"In Quisling's Shadow. The Memoirs of Vidkun Quisling's first wife, Alexandra" (Book Review)

This is not a new book, being published in 2007, but I was interested in it as part of some genealogical research I’m doing and it has relevance to this blog as its subject was certainly a woman forced to carry a history bucket. It also has contemporary relevance in light of the current frictions between Ukraine and Russia reflecting a resurgence of old feuds.

In 1921, Alexandra Andreyevna Voronina lived in the city of Kharkov in the Ukraine with her mother. Once a very wealthy family, they had fallen on the hardest of times. Her father disappeared years earlier and it was never known whether he had deliberately abandoned them or was the victim of sinister action (common enough in the Bolshevik era). Not only had the region suffered the after-effects of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, it was also devastated by an epic famine in which some starving individuals had resorted to cannibalisation to survive (there are verified images of this in the book).

Originally training to be a ballet dancer, Alexandra had to compromise her dreams and do whatever work she could. She found it in the office established by the Norwegian explorer and humanitarian, Fridtjof Nansen, from where famine relief was co-ordinated. Nansen’s representative in Ukraine was Captain Vidkun Quisling. Alexandra fell completely under his spell and, although barely seventeen years of age, married him.

There follows a lengthy, and often depressing, litany of what today would be classified as spousal abuse – not physical, but definitely mental. Quisling, who has left a highly controversial mark on history being the man who led Norway and sided with Hitler during World War II and for which he was later executed, was controlling, cold and calculating, probably psychotic. He manipulated Alexandra into an abortion and then forced her to accept - and even share a bedroom with - the new woman in his life, another Russian, Maria Vasilyevna Pasetchnikov.

A forcibly staged photograph of
the  two "wives"
on the balcony of the Quisling apartment

Maria, in turn, was a nasty character who may have been an agent sent to spy on Quisling and the Norwegian relief effort and she added further layers of scheming and subterfuge to the cruel treatment of Alexandra.

Back and forth across Europe, Alexandra was often left to fend for herself in places where she knew no-one, then with little warning, was drawn back into Quisling’s net, then abandoned again. In spite of promises that he’d keep her safe and secure as long as she lived, he was erratic with money. In spite of all that he did to her, Alexandra still hoped that Maria would be sent packing, that she and Quisling would get back together again.

My main quibble with her story is that some areas are overly detailed while others are glossed over and leave more questions. Alexandra often complained about being isolated for weeks or months in places, or left destitute without any means of support. She said she survived solely on a diet of bananas and cream for months on end - curious foods that may not have been as cheap as the poor person’s diet of bread and dripping (or the French equivalent). With Quisling being so mean in providing her with a regular income and unable to work, she must have had some regular source of money other than just help from generous friends. She would certainly have needed funds when travelling around Europe plus undertaking artistic and ballet studies in France and eventually being able to buy her passage to Shanghai. The latter part of her life in Shanghai and later in California includes two further marriages and a child, but this is all rushed through. The fact her mother was abandoned on her own in the Crimea for the rest of her life is also troubling and it would have been interesting to find out what efforts, if any, had been made to get her out

Alexandra seemed overly naïve, compliant and trusting. From our more liberated distance of a century later, it can be hard to understand why she did not stand up to her treatment and find a way of being self-sufficient. But one has to remember the attitude of the times and the fact she was still in her teens, subservient to her husband’s whims and not financially independent. Her story has its sad echoes today with still far too many women at the mercy of unscrupulous and controlling men.

Three stars.

Print copies may be hard to find, Kindle versions available from:

amazon.com

amazon.com.au

The Ladies of the Committee - (1) Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Formidable. Frosty. Forthright. Just a few of the words that have been applied to Millicent Garrett Fawcett by her biographers and those who knew her. Even at this distance in time, and although being physically tiny in stature, she looms large among the campaigning feminists of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Mrs Fawcett, 1890
Photograph by W. and D. Downey
National Portrait Gallery UK

Whether she was the best choice to head the Ladies Committee to investigate the concentration camps in South Africa is debatable, especially in the middle of a war in which opinions were sharply divided. Millicent was a dyed-in-the-wool Imperialist with little tolerance of anyone with opposing views. Like many of that era, she believed Britain had a right to rule the world. It would not go well for any of her fellow Committee members who questioned that idea.

