Rosa FitzGeorge and Vera Arkwright Bate Lombardi
The divorce papers at The National Archives, Kew [J77/327 C527592], reveal that many statements, formerly in print about Rosa Frederica Baring FitzGeorge (1854-1927) and her daughter Vera Arkwright Bate Lombardi (1883-1948), are incorrect.
The sworn Petition of Rosa Baring's first husband, Frank Wigsell Arkwright, dated 20 October 1884, states that there were two children of his marriage to Rosa: Esme Francis Wigsell Arkwright, born 7 May 1882, and Vera Nina Arkwright, born 11 August 1883:
The eldest child, Esme Francis Wigsell Arkwright was, according to the 1891 Census [RG12/585-26-2], born at 26 Hans Place, London. His birth was registered at Chelsea in the June Quarter of 1882 [GRO Birth Indexes, 1a 370]. In 1891 he was aged 8 and living with his father at Sanderstead. The second child, Vera Nina Arkwright, was, according to the 1891 Census [RG12/932-69-9], born at London. In that year she was aged 7 and living with her Baring grandparents at Norman Court.
However, the birth of this second child was registered only as 'Female Arkwright', She was born at Kensington in the September Quarter of 1883 [GRO birth indexes 1a 172] and the birth Entry itself (No. 372) shows that she had been born on 11 August 1883 at 17 Ovington Square in the sub-district of Brompton, the daughter of Frank Wigsell Arkwright, Captain late Coldstream Guards, by his wife Rosa Frederica Arkwright formerly Baring, the informant being the father, of that address, on 31 August 1883.
The girl's 'Name, if any', and her 'Baptismal Name if added after Registration of Birth' were both unfortunately left blank in the birth entry. However, the parish registers of West Tytherley, Hampshire, show that the girl was baptised Vera Nina and recorded as the daughter of Frank Wigzell [sic] Arkwright and his wife Rosa Frederica, by the Rector, at West Tytherley, Hampshire, on 16 September 1883, the father being described as Late Captain Coldstream Guards [Parish Registers, Entry 292, Page 37].
The daughter Vera Nina Arkwright was thus not born in 1885 and she was certainly not 'a stonemason's daughter' or the daughter of Prince Adolphus of Teck, as was sometimes stated [Axel Madsen, Coco Chanel, a woman of her own (New York, 1990) 142], as the Prince would have been only a few months past his fourteenth birthday at the time of her conception (he was born 13 August 1868), and not seventeen, as was also variously stated. The entry in the 1891 census showing Vera as the 'granddaughter adopted' of Elizabeth Baring's husband is in no way remarkable and should not be used to suggest that Vera was illegitimate.
Frank Arkwright's Petition for Divorce accused Rosa of frequently committing adultery (in July 1884 at Ostend, in September 1884 at 15 Motcomb Street, Middlesex, on 4-16 October 1884 at Holme Meade, Sevenoaks, and from 17 October 1884 to date at Queen Anne's Mansions, St James Park, Middlesex) with Lieutenant Colonel George FitzGeorge, the Co-Respondent (on whom notice of the proceedings had been served and who was legally represented), names the children and gives their dates of birth. The Divorce proceedings were also widely reported in the national and local press. That George FitzGeorge was, at the time of his marriage to Rosa Arkwright a year later, not aware that his future wife had been previously married and was the mother of two children, is thus not correct.
Newspaper accounts of the divorce proceedings say that shortly after their marriage differences arose between Frank Arkwright and his wife and a formal Deed of Separation was drawn up by which Rosa Arkwright had charge of the children, she allowing access to her husband, but that she was disinclined to let him have opportunities of access. She lived at Sevenoaks, but after a time Frank 'could not find the place of her residence' and a watch was consequently set on her movements, when it was found that she had gone to Ostend where she lived for some time with George FitzGeorge. As a result a formal Petition for Divorce was filed [Portsmouth Evening News, 6 March 1885, page 2d; York Herald, 7 March 1885, page 19b; Morning Post, 6 March 1885, page 6c-d; Bristol Mercury, 6 March 1885, page 8b]. One Irish newspaper mentioned that the co-respondent was a son of the Duke of Cambridge [Freeman's Journal, 6 March 1885, page 5g-h].
At the divorce Frank Arkwright petitioned for custody of the two children. Rosa Arkwright and George FitzGeorge both denied adultery but did not appear in Court to defend the suit, and were represented by the same solicitors. Rosa's initial costs of £12-4-8 were paid by Frank Arkwright. The marriage was dissolved by a Decree Nisi on 5 March 1885 which was made Absolute on 27 October 1885. The Court ordered that George FitzGeorge pay the costs of the action and that the children remain with Frank Arkwright until further Order [also reported in Portsmouth Evening News, 6 March 1885, page 2d].
