced in F ranco’s Spain, though I did not know this. ------ -----------------------------------------------

A nne’s story began on 19 A pril 1928 w hen Louis D arquier, the second child o f a provincial doctor and his wife in Cahors, in southw est France, m arried M yrtle M arian A m brosine Jones, second child o f an A ustralian xxvi

PROLOGU^

grazier and his w ife from the tow nship o f Carrick, eleven miles outside L aunceston, in the n o rth o f Tasm ania. Louis D arquier was often described as a handsom e fellow. By 1928 he had acquired the E nglish uniform im m ortalised by P. G. W odehouse: a m onocle and cane, the form er w orn ostensibly for his farsightedness, and never left at hom e even w hen his clothes w ere in tatters. H e was five foot ten, b u t seem ed taller. H e had a huge head, and in photographs he always looks solid and juts his jaw forw ard o r stands erect, flourishing him self at the cam era. H is eyes w ere brow ny green, and his other distinguishing m arks w ere those o f a boy and m an used to punch-ups: a scar above his left eyebrow and a slighdy flattened nose. Louis resem bled his father, and passed o n to A nne the D arquier shape o f face, his pale skin and straight hair. As is so often the case w ith m arried couples, M yrde slighdy resem bled her husband, so th at w hen you looked at A nne, the eyes and m outh o f her m other, shared by M yrtle's three sisters and five brothers, stared o u t o f her D arquier face. M yrde Jones was n o t a beautiful w om an. W hen Louis first m et her the best he could say o f h er was th at “she is n o t ugly.” B ut w hat he added revealed th at he had m et his soul m ate. M yrde Jones, as form idable a fantasist as Louis him self, was, he told his brother René, “th at kind o f agreeable w om an w ho has a keen sense o f reality.” O n their m arriage certificate, Louis D arquier gave his age as thirty years, as indeed he was. M yrde gave hers as twenty-six, w hereas she was in fact thirty-five, and described herself as a spinster, w hich indeed she was not. In Sydney in 1923 she had m arried for the first tim e under the nam e o f Sandra Lindsay. It is a national A ustralian characteristic to abbreviate nam es. H ad Louis D arquier him self lived in A ustralia for any length o f tim e— as he so often, and so falsely, claim ed to have done— he w ould cer­ tainly have been know n as Lew. M yrtle carried this habit for life. In A us­ tralia she was A unty M yrt, in public she was Sandra, b u t in private, throughout the m ultifarious reincarnations o f her life in E urope, she called herself “San” except w hen som eone was after her—-creditors, pass­ p o rt officials, functionaries o f th at kind. O n those occasions she had to use her given nam e, M yrtle Jones, M yrtle M arian A m brosine Jones. In this book she is M yrde. D uring the years I knew A nne, from 1963 until 1970, she often m en­ tioned that she had been abandoned by her parents w hen she was a baby and had been brought up by a nanny in an English village, in considerable xxvu

PROLOGUE

poverty. In 1965 A nne was in her thirties, eight years older than I. She had a gende, round face, her skin was very w hite, very English, and her voice was very English too. B ut nothing else about her was. H er body in partic­ ular seem ed to belong now here; she had a sense o f im m inent departure about her, even w hen she gave you her closest attention, w hich she always did. She stooped, and her straight brow n hair stooped w ith h er— she was always pushing it back w ith one hand. H er shoulders w ere rounded, bowed alm ost, and her very French legs w ent all over the place. She could n o t sit on a chair w ithout tucking them up underneath her as though she was packing them away. H er face was n o t happy, b u t it was n o t sad either: it was wary and alert and concentrated. She laughed, and she could be angry. She told me secrets she should have kept to herself, b u t had she not, I could never have begun the search fo r the tru th about her. She sent me on my way w ith many clues. I discovered that her story was n o t her ow n, b u t a keyhole into the dark years o f civil w ar in France and o f the victory o f one faction during the Vichy years. A nne’s story spread over continents, from France, the land o f her father, to A ustralia, the land o f h er m other, to G erm any and Spain, and to Britain— w hich gave her, as it gave so m any at th at tim e, w hat luck in life she had. ■0A0

As Com m issioner for Jew ish A ffairs, A nne’s father was the longestserving official o f the Vichy state appointed to deal w ith the elim ination and despoliation o f the Jews o f France. B efore the war, Louis D arquier had been a leading French anti-Sem ite, funded by the N azi Party. From 1935 to 1944 he held public appointm ents and ran private organisations through which he cam paigned for the expulsion o r m assacre o f the Jews o f France. Both the French police and the N azis considered him as a top man in his field. H e was a professional w ho used Jews as a way o f m aking a living. M ore than that, he was a con m an, one w ho was in his tu rn used by the Vichy state and the G erm an occupiers as their p u p p e t For Vichy, as Com m issioner for Jew ish A ffairs from May 1942 to Feb­ ruary 1944, Louis D arquier controlled a staff o f over a thousand and a police force which terrorised both Jew and G entile. In July 1942 he was placed in charge o f the notorious Vel’ d ’H iv’ round-up in Paris, w hich despatched nearly thirteen thousand Jews to death cam ps— alm ost a third xxviii

PROLOGU^

o f them w ere children. T hough an idle m an, he w orked tirelessly to p ro ­ vide m ore Jews for deportation. H e introduced the yellow star and took life-and-death decisions over the fate o f the Jews o f France. M ost o f those w ho died in A uschw itz w ere sent there during Louis D arquier’s tenure. A lm ost all o f the 11,400 children w ere sent there in his tim e. M ost o f them did n o t survive. A bove all, he used the persecution o f Jews to make m oney for him self and his cronies— through corruption, despolia­ tion, looting and bribery. W hat energy rem ained to a m an w ho loved high living was expended on propaganda efforts to achieve m ore o f the same. A fter the end o f the G erm an occupation o f France in 1944, in the épuration, the purge, w hich followed, a m an was lynched by a m ob in Lim oges o r Brive— reports differ— in the belief th at he was “D arquier de Pellepoix.” B ut they g o t the w rong man. In a letter in 1975, a M adam e Laurens, a native o f C ahors w ho had know n the D arquier family w hen Louis and his brothers w ere children, w rote: “W hat is interesting to us is the nam e he added him self—‘D e Pellepoix’— G od know s why, o u t o f pride I suppose. As a young m an he was, they say, troubled and unstable, a spendthrift, always at odds w ith his parents.” B ut w here did he com e from ? W hat m ade him w hat he was?

x x ix

COBBLERS &

CONVICTS

1 -------------------------- -

The Priest’s Children AHORS, i n s o u t h w e s t F r a n c e , the D arquiers’ native tow n, is built

C

on a loop in the River L ot, and boasts m onum ents and buildings, bridges and churches o f great beauty, strong red wine, plum p geese and fam ous sons, one o f w hom was the great hero o f the T hird Republic, L éon G am betta, after w hom the m ain boulevard and the ancient school o f C ahors are nam ed. It is an am iable, sturdy, provincial place, w ith the w indy beauty o f so m any southern French tow ns, dom i­ nated by its perfect m edieval P ont V alentré and its Rom anesque fortress o f a cathedral, the massive C athédrale de St.-Etienne. Cahors was the capital o f the ancient region o f Quercy, w hose m any rivers cut through great valleys and hills, patched w ith lim estone plateaux, grottos and cascades. In m edieval tim es C ahors was a flourishing city o f great bank­ ers w ho funded the popes and kings, b u t up to the Wars o f Religion in the sixteenth century Q uercy was also an explosive region o f great vio­ lence, one explanation perhaps for the cautious politics o f its citizens— Cadurríens— in the centuries th at followed. Q uercy reflected an im portant fissure in the French body politic, in the rivalry th at existed betw een Cahors— fiercely Catholic during the Wars o f Religion, w hen its leaders m assacred the P rotestants o f the tow n— and its southern neighbour, the m ore prosperous tow n o f M ontauban, a P rotestant stronghold. B ut under N apoleon Cahors becam e the adm inistrative centre o f the new departm ent o f the L ot, M ontauban o f the T arn-et-G aronne. (The rivalry continued: w hen the Vichy state came to pow er in 1940, and w anted to w ork w ith the N azis to control its Jew ish population, the two Frenchm en w ho m anaged m uch o f this process were Louis D arquier o f Cahors, C om m issioner for Jew ish A ffairs, and René B ousquet o f M ontauban, Secretary-G eneral for the Police.)

3

Golfe du Lion

Cahors and environs in southwest France

T H E P R I E S T ’S C H I L D R E N *

In the late nineteenth century the L ot was a p o o r agricultural depart­ m ent, covered w ith vineyards large and small, a place w here “notables”— the elite bourgeoisie— reigned suprem e, looking after a rural com m unity w ho w orked a hard land. T he L o t was m odesdy revolutionary after 1789, restively N apoleonic under N apoleon, im perially B onapartiste in the tim e o f Louis N apoleon, warily republican after 1870. By 1890 the departm ent had becom e solidly republican, and rem ained thus ever afterw ards. Iso­ lated from the polidcal sophistications and turm oils o f Paris, the L ot turned its face tow ards Toulouse, a hundred kilom etres or so to the south. T he Lotoisw ere conform ists, b u t they w ere individualists and pragm a­ tists. T he scandalised clergy o f the L ot w atched as their congregations w ent to M ass on Sundays and holidays, w hile regularly voting for the god­ less republic and indulging in the “m urderous practice” o f birth control for the rest o f the week. T he L ot stood o u t in the southw est for this sin­ gularity: nearby Aveyron rem ained fervently Catholic; other neighbouring regions veered to the left and distanced them selves from the Church. In C ahors “On allait à l*église mais on votait à gauche”f they w ent to church b u t they voted for the left— piety o n Sundays and holy days, anticlerical the rest o f the week. T he L ot rem ained faithful to b o th republic and C hurch, o n its ow n term s. B ut in 1877 the vineyards w hich provided so m uch o f its prosperity w ere destroyed by phylloxera, and so began a long decline, as the Lotois left to find w ork in the cities. -------------------------- 0A0--------------------------

F or the first h alf o f his life Louis D arquier’s father, Pierre, was a fortu­ nate m an. H e was b o rn at a propitious tim e, he m arried a wealthy wife w ho loved him , and he had three handsom e and intelligent sons, and at least one other child b o rn o u t o f wedlock. H e was a good doctor, and alm ost everyone w ho knew him spoke well o f him and rem em bered him fondly. B orn in 1869, he was only a year old w hen the last o f the French em perors, Louis N apoleon, N apoleon III, m ade the m istake o f attacking Prussia in 1870. T he Franco-Prussian w ar ended in the defeat o f France and the bloody suppression o f the Paris Com m une in 1871, and it was also the end o f all kings and em perors in France. T he T hird Republic, p ro­ claim ed in 1870, was to last until 1940, alm ost the entire lifetim e o f Pierre D arquier. T he origins o f the D arquier family w ere extrem ely m odest. Louis 5

BAD F A I T H

D arquier always varied his claims to nobility, adding and subtracting claims to aristocratic, G ascon o r French Celtic blood as die w him took him . H is obsession w ith pure French blood flow ing from French soil is genuine, however: m ost o f his ancestors, the dregs o f the earth for cen­ turies, are buried in the small tow ns o f the L ot. T hey w ere poor, and m any w ere both illegitim ate and illiterate. Pierre D arquier was b o rn on 23 January 1869 at num ber 10, rue du Tapis V ert, the street o f the green carpet, one o f the m edieval ruelles w hich cluster around the C athédrale de St.-E tienne. T his was the house o f his m aternal great-grandm other, and generations o f his family had been b orn and lived there. P ierre’s grandfather, Pierre E ugène Vayssade, a tobacco w orker in Cahors, had died there at the age o f thirty -eig h t H is widow, Marie Adélaide Constanty, supported herself and their only child, Eugénie, b orn in 1843, by w orking w ith her m other-in-law in the family’s grocery shop, w hich served the clergy o f the cathedral nearby; it is still there on the angle o f rue N ationale and place C hapou, and was w orked by the family until 1907.2 Pierre’s father Jean often helped his w ife Eugénie and his m other-inlaw at the counter, and Pierre grew up betw een shop and hom e, w ith his parents and grandm other, fluent in the local patois, a variant o f O ccitan, la langue d’Oc, the language o f the Languedoc. A fter a lifetim e’s w ork, Louis* great-grandm other, w hen she died, had nothing to leave. A bout ninety kilom etres to the n o rth o f C ahors lies the m edieval tow n o f M artel, w here a large num ber o f P ierre’s paternal ancestors w ere born, all carefully chronicled in the records o f C hurch and state. H is great-grandfather, B ernard Avril, was a priest w orking in the D ordogne w hen he authorised the m arriage o f his daughter M arguerite in 1827, and agreed to provide her w ith an annual dow ry o f “w heat, half a pig, tw o pairs o f conserved geese and twelve kilogram s o f n u t oil.” 5 M arguerite was tw enty-three w hen she m arried Jean Joseph D arquier, a policem an from Toulouse, w here his father Joseph was a cobbler and chair porter. It is necessary to be precise about these persons and dates, because it is this unfortunate M arguerite Avril w ho was used to give Louis D arquier his erroneous claims to nobility. M arguerite had four children, all boys, all born in M artel, before her husband Jean died at his barracks at the age o f forty-five. T heir first son, Jean the younger, was b o rn in 1828, and it was he w ho initiated the social rise o f the D arquier clan w hen he took up the lucrative post o f tax collector. 6

the priest ’s children

O n 25 A ugust 1862, w hen he was thirty-four, Jean the tax collec­ to r m arried his relative .Eugénie Vayssade by special dispensation, for E ugénie was also related to the fecund F ather Avril. T he nineteen-yearold E ugénie took h er husband to live in her m other’s house in rue du Tapis Vert. T here w ere tw o sons o f this m arriage, b o th called Pierre, bu t only the second, christened Jean H enri Pierre, survived to inherit all the considerable worldly goods garnered by his father, w ho died w hen Pierre was nineteen. L ouis’ paternal grandfather the tax collector left shops in C ahors earning rent, o th er houses, furniture w orth over tw enty thousand francs, as well as letters o f credit, savings, buildings, land and vineyards at M ontcuq and St.-Cyprien, near Cahors. Pierre was now a w ealthy young m an. H e turned tw enty-one just as the belle époque ushered in the joys, both frivolous and practical, o f those legendary pre-w ar decades. As a m edical student in Paris from 1888 to 1893 he and his elder brother, w ho died there at the age o f eighteen, were the first D arquiers to savour the full glories o f the Parisian vie bohème. T hree years later, in 1896, he m arried an even w ealthier young wom an. Louis D arquier’s m other, Louise, was a class above Pierre D arquier, b u t in fact her family’s prosperity was only one generation older than th at o f her husband. T he Laytou family had lived in Cahors for genera­ tions, and Louise’s grandfather m ade their fortune w ith his printing w orks and the new spaper he founded in 1861, the Journal du hot. H is son inherited the business, and his daughter Louise Em ilie V ictoria was born o n 11 A pril 1877. Like Pierre D arquier, her only sibling, a brother, also died, so she alone inherited all the w ealth and property o f her printing family. C ahors was a bustling provincial city o f som e tw enty thousand per­ sons in January 1896, w hen Pierre and Louise m arried. H e was alm ost tw enty-seven, she eighteen; they honeym ooned in Paris, N ice and M ar­ seille. By then he had com pleted his m edical studies in Paris at the tim e o f the great French m edical teacher and neurologist Jean-M artin C harcot.4 P ierre’s thesis, w hich qualified him as a doctor, was on the subject o f one o f C harcot’s neurological discoveries. Pierre seems to have taken the best from C harcot, unaffected by the latter’s theories o f racial inheritance, and he was often described as a gifted practician, always as a kindly one. Louise Laytou brought w ealth to her m arriage, and was thought to have m arried beneath her, b u t in retu rn Pierre D arquier’s profession qualified him to becom e one o f the leading notables o f Cahors and die Lot. 7

BAD F A I T H

Pierre was blue-eyed and n o t tall— Louise was taller than he— and had inherited the tendency to corpulence o f his m other and grandm other. W hen young he was a handsom e fellow w ith brow n curls and a round, cheerful face, the shape o f w hich, if n o t the tem peram ent it expressed, was passed on to his second son, Louis, his granddaughter A nne and many o f his other grandchildren. H e had a rather fem inine voice, w ore the form al clothes o f the tim e— bow ler h at in w inter, frock-coat, necktie, a boater in sum m er— and a handsom e handlebar m oustache at all times. H is personal appearance, however, does n o t explain his success w ith the opposite sex. Pierre cherished his wife, b u t he was a creature o f his tim e, as addicted to dalliance as was M arshal Pétain, thirteen years his senior b u t a product o f the same sexual m ores. Pierre was a jolly m an, self-indulgent, a typical “hearty bourgeois o f the period, a w om an-chaser, and a do cto r in his spare tim e.” H e was “big and solid, cordial and joyous, m uch loved in Cahors,” and was often spotted, braces flying, returning hom e at the crack o f dawn. O ne early m orning a w orker called after him , “Hey, D octor, do you take your trousers o ff to exam ine your patients?” B ut this shocked no one in those days, least o f all Louise. H er “real D o n J u a n . . . has the charm o f a M arquis,” she w ould say w ith pride. “O ne m ust know w hen to shut one’s eyes.” 5 Louise D arquier was beautiful w hen young, and rem ained so all her life. She was attended by the consideration such w om en are accustom ed to receive, but this was not, in her case, always accom panied by m uch affection. Louise was “im peccable,” w ith “Pairpresque aristocratique”— an alm ost aristocratic air. To som e she seem ed w arm and lovable, to others she gushed and fluttered. Som e w ho w orked for her loved her fo r her kindness and affection, others regarded it as m annered patronage. Family recollections describe her as rem arkably stupid, and acquaintances are n o t much kinder— she was “very proud,” “very spoiled, very old France, very beautiful,” “w ith a high, studied voice, given to litde exclam ations.”6 Everything about her was exquisite, her clothes, her hats, h er considerable collection o f jewellery, her carefully coiffed fair hair. E ven her handker­ chiefs, delicately em broidered by herself, w ere the envy o f the w om en o f Cahors. Louise enjoyed ill health, fem inine m aladies and exercising C hristian charity towards the unfortunate. She took the w aters at Vichy, read poetry, w rote to her w om en friends, stitched and em broidered beautifully— for 8

T H E P R I E S T ’S C H IL D R E N

herself, for the church, for family and friends— and trained her maids and p o o r relations to look after her properly. H er letters— outpourings o f dom estic fuss and bother, alternating w heedling requests w ith woes plain­ tively enum erated— throb w ith her anxious hold on social position. She bequeathed her habitual note o f lam entation to Louis, together w ith her pretension to social grandeur. Louis spent m uch o f his adult life com ­ plaining th at his parents did n o t support him , did n o t help him financially as they did his brothers, and w hen the tim e came, during the O ccupation, th at he could support him self, he m ade the sam e com plaints about Pétain and the m andarins o f Vichy. Louise was w hat they called “unepunaise de sacristie,” a churchy wom an. T he French C hurch had been in a state o f recurrent w ar w ith the anti­ clerical republic since the Revolution— it was G am betta w ho had said in 1877 th at “L e cléricalisme, c’est 1*ennemi!”1 T he D arquier m arriage perfectly encapsulated this French duality. E ducated at the convent o f Les D am es de N evers in CahorS, Louise w ent to M ass every Sunday and often during the week, w hile Pierre confined his attendances to weddings and funerals. Louise D arquier em bodied every reason why French w om en w ere n o t to receive the vote until 1944. In the early years o f the D arquier m arriage the struggle betw een the French C hurch and the republican governm ent reached its climax over the D reyfus affair and the control o f education.8 T he outcom e was the separation o f C hurch and state in 1905, the rem oval o f education from clerical hands and the expulsion from France o f a num ber o f religious orders. T he republic, ruled by governm ents o f the Radical Party, form ed in 1901 and representative o f the politics o f the provinces and the petite bourgeoisie, thus w on its m ajor victory over the Catholic C hurch in France* T he m en w ho represented the L ot politically, at b oth national and local levels, w ere alm ost always lawyers and doctors, rarely the nobility, and o f these doctors w ere always the m ost num erous. Pierre D arquier had w ealth, the right profession, family connections and a family new spa­ per. H e joined the Radical Party and proceeded in the classic m anner: first mayor, then councillor for the departm ent— after th at w ould follow Paris and national politics. H is party, w hich w ould be dom inant in French politics until the Sec­ ond W orld War, was by no m eans radical in the British sense o f the word. It was a centrist party, republican, anticlerical, b u t m oderate— like the W higs in England. T he Radical Party was an um brella group o f m any dif9

