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A Secret Well Kept: The Untold Story of Sir Vernon Kell, Founder of MI5
224Overview
The United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, most commonly known as MI5, was founded in 1909 by Sir Vernon Kell KBE. Kell ("K" within the agency) not only founded MI5, but was also its Director for 31 years, the longest tenure of any head of a British government department during the twentieth century. Kell was also fluent in six foreign languages, making him arguably the most gifted linguist ever to head a Western intelligence agency.
A Secret Well Kept was written by Kell's wife, Constance, in the 1950s, and the manuscript has been a treasured family possession ever since. Constance's story is endlessly fascinating: she tells of their life in China during the Boxer Rebellion, the formation of MI5 in 1909, the key characters, events and spy cases of Kell's career, and his important work achieved for the country during two world wars.
A modern-day preface from Kell's great-granddaughter, introduction by Stewart Binns, and notes from Dr. Chris Northcott add historical context to this delightful and unparalleled insight into the personal life of an extremely powerful and important man.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781844864355 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury USA |
| Publication date: | 05/23/2017 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Constance Kell was Sir Vernon Kell's wife for over 40 years. Deeply devoted to him, she provided constant support to him in his life and work. A Secret Well Kept is her account of their fascinating and wonderful life together, written after his death in 1942. Constance died in 1971.
Read an Excerpt
A Secret Well Kept
The Untold Story of Sir Vernon Kell Founder of MI5
By Constance Kell
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2017 The Estate of Lady KellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84486-435-5
CHAPTER 1
MOSCOW
* * *
It was in August 1909 that an opportunity arose for Vernon Kell to do something vitally necessary for the safety of his country. There was the risk that should he fail to carry it through it would leave him with his career wrecked and bring about the dismal prospect of having to provide for his family with no adequate means of doing it. But he was young and an optimist – why should he fail? I was sure he would succeed, so he decided to accept the suggestion of the Committee of Imperial Defence that he should start a scheme of special defence to counter espionage. He was a fine linguist, that would be an asset; he had travelled a good deal and, best of all, he had vision.
He started off with high hopes, hardly knowing how to begin to lay the foundations of the organisation that eventually proved so successful. Even the enemies against whom the schemes were directed bore rather rueful testimony to their efficacy. In fact, they voiced grudging admiration of the way their network of spies was broken up and they found it necessary to alter their methods frequently, only to have them quickly checkmated.
Little did Vernon realise in those early days when he started with just one clerk that he was creating an organisation which would require the assistance of hundreds of people to operate, the number growing ever larger as the war years approached. He found that his experiences in China, and especially those relating to his work in connection with that of the temporary Russian Railway Administration during the Boxer Rebellion, had given him an insight into the way the military minds of various foreign nationalities approached questions that required much vision to deal with and do so without friction.
Vernon liked to describe himself as a 'Yarmouth Bloater', for it was at Yarmouth, where his mother was spending a few days at the seaside, that he was born on November 21st 1873. He grew up with a cosmopolitan outlook, for his mother, a most attractive woman, was only half-English, her father, Count Konarski, having married an English girl. The Count left Poland when many of the nobility and landed gentry had been pushed out during the unrestful days of the last century, and he had settled down to a rather uneventful country life in England.
Perhaps it was this touch of foreign blood in Vernon that accounted for the fact he was an excellent linguist, for he could, as a young man, speak six languages. He was educated privately, and it was at first intended that he should enter the Diplomatic Service, his name being placed on the personal list of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. This idea of a diplomatic career arose quite by chance from an incident that brought his name forward. As part of his studies, he was told to translate into four languages the address which Colonel Kenyon Slaney, then MP for Shropshire, had moved in the House of Commons in reply to the Queen's speech. The Colonel was a great friend of the family, and the translations were sent to him more in joke than in earnest, but he was so struck with them that he showed them to Lord Salisbury, who promptly gave Vernon a nomination for the Diplomatic Service.
Vernon's father, Major Waldegrave Kell, had started his army career in the Connaught Rangers, then stationed in Ireland, and on the outbreak of the Zulu War he went with his regiment to South Africa. Here, during the campaign against the Zulus, he very successfully carried out a most unusual task for an infantry officer. He was placed in command of a battery of artillery that had been left completely denuded of officers owing to wounds and sickness. He carried out this task so efficiently that it earned him a mention in dispatches, and he was given accelerated promotion and a job on the staff. One of his duties as a staff officer was to make arrangements for bringing back the body of the Prince Imperial to England for his funeral. This prince, so beloved of his mother the Empress Eugenie, and in fact loved by all who knew him and served with him, had been ambushed and killed by the Zulus, a tragedy felt most deeply, especially by Queen Victoria, who knew what his death would mean to his mother.
On his return from carrying out this duty, Waldegrave Kell was promoted to captain in the South Staffordshire Regiment and was made adjutant to the 4th Militia Battalion stationed at Lichfield. He and his family went to live there, but his wife disliked his many moves to different stations while he was in the army and persuaded him to retire shortly after he had been promoted to major. They went to live in Shropshire at Ruckley Grange, a lovely house on a small estate where there was a certain amount of shooting, three small lakes and quite a good trout stream. Vernon soon became a good fisherman, and fishing remained always his favourite sport.