The marriage of Rosa Frederica Baring (Mrs F. Arkwright), youngest daughter of W. Baring Esq of Norman Court, to Lieut-Col G W A FitzGeorge ADC, at the British Embassy, Paris, on 28 November 1885, was reported in the Hampshire Advertiser, 5 December 1885 [page 7c] and a week later the Hampshire Telegraph noted, 'Major Fitzgeorge was married a few days ago in Paris to pretty Mrs Frank Arkwright, and so ended one of the romances of the year' [Hampshire Telegraph, 12 December 1885].
It is thus clear that Rosa FitzGeorge did not 'abandon' her children as has been claimed, though she probably knew that as a consequence of her actions they would be removed from her custody. Rosa being the 'guilty party'. The children were initially placed in the care of Frank Arkwright, but on 4 May 1886 the Court ordered that Vera Nina be placed in the custody of her grandmother (i.e. Rosa's mother), Elizabeth Baring, as had been Agreed on 19 April 1886.
Frank Arkwright then applied for permission to vary the terms of his Marriage Settlement with Rosa Baring dated 27 August 1878. After several delays a Variation was agreed by the Trustees of the Settlement and this was confirmed by the Court on 8 June 1886 which ordered that £200 per annum be paid to Rosa from the income arising from the Trust Fund, the remainder being placed in trust for the children. Rosa's power to appoint Trustees was cancelled. On 14 August 1886 George FitzGeorge was ordered to pay Frank Arkwright's costs of £56-1-9.
Frank Arkwright died on 13 March 1893 (leaving a Personal Estate of £10,217-14-8) and on 7 August 1893 his Executors and Vera's Guardians were involved in further discussions about his Marriage Settlement and the Trustees were restrained from dealing in the property. On 26 February 1894 the Court ordered that Vera be represented in the proceedings and on 20 April 1894 it noted that Vera had (on 17 April 1894) elected Elizabeth Baring to be her Guardian. On 13 July 1894 the Court ordered that Rosa Arkwright also be at liberty to intervene in the proceedings and her solicitors duly filed an Intervention.
On 13/14 May 1895 the Court ordered that a Report of the Registrar on a Variation of the Settlement be confirmed to take effect from 14 May 1895, the costs of all the parties being paid out of the income arising since 14 May 1895 from a sum of £10,000 brought into Settlement by the late Petitioner (Frank Arkwright). The costs of the Trustees and Guardians were filed 1 August 1895. There is no further document on the Divorce file.
Elizabeth Baring, Vera Nina's grandmother, died at Norman Court on 6 November 1897 (leaving a Personal Estate of £518-1-1 gross or £462-13-17 net) and Elizabeth's husband, William Henry Baring, died at Norman Court on 10 June 1906 (leaving a Personal Estate of £84,874-18-11). The will of Elizabeth Baring dated 25 May 1897 and proved in the Principal Registry, 9 March 1898 makes no mention of her daughter or of the latter's children. The will of William Henry Baring dated 1 May 1899 and proved (with a Codicil dated 5 May 1902) in the Principal Registry 15 August 1906 named his daughter Rosa and the unspecified amounts owed by her husband George William Adolphus Fitz-George (as reported in the Western Gazette and cited below). His codicil, inter alia, gave £200 to his granddaughter Vera Arkwright.
Vera Nina Arkwright has not been found in England in the 1901 and 1911 census returns and it is not clear where she was living in those years (though her US passport applications say that she lived in England from 1884 to 1914). She is probably the Miss Vera Arkwright at 17 Connaught Street, South Paddington, in 1915 [Electoral Register, Hyde Park Ward, Division 3, Page 375]. If and when she lived with Lady Margaret Grosvenor (1873-1929), the daughter of the First Duke of Westminster and the wife (from 1894) of the above mentioned Prince Adolphus of Teck (who was created Duke of Teck in 1900 and Marquis of Cambridge in 1917), and if and when she assumed the forenames Sarah Gertrude, as stated by Axel Madsen, remains undocumented. The former Margaret Grosvenor died on 27 March 1929 and her will as Dowager Marchioness of Cambridge dated 15 June 1928 and proved in the Principal Registry on 27 June 1929, makes no mention of Vera Nina in that or any other name.
Although her age in the 1891 census (as given by her grandparents) is correct and agrees with her birth on 11 August 1883, Vera sometimes said that she was born later and her passport applications in 1916 say that she was born on that day in 1885 whilst those made in 1919-21 say that she was born in 1884. From the Court arrangements outlined above it is clear that Vera, her brother and her mother shared the income from the Trust set up by her father. After her mother's death in 1927, Vera would have shared the balance of the Trust with her brother until his death in 1934. She may have received other funds under the wills of her father and grandfather.
