DURING THE WAR bogus royalties and princesses sprang up like toadstools. Any young woman with a turn for private theatricals and a vivid imagination could burst forth as a high-born refugee and get someone to believe in her and, incidentally, to finance her until she found a husband from among the officers in one or other of the camps. The first I remember was a Russian princess who, while staying with a very influential lady in the Midlands, had become engaged to a certain temporary officer of large expectations. She was described to me as beautiful, with a peculiarly Russian type of loveliness, emotional, as all Russians are, with blue eyes that became easily suffused with tears and with a charming flow of broken English. I think it was the broken English that was her undoing, for she had the ill-fortune to come into contact with an Englishwoman who prided herself on her Russian and would insist upon showing it off to every Russian she met. Curious to relate, the princess had entirely forgotten her Russian and for some reason her parents had neglected to have her taught French, which is in the ordinary curriculum of well-born Russians. She accounted for this by vague allusions to the misfortunes of her family, who had had so troublous an existence that they appeared to have forgotten to teach her anything but English and this only broken English.
It was in the height of the spy mania and, not un-naturally, the Russian-speaking Englishwoman jumped to the conclusion that she had to deal with a German spy and, worse, a German spy who had got herself engaged to a British officer and so she came to me. I found that the princess’s hostess was still ready to go bail for her and could not bear that her protégée should undergo the humiliation of being called to Scotland Yard, but I was adamant. Come the lady must. All I could promise was that she should not be dealt with harshly even if she proved to be a spy.
There walked into my room a beautifully dressed young woman with a full outfit of furs, because, I suppose, a Russian princess would not be Russian without them. Her broken English was certainly not the broken English of a Russian nor of a Frenchwoman nor of a German nor, indeed, of any nation that I had yet encountered. It was the broken English of the English stage; and when I came to look at the lady I was quite sure that whatever knowledge she had acquired of life had been acquired in the lower ranks of the profession.
I said: ‘English does not come very easily to you. Shall we talk French?’
‘I not speak French, sir.’
‘But you are a Russian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your parents are now in Russia?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And yet you do not speak Russian?’
‘No, sir. Russia I leave many years ago.’
‘Can you describe to me your Russian home?’
‘I leave, sir, when quite a leetle child.’
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want you to give me the address of your English mother. You see, in this room one has to drop all play-acting and tell the truth.’
Her blue eyes filled with tears, but at last, quite faintly, she gave me an address in London and retired to await the arrival of her mother.
There was no play-acting about this good lady when she arrived. She was a buxom woman of fifty, who earned her living as a housekeeper and had two daughters, one in a good situation and the other a young woman who had become stage-struck at eighteen and would from time to time fill the breasts of her mother and sister with silent indignation by flouncing in upon them in expensive clothes and attempting to patronise them. ‘I always told her that she’d get herself into trouble if she went on as she did and now she has. You just let me see her for five minutes and talk to her.’ I asked whether she had ever heard that her daughter was posing as a Russian. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I remember that one Christmas she got a part as a Russian princess in a pantomime and had to talk broken English.’
In fact, the war had broken out just in time to give this young lady an opportunity of continuing her part off the stage. She had had a glorious time. I was not present at the interview between mother and daughter, but at the end of it the mother informed me that she had promised to be a good girl and make a clean breast of it all to her patroness and also to the man whom she was about to marry and I heard that he, good fellow that he was, married her all the same.
Another young woman who appeared in 1915 aimed higher and, being better educated, played her part with more distinction. She was no less, according to the accounts that first came to me, than a daughter of Marie Vetsera, the heroine of the mysterious tragedy in which Prince Rudolf of Austria met his death and of course I need hardly say that Prince Rudolf was her father. She arrived from America and almost immediately became engaged to a British officer. She was invited to Scotland Yard for an interview. She did not talk broken English, but her accent was neither American nor English and, unlike the Russian princess, she was possessed of some means. Her story was full of mysteries and reticences. She could only tell me, she said, what she had herself been told. Her earliest recollections were of the convent in America in which she had been brought up. The Sisters would only tell her that a foreign-looking stranger had brought her there as a baby and that her parentage was very distinguished indeed. She must not ask too many questions. He had invested for her a large sum of money which she was to enjoy when she came of age. It had been placed in trust with a firm of lawyers who were under an obligation not to tell her whence it came. As the years went on there were hints about the Austrian royal family. Prince Rudolf had been mentioned and then one day the Mother Superior put her arm round her and whispered that her mother had been very unhappy, that the whole thing was very tragic and, again, that she must not ask too many questions. From this she inferred the rest – that she was the daughter of Marie Vetsera, born some time before the tragedy.