BAD F A I T H

ferent opinions and cliques, tolerant o f considerable d issen t In the L ot, Radicals often belonged to the Radical-Socialist w ing o f the party, the use o f the w ord “socialist” being even m ore baffling to A nglo-Saxon ears, for these politicians ran the L ot like a private business. T he ruling Radicals w ere progressive b u t fatherly, alm ost feudal m en o f position and profes­ sion, m anipulators o f influence and patronage and'accustom ed to being obeyed. To its num erous enem ies on the right, being a m em ber o f the Radical Party was synonym ous w ith being a Freem ason, and thus hostile to the pow er o f the Catholic Church. H ow ever, w hile there w ere tw o M asonic lodges in Cahors at th at tim e, m ysterious and fearful places to the local Catholic children, in the rural w orld o f the L ot its notables w ere neither markedly anticlerical, n o r M asonic. “T hey believe in m an, I believe in G od,” was a typical Lotois attitude tow ards M asonic practices. Pierre D arquier had been raised by pious Catholic w om en— his w ife described him as “a Christian, b u t n o t a m artyr”— and was neither a M ason n o r a m an o f the left. “In the L ot, everyone was Radical S ocialist. . . It was a party w hich veered m ore to the right than the left,” a party th at “respected a certain hierarchy, at any rate a hierarchy w hich favoured them selves.’*9 W hen France fell in 1940, all the deputies o f the L ot, socialist. Radical Socialist, Radical republican and otherw ise, brought an end to the T hird Republic by voting full autocratic pow ers to M arshal Pétain. T he D arquiers’ first child, Jean, was b o rn eleven m onths after their m arriage, on 12 D ecem ber 1896. Twelve m onths later, Pierre D arquier had m oved his family into the handsom e Laytou family house at 54, rue du Lycée in C ahors (now 394, rue P résident W ilson). P ierre and Louise raised their three sons in the house, linked by a beautiful garden to the massive Laytou family printing w orks behind it. H ere, o n 19 D ecem ber 1897, Louis D arquier was born. Louise D arquier had greeted the news th at she was pregnant again while still w eaning her firstborn w ith the usual gloom o f w om en under these circum stances. Louis leapt o u t o f his m other’s w om b at six and a half m onths, alm ost a miscarriage. “I cried the very first day I knew o f his existence and I will w eep for him until the last day o f my life,” she w ould bem oan in later years, as she listed the troubles he had caused her m other’s heart.10 Louis grew up securely entrenched in the fortunate classes o f the tow n; n o t for him the labour in the vineyards and fields o f tobacco, o r the 10

T H E P R I E S T ’S C H I L D R E N

shops and barracks o f his ancestors. O f the three D arquier sons— the baby, René, was b o m ki 1901— Louis turned o u t to be the classic m iddle child, always scrabbling for attention, a problem from the day he was born. Physically, Jean and René resem bled their m other, while Louis, though taller, strongly resem bled his father. Pierre was as authoritarian a father as w ere all G alsw orthian m en o f property o f his tim e. Children did n o t speak until spoken to, never before the p la tprincipal at meals, and did as they w ere told. Louise loved her nam esake son, b u t he was perm anendy at odds w ith his father. In 1906 w hen Louis was eight and his father thirty-seven, Pierre was elected m ayor o f Cahors, the only m ayor ever to be elected on the first b a llo t H is acceptance speech gives the flavour o f the man: “All my actions will be inspired by the fine ideal o f liberty, equality and fraternity, and o f the social solidarity w hich constitutes the strength, the honour and the glory o f our Republic.” T he family new spaper, the Journal du L ot, described him then as “a steadfast friend, devoted, selfless,” a m an to w hom “hatred, rancour, je a lo u s/’ w ere unknow n. “H is openness and loy­ alty are as well know n as his great goodness.” Louise now becam e the first lady o f Cahors. She entertained a great deal and in considerable style, m aintained two maids, a cook and a G er­ m an cham berm aid, and the family holidayed each year by the sea and in the m ountains. Pierre D arquier had a good practice, b u t the L ot was po o r and Pierre kind: his patients often paid him w ith “skinny chickens and old eggs.” As the years w ent on, a G erm an and an English governess were added to educate the boys, and a chauffeur to drive Pierre’s m otorcar, acquired by 1910, w hich he used to visit his patients, to the astonishm ent and joy o f the inhabitants o f C ahors and its environs. B oth Louis and René spoke E nglish and G erm an exceptionally well. T he boys w ere sent to school across the road, to the Lycée G am betta, w here Pierre him self had been educated m ore than tw enty years before. Like all French schools after the Separation Law o f 1905, the Lycée was n o t religious. C hildren o f political antagonists, right and left— the noirs and the rouges—w ere taught together. Catholic children, like Louis D ar­ quier, w ere instructed in their catechism by a chaplain; the children o f socialists. Freem asons, atheists and others w ere left in peace. All o f them m arched and sang the “Marseillaise” together. T he curriculum o f the tim e was a preparation for war. Y oung m en w ere raised in the spirit o f Revanche, revenge for the Prussian defeat o f 1870 and the G erm an appropriation o f

BAD F A I T H

A lsace-Lorraine. T hroughout their childhood, G erm an family em ployees notw ithstanding, Louis and his brothers w ere brought up under the shadow and the threat o f G erm any. A t school the boys w ere securely uniform ed in cap o r beret, stiff col­ lar and flowing tie, learned shooting and fencing, w ere rigorously edu­ cated in patriotism , high culture and sport, and trained to be good sons o f France. T heir teachers m atched their form ality in dress coats, starched collars, top hats o r bow ler hats, and often sported the m onocles and canes Louis was to adopt as his adult insignia in die 1920s. T here is a photograph o f the three D arquier boys fencing at school in 1907. René, only six, is heroically feinting his elder brother, w hile Louis’ arrogant litde face stares proudly at the cam era. A ll three w ere handsom e, intelligent and self-confident, and w ere dressed elegandy; their schoolm ates, by con­ trast, look like Richmal C rom pton’s W illiam, a Cadurcien collection o f rapscallions. In Cahors those w ho knew Louise D arquier w ere unanim ous th at she was excessively am bitious for her sons. Jean had the fine physique o f his m other, but Louis was a “fo rt cailloux? a hard nut, “n o G ary C ooper,” b u t he grew into “a good-looking m an, strong, broad-shouldered like a good rugger player.” 11 T he m ore delicate, m ore sophisticated Jean was to becom e an elegant m an, artistic, poetic, and musical. René was unlike his elder brothers, shorter than both, as spirited, b u t m ore reserved and seri­ ous. T hough the youngest, he seems very early to have becom e the father o f the family. Jean and Louis started school together w hen they w ere seven and six respectively, and w ere im m ediately the best pupils in their class. W hen René joined them in 1905, only four years old, he perform ed equally well: until 1914 the brothers josded to bring hom e the m ost honours and prizes. T heir parents rew arded them w ith five francs for achieving first place in class, three francs fo r second; b u t the boys had to pay back five francs if they came third, o r worse. Louis was baptised at the cathedral in C ahors w hen he was a m onth old. His fabrications about his life begin here. H e always claim ed th at his godfather was Pierre’s d o se friend, the crippled advocate, dubious parliam entanan and future quasi-collaborator A natole de M onzie, w hereas in fact Louise’s u n d e filled this role. In 1909 Pierre w anted to stand for election as deputy for the L ot, b u t gave way so th at de M onzie could stand as

12

T H E P R I E S T ’S C H I L D R E N •

the sole republican candidate. T he departm ent becam e de M onzie’s fiefdom for m ore th an thirty years. M ayor o f C ahors from 1919 to 1942, betw een 1909 and 1942 he also reigned variously as councillor, president o f council, deputy and senator for the departm ent. D e M onzie was a w heeler and dealer, a pow er broker w ith a finger in every pie o f social and political life in the T hird Republic. H e was, tenuously, a Radical Socialist, b u t his political ideas and practices w ere his own. H e was either a m an w ithout principle o r an independent spirit, a pontificating fixer w ho conquered the w orld w ith his charm and intelligence. A fter a pushchair accident as a baby, de M onzie lim ped all his life; he was physically deform ed and form idably ugly. H is vast bald head, w ith a protuberance w hich he covered w ith a Basque beret, was com pared by C olette to “an unassum ing Japanese volcano”; nevertheless, “you could n o t be in his presence w ithout falling under his charm : he was very bril­ liant, very gende, he talked so well. H e was also absolutely im m oral.” 12 D e M onzie m ixed enthusiastically in the Parisian intellectual salons o f the tim e; he w rote and published volum inously, and was in charge o f the com m ittee o f the French Encyclopaedia, “l’Encyclopédie Motivate? Closely linked to the w orld o f big business, industry and banking, he wove all these threads into a political life w hich was above all apolitical. H e seems scarcely to have believed in the republic he served for so m any years. H e dealt w ith M ussolini, corresponded w ith Trotsky, b u t in his involvem ent in E uropean politics, particularly w ith Russia and Italy, neither com m u­ nism n o r fascism m attered to him . T he British assessed him , correctly, as a “scintillating b u t co rru p t figure.” 15 I f Pierre D arquier was an enthusiastic w om an-chaser, de M onzie, described as “one o f France’s greatest cocottes,” 14was m ore than enthusias­ tic. H alf a century later people in C ahors still talk about his baisodrome, a special little house he is said to have kept on the outskirts o f the village for his sexual encounters w ith the local girls. “H e kept nude w om en in his château,” one gossip recalled. “T he priest couldn’t say anything because de M onzie gave him m oney n o t to.” 15 Louis’ later habit o f equally indiscrim inate copulation perhaps con­ tributed to de M onzie’s fondness for him , and they also shared the insta­ bility noted mildly in de M onzie, ram pant in his protégé. D e M onzie liked to be surrounded by handsom e youths, and he was m uch in evidence as guide and p rotector to the young m en o f the Lot. For Louis D arquier he

13

BAD F A I T H

becam e éminencegrise and alternative father, and as patron, role m odel and saviour he provided dangerous tolerance o f Louis* singularities. Louis* troubles w ith his father never ceased. “H e is n o t m y father,** Louis used to say o f Pierre, “he is a wolf.*’ P ierre D arquier was a strong m an, given to violent tem pers, a trait he passed o n to his second son. Because o f the tension betw een them , in 1909 Louis was sent across die street to board at the Lycée, b u t he was hom e again the follow ing year, for at school his vehem ent personality and unpredictable tem per, and his inability to fit in w ith teachers o r fellow pupils, w ere all too obvious. In his last year at school, 1913—14, Louis was doing his baccalaureate in m athe­ matics, but also w on a prize for E nglish, in the form o f a visit to England. T he outbreak o f w ar in A ugust 1914 seem s to have p u t paid to this, as it ended m ost things for the D arquier family. T he photographs o f Louis as a child show the m an he was to becom e: he stares straight ahead, reckless, w ith a bold and im pudent eye. T he descriptions given by those w ho knew him as a young m an are m uch the same as those o f his Vichy colleagues: “Y ou m ust understand th at Louis D arquier was a p h en o m en o n . . . proud, pretentious . . . a swelled head, a gam bler, a gadabout, an idler.*’16A lthough his m other’s fluttering influence was obvious, no Cadurciens blam ed his parents o r his education for the m an Louis D arquier became. “I t was rather the atm osphere o f the tim e, w hen anti-Sem itism was norm al and in no way sh o ck in g . . . it was the norm , the result o f the anti-Sem itism o f reaction**17— reaction to the republic and its values. cAo-------------------------

Louis D arquier’s anti-Sem itism flowered under the influence o f a particu­ lar French tradition, im bedded in a dark side o f the Catholic C hurch. T he anti-Sem itism o f the Catholic C hurch is still a touchy subject, b u t in recent years the taboo surrounding its consequences has been broken and apologised for, by both the late Pope Jo h n Paul II, in uneasily vague term s, and by the prelates o f France m ost specifically. Anti-Sem itism has always been an integral p art o f C atholic instruc­ tion, based on the view th at the Jews m urdered C hrist, always ignoring, and in som e extrem e cases denying, th at C hrist him self was a Jew. France, the eldest daughter o f the C hurch, has som etim es distinguished itself by a tentatively independent, rational, n o t to say occasionally snappish, atti14

T H E P R IE S T ’S C H IL D R E N

•

tude tow ards its V atican parent; indeed by 1914 only a quarter o f French Catholics practised their religion. T he L ot had no m ore than fifteen Jew ish families before 1940, and C ahors was n o t openly anti-Sem itic, at least until the decades o f the D rey­ fus affair. “I am n o t w hat you w ould call an anti-Sem ite ‘by tradition,’ ” w rote Louis in 1938. “To tell the tru th , I knew absolutely nothing about Jew s until I becam e an adult. My father, a D reyfusard and Radical m ayor o f a small provincial capital, was im bued w ith egalitarian and hum anitar­ ian ideals, and as we only had one Jew in the entire tow n (he was a little haberdasher w ho w ore a fur hat in w inter), he could n o t cause any trou­ ble.” 18 In 1978 how ever, he contradicted him self: “In C ahors we have never liked Jews . . . A n ancient tradition.” 19 T he D reyfus case was the dom inant event in French public life dur­ ing Louis’ childhood, a bitter crisis w hich polarised further a country o f intransigent political and religious differences. T he affair erupted in 1894, w hen an obscure Jew ish arm y officer, A lfred D reyfus, was wrongly accused o f selling national secrets to G erm any, and after a secret courtm artial was shipped by the arm y to life im prisonm ent on D evil’s Island, in French G uyana. T he case alm ost led to civil war, as those w ho rightly defended his innocence— D reyfus was fram ed— fought the arm y and the Church. T he furore dragged on for twelve years, and the acrim ony for m uch longer, pervading the atm osphere in w hich Louis D arquier and his Vichy com patriots grew up. A fter D reyfus, anti-Sem itism becam e a “know n thing” am ongst the C atholic bourgeoisie. T he Jew was created by G od to act the traitor everywhere, “to fight the religion o f Jesus C hrist and to dom inate the w orld by the pow er o f money.”20 A buse like this was unceasing in the violently un-C hristian polem ics o f certain Catholic new spapers, such as the popular L e Pèlerin and the daily paper o f the A ssum ptionist order, L a Croix, w hich happily claim ed to be “the m ost anti-Jewish new spaper in France.” In the years o f Louis’ childhood these papers, w ith vast cir­ culations, issued instructions in language o f vitriolic hatred to “Black France”— the Catholic faithful— m any o f them , like Louise D arquier, m em bers o f the upper bourgeoisie. In the catechism used by the chaplain at the Lycée G am betta— and in Catholic institutions worldwide through­ o u t the centuries— C atholic propaganda shaped “the C onversion o f the Jew s” into a subject for childhood prayer. “ Oremus”— “L et us pray for the perfidious Jew.” 15

BAD F A I T H

In Cahors, the priests at the cathedral w ere so bitterly divided during those years that “in the courtyard o f the seminary, there was one p art o f it called “T he Royal Walk,” frequented by those w ho w ere rather A ction Française, and the dem ocrats had another section o f the courtyard, b u t they never mixed.”41 A fter the D reyfus case, how ever, “T he C hurch in C ahors was anti-Sem itic.”44 T he practising Catholics o f C ahors usually w ent to eleven-o’clock Mass on Sundays at the cathedral. W hile hoi polloi gathered in the body o f the church, the wealthy Catholic notables o f the tow n, Louise D arquier am ong them , in descending order o f im portance, paid for pews near the stalls o f the clergy.

hh cien' patrcn. vous ôtes content.... Us vont bien à la Chambre? FeuhJ Dreyius. la magistrature, la Parlament désorienté. 1armée ealie ;e m an moque pas mal ce n est qu un prétexta-.... Ja ne serai vraim ent heureux que quand J aurai terrassé cat ennemi IA’

The Catholic journal la Shoah)

LePèlerin, 3 January 1898 (© Archives du CDJC—

16

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E very week from 1897, the year o f Louis’ birth, the Catholic weekly o f the L ot, L a Defenset as virulent as L a Croix and Le Pèlerin, was sold to devout parishioners after M ass, delivering the C hurch’s instructions both political and spiritual. T his was a successful weekly new spaper, its circula­ tion, thirteen thousand, equal to th at o f the thrice-weekly paper o f Louis’ grandfather, the Journal du Lot. T he faithful w ere directed to oppose the republic and all its institutions, to disapprove o f socialism , and to be tolerant o f parties and leagues o f the extrem e right. Strikes w ere the “insupportable tyranny o f a group o f irresponsibles,” 25 irreligious school textbooks w ere denounced as “abom inably doctored and distorted.”24 T hese messages continued through the decades. “We m ust bring an end to the corruption o f the race,” L a Défense announced in A ugust 1940. Catholic France was by no m eans the only source o f the antiSem itism o f Vichy France, o r o f Louis D arquier; it had its ow n, French, philosophers. T he Catholic C ount Joseph A rthur de G obineau in the m id-nineteenth century, friend o f W agner and a p o ten t influence on N ietz­ sche and H itler, was one such. M aurice Barrés, nationalist and populist orator at the tu rn o f the century, w ho bequeathed to his followers a p ro ­ found sense o f decadence and decay, was another. B ut the father o f French anti-Sem itism was E douard D rum ont,25 w ho, w ith the help o f the fam ous nineteenth-century novelist and republican A lphonse D audet, published his notorious book L a FranceJuive in 1886, and w hose L a U bre parole becam e one o f the m ost influential daily new spapers o f the 1890s.26 D ru m o n t was a representative o f Catholic anti-Sem itism at its m ost un-C hristian. H e divided his Catholic w orld into pure and heroic Aryans, and im pure and schem ing Talm udic Semites. His best seller popularised the notion th at Jews controlled French banks, property, universities, let­ ters, theatre, press, m edia, prostitution— th at in fact they controlled everything, and th at France was now an enslaved nation in their thrall. D ru m o n t linked Jews and Freem asons together, and his influence was at its apogee during the D reyfus affair in the 1890s. Tem peram entally, however, D arquier’s true m odel was D rum ont’s contem porary and fellow anti-Sem ite the M arquis de M orès, the first French “national socialist.” 27 This som brero-hatted, red-shirted young aristocrat m arried an A m erican heiress and spent som e form ative years in the N o rth D akota badlands, catde-rustling and bringing ill fortune to the tow n o f M edora, w hich he founded and nam ed after his wife. A fter vari­ ous disasters in the U nited States— for w hich, like D arquier in similar cir17

BAD F A I T H *

cum stances, he blam ed the Jews— he consigned A m erica to his personal m ythology as D arquier w ould do later w ith A ustralia, and returned to France in 1887. M orès was fond o f form ing associations; he was a braw ler and a ruffian w ho careered around w ith groups o f bully boys and killed people him self rather than leaving it to others, as D arquier was to do. B oth M orès and D arquier w ere self-publicists and sought m oney from Jew and G entile alike. D arquier constandy m ade reference to M orès, and im itated both his aristocracy and his violence. B ut since the end o f the nineteenth century die m ost im portant ally o f die French C hurch— one it could often have well done w ithout— was A ction Française. I f the C hurch gave Vichy France its belief system and language. A ction Française, b o rn o f the D reyfus affair, provided its rhetoric and its political blueprint. A ction Française the m ovem ent, and Action française its new spaper, derived their character from the fanatical teachings o f the classicist and intellectual Charles M aurras, and its jour­ nalistic genius from Léon D audet, son o f A lphonse. L éon D audet was an erudite m an o f noisy charm , m erciless yet given to occasional kindnesses, while M aurras, alm ost deaf from childhood, was the isolated— and thus revered— intellectual giant o f the m ovem ent. Philosopher and poet, M aurras was also, crucially, a talented propa­ gandist and, xhiouçfr. Actionfrançaise, published daily in Paris from 1908, he and D audet incited the nationalist right to action. B ut despite the fact th at M aurras considered the idea o f a “Jew ish C hrist” unpalatable, and despite being an atheist him self, he nevertheless saw in the hierarchical arrange­ m ents o f the Catholic C hurch the key organising force for those w ho would n o t accept the Revolution o f 1789 and the republic w hich it estab­ lished. So firm was his belief th at everything engendered in 1789 was an aberration, an outcom e o f E nglish and G erm an influences w ith Jew ish overtones, th at he refused to call the R evolution “French.” M aurras’ political philosophy (known as “Integral N ationalism ”) called for the return o f royalty, for a king w ho w ould bring about the return o f the “real France” and banish “legal France,” the verm inous republic and its dem ocratic practices. H e rejected parliam entary dem oc­ racy and those he considered to be its rulers—Jews, P rotestants, Freem a­ sons and métèques, a w ord M aurras invented and w hich was speedily absorbed into the French language to describe all foreigners w ho lived in France.28 This political stance M aurras adopted “like a religion.” H e shared the 18

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«

views o f the C hurch o n authority, an alliance appreciated by the French C hurch for m any years. T he C atholic hierarchy printed articles from Action française for dissem ination to its flock, used its argum ents in ser­ m ons, and gave M aurras, his m ovem ent and his new spaper active and loyal support in public and in private. As Pope Pius X told M aurras’ m other: “I bless his w ork.”19 B oth M aurras and D ru m o n t becam e Louis D arquier’s dem igods, all the m ore so because D ru m o n t insisted th at G am betta, C ahors’ great hero o f the republic, was in tru th a Jew, and w orse, a G erm an Jew. T he im m ense contem porary im portance o f M aurras is difficult to appreciate today, as is the reverence in w hich he was held as an intellectual. T his was a m an w ho attacked the 1926 film Ben H u rîo t being pro-Jew ish, and w ho was “struck, m oved, alm ost h u rt” on his first arrival in Paris to find street nam es w hich he considered to be foreign and Jew ish because they included a “K,” a “W ” o r a “Z .” 3° In the years in w hich the D arquier boys grew to m anhood, M aurras was the leading nationalist figure. A ction Française cam e to southw est France in 1904, w hen a branch opened in Toulouse, and later in Cahors and M ontauban. By the tim e Louis was thirteen and Jean fourteen, the m ovem ent was holding badly attended m eetings in the rue du Château du Roi in Cahors, though its influence was negligible. In C ahors its w ork was done by the C hurch and in the pages o f L a Défense. H ow ever, the H oly See was n o t always happy w ith its unruly ally, and w ith the advent o f Pope Pius X I, in 1922, the Vatican tardily m oved against its rival. A ction Française was banned in D ecem ber 1926, dismay­ ing the thousands o f priests, the hierarchy and the faithful w ho w ere its fervent followers— including eleven o f France’s seventeen cardinals and archbishops. B ut by then it was too late; the language o f A ction Française had entered the C hurch M ilitant, and given a certain kind o f Catholic their m arching song. W ith his colleague M aurice Pujo,51 M aurras com posed the battle hym n for his m ovem ent: TheJew having taken all, Having robbed Paris o f all she owns, Now says to France: “You belong to us alone: Obey! Down onyour knees, all o fy ouF l9

