The end of hostilities and the Armistice negotiations produced a host of new problems for the Board of Admiralty and for Beatty; and the strain on the latter was aggravated by his son David falling seriously ill at Osborne College and by Eugénie being afflicted with kidney trouble, which finally necessitated an operation, in London. Nor were Beatty’s anxieties mitigated by Eugénie evidently posing some awkward questions about their relationship; for he seems to have appreciated more clearly than she the fact that it was bound to become more difficult now that he and Ethel would be together much more, and would be expected to present to society the picture of a happily married couple. Moreover Beatty was clearly determined to avoid even a whiff of public scandal – such as could well have ruined his career.
Many years later Leslie visited Eugénie, then a widow living in a ‘grace and favour’ house at Hampton Court Palace, in order to collect material for his Beatty biography, and she evidently told him that after the 1914-18 war ‘there was a chance of the Indian Viceroyalty’, being offered [to Beatty], in succession to Lord Chelmsford, ‘but the King knew better than anyone that her [i.e. Ethel’s] health would not be equal to it’. Eugenie must presumably have learnt of this possibility from her husband, but as there is no mention of it in the King’s diary or elsewhere in the Royal Archives it is improbable that the idea ever got further than a tentative suggestion discussed verbally among the courtiers.1
Very early in the New Year Beatty began a letter to his ‘Golden haired Comrade’ saying ‘It’s alright that’s what you told me to say if it was alright and I say it first to [sic] and at once . . . make it clear that your imaginings are all wrong’. As he went on to describe himself as ‘a selfish beast’ and to admit that he ‘ought to say that I must not trouble you more and ought to retire gracefully out of your life’, but could not do so, it seems clear that he was still hoping to get the best of all worlds.2 Several more letters, written with the object of reassuring his mistress about nothing having changed between them quickly followed.3 He was touched that Eugénie remembered his birthday (17th January), and promised that what she had evidently called the ‘elusive little Flame’ was still there, and that it ‘burns all day and all night’; so she must not be ‘alarmed’ but would, he hoped, go to Italy to seek warm weather and better health.4
In February Beatty, with Spickernell and Seymour to support him, accompanied the King on a tour of the battlefields of Flanders. They were royally entertained, among others, by the Belgian King and by wartime celebrities such as Cardinal Mercier of Louvain and Burgomaster Max of Brussels; but Beatty admitted to Eugénie that he was ‘never any good at sight-seeing of any kind’, and that he was bored by the whole enterprise. He was, however, buoyed up by the hope of seeing her on his return – ‘if Tata doesn’t get the sulks and change her plans’.5
We have seen how, at the beginning of Wemyss’s time as First Sea Lord relations between him and Beatty had been cordial – despite some disagreements arising over matters of policy such as the completion of the North Sea mine barrage; but the end of hostilities with Germany produced a big change. In Wemyss’s words there arose ‘a marked disposition on the part of the Commander-in-Chief and his staff to regard the climax [to the war] as unworthy. They had looked for a Trafalgar . . . [but] what they got was a victory more crushing than Trafalgar, but without its losses and without any of the personal glory which would have been attached to the survivors’.6 A more immediate cause of strife arose over the appointment of officers. For example before the end of the war Beatty wrote a very prickly letter to the Admiralty about Captain F. C. Dreyer’s appointment being changed from Director of the Gunnery Division to Director of Naval Artillery and Torpedo. ‘It is assumed’, he wrote, ‘that the Director of Naval Artillery and Torpedo will be at liberty to communicate direct only with the C-in-C’; and again that ‘Their Lordships will I am sure recognise the desirability of taking the C-in-C of the Grand Fleet into their confidence before creating a new office and conferring upon it powers and duties which affect very considerably the status and responsibility of the C-in-C in Gunnery