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Overview
Love, war, duty, faith, betrayal and belief - a revolutionary new view of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes and experiences of the women who endured it, by the greatest historian of Spain: 'Passionate and deeply moving... when Preston writes about these women, you feel as if you are in their company.' Scotland on Sunday
'Four extraordinary women whose personal histories should dispel any illusions that the Spanish Civil War was an all-male war...Written with a shrewd eye and a sure touch, the book is full of wonderful stories and acute observations. Above all, these are compellingly human dramas in which moral issues, right and wrong, Fascism and Communism, melt away.' Sunday Telegraph
The Aristocrat: PIP SCOTT-ELLIS fell in love with a Spanish prince and set off for Madrid in a chauffeur-driven limousine. She ended up nursing in front-line Francoist hospitals.
The Communist: NAN GREEN, by contrast, travelled to war third class. Leaving her children behind in England, she went to fight for the International Brigade.
The Intellectual: MARGARITA NELKEN was an art critic and novelist, who had translated Kafka into Spanish. Denounced as a whore by the Catholic Right, she became a radical politician.
The Fascist: After her husband was killed in the fighting and miscarrying her baby on hearing the news, MERCEDES SANZ-BACHILLER set up a welfare organisation that was to change the face of Spain.
'Preston has harnessed biography to serve history by vividly telling the stories of four very different women whose lives were starkly altered by the conflict... significant, tragic and remarkable' Irish Times
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780006386940 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 04/07/2003 |
| Series: | Five Women of the Spanish Civil War |
| Edition description: | UK ed. |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 1.23(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
DOVES OF WAR
Four Women of SpainBy PAUL PRESTON
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2002 Paul PrestonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 1555535607
Chapter One
PRISCILLA SCOTT-ELLIS
All for Love
The Spanish Civil War has given rise to a gigantic bibliography running into more than fifteen thousand books. In 1995, a remarkably original addition to the literary legacy of the conflict passed almost unnoticed. Its importance was obscured by the fact that it appeared on the list of a small English publishing house in Norfolk. The Chances of Death consisted of an edited selection from a voluminous diary written between the autumn of 1937 and the end of the war by Priscilla Scott-Ellis. The author, who had died twelve years earlier, was one of only two British women volunteers who served with Franco's Nationalist forces during the war. Her vibrantly written and transparently honest account of her experiences is a mine of original insights into life behind the lines of the Francoist zone. Gut-wrenching descriptions of the front-line medical services alternate with accounts of the luxury still enjoyed in the rearguard by the Spanish aristocracy. Although highly readable, and deserving of a wider audience, there was every chance that this remarkable book would be a reference only for scholars.
However, an appreciative article published in the Madrid daily El País by the British historian Hugh Thomas provoked an astonishing polemic which in turn guaranteed that the book would be translated and published in Spain. Once at the centre of the ensuing scandal, the book, taken up by one of the country's most prestigious publishers, achieved considerable popular success. Hugh Thomas's glowing review, entitled 'Sangre y agallas' (blood and guts), gave an entirely accurate picture of the book's merits. He praised its vivid portrayal of life in an emergency medical unit and its equally fascinating account of high society behind the lines. He also commented rightly that the diary presented an image of a brave, self-sacrificing but fun-loving girl, tirelessly driven by curiosity and enthusiasm. Nine days later, a disputatious reply was published in the pages of El País's Barcelona rival, La Vanguardía. Entitled 'Un enigma', its author was José Luis de Vilallonga y Cabeza de Vaca, the Marqués de Castellvell, a playboy and journalist, known for his appearance in several Spanish and French films, for several successful novels published in France and for a semi-official biography of the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, with whom he claimed friendship.
Vilallonga attacked the editor of Priscilla Scott-Ellis's diary, Raymond Cart, claiming that it was a forgery 'written by God knows who and with what sinister intentions'. Accordingly, he dismissed Hugh Thomas's remarks as the fruit of ignorance. Vilallonga justified these assertions by the fact that he had been married to Priscilla Scott-Ellis for seventeen years, from 1945 to 1961. He found it incredible that she had never mentioned such a diary to him. He now demanded to know the identities of 'the real author of this diary' and of the beneficiary of the book's profits. Along the way, he presented a cruelly dismissive account of Priscilla Scott-Ellis and her family. He asserted that the author was incapable of writing a diary, claiming that her prose was 'infantile'. He described her father, the Lord Howard de Walden, as a whisky-sodden alcoholic. He alleged that Priscilla Scott-Ellis was in fact illegitimate and really the fruit of an adulterous affair between her mother and Prince Alfonso de Orléans Borbón, a cousin of Alfonso XIII and a close friend of her parents. He further insinuated that the great love of her life, Ataúlfo de Orleans Borbón, who was in some ways inadvertently responsible for her decision to go to Spain, was a homosexual. His own marriage to her was thus presented as a way out of an embarrassing situation for Prince Alfonso. He stated that his own parents never approved of the marriage 'to a foreigner through whose veins there coursed Jewish blood'.