Stories of Vera's 'royal illegitimacy' thus have no basis in fact and it is equally clear that she and her daughter Bridget Bate Tichenor (1917-1990), had no 'royal descent' through George FitzGeorge.
Two books often cited as sources for the birth and parentage of Vera Bate Lombardi are Axel Madsen (1930-2007),Chanel: a woman of her own (1991) and Hal Vaughan (1928-2013), Sleeping with the enemy: Coco Chanel's secret war (2011), but both seem to relyfor these details on the allegations of Vera's daughter Bridget Bate Tichenor (1917-1990). Bridget was a surrealist painter in the 'magic realism school' and had, it seems to me, little interest in factual truth. She was estranged from her mother after 1939 and had moved to a reclusive life in Mexico in 1953. She considered her mother a 'monster' and told many stories about her to a spiritist protégé, Zachary Selig (1949-2016), whom she met in 1971. Amongst these stories was the suggestion that she (Bridget, born in 1917) was the daughter of Coco Chanel and the Second Duke of Westminster (who did not meet until 1923), that her mother (Vera Arkwright, born in 1883) used the forenames Sarah Gertrude (though she has not been found anywhere in those names), did not marry until 1919, and was the 'surrogate child' of the Duchess of Westminster; that Vera was descended from King George III and was either the daughter of Rosa Baring by George FitzGeorge (Rosa's second husband) or by Prince Adolphus of Teck (then just fourteen); that Rosa had abandoned her two children (born in 1882 and 1883) by her first husband Frank Arkwright and that there was a royal 'cover up' when they divorced in 1884-5. These allegations, for which no evidence can be found, were apparently made known by Zachary Selig after Bridget's death in 1990 but none has been corroborated from other sources. Selig's friends apparently claim that he gave information for Hal Vaughan's book, Sleepng with the enemy (2011), but that well-referenced book makes no mention of him.
The allegations that Prince Adolphus was Vera's father were made by her daughter Bridget in the belief that she (Vera) was not born until 1885 (when Prince Adolphus would have been 16 or 17), whereas Vera was born in 1883 when he was just 14. The 1884-5 divorce papers of Vera's parents show that their marriage settlement was openly discussed in court, its trustees were closely involved, and after Frank's death in March 1893, his executors were also involved. By a deed of separation made prior to the divorce the two children had been placed with Rosa Arkwright, Frank having access, but Rosa was disinclined to allow access and when it was found that she was committing adultery with George FitzGeorge, divorce proceedings were instituted in October 1884. The children were as a result placed with their father who, under the terms of his marriage settlement, was providing for their upkeep. The divorce was no quickly hushed-up matter and various extensions of time were given so that those affected might be represented and bring forward information which would safeguard the future income and welfare of the children. It was not until 4 May 1886 that it was ordered that Vera be placed, by mutual agreement, in the care of Rosa's mother, Elizabeth Baring. Affidavits were filed as late as April 1894 (following Frank's death) relating to the child's election of Elizabeth Baring as her testamentary guardian ad litam. Vera was mentioned as being bequeathed £200 in an account of her grandfather Captain William Henry Baring's will, Rosa being left £10,000 in trust for the eventual benefit of all her children (except her eldest son Esme Arkwright) if unspecified monies owing to Captain Baring by Colonel FitzGeorge had been paid in full [Western Gazette, 24 August 1906, page 3].