and Torpedo questions’7 – which came near to arrogating to himself powers which plainly rested with the Board of Admiralty. It is not surprising that the Board should have rejected such a claim summarily. In his memoirs Wemyss admitted that as long as the war lasted and the fleet might at any time have to fight a battle it was reasonable that the C-in-C should have a big say in the selection of his subordinates; but once the possibility of battle had disappeared the situation was totally changed. He recorded that ever since he had become 1st Sea Lord he had ‘suffered considerable inconvenience and difficulty from the power which had gradually accrued to the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet in the matter of appointments’; and that Beatty ‘almost had got into the way of looking upon such appointments as his prerogative’. As this was constitutionally wrong he told Geddes, the First Lord, that he ‘thought it was most necessary that the Admiralty should immediately recover its authority and prerogative’.8 This purpose led to a clash over the appointment of Roger Keyes to command the Battle Cruisers, which Beatty heard about before the Naval Secretary’s informative letter had reached him. Beatty ‘chose to regard this as a slight upon himself’, wrote Wemyss; and he considered that it exacerbated ‘the bitterness which . . . without doubt existed in his [Beatty’s] mind towards the Admiralty’.9 Wemyss also considered, and was sympathetic about the fears of Grand Fleet officers that the British public would conclude that the Navy had contributed little to victory compared with the Army; and he therefore fought strenuously to ensure that in the matter of honours the Fleet’s top officers should be treated exactly the same as the Army’s. The particularly issue was that if Field-Marshal Haig was given an Earldom Beatty should be elevated to the same position, and should not be given only a Viscountcy, as both the Prime Minister and the King had, according to Wemyss, first intended. ‘Had Sir David Beatty’, he wrote, ‘been less vain or had he been a man of more sound judgement he would have realised the situation; but he never showed it’.10 Though Wemyss’s attribution of vanity to Beatty was harsh his conduct at this time certainly substantiates it.
In March Walter Long, the new First Lord, wrote to Beatty about the arrangements to be made on the hauling down of his flag after he had been promoted Admiral of the Fleet. He suggested a reception in London by the King and a representative of the government, followed by a march through the city at the head of about 1,000 men, and a lunch given by the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall – which one may feel was a pretty handsome acknowledgment of his services. Beatty, however, replied that as ‘many of us have been in London during the past three months . . . such a reception would perhaps be inopportune’, and suggested a march by ‘a very much larger number . . . at a convenient date later on’ – a proposal which Long tactfully accepted.11
There is no doubt that Geddes discussed Beatty’s future with him before he left the Admiralty in December 1918, and that the First Lord then gave him the impression that he would be called to replace Wemyss ‘upon the vacation of office’, which event he expected to ‘take place before very long’ as Wemyss ‘was to become Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean and Governor of Malta’. Long assumed that ‘the changes in the office of First Sea Lord had the approval of the Prime Minister’ and that ‘the appointment of Sir R. Wemyss had been conceded by the War Office’;12* but neither assumption was in fact justified. Wemyss was evidently given the same erroneous impression, and when he discussed their future plans with Beatty in London in December 1918, he not only accepted Beatty’s desire to become First Sea Lord but gave him to understand that the change would take place ‘in the spring of 1919’. Unfortunately Churchill, then Secretary of State for War and Air, objected to a sailor being infiltrated into what the Army had always regarded as one of its perquisites, so the appointment as Governor fell through. To be merely C-in-C, Mediterranean after having held office as First Sea Lord understandably held no attraction for Wemyss, who therefore declined both that proposal and the offer of command of one of the naval Home Ports.