BAD FAITrt*

InsolentJew, holdyour tongue... Back to whereyou belong, Jew .. .}2 Insistence on purity o f blood was only one o f the doctrines Louis D arquier borrow ed from A ction Française. H e also adopted their fixation on genealogy; in their attachm ent to the principle o f m onarchy, m any m em bers o f A ction Française assum ed nobility, and bought, begged o r lied about ancestors w ho w ould perm it them to add a particule to their names. D enunciations o f such assum ed aristocracy by the vraie nobility were frequent, b u t Louis D arquier g o t away w ith it.53 G ascony is the region to the south and w est o f Quercy, w hose inhab­ itants are noted for their panache. Two o f the m ost popular stories o f Louis’ childhood w ere E dm ond R ostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Alex­ andre D um as’ The Three Musketeers, tales o f daring G ascons, younger sons unfavoured by the gods, m isunderstood, courageous, outspoken and heroically belligerent. W hen he appropriated his noble tide— B aron D arquier de Pellepoix— Louis took it from the D arquier nobility in G ers, Gascony, and so claim ed to be a G ascon. A natole de M onzie was a tru e G ascon, b u t Louis D arquier’s only fragile link to the region was provided by tw o o f his greatgreat-great-grandparents, a baker and his w ife o f the nam e o f D arquié o r D arquier w ho lived in the little G ascon tow n o f T ournan in the early eigh­ teenth century. T he nam e D arquier, and its variants D arquié, D archer, D arqué, A rquier and d ’A rquier, is found in state and parish registers in Toulouse and throughout m any o f the southw estern departm ents w hich surround it, including the departm ent o f G ers, ancient Gascony. In docu­ m ents and records, m any hundreds o f these D arquiers rise from the past as servants, cooks, carpenters, chair porters, plasterers, hosiers, tinsm iths, tailors, secondhand clothes dealers, hat-m akers and candle-m akers. T here was a noble family o f D arq u ier/d ’A rquié in southw est France, and it was two o f its bachelor m em bers w hom Louis purloined for him ­ self. O ne was the fam ous astronom er A ntoine D arquier de Pellepoix o f Toulouse, w ho discovered the first planetary nebula in 1779— D arquier’s N ebula.34A ntoine derived his nam e from his estate o f Pellepoix, south o f Toulouse. Louis’ great-great-grandfather was a cobbler and street p o rter at the tim e the noble D arquiers flourished in th at city, b u t a claim to being a m ere by-blow was n o t on Louis’ agenda. H e appropriated the entire

20

T H E P R I E S T ’S C H IL D R E N

d a n , and proudly added links to the bachelor B aron François Isidore D arquier, a Baron d 'E m p tn ^ N apoleonic tide. Louis w ould w ork at his noble G ascon persona as he w orked at n o th ­ ing else, and to the end continued to claim absolute p ro o f o f his noble blood. G ascons w ere know n for their boastfulness, bragging and unrelia­ bility, so th at to “faire une offre de Gascon” in French m eans to raise false hopes. Louis D arquier was thus a spiritual G ascon, if nothing else.

2 ------------------------------- < o »

i.

The Convicts’ Kin f t e r P i e r r e D a r q u i e r b e c a m e acquainted w ith his daughter-in-

A

law M yrde Jones, he w ould explain the provenance o f his son’s bride as “the pendant th at hangs on the b ottom o f A ustralia.” 1 This jewel began its E uropean life as “th at island betw een heaven and hell,”2 a place w here Britain sent its crim inals— m en, w om en, children— politically suspect persons, Irish rebels, and the im poverished dregs o f its rich earth. T he colony was nam ed Van D iem en’s Land by the D utch nav­ igator A bel Tasm an, after the governor-general o f the D utch E ast India Company, w hich sent Tasm an to explore the South Pacific in 1642. By the eighteenth century the shores o f Terra A ustralis Incognita were another batdeground in the continuing contests o f strength betw een France and Britain. T he French connection is m ost obvious in Tasm ania, w here exploratory French vessels com plete w ith artists, zoologists and scientists preceded British setdem ent and carried o u t so m uch exploration and research. M arion Bay, for instance, is nam ed after the French explorer M arion D ufresne, the first E uropean to reach the island after Tasm an. M yrde Jones grew up on an island studded w ith French nam es: Cape Tourville, Freycinet Peninsula, Cape Baudin, D ’E ntrecasteaux Channel, Bruny Island, H uon River. In 1769 the British despatched Captain C ook to the South Pacific. H e entered Botany Bay on the A ustralian m ainland in A pril 1770; later, w hen Britain was no longer able to send its convicts to its form er colonies in America, over a thousand o f them w ere sent to establish a new penal colony there.3 T he First Fleet reached B otany Bay in January 1788. Six days later the French explorer Jean-François la Pérouse arrived. T hough their countries fought five wars betw een 1701 and 1815, the French and the British passed an equable six weeks together on A ustralia’s east coast before la Pérouse sailed off, never to be seen again. 22

T H E C O N V IC T S ’ KIN

H obart, die capital o f Van D iem en’s Land, becam e Britain’s third antipodean penal setttlem ent in 1803, and in 1804 the setdem ent around L aunceston becam e a fourth. By 1825, w hen Van D iem en’s Land becam e a separate colony ruled direcdy from Britain, the island had becom e per­ haps the m ost barbarous penal establishm ent o f the British E m pire, and expressed its objection to this by renam ing itself Tasm ania two years after it received its last convict from the M other C ountry in 185 3. A ustralia was to develop as a nation divided in three, n o t tw o as in France: A nglo-A ustralians, devoted to K ing, Q ueen and Country, and others— w orkers, republicans, dream ers o f different freedom s for their N ew W orld. O verarching this division w ere, and are, the original inhabitants o f A ustralia. T heir suffering and centuries o f m istreatm ent becam e som ething every w hite A ustralian lives w ith, w ith varying degrees o f shame. A bout three o r four thousand Tasm anian A boriginals— slighdy differ­ ent physically from those o n the m ainland, being darker o f skin and curlier o f hair— w ere o n the island w hen the first convict ships cam e to land. T he island becam e a B ritish gulag o f starvation and punishm ent: dark cells and solitary confinem ent, chains and leg irons, diabolic instrum ents o f to r­ ture, horrific w ounds and the stench o f m en flogged alm ost to death tim e and tim e again. F or the A boriginals it was even worse. T hough adm on­ ished by their betters th at it was “absurd to call the Tasm anian aborigine an upright-w alking monkey, a talking brute,”4 the brutalised convicts and early settlers, victim s them selves, dem onised and hunted dow n the A b­ original Tasm anians, already ravaged by im ported E uropean diseases. T he savagery and brutality o f Van D iem en’s Land was so great that its nam e still has a sulphurous odour about it, like D evil’s Island. Carrick, the little tow n near L aunceston w here M yrtle Jones was raised, has a ghostly, faintly eerie atm osphere. By 185 3 Tasm ania’s A borig­ inals w ere all b u t exterm inated, b u t the w hite com m unities flourished: w hen Q ueen V ictoria died in 1901 and M yrtle was eight years old, Aus­ tralia had becom e a federated nation w ith a population o f nearly four mil­ lion. M yrtle’s island was always a special place. D ivided by Bass Strait from M elbourne on the m ainland’s southern coast, facing the A ntarctic below, everything about Tasm ania is slightly different from the vast conti­ nent above. Its w inters are m ild, its sum m ers generous, and it has a lim pid southern light, and naked-nose w om bats and Tasm anian D evils w hich it shares w ith now here else. 23

BAD F A IT H *

By M yrtle’s tim e free settlers, the discovery o f gold and the w ealth o f its pastures m eant th at the m ajor setdem ents o f A ustralia w ere proud and prosperous cities o f the British Em pire. B efore 1900, 80 percent o f the w hite inhabitants cam e from the B ritish Isles, w ith a sizeable p roportion o f Irish convicts and im m igrants to provide a perm anent irritan t to the British status quo. Tasm ania, isolated from the m ainland, becam e the m ost English o f the A ustralian states. T he m ountains and valleys, lakes and uninhabitable w ildernesses o f m ost o f the island are n o t conducive to this am bition, b u t the northw est is different. L aunceston’s polite parks and squares, its colonial buildings and the rolling hills and pasturelands w hich surround it, tell the visitor: “T his is A ustralia, b u t we— and you— really w ish it were England.” 5 M ainland Australians tease the islanders about their undiluted A ngloSaxon population, about inbreeding and the sim ilarity o f the island’s out­ line to the female pudenda, b u t m ost o f all for their enduring desire to hide their convict past. T he Tasm anian proverb “H ere, m en are m en, w om en are knocked up and sheep w atch their backsides,” and its convict days, w hen the island was know n as the “Isle o f Sodom ,” seem to have given birth to nostalgia for a past and a country w hich w ere never theirs. T he convicts w ho survived m ixed w ith indigent settlers to provide a collection o f eccentric rogues and bolters, reform ed felons o f question­ able virtue, lecherous prelates, ranting nonconform ists, rem ittance m en, political firebrands, Scottish evangelicals and personifications o f English gentility. T his latter species becam e the Tasm anian elite o f w hich M yrtle was an arch-representative, “so E nglish, they w ish th at E ngland could go to w ar so they could fight for her again.” Som ething like half o f all w om an convicts transported to A ustralia were sent to Van D iem en’s Land, w here m en outnum bered w om en seven to one. A bout four hundred had survived the long voyage by the 1820s, and two o f them w ere M yrtle’s ancestors— Sophia Edw ards, transported in 1800 “for feloniously stealing a silver mug,” and M ary Shea, convicted in C ounty C ork in A ugust 1816 for stealing m uslin. A fter earning her Free Certificate on 28 January 1825 M ary Shea m arried W illiam Saggers, sen­ tenced to transportation at M iddlesex in 1798; their fifth child. M yrtle’s grandm other Elizabeth, was b orn in 1826. Pardoned at the same tim e as M ary Shea and W illiam Saggers was the ebullient B ritton Jones, w ho arrived in Van D iem en’s Land in 1820. A w aterm an by trade, he was sentenced to seven years at B ristol Q uarter *4

T H E C O N V IC T S ’ KIN

Sessions on 14 July 1817 for stealing a piece o f lead.6 In 1822, still serving his sentence, Jones m arried Sophia K irk, the daughter o f Sophia Edw ards and another convict, M atthew K irk. Sophia K irk was the thirteenth w hite girl b o m o n the island. T his collection o f form er “incorrigibles” was, like Louis D arquier’s ancestors, m ostly illiterate. T he island becam e infam ous as the “dust-hole” o f Britain. “D runk­ enness, especially, was all b u t universal.” By 1825, w hen B ritton Jones becam e a free m an, there was only one church in L aunceston, w here the clanking o f convicts’ chains disturbed the A nglican congregation, but thirty taverns— the C at and Fiddle, the Jolly Sailor, the H elp M e T hrough the W orld: nam es o f jollity and hope. T his was w here Jones was to make his m oney; he becam e one o f the earliest brew ers and innkeepers in Launceston. A fine swearer, boozer and adventurer, in 183 3 he called his public house the Sir W illiam Wallace, a good rebellious Scots nam e, even though Jones claim ed to be W elsh and proud o f it. T hese early Tasm anian pothouses, exuding fum es o f tobacco and erupting w ith “shrieks o f pas­ sion,” oaths and laughter, in w hich prostitutes like Fat C atherine and Car­ roty K ate earned their keep, m eant th at prelates o f every persuasion descended upon Van D iem en’s Land to inject the w ord o f G od o r sprin­ kle holy w ater upon the sinful. A part from depravity and rum , w haling and sealing w ere the staffs o f island life; b u t B ritton Jones looked to property and the land, and becam e a prosperous farm er and livestock breeder. In 1838 he built for him self w hat was to becom e one o f Tasm ania’s stately hom es, Franklin H ouse, a confident G eorgian construction now open to the public. A few years later he sealed the status o f his progeny by bestow ing land for the erec­ tion o f a church and school. Sophia Jones m eanw hile had eight children, and m any o f these had even m ore. T hree o f the Jones children m arried children o f William Sag­ gers, and one o f these couples, E lizabeth Saggers and B ritton’s eldest son, W illiam “T iger” Jones, w ere M yrde’s grandparents. E lizabeth had nine children, in tw enty years, and died at the age o f forty-five. A year later William Jones, a farm ing m an, propertied and w ell-to-do like his father, m arried again. T his second m arriage produced a further six children, and the vast brood setded around Launceston, so th at even now Joneses are thick on the ground. In 1864, five years before the birth o f Pierre D arquier in Cahors, Myr­ de’s father H enry was born. M any o f the family lives have been recorded *5

BAD F A I T H

in a booklet. Keeping up with theJoneses, w ritten by one o f B ritton’s descen­ dants. T he genteel aspirations o f A nglo-A ustralia, later im m ortalised by Barry H um phries, flourish in this w hitew ashed account in w hich B ritton Jones, their onlie begetter and a m an n o t to be asham ed of, is described as the son o f a B ristol p o rtrait painter to G eorge III, w ho once had a letter from Q ueen V ictoria.7 Today, for m ost Australians a convict ancestor is the equivalent o f royal blood, b u t in this family history all M yrde’s convict ancestors are portrayed as adventurous pioneers w ho “cam e ashore” o r “landed” o r “setded” in Van D iem en’s Land. T here is n o t a w ord about convict ship o r chain gang. M yrde grew up at a tim e w hen fantasy was already well in the air, and m any incrim inating records o f convict ancestry w ere rem oved from state archives and destroyed. T he price paid for such pretensions in Launceston, as in Cahors, was an anxious silence about anything that m ight dam age a family nam e so recendy acquired. T he Jones family encountered a m ore severe form o f gentility w hen H enry Jones— H arry— m arried M yrde’s m other, A lexandrina— Lexie— M orrison in 1891 according to the rites and cerem onies o f the Free Church o f Scodand, later know n as the “Wee Frees.”8 Lexie’s m aternal grandm other A nn MacLeay, an indigent crofter’s widow, brought this harsh fundam entalist faith from the rem ote island o f N o rth U ist in the W estern Isles o f Scodand in 185 5, and she also brought three o f her six children w ith her— Colin (farm labourer), M urdoch (ploughm an) and A nn (housem aid). T he follow ing year A nn the housem aid m arried another hardy Scot from the W estern Isles, D onald M orrison, a school­ teacher and small farm er, w ho arrived in L aunceston w ith his violin in 1840. T he Wee Frees are zealous Calvinistic Christians, fiery preachers, often in the Gaelic, and their flock keep them selves to them selves, upright folk, careful, dedicated to the professions and to teaching in particular. A nn MacLeay M orrison, her Wee Free grandm other, lived until M yrde was twenty-three. T he fortress against sin constructed by followers o f the Wee Free persuasion, m ade up o f strict opinions about the Sabbath, Pop­ ery, gam bling, alcohol and dancing, together w ith a grim view o f wom en's lot, was certainly shaken w hen Lexie m arried H arry.9 T he Joneses’ w orld o f brewers, hoteliers and graziers extended to the T u rf and Racing Club in H arry’s case, because he was a fine horsem an, a noted judge and breeder o f horses w ho trained and raced his ow n T horoughbreds and 26

T H E C O N V I C T S ’ j£IN

was an avid racing m an. A ccording to M yrtle, in her family “the M other is always Sacred,” and Lexie seem s to have w on the day w ith m ost o f their progeny, w ho, at least outwardly, becam e pillars o f respectability. M yrtle, w ho did n o t, was b orn on 26 N ovem ber 1893, as sum m er began, at Freshw ater P oint, o n the Tam ar River eight miles n o rth o f L aunceston, just as P ierre D arquier was graduating as a doctor in Paris. T his lovely old colonial hom estead, encircled by verandahs, w ith lawns sloping dow n to the banks o f the river, is a place o f beauty exceeding any­ thing offered by the rue du Tapis V ert o r the rue du Lycée. In the follow­ ing year H arry purchased his first property at Carrick, eleven miles from L aunceston, and later bought again, calling his house and estate Arm idale. Carrick is a rural tow nship— o f about three hundred people in M yrtle’s tim e— set on the River Liffey. T here was a great deal o f w ealth am ongst the “Families o f L aunceston”; the rich grazing land produced som e o f the b est m erino w ool in A ustralia in those days. To w ool and w heat H arry added stockbreeding. Like Pierre D arquier he becam e a notable o f his district, and his business dealings and positions w ere so num erous th at by 1927, w hen Louis D arquier m et M yrde, his “Yankee style” heiress, he was easily able to check on H arry’s w ealth by consulting the L aunceston directory. H arry and the tall and handsom e Lexie had nine children: M yrde was the second. As a child M yrde was neither pretty n o r otherw ise, just a female version o f her m any siblings, w ith good wide eyes and dark hair. H er personality m ade up for any physical inadequacies, and her w arm th and vivacity w ere qualities she was never to lose, just as Lexie, how ever far she m oved into the A nglican establishm ent, always rem ained the daugh­ ter o f her careful Scots parents. “I was brought up,” M yrde’s younger sister Olive w rote in 1991, “in the early p art o f this century w hen values and principles w ere h ig h . . . T hat seldom heard w ord ‘self-discipline’ was encouraged and expected. Bad language and vulgarity w ere n o t perm itted in our house.” 10 D isci­ pline, rectitude, duty and concern for education and social position seem to have form ed the circum ference o f Lexie’s life. She m ade her children’s clothes, taught them m usic, gave them their lessons; they were raised to be “true believers in C hristian principles.” As the “children o f the big house” they w ere kept away from the tow nship and, like the D arquier boys, each Jones child was encouraged always to be top o f their form . By the tim e H arry m oved his family into the house he built at A rm i*7

BAD F A I T H

dale, Car rick’s heyday as an im portant grain tow n had given way, along w ith the bushrangers, poachers and riffraff o f earlier days, to graziers and pastoralists w ho lived w ith the inhabitants o f C arrick in the English way— they em ployed them , b u t did n o t m ix w ith them socially. O n Sun­ days Lexie com bined hymns around the piano w jth attendance at St. A ndrew ’s Anglican church, taking her children there on a route w hich avoided the tow nship. H ere too the Jones children w ent to Sunday school, sang in the choir, o r played on the sm all organ, transported from the crypt o f St. Paul’s Cathedral in L ondon, encased in E nglish oak, a relic o f “H om e.” E xcept for the m ill-ow ning M onds family, the o th er pastoralists o f the district and the rectory, there was little com pany, although there w ere plenty o f children the Jones clan could have played w ith had vulgarity n o t been an issue. Carrick still had all the usual requirem ents o f a sm all A us­ tralian country town: w ide gravel roads, gum trees, w atdes, neat litde cot­ tages o f brick and w eatherboard, hotels lining the m ain street, a police station, a school, two churches, a Public H all and M onds Roller Mills, w hich dom inated and gave w ork to the tow n. M yrtle’s incapacity to earn her living may well have com e from seeing the m otto o f this enterprise on the factory flourbags every day o f her young life— “W ork C onquers All.” E ven today there are horses everyw here in Carrick. T hen, the big race days on Boxing D ay and Q ueen V ictoria’s birthday w ere highlights o f the Carrick year. T here was a Carrick H unt, com plete w ith pink coats, bugles and tally-hos, a T u rf Club and a racecourse. H arry Jones was treasurer, clerk o f the scales and secretary o f the W est Tam ar Race Club, and his horses w on m ore races at Carrick and throughout n o rth ern Tasm ania than those o f any other owner. All the Jones children w ere taught to ride, but M yrtle particularly seems to have been her father’s child. She insisted that one o f her num erous uncles teach her show jum ping, and she raced one o f her father’s horses at the annual L aunceston Show, and won. A rm idale was in its way the m anor o f Carrick, a large w ooden Feder­ ation house, set am ongst trees and reached by an im posing avenue o f poplars and pines. T he River Iiffe y bordered the property, and the house, com plete w ith running w ater and one o f the first telephones in the dis­ trict, had a charm ing landscaped garden rolling dow n from its handsom e verandah to a w andering picket fence. T here w ere clim bing roses and lilac trees, sham rocks and daffodils, orchards and stables. W eeping willows lined the banks o f the Liffey, w here the children paddled and swam. Lexie 28

