Have I got a good one for you today folks. :)

I read Roald Dahl’s authorized biography and despite my intention not to talk about the seamy side of his life, something has jumped up and punched me between the eyes.

Alfhild Dahl, Roald’s elder sister, tells Sturrock a story about how Roald first became involved in espionage. She claims that Roald befriended a couple on his trip back from Egypt in 1941: the husband was British, the wife half-German, half-Japanese.

This well-heeled and cosmopolitan couple became good friends with Alfhild and Roald; they all traveled in the same circles in London.

Well, one day Alfhild got the idea that this couple were actually spies for Vichy France. She mentioned her suspicions to Roald, who promptly reported the couple to Britain’s secret service. As a consequence of this action, Roald was followed and watched by secret servicemen himself.  No more detail is given, but this is how Alfhild claims Roald got noticed.

Several questions arise for me. Firstly, the official history is that Roald was recruited for The Irregulars in Washington. In fact, we now know that he was contacted much earlier in the U.K. (Read Sturrock’s book for all the details.)

Secondly, on what basis could Alfhild have made her judgement? Did she have any “ins” in the intelligence field? Well, yes she did. Alfhild was a party-girl known for her affairs. Sturrock gives us a list of her lovers, the majority worked as propagandists for the War effort. In fact, Alfhild comes across as something of a barracks-whore in the intelligence community. Perhaps all that experience did give her insight into espionage– or maybe it just made her an ancient Jill Kelley.

Alfhild and Roald ran in agent-rich circles well before Roald’s posting to D.C. Roald really was perfect for his role as an agent provocateur: Alfhilds’ agency-veteran lovers could testify to that. Alfhild shook her ass back home; Dahl could do that equally well in ‘Caput Mundi’.

So, at Sis’s suggestion, Dahl reported their friends to the powers that be. Who were this couple?

They had to be wealthy, otherwise they wouldn’t be traveling at such a time. They  had to be well-connected and privileged, considering that they ran in culturally-elite circles.  They were also unusual: a Japanese-German married to an Englishman, with clearance to travel during war-time. (Remember that the UK and USA were running ‘internment camps’ for people who they SUSPECTED of having ties with Germany or Japan.) This couple also had to have some ties with Vichy France.

Do I know of any Japanese-Germans who were wealthy, privileged, could run with the in-crowd in London, and yet were connected with Vichy France? Hmmm.

‘Coulda been one of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s daughters. And if it was, it was probably Ida.

Coudenhove-Kalergi was an Austro-Hungarian nobleman and diplomat who took a lot a pride in the diversity of his ancestry. In a seeming attempt to one-up his forefathers, he married a Japanese woman against her family’s wishes. In fact, Coudenhove-Kalergi had to call in some political favors to force the marriage through. The couple had several children back in Austria; Ida was the only daughter to distinguish herself.

Ida was very active in the German Youth Movement. She was also a strong supporter of the Catholic Church; though her views were not catholic. She is better described as a Unitarian Universalist.

This is how Ludwig von Mises describes the German Youth Movement:

The chiefs of the youth movement were mentally unbalanced neurotics. Many of them were affected by a morbid sexuality; they were either profligate or homosexual. None of them excelled in any field of activity or contributed anything to human progress. Their names are long since forgotten; the only trace they left were some books and poems preaching sexual perversity. But the bulk of their followers were quite different. They had one aim only: to get a job as soon as possible with the government. Those who were not killed in the wars and revolutions are today pedantic and timid bureaucrats in the innumerable offices of the German Zwangswirtschaft. They are obedient and faithful slaves of Hitler. But they will be no less obedient and faithful handy men of Hitler’s successor, whether he is a German nationalist or a puppet of Stalin.

Despite Ida’s involvement in this organization, she wrote and was published throughout the span of the Third Reich, though her ideas were certainly not ‘nazi’. After the end of the war, Ida was welcomed into the bosom of the American literary establishment, her Nazi-era masterwork, The Hidden Face, was translated and published by Pantheon.

Ida’s book The Hidden Face was first published in Germany in 1944; a large part of the research was probably done between ’39 and ’44. The book is about Saint Therese of Lisieux, the young nun who died and was transformed by her mother-superior into a cult figure. Saint Therese lived in Lisieux, which in the early 1940s, was in the heart of Vichy France.

The 1959 version of Ida’s book is careful not to mention where she did her research, but she clearly has intimate knowledge of the original source material regarding St. Therese.

So: privileged, rich, well-connected, connection to Vichy France… yes, all there for little Ida. What about that Englishman-husband?

Ida did marry: a German engineer called Goerres, but he doesn’t seem to have meant much to her. In fact, Ida was underwhelmed by the institution of marriage in general: she saw it as a means to an end. Her work with the Youth Movement, the Catholic Church and women’s issues devoured all her energy. Did she have time for anything else, I wonder?

IF Dahl did report Ida and her Englishman, who was her Englishman? Could he have been some sort of handler? Did Dahl, neophyte to espionage, report a British double-agent to the British?

IF Ida was a double agent, it would explain the ease with which she and her family moved during and after the war. In fact, her brother became quite powerful.

IF Dahl did make this faux pas, it would explain Alfhild’s reluctance to name names. Roald’s actions would have been a great embarrassment to him later in life… perhaps guilt and embarrassment weighed on his conscience?

In the 1959 edition of The Hidden Face, Ida lists the book Saints for Now as one of her sources, though I can’t find where she actually used information from it. Saints for Now was edited by Clare Boothe Luce, and first published in 1952. Ida Goerres’ knowledge of the subject far outweighed Clare Luce’s; why would Ida mention an inferior book that was published eight years after her original work on St. Therese? What connection can these two women possibly have?

A short excerpt for Roald Dahl’s authorized biography:

His date for that evening was the actress Nancy Carroll, a thirty-nine year old divorcee, but at the party afterwards it was Congresswoman Clare Booth [sp] Luce, the wife of the owner of Time and Life magazines and a vituperative critic of Henry Wallace’s, who caught Dahl’s eye.

Mrs. Luce, a reluctant anglophile, quickly succumbed to the allure of the glamorous young air attache, thirteen years younger than she was, and Dahl did not return home that night. “I got home to the house of my host at 9 AM the next morning,” he told his mother, “and failed to make my room without being seen to ruffle the bedclothes… I had to do a lot of talking to re-establish my reputation.” Later, Creekmore Fath claimed that the embassy encouraged the liaison in the hope that Dahl would convert Mrs. Luce to a more pro-British position…

A few years later and Mrs. Luce’s into saints…

Could it be that an uneasy conscience led Dahl to unwise pillow-talk? Or was it just an uncontrollable desire to name-drop? What business does Clare Boothe Luce– a very recent Catholic convert– have editing a compendium of Saints’ lives? Perhaps we’ll never know.

P.S. If you’re interested, a (not exhaustive) list of Alfhild’s lovers:

William Walton, composer.

Arthur Bryant, historian.

and probably Alfred Tregear Chenhalls, since she was the only Dahl sister not to booby-trap her door against him.

Roald was good friends with Leslie Howard’s business manager, a man named Alfred Tregear Chenhalls. Chenhalls was a creepy individual; Dahl’s younger sisters barricaded their doors against him at night when he visited the family. Both Howard and Chenhalls were killed when their plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe, probably because of their propaganda activities.

A perfect circle of friends for a double agent, I’d say…