According to Wemyss himself he had always intended to leave the Admiralty soon after the end of the war and ‘at the psychological moment’; but he found it difficult to decide when that moment had arrived.13 Before it had done so a Press campaign in favour of Beatty replacing Wemyss had started – in the words of the latter ‘almost imperceptibly’ at first, but gradually increasing in volume, especially in the Northcliffe papers. On 6th January 1919 The Times published a statement that ‘It is understood that Sir David Beatty will almost immediately come to the Admiralty – an appointment which will help to remove a very widespread anxiety about the control of the Navy during a difficult period of transition’. On reading this Wemyss at once went to see Geoffrey Dawson, the editor, who assured him that he would never have allowed such a statement to be published had he not ‘had it on the highest authority’; but he understandably refused to disclose his source.14 Wemyss at once arranged for the Admiralty to issue a categorical denial. That same day Beatty came to see him, and their talk naturally turned to The Times article and the question of the intended change in the holder of his office. Wemyss’s account of the interview records that Beatty ‘said nothing acid’; but when the Admiralty’s denial was mentioned he appeared to be ‘nonplussed’. On thinking the matter over Wemyss came to the conclusion that Beatty himself had ‘either directly or indirectly’ inspired the announcement in The Times; and from Beatty’s actions a short time later, recorded below, that assumption certainly seems to have had at least some measure of justification in it. Wemyss described this squall as ‘an extremely unpleasant incident’;15 while Beatty wrote to Eugénie that ‘The Admiralty have annoyed me much lately and it has made me sore about things. . . .’16 It is a fair guess that the most important of the ‘things’ which had annoyed him was his encounter with Wemyss.
Early in March Long wrote to Lord Stamfordham saying that the whole fracas was ‘a most unfortunate legacy’ from Geddes’s time as First Lord, and he hoped that the Monarch’s private secretary would act as ‘amicus curiae’ (friend of the court) and persuade Wemyss to retire. He could not, wrote Long, ‘just be kicked out’.17 At about the same time Long wrote to Beatty that as the expected post for Wemyss (i.e. the Malta governorship) had fallen through he was staying on as First Sea Lord ‘for the present’; but he hoped that Beatty would come to the Admiralty in due time ‘and give the Empire and the Navy the immense benefit of your abilities and invaluable experience’.18 A short time later he wrote again, thanking Beatty for a letter in which he had ‘put the facts of the past very clearly’ and given him ‘some fresh information’. ‘Of course’, continued the First Lord hopefully, ‘I must find a modus vivendi. That is what I came here for’.19
Long’s hope was, however, quickly shown to be more easily expressed than achieved, since Beatty was not placated either by his soothing letters or by a long one written by Wemyss at the end of February. In it he said that ‘with great regret’ he had gathered from Beatty’s recent interview with Long that he was ‘displeased at the general state of affairs existing between the Admiralty and yourself, and the Admiralty in this case probably means me!’ The specific subjects on which Beatty had voiced criticisms were, wrote Wemyss, firstly, that he was being ‘constantly ignored’; secondly that he was not coming ‘to relieve me immediately’; and thirdly that in the matter of appointments he had not been treated ‘with the courtesy to which you [Beatty] are entitled’. He went on to refute all these complaints in measured and moderate terms, described himself and Beatty as ‘too old and firm friends to quarrel about anything’, and went on to say that he was sure Beatty was ‘as determined as I am that the service shall not suffer as it must do if the C-in-C, Grand Fleet and 1st Sea Lord are known to be at loggerheads.’ Probably he had in mind the schism produced by the feud between Fisher and Beresford before the war. He invited Beatty ‘to come and see me and talk matters over’.20 Beatty’s reply was far less courteous than Wemyss’s letter, though he did accept – with rather bad grace – the offer of a meeting to discuss their differences. But if such a meeting took place they reached no solution to their differences.