T H E C O N V I C T S * 0 LIN

looked after the basse cour 2nd dairy, and until 1912, w hen H arry acquired one o f the first m otorcars in die district, drove a horse and buggy into L aunceston to do h er shopping. As the daughter o f a Scots dom inie, above all Lexie was am bitious for her children, w hose o u td o o r life and access to the racetrack w ere bal­ anced by her passion for education and for music. T he Jones children w ere taught to play and to sing, and to forge useful social contacts; they Were n o t perm itted to attend the village school, b u t they w ere allowed to encounter the tow nspeople at Carrick penny concerts, w here M yrtle and her brothers w ould play and sing the songs o f the day, poetic— “Believe M e, if All T hose E ndearing Y oung Charm s,” “Com e into the G arden, M aud”— and m usic hall— “My G randfather’s Clock,” “Two Little G irls in Blue,” and o f course “Soldiers o f the Q ueen.” In the tow n there were shows and com petitions, concert artistes in the Public H all, and dances w here M yrtle could play fo r the m atrons o f Carrick, “in long flowing gow ns gliding gracefully to the strains o f a waltz o r Pride o f E rin.” O th ­ erwise, the Jones children grew up behind the picket fence o f Arm idale. Olive rem em bered: “My w onderful m other gave us our lessons every m orning and for the rest o f the day we w ere free as the fresh air we breathed. We w andered and walked all over the place, visiting our makebelieve friends. We rarely played w ith other children, and at the table we spoke w hen we w ere spoken to.” 11 N o t opening one’s m outh seem s to have been as im portant at Lexie’s A rm idale as it was in Louise D arquier’s rue du Lycée. M yrtle’s w orld o f fantasy was nurtured here. W hile the larrikin children o f Carrick enjoyed real A ustralian childhoods o f bush and river, birds like flying jewellery in the skies above, the Jones children w ere placed in the best schools: the boys in the A nglican L aunceston C hurch G ram m ar School, and the girls in M ethodist Ladies’ College, w hich sent them on the way to university and propertied gentility. E xcept for M yrtle and her brother Will, the nextborn. M yrtle boarded at Miss W indeatt’s m odest little private school in Launceston, w here m anners and deportm ent w ere the order o f the day. For W ill, the F irst W orld War was to be his education. All the Jones girls w ere musical, b u t M yrtle was exceptional. A t the piano she could capti­ vate the w orld; the instrum ent cam e alive under her flying fingers as she played and sang. From the earliest days o f E uropean settlem ent w hite A ustralians loved m usic, loved to sing and play it, thronged to touring opera and the29

« BAD F A I T H

atre com panies. L aunceston in M yrtle’s tim e was m ore populous than Cahors, but still a sm all country tow n. By the tu rn o f the century its vast V ictorian A lbert Hall held audiences o f a thousand o r m ore for its Patri­ otic C oncerts and those o f “the Tasm anian N ightingale” Am y Sherwin, and especially N ellie M elba. M elba, A ustralia’s national heroine, toured the country twice during M yrde’s childhood, in 1902 and 1909, m obbed w herever she w ent. T his was the age o f operetta, especially o f G ilbert and Sullivan’s Savoy operas, w hich first came M yrde’s way w ith L aunceston O peratic Society’s enthusiastic perform ances o f H M S Pinafore and The Pirates o f Penance. M yrtle was an exception in h er family in m any ways: she was theatrical and outgoing, quite untouched by Presbyterian habits o f thrift, industry and tem perance. By 1912 Lexie was spending her weeks in a L aunceston house so that the younger children could attend their schools m ore easily. Perhaps Myr­ tle left hom e then. By 1916 her older brothers. H ector and V ernon, w ere b oth w orking on the m ainland; the boat trip from L aunceston to M el­ bourne is short, and it seems that M yrtle took it before H arry Jones sold A rm idale and m oved w hat was left o f his family into Launceston. H ow M yrtle becam e an actress and singer, and why and w hen she left hom e, rem ain mysteries, b u t by 1916 she was gone across the water. She was twenty-two. W hen she m arried in 1923 she signed herself as “Sandra Lindsay, A ctress.” A nne D arquier told m e her m other was a singer, and next to his bed Louis D arquier always kept a cheeky Edw ardian ph o to o f “Sandra” in a bathing suit, posing w ith her stockings rolled dow n her thighs in the postcard m anner o f the tim e. It seem s a fair guess th at w hen M yrtle left hom e she perhaps took som e classes— in piano, acting o r perform ing— and tried her luck on the stage. M yrtle was never abandoned by her parents: quite the opposite— they never ceased to fret about her. Louis w ould cause the death o f m any thousands, b u t these deeds seem never to have been acknow ledged by the Jones siblings in Australia. F or them , M yrtle achieved undream ed-of heights, and their h o rro r o f anyone investigating her life intim ates that som e o f them , at least, knew w hat Louis D arquier did, and w hat M yrtle Jones accepted and approved. T he youngest o f M yrtle’s sisters, H eather, w rote a record o f M yrtle and Louis’ lives. T hat M yrtle called herself an actress, th at she drank— was in fact an alcoholic, m ost probably from her tw enties— and th at she 30

THE CONVICTS’ £ I N

alm ost certainly had a drug habit too, are glossed over in family accounts o f her w onderful later life as a real E uropean baroness, living in the fabled land o f “abroad.” T heir M yrde was a creature w hose vibrant personality was litde suited to their small island, a sister w ho could only flourish on a larger stage, and w ho happily found this in a great, aristocradc E uropean love affair. T he convict B ritton Jones offered his descendants m uch to be proud of; instead it was M yrde’s life th at was the fairy tale for the Jones family. In fact M yrde knew m ore o f the constancy o f love, physical com fort and financial security in her Tasm anian years than she was ever to know again. T he D arquiers o f C ahors w ere by no m eans as blind o r as loving as the Jones family o f Launceston. O therw ise the tw o families had m uch in com m on. T heir unsteady hold on social respectability and professional achievem ent dem anded silence, the forgetting o f disturbing facts, and gave b irth to children w ho escaped into fantasy worlds, and there w rought havoc.

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-v

Soldier’s Heart

T

h e G r e a t W a r o f 1914—18 began w ith a roar o f patriotism as

France and G reat Britain, w ith their em pires and their allies Rus­ sia and Belgium, confronted G erm any and its allies, the A ustroH ungarian and the O ttom an Em pires. M any o th er nations w ere sucked into its maw, and by its end nearly nine m illion m en w ere dead, m illions m ore were missing, tw enty m illion m ore w ounded, disfigured, m utilated, gassed. M ost w ere young m en o f Louis D arquier’s generation. W hen w ar broke out in A ugust 1914, all French m en aged betw een tw enty and fortyeight were called up and m arched away to the glorious adventure, “the purifying war.” 1E ven the extrem ist Catholic press, and Charles M aurras— rejoicing because the object o f his unrem itting vituperation, the French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, had been assassinated by a fanatic on the eve o f w ar— united behind the republic in a Union Sacrée, a sacred union. Louise w anted both her elder sons to becom e doctors. Louis was a sturdy fellow by now, the tallest o f the D arquier m en. Jean graduated from the Lycée G am betta in the sum m er o f 1913, bedecked w ith honours in philosophy. In Septem ber 1914 Louis’ equal success in Latin, sciences and m aths took him to Toulouse to join his b ro th er as a student in the Faculté des Sciences. In the years before the war. A ction Française had spread throughout France w ith its rituals and m eetings, its groups, sections and student branches. Its young royalists, the Cam elots du Roi, w ent on the streets to sell the m ovem ent’s new spaper and, as w andering bands arm ed w ith bludgeons and lead-tipped canes, did the m ovem ent’s dirty w ork, creating incidents and adm inistering beatings— actions described as just “ fooling about” by L a Défense. They were also m uch given to surprising their ene­ mies by slapping their faces in public. N either Jean n o r Louis belonged to A ction Française at this point. 32

soldier ’s he ^ t

though they w ould certainly have heard o f the noisy activities o f its Cam elots, m any o f them fellow students in the faculties o f science and m edicine. B oth brothers studied for the Certificat de Licence ès Sciences, the PC N — Physics, Chem istry, N atural Sciences— the entrance exam ination required to study m edicine in France. Jean passed. Louis failed his chem ­ istry exam ination, giving Louise “sleepless nights o f w orrying about him .” Pierre D arquier, forty-five in 1914, was m obilised im m ediately as a m ajor and chief m edical officer. Posted to an am bulance service, he was attached to those first arm ies sent to w ar by cheering crowds, to the singing o f the “Marseillaise” and cries o f “ Vive la France!” Inspired by the fervent w ish to avenge the defeat o f 1870, they believed the w ar w ould be over in a few weeks. W ithin a m onth Pierre w itnessed the near victory o f the G erm an arm y as it m ade for Paris and the French and British arm ies fought to push it back. F rom A ugust to N ovem ber 1914 he followed the battles o f the G uise, the M arne, the Aisne and the Y ser in Belgium, treat­ ing the w ounded and the colum ns o f exhausted m en in fields and tow ns w hich w ere to be fought over again and again— Ypres, Passchendaele, M essines, the ridge o f the Chem in des D am es.2 A s the hope o f early victory disappeared, the scale o f suffering becam e clear. A rm s, legs, heads and bodies cut o r blow n to pieces were strew n over the fields and along the roads, often dw arfed by team s o f bloated dead horses. Soldiers fought alongside, on top o f and surrounded by corpses and fragm ents o f corpses. T hunderous offensive confronted counteroffensive, and furious fighting alternated w ith stalem ate. Trench w arfare began, and w ith it the intensity o f sound w hich m arks all the descriptions o f this w ar— the m oans and cries o f m en w ounded and dying, the stuttering and thunder o f rifles and w hizzbangs, m achine guns and how itzers. W orse, p ast hum an im agining, was the destruction o f hum an flesh w hich Pierre D arquier saw— the hideous w ounds o f the sol­ diers in this first m echanised war, and the carnage o f batde on a scale hitherto unknow n. In 1916 H enri Barbusse, the French w riter called “the Z ola o f the trenches,” w rote in his best seller L e Feu {Under Fire): “This w ar m eans dreadful, superhum an exhaustion, w ater up to your belly, and m ud, and grim e and unspeakable filth. It m eans rotting faces and flesh in tatters, and corpses th at no longer even look like bodies floating on the surface o f the voracious earth.”3 Pierre D arquier had n o t qualified as a surgeon, b u t in w ar he becam e one; his experience o f the suffering o f the troops at the front was to end 33

BAD F A I T H

w ith the first battle for Ypres. H e had left C ahors in A ugust 1914 a pros­ perous and jolly doctor-m ayor; o n 18 N ovem ber he was evacuated to D unkirk, prosaically w ith sciatica, b u t he had seen enough o f this new kind o f w arfare to tu rn him into the “cow ard” his son Louis considered him to be. “T he French Army, w ith a m obilised strength o f tw o m illion, had suffered by far the w orst. Its losses in Septem ber, killed, w ounded, m issing and prisoners, exceeded 200,000, in O ctober eighty thousand and in N ovem ber seventy thousand; the A ugust losses, never officially revealed, may have exceeded 160,000. Fatalities reached the extraordinary total o f 306,000.. .”4 As w inter set in Pierre was posted to Tours, w here, attached to a mili­ tary nursing hom e, he was in charge o f deciding w hether w ounded sol­ diers w ere fit enough to return to the front. Som ething vaguely sham eful about his attitude to the war, m urm ured about in Cahors, m uttered about m ore forcefully by Louis later, could well have been his over-generosity in diagnosis. In January 1915, Louise joined him . In Tours she socialised, vis­ ited the chateaux o f the Loire, em broidered, and sum m oned pears, eggs, truffles and services from those w ho did h er bidding in Cahors. Louis and Jean joined their parents in Tours, and in July 1915 b o th enlisted at the H ôtel de Ville. T he seventeen-year-old Louis belonged to the class o f 1917— that is, he w ould have been called up fo r m ilitary service in th at year— b u t instead he volunteered tw o years early. T he French arm y accepted underage volunteers, b u t they had to be eighteen before they could fig h t Young m en w ho knew their way about som etim es volun­ teered early in order to avoid being sent direcdy to the infantry, w here casualties w ere atrocious in the trenches. Joining as an underage volunteer also m eant training courses and better preparation to becom e an officer. All this w orked for Louis. By February 1916 his b ro th er Jean was serving as a gunner in the 18th A rtillery Regim ent under G eneral Pétain, in the first m onths o f the batde for V erdun, “on the fro n t line in the bat­ tery, crouched at the bottom o f a hole.” Louise was beside herself. Jean was “in a regim ent w here we know no one”; she did n o t w ant her sons to be com m on soldiers—■poilus. She w rote: “Pierre has heard details from injured soldiers com ing back from V erdun and they all agree th at since the beginning they have never seen such scenes. T he ground in the trenches trem bles constandy and the soldiers say it is like a train rushing by right next to them w ith sudden jolts and trem ors. You can im agine. . .” 5 A m illion m en w ere killed o r w ounded at Verdun. Jean exacerbated 34

soldier ’s heart

the state o f Louise’s nerves w ith letters from m id-battle, as did Pierre, w ho horrified her by applying to serve again at the front. A natole de M onzie visited the D arquiers in Tours and caused m ore pessim ism and gloom , reducing Louise to “a state o f m adness.” She was alm ost as con­ cerned th at her boys should join the b est regim ents as that they should survive. She w anted Louis to go into the artillery, b u t found it im possible to arrange. T he F irst W orld W ar was, in its first years, a w ar o f m en and horses. T hough tanks and dism ounted action took over as the w ar p ro­ gressed, horses pulled the field guns and heavy cavalry was still used. France fielded over 100,000 cavalry, still accoutred in the m agnificent cos­ tum es o f N apoleon’s tim e, still trained for m ounted com bat. “T he idea o f Louis in the cavalry fills m e w ith dread,” Louise w rote, b u t Louis, always in love w ith uniform s, joined the 5th Cavalry Regim ent as a Cuirassier Second Class. Louise delivered him personally, “very nervous,” to the instruction centre for officer cadets at St.-Cyr. By D ecem ber 1915 he had com pleted his initial training and had advanced to Cuirassier F irst Class. H e applied to train as an officer, b u t this was to be a second disappointm ent: he came eighty-eighth o u t o f an intake o f 128, n o t a position any D arquier boy was used to. H is superiors adm ired his strength, energy, stam ina and intelli­ gence, judged him to be “m ore energetic than punctual, b u t should go far if he is well guided,” b u t found his character “slightly weak.”6 A year after enlisting, he had n o t yet engaged in batde. In July 1916 he was appointed first corporal, then sergeant in the 3rd Cavalry Regim ent, as handsom ely costum ed as the 5th, and he finally becam e a cadet officer on 1 August. H e was now ready for war. T he first battle o f the Som m e had already begun. ----------------------------- cA o-----------------------------

In Septem ber 1915, tw o m onths after Jean and Louis had enlisted in Tours, Will Jones w ent from Carrick to the tow n o f Clarem ont, near H o b art— he was twenty, eighteen m onths younger than M yrtle— and, w ith the approval o f H enry and Lexie, enlisted in the A ustralian Im perial Force, the A IR N early half a m illion A ustralians volunteered to fight for Britain and the E m pire, and m ost o f them m ade the long journey over the seas to fight for “H om e.” A ustralian soldiers o f the G reat War came to be know n as A nzacs, the initials o f the A ustralian and N ew Zealand A rm y 35

BAD F A I T H

C orps w ho fought o n the G allipoli peninsula alongside m en from India, France and Britain in early 1915. G allipoli dom inates popular A ustralian m em ory o f die F irst W orld War, although alm ost three tim es as m any B ritish, and m ore French than A ustralian, soldiers w ere slaughtered there. B ut their real graveyard is in France and Flanders, w here A ustralian soldiers— called “diggers” because so m any form er gold-diggers w ere in the early arm y units— dug, fought and died in the horrific trenches o f the W estern F ro n t G unner Jones, soldier num ber 8911, H ow itzer Brigade o f the A m m u­ nition Colum n, 2nd D ivision o f the A IF, stood five feet seven inches tall, had green eyes, was a m em ber o f the C hurch o f E ngland and set sail from M elbourne two weeks before his sister M yrtle’s tw enty-second birthday. Before he left for the front. Will popped into M iss W indeatt’s school in Launceston, to say goodbye to his younger sisters. T he school rose to farewell him by singing the national anthem . Two m onths later his ship reached Suez; then, after three m onths’ training in Egypt, the A ustralian soldiers joined the B ritish E xpeditionary Force at Alexandria. In M arch 1916 they w ere shipped to M arseille and sent on by train to the battlefields. W ill joined the 4th Field A rtillery Brigade just in tim e for the first battle o f the Som m e, w hich had begun on i July, the day on w hich the B ritish arm y walked steadily into barrages o f G erm an m achine-gun fire, w ith the loss o f som e sixty thousand m en. W hen Pierre D arquier served as a do cto r at the front, the only h o rro r he did n o t w itness was poison gas, first used by the G erm ans in A pril 1915. O therw ise he knew perfecdy well w hat his sons m ight endure, Jean at V erdun, Louis in the trenches. As it turned out, it was Will Jones w ho got the w orst o f it. T he first battle o f the Som m e lasted for a litde over four m onths, and over a m illion m en w ere killed, w ent m issing o r were w ounded. In to this inferno Will Jones’s division and the 2nd A IF descended in the last week o f July 1916. Louis D arquier was a fine horse­ m an, Will Jones a better one, b u t this was a skill Will could use only in pulling the how itzers and m obile guns o f field artillery. H e was a gunner, subject to the barrage o f fire that often drove m en m ad. H e had tw o weeks o f norm al life left to him. Will fought at the batde o f Pozières in the departm ent o f the Somme. T he litde village o f Pozières was razed to the ground in July and A ugust 1916. Tw enty-three thousand A ustralian officers and m en w ere killed o r w ounded there w ithin five weeks. As one A ustralian soldier w rote: “O ne 36

soldier ’s heart

feels on a battlefield like this th at one can never survive, o r that if the body holds, the brain m ust go forever.”7 Will was gassed on his twentyfirst birthday— 13 A ugust 1916—-but was back at the front four days later. H e was gassed again on 29 O ctober in the assault on the Transloy Line and adm itted to hospital. T he num ber o f tim es he had been gassed now qualified him as w ounded and w on him a trip in a hospital ship to Blighty. -------------------------- cto

A t this tim e, Louis’ cavalry regim ent was near the front, b u t in reserve, helping w ith the harvest near Beauvais. Cavalry divisions w ere o f little use in the exploding w orld o f flying bom bs and earth, sm oke and shrapnel o f the Som m e, and Louis’ youth still protected him . As Will left for England, Louis’ regim ent m oved from behind the lines to take its tu rn in the trenches at Vailly, along the Chem in des D am es, the ridge above the A isne originally built by Louis X V as a pleasure path, now the sector o f the fro n t w hich stretched from Rheim s to Soissons. As a cadet officer, only eighteen years old, Louis was back at base cam p doing stable guard ser­ vice. M isbehaviour began im m ediately— “eight days o f ‘open arrest’ ” for “kicking a horse.” T he U nited States declared w ar on G erm any as the French 3rd Cav­ alry m oved tow ards the fro n t as p art o f G eneral N ivelle’s new offensive o f A pril 1917, along the Chem in des D am es. In May, Louis’ regim ent was in the trenches near Rheim s, and saw violent action. N ineteen o f the 3rd Cavalry’s “officers and m en w ho displayed brilliant conduct during the H un’s offensive o f 30 July against the Prunay trenches” received the Croix de G uerre in July. Louis was n o t am ong them , b u t he shattered his m other by reporting th at his best friend in the regim ent had been killed. A lthough there w ere fewer horses at the front now, and cavalrymen were being sent to fight in the trenches o r m oved to tank o r artillery brigades, his cavalry regim ent was still a place o f relative safety. In 1917 the French arm y was losing thirteen thousand m en a m onth. In eight m onths o f fierce w arfare, Louis’ regim ent suffered ten deaths and forty w ounded. Well before then, Louis had had enough o f horses and uniform s and stables behind the lines. D uring the w orst days o f the battle for V erdun in 1916, G eneral Pétain had provided the French people w ith their great sym bolic victory o f the G reat War, and its patriotic cry: “They shall n o t pass!” Following the disastrous failure o f G eneral N ivelle’s A pril 37

BAD F A I T H

offensive, Pétain replaced him as com m ander-in-chief o f the French army. B ut th at m onth French soldiers, enraged by decreasing success, p o o r food, no rest, and the endless m ud, rain and cold, rats and lice, cou­ pled w ith the overpow ering tedium o f w aiting fo r alm ost certain death and their distrust o f the generals w ho sent them to it, began to mutiny. Few soldiers w ere unaffected by the violence and disobedience, although it was m osdy the infantry, entrenched in appalling conditions along the front, w ho raised their voices against their leaders. In A ugust 1917 Louis refused to carry o u t an order and gave a ridiculous excuse, resulting in four m ore days o f single arrest. W hile he was having a w retched w ar inactive behind the lines, his father was prom oted and m oved to Paris, to the arm y discharge centre at C lignancourt, still certify­ ing the w ounded as unfit for service. Everyone w ho w orked w ith P ierre D arquier in the arm y during these w ar years gave a good rep o rt o f him — “sw eet tem pered, highly intelli­ gent” was a typical com m ent— and in Septem ber he was appointed chief m edical officer to the G arde Républicaine, the elite corps o f defenders o f the president o f the republic and the French state.8 Louise did n o t regret leaving Tours for Paris and a rented apartm ent in the avenue de Clichy. “T here are n o t even any victories to speak of,” she w rote from Tours. She was “reading books about B yzantium . . . m aking m yself tw o m uffs w ith som e old fur.” T he m utinies continued. T he fears o f the French high com m and, including Pétain, o f Bolshevik anarchy w ere exacerbated by the revolu­ tion in Russia o f N ovem ber 1917. Pétain restored order by im proving conditions in the trenches for his poilus, b u t som e soldiers w ere arrested and tried, a few w ere sent to D evil’s Island, and few er w ere shot. Louis m ade his escape. H e applied for transfer to the artillery in O ctober, and by the tim e he turned tw enty on 19 D ecem ber 1917, his com m anding officer had sent him o ff for training w ith the follow ing assessm ent: “excellent background, good m ilitary m ind, excellent behaviour, intelligent and well educated. Should be highly suitable for a position o f com m and although still shows signs o f a slighdy weak character for his young age.”9 ------------------------------------0A0