Although Vera Arkwight cannot be found in the 1901 and 1911 census returns it seems likely that she was somewhere in England when the Census was taken. As "Miss Vera Arkwright" she was amongst those present at the annual Oakley Hunt Ball in January 1905 [Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 20 January 1905, page 5], she was amongst the guests at the marriage of Nora C. Barrow and W. Lindsay Hogg at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, in May 1907 [Kent and Sussex Courier, 24 May 1907, page 4], she was a bridesmaid at the marriage of her brother Esme Arkwright to Audrey Violet Hatfield-Harter at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, on 6 July 1909, the Prime Minister and Mrs Asquith being guests [Buckingham Advertiser, 10 July 1909, page 7], she broke her right arm whilst out hunting from Bredenbury Court, Bromyard, with the North Ledbury Hounds, in January 1910 [Gloucestershire Echo, 11 January 1910, page 3, and Gloucestershire Chronicle, 15 January 1910, page 6. Bredenbury Court, a 53-roomed house, was unoccupied except for two servants when the census was taken in 1911. Her photograph appeared in The Tatler in 1911 when she was described as half-sister of the misses Iris and Daphne Fitzgeorge the grandaughters of the late Duke of Cambridge [28 June 1911, page 68]. In 1915, however, she was shown in the same magazine within a hospital waggon and serving at the American hospital in Paris [6 January 1915, page 7]; photographs later that year, showed her in the park with Lord Ribblesdale [The Tatler, 19 May 1915, page 9] and in November saying that she had been acting as a Red Cross nurse at the hospital at Neuilly since September 1914, being attached to the surgical operation room [The Tatler, 10 November 1915, page 23]. Her service as a Nurse, Voluntary Aid Detachment, American Ambulance, Auxiliary, 1914-20, was recognised by the U.K. by the award of the WW1 Service Star 3 October 1914 [TNA, WO 372/23/955]. A review of Marie van Worst's War Letters of an American Woman noted that Miss Vera Arkwright had 'come in for much well deserved praise' for work in the French hospital [The Tatler, 1 March 1916, page 18]. The following month the Sunday Mirror [9 April 1916, page 9] had a photograph of her on her engagement to Mr Frederick Bate of Chicago, as didThe Tatler [19 April 1916, page 6; The Times, 8 April 1916, Forthcoming Marriage of F. Bate and Miss Arkwright' she being 'Vera Nina Arkwright, daughter of late Captain F.W. Arkwright, Coldstream Guards, and Mrs FitzGeorge, widow of Colonel FitzGeorge, eldest son of HRH the Duke of Cambridge'] and the couple married in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris on 1 May 1916. Later that day, as Vera Nina Bate, she appied for a passport in Paris. According to Axel Madsen the marriage had been 'on an impulse' on her part [Madsen (1990) 142].
The Tatler showed her again as Mrs Frederick Bate 'who has beeen doing war work and will be remembered in society as Miss Vera Arkwright' [The Tatler, 23 January 1918, page 26], adding 'her mother's second husband was the late Colonel FitzGeorge', and was repeated inThe Tatler, 8 September 1918, page 18. In 1923 it printed a drawing of her by Drian, saying that she was in London on a flying visit from Paris 'where she is connected with Chanel' [The Tatler, 18 April 1923, page 12]. She had introduced Gabrielle Bonheur ('Coco') Chanel (1883-1971) to the Duke of Westminster in 1923 and the three were photographed together in Scotland in 1925. In 1924 The Tatler again said that Vera was 'now a great person in one of the most celebrated dressmaking firms' [The Tatler, 15 October 1924]; in 1925 as 'one of the chief people at Chanels' she was seen with Lady Curzon at the Grand, in Venice [The Tatler, 2 September 1925, page 5] and in 1926 in 'A letter from Rome' she was seen 'at hounds' with Countess Frasso and others[The Tatler, 13 January 1926, page 34].
On 21 August 1928 The New York Times [Section S, Page 31] had an headline, 'Mrs Bate sues in Paris to obtain divorce from Reparation Board Member' and Vera Bate divorced her American husband, Frederick Bate, in 1929 [Vaughan (2011) 51]. Shortly afterwards in 1930 she had left Chanel to work for a competitor in Paris, the fashion house run by an Englishman, Captain Edward Molyneux [Vaughan (2011) 51].
Vera had meanwhile married in 1929, Alberto Carlo Bartolomeo Lombardi (1893-1975), an Italian rider and horse riding instructor who taught at the Pinerolo and Tor di Quinto riding schools in Rome between 1921 and 1929 and had won the three-day event team bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in 1924.
In 1933 a photograph of M. and Madame Lombardi taken at Eaton Hall when guests of the Duke and Duchess of Westminster for the Grand National, appeared in The Tatler, noting that Madame Lombardi was formerly Miss Vera Arkwright [The Tatler, 5 April 1933, page 18].
In 1935 The Tatler page 34 had a photograph of Mme Vera Lombardi 'sculptress' and Mrs Nugent Allfrey, at Londonderrry House for a joint exhibition private view with the Hon Anthony Chaplin (Lady Londonderry's nephew) saying 'Mme is showing drawings, bas-reliefs and works in the round of horses ... she is married to the head of the Roman Weedon, the Tor di Quinto' [The Tatler, 10 July 1935, page 34].
On 8 May 1940, The Tatler in its 'The Social Round', page 4, it reported that, "The junior Hugh T. Chisholm of New York are visiting her artist mother, Donna Vera Lombardi, in Rome. She was Mrs Fredeick B. Bate of Paris and before that Vera Arkwright, a considerable personality in the hunting, social and artistic lives of the Great War generation".