‘I am sorry to interrupt you,’ I said, ‘but Marie Vetsera never had a daughter. The whole of her history is well known.’
Her eyes filled with tears and she replied that she could only tell me what she had been told. When she left the convent the lawyer had hinted at the same thing and had paid over to her the money that had been placed in trust.
‘The lawyer’s name?’
‘Alas, sir, he is dead and the firm no longer exists.’
She then asked for advice as to how she should manage about her boy, then a child of about six. As far as I could gather, she had for some time been living on her capital, which must in due course come to an end. Asked what she would do when the inevitable happened, she shook her head and hinted that she would put an end to herself.
It transpired in the course of the interview that she could speak French and Polish fairly fluently and this may have accounted for the peculiarity of her accent. She had been taught these languages, she said, in the convent. She would not give the name of the convent and therefore all this part of the story may have been invented like the rest, but it was clear from inquiries that were subsequently made that by nationality she was American and that she was certainly not engaged in espionage.
But the most amazing of all the claimants was a certain soi-disant princess of a royal house who had succeeded in convincing a very large number of people that she was genuine. She was not in need of funds, nor had she any object in view except to gain the prestige which a royal parentage would confer upon her. It was therefore a quite harmless amusement and she must have got a great deal of fun out of it. Unfortunately for her, when she had first laid claim to her rank there was nothing to show that we were soon to be at war with the sovereign whom she claimed for father and when the spy mania was at its height he came, not unnaturally, under suspicion. It was still more unfortunate that her own brother was living in this country.
She had worked out the details of her claim with remarkable skill. Her mother was still living, as well as her two brothers and a sister. It was impossible to ignore them altogether and so she told a story of how she had been confided to the care of her own mother by an imperial lady who, for some unexplained reason, wished to keep her birth a secret. I commend this kind of story to any future claimant of royal parentage, because when sceptics begin to throw details of your early life in your face you can say, ‘Quite so, all that happened, only you were never told the secret of my birth, which is known only to me and to one or two other people, who are dead.’ All she had to do, in fact, was to read up all the movements of the court during the years of her infancy and childhood and retail them as a privileged eyewitness.
There sailed into my room one morning the most imperial-looking person I have ever seen. Even when sitting in my low armchair there was a calm and condescending dignity about her that would have impressed anybody. She had a husband who was on the way to make a fortune and who was in attendance to confirm everything she said and no one was ever more ready than she to help me over any difficult points, only I must tell her what they were. My first point was that her reputed mother did not and could not have had a child at the particular date when she said she was born. She smiled rather pityingly and said that no doubt I was not aware that her mother had spent some months alone at a watering-place in France at that time and that it was evident that I did not know how eccentric she was. As a matter of fact I did, but I also knew a good deal about the movements of the imperial lady immediately after the supposed birth and they did not at all tally with my visitor’s story. I took her through her various statements and as I had no documentary evidence on the other side to confront her with she left with the honours of war, but she left me also quite unconvinced.
A few days later I discovered her brother, a composer of considerable ability and a very striking-looking man with a strong family likeness to his sister. He was in a state of great indignation against her, chiefly, I think, on account of the disparagement of his mother which was entailed by her story. He came fully armed with most convincing documents – family photographs from the time when they were all children together, letters written by the lady herself to her family and letters from his mother in Switzerland. Among the letters was one written when the claimant was a girl of seventeen. She and her sister were at a watering-place and she retails, with satisfaction, a remark she overheard about them, that they were Kaiserlich mädchen. This chance remark overheard in a hotel probably put the entire idea into her head. In appearance she was Kaiserlich to the finger-tips and it must have been balm to her soul to extend them to be kissed and to see the world curtsy to her. She was the daughter of a Jewish bank manager in a good position. She had been well educated and she knew a number of people who could tell her the gossip of the court. She could not have imposed on any one in her own country, but once abroad she began to expand and the story had given four or five years of intense pleasure.