W hen Will Jones’ hospital ship arrived in E ngland in N ovem ber 1916 he was diagnosed as suffering from “debility,” a w ord to be used over and ?8

s o l d i e r ’s

heart

again about him , som etim es interspersed w ith “sick in field”— the latter often caused by the sten ch and sight o f unburied, m utilated o r decom ­ posing corpses, bones and hum an parts. D uring the G reat War “debility” was “often the result o f repeated acute states o f exhaustion,” w hich som etim es led to D .A .H . (disordered action o f the heart), effort syn­ drom e, stress, panic attacks caused by fear— “soldier’s heart.” 10 For the next eight m onths Will was treated in hospitals, convalescent hom es and Australian retraining centres. H e m anaged to add m um ps to his debility, b u t by June 1917 he had been set sufficiently upright to be sent back to the front. T his tim e he fought in Belgium, in the sea o f m ud w hich was the third batde o f Ypres, o r Passchendaele. W hile Louis was kicking horses behind the lines. Will was transferred to the 2nd D ivision Signal Com pany as a sapper. From Septem ber to O ctober his division fought through the bat­ tle o f the M enin Road, at B roodseinde Ridge and Passchendaele. As the pelting O ctober rains cam e dow n, in these hopeless encounters, fought up to the w aist in the deep swam p o f the flooded landscape, small victories brought vast losses: there w ere thirty-eight thousand casualties in the Aus­ tralian divisions alone, m any o f them drow ned in subm erged shellholes. Will was arrested for drunkenness: he spent seven days in the clink, and on the day he was released he was gassed again, and again the day after. A fellow soldier recorded: “T he p o o r creatures w ere b lin d . . . suf­ fering great pain in their throats and stom ach,” as “helpless as babies.” 11 O n 31 O ctober, as his division was w ithdraw n for rest. Will was invalided once m ore to England. A gain he spent nearly eight m onths there being reconstructed for the fro n t.12 Louis D arquier was luckier. U ntil 1918 he had spent m ost o f his tim e in training o r behind the lines. In his m onth o f preparation for the artillery at Fontainebleau, just outside Paris, Louis did well. H e was appointed cor­ poral, then sergeant: “calm and thoughtful,” the reports said, “energetic and frill o f drive,” and he cam e tw enty-ninth out o f 159 young cadets. N ow he was to fight as Will Jones had, in the thick o f it. In February 1918 he was posted as an officer to the 49èm e Régim ent d ’A rtillerie de Cam­ pagne, the 49th Field A rtillery Regim ent, and the following m onth he reached the front at last. By this tim e artillery was m ore accurate, o f bet­ ter quality, in better supply. T he G erm an arm y was alm ost exhausted, and now it faced a unified enemy. G eneral Ferdinand Foch was appointed com m ander-in-chief o f all 39

BAD F A I T H *

Allied forces in A pril 1918. T he Allies w ere helped by im proved resources, technological advances in com m unications and w eaponry, tanks and aero­ planes, and, at long last, troops from the U nited States. Pétain was n o t happy w ith the idea o f a unified com m and. H e resented Foch’s appoint­ m ent and w anted to retain A m erican troops under his control. Vain and pessim istic, he saw U.S. C om m ander-in-C hief G eneral Jo h n J. Pershing as inexperienced, and him self as “a great m an.” 15 In Paris, Louise stood at the w indow s o f h er apartm ent, w atched the first air bom bardm ents and agonised. B oth her sons w ere at the fro n t Louis joined his unit, the 6th B attery o f the 49th, at Toul near N ancy on 10 M arch, and two days later G eneral Pétain arrived to review the regi­ m ent, to present the m en w ith souvenirs o f his visit, and form ally to prom ise its officers the honorary insignia o f the Fourragère after the w ar.14 Louis’ regim ent fought in the second battle o f the Som m e through­ out A pril 1918, at M oreuil to the east o f H angard W ood, alongside W ill’s division, p art o f the A ustralian corps w hich halted the G erm an advance at V illers-Bretonneux. Will, m eanw hile, was convalescing in W eymouth. This was a com bined French and B ritish attack; French posts next to British, Australians, Canadians and N ew Zealanders, fighting close to the enemy. T he second Som m e battle was no longer only stalem ate trench warfare, b u t also hand-to-hand fighting under continuous heavy fire and shelling, in copses, w oods and gullies, using bayonets, revolvers and bom bs. T here w ere heavy losses and hideous shrapnel w ounds, and “the w hole countryside was literally drenched w ith gas.” 15 I t was m ustard gas now, and Louis was in the m êlée o f death and m utilation, fighting am ong the first G erm an and British confrontations by tank attack. H e was m en­ tioned in despatches for his bravery in com bat at H angard-en-Santerre on 9 A pril, although the w rist w ound he later added to his career details was too slight to be m entioned in his regim ent’s daily journal.16 Louis had perform ed well, and in July was prom oted to second lieu­ tenant. A m onth earlier his regim ent had m oved on to take p art in the sec­ ond battle o f the M arne, around the M ontagne de Rheim s w here the last G erm an offensive was to begin. Fighting in support o f Allied troops along the Somme, Louis reached the Rheim s sector, w here C orporal A dolf H itler’s regim ent was p art o f the massive G erm an assault. Will Jones rejoined his unit on the Som m e in July, as it prepared to take p art in the battle o f Amiens. 40

s o l d i e r ’s h e a r t

♦

Louis fought on until the end o f A ugust, w hen his unit was pulled from the front, and^n Septem ber he w ent on leave to stay w ith his parents in Paris. In her letters w ritten to Cahors throughout the war, though she is always concerned about Jean, a m edical auxiliary now — often at the front line, often under fire, often ill— it is Louis, “my second lieutenant,” about w hom Louise frets the m ost. She loved all her boys, b u t “Louis m ade him self noticed and felt m ore than the other two.” Still, for her, “all that matters is th at my children survive!” 17 A fter tw o days at hom e in Paris Louis w rote to the War O ffice requesting release from the army. H e was still a boy: the handw riting o f the letter is childish and hesitant. H e sent it o ff on 4 Septem ber 1918, and five stam ps, m any addresses and over a year later it arrived at the War O ffice on 12 Septem ber 1919. “I have been engaged as a volunteer for the duration o f the w ar since 5 July 1915 . . . I beg to request a transfer to the reserve,” Louis w rote to the M inister o f W ar.18 H e had been at the front for six m onths, and had w ritten his letter know ing th at on his return from leave he was to be reassigned to the 8th B attery and his artillery regim ent was to be placed w ith the 2nd French Colonial C orps, under the com ­ m and o f the U.S. A rm y and G eneral Pershing. T his first solo attack by the A m erican forces, p art o f the huge Cham ­ pagne offensive, began on 12 Septem ber 1918 at St.-M ihiel, southw est o f Verdun. H ere Louis fought in soaking rain and deep m uddy trenches. T he A m erican onslaught was only one o f the Allied offensives orchestrated by G eneral Foch. A nother was the batde o f Am iens, w hich had begun on 8 August. T his tim e Will was lucky. His division’s successful attack on M ont St.-Q uentin in A ugust, follow ed by the last A ustralian attack o f the w ar at M ontbrehein in early O ctober, was the end o f his war. Peace was declared on 11 N ovem ber 1918; he had survived. W hile his request for release from the arm y w inged its way from mili­ tary office to office, Louis had to fight on in the quagm ire o f the M euseA rgonne offensive. W here he fought— at Souain-Perthes-les-H urlus— is today a necropolis for m any thousands o f the dead— French, A m erican and G erm an. By the end o f O ctober 1918 Louis’ C olonel Cam buzat com m ended him again: “Perfect behaviour. Remarkable drive, good con­ duct under fire. G ood sense o f com m and. Will make an excellent battery officer.” 19 As Louis’ regim ent was preparing for the last great offensive in N o ­ vem ber, the arm istice was declared; a few days later the 49th A rtillery 41

BAD F A I T H

m ade a trium phal entry through sm all French villages in the M oselle. Nearby, Louis’ hero Pétain led the trium phal m arch into M etz, and Louis and his regim ent attended w hen the president o f the republic, Raym ond Poincaré, arrived to decorate Pétain w ith his m arshal’s baton. G eneral Pétain, now an exalted Maréchal de France, im m ediately fulfilled his prom ise and honoured the 49th Regim ent w ith the Fourragère. For the next twelve m onths, as o th er soldiers w ere gradually dem o­ bilised, Louis was based at o r near M etz in barracks. T he year was passed in recovering am m unition and taking p art in reviews and parades. Louis m ight have distinguished him self at hand-to-hand com bat, b u t acting under orders rem ained im possible. In May 1919 he was cited for “unshakeable bravery” and “superb disregard for danger” under enem y attack at H angard-en-Santerre on 9 A pril 1918, b u t his new squadron leader reported o f him: “better in com bat than during rest and instruction peri­ ods,” lacking “sufficient understanding o f the role o f the officer during the post-arm istice period.”20 Will Jones, m eanwhile, was on his way back to Tasm ania. A fter the arm istice and three w eeks’ leave in Paris he set sail in the troopship SS Ypiranga in M arch 1919, heading for Cape Tow n, then A ustralia. H e was just com ing up to his tw enty-fourth birthday. O n 7 June, w ith tw o other dig­ gers, he w ent into Cape Tow n to have several drinks at the G rand H otel. A t another hotel, the Fountain, they did likewise, w ent back to the G rand and had a few m ore, then w ent upstairs to dinner w here they each had another couple o f double whiskies. D ead drunk, the A ustralians w ere p u t out on the hotel balcony. Will fell to the pavem ent below and fractured the base o f his skull. H e was heaved into a taxi and taken to hospital, w here he died an hour later. H e left a kit bag and a w allet w ith £28.10.1, souvenirs o f batde in the shape o f tw o G erm an w atches, seven pence, a G erm an belt and a French calendar. A t the C ourt o f E nquiry proceedings in Cape Tow n, the finding was that the deceased “m et his death by falling from a balcony o f the G rand H otel, Strand Street, Cape Town, on the evening o f the seventh June 1919, about 9:45 p.m.: th at there is no evidence show ing any reasons for the deceased clim bing or falling over the balcony fence— w hich stands som e three feet six inches h ig h . . . in the opinion o f the court the deceased soldier was intoxicated at the tim e o f the accident.”21 Tw o-thirds o f the A ustralian soldiers w ho served overseas becam e casualties o f the G reat War; over forty thousand o f them are buried in the 4*

soldier ’s heart

tow ns and fields o f n o rth ern France, in know n and unknow n graves. Will Jones was given a m ilitary funeral. ------------------------------- cAà*-------------------------------

O n i2 Septem ber 1919 the M inistry o f W ar replied to D arquier’s request o f a year earlier and he was appointed to the reserve. H e was dem obilised on i O ctober in M etz, and sent o ff from the 49th A rtillery Regim ent w ith this final report: In peacetime has not lived up to the hopes founded on his wartime behaviour. Has carried out no noteworthy service. Took advantage of his achievements as a group commander to make no further effort. Poorly carried out subsequent missions he was entrusted with. Ended his career with an act o f indiscipline which entailed a punishment of 15 days’ arrest. Judging himself to be demobilised, [Darquier] discharged himself from the regiment in the morning o f 1 October, without waiting for the arrival o f ministerial orders concerning his demobilisation—orders received in the evening o f 1 October.22 A nd so, in 1919 Louis D arquier left the arm y in disgrace. ■0A0-----------------------------

Pierre D arquier rem ained nom inally m ayor o f Cahors until 1919— thirteen years o f service w hich earned him the decoration o f chevalier o f the Légion d ’honneur in 1913. Towards the end o f 1918 the old family hom e in C ahors was rented o u t and he and Louise m oved to an apart­ m ent in Neuilly, the leafy and elegant Parisian suburb near the Bois de Boulogne. T he wide avenues and substantial private houses o f Neuilly exude careful affluence, and Louise’s choice was large enough for all the family, for P ierre’s surgery and for the one o r two dom estics they always retained. Unlike the m en o f so m any French families, the three D arquiers w ho served throughout the w ar survived, and by 1920 Pierre and Louise had their sons w ith them in Neuilly. W hile Jean ended up as a m edical captain and was awarded the Croix de G uerre for heroism at Verdun, Louis’ 43

BAD F A I T H

departure from the arm y was ignom inious, although he had fought well. H is arm y citation entided him to a m inor decoradon— a B ronze Palm on his Croix de G uerre, b u t as, m ost unusually for him , he never m entioned this in his volum inous curricula vitae, it may well be th at it was rem oved from him at this time. H e spent the follow ing decade loathing France. L ater Louis transform ed his hatred for France and his ignom inious departure from the arm y into vehem ent patriotism . H e rem em bered only the glorious victory o f la patrie and his relish for battle, and bewailed the fate o f French soldiers such as he, w ho had shed their blood for France while Jews and financiers had rem ained at hom e, m aking personal for­ tunes o u t o f the war. Before the G reat War, pacifism had little appeal in France to genera­ tions brought up in the shadow o f the G erm an enemy. A fter it, 1,400,000 had died, and m ore than a m illion disabled French soldiers returned hom e— the crippled, the disfigured, the gassed, the traum atised. T here w ere the 600,000 widows, and m any m ore thousands o f fatherless chil­ dren. Pacifism was to perm eate an entire generation, as was its shadow, fascism. T he rise o f H itler and the N azis is always linked to the F irst W orld W ar and the hum iliation inflicted upon G erm any by the Treaty o f Ver­ sailles, signed in June 1919. As firm ly linked to the afterm ath o f th at w ar is the rise o f nationalism and fascism in France, w hich pounced upon the old divisive issues and w eakened the republic, already enfeebled by the nation’s terrible losses, b o th hum an and econom ic. To veterans w ho shared Louis D arquier’s convictions, their hatred o f the parliam entary governm ent o f the republic was based on their belief th at it was now in the hands o f parasites w ho used the sacrifice o f the French soldier for their ow n ends. Action française had a good war, its jingoistic support for the royalist and nationalist cause expressed in w itch-hunts against G erm ans, traitors, spies and foreigners. O m nipresent in hospitals, barracks and at the front, the new spaper loved to m ythologise the im m ortal glory o f the m ilitary heroes o f France, one o f w hom was G eneral Pétain, the suprem e com ­ m ander o f the French arm y and the “V ictor o f V erdun.”25 Many m en prom inent on the Catholic right and in A ction Française after the w ar had been leaders during it: Pétain him self. G eneral M axime W eygand24— Foch’s chief o f staff—and the Catholic G eneral É douard de Castelnau,25 w ho w ent on to found the Fédération N ationale Catholique, 44

s o l d i e r ’s h e a r t

• the fraternal partner o f A ction Française w ithin the right w ing o f the Catholic laity. T hese w ere only a few o f the vast arm y o f shaky survivors w ho, like A dolf H ider in G erm any, extracted a poisoned sense o f destiny from the G reat War. By 1939, nothing could make the people o f France, w ho had paid the highest price in the F irst W orld War, feel enthusiastic about repeating one m onth o f it.

II COCK &

BULL

4 Scandal and Caprice v e r y tim e W i l l w as w ounded, o r invalided out o f France, the

Jones family received a telegram . W hen they received the telegram announcing his death in Cape Town, the Prem ier o f Tasm ania helped them find o u t alm ost im m ediately the true reason for it. T here­ after alcohol was never m entioned: Will was a casualty o f the G reat War, o r had been “killed in an accident.” His kit bag and wallet were restored to his family, and his medals followed. In the same year, 1919, the old w ooden hom estead at A rm idale b u rn t down. H arry m oved his family into a com fortable house in Launceston. H e was still a w ealthy m an, b u t seems to have becom e less so w ith each passing year, as the family hom es becam e increasingly m odest. In 1921 they m oved into the last o f these, “G lenholm e” at 3 Cypress Street, Launceston, a small and typically A ustralian suburban house, prettily gabled b u t unassum ing, its kitchen m antelpiece decorated w ith the painted words: “Jesus is L ord.” Cypress Street is as gloom y as its name. In family accounts o f those years in Launceston, Will is never forgotten, M yrde never m entioned. By 1915 her older brothers were teaching and studying, in Q ueensland and N ew South Wales. M yrde may have followed them ; there is no way o f know ing for certain w here she was until her m ar­ riage in Sydney in 192 3. Louis in the m eantim e, after two weeks under m ilitary arrest, returned to N euilly in O ctober 1919. T he w ar had devastated the population o f the Lot, and like m any o f his fellow Lotois Pierre D arquier did n o t return to Cahors after the war. As he had done before, he m ade way for A natole de M onzie, w ho added to his portfolio o f political activities by taking over as mayor o f Cahors. Pierre took a position as a doctor for an insurance com ­ pany in Paris, La Préservatrice. H e continued to have a surgery at hom e, but som ething had happened to his spirit during the war. H e had seen to o 49

BAD F A I T I Í

m uch. H is eldest son Jean had been gassed, and returned hom e in 1919 to succum b to the worldwide influenza epidem ic. H e survived to follow his father into th at field o f m edicine in w hich Pierre had becom e interested as a m edical student, neurology. René, w ho was now eighteen, was study­ ing law, w hich to Louise’s delight he “passed w ith flying colours.” 1 Louis, the only brother w ith no academ ic qualification, had to begin his w orking life m ore humbly. In 1920 he took a job at 53, rue Lafayette, selling advertising for the Société Ferm ière des A nnuaires, agents o f B ottins, producers o f telephone directories for France and abroad. France was exhausted econom ically and emotionally. Post-w ar disenchantm ent— galloping inflation, strikes, unem ploym ent, national debt, national m ourning— was com pounded by the sight o f so m any mutilés de guerre, w ar w ounded, in the streets. Louis D arquier, how ever undistinguished his w ar career, was a product o f the disillusion w hich fol­ lowed victory. O thers, like him , drank from a well o f anger and grief, fuelled by a sense o f decline and decadence, a sense o f the passing o f an em pire, o f all the old values gone. B ut in 1920 C olette published Chéri, Scott Fitzgerald This Side o f Par­ adise. T he jazz age and the age o f the flapper w ere on the horizon. T he Paris Peace C onference o f 1919 concluded w ith the signing o f the Treaty o f Versailles w hich in turn, in 1920, set up the League o f N ations to arbi­ trate international peace and cooperation. T he harsh revenge France exacted on defeated G erm any led to tw enty years o f diplom atic failures as France struggled to keep G erm any to its treaty com m itm ents. T he heartbreaking m onum ents to the w ar dead w hich sprang up in villages, tow ns and cities in France and in m ost o f the belligerent countries— used again in 1945 to record deaths in the Second W orld War, often in the same families— w itnessed the futility o f war, n o t its glory. Louis’ academ ic failure before the w ar was n o t to condem n him to selling advertising in phone books forever. H e was only twenty-two, and his “godfather” was to hand. D e M onzie, too disabled for w ar service, had m ore tim e on his hands: he was defeated in the 1919 elections for the C ham ber o f D eputies, the low er cham ber o f the French Parliam ent, though he quickly m oved on to becom e senator o f the Lot. H e was n o t an anti-Sem ite, had no political anim osities and was a prolific entertainer. T he great and the good sat at the dinner tables o f his estates in the L ot and his apartm ent in Paris. T he person he loved m ost in the w orld was his