Alberto Lombardi, a Colonel in the Italian Cavalry, was suspected of working for the Italian military intelligence service [Vaughan (2011) 51]. He had been a member of the Facist Party since 1929 and his brother Giuseppe Lombardi was head of the Italian naval Intelligence service [Vaughan (2011) 171]. In July 1937 it was reported that a champion rider in the Italian army, Major Lombardi, had come to England to buy horses on behalf of his government, but without success as the births of the horses had not been registered in stud-books, and that his English wife Miss Vera Arkwright had 'also made a great name for herself as an horsewoman' ['Red Tape' in Lancashire Evening Post, 30 July 1937, page 6].
Hal Vaughan has established in his Sleeping with the Enemy; Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent (2011), that Chanel committed herself to the German cause as early as 1941 and worked for General Walter Schellenberg, chief of the German intelligence agency Sicherheitsdienst and the military intelligence spy network Abwehr at the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin. During the German occupation of Paris she closed her shop and moved into the Ritz Hotel. There she had an affair with Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, a press attache at the German embassy. Chanel apparently had no earlier communicaton with Vera Lombardi but in late 1943 or early in 1944 she and Walter Schellenberg devised an extraordinary plan to get Britain to consider a separate peace in which Vera Lombardi would act as courier between them and Winston Churchill, taking a letter written to the latter by Chanel to Madrid in neutral Spain on their behalf. Vera, who was then being held in Italy under suspicion of being a British spy, was led to believe that this was a business trip to explore the potential for marketing Chanel couture in Madrid. This 'Operation Modellhut' was a complete failure as vera Lombardi, having been freed in Italy (where her husband was in hiding), on arrival in Madrid went immediately to the British embassy and 'denounced all and sundry, including Madame Chanel, as German agents to the British authorities' [Anthony Cave Brown, "C" The secret life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies spymaster to Winston Churchill (1987) 565-6, quoting (Note 19. page 810, the interrogation of Schellenberg].
Vera Nina Lombardi, 'an embarrassing witness of things past' [Madsen (1990) 275], died at 32 Via Barnaba Oriani, Rome, Italy, on 22 May 1947 [The Times, 27 May 1947, 'Vera (nee Arkwright), beloved wife of Berto [sic] Lombardi'], and Limited Administration with her will attached was granted at the Principal Registry, London, on 21 March 1949, to Evelyn Bingham Baring, merchant banker, attorney for her husband Alberto Lombardi, her effects in England being £4,444-9-9. Alberto Lombardi himself, died at Rome, 11 April 1975.
Anthony Camp, 11 & 20 November 2012, amended 29 June 2015, 3 November 2019, 13 February 2025.
Frederick Blantford Bate (1886/7-1970)
The thrice married journalist Frederick Bate who was a friend of King Edward VIII seems likely to have been one of the persons that Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, a fierce opponent of divorce and re-marriage, had in mind when, three days after the abdication of King Edward VIII, he broadcast his view that the former King, intent on marrying a woman with two living husbands, had 'sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage, and within a social circle whose standard and way of life are alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people' [Frances Donaldson, Edward VIII (1974) 298].
Bate had been born in Chicago, 13 November 1886 [1900 Census; 1919 Passport Application; 1942 Passenger List] or 13 November 1887 [1916 Passport Application; 1939 Register] and appears in the 1900 Census of Chicago as aged 13, at school, the adopted son of Sadie L. Bate, aged 38, a widow without other children. She rented a house and took in boarders at 3000 Indiana Avenue. Bate seems not to have known anything for certain about his parents. In the 1900 census he and his unnamed parents were all said to have been born in Illinois but in 1910 he said that his father and mother were born in England. In 1916 he swore that his late father had been a naturalised citizen of the USA. On a 1919 Passport Application he said that his father was Perry Bate but on another Application in 1923 he called him Harry B. Bate. On both applications his father was said to have been born in England and was now deceased.
Bate's adoptive mother Sadie L. Bate appeared as Sarah L. Bate in the 1910 census at 1954 Congress Street, Chicago, widow, aged 41. She was then described as the sister-in-law of Alonzo Mills and his wife Isabel. All three came from Canada, Sarah and Isabel saying that they were naturalised in 1893 and Alonzo that he immigrated in 1886. Sadie/Sarah seems also to be the Sarah Bate at 133 & 134 Jackson Blvd, Chicago, aged 55, widow, naturalised in 1900, with 9 lodgers, in the 1920 census. She apparently had sufficient funds to send her adopted child to the University of Chicago, 1907-8, but he was a 'mediocre' student [Derek W. Vaillant, Across the waves: the US and France shaped the international age of radio (University of Illinois Press, 2017) pages 31-50].
As 'Frederick B. Bate' he married firstly in Cook County, Illinois, 7 January 1909, Sally K. Plows (1889-1947), the heiress daughter of Edward Plows (1855-1906), a prominent candy maker in Chicago. In 1910 she and Fred Bate (who had no children together) were living with her mother, Sallie Kinyon Plows, in Ellis Avenue, Chicago, all three being described as confectionery merchants.