It was sometime after this that the question of a career for Vernon had to be decided. His father had suddenly and very unexpectedly decided to alter his plans for his entering the Diplomatic Service and now turned to the possibility of sending him into the army. Vernon was now just eighteen and could therefore only have one chance of passing the entrance examination before he reached the age limit. He was sent to a crammer, and succeeded in passing both his preliminary exam and his final within three months of each other.
In 1892 he went to Sandhurst and spent two very happy years there. During his second year, a cadet arrived who was to become one of the most famous of men, namely Winston Churchill, who came with the reputation for being able to get away with most things, having been quite irrepressible at both his private and public schools. But at Sandhurst he was determined to get through well. His imperturbable character, so individualistic and purposeful, got him into some difficulties and he had to undergo some pretty drastic ragging, but this completely failed in its object, for nothing could get him down and he passed out with nothing particularly arresting to relate while he was at Sandhurst. In later years Vernon was to see much more of him.
Vernon thoroughly enjoyed his time at Sandhurst, especially as he had been entirely free from asthma, which was the one great difficulty he had to contend with. From the time he was eight years old and in consequence of one of the usual infectious diseases of childhood, he was left with asthma, at first very severe, but later controllable except in certain localities. He was strong physically, but his affliction was always the thing he dreaded and had to fight against.
His father was now living in London and had married again, as his first wife had left him. Their house in Clarges Street was a delightful centre, for his American wife was a very charming hostess and they had a large circle of friends. Vernon liked his stepmother greatly and spent many happy days there, but mostly he went abroad when he got leave and stayed with his French relations, who lived in the south of France and in Paris. His mother's two sisters, Countess Marie Konarska and Countess Emma Macswiney, lived in a lovely house at St Germain en Laye. They were known as 'the English ladies', though their very foreign accent seemed to belie that title considerably. Countess Emma had married a rich banker and was a wonderful horsewoman, with her own haute école on the premises. She was rather a haughty woman, very artistic, and had a great collection of antiques, so that her home resembled a museum. She chose to live like this, surrounded by glass cases, cabinets, statues of all sorts and no comfort anywhere, which was hard on poor Countess Marie, who loved her creature comforts. Vernon had many French cousins also and much enjoyed staying with them.
On completing his time at Sandhurst, Vernon joined his father's regiment, the 1st Battalion South Staffords, at Lichfield in October 1894. He went through the usual subaltern's courses, but he was determined to strike out on his own and make use of his languages. He therefore applied to go to Russia to get the Russian interpretership, which meant that he had to take a preliminary exam in London to qualify for it. While waiting for this he passed the French and German interpretership exams with ease. Having received permission to work for the Russian preliminary exam, he passed it successfully and could now go to Moscow to learn the language fluently.
In 1898 he got the necessary leave and went to live with a family called Von Kotzk in Moscow, where he could get the tuition he required. Madame Von Kotzk and her family were interesting, artistic, most amusing and lively. Madame took in boarders, British officers who were studying for the Russian interpretership, and she was a most excellent teacher. One of her pupils was a certain Captain Lindsay who had brought his wife and daughter with him. The little girl was a great favourite with them all and a very constant companion of Vernon's. What was their consternation when she suddenly developed scarlet fever, which in due course she handed on to Vernon. The question as to what to do with him was a puzzle, for there seemed nowhere else to send him but to the fever hospital in Moscow, where the accommodation was very primitive because the hospital at that time only catered for the very poor who could not afford to pay anything.
Vernon was driven to this hospital in a state of high fever in a one-horse tumbledown vehicle with all the windows broken. The cold was intense but he was feeling too ill to care much about that. On arrival his interest was certainly stimulated when he found himself bundled into a room where a woman managed to make him understand that he must have a bath before he could be allowed to get into bed. She prepared to attack him in the bath with a coarse wisp of straw to rub him down with, and a sort of circular piece of metal to scrape him with should he prove as dirty as most of the patients. On his protesting very vehemently she at last realised that her ministrations were not so very necessary, and she let him off. He was taken to a small private ward where fresh difficulties presented themselves. The mattress on the bed was of the coarsest straw, and as he lay on it with his skin so red and inflamed, the straws all stuck into his back and drove him frantic, his pillow no better. He knew enough Russian to beg the matron to allow him to buy a special mattress and pillow, and when she realised that he would pay she sent for them. At last he could get some ease, which was something to be thankful for, considering that he had bad attacks of asthma to add to all he was going through.
The matron and the nurses were very kind to him and took great interest in this young Englishman whose charm of manner and smiling resignation to the many discomforts he had to suffer attracted their sympathy and help. They found out that he was in Moscow to learn Russian and lost no opportunity to help him and to read to him; the matron, in particular, gave him as much of her time as she could spare and he learnt a great deal from her. The five weeks spent in hospital gave him quite an unlooked-for chance of becoming fluent in the language, and also it gave him an insight into the lives of the patients, who were very poor. He made great friends with them as soon as he was well enough to go into the public wards, and found them such simple, kindly people with the most trusting and childlike outlook on life, their ignorance quite astounding but their cheeriness most infectious. Vernon always spoke of his time in that hospital with great appreciation, for all the people he came in touch with had been so good to him and had made his convalescence very pleasant. He went back to the Von Kotzk family to continue his work and thoroughly enjoyed his time with them. They were such bright, intellectual people, always ready to make the best of difficulties, and they were many which came their way, for they had very little money and had a hard struggle to make two ends meet. Madame Von Kotzk herself, who did most of the teaching, introduced so much of interest into the lessons that it made it easier to learn what is, to most people, a very difficult language.