50

SCANDAL AND CAPRICE school friend H enry de Jouvenel,2 m an o f letters, charm and politics, now one o f the editors-in-chief o f L e M atin. By 1920 de Jouvenel had been w ith C olette, m arried o r unm arried, for a dozen years; his previous wife, and his next one, w ere b o th Jew ish.3 D e M onzie was am bitious for de JouvenePs political career— politicians, edi­ tors, thinkers, w riters, industrialists and businessm en were part o f his salon, and outside his salon his acquaintance and influence were even larger. Action Française was now at the height o f its power. P roust, Rodin and Gide took its new spaper regularly, and in Britain T. S. E liot gave it his im prim atur in the C riteon4. D e M onzie first m et Charles M aurras in They argued about everything, b u t their adm iration was m utual. A natole de M onzie placed b oth Louis and René D arquier in the w heat trade.5 O ne o f his key affiliations was to Jew ish w heat families, m any o f them living in Alsace, w hich w ith the departm ent o f the L orraine bor­ dered France and Germ any. Revolutionary France had been the first w estern E uropean country to em ancipate its Jews in 1789 and 1791, and in A lsace-Lorraine a small Jew ish com m unity prospered— A lfred D reyfus o f the affaire Dreyfus was one o f them , though his family were in textiles, n o t w heat. T hese w ealthy families valued the freedom granted them by the French republic, and w ere patriots, leading local politicians and coun­ cillors. By the tim e Louis D arquier w ent to live in Strasbourg, in 1922, the Jews o f Alsace w ere particularly conspicuous in trade and com m erce, and om nipresent in the grain trade. A fter the w ar French farm ers, prodigious w heat producers, found themselves threatened on all fronts. T he w heat o f France had to com pete w ith cheap varieties from foreign parts, countries reached by the great ships w hich sailed the “w heat ru n ” and fed E urope in peace and w ar— A rgentina, Canada, the U nited States and Australia. M ost A ustralian farm ers, like H arry Jones, unlike their E uropean counterparts, produced both w ool and w heat for export; b u t their m arkets were oceans away. Into this vacuum stepped the w heat barons and their steam ships. T hese vast fleets w ere ow ned by a new class o f m agnate, pow erful m en w ith global reach w hose com panies becam e international giants. T he sons o f the Jewish w heat m erchants o f Alsace profited too. It was the visibility o f the im m ense w ealth these m en am assed during the G reat War th at fuelled so m uch anti-Sem itism during the tw enties and thirties, and th at becam e a running sore to som e, like Louis D arquier. Fol-

BAD FAIT#

low ing M ussolini and his Italian bde gr G oebbels’ dem and for “freedom and bread” for every G erm an, they saw the apparent Jewish control o f w heat, the staff o f life, as poisoning the staple food o f the French nation, ruining the revered French peasant, and weakening the race. In Australia, at the o th er end o f the w heat run, antiSemitism was fuelled by similar m yths and conspiracy theories. By this tim e de M onzie was a national figure. H e becam e a m inister, variously, o f the M erchant M arine, o f Finance, o f Public W orks, o f E du­ cation and o f Justice, fourteen tim es in all, in the m any inter-w ar French governm ents. H e was also a barrister, w ith a good practice at the Paris bar. D e M onzie had twice been Secretary o f State for the M erchant M arine during the First W orld War, w hen the purchase o f w heat was under state control. H e knew all the w heat barons, Jew ish o r not, and w ith one o f them , E rnest Vilgrain, he paid his dues to Pierre D arquier. T hree m en from A lsace-Lorraine directed the fates o f Louis and René D arquier over the next decade. E rn est V ilgrain was one; the others were H enry Lévy o f the G rands M oulins de Strasbourg, and Louis Louis-Dreyfus— often know n as K ing Two Louis, a pun on the highest gold coin o f the ancien régime— o f the im m ense grain m erchant com pany Louis Dreyfus & Co.6 T he Louis-D reyfus family w ere Jews from Alsace, m odest traders in grain w ith a m odest bank in Paris. By the early twentieth century Louis Louis-D reyfus had transform ed the family firm into an international empire: he added a flotilla o f ships, expanded his banking interests and opened offices all over the w orld. H e specialised in buying surplus w heat in bulk, and shipping and selling it to countries w ithout it, taking the profit o f every p art o f the procedure for him self. H e did this for nation-states on a vast scale, and becam e m onarch o f his com m odity world, King Two Louis, the “K ing o f W heat.” Louis Louis-D reyfus was a m an o f m any attributes, a m illionaire w ho was careful about m oney and a deputy, then senator, o f the French repub­ lic, a Freem ason, lefdsh— he and his brother Charles w ere shareholders in FHumanité, the new spaper o f the French C om m unist Party— and he entered Parliam ent as a Radical Socialist, like Pierre D arquier. H e pros­ pered during the First W orld War by adding m aritim e arm am ents to his portfolio, and was denounced in several governm ent reports for profiteer­ ing from state w heat contracts. K ing Two Louis, reputed to be the richest man in France, came to be considered the quintessential enem y o f the

52

SCANDAL AND CAPRICE small m an— in this case the small French w heat farm er— w ho blam ed him for the collapse o f farm prices in the 1930s D epression. E rn est Vilgrain, o f an- old L orraine m illing family, w orked for the French M inistry o f Trade during the F irst W orld War. W hile still in govern­ m ent he began to build up his G rands M oulins de Paris, transposing the supplies system he had learned as U nder-Secretary o f State for Supplies into his ow n private business. H e left the governm ent o n 19 January 1920, and the next day started his ow n com pany, the C oopérative d ’A pprovisionnement, de T ransport et de C rédit (CATC), to operate as a purchase and finance office for his firm .7 V ilgrain m ade vast profits by im porting Aus­ tralian w heat via CATC, using the services o f an E nglish cohort, Sanday & Co., com m odity brokers o n the Baltic Exchange, and selling it at vastly inflated prices to the French state. T his w heat, well nam ed “exotic,” was often paid for, b u t never delivered. T he A ustralian w heat scandal o f 1920, as it cam e to be know n in France, brought about a parliam entary investiga­ tion, a rep o rt and a court case. D e M onzie defended Vilgrain, w hose nam e so perfectly encapsulated his activities, and his relations w ith the LouisD reyfus family w ere alm ost familial. In this fevered w orld V ilgrain and K ing Two Louis w ere old enem ies.8 In 1921, de M onzie placed Louis D arquier in Vilgrain’s firm . Louis w orked in “different services”9 at Vilgrain’s Paris headquarters at 150, boulevard H aussm ann until June 1922, w hen he was sent to Strasbourg to open a subsidiary there. Strasbourg’s p o rt on the Rhine was a conduit to the huge corn and grain exchange in A ntw erp, w here w heat was shipped in from all over the w orld. Louis D arquier, grain m erchant, o f 15, avenue des Vosges, Strasbourg, was now a m anaging director earning three thou­ sand francs a m onth (roughly £2,000 in today’s values) “and percentages.” Soon his bro th er René, after obtaining his law degree, joined Vilgrain’s CATC in Paris. In Strasbourg from 1921, and then in A ntw erp from 1922 to 1926, Louis was close to a p art o f E urope w hich was prey to tum ultuous politi­ cal events. Alsace itself was a battleground o f conflicting national identi­ ties, and a nursery for activists o f one kind o r another— A ction Française w orked hard to stim ulate paranoia there, as elsewhere, during these years. S upport for the C om m unist Party was strong, while hard by the occupied Rhineland was a running sore, scratched at by separatists, dissidents, the burgeoning N azi Party and G erm ans generally.

53

D 'E ntrecasteaux C hañad Recherche Bay

Tasmania

SCANDAL AND CAPRICE

In Italy, M ussolini and his Blackshirts m arched on Rom e in O ctober 1922, one o f the first signs o f the rise o f fascism in E urope. A year later H ider was leader o f the N azi Party in Germ any. France batded and failed to extract w ar reparations from G erm any; as a result, in 1923 the French and Belgian arm ies invaded the Ruhr. M eanwhile, the N azi Party had grow n from a thousand m em bers in 1920 to over fifty thousand by June 1923; th at N ovem ber H itler was im prisoned after his failed Beer H all Putsch in M unich, 2s\AM ein w K am pf as published in 1925 F or intellectuals, artists, m usicians and w riters, Paris in the 1920s was to becom e a legendary hotbed o f activity and incident, b o th political and artistic. T hese w ere les années ,foles the years o f J Ulysses, o f im poverished and drunken bohem ians o f genius living la vie en rose. W ork took Louis D arquier away from this for m ost o f the decade, b u t in his years in the w heat business the rebellious young w ar veteran nevertheless m anaged to becom e a perfect, if som ew hat sinister, bounder o f the Roaring Twenties. 0A 0-----------------------------

In Sydney and M elbourne, M yrtle was m oving in a sim ilar direction, albeit w ith Edw ardian overtones. A t som e po in t in these years she abandoned h er nam e, M yrtle M arian A m brosine Jones, for her new persona o f “San­ dra Lindsay.” T he “Sandra” she appropriated from the m iddle o f her m other’s nam e, A lexandrina; the Lindsay rem ains a mystery, although possibly she took it from the A ustralian poet so dear to Q ueen V ictoria, A dam Lindsay G ordon. Everything about him and his poetry seems to fit the Tasm anian descendants o f B ritton Jones. H e cam e from a branch o f an old Scottish family, and his chief interest in life was horses. H e was despatched to A ustralia for stealing one. T here he fell into debt from gam bling, drinking and over-borrow ing, and shot him self at B righton Beach in M elbourne in 1870. N o t before he had becom e, however, the national po et o f A ustralia, and its “laureate o f the horse,” though his m ost fam ous lines have nothing equine about them . To this day, genera­ tions o f A ustralians w rite rude versions o f the lines for w hich he is best rem em bered: Life is m ostly froth and bubble Two things stand like stone 55

BAD FAITH Kindness in another’s trouble Courage in your ow n.10 Everyone w ho m et M yrtle, sober or otherw ise, throughout h er life as San­ dra, described her as the kind o f w om an given to utterances o f this kind. It is n o t difficult to imagine w hat a com fortable and churchgoing Launceston family thought o f a daughter w ho w ent on the stage in Syd­ ney in the 1920s. P. L. Travers, author o f M ary , an A ustralian only a few years younger than M yrde Jones, toured N ew South Wales as an actress and dancer in the 1920s: “It was a very shocking thing to do in those days.” 11 By 1922 M yrde had certainly done som ething to shock her parents. W hen H arry Jones m ade his will th at year, it was alm ost entirely constructed to protect the errant M yrde from the consequences o f h er follies. All the other children are swiftly and generously dealt w ith, b u t special arrangem ents are m ade for M yrde: the threnody “o ther than my said daughter M yrde M arian A m brosine Jones” runs through her father’s will like a fretful cry. M yrde’s escapades are kept hidden behind the n et curtains o f Launceston to this day, b u t H arry’s will suggests w hat m ight have been the problem . T he will is dated 17 July 1922. T hree weeks later M yrde’s future husband, Jam es Roy W orkman, always know n as Roy, sailed o ff on a steam er w ith his parents in a G ilbert and Sullivan touring com pany to perform in India and the Far E ast. M yrde had m et Roy before that, while he and his family were touring Australia. It seem s likely th at she sailed w ith them , and that this led to her father’s new testam entary arrange­ ments. N o t that M yrde was cut o ff w ithout a penny: quite the opposite. While her family had money, she was provided w ith it for m any years, b u t after July 1922 she alone o f the Jones children was n o t perm itted to touch her capital. Family descriptions o f M yrde’s years on the mainland imply litde p ro­ fessional activity. This seems to have been the case, because no m ention o f a Sandra Lindsay o r M yrde Jones surfaces in A ustralian theatrical archives. M yrde lacked application, and she liked to gallivant. She was probably one o f the Idas o r Ivys, E thels o r B erthas, M innies o r M audes so fetchingly exhibited in theatre program m es o f the tim e, w hich in those days merely listed “ 13 in the chorus.” A udiences for musicals were phe­ nom enal, for the 19 20s were the years w hen the success o f “A ustralia’s Q ueen o f Musical Comedy,” Gladys M oncrieff, in operettas such as The 56

SCANDAL AND C A PR IC E

M aid o f the Mountains, m ade her as fam ous in A ustralia as N ellie M elba. O n the other hand, photographs M yrde left behind suggest th at she may have posed for saucy postcards:—“D ark-eyed beauty in sw im suit revealing thighs and stocking tops and holding a Parasol” w ith captions such as “T he G lad Eye,” “Lady D isdain” o r “Miss Caprice.” 12 By 1922, w hen the W orkm ans’ theatrical entourage departed on tour, Australia, like E urope and A m erica, had begun to froth w ith the spirit o f the jazz age, its heroines very often being young persons like M yrtle, scallywag daughters o f m iddle-class families. S hort skirts and cigarettes, bobbed hair and bandaged bosom s w ere all the rage. Perhaps the per­ sonality and charm M yrtle added to her m usical talent led her to try her hand at the piano in one o f the num erous all-night dances o f the time. I f she did indeed race through “L et’s M isbehave” and “Yes, We H ave N o Bananas”— n o t to m ention ragtim e, jazztim e, swing— she rem ained a m usical child o f the 1890s, and her repertoire could easily have extended to perform ing as a m aid o r nym phet in a G ilbert and Sullivan opera. Roy W orkm an was the only child o f a Belfast soprano, Bessel A dams, and C. H . W orkm an, the celebrated Savoyard and principal com edian o f the D ’Oyly C arte O pera Com pany in L ondon from 1898 to 1909. Charles W orkm an appeared in every G ilbert and Sullivan operetta except Ruddigorey playing B unthorne in Patience, the D uke o f Plaza Toro in The Gondo­ liers; K o-K o in The M ikado\ b u t his greatest claim to fame was his Jack P oint in The Yeomen o f the Guard\ a role w hich he established and m ade his ow n.15 H e m anaged the Savoy T heatre in L ondon for one unfortunate year from 1909, w hen he cam e to legal blows w ith W. S. G ilbert, having m ade the m istake o f inserting a song o f his ow n choice— “O h Love, that Rulest in O ur L and”— into a G ilbert libretto.14T hey also quarrelled about leading ladies, and G ilbert banned W orkm an from perform ing his works in England. A Savoyard rem ittance family, the W orkm an ménage em barked in 1914 for A ustralia, w here they spent m any successful years touring the Savoy operas. Charles W orkm an was fêted throughout A ustralia for this, and for his Bum erli in The Chocolate Soldier. They loved him too as Ali Baba in Chu Chin Chow, fam ous for its onstage camels and horses and its C obbler’s Song. T he W orkm ans w orked for the great A ustralian im presario o f the tim e, J. C. W illiam son, and travelled w ith his D ’Oyly Carte G ilbert and Sullivan touring com panies, w hich did as m uch as the gam e o f cricket to maintain affection w ithin the British Em pire. This alliance could have J7

BAD F A I T H

been o f trem endous im portance to M yrtle’s theatrical aspirations had the W orkmans survived their 1922 tour. Alas, Bessel A dam s died o f a heart attack in the G rand H otel, Calcutta, in February 1923, and Charles died at sea o ff H ong K ong three m onths later. T hey left their underage son an orphan. Back in Sydney, three weeks before his tw enty-first birthday, M yrde m arried him. W hen M yrde m arried Roy W orkm an at the office o f Sydney’s regis­ trar general on 1 A ugust 1923, both gave their address as H er M ajesty’s H otel, Sydney, he giving his profession as actor, she as actress. M yrde’s inventions at this tim e were wide-ranging. She lied about her nam e, her age, and her parents— she called her father H arry Lindsay— and claim ed to have been born in W eymouth, England, w here her b ro th er Will had convalesced during the F irst W orld W ar.15 B ut she could adm it her marriage and a m onth after the event it was suitably announced in the Launceston Examiner. The only account we have o f M yrde in the years after her m ar­ riage comes from Louis D arquier, w ho told his younger brother in 1927 that “these two phenom enons [Roy and Myrde] have been travelling for three and a half years! China, Japan, Am erica, H onolulu: they have been everywhere .. .” l6 I f this was true— did Louis D arquier ever tell the tru th about anything?— it could be that M yrde and Roy joined a J. C. W illiam son touring com pany (perhaps replacing his defunct parents) w hich left for the Far E ast at the end o f 1923. Louis described Roy as “a kind o f fool, charm ing I m ight a d d . . . H e is twenty-six years old: he drinks like a lord and is com pletely im potent.” M yrde’s drinking, learned perhaps in her bohem ian years in Sydney o r perhaps during her four years w ith Roy— w hom she later com plim ented for hitting her but “once” and then “only w hen m addened by drink” 17— was som ething henceforth never abandoned, b u t som ething she always struggled to hide. ---------------------------

0A 0

In France, by 1924, Louise D arquier was a happy w om an. “Pierre is still working. Jean is a brilliant intern, Louis is going to set up another branch in Antwerp, and René has joined the sam e firm as Louis .. .” l8 T h at Janu­ ary Louis w ent to A ntw erp as one o f tw o directors— he was Vilgrain’s representative— to manage a new G eneral G rain Company, a joint Anglo58

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• French venture set up by V ilgrain and B ritish firm s w ith w hich he had been involved in th e A ustralian w heat scandal. T his began Louis D arquier’s long involvem ent w ith E ngland— he was paid in sterling, £1,500 a year plus percentages, about £5 3,000 today. A year later Vilgrain’s partners w ere gone, the com pany was renam ed the G rain U nion Company, and it was said to handle “m onetary operations and illegal transactions.” 19 Louis was now a w heat broker, and he had a share in the company. H is m andate included, fatally, perm ission “to sign, endorse and discharge cheques and m oney orders.”20 A nd he signed the accounts. H e had a fiancée called Line, w hose expensive ring he used in later years to raise m oney w hen dow n and out. Nearby, in M unich, H itler’s trial follow ing his Beer H all Putsch was m aking headlines. In July 1924 Louis visited his par­ ents, to go to die O lym pic G am es at C olom bes in the w estern suburbs o f Paris. H e used his excellent E nglish during num erous trips to L ondon, w here he stayed in com fort at Brow n’s H otel in M ayfair near Piccadilly, an elegant place beloved o f the sm aller kind o f E uropean royalty and “b u t a stroll away from Buckingham Palace.” T he high p oint o f Louis’ life as a w orking m an was 1924, the last year o f peace for all m em bers o f the D arquier family, and the last year o f any continuing relationship w ith his father. A t the same tim e, the elections o f th at year w ere w on by an alliance o f parties on the left, and France’s polit­ ical fissures w ere deepened by terro r o f com m unism and hatred o f fas­ cism. Louis’ handsom e prospects began to ebb away in the follow ing year, w hen the country was in the m idst o f econom ic depression. In Strasbourg Louis had already acquired the reputation o f a rake, bu t now m ention o f debts began too. It is also said that he was arrested in L ondon for being drunk and disorderly.21 It seems th at he was often intoxicated, for one day at the A ntw erp stock exchange— a m agnificent M oorish G othic building w ith an im m ense colonnaded and arcaded hall— he galloped in “on a horse, and tried to take it into the central enclo­ sure.” B ut his real crim e was his use o f com pany m oney “for his ow n pur­ poses.” O th er reports suggest th at he used the m oney to speculate against the franc, w hich seems likely. “A t the same tim e he also began his swin­ dles: he used the business inform ation he found on the Stock Exchange for his ow n purposes if an interesting opportunity arose, and passed the bad deals o n to the company. M anagem ent discovered this at the end o f six m onths: these m anoeuvres and his characteristic abuse o f tru st cost the com pany nearly 500,000 francs!”22 Louis traded in futures: good ones 59

BAD F A I T t ï

for himself, bad ones for his company. O n 29 N ovem ber 1925 his fellow director called an extraordinary general m eeting and dem anded Louis’ dismissal. It took two m onths to get rid o f him. Louis w rote to an old friend and political colleague o f his father’s in Cahors, filing him he was returning to the tow n for Carnival— he now had plenty o f free tim e on his hands— and th at he w anted to go into the political life w hich “Papa has unfortunately abandoned.”23 Louis’ recon­ stitution o f recent events included a claim to have m ade a fortune o f about two million francs on the A ntw erp Bourse; b u t only his family and their connections now saved him from his em barrassm ents. W hen Louis’ fraud was discovered, René was in A ntw erp too, as director o f V ilgrain’s CATC office there, and presum ably he pacified Vilgrain. H enry Lévy had set up G rands M oulins de Strasbourg w ith Achille Baumann in 1899. By 1924 Baum ann had resigned and by 1927, w hen René w ent to w ork for him , H enry Lévy had becom e “T he M iller King,” in sole charge o f the vast Baum ann-Lévy em pire. V ilgrain and his com pan­ ies had encountered financial problem s: w hether these w ere due to the court cases, or investigations into the A ustralian w heat scandal, o r w ere brought about solely by the depredations o f Louis D arquier is unknow n. Lévy bought out Vilgrain’s com pany All reports agree th at René rescued Louis w ith the help o f Lévy, b u t this w ould have been only one o f a thou­ sand o f his generosities, for Lévy was know n as a “m an w ith great heart,” a benefactor to Jew and G entile, w hose greatest qualities w ere his bound­ less generosity and his “understanding and kindness to those in distress.”24 The years 1925 and 1926 w ere the peak o f de M onzie’s m inisterial power, and Louis was n o t sent to prison. Scandals m uch larger than his were chronic in France in the 1920s and 1930s anyway. H is honour was restored to him , inasm uch as his reinstatem ent was announced on 31 D e­ cem ber 1926, and his “resignation” accepted the follow ing day. Louis’ anti-Semitism was always to be linked to these Jew ish w heat barons, and he chose King Two Louis, w ho added insult to injury by using Louis’ good French Christian nam e twice, as representative o f them all. So, whilst it was H enry Lévy w ho bought o u t V ilgrain, Louis hid his igno­ minious dismissal and its resolution by transform ing these events into a principled resignation because Vilgrain’s com pany had been “sold to the Jew Louis-Dreyfus.”25 Louis D arquier now led an existence th at was the despair o f his father, never ceasing to com plain th at his parents w ould n o t help him as 60