However, it was reported on 14 April 1916 that Bate's marriage had been 'dissolved by divorce due to his desertion' [www.royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2010/04/vera-arkwright-to-marry retrieved 06/10/2019]. In the meantime Sally Plows had married 2ndly in Chicago, 22 July 1915, an architect, Hugh Mackie Gordon Garden (1873-1961) and by him she had an only daughter, Sally Garden, born 27 June 1916, who died in 1977. Hugh Garden's mother-in-law 'Sallie K. Plows', aged 79, was living with him in Chicago in the 1940 Census.
In Bate's passport applications (which included one sworn in Paris on 24 February 1916), he said that he had left his home at 3747 Ellis Avenue, Chicago on 17 February 1912 and had left the USA on 2 March 1912. He had come abroad 'to study art' at the Academie Julian (a private art school in Paris). After about a year and a half he had given up his artistic studies to join the Paris branch of the Ford Automobile Company and in October or November 1913 had gone to work for Ford in Spain, returning to France in July 1914 to report to the Ford headquarters. On the outbreak of War on 4 August 1914 he had joined the staff of the American Ambulance Service in Paris and was with it until 30 April 1916 [1919 passport application]. He said that cousins in Mason City, Iowa, were 'my sole relatives in the US, my immediate family being dead'. He was now following the occupation of 'artist and automobile business' and was temporarily residing at 25 rue de Longchamp, Paris. He claimed to have lost a passport issued in the autumn of 1913 by the Embassy in Paris, but needed one for 'residence in France', for 'artistic purposes in Spain' and for 'automobile business in England and Russia'. He submitted for identification his American Ambulance identity card and a driving licence issued in Paris on 24 April 1915. He also said that he did not pay American Income Tax, his income being insufficient.
Whilst in Paris on 1 May 1916 and as 'of Chicago' Bate had married secondly in the 16th Arrondissement, Vera Arkwright [Passport application 20 May 1916; the marriage was reported as forthcoming in The Times, 8 April 1916, page 11, and the Sunday Mirror, 9 April 1916, page 9], having known her for about eighteen months. Vera, a well known and well connected London socialite and horsewoman, had been born in London, 11 August 1884. She had left England to undertake Relief Work for the American Red Cross and arrived in Paris in September 1914 [her US Passport Application 1919]. As an Auxiliary Nurse at 30 Quai de Bethune, Paris, she had been awarded the UK's WW1 Service Star, 3 October 1914 [WW1 Service Medal and Award Rolls 1914-1920]. The couple had one child, Bridget Pamela Bate, born in Paris, 22 November 1917 [Passenger List of Ile de France, leaving Southampton, 3 September 1939]. Vera later worked in Paris with Coco Chanel from 1920 to 1930 and in 1923 she introduced Coco Chanel to Hugh, the Second Duke of Westminster (1879-1953), with whom Chanel then had a ten year affair. The three were photographed together in Scotland in 1925. The Duke was an outspoken anti-Semite and, like many in London society and politics at the time, pro-Nazi and anti-Communist [Vaughan (2011) 49].
After marriage Fred Bate worked from May 1916 in Paris with the Vacuum Oil Company and did relief work for the American Red Cross until 12 March 1919 when he applied for a passport for himself alone at Paris [issued 22 August 1919]. About January 1919 he had been released from the American Red Cross and in October 1919 he went to Austria as a secretary with the Reparations Commission, returning to France in June 1921 when it was agreed, because of Austria's financial position, that no payments should be made, 'beyond credits for transferred property'. His wife had accompanied him since 1 May 1916. In 1923 he was at 2 Villa de la Tour, Paris, 'for the General Secetariat assigned to US unofficial delegation to the Reparations Commission, Paris', but seems also to have been with the American Red Cross as Director of Motor Transport [Passport Application 1923].
In Paris on 1 November 1926 the Dundee Courier reported (page 10) that the Prince of Wales was playing golf with Fred Bate and that 'Mr and Mrs Bate are close personal friends of the Prince'. However, Fred and Vera were divorced in 1929 and Vera married Alberto Lombardi that year.
