The Spy Who Painted the Queen (18 page)

He presents all the appearance of a very emotional man of the nervous type, but I am inclined to discount the possibility suggested by Dr Craig of a nervous breakdown.

Internment to a man who has lived under the conditions under which Mr László has lived is of course a great hardship, but I do not anticipate any real danger to life or reason or a serious breakdown in health if the authorities consider it advisable that it should be continued.

At the request of the worried Mrs De László, reports were commissioned on him by his normal doctors, Dr Keightley and Dr Lund, as well as by Dr Maurice Craig, a ‘nerve specialist'. Dr Keightley wrote:

The lack of exercise and the condition of his liver tend to produce the alternate conditions of excitement and depression, and his whole constitution tends therefore to nerve fatigue. If these conditions can be ameliorated, or he can obtain his release, I believe they will pass off under proper conditions otherwise it is quite possible that these mental conditions of excitement and depression may become permanent.

Dr Craig saw De László on 4 February 1918 and reported:

I find him in a restless condition; he is evidently getting loss of power of concentration; sleep is becoming defective; his circulation is bad, the pulse is slow and low tensioned, and he is losing weight.

The strain of the last few months has evidently told and is telling upon him, and if this restlessness continues, there is a grave danger of his having a mental breakdown.

I am of the opinion that it would be wise to let him have a ten grain dose of potassium bromide once a day, and if necessary he ought to be given a definite hypnotic. It would be wise for him to be in bed for a few weeks, but I do not know whether this is possible.

On 6 February Dr Lund sent a more worrying letter:

I saw Dr Keightley today and I find that he, Dr Craig and I all agreed to the risk, if not actual danger to your husband's mental condition by a prolongation of his present internment.

I have never seen him in such an unnerved state. His ordinarily highly strung mentality is suffering acutely under the strain of his present circumstances and life of inactivity, and I feel most strongly that it is running an unnecessary risk, and endangering his life by keeping him there.

The cumulative effect of the reports was to persuade the Home Office to allow him to be moved to a nursing home in Ladbroke Gardens, Notting Hill, and he was released there on 14 May 1918 having signed a promise not to go outside the home and its grounds or to communicate with anyone other than his wife. No doubt he was discreetly watched, but he seems to have kept his promise.

While De László languished in semi-captivity, events in the outside world began to shape in a way that was to have a profound influence on his future. There was still an intense feeling of hostility abroad in the country against aliens, perhaps unsurprising given it was the fourth year of a war that had been ghastly and expensive in terms of casualties and money. To most people it looked as though it was likely to extend well into 1919 or even beyond. There was also a lingering feeling that there were highly placed German sympathisers or dupes in the establishment who were deliberately sabotaging the war effort.

In May 1918 the eccentric and right wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing was sued for libel by the actress Maud Allan for alleging that her play
Salomé
was part of a German conspiracy to promote homosexuality and corrupt the manhood of Britain. He further alleged that there was a secret German list of 47,000 highly-placed British perverts who were being blackmailed into sabotaging the war effort. This was based on evidence that had been provided to him by an American named Harold Sherwood Spencer who had claimed British nationality because his grandparents were British and been commissioned into the Royal Irish Fusiliers in order to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. On the basis of his speaking Albanian and a claim that he had spent time in the Balkans before the war, Spencer was sent to Italy to join the British Adriatic Mission where he served for some months in 1916.

It was Spencer's evidence that helped clinch the trial; he claimed to have seen the actual list, in the form of a ‘Black Book', which was shown to him before the war by the German Prince Wied, who was king of Albania and to whom he had been a personal aide de camp. He had seen the names, their perversions and the means by which it was recommended the German Secret Service should approach them. He had passed the list, he said, to the British authorities who had suppressed it. The trial resulted in Pemberton Billing being acquitted of the charge of libel in a spectacular fashion after the jury deliberated for an hour and twenty-five minutes. There was a near riot in the court, with the gallery cheering and shouting ‘Hurrah', and the ushers and police were directed to clear the court. A cheering crowd of a thousand people saw Pemberton Billing walk from the court and mobbed his car as he drove away.

Fortunately for Pemberton Billing and Harold Spencer, it was a civil case. MI5 and Special Branch had bulging files on Spencer going back to at least 1915. To them he was American, a journalist, a con merchant and sexual deviant with a tendency (that he was well aware of) to get over-excited and obsessive – not to mention delusional. In 1912 he had been arrested by the Italian police for assaulting a servant, and photographs were found in his suitcase ‘of the sort whose mere possession is a criminal offence'. He had then attached himself to the US Embassy in Rome and claimed to be on the staff, but also claimed the ambassador was a Japanese spy. He had escaped from New York, leaving a litter of bounced cheques, in 1913 when his first wife was pressing charges ‘of a serious nature', and returned to the Adriatic where he swindled the US Consul before proceeding to Albania. Though he claimed to have been confidentially employed by the Prince of Wied, MI5 thought it most likely that he had commanded an unofficial bodyguard in 1914.

Spencer appears to have done a good job while attached to the British Adriatic Mission: MI5 quietly expressed the opinion that they hoped he had not seen some of the letters from his superiors praising his abilities in a manner that was ‘indiscreetly worded'. Whilst on leave in London he had done translation work for the Admiralty and was then, at some point, posted to his battalion in Salonika, which is when he seems to have flipped, telling all and sundry about German plots in London and claiming the Salonika intelligence officers were all under German influence. By mid-1917 he was raving; a medical board diagnosed delusional insanity. He started making allegations about scandalous sexual practices in the Asquith household and said of the British ambassador in Rome, Sir Rennell Rodd, that a ‘Greek Jew financier' was blackmailing him because of his dedication of a volume of poems to Oscar Wilde thirty years before, with the result that the ambassador had been ‘forced by pro-German influence to send away every intelligent member of his staff and replace them with others of conspicuous stupidity and incompetence'. He was soon found unfit and invalided out of the army, but found himself a job as an aeronautical inspector. He began to associate with Pemberton Billing and started writing for his
Vigilante
magazine. His evidence was purest fantasy but it helped bolster the festering feelings that not enough was being done against ‘the enemy within'.