Meanwhile, far from pouring oil on troubled waters, Beatty had sent the Admiralty the terms on which he would take office as 1st Sea Lord – which included combining that office with the appointment of C-in-C, with power to issue orders to the Navy over his signature without reference to the Board. Though a precedent for such powers existed in the case of the Army prior to the changes brought about by the Esher Committee of 1904, no naval precedent for Beatty’s proposal existed. Wemyss was strongly opposed to such a constitutional innovation, Oswyn Murray the Permanent Secretary totally demolished it, and the First Lord fully accepted their views.21 When Beatty learnt about the very unfavourable reaction to his ‘terms’ he wrote, a little defensively, to Eugénie that ‘I daresay the C-in-C 1st Sea Lord idea has caused some commotion and given those who like the well defined paths some food for thought and those evilly disposed a handle to keep me out. But I’ve given up thinking about it and am not fussing any more’.22 In truth his proposal is reminiscent of Fisher’s outrageous statement of the conditions on which he would return to the Admiralty in May 1915 – which made his downfall final and irrevocable.23 What Professor Marder calls ‘more than a soupçon of arrogance and folie de grandeur’ is surely discernible in Beatty’s conduct in this matter.
Walter Long next tried to put a term to the argument by suggesting to Lloyd George that the time had come to carry out his predecessor’s intention that Beatty should replace Wemyss; but the Prime Minister would not discuss it until the protracted negotiations in Paris over the Peace Treaty were finished. With Wemyss refusing to go to the Mediterranean unless he was Governor of Malta as well as C-in-C, and also declining either to resign or to carry on with the Peace negotiations except as First Sea Lord, and Beatty turning down flatly a suggestion that he should come to the Admiralty with his whole staff and preside over a far-ranging inquiry into warship design and building programmes, by the middle of March a complete impasse had been reached.24
With the Northcliffe Press and some other organs campaigning for Wemyss to be replaced Long’s position was certainly unenviable,25 especially as Wemyss was now showing that he too could be obstinate. On 10th March he wrote to Long, in very moderate language, pointing out that although ‘the centre of naval interest has lain with the Grand Fleet during the war’ it had not been the only naval instrument whereby victory had been achieved. In particular it had ‘little or nothing to do with the anti-submarine warfare’, and therefore ‘is not the only pebble on the beach’. There were, he continued, many other officers besides Beatty, such as Sir Alexander Duff (Director, Anti-Submarine Division) and Sir Roger Keyes (in the Dover Command) to whom a great deal was owed; nor was it fair to ignore the part played by the Admiralty as a whole.26 In short the letter gently but firmly deflated Beatty’s claims. Early in May Walter Long came off the uncomfortable fence on which he had been sitting and replied to a Parliamentary Question to the effect that his predecessor had only told Beatty ‘unofficially’ about his coming to the Admiralty, that Wemyss enjoyed ‘the complete confidence’ of the government and that no change in his office was intended;27 all of which was of course anathema to Beatty.
On 3rd April 1919 Beatty and Jellicoe were both promoted Admirals of the Fleet. As the number of officers authorised to hold that rank was only three, and those places were already filled by Sir William May, Sir Hedworth Meux and Sir George Callaghan, a special Order in Council was necessary. At 48 years of age Beatty was the youngest officer ever to hold that rank, and for four days he flew the symbol of his new status – the Union Flag at the mainmast – in the Queen Elizabeth. On 5th April he made his farewell speech to her company and through them to the whole Grand Fleet. It was short and very much to the point. After thanking them for their loyal service ‘in success, in disappointment, and in monotony’ he touched on the probability of difficult times lying ahead and assured them that, as they well knew, he belonged ‘body and soul’ to their ‘great Service’. They could therefore depend on him for ‘sympathising and assisting every man and officer . . . in his just aspirations’.28 That same day the Board of Admiralty sent him perhaps the most warmhearted letter ever issued in their august name; for the Lords Commissioners paid tribute to ‘those qualities of resolute leadership, unerring insight, and quick decision’ exemplified by his ‘achievements in battle’, described him as ‘a beloved and well trusted leader’, and declared that ‘Posterity will always associate with your name the chapter of the Royal Navy’s history now drawing to a close’.29 If we now feel that there were some exaggeration in those plaudits few if any of the Grand Fleet’s officers and men would at the time have considered them other than fully merited.