The winter passed quickly, a winter which gave Vernon an insight into all the brightness and light-heartedness of life in the Moscow of those days. The sunshine, the snow, the sleighs and their lovely teams of horses with jingling harness driven by fat drivers sitting perched up high and muffled to the ears; the expeditions to the hills for skiing, for skating; the dancing – all the gay Russian life made its appeal and Vernon felt the time slip away all too quickly. But his leave was up and he had to return to London to take the exam. This he passed very satisfactorily and then he rejoined his regiment, which was stationed at Spike Island in Cork Harbour.
They were good days in the South of Ireland, when there was so much prosperity in the towns owing to our troops stationed there, and HM ships. Trade flourished, money flowed freely, and there was a sense of security before the 'agitators' got busy among the people. The residents, both in town and country, lived in what seemed then a carefree atmosphere, in comparison to the strained uncertainties that were to follow when the unrest that led to what the Irish described as 'Our War' had settled upon them.
It was here that I first met Vernon. My father, James William Scott, was a man well-known and much-beloved in that part of Ireland. Our family was a very musical one, which appealed to Vernon, for he could play the piano well and since his visit to Moscow had brought back some lovely Russian folk songs, which we thoroughly appreciated, for we sang well and this music was delightful. Vernon made many friends and enjoyed the genial gaiety of the people he met. He had plenty of sport of all sorts, and the friendly gaiety of everyone was so infectious that he enjoyed every moment of the amusing, careless life that all were sharing.
CHAPTER 2JOURNEY THROUGH CANADA
* * *
After a short spell of regimental life Vernon became restless and longed to go abroad again, and determined to ask once more for language leave, this time to go to China and try for the Chinese interpretership. His application succeeded and he started to make his plans to go off to Shanghai, when quite suddenly there came the fateful Jameson Raid in South Africa, which so quickly led to the South African War. Vernon naturally wanted to give up all thoughts of China and go with his regiment to the Cape, and his dismay was great when he was told he must stick to his original intention. He hurried over to London to see if a personal appeal to Major General Sir John Ardagh, then Director of Military Intelligence, would succeed so that he could go to South Africa with his regiment. Sir John was very sympathetic, but also very emphatic; he could not alter his decision, and Vernon must leave for China as arranged. He cheered him up slightly by telling him that it would not surprise him if some active service might not be in store for him in the Far East.
Vernon went back to Spike Island bitterly disappointed, and very dejectedly continued his preparation for his journey to China. This was in the spring of 1900. His friendship for the Scott family had grown into a much closer bond. He wondered if I would perhaps consider going to China with him. We would have to get married straight away.
He came to me and asked what I thought about it. It was just wonderful, I gladly consented, for after all it would be a case of being only two years away, and why not go with him? Vernon had been seconded from his regiment for these two years to enable him to get the Chinese interpretership, but my mother was very alarmed at the prospect, though my father backed me up when we decided to marry early in April and go off. After a short honeymoon we spent a few days in Dublin, which was then crowded and beflagged, to greet Queen Victoria who was paying her last visit to Ireland, and we were there to take part in the great welcome she was given. We saw her several times as she drove through the streets; she looked pleased and happy, she had hardly expected the reception to be so spontaneous and the welcome from the crowds everywhere was most enthusiastic. We could only stay the inside of a week and left Dublin, going home to pick up our luggage and say goodbye.
On April 12th we went off in a tender to meet the liner that was to take us to New York. My mother looked very white and strained as she said goodbye, my father tried to be as gay as possible, and as we left the tender and waved to them from the deck of the liner we felt we had indeed taken a big step and wondered what lay in front of us. Our ship was due in New York on April 18th, and we planned to go by easy stages and eventually fetch up at Vancouver. The ship, the Teutonic, in those days one of the fastest ships of the White Star Line, was a good sea boat and she had need to be, for we encountered a very heavy storm in the Atlantic causing the ship to be a whole day late in arriving in New York. We reached the mouth of the Hudson River in dense fog and watched with intense interest the ship slowly and cautiously threading her way through much shipping. It seemed almost incredible that we did not collide with some of the ships that we barely scraped past. Just as we were nearing the Statue of Liberty the fog lifted, and the sight of the Statue of Liberty glittering in the sunshine, the shipping densely packed in the river, the marvellous silhouette of the tall, crowded buildings along the waterfront, was so beautiful that it made an unforgettable impression. Then came the bustle of docking, a perfect swarm of little tugs pushed and pulled the big liner and got her into place to enter the very narrow dock where she was to land her passengers. Soon gangways were moving on board, and everyone had to make ready for customs