Some weeks later, Vilallonga's diatribe brought forth a dignified reply from Sir Raymond Carr. He pointed out that Vilallonga's questions about the authorship and the royalties constituted an accusation that, for money, he had knowingly undertaken to prepare an edition of a forgery. Carr gave an account of the genesis of the diary and an explanation of the circumstances whereby it had lain unpublished for half a century. In fact, it had been on the point of publication in the autumn of 1939 but the project was aborted because of the outbreak of the Second World War. Carr also published in facsimile a section of the diary. He then went on to underline some of the inaccuracies of Vilallonga's account of Priscilla Scott-Ellis's experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Finally, in a spirit more of sadness than of anger, he expressed his surprise that 'a Spanish gentleman should assert in a newspaper that his wife, deceased and unable to defend herself, was a bastard and her father a drunk'. He found it tragic that Vilallonga's article should thus 'defame the memory of a valiant and indomitable woman'.
Who then was this remarkable woman? Esyllt Priscilla Scott-Ellis - known as 'Pip' - was the daughter of two remarkably creative and eccentric parents, Margherita (Margot) van Raalte and Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, the eighth Lord Howard de Walden and fourth Lord Seaford. Margot was born in 1890, the daughter of an extremely wealthy banker of Dutch origins, Charles van Raalte, and Florence Clow, an English women with some talent as an amateur painter. Florence van Raalte was such a snob that she was known in the family as Mrs van Royalty. From her parents, Margot had inherited money and both musical and artistic talent. She was a good painter and an accomplished musician. Her singing voice was good enough for her to be trained for the opera with Olga Lynn and she often gave concerts, even being cont ducted - in Debussy's La Demoiselle Élue - by Sir Thomas Beecham. These interests would provide a formative influence in Pip's childhood. Margot's family lived at Aldenham Abbey near Warlord in Hertfordshire, where they were often joined by members of the Spanish royal family. The Infanta Eulalia, Alfonso XIII's aunt and a woman of scandalous reputation, was a friend of Margot's parents. Princess Eulalia's two sons, Prince Alfonso and Prince Luis de Orléans Borbón, were being educated at English boarding schools and often spent summer holidays with the family. In the late 1890s, the Van Raalte family bought the paradisical Brownsea Island in Poole harbour. With its medieval castle, two flesh-water lakes and dykes and streams, it was a wonderful place for children. Margot spent many idyllic summers there with other children including Prince Ali and Prince Luis. It was on Brownsea Island that Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell, a friend of Margot's father, launched his Boy Scout Movement in 1907.
Tommy Scott-Ellis was born in 1880. A soldier and a great sportsman, he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the 10th Hussars in 1899 and fought in the Boer War. The man presented by Vilallonga as a helpless sot was actually a good cricketer and boxer and was the English amateur fencing champion. In 1901, he became an immensely rich man at the age of twenty-one when he inherited his father's title and the fortune of his grandmother, Lady Lucy Cavendish-Bentinck. He then bought a racing motorboat and competed in highly perilous cross-Channel races. He also bought a yacht and was a member of the British Olympic Team in 1906. He then acquired racing stables. In his childhood, he too had spent happy summers at Brownsea Island which was then owned by the Cavendish-Bentinck family. Having had a bitterly miserable time at various boarding schools, Brownsea became a haven for him. He now tried unsuccessfully to buy it. Deeply disappointed, he was consoled when the new owners, Charles and Florence van Raalte, turned out to be friends of his mother, Blanche. He was thus invited to Brownsea to sail in summer and to shoot in winter.
Shortly after marrying Margot van Raalte, Tommy, anxious to keep a link with the Army, joined the Westminster Dragoons. Their first children, twin sister and brother, Bronwen and John Osmael, were born on 27 November 1912. When the First World War broke out, Tommy left for Egypt as second-in-command of his regiment. At the time Margot was pregnant with their third child, Elizabeth, who was born on 5 December 1914. At the first opportunity, however, she arranged to join Tommy in Egypt. As was commonplace among the upper classes at the time, Margot thought it normal to leave her three children with a nurse. At Chirk Castle, the family's country seat near Llangollen in North Wales, they were neglected to the extent of contracting rickets. At first Margot was rather bored in Egypt but after Tommy volunteered to go with the British invasion forces to Gallipoli, and casualties began to arrive from Turkey, she joined a friend, Mary Herbert, the wife of Aubrey Herbert, a contemporary of Tommy's at Eton, in setting up a hospital. One of the Herberts' daughters, Gabriel, was also to work with Franco's medical services during the Spanish Civil War; the other, Laura, was to be the second wife of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. At the end of 1915, Tommy was posted back to Egypt and Margot was able to live with him there until in May 1916, they returned to England. She was by then pregnant once more. In November 1916, Tommy got himself transferred to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in order to serve in France. Two days after he left, Priscilla was born in London on 15 November 1916. The real sequence of events undermines Vilallonga's accusation that her father was Prince Alfonso de Orleáns Borbón. Margot and Tommy would have two further daughters, Gaenor, born on 2 June 1919 and Rosemary on 28 October 1922.