The hauling down of the Union Flag on 7th April marked the end of the Grand Fleet, and of an era. Under the new organisation the main strength of the navy was divided between the Atlantic and Home Fleets, both commanded by Beatty’s former second-in-command Sir Charles Madden, and the Mediterranean Fleet. Smaller squadrons, composed mainly of cruisers and sloops, were soon distributed all over the world in the accustomed foreign stations. Beatty recorded his feelings about the termination of his command by telling Eugénie ‘The Grand Fleet is dead and safely put to rest. It was a harrowing experience which I don’t want to repeat but it had to be done. There’s nothing like departing with a little dignity and they [presumably his officers and men] were all so kind and seemed truly sorry to see the last of me that in some ways it repaid. However, most of my Staff have received a soothing draught in the shape of an honour to help them on their way and to remind them [that] their services to me had been appreciated’. Rather surprisingly he added that ‘The Admiralty were very good in that respect [i.e. about the honours] and met my rather large demands in the right spirit.’30
While the argument over his future and other matters was in progress Beatty sent Eugénie ‘a few typewritten facts that you might keep to yourself as to their origin and at the same time place before [her brother Charles] Dudley Ward in your own language as pertinent queries which give food for thought’, because it had struck him ‘that the General Public would be likely to be disturbed if they knew the actual facts’. They were, firstly, ‘That up to the Cessation of Hostilities the C-in-C G.F. was consulted upon, and actually governed every operation against the Enemy’; and, secondly, ‘That immediately hostilities ceased he ceased to be consulted or to have anything to do with the decisions arrd. at which in reality became more vital but less dangerous than when the war was on’. In addition he claimed ‘that the advisers to the P.M. are not those who actually conducted the War and who have not the experience to enable them to give the best advice’. He also asked whether ‘even if they had the experience or were the best advisers is it reasonable to suppose that those who bore the actual responsibility under War Conditions should not be capable of giving Valuable assistance in solving some of the many problems which have to be decided under Peace Conditions?’ This letter certainly produces a sense of distaste; for it was not only a covert attack on Wemyss but a disguised attempt to enlist the services of Eugénie’s brother, who had written a number of books and articles, to further Beatty’s purposes.31*
On 21st April Beatty set out on a visit to Paris and the former front line – apparently as one of the guests invited by the French Army. Verdun and particularly the ‘Tranchée des Bayonettes’ (which is still preserved) made a deep impression on him; but he took offence because, although Paris was full of British politicians and service men, ‘No member of the British Adty. . . . made any attempt to receive or pay any respect or salute to any part of their representatives of the British Navy recd. by France’. He asked Eugénie to tell her brother the foregoing ‘and see what he says’, as in his view ‘it was obviously done deliberately and of set purpose’ – an accusation which continued his covert attack on Wemyss and Long, and was almost certainly groundless.
Having thus worked up another grievance Beatty went on to Cannes where he embarked in the Sheelah which had steamed out from England, still under the command of the faithful Captain Grint. We do not know the size of the Sheelah’s crew, but as she was a coal fired vessel and could carry about half a score of passengers in comfort, it is a fair guess that it must have been at least a dozen men; but as with other very rich Americans the Marshall Field’s enormous wealth had certainly not diminished because of the war, and the standard of living kept up by the Beattys continued to be as luxurious as before. Beatty had evidently seen The Times leader of 24th April, which had declared that while ‘there was, and is, no disposition anywhere to minimize his [Wemyss’s] services’, it was ‘felt universally that one man and one man only can fill a particular post to universal satisfaction. . . .’ He told Eugénie that although the leader was ‘pretty strong’ he doubted ‘if it will do much good unless it is continued’ – to which end he was evidently offering assistance.32 He asked her to continue writing to him at Hanover Lodge, the big London house in Regent’s Park which they rented, whence her letters would be forwarded. He and Ethel then set off on a two month cruise starting at Monte Carlo, where they gambled successfully in the Casino and took money off the Duke of Westminster ‘and his harem’ at tennis.33* Then they went on to Elba, Naples, Corfu and Patras, whence they passed through the Corinth Canal to Athens. After being royally entertained there they visited some of the Greek islands and then returned to Cannes via Taormina and Naples, where the yacht replenished her bunkers.