In her memoir, "What I Remember", Millicent recalled it was in July 1901 that she received a visit from Edith Lyttleton, the wife of the sportsman/politician Alfred Lyttleton, asking her if she would be prepared to travel at short notice to South Africa to inspect the state of the camps there. Edith had became a founding member of the Empire friendship organisation, the Victoria League.

 

Millicent commented that Alfred "was admired, beloved and trusted by all parties and all sections of the country as few men have ever been" - rare praise for a politician - and he was most concerned about what was happening to the children in particular in the camps.

 

Edith informed Millicent that she would be joined by other women who were experts in health and child welfare. Millicent didn't hesitate but, when discussing her duties with the Secretary of War, St John Brodrick, she was vehement that she would not speak to Emily Hobhouse at all.

Emily Hobhouse
angloboerwar.com

While it is understandable that Millicent might prefer to see things for herself, she was already biased against Emily. Apparently the knives had been out previously between the two women over another matter when Emily supported some tenants in a building owned by the Fawcett family.

 

Added to this, although it was Emily’s exposure of what was happening in the camps that initiated the Committee, she had suffered from bad press, with words like "excitability" and "hysterical" attached to her, compared to Millicent's personality with its cool detachment and control.

Emily's behaviour suggested she was more sympathetic to the Boer cause than she should have been, and she had been deported from the Cape for her activities. No wonder Millicent would have nothing to do with her.

Millicent left England on 22 July 1901, accompanied by Lady Alice Knox, wife of General Sir William Knox then on service in South Africa and Miss Lucy Deane, a trained Inspector of Factories and an expert in infant welfare. Also on the voyage were Millicent's daughter Philippa, Lucy Deane's sister and Lady Alice's maid. The three other ladies to make up the Committee were already in South Africa.

While on board ship, the women made plans and also learned from a fellow passenger a few words of the Cape Dutch Taal, although one can't imagine Millicent being that keen on learning what many English people disparagingly considered a pidgin or inferior language to the true Dutch of the Netherlands.

When they arrived at Cape Town, the ladies were accommodated in the grand Mount Nelson Hotel before meeting up with the two female doctors, Ella Scarlett and Jane Waterston and the nurse, Katherine Brereton. Millicent's memoir described the violent, hostile factions that were evident in the city and the many other charitable and relief committees who had differing viewpoints as to what needed to be done in the camps. There were many "cooks" stirring the broth and the ladies were discouraged from calling at Government House in case of trouble.

Mount Nelson Hotel
Still one of the world's grandest hotels

Emily Hobhouse had done much of her travel and investigation of the camps on her own, paying her own way, struggling with red tape permission, using primitive modes of transport and often going without food, water or a bath or shelter. She had experienced the deprivations of war at first-hand and wasn't impressed to learn that the Ladies Committee undertook their travels in a special train supplied by the Cape Government. Millicent described this as follows:

"Each of us had what was a second-class compartment fitted with sleeping accommodation. There was a large saloon for our meals, with a travelling kitchen attached, and we also had a Portuguese cook named Gomez, and the services of a young Tommy named Collins, lent to us by General Knox, Lady Knox’s husband. We looked all round the arrangements made for our comfort and security with interest, curiosity, and gratitude, for these railway carriages were to be our home for about five months."

(Details of the progress can be followed through Millicent's memoir that is available online, see Chapter XVII. More of it will feature in further posts on this topic.)




More biographical background on Millicent:-

Millicent Garrett Fawcett was born in Suffolk in 1847, one of eleven children of a wealthy industrialist Newson Garrett who encouraged his children in liberalism, to be outgoing and have enquiring minds. Millicent developed a passion for self-education, literature, the arts and there’s no doubt her elder sister, Elizabeth Garret Anderson, who would become Britain’s first female doctor, was a major influence on her.

 

At eighteen, she met the blind Cambridge professor and Reformist, Henry Fawcett, 14 years her senior, and they married in 1867. Her only child, Philippa, destined to be a prominent mathematician, was born a year later. They were a radical couple for the time and their successful partnership was strengthened by shared interests in outdoor pursuits, women’s education and suffrage.