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they helped Jean and René. H is fiancée Line had com m itted suicide. H e had already seen his-older b ro th er becom e a doctor, w hich he had failed to do, and now he had to bear the further indignity o f w atching his younger brother prosper w here he had com e to grief. René’s good fortune and H enry Levy’s generosity w ere to support him for the next ten years: “crippled w ith debts, w ith creditors at his throat, his back against the w all. . . each tim e he knocked at the door o f his b ro th er and H enry Lévy, each tim e they g o t him o u t o f his fix, though obviously n o t for very long.”26 ----------------------------- cA o-----------------------------

Before the 1960s all A ustralians had British citizenship, b u t now, as the wife o f the N o rth ern Irish Roy W orkm an, M yrde had a B ritish passport, o f w hich she was im m ensely proud and w hich she treasured until the end o f her days. T his devotion to the “M other C ountry” nevertheless seems to have caused interm inable problem s, because M yrde’s grizzles about passports flicker through the follow ing decades. Perhaps she obtained her passport as Sandra Lindsay o r Sandra W orkm an, b u t w hatever the original problem she com pounded it, for although Roy W orkm an was a singer w ho only appeared in musicals and G ilbert and Sullivan, they presented them selves to E urope in late 1926 o r early 1927 as L ord and Lady W orkm an-M acnaghten, o f Belfast. T here are m any explanations as to how Louis D arquier m et M yrde. Some say she m et him in France w here her husband was singing, others th at it was in a m ilitary convalescent hospital w here Roy was perform ing, w hile Louis once claim ed that they m et at the casino in M onte Carlo. G am bling is a distinct possibility, b u t the favourite o f the m edley on offer is th at they m et in G erm any, w here Roy’s com pany was entertaining the troops. A fter the G reat War, as a protective buffer betw een France and G er­ many, the Rhineland was occupied for eleven years by the arm ies o f the Entente. T he B ritish left in 1929. U ntil 1926 their headquarters w ere in Cologne, thereafter in W iesbaden. T he occupying troops w ere provided w ith every B ritish com fort: cricket, m arm alade. Scouts and G uides, the­ atre and cinem a. In the Walhalla T heatre in W iesbaden, the Rhine A rm y D ram atic Com pany p u t on productions o f plays by Jo h n G alsw orthy and, o f course, the operettas o f G ilbert and Sullivan. In Strasbourg from 61

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1922 to 1925 and in A ntw erp from 1924 to 1926, Louis D arquier was a w hisper away from Cologne and W iesbaden, and, w ith the R hineland vir­ tually a French protectorate, the latter had becom e alm ost a border tow n. A round these troops hovered a num ber o f prostitutes so excessive— an estim ated thirty thousand in Cologne alone— th at it was proposed that a team o f British policewom en should patrol the streets. Louis was know n to be partial to this kind o f sexual opportunity, and his good E n ­ glish enabled him to move around w here he liked. Finally there was a casino, the Casino W iesbaden, an old and fam ous place o f entertainm ent, dripping w ith chandeliers and fantastical neoclassical grandeur. Today it has blackjack and roulette and stud poker, b u t it was closed for gam bling from 1873 to 1949; then, as now, it had a concert hall, and here the troops were entertained. This gingerbread palace w ould have been a perfect set­ ting for the m eeting o f Louis D arquier and M yrtle Jones. By 1927, however m uch René and H enry Lévy had helped him , Louis could no longer actually earn money. H e now looked to other quarters for financial rewards, and he w rote happily to René in 1927— “n o t w ithout some cynicism”— about his new arrangem ents. H e was living “as m an and wife” w ith Sandra in her guise as Lady W orkm an-M acnaghten, w ith Roy in tow, at the H ôtel Bristol on the Canebière in M arseille. T his p o rt city o f strangers and travellers was another perfect setting for the three adventurers to arrange reincarnation. M yrtle, Louis told René, was “an Australian wom an, m arried to an Englishm an, nephew and heir o f L ord M acnaghten but w ho has n o t a sou. She is the daughter o f a grain and wool producer o f Tasmania [Louis w rites the latter w ords in English]. Family w ith Yankee style— 9 children— unquestionably lots o f m o n e y . . . In any case the directory indicates several o f her father’s firm s. B ut she is fed up w ith her husband.”27 Roy W orkman drank so m uch he was “com pletely help­ less,” w rote Louis; all three o f them drank. Louis w ould becom e violent, but he was not an alcoholic. M yrtle was. W hen “Lady W orkm an-M acnaghten” m et Louis she presented her­ self to him as an A ustralian version o f those A m erican heiresses m uch dream ed o f by indigent E uropeans in the 1920s. In photographs she stands about five inches shorter than Louis; som etim es she looks am ple, sometimes thin and distrait. B ut w hatever she may have lacked in beauty Myrtle made up w ith glam our; she had a tireless sense o f hum our, was always anxious to please, and she decorated herself like a child at play. M yrtle had style. In 1927 she was still in regular receipt o f funds from 62

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Tasm ania— “£40 a w eek w ithout taking into account gifts on every occa­ sion,” w rote Louis, w ith the expectation o f a substantial inheritance o f “as m uch as £130,000 at the age o f 28.”28 M yrtle was already thirty-four w hen she assured Louis o f these handsom e prospects, unaw are o f the special arrangem ents H arry had m ade for her in his will. Roy W orkm an’s adoption o f a N o rth ern Irish peer as his uncle was the kind o f fabrication M yrtle dream ed up for all the m en in her life.29H er habit o f claim ing aristocratic relations seems to have com e from an anx­ ious aspiration to belong to England and “H om e,” as A ustralians o f E n ­ glish descent liked to call the country w hich despatched their convict ancestors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such aspirations w ere thoroughly rem oved from the facts o f M yrtle's existence as noted in her b irth and m arriage certificates. T hese circum stances m ade divorce difficult. N evertheless M yrtle offered to divorce Roy, to m arry Louis and take him to A ustralia. Louis equivocated, then settled the m atter by m ar­ rying M yrtle, divorced o r not. Family tradition reports th at Roy rem ained devoted to M yrtle to the end, b u t his loss did n o t prevent him from re­ turning to E gypt and living w ith another w om an older than him self. M yrtle was to learn the tru th about her inheritance two years after she assured Louis o f her m illions, just at the m om ent w hen, in the personae o f B aron and Baroness Louis D arquier de Pellepoix, they descended upon Brow n’s H otel in M ayfair to begin four years o f life in L ondon (save for Louis’ constant dashes to Paris in pursuit o f funds). Louis never show ed any sign o f fury w hen M yrtle proved yet again to be parsim o­ nious w ith the tru th — he could n o t afford to. T heir m utual inventions w ere one o f the strongest cords th at held them together.

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t w o u l d be b e a u t i f u l to have little ones around me,” w rote Louise

to a faithful m inion in Cahors in 1924. “I feel I am getting old.” 1W hen Louis and M yrde m arried in St. Giles Register O ffice in L ondon on 19 April 1928, they were staying at the St. K ilda H otel in T orrington Square, in the heart o f Bloomsbury. T his hotel, obliterated by G erm an bom bs in the Second W orld War, was advertised in the D aily Telegraph as “O verlooking G ardens. Excellent Cuisine. Billiards. Full o r p art board. M ost convenient for business and pleasure. C om fortable. Term s m oder­ ate.”2 Such term s were necessary, for by 1928 Louis was no longer speak­ ing to his father. T he couple was living on M yrtle’s money. As Louis com pounded his early differences w ith his father w ith constant im broglios and dem ands for money, m atters betw een them never im proved. T hough sorely tried by Louis’ m arriage to M yrde, Louise continued to defend her “lame duck” son. The help Louis insistently dem anded was som etim es given to him by his m other (who in 1934 sold the Laytou family hom e in C ahors to pay Louis’ debts), and always by his brother René, b u t in 1928 his parents had other expenses. All three o f Louise’s sons m arried in that year, Jean and René in Paris, René’s m arriage properly taking place at Louise’s local church o f Saint-Pierre de Neuilly. Louise dream ed o f great m arriages for her sons. In Jean’s case she had succeeded in parting him from a girlfriend in Cahors, explaining that she was a P rotestant and “too m odest in origins and not sufficiently rich.” 3 She had no opportunity to interfere in Louis’ choice. His London nuptials were unattended by any o f his family, b u t at least he m arried first, always an im portant position for the D arquier brothers. “As you can see, my two beloved boys are so alike,” said Louise o f Jean and Louis, m aternal wishful thinking o f a high order.4 Jean was a 64

BABY • m edical m an b u t also an artistic touche-à-tout, a jack-of-all-trades, while Louis was Poor-Johnny-O ne-N ote:5 once he chose Jews as his trade, he rarely m oved o ff the subject for a m om ent. René, the youngest, was the businessm an, the one w ith his feet on the ground. Jean qualified as a neu­ rologist at the Faculty o f M edicine o f Paris in 1927, w orked as an intern at the fam ous Salpêtrière H ospital and lived w ith his parents in N euilly until he m arried Jeanne Riu— “Jan o t”— in July 1928. Four m onths later René m arried Lucienne L osson, w ho lived in another o f the flats in the N euilly apartm ent block: “Lucienne was a girl w hom the three brothers used to m eet on the stairs, and pull her plaits . . . she fell in love w ith Jean b u t that did n o t w ork o u t so she m arried René.” Pierre is reported to have said th at she chose “the best o f the bunch.”6 Louis m issed the m arriages o f b oth his brothers. René was now living in Strasbourg, w here H enry Lévy had acquired a shareholding in Les M inoteries Alsaciennes— Flour Mills o f Alsace. René was appointed its operations m anager, one o f about forty to p m anagers w ithin the em pire o f Levy’s G rands M oulins de Strasbourg. It w ould be hard to pinpoint w hich o f her daughters-in-law disap­ pointed Louise the m ost. Jean’s w ife Jan o t was the m ost form idable o f the three— “she was a fascinating w om an, n o t beautiful at all, w hich was astonishing because Jean was elegant, handsom e and a sweet talker.”7 Janot was “a little brow n thing, ugly, w ith prom inent teeth,” b u t she had a brain-— she too becam e a doctor, in 1943. Lucienne disliked Louise and vice versa, while M yrde was simply beyond the pale. It is unlikely that Louis explained the bigam ous nature o f his m arriage to his adored m other. In the 1920s divorce was a lengthy, cosdy and scandalous proce­ dure, and it w ould have been im possible to com plete it in the short period betw een the encounter o f L ord and Lady W orkm an-M acnaghten and Louis D arquier in M arseille in 1927, and the m arriage o f Louis and Myr­ de in L ondon in A pril 1928. I f M yrde did divorce Roy W orkman, there are no records o f it in the registers o f A ustralia, France o r Britain.8 Per­ haps they divorced in E gypt, although it seems unlikely. Possibly M yrde convinced herself th at she had n o t been m arried before, because she had n o t used her real nam e. T he Tasm anian family seems to have know n the tru th o f it: th at M yrde did n o t have a divorce w hen she and Louis m ar­ ried. Bigamy was transm uted into elopem ent, a rom antic French love story, as the years w ent by. W hether o r n o t M yrde and Roy were later divorced, for a Catholic like Louise, M yrde’s previous m arriage was unacceptable. W hat is m ore she 65

BAD FAITH was a P rotestant, also unacceptable. Louis’ m arriage m eant he now had problem s w ith both his parents, and he dealt w ith them at this p oint by staying away from France. In a sense he becam e a French rem ittance m an, because, as a w edding gift, René D arquier gave Louis and M yrde a firstclass ticket to Australia. O n the passenger list o f the elegant steam ship the Principe di Udine, w hich sailed from G enoa in m id-June 1928, b o th o f them stated that their “intended future perm anent residence” was to be Australia. They listed them selves as plain Mr. and Mrs. Louis D arquier, he a grain m erchant, she a housewife, heading for 3 Cypress Street, Launces­ ton. It seems that the appurtenances o f nobility descended upon them during the voyage, because on arrival the entire Tasm anian family appears to have sincerely believed that their daughter and sister had m arried a baron. Louis D arquier made grand claims for this w edding trip. T he inven­ tions are rich and various, sw erving from accounts o f a year spent raising sheep and cattle, to the running o f a “sheep-farm ,” to the m anagem ent o f a large agricultural concern. H e obliterated the years 1926 to 1933 from his m em ory under a m ountain o f faradiddles in his curriculum vitae, ranging through: “From 1925 to 1928 having m ade a fortune o f about 2.000.000 D arquier worked for him self and travelled particularly in A us­ tralia, the U nited States and in E ngland,”9 to “W ent to A ustralia in 1927 to manage a livestock and agricultural farm ,” 10 to “In 1927 he failed at sheep-farm ing in A ustralia having previously m arried an heiress.” 11 H e was nowhere near A ustralia in 1927, and he did no w ork o f any kind there. Tasmania was unknow n to 1930s E urope, so the story o f M yrtle’s fortune was a safe claim which could never be investigated. T he couple reached M elbourne in July 1928, and by the end o f the m onth they were in Launceston. As they w ere steam ing tow ards A ustralia, H arry Jones ensured th at Louis could n o t get his hands on any Jones money. O n 6 July he added a codicil to the effect th at no one could inherit until Lexie’s death. As Louis and M yrtle approached Launceston, she ceased to be an heiress. I f Louis and M yrtle had serious intentions o f living in Australia, they were quickly dispelled. They did n o t stay at Cypress Street; indeed its suburban proportions probably gave Louis his first indication o f disap­ pointm ents to come. T hese w ere to be many. Launceston was a small antipodean rural tow n, and Louis and M yrde were night birds, creatures o f the city. M yrtle had told Louis th at one o f her brothers was a student 66

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at H eidelberg, another at O xford, and a third a doctor. All this was untrue, though her brothers w ere accom plished and educated young m en, and Louis now m et the dentists, teachers and farm ers they actually were. T he B aron and Baroness are said to have enjoyed a riotous tim e in Tasm ania, b u t ten days in L aunceston, housed in the grandiose A ustralian pub know n as the H otel L aunceston, was all they could tolerate. T hough divorce and rem arriage— to a Catholic— w ere as unacceptable to Lexie and H arry Jones as they w ere to the French D arquiers, w hen M yrtle’s family m et Louis D arquier in 1928, her sisters Olive, H azel and H eather all becam e besotted w ith him . Louis sat at the piano w ith his wife and entertained the family w ith E nglish and French songs. W ith his enchant­ ing French accent he was the stu ff o f dream s: “Louis was rom antic, French, w ore a m onocle, was handsom e. All the Jones sisters w ere in love w ith him .” 12 A fter L aunceston M yrde and Louis stopped o ff in M elbourne— w here M yrde’s sister H azel was studying at M elbourne U niversity and w here Louis D reyfus & Co. had substantial headquarters— then w ent on to Q ueensland, w here her b ro th er H ector was a dentist in Toow oom ba, a visit rem em bered by a relative: “Louis was a very w ell-dressed, handsom e m an w ho im pressed us w ith his E uropean m anners and travellers’ tales. A unty M yrt was a beautiful lady, always well dressed w ith a very outgoing personality.” 13 Floating around the w orld in a first-class cabin was m uch m ore to the D arquiers’ taste than driving along the unm ade roads o f the D arling D ow ns in H ector’s little A ustin. They visited Sydney in early 1929, w hen Louis renew ed his passport at the French consulate.14 Louis noticed none o f the joys A ustralia can offer. True, w hen he vis­ ited the country in 1928, before the influx o f im m igrants w ho have trans­ form ed the country into a gourm et’s paradise, it had the w orst cooking in the w orld. O verdone steak and overboiled cabbage, and several thousand different kinds o f cake o r sponge fingers, accom panied by strong tea, could n o t tem pt a E uropean palate. Louis and M yrtle were avid gam blers, b u t A ustralian pursuits— horse tracks and tw o-up— provided none o f the glam our o f E uropean casinos. Louis hated h o t w eather, and he failed to notice the light in the vast skies o f m any blues, the m iraculous calls and colours o f the birds, the bush o f such a particular and hypnotising green. W hat he did notice he used in another fantastical curriculum vitae in w hich he asserted: “In Australia, in particular, he learned, to his ow n cost, o f the catastrophic effect o f M arxist doctrine and the system o f state 67

BAD FAITH control on large farm ing enterprises.” 15 H arry Jones still ow ned three estates outside Launceston. T here was a huge w heat surplus in 1928, a slump in prices and talk o f re-establishing state control o f the sale o f A ustralian w heat— rejected by farm ers as a socialist concept. Louis m ight have purloined H arry’s opinions, o r he m ight have Been for him self that 1920s Australia was as jittery and riven as any E uropean country after die G reat War and the birth o f com m unism . T he D arquiers’ arrival coincided w ith an extended “w harfies” (water­ side workers) strike which, apart from inconveniencing them , w ould have been an eye-opener as to the suitability o f A ustralia as a dom icile. T here were riots on the docks, and sympathy strikes in key industries. Particularly in Sydney, always a Labor stronghold, K ing-and-Em pire A ustralians— the establishm ent— confronted the trade unions and the C om m unist M en­ ace. N ew spaper headlines such as “Police Fire on Strikers,” “Red Rule,” “Unionism Declares War” w ere daily fare.16 T hen, having been governed by conservatives since the war, in O ctober 1929 A ustralians voted the Labor Party into power. Louis and M yrde had left by then, b u t they sailed into the G reat D epression, landing in the U nited States as the N ew Y ork stock m arket was preparing to collapse, and in L ondon just as the slum p was to reach its w orst there. As the first signs o f recovery w ere appearing in Britain, they moved on to France w hen the w orld econom ic disaster had just begun to bite. Louis’ reported w ords o f farewell w ere to prom ise H arry Jones that he would always look after M yrde, and in his ow n way he did. W hen H arry died on 10 February 1929, the term s o f his will, revealed a m onth later, put paid to all Louis’ hopes o f im m ediate wealth. A t his death H arry, whose assets would have m ade him a m odest m illionaire at today’s values, left all his m oney to Lexie.17 A m onth later there w ere disastrous floods in northern Tasmania, and the land around L aunceston was devastated, then, in O ctober 1929, Wall Street crashed and so did the Jones fortune. -------------------CAO “The m ore I go on,” w rote Louis to René in 1927, “the m ore I think that one m ust stretch one’s field o f action as far as possible.” N ow a citizen o f the world, he later described his and M yrtle’s “series o f voyages in Aus­ tralia, the U nited States and N ew Zealand” (in fact it is unlikely th at they

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ever travelled in the U nited States o r N ew Zealand— at the m ost the ship they travelled on from A ustralia called in at p orts there on the way) as an invaluable opportunity to “study the constantly w orsening state o f the w orld economy.” Money, preferably unearned, was a god to M yrde and Louis; the gods did n o t reciprocate in kind. W ithin a few m onths o f their taking up resi­ dence in Louis’ favourite M ayfair hostelry. Brow n’s H otel, in D ecem ber 1929, the G reat Slump had h it A ustralia, the price o f w ool and w heat fell and the value o f the A ustralian m ining shares in Broken H ill collapsed. M yrde’s £40 a week, a handsom e sum in the 1920s, was w hitded dow n to £10, and then £5. T he disappearance o f her crock o f gold coincided w ith the news that she was pregnant. B ut at first nothing changed for M yrde and Louis. T he p art o f L on­ don they inhabited— Piccadilly, M ayfair— was the centre o f life for the bright young things o f the day. Brow n’s has tw o entrances, one in D over Street, the other in A lbem arle Street, an excellent thing if one needed to avoid creditors, w hich was very soon to be the case, b u t in the m eantim e they w ere near every p art o f L ondon they m ost loved. They fell in w ith the Jim m y Rudands and other lesser W odehousian honourables, w ith denizens o f Buck’s Club in C lifford Street and adventurers and adulterers on long golfing w eekends at Le Touquet. N ightlife, gam bling and music w ere at the door. H utch, the black pianist and singer so beloved by Lady Edw ina M ountbatten,18 sang and played exacdy to M yrde’s taste— “A in’t M isbehavin,” “W hat Is this T hing Called Love?” T he haunting songs o f the tim e w ere played at the Café Royal in Regent Street, the Café de Paris and the Berkeley. N earby w ere the theatres and cinemas o f Shaftesbury Avenue and C ovent G arden, Rosa Lewis’s legendary haunt o f Bohem ia the Cavendish H otel, and Fortnum and M ason for tea and goodies. T he B aron and Baroness, dressed to the nines, could hear N oël Coward, Jessie M atthew s and the C ochran revues, w ith songs M yrde w ould have played in a trice had they been able to afford a piano. T here w ere cabarets and nightclubs galore— the G argoyle in Soho, haunt o f the decadent upper crust, the Blue Train, the Silver Slipper, the N ot. By the m iddle o f 1930 there w ere two m illion unem ployed in Britain, despite all the prom ises o f Ramsay M acD onald’s L abour governm ent Louis could n o t get a position. Very soon, despite his w innings at poker, there was no m oney left. Louis turned to René. It soon becam e his habit

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BAD FAITH to telegraph René in Strasbourg first, letters o f explanation following. All his telegram s^re similarly breathless. In the spring o f 1930 he cabled: F O U N D P O S IT IO N IOOO PO U N D S PLUS SIX PE R C E N T A G E BASE LAST BALANCE SH E ET N E E D TO H O L D O N T IL L A F T E R E A STER C A N YOU ADVANCE I JO PO U N D S V ITA L U R G E N T A N D SE C R E T KISSES LO U IS TH O S. COOKS B ERKELEY STREET*9

