Why did they burn his damn letters?

The Murenger remains my favourite pub in Newport. It is quiet, idiosyncratic (in a city that turns idiosyncracy into something worth bottling) and is a refuge for writers, or those who value a silent drink. The two, it must be said, do not go hand in hand, at least on a Thursday afternoon. There two people hold sway, William Cross and Monty Dart; two literary truffle-hounds who’ve been invaluable in the background to my forthcoming trilogy, The Gift, Bloodline, and Bloodfall.

They have turned Evan Morgan, the last Lord Tredegar, into a cottage industry and it’s impossible to avoid their enthusiasm. They scour the arcane: Kew, the Vatican Library, and the private records of the Great Houses in their quest for forgotten letters that reveal more of their quarry.

William Cross’s latest book Evan, Lord Tredegar, selected Letters, Prose, and Quotations, the Mystic Muse of Evan Frederick Morgan is a little longer than its title but packed with insight into the earthy and otherworldly lord. The full story will never be told because his most private letters and other material were hurriedly burnt on his death. Knowing what we do of Evan Morgan it’s easy to understand why.

So what do we have here?

The first part of the book treads familiar territory to those who’ve read the author’s previous books on Evan Morgan. It is in a sense an extended introduction for those new to the man. Having said that there are some new, evocative snippets, such as for example Paris just before and after the First World War.  

The real joy of the book is to be found in the letters and articles from Evan himself. I wish there were more. There are poems too. Morgan fancied himself as the reincarnation of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poems though fail to support the theory.

So what for me were the highlights?

I’d have to include Morgan’s letter to the Western Mail during the carnage of the First World War: ‘War thoughts from Algiers’. It is too long to quote in it’s entirety but to cut any part of it would dilute its purple absurdity, its naïve sycophancy when he praises Lloyd George, and his ‘Geddin down wid de people’ as his article reaches its climax. Perhaps a short quote then: ‘…Do we all fully appreciate him, we of the old country of the mountains? He is one of us…. We are his countrymen, have seen him, have watched him make the name of Wales ring throughout the world. What reward, what show of gratitude can we give back in exchange, we Welshmen…’

We Welshmen—this man who avoided Wales whenever possible in search of sun and young boys.

There are newspaper articles and accounts of his attempt to win a seat for the Tories in Limehouse, with another wonderful ‘Geddin down wid de people’ moment in his lyrical description of the ‘neat’ and ‘smart’ ‘inhabitants’ of Limehouse. He even boasts about dancing with them. As for his purple prosed rhapsody on the eternal glories of Catholicism… Well, the church is a vessel for sinners and navigated by them, too. So no doubt there exists a lifeboat somewhere for the generous, bitchy, idealistic, pompous sexual predator and Satanist: Evan Morgan.

Mellow fruitfulness...and stuff

Autumn is nature's great clean-out, recycling gone mad, and it happens every year. As fast as I rake leaf-covered lawns, more leaves descend, and I end up with mounds of red and gold leaves. Within days they’ve turned brown, flecked in crimson and gold. A ratatouille of decay. A week or two later they’ll resemble giant horse droppings.

Still, very satisfying as you look out the window. Beneath those dormant piles are oceans of sludge teeming with microbes and bugs, worms and beetles, the occasional hedgehog, a smorgasbord for birds.

I wish my recycling were as efficient. My downfall is what comes through the letterbox: those things you look at and think—‘Ummm, could be useful one day.’  They go behind the fruit bowl in the kitchen and by the end of the year they’re pushing bowl and fruit to the edge of the worktop.

We are talking about leaflets from estate agents begging you to sell your home, business cards from several banks, Cancer Research Gift Aid labels, Church newsletters, Tree Surgeons. (There are a lot of trees in Osbaston). And lets not forget Take-Away Menus ranging from the Misbah, the Raduni, and Jewel Balti to a yet to try Thai Bistro.

There are leaflets selling Clay Core storage radiators – ‘the future of heating’, numerous small gardening businesses offering moss-free lawns, taxi cards, Blenheim Palace brochures, ‘Honest quotes’ from Ash Tree Electricals, others promising to satisfy all of my TV and Audio needs. Handymen at reasonable prices, gutter clearance.

I have glossy Internet Provider brochures, Old online supermarket orders, leaflets offering ‘Drive Maintainance and Patio Power Cleaning’. Buried in the pile are old gardening catalogues old postcards thought too good to throw away so instead lost in fruitbowl limbo, old credit cards used to scrape grease from the hob, unopened Home Insurance mail promising me theirs is the cheapest and best, an expensively produced holiday booklet from Citalia, kept for six Italian recipes that looked wonderful but never tried. The only things missing are charity brochures. They would fill an entire kitchen unless binned at once.

The whole thing is horribly expensive because I have to buy tons of fruit to hold the bowl in place. Without such ballast the bowl would teeter and plunge from the worktop.

There are just two more sad confessions:

 A pepper pot that no longer works but which every so often I try to fix. That hides behind the knife block waiting for its yearly fumble

                                  A five year old tube of 1% fat when I foolishly went on a diet.