Fred Bate, aged 43, married his third wife, Genevieve Gillette, on 21 July 1930 in Cook County, Michigan [FamilySearch]. She had been born at St Paul, Minnesota, 24 September 1900, the daughter of Payson Edward Smith, a lumber dealer at Minneapolis [Family Search] and had only that year been divorced by Earl Perkins Gillette (1900-1951) a broker in that city. When the census was taken on 7 April 1930 she was recorded as living with her husband, their two young children (Jacqueline, aged 6, and Judith, aged 4) and her parents-in-law, at Girard Avenue, Minneapolis [Federal Census, 1930]. Bate had left Europe to meet her, sailing from Cherbourg on the Leviathan, 13 May 1930 and arriving at New York, 19 May 1930, when he gave his address as c/o the Lee Higginson Bank Building. What earlier connection there had been between Genevieve (known to her friends as 'Gebe') and Bate is not apparent. In September 1930 the Prince, on a private visit to Paris, was again reported as motoring alone to the St Cloud Country Club to play golf with Bate, one of its members [Yorkshire Post, 22 September 1930, page 8]. Bate is said to have worked for an American bank in Paris, 1930-32 [Jim Cox, Radio journalism in America (2013) 173]. On 12 May 1933 the new 'Mrs Frederick Bate (of USA)' was presented to Queen Mary in the General Circle by Mrs Atherton [The Times, 15 May 1933, page 21], the latter presumably being the wife of Ray Atherton, Counsellor to the American Embassy [The Royal Blue Book (1937) 684].
Whilst working for the War Reparations Commission Bate had come to know the American industrialist and banker Owen D Young (1874-1962) a prominent member of the Commission who in 1919 had founded and was the first chairman of the Radio Corporation of America which in turn had in 1926 created America's first radio network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Bate joined NBC in September 1932 and after four years as its European representative was in 1936 stationed in London as its British representative [Jim Cox, Radio journalism in America (2013) 173], whilst the ubiquitous Max Arthur Jordan (1895-1977) based in Basel, became NBC's full-time European representative. Bate is credited with 'developing international broadcasts into a viable enterprise' ['Networks in France and Europe, 1932-41', pages 31-50, in Derek W. Vaillant, Across the waves: how the United States and France shaped the international age of radio (2017) 31-50].
In London, Bate lived then at 15 Campden Hill Square, W8 [The Royal Blue Book (1937) 710] and his friendship with the Prince of Wales continued. The Duchess of Windsor later recalled that about 1934 or 1935, the Prince of Wales 'wished to ask us [i.e. Mrs Simpson and her husband Ernest] to a dinner party that he was giving at the Dorchester for two old American friends, Fred and 'Gebe' Bate. Fred was the Western European representative of the National Broadcasting Company, and I had met them at the Fort' [Duchess of Windsor, The heart has its reasons: the memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor (1956) 192].
The Bates had become frequent visitors of the Prince of Wales at Fort Belvedere (the castellated private residence bordering Windsor Great Park which the Prince had taken in 1929 and called 'The Fort'), signing its new guest book in 1935 - a gift from Mrs Simpson - on 1 and 26 January, 9 March, 11 May, 7 June, 25 October and 21 December [Michael Bloch, Wallis and Edward: letters 1931-1937 (New York, 1986) pages 295, 347-355]. They came less frequently after the Prince of Wales became King on 20 January 1936 but were there 'for the weekend' on 14 March, on 18 April and on 25 May 1936. On one occasion Bate had, from the Fort, telephoned Sir John Reith, director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, to say that the King would like the BBC dance orchestra to play a certain tune, but the BBC avoided any mention of Mrs Simpson's name until the week of the abdication [Brian Inglis, Abdication (1966) 310]. The Bates sailed for New York on the Queen Mary on 27 May 1936 and returned on the Berengaria, 23 June 1936. She alone signed the visitor's book on 9 October 1936.
On the understanding that the King had no intention of marrying Mrs Simpson the more important British newspapers had agreed in mid-October 1936 not to give publicity to their relationship and her upcoming divorce, a decree nisi being expected on 27 October [Donaldson, Edward VIII (1974) 219-23, 228], but on 26 October the New York Herald, stated unequivocally that the King would marry 'Wally' eight months after the divorce and that after the King's coronation she would be his consort. The British press, however, kept its silence until 5 December when the question of their possible marriage was openly discussed and revealed widespread hostility in the British public and the Commonwealth.
Bate had provided up-to-the-minute radio coverage of the King's relationship with Mrs Simpson to the American public and must therefore take some responsibility for 'all this scandal and vulgarity' and the 'degrading and horrible publicity' which was, as Noel Coward wrote to Lord Mountbatten, circulating in America [Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: the official biography (1985) 94]. On 23 October 1936 Bate took a two-month holiday and left on the Manhattan for New York. He therefore missed the drama of the King's abdication on 11 December but, on hearing the developing news, he had telephoned Alistair Cooke and asked him to go immediately to Broadcasting House and beam over a news dispatch for NBC before the midnight circuit which the rival network CBS had booked. Cooke did so and for the next ten days of the crisis he broadcast to America six or seven times a day. Bate returned to England on the Queen Mary on 21 December. In April 1937 he sent the first of a long series of special British programmes about the forthcoming coronation of King George VI to America [Daily Herald, 21 April 1937, page 17] and in January 1938 organised the first of a series of 'spelling bees' between colleges in England and the US [Western Daily Press, 25 January 1938, page 9]. In 1939 Bate and his wife were living at 11 Portland Place [1939 Register, The National Archives RG101/0457F/004/44].