The anti-alien frenzy and concern about this secret internal enemy led the home secretary, Sir George Cave, to accept an amendment to his Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill of July 1918, which specifically stated that naturalisations which had taken place after the beginning of the war should be reviewed and might be subject to revocation. It was a pressing political point. In the Clapham by-election the Independent candidate (supported by Pemberton Billing's
Vigilante
magazine), Henry Hamilton Beamish, raised demands for the denaturalisation and internment of all former citizens of enemy countries in the United Kingdom, the closure of all foreign banks and the wearing of a badge by all foreign aliens. The Conservative candidate, Harry Greer, expressed the view that ‘stronger measures' were necessary and published a letter from the prime minister who said he was ‘determined to take whatever action is shown to be necessary'. Greer won with a reasonable majority, but given neither the Liberal nor Labour parties had put up candidates because of the coalition government, his opponent's 43 per cent share of the vote was worrying to the political establishment. The result of the amendment was that De László, along with every other alien who had been naturalised since August 1914, was required to have their status as British citizens examined and, if necessary, revoked.

The De László case had continued to fester and receive attention. Though the French Secret Service reports had received no mention in the press or the public hearing, the letter produced by Basil Thomson's agent mentioning Madame G and the forty reports allegedly submitted by De László was known about, if only vaguely. On 11 July 1918, Sir J.H. Dalziel, Liberal MP for Kirkcaldy Burghs, declared:

You could almost have got a quorum of Members of the House of Commons who have been painted by László and who were able to say what an innocent person he was. It is very easy to be deceived, especially by enemy aliens. What was the case of Mr. László? He was found out, after a considerable time – it was kept a little bit of a mystery – committing an act of treason against this country, and, if I am not misinformed, just to show that you ought not always to trust enemy aliens, even though they have guarantees,
he was thanked, I understand, for his report on the condition of affairs in this country
. I only utter this to show that we really must not approach the consideration of this question full of trust in enemy aliens. I doubt not we have a duty to them. I am sure we have. But we have a duty to ourselves. Why should we take risks in time of war like we have been doing? No other country does it. Germany does not do it … None of our Allies have shown the tenderness which we have up to the present.

In a debate on 15 April 1919, Sir Richard Cooper, Conservative member for Walsall, declared:

De László was caught by the Government, in spite of the backing he had, from a letter which came from Hungary from his brother, in which his brother said he was instructed by the authorities to thank him for his fortieth report on the military situation in Great Britain … What I ask is, Why was he not shot? If he had been a Britisher, and if it had been discovered that he had made a fortieth report on the military situation, I venture to think that he would have been shot by the most weak-minded Government that we could conceive. Why, then, was de László, who got the protection of persons in high places at the outset, when he was found guilty, not shot?

John Bull
, the magazine owned by another right-wing populist MP, Horatio Bottomley, complaining about De László's treatment generally, reminded its readers that ‘he was afterwards found in traitorous communication with the enemy – this “British” citizen who ought to have been court martialled and shot … he used his position to worm out our military secrets and convey them by letter – nearly fifty of them – to the enemy'.

F
OLLOWING THE PASSAGE
of the Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, the home secretary appointed a three-man committee to investigate and, where necessary, revoke the nationalities of all former aliens naturalised after 4 August 1914. Notices in the press instructed them to contact the committee directly by letter and requested members of the public with information also to send in their evidence in writing. Questionnaires were sent out to the individuals at the beginning of October 1918 asking for details of their relatives and property in formerly hostile states as well as when they last visited, whether they belonged to any clubs or associations linked to them, and whether any relatives had served in enemy forces. They were clearly designed to tease out former enemy aliens. Seven days were given to reply. Cases where naturalisation had occurred before the start of the war and there was suspicion of abuse were referred directly to the home secretary.

De László had, by now, been released from the nursing home following the intervention of some of his powerful friends and been allowed to live in the country house of his newly appointed solicitor, Sir Charles Russell, in Buckinghamshire. It can't be said that he didn't co-operate with the enquiry. As well as writing a personal defence, he wrote to Madame van Riemsdyk, to his family and to other persons he had been in contact with, authorising them to send, to the inquiry, his original letters. These were collected by the British Consul in Holland and by representatives of the Spanish government in Hungary and forwarded to the Foreign Office.

The authorities began to prepare their case against him, but ran straight into problems. A whole swathe of correspondence that had been used in support of their case before the internment committee had gone missing. The Treasury Solicitor noted:

In August 1917 the Police searched the Holder's house and took possession of a number of letters and other documents. Certain of these were selected for use in support of the recommendation for internment, and are referred to in the report of MI5 dated 19th September 1917, being shortly described therein and lettered from M to Ze. Neither the documents themselves nor copies of them are attached to the report. On a perusal of the papers which came to me with my instructions, it became apparent that the documents mentioned would form an essential part of the case against the holder on the question of denaturalization, but, apart from this, as the case was likely to be strongly contested, it was clearly desirable that I should see and have in my possession all the documents which had passed into the hands of the Police.