But despite what should have been an idyllic cruise, with Ethel as always at her best at sea, Beatty managed to work up another complaint – this time over the Admiralty having refused to issue railway warrants for Ethel and her maid to travel to Boulogne, despite the former having been invited to Paris as a guest of the French Government. He told Eugénie how, in marked contrast to what he regarded as the Admiralty’s stinginess, the French had laid on a special train to take them all to Cannes free of charge; while Lady Jellicoe had been ‘sent round the world in a British Man of War at Government expense’ during her husband’s Empire tour. But Beatty warned Eugénie to keep quiet about the latter arrangement ‘as nobody else knows of it and it could hardly have come from any other source’ than himself.
Then he worked up yet another grievance about articles in the Morning Post and Daily Telegraph of 3rd May having implied that the reception to the officers and men of the Grand Fleet in London had been postponed ‘to suit my convenience and [that] consequently I was depriving the men of the G.F. from [sic] a Public reception’. ‘Dirty dogs aren’t they’ was his comment; and he again invited Eugénie to tell her brother about it. In the same letter he told her that he had heard that at a Royal Academy dinner Wemyss had ‘stated that the Navy was full of Bolshevism’ – but he could not believe it. He went on to declare, most libellously, that Wemyss and ‘his Hun wife’ were ‘the only Bolshys [i.e. Bolsheviks]’ he knew.34 In fact Wemyss had married Victoria, elder daughter of the ‘eminent diplomat’ Sir Robert B. D. Morier.35*
In Athens Beatty’s equanimity was further disturbed by reading Walter Long’s statement in Parliament about himself, already referred to, and he at once dashed off a letter telling Eugénie that it was ‘one unadulterated lie from end to end’. Firstly because, contrary to Long’s statement, he ‘was offered and accepted’ the post of 1st Sea Lord; secondly that Geddes not only asked him to come but told him that Wemyss was leaving; thirdly that, again contrary to Long’s statement, a date was mentioned – namely the date of the signing of the Peace Treaty; fourthly that it was untrue to say he had been consulted ‘on Naval Policy since the Armistice’; and lastly that he had not refused to undertake the inquiry Long had suggested ‘for personal reasons’ but ‘on Public Grounds and very good ones’. ‘What’, he asked, ‘are you to do with a lying old hand like that?’; but at least he was glad that Ethel was far distant from London, since otherwise ‘in her wrath [she] would surely be indiscreet’, because she was incapable of understanding that ‘the wisest thing is to preserve a dignified silence’.36 Though Beatty’s polemic against Long was not without some measure of justification, he seems never to have grasped the simple fact that the verbal offer made by Geddes could hardly be held to be binding on his successor when the circumstances affecting Wemyss’s future had altered fundamentally. It was Churchill who put his finger on the basic problem of the time by writing to Lloyd George that ‘Wemyss is a very good First Sea Lord . . . At the same time he is in a weak position in his own profession and far overshadowed by Beatty. Beatty is very anxious to become First Sea Lord and was I believe encouraged by Eric Geddes to believe that his appointment was imminent. At any rate, it seems to me that sooner or later Beatty will have to replace Wemyss, and in a reasonable time I think this would be the right thing to do. On the other hand, you must remember, once Beatty is enthroned, he will be in a position to champion the particular interest of the Admiralty to an extent which it would be quite impossible for Wemyss to do’. His conclusion was therefore that it was ‘extremely important that no change should take place at the present time’.37
Beatty had to get home again by 10th June to receive various honours. He told Eugénie that he was sad that the cruise was coming to an end, ‘but it has the consolation that I shall see you again, and if that is to be [?] removed [then] I am done . . . You know what I mean’.38 The last sentence can hardly be misunderstood.