On 8 May 1939 the ex-King, living in France as a private citizen but convinced that war as a means of settling disputes was unacceptable, was easily persuaded to accept an offer by Bate to address the world on the anniversary of the Battle of Verdun on the need for world peace. However, the BBC decided not to carry the broadcast and many thought that it should never have been delivered. It followed soon after the Duke's untimely visit to Germany and, as his biographer Frances Donaldson wrote, the Duke's 'unerringly unfortunate sense of timing' was disastrous. In his official biography Philip Ziegler says that it was 'ill-luck' that the new King and Queen were en route to New York for their first goodwill visit to Canada and the United States [Philip Ziegler, King Edward VIII: the official biography (1990) 399], but the Duke's biographer Frances Donaldson thought the ex-King's broadcast and his later appeals for peace, coming as they did from someone who was now merely a private citizen, 'most foolish of all', saying that it 'seems probable' that the Duke had fallen 'a sucker' to Fred Bate who had been trying to persuade him to broadcast ever since the abdication and 'finally devised a scheme the Duke found irresistible' [Frances Donaldson, Edward VIII (1974) 342-43]. The historian Sarah Bradford commented, 'This may be partly so, but it is hard not to suspect that there was a decided intent on the part of the Windsors to upstage the King and Queen before they arrived in America and to draw attention to the Duke as an international figure of equal importance' [Sarah Bradford, George VI (1989) 378]. The Duke's rancour towards his family was at this time deeply embittered [Philip Ziegler, King Edward VIII: the official biography (1990) 397].
On 2 June 1940 Mrs Bate and her two children (then aged 15 and 16) had left from Galway on the President Roosevelt for New York, arriving there 9 June 1940 and heading for 685 Linwood Place in her birthplace St Paul, Minnesota, and later that month it was announced that Bate was to be vice-chairman of the London Committee of the American Red Cross [The Times, 22 June 1940, page 6]. Bate thus remained in England and on 16 July, with Edward Murrow and John Steele, was present when the King and Queen toured Broadcasting House and explained how listeners in the USA got American commentaries from England [The Scotsman, 17 July 1940, page 6]. In June the two networks had jointly installed microphones in suitable air raid shelters across London so that listeners in the USA could hear the sound of the raids [Gloucester Citizen, 26 June 1940, page 4]. Murrow at CBS and Bate at NBC had a friendly rivalry but Bate was never able to overtake Murrow's air dominance [Cox (2013) 173]. Bate was himself wounded by shrapnel when a bomb hit NBC's London offices in December 1940 and he spent ten days in hospital. Having been appointed NBC's director of shortwave broadcasting in New York [Cox (2013) 173], Bate left England on the Jamaica from Liverpool, 10 January 1942, and stayed at the Hotel Sulgrave in New York but did not complete the Draft Registration procedures there until 20 October, saying that he had not registered because of his wife's illness [World War II Draft Registration Cards].
Bate remained in contact with the Duke of Windsor and when, in August-September 1944 the Duchess was in hospital in New York, stories spread of her extravagance (she having moved into a ten-room suite with six full time nurses) [Charles Higham, Mrs Simpson (2005) 417]), 'Hermann Rogers of the press censorship and Fred Bate of NBC saw to it that the story was swiftly and publicly corrected' [Michael Bloch, The Duke of Windsor's war (1982) 342]. By this time Bate's former wife, now Signora Lombardi, who had been interned in Italy, had gone to Spain and reported that Coco Chanel was a Nazi agent [Charles Higham, Mrs Simpson (1988) 416; Hal Vaughan, Sleeping with the enemy: Coco Chanel's secret war (2011)].
Bate retired from NBC in 1949 [Cox (2013) 173] and from 1950 to 1954 promoted educational TV with a grant from the Ford Foundation [Cox (2013) 173]. He died at Waterford, Loudon County, Virginia, 24 December 1970, aged 84, and was buried at Lee Crematory, Washington DC, with an inscription as 'Frederick Blandford Bate' [sic], at Waterford, Loudon, Virginia [obituary in New York Times, 30 December 1970, page 28]. Genevieve Bate died 18 December 1984, aged 85, at Palmer House on Main Street, Waterford and was buried at the Metropolitan Cemetery, Alexandria, Virginia [Virginia Death Records 1912-2014].
Anthony Camp, 27 October 2019.