Having satisfied myself that, whatever else the lady might be, she was not dangerous to the cause of the Allies, I dropped the case, thinking that if any exposure became necessary the brother would bring it about; but one day, to my great surprise, a friend who has a profound knowledge of Austria, told me that he was satisfied that she was genuine and thought it a great pity that she had been subjected to the indignity of interrogation. I made him a sporting offer. I said that the lady was probably expecting another interview, that I had documentary proofs in my possession and that if he liked I would invite her to see me again in his presence. He agreed and asked only that he might bring with him a personage who has since become very prominent in Europe.
The interview took place. The lady sailed in as imperially as before. My companions were presented to her and she acknowledged their bows with the slightest nod.
‘Sit down, madam. Since I saw you last some very interesting documents have reached me and I want to put them to you. The first are some family photographs.’
I thought she flushed slightly.
‘Oh, I can see what has happened. You have been in communication with Mr K—, who claims to be my brother. Poor man, it has become an obsession with him.’
I do not think that she was prepared for the family photographs, for at first she would not admit that the girl of fourteen in one of the groups was herself. A little later she seemed to think that this was a false move, for she said, ‘I suppose that is my photograph, but you see at that time we should have been photographed together because I had been consigned to the care of Madame K—.’ When she came to her own letters she was for the first time embarrassed and inclined to be angry, for she had at short notice to make up her mind whether she would deny the authorship altogether, or admit it and readjust her story. I was on pretty sure ground, because it happened that a relation of mine had been staying in the same house as her imperial ‘mother’ on an occasion when she claimed to have been present and that when her photograph was shown to this lady, she declared that the girl she saw there was quite a different-looking person. For the first time her imperial calm broke down. She became very pale and very angry. It was difficult to say whether fear or anger was the stronger of her emotions. She admitted the authorship of the letters and to all our further questions she would only reply that she was suffering for the malice of her brother.
For a time I think she dropped her royal pretensions. At any rate, she dropped the idea of writing a book, which was said to be nearly ready for publication.
Another case of impersonation was that of the man who called himself Count de Borch. He was a Polish Jew, well educated and well dressed and he seems to have had a curious fascination for persons with whom he came in contact. Any mysterious Pole was at that time an object of suspicion. This man had obtained employment carrying a small weekly wage with a firm of furniture dealers in London and yet he was able to cut a dash at London tea-tables and expensive restaurants. He had a large circle of hostesses from whom he would have been in a position to acquire a good deal of information useful to the enemy if he had tried to do so. He was brought down to Scotland Yard some weeks before the tragedy which brought his name before the public. The title of ‘de Borch’ was old and highly esteemed in Poland and I had been assured that whatever this man might be he was certainly not in any way connected with the family. He made a very bad impression upon me. He fell back upon the usual ruse of bogus claimants. He said that he knew nothing about his ancestry except what he had been told, that there had always been a mystery about his parentage because, owing to family differences, his father was anxious that his existence should be kept secret until the day when he could come into his own and so he had been supporting himself honourably with a firm in London until Poland was free. It was like a great many other cases at that time. Until some evidence was forthcoming that a man was engaged in espionage, he had to be left at liberty under surveillance. He was believed to be drawing sums of money from some of his hostesses to eke out his slender wages and it was his social side that was his undoing.
The tragedy in which he met his death was very fully reported at the time. Captain Malcolm had returned from the Front to find that this over-dressed and scented person had been trying to break up his home. He came to Scotland Yard to ascertain his address, but as it is not the custom to give addresses to callers no information was given. He found it out in another way, bought a horsewhip, with which to thrash the man and gained admittance to his room. In the scuffle that followed the use of the horsewhip, de Borch was shot dead, but as a loaded pistol was found in an opened drawer close to the bed it was held that de Borch intended to use it upon his unwelcome visitor and Captain Malcolm was acquitted.