In later life, when she had become addicted to drama and excitement, Pip would attribute her taste for adventure to having been born during an air raid; more likely it was inherited from her parents. According to her brother, when she was a toddler, the family called her 'Chatterbox'. Ensconced in her high chair, she would chunter away irrespective of anyone listening or understanding. As a child, she used her Welsh name of Esyllt (the equivalent of Iseult or Isolde). However, she quickly became irritated when people twisted this to Ethel, so she switched to Priscilla, which in turn became reduced to Pip. Her mother remembered how useful she always made herself with her younger sisters: Rosemary was a rascal, 'Pip alone could manage her with loving ease.' Pip was an affectionate child, always desperate to please and to be liked - and thus hurt by the coldness of her parents. Gaenor recalled that Pip was 'a very pretty girl with golden cuffs and blue eyes, and bitterly resented the disappearance of the curls and her entry into the comparative drabness of schoolroom life'. She was brought up in the splendour of Seaford House in Belgrave Square until she was nine, attending a London day school - Queen's College in Harley Street. While still a child in London, she suffered a distressing riding accident in Rotten Row in Hyde Park. She was thrown from her horse and when her foot was caught in a stirrup she was dragged some distance. She was nervous about riding for a while but, according to her sister, 'she grew up to become an extremely brave horsewoman, and to show courage in all sorts of difficult and dangerous situations'.
Withal, it was a privileged existence. Margot was concerned that her children be independent and resourceful which was difficult given the legions of servants whose job it was to make life easy for the family. With a great imaginative leap, considering her own station in life, Margot supposed that 'some, if not all, of the girls might have to cope and "manage" in later life'. To create a contrast with the world of housemaids who cleared up books and toys and grooms who saddled and rubbed down horses and ponies, a little house was built at Chirk called the Lake Hut. There, the girls made do on their own, cooking, washing-up, and looking after themselves. Pip took to this very well. When their parents took the children on trips on their sixty-foot motor launch, Etheldreda, Pip and Gaenor would do the cooking. In her mother's recollection, 'when it was rough it was Pip who managed to produce food for us all. She was gallant and highly efficient at ten and twelve years old.' Holidays at Brownsea were enlivened by days camping at nearby Furzy Island. Indeed, Chirk, Brownsea and Furzy provided the basis of blissful fun for the children. They had considerable independence to wander the fields, the woods and streams. When they were required for meals, if Margot was present, she would unleash the power of her soprano in Brunnhilde's call from Die Walküre and they would come scampering home.
All in all, there were idyllic elements but there remains a question mark about the impact on the children of the lengthy separations from both Margot and Tommy. The Scott-Ellis girls saw relatively little of their parents, particularly of their father. When they did, emotional warmth was in short supply. Tommy and Margot were, according to their son, incapable of showing emotion. They both seemed totally remote, capable of impersonal kindness but not of understanding. Pip's cousin Charmian van Raalte, who was brought up with the Scott-Ellis girls, having been abandoned by her own mother, recalled that 'neither Tommy nor Margot ever showed a grain of affection to any of the children'. Indeed, when Thomas Howard de Walden returned from France, where he had fought in the mass slaughter of Passchendaele, he was dourly taciturn, in shock from the shelling and the butchery. In his own description, part of him had died in the war and the part that survived was 'no more than a husk, living out a life that he finds infinitely wearisome'. However, on the rare occasions when their parents did acknowledge the existence of the children, they seemed, fleetingly, to have fun together. Lord Howard de Walden had a burning interest in the theatre as well as being a musician of some talent. At Chirk, he would often delight guests with his playing in the music room. He wrote the libretto for three operas by Joseph Holbrooke. He ran the Haymarket Theatre for several years. He often organised theatrical events involving his children and their friends, writing six plays for them. With professionally produced costumes and scenery, these were exciting enterprises. In one, a part was taken by Brian Johnston, later famous as a broadcaster. Moreover, baskets of costumes from old productions at the Haymarket, with armour and helmets, ended up in the family home, swelled the dressing-up basket and transformed many childhood games.
Although he seemed always to have more of a bond with Pip, Tommy did not, in general, have much time for girls.
Continues...
Excerpted from DOVES OF WAR by PAUL PRESTON Copyright © 2002 by Paul Preston
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.