Meanwhile Wemyss had, in Long’s view, strengthened his position by ‘the dignified way in which he has borne these most undeserved attacks’, and by the fact that the naval conditions of the Peace terms were ‘absolutely satisfactory’. All in all Long found him ‘a most excellent First Sea Lord’, and he was therefore not prepared to put him ‘on the beach’. Beatty on the other hand had, in Long’s view, ‘behaved very foolishly’; while Ethel had been very rude and had ‘openly cut’ the First Lord on two occasions.39
Soon after Beatty returned home from the Mediterranean he received the Freedom of the City of London and of at least ten other cities. On 12th June he and Lord Haig received from the King’s hands the rare and very distinguished Order of Merit, and ten days later the Monarch enjoyed what he described as ‘a very pleasant dinner’ with Beatty and about 20 Admirals, among whom he found ‘many old friends’, at the First Sea Lord’s official residence Mall House.40 In addition to the many honours heaped on Beatty by Royalty and the cities of Britain he received honorary degrees from several universities. Such ceremonies involved him in a heavy burden of speech making; but, with Spickernell’s help in preparing the speeches, he carried the load lightly and with complete success. On 6th August he received his Earldom and took the additional title of Baron Beatty of the North Sea and of Brooksby, so combining the scene of his war service with his favourite peacetime home.41 For his eldest son he took the courtesy title of Viscount Borodale – so bringing in his Irish ancestry.
When the Cabinet considered money awards for the top naval and military leaders Churchill proposed £100,000 for Beatty, but added the sour comment ‘if he wants it’.42 However, on 7th August Parliament voted him that sum, while Jellicoe only got half as much.43 As for Wemyss’s rewards, he had been told the he was to receive a Viscountcy and a money grant, and when neither materialised it was his turn to be piqued and he sent Long his resignation – which the First Lord refused to accept.44 Wemyss was finally persuaded to hold his hand on the grounds that resignation at such a time and on such an issue was almost certain to lay him open to serious criticism; but on 28th August he formally handed in his resignation, to take effect two months later. On leaving the Admiralty Wemyss was promoted Admiral of the Fleet; but when he learnt that he was only to be offered a Barony he stood out for the higher honour which Long had unwisely foretold for him, and wanted it to be dated to Armistice Day. However, in the end he accepted what was offered him. If his conduct in this matter was ill-advised he surely comes out of the unsavoury squabble of the time better than Beatty.
The long awaited Peace celebrations took place on 19th July and Beatty led the large naval contingent representing all branches of the service. The procession moved off from Hyde Park’s Albert Gate at 10.0 a.m., the King took the salute standing on the steps of the Queen Victoria memorial in The Mall, and the march ended at Hyde Park Corner about 2½ hours later. Beatty told Eugénie ‘It was a wonderful day, wonderful in many ways but most of all in the extraordinary reception accorded to the Navy. Surely no one can misunderstand the place that the Navy holds in the hearts of the people. I don’t care what anybody says I am certain that none really touched the hearts of the people like the Sailors did. I who know them so well was filled with admiration and pride at their bearing and appearance, how much more then must it have appealed to those who had never seen them before. They [? The Press] complain that I never smiled. I never felt less like smiling and am not good at camouflaging. I was more nearly weeping than [?] smiling and that’s the truth. . . .’45 The events of that day suggest that Beatty had good reasons for throwing cold water on Long’s earlier suggestion about a reception and parade in London.
