Maud Russell tells an anecdote, relevant nearly eighty years later.
“Thursday December 17 1943
There was a discussion and during it Comert (editor of La France) made some excuse for someone, or a country – it may have been France – not fighting because they didn’t think they could win. Neville Lytton* pounced, swooped like an eagle, saying that expectation of winning was not what made a country fight. And I thought how right he was when I remembered England in June 1940 with such a poor chance of victory but unanimous determination to fight and die, if need be – not rat away like France. This chance remark of Comert showed up one of the contributory causes to the defeat of France – the lack of guts in the French and the curse inherent in their logic.”
* Neville Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl of Lytton OBE (1879 – 1951), artist. Active service in WW I, an experience he represented in frescos in Balcombe village’s Victory Hall. He won a bronze medal for real tennis in the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Maud’s husband, Gilbert, died in May 1942, leaving her grieving and purposeless. She was a close friend of Ian Fleming and he wangled her a job in Naval Intelligence. She started in June 1943 and her rural life was restricted. She was supposed to work six days a week, unpaid, in the Admiralty and could only go to Mottisfont one day a week. Ian Fleming advised her to move out of Claridges as it might cause friction with her colleagues and she took a small flat. She maintained an active social life in London and at Mottisfont – she could often take a train down on Saturday afternoon and go up to London on Monday morning.
After the war Maud’s life as a generous hostess and chatelaine resumed. In 1957 she gave Mottisfont to the National Trust but continued to live there until 1972 when she moved to a house in the village. She died in 1982, aged ninety.