Henry and Millicent by
Ford Madox Brown, 1872
National Portrait Gallery UK

 
Millicent developed her own writing and speaking career, specialising in politics and economics as well as women’s issues. It was rare for a woman to give a speech in public and, as still happens today, she had her critics than she must be neglecting her child while involved in such work.


When Henry died suddenly in 1884, Millicent was bereft and she and Philippa moved in with another sister Agnes Garrett, who was a pioneering businesswoman in her own right, but she continued on the same path. She became the leading force in women’s suffrage and a frequent lecturer at girls’ schools and women colleges.


She also espoused many other causes including moral rearmament and backed campaigns connected to prostitution and the sexual exploitation of women and children, but her puritanism and inflexible attitude towards private morality were often at odds with her support for public reforms. She was appalled by the idea of free love out of marriage, yet ahead of her time in advocating divorce by consent.


The rest of Millicent’s life as regards her activities during World War I and the advancement of women has been well-documented. She was bestowed with many honorary doctorates, and received a Damehood in 1925. She died in 1929.


Some of her liberal Victorian attitudes may seem at odds with her feminism and modern women will find her a challenge to evaluate. This closing paragraph from her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography seems to summarise her well.

"In contrast to the Pankhursts, she shrank from hero-worshippers and did not seek to be a charismatic leader. As a speaker she was persuasive rather than inspirational; she was not a good committee chairman. Victorian values lingered on in her sexual, social, and imperial politics. She took pride in her ‘Englishness’ and—not only in the context of war—had some of the defects that implies. Her statesmanlike qualities were nevertheless crucial in guiding the British women's movement. The range of her contributions to public and intellectual life in an exceptionally long and influential career has only recently been recognized. Once stereotyped as a narrowly bourgeois liberal feminist, she is now appreciated as a woman who also addressed the exploitation of working women and child abuse. She argued—while never adopting the language of ‘sex war’—for votes for women on the grounds that they had distinctive insights to offer and interests to defend. Changing fashions and values in politics and feminism, and her status as an emblem of the women's movement, have complicated the task of her biographers—and will continue to do so until it becomes possible to represent eminent feminists sympathetically as creatures of, as well as rebels against, their times."

Millicent Fawcett, c. 1910
Photograph by Olive Edis
National Portrait Gallery UK

Introduction to the Ladies

Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Lucy Deane Streatfeild

Katherine Blanche Brereton

Lady Alice Knox

Dr Jane Waterston

Dr Ella Scarlett Synge

Personal library sources include:

"The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War, A Social History" by Elizabeth Van Heyningen

"Rebel English Woman, The Remarkable Life of Emily Hobhouse" by Elsabe Brits

"The Compassionate Englishwoman" by Robert Eales

"The Boer War" by Thomas Pakenham

"Those Bloody Women, Three Heroines of the Boer War" by Brian Roberts

The Ladies of the Committee (Introduction)

Women were actively agitating for the vote and equal or greater representation in many areas of British life when an all-female Committee was appointed to investigate the concentration camps created during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa. 

This new series of posts will look at the women who were part of that group. *

The leader, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, is perhaps the most famous. In 2018, she became the first woman to be commemorated with a statue in Parliament Square in London, unveiled by then Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Perhaps less well-known are the other members. They were Lucy Deane, Lady Alice Knox, Dr Jane Waterson, Dr Ella Scarlett and Katherine Brereton.

Emily Hobhouse brought the appalling conditions in the camps to wider knowledge in Britain and the world at large. Her explosive revelations caused outrage in the general public and embarrassment to the UK Government. **

Like Emily, the members of the Committee were progressive women in that era of struggle for feminist representation and advancement, but they weren't all compatible in their beliefs and ideals so the dynamic would have been an interesting one and Emily herself was not included or consulted.

All of them hailed from the respectable upper classes but if one bases success, achievement and historical recognition as being given the accolade of an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, only three of them - Fawcett, Deane and Waterston – are included in the ODNB. 

(Image source unknown)

* Although often called the Fawcett Commission or Ladies Commission, it was not a Royal Commission in the true sense.

**  See my two previous posts about teachers for the camps and a book about Emily Hobhouse.