At the end of the letter quoted above Beatty dropped a hint about meeting Eugénie in London when she returned from her convalescence abroad; but nothing seems to have come of it. His next letter was written from Brooksby where his whole family had foregathered to produce an atmosphere which he described as ‘peaceful and warm’. Eugénie had gone to stay with the Eshers in Perthshire, and Beatty suggested to her that as he was going to Scotland for the grouse shooting in the near future and she was likely to be coming south they might meet at their old place of assignation the North British Hotel in Edinburgh; but he warned her that if she sent him a letter to that address she should ‘disguise’ her ‘flowing hand’ – presumably to prevent Ethel recognising it.46 We do not know whether the assignation came off. After helping to kill ‘only 190 brace’ of grouse Beatty went briefly to Aberdour and then to London in order to see ‘poor little David’ go back to Osborne in September. Soon afterwards the Beattys gave up their tenancy of that house – because his appointment as 1st Sea Lord was about to take effect. ‘We hated leaving dear little Aberdour’, he wrote, ‘it was a great wrench for poor Tata who had got very fond of it, and the associations of 5 very strenuous years could not be wiped out at one blow’.47 for Eugénie too the house must have held golden memories.
Of all the avalanche of honours showered on Beatty in 1919 probably none gave him greater satisfaction than the dinner given to him by the Lower Deck of the navy in Portsmouth Guildhall on 22nd September. His car was first hauled through densely crowded streets by a seamen’s gun’s crew, and his reception was rapturous. At the dinner he sat between a Chief Writer and a Seaman Petty Officer, his speech struck just the right note, and at the evening’s end sixteen bells were struck as a hopeful sign of the dawn of a new era in the relations between officers and men.* One may feel that all these quite sincere outbursts of hero-worship were enough to turn the head of a far less vain man than Beatty; and they must surely have contributed to the less attractive features of his conduct here described.
On 1st November Beatty was ‘read in’ as 1st Sea Lord, and so began the last phase of his naval career. Among the many letters of congratulations and good wishes he received he probably appreciated the one from ‘Jacky’ Fisher as much as any; and in it the old Admiral made one of his many astonishingly accurate prophecies. ‘It is a momentous time’, he wrote, ‘when the whole aspect of Sea War is so utterly changed by the prodigious and daily development of Aircraft’.48
At the time Beatty took office Ethel seems to have been in a comparatively stable condition; but, as will be told shortly, serious mental and nervous deterioration soon set in. Plainly Beatty still wanted to keep up his love affair with Eugénie; but with both married couples living in London the prospects can hardly have seemed favourable. Moreover his letters suggest that he was slowly changing from passionate lover to devoted and intimate friend. As to his conduct after leaving the Grand Fleet, Professor Marder refers to the period having revealed ‘the new Beatty’49; but I am inclined to think that the vanity and arrogance he exhibited in the period covered by this chapter had been there for a long time – certainly since he became C-in-C, Grand Fleet – but that those defects had not become so offensively prominent until peace brought him a torrent of adulation. And the defects became more pronounced when for the first time since he began his extremely rapid climb up the naval ladder, he found that he was not going to be allowed to have his way on an important issue – namely his early accession to the office of First Sea Lord.
*It was Wemyss himself who put forward the proposal that the Governor of Malta should be a full Admiral and also naval C-in-C and High Commissioner, Mediterranean instead of a retired soldier being merely Governor. The new appointee was not to fly his flag afloat but was to have a Vice-Admiral under him in command of the Mediterranean Fleet. Had it come off Wemyss would, he wrote ‘gladly have gone to the Mediterranean’. Wemyss memoirs.
*Eugénie’s son George considered that the Dudley Ward referred to was her younger brother Charles and not her elder brother who had been a Liberal MP before the war but held no official post after it; nor did he ever write anything that was published. Endorsement by George Godfrey-Faussett on typed copy of the letter.
*This was the 2nd Duke of Westminster (1879-1953), known to his intimates as ‘Bendor’. The locus classicus of this enormously wealthy but unattractive character is Christopher Sykes’s brilliant study of him in his Evelyn Waugh esp. pp. 164-6 in Penguin Ed. (1977).
*Lady Wemyss was, however, brought up in Germany and according to the memory of a contemporary always spoke with a strong German accent. Presumably Beatty had this in mind when he described her as quoted.
*At one minute to midnight on New Year’s Eve sixteen bells are traditionally struck in R.N. ships by the youngest rating on board to herald the New Year.