Back to the window....and staring at leaves

Maybe not a good life, but a life fully lived

When I was a very young boy Germans wore boots and dueling scars, and, if they were spies spoke in harsh sibilants. Female spies were either butch with hair enbrosse, or else dark and sinisterly beautiful and smoked thin cheroots.

Old memories came back as I reread the remarkable history of Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe. As the picture illustrates she doesn’t match my childhood vision, though J Edgar Hoover threw a hissy fit when he realised she was in America.

Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe

He referred to her as ‘worse than ten thousand men,’ and placed her under 24-hour surveillance. So not the Nazi spy of my dreams though she did have a habit of smoking Havana cigars, striking the requisite match on the soles of her shoes.

She divorced her husband in 1920 but retained the title. After that there was no holding her back. In 1922 she moved to Nice, began a relationship with The Duke of Westminster, and then moved on to John Warden of Standard Oil, before moving to Paris and Sir William Garthwaite, a British insurance tycoon.

Rich, but not rich enough.

In 1927 she met Lord Rothemere, the third richest man in Britain. He was impressed by her assets, she with his playing style. The relationship endured and, after being accused of spying for Germany, she moved from Paris to the Dorchester in London. Rothemere was besotted with her, and his newspapers, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail praised the genius of Adolf Hitler and argued that The Treaty of Versailles was unjust, and that Germany should have its former territories restored.

It should come as no surprise that the Princess was promised £350,000 if she canoodled  Rothemere to champion German claims upon Poland.

By this time Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe was on very good terms with Hitler, Goering, Himmler and Ribbentrop. Hitler called her his ‘favourite princess’ which bears tribute to her beauty, magnetism and manipulative charm.

Why?

Perhaps because Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe was part Jewish. No matter. Heinrich Himmler declared her an ‘honory Aryan,’ and Hitler awarded her the Golden Insignia of the Nazi Party, along with a castle in Austria. In 1938 British Intelligence reported ‘She is frequently summoned by the Fuhrer, who appreciates her intelligence and good advice. She is perhaps the only woman who can exercise any influence upon him.’

It is not surprising then that she became a key conduit of secret messages between Goering, Lord Halifax (British Foreign Secretary and arch appeaser) Lord Rothemere, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Lord Rothemere, George Ward Price, Hitler, Fritz Weidemann, Joseph Goebbels, Magda Goebbels and Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe

Her star waned when she began an affair with Hitler’s aide-de-camp, Fritz Wiedemann, a man ‘exuding eroticism.’ Hitler removed him – to San Fransisco, where he served as German Consul.

In 1939 Stephanie Hohenlohe joined him sharing the Weiderman household with Weiderman’s children and wife, Anna Luise.

From this point on she was hounded by the FBI who were convinced, probably rightly, that she was set upon increasing Nazi influence in America. In 1940 she was ordered to leave the country. She fought against it, declaring her innocence, her love for America and when that failed experienced a ‘nervous breakdown.’

On the point of being expelled as a German spy, she played her final card, beginning an affair with Major Lemuel Scholfield, head of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, a senior figure in the State Department.

Hmm, I wonder what she sees in me?

She saw enough to marry him, much to Roosevelt's profound annoyance.

And then what? What happened to ‘the most dangerous woman in Europe?’

After the war she returned to Germany and began a new career in the media. Maybe not a good life, but a life fully lived.

A trail of crumbs in a dark wood

I’m going through a sticky patch, not so much ‘writer’s block’ but more 'where the hell am I going with this?' This being the final book in a trilogy. 

The first two novels, ‘The Gift’ and ‘Bloodline,’ are strong; books I’m happy to send out, perhaps the best I’ve written so far. I dip my quill in hubris and look around nervously.

On the other hand, this final book, putatively titled 'Blood-fall', is teetering on 'Still-born.' At present a nightmare. What do I have?

It is set between 1932 and 1941. 

It has a prime motivating force. 

 I know the fate of one of the major characters, and more importantly why. 

Other than that, for the moment at least, I can’t see the wood for the trees. There are so many rich and fascinating trees:

Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s intimate advisor who had occult leanings and associated with the black magician Evan Morgan in his younger days, The Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe, the beautiful and manipulative master spy who had Lord Rothmere and Adolf Hitler wrapped round her perfumed fingers, despite being half Jewish. Guy Burgess and Edouard Pffieffer, the aide to Daladier, the French Minister of War. Burgess, a communist spy, and Pfeiffer were predatory homosexuals who once played ping-pong over the supine body of a Parisian rent boy – but more to the point a weak link in the highly secretive correspondence between Neville Chamberlain and Daladier during the Munich crisis. I have Ribbentrop and the deeply troubling Lord Halifax who once expressed a wish for a State Procession in honour of Hitler, the British monarch by his side in London. And had it been Edward VIII this would likely have come to pass.

All this you cannot make up – but so many rich and variegated trees for my fictitious characters, John Grey, Elizabeth and Elsie McBride to weave their way through in something approaching a compelling plot. I'm looking for that trail of crumbs in the dark wood; no worse. I'm feeling my way through a maze in a thick mist, and wearing a blindfold. Wish me luck