“I have been entirely ruined for a long tim e— I ’ve lived any old how for som e m onths and feel the end approaching,” he then explained by let­ ter. T he “cow o f a hotelkeeper” at Brow n’s was threatening to throw them out. Would René buy his ex-fiancée lin e ’s ring, his tiepin o r “San­ dra’s diam ond brooch” and send him £ 1 50 im m ediately so he could pay the bill? H e was about to becom e the m anager o f a car sales company, “A utom obiles, new and second hand, garage, accessories e tc ,” in w hich, he assured René, his role w ould be “above all to talk to the distinguished people w ho do n o t like, in England, as you know, to do business w ith a professional mechanic.”20 H e begged René, w hen he sent the money, to rem em ber that he was now D arquier de Pellepoix.21 René never did remember. Louis earned his keep by pursuing anyone w ith a tide o r a position: the 1930 candidate was “the m anager” o f Lloyds Bank, a Y orkshirem an nam ed Robinson, w ho prom ised him “ 3 o r 4 consultancies” w orth “400 or 500 pounds a year.”22 M yrtle’s family w ere dunned too, b u t unfortun­ ately H ector, applied to for £100, was too far away to provide im m ediate relief. By the tim e M yrtle was five m onths pregnant, in A pril 1930, Brown’s H otel refused to accom m odate them any longer, and the Baron and Baroness appeared in M arlborough Street M agistrates’ C ourt, in com pany w ith the beggars and indigents o f the tim e, because o f Louis’ failure to register as an alien. As such he was required to dem onstrate, under clause ia o f the Aliens A ct, th at he was “in a position to support him self and his dependants,” so he scarcely had a leg to stand on. Pre­ ceded into court by A lbert G abb, aged fifty-six, accused o f begging, Louis, “aged th irty -tw o . . . grain m erchant,” “tall and distinguishedlooking” in “a sm art speckled-grey overcoat” was fined £100, n o t the usual £50. “What! A Baron and a Baroness?” rem arked the m agistrate. “I should be insulting if I were to suggest such a small sum to them .” T he Evening Standard o f 17 A pril reported the case: “M O N O C L E D 70

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• BARON CH A RG ED .”2* F or her appearance at court M yrtle w ore the uniform o f her aspirations. “Baroness D arquier,” aged thirty-seven, was described as “aged tw enty-eight. . . an attractive-looking w om an” w ear­ ing “a dark blue coat w ith a fur collar and a close-fitting black hat.” By the tim e this account reached Tasm ania, these events had been transform ed into a glam orous peccadillo, a small m isunderstanding w hich could in no way m ar the im age o f the aristocratic B aron and his beautiful young wife. M ore realistically. Father R obert Steuart o f Farm Street, L ondon’s m ost exclusive Catholic C hurch, “stood surety for each.” A fter this Louis was entirely on his uppers. T heir M ayfair life was quite over. H otel m anagers, m en w hom Louis liked to describe as “tav­ erners,” objected to n o t being paid. A fter their ejection by Brow n’s, Louis and M yrtle’s descent was rapid: they flitted through the C urzon H otel, follow ed by a sw ift descent to the H otel Rubens in Buckingham Palace Road, a street less grand than its royal nam e m ight imply. T heir energies w ere now devoted to extracting m oney from their respective families to pay the weekly bills. René and Lucienne w ere also expecting their first child, b u t this did n o t prevent Louis from ringing Strasbourg at m idnight, o r ticking his bro th er o ff if m oney did n o t arrive in tim e, o r if René sug­ gested investigating the reasons for R obinson’s failure to com e fo rth w ith anything sound. Louis’ nerves becam e “frazzled,” while M yrtle grew “enorm ous.” She was due to give b irth in A ugust, and by June they m oved o u t o f L ondon for her confinem ent. I t is likely th at they chose O ld W indsor because o f its propinquity to the royal castle and E to n College— Louis hoped for a boy, and w anted him educated at E ton. In fact O ld W indsor was n o t the W indsor o f the B ritish kings and queens b u t a m ore ancient nearby parish w ith som e four hundred houses in 1930, none o f them m eaner than Treen Cottage, w here the D arquiers lodged for £ 4 a week, “everything included,” in the sum m er o f 1930.24 In July Louis had a “violent discussion” w ith Robin­ son w hich ended all hopes o f m oney from th at quarter, and im m ediately car sales com panies becam e a tiling o f the past. Louise D arquier was die daughter and granddaughter o f printers and journalists; Louis decided to earn his living by becom ing a w riter. T he Jones family sent Louis and M yrtle £100 to pay for the birth o f their child, and Louis found him self a literary agent and tossed o ff som e travel articles and four sh o rt stories in a m atter o f weeks. “I hope he will sell them ,” Louis told René, and every tim e he w rote asking for m ore 71

BAD FAITH money, he inform ed his brother th at he hoped it w ould be his “last beg­ ging.” Louis w rote his fictions in English and som etim es in French, and M yrtle said they appeared “in the French papers at intervals.” N othing is left to inform us o f their quality o r flavour, o r even their existence, the records o f his dealings w ith literary agents and putative publishers hav­ ing been either lost in the m ists o f tim e, discarded as unim portant, o r destroyed by bom bing during the war. Louis could w rite a novel, in E n ­ glish, in a few m onths; this may be one reason they w ere never published. A nne D arquier was born in T reen Cottage, O ld W indsor, o n 3 Sep­ tem ber 1930, the certificate recording this event being a fabrication from beginning to end, except for the date. G iving A nne the m iddle nam e o f “France,” as was the habit o f patriotic Frenchm en, Louis now officially signed him self as B aron Louis D arquier de Pellepoix. D espite the fact that he and M yrtle were to live in hotel room s o f considerable seediness for m ost o f their lives, he described him self as a “Landow ner and French Baron.” Myrtle, as ferocious a fibber as Louis, gave her nam e as “M yrtle M arion A m brosene D arquier de Pellepoix, form erly Lindsay-Jones.” A week later, A dolf H itler’s N azi Party was elected in sufficient num bers to make it the second-largest political party in G erm any. M yrtle, presum ably because o f her incoherent m arital status, was always anguished by any dem and to see her passport, o r any other official docum entation. Possibly for this reason, o r perhaps because she and Louis were so often pursued by angry creditors, her use o f aliases contin­ ued throughout her life. Som etim es she is M yrtle D arquier de Pellepoix, form erly Lindsay-Jones— later she changed the spelling to the m ore aris­ tocratic Lyndsay; som etim es she is M orrison-Jones, som etim es Sandra Lyndsay-Darquier. O n the ru n after the w ar she was Cynthia de Pelle Poix. Sometimes she is English, som etim es Irish, som etim es A m erican; often she is a wealthy heiress, the proprietor o f vast “ranches” in Aus­ tralia. Always she liked people to address her as “Baroness,” “Baronne? “Baronesa? -C to

Elsie Lightfoot o f D uns Tew in O xfordshire called herself a children’s nurse. It is unlikely she had any training, b u t it seem s certain th at in 1930 she answered an advertisem ent placed by M yrtle in The Lady, the English weekly magazine which has m atched nannies, m aids and menials w ith 7*

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those in need o f them since 1885. In those days The Lady carried advertise­ m ents requesting “thoroughly experienced cake makers,” “com panionhelps” and “strong, willing and early rising” persons o f all kinds to com e to the assistance o f ladies and gentlew om en o f the leisured classes. Elsie was thirty-seven years old w hen she w ent to w ork for a couple w hom she believed to be B aron and Baroness Louis D arquier de Pellepoix. A nne always im plied th at Elsie was paid to take her in alm ost im m e­ diately after she was born. Six weeks later her parents registered her birth in W indsor; three m onths later they w ere gone, back to L ondon, and then to Paris. T hese three m onths constitute m ore o r less the entire tim e M yrtle, Louis and A nne D arquier were to spend together. A nne was given away for a fee o f £1 a week. In later life Louis explained this away as norm al behaviour for the tim e; if he had indeed possessed the lands and estates he claim ed, A nne w ould have lived apart from her parents w ith her nanny in the standard E nglish upper-class m ode. Louis and M yrde called Elsie “N urse” in the accepted way, and gave A nne to her to take away to live in D uns Tew. N ei­ th er M yrde n o r Louis ever referred to their daughter by her nam e: for M yrde she was always “Baby,” for Louis “lagosse” the kid. ------------------- 0A0------------------T here are three Tews in O xfordshire: D uns Tew, Little Tew and G reat Tew, nestling n o rth o f O xford and bypassed by the road from Chipping N o rto n to Banbury. T hese w ere still D om esday feudal villages in the 1930s, w ith tied cottages, lords o f the m anor o f the hunting, shooting, fishing and absentee kind, and ancient and charm ing parish churches. T here was no sewerage, no gas, electricity o r mains w ater, and only an occasional public telephone. Elsie L ightfoot was b orn in the village o f C um nor, very near O xford, on 4 July 1893— four m onths before M yrde Jones. H er parents, Reuben and E m m a H all L ightfoot, w ere the class o f person w hose ancestral role was to serve as nannies, groom s and gardeners, or, as in Reuben’s case, as a blacksm ith. O xfordshire, near the Cotswolds— described by Sylvia Plath as “a county on a nursery plate”— is wealthy, b oth because o f its rich farm ing land and its proxim ity to L ondon. B ut in the 1930s “everybody was poor.” “I t w asn’t all rising fields o f poppies and blue skies. A large p art o f it was lashing rain; chaps walking round dressed in bits o f soaking 73

BAD FAITH sacking, and children dying o f quite ordinary diseases like w hooping cough.”25 T hat is how A nne rem em bered her country childhood. W hen they were n o t “w orking away,” as dom estic service was called at the tim e, Elsie and her sisters lived w ith their m other E m m a in D uns Tew. A nne always called Elsie “Nanny,” and her sisters becam e A unty V iolet, Aunty M aud and Aunty Annie. By 1950 Jo h n Brice, A nnie’s husband, had died, and her daughter May was living w ith her grandm other. A lm ost immediately Em m a L ightfoot died, the tied cottage returned to die estate o f the Dashw oods, owners o f D uns Tew M anor, and Elsie and M aud rented a litde thatched cottage, tw o-up tw o-dow n, next d oor to D aisy Pym, the village schoolm istress. This cottage, m uch im proved, is still there in the m ain street o f D uns Tew, opposite the post office, next to the church. A nne was three m onths old, and A nnie’s daughter May, thirteen, was never taken back by her m other. M aud and Elsie, May and A nne w ere to live together, one way o r another, for m ost o f the next fifteen years. May becam e an older sister to Anne, sharing the particular bond o f m aternal rejection. O ne o f her friends rem em bered: “May never forgave h er m other— A nne didn’t either.”26 Until she took A nne, Elsie was used to w orking away, b u t she could do so no longer, at least while A nne was a baby. I f she had hoped to live on the m oney Louis and M yrtle had prom ised her for A nne’s upkeep, she was soon severely disabused. T hough she continued to believe that A nne’s parents were the B aron and Baroness she liked them to be— Elsie was as partial to royalty and titles as M yrtle— she soon gave up any hope o f noble behaviour from either o f them . T he D arquier family had alm ost w ritten Louis o ff by this tim e. F or ten years he had failed at everything: everywhere he was well know n for “his extravagances and his follies.” T he birth o f Baby, though, m ended fences, so after they left A nne w ith Elsie, Louis took M yrtle to Paris to m eet his family, probably for the first time. M yrtle’s accounts, always chaotic, are not specific on this point, b u t they make it perfectly clear th at the D arquiers made it obvious that she w ould n o t do. T he visit was a disaster. Myrtle w rote to René: “You will never know how it h u rt m e to find you all hated me. I liked you too and som ehow I fondly im agined you did me.”27 They did not, and Louise in particular. Louis w orshipped his m other, and Myrtle was “particularly grieved over M adam e’s attitude.” “A us­ tralians sound terrible to us and we b o th look and sound terrible to 74

BABY them .” *8T his was n o t the reception M yrtle expected. She belonged firm ly to th at class o f A ustralians w ho hankered after E urope. W hen she was sober she assum ed a very British accent; w hen drunk she becam e Aus­ tralian. W hether drunk o r sober, she had no com m and o f any foreign lan­ guages, and her French was at best vestigial. T here are fleeting references to som ething w hich w ent terribly w rong during their stay at Neuilly: the chances are th at enough becam e apparent about the drinking habits o f b oth M yrtle and Louis to horrify the D arquier family.29 H orrified they certainly were. A fter the couple’s ignom inious depar­ ture from Neuilly, Louise opened a letter from Roy, addressed to M yrtle. T his may be how she discovered that M yrde was at best a divorced w om an, at w orst a bigam ous one. T he despatch o f Louise’s first grand­ child to a nurse in the English counties was unacceptable, though M yrde m aintained th at “it costs far less to have her there than w ith us as we w ould have to pay board here for her— it is healthy there for her.” }0 Louis’ lack o f em ploym ent was a m ajor source o f displeasure, as w ere his and M yrtle’s nightlife and their spendthrift days. T he family called M yrtle “m e Anglaise,” “la Tasmanienne” and longed to return her to the strange place from w hence she came. Ju st as im portant, it seems, was the absence o f the anticipated inheritance. M yrtle struggled to please. Louise D arquier was always beautifully and expensively dressed, w ith exquisite jewellery, and was m ost particular about her hats, m ade for her by her personal “modiste” (milliner). H ence­ forth M yrtle attem pted to flatter— or com pete w ith— her m other-in-law by appropriating a passion for hats th at always caused com m ent w herever she w ent. A vain attem pt, because the D arquier family spent m ost o f the next three years trying to force Louis to get a position, and to get rid o f M yrde. T he couple stayed on in Paris w hile Louis tried to find the m oney to return to L ondon. B oth he and M yrde thought he could do so by w riting a book. M yrde was sure he could. Closeted together in their hotel room Louis w orked on his first novel— False Gods was its tide— while M yrde took up the task o f dealing w ith René. Louis’ hatred for his family’s “p ro­ foundly cruel attitude” and “inhum ane solutions” m eant th at the only contact he now had w ith them w ere “fire-eating letters” to René, w hose grow ing im patience was expressed only in a m odest request that Louis could perhaps cease w ounding him every tim e he tried to help. M yrtle’s letters tell us everything about her, except for those m atters 75

BAD FAITfc she could n o t face o r w ould n o t talk about. H er spelling was shaky in English; as for French, she spelt the language as she heard it, and her inventive attem pts to spell the nam es o f her D arquier relations changed in each begging letter. Sometimes there is only a day o r so betw een letters, som e o f them fourteen pages long, im ploring, beseeching René: “Could you let us have 500 francs to get things necessary for Baby and ourselves and collect the book and send it away. . . ” “Louis or not I will have any more children—we cannot keep our­ selves and the poor little one. I have been very queer myself for the last fortnight. . . ” “My dear René we are again in a very difficult situation. We have had, so to speak, nothing to eat since Saturday.. .”JI T he w ord “grateful” counterpoints “please send” and “as soon as possible” in all M yrde’s letters. René sent her the money, w ith adm oni­ tions she accepted w ith humility, apologies, abasem ent: “please René [sic] try to forget personal feelings about m e . . . My people are n o t any m ore pleased w ith the m atch than yours . . . I am n o t m aterial. . .” 52 Louis, meanwhile, m ade m atters w orse by applying to family friends and col­ leagues for money, w ith calam itous results. H e approached one o f René’s form er colleagues, Jean O sterm eyer, w ho w orked for the G rands M oulins in Paris, and followed up his initial success w ith further dem ands, w riting: “be careful in w hat you say to René— he is a little boy, very pretentious and quite stupid despite his com m ercial sense about practical m atters.” 53 O sterm eyer sent the letter on to René. “I suppose,” w rote O sterm eyer, “that similar letters have been sent in m any directions— As for m e, I shall not be taken in twice. His last furore was n o t w orthy o f him , he lied and spoke badly about his parents.” 54 A natole de M onzie’s office told Louis he w ould assist him later— “they were helping a banker at present.” 5’ W hen Louis applied to Jean’s medical teacher. D r. Clovis V incent o f the Salpêtrière H ospital, V incent replied that Pierre D arquier had already w arned him off, accom panying this instruction w ith richly descriptive com m ents about his second son. “I w ant you to realise,” roared Louis to René, “the hate th at I have held for the last twenty years for the bastard w hose nam e I regret to say I bear (and w ho always conducted him self, in w ar and in peace, in politics as in the

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BABY family, physically and m orally as the w orst o f cow ards). . . T here are m any personal elem ents in my failure, b u t also m any profound causes for w hich I am n o t responsible-—a heavy family inheritance, com bined w ith intellectual poverty on one side and congenital cowardice o n the other— a dreadful education, low in all points o f view— the w ar above all— Two o r three years o f attem pts are n o t too many, believe m e, to get rid o f this dross.” 56 M yrtle’s w ork becam e even harder, her letters longer. Baby, she w rote, “has w onderful health and is a very good and obedient child. She needs so m any things.”57 So did Louis, w ho had ordered a new suit, b u t w ho was to pay for it? “To find a job is a terrible problem ,” w rote Louis. “I w rote a big novel w hich I did in a desperate effort to be published as quickly as possible— the reader o f one o f the biggest publishers in L o n d o n . . . w rote to m e yesterday. . . ‘I have read the beginning o f it w ith consider­ able interest.’ ” 58 Louis w rote his novels under the nam e o f Louis de Pellepoix; he w rote in longhand, and could n o t afford to get his m anu­ script typed; he knew nothing at all about British, o r any other, publishing habits. M yrtle never returned to A ustralia after 1928, b u t the threnody o f her Tasm anian family and the m oney she w ould one day inherit trills through all her letters like the sound o f a piccolo. She was prone to use A ustralian idiom s, and René did n o t take kindly to being told he was n o t “fair and sporting,” o r was hitting “below the belt” w hen he occasionally did n o t send the m oney dem anded. M yrtle herself knew how to get a blow in: “you know René all these m en w ho w ent through the w ar are n o t as strong and able as you are . . . [Louis’] nerves w ere com pletely shot to pieces.” 59 She insisted, again and again, th at her prospects had been ruined only tem porarily by the D epression in A ustralia, that the family land w ould boom again, w heat w ould recover, and “a good price fo r w ool w ould gready alter their position.”40 M yrtle’s m other Lexie was only fifty-two w hen M yrtle used her antici­ pated death in such letters to assure the D arquier family that w hen she died M yrtle’s share o f the estate w ould be “considerable and will provide a happy future fo r us.” U ntil th at day (which was n o t to com e for nearly thirty years, and w hich w ould provide no fortune then) she im plored them to im itate the generosity o f her ow n family, w ho continued, w ith difficulty, to send w hat they could. M yrtle’s tacdess com parison o f Tas-

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BAD FAlfH manían generosity w ith die parsim ony o f the French family was the last straw. Louis’ family offered bribes for M yrde to go away. M yrde fought back: Despite all the difficulties in England [Louis] was so much better there. . . It is very silly o f you to imagine that by me going to England Louis would be b etter. . . I realise Madame wants me to leave Louis but I venture to say she does not realise what would happen. . . every day I say I will not stand any more but despite a heavy black eye etc, numerous bruises, many dreadful insults and locked doors and distur­ bances I cannot leave him . . . I have nothing to gain by staying but hunger and more difficulties and the dread o f something even more frightening.41 A fter six m onths o f this, Louis caved in and w ent to see René in Stras­ bourg. H e now had “nothing, nothing, nothing.” B efore his final subm is­ sion he tried once more: For a long time Maman set out two assumptions, which despite all appearances are false, i.e. i . Sandra is responsible for everything that has happened, happens or will happen 2. Louis is ready to leave her in one way or another. On this basis, on my first return to Paris, I had to listen to inhumane solutions that the greatest wretches would not be able to accept. . . and you. . . asked me yesterday; “Has Sandra left?” forgetting, no doubt, that having nothing to pay for her shoes, it would be difficult for me to pay for her passage to London. But that is not the point— The essential fact is that all these difficulties that I have undergone, undergo and will undergo are due to me, to my ideas, to my need to escape from the principles o f a country where I cannot live—whatever have been the difficulties (for a long time so stressed by poverty together) that I have found in my marriage—it remains that I have found in it the only satisfactions that I have known in my life. There is nothing of a genital nature in this— (another o f the stupid and gratu­ itous hypotheses o f Maman)— it is o f the most profound spiritual nature—so much so that if I sacrificed it I would lose my reason for 4*

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BABY Louis refused to give up Sandra; returning to live in France w ould be m oral suicider I f his family declined to finance his literary career, he pre­ ferred to live in the gutter in L ondon. T his was his last sally. T he family prom ised M yrde £ z a week— over ¿100 a week today— to stay away from Louis. M yrde was “really very w orried about him — he is so nervy and tired and bursts into tears at the slightest provocation. I cannot help b u t be frightened at his violence and I dread the thought o f scandal and really Louis is com pletely im possible at present. H e is quite broken and w hen I think and speak o f leaving him he goes to pieces— I am really afraid how all this is going to end— hitting people in restaurants . . . I t w ould be far from cricket to leave him w hen he is p o o r and m iserable.”45 B ut she w ent. Louis w rote to René: “Sandra left yesterday— D o n o t forget her— and above all the blonde child w ho m ust be beginning to cry famine.”44

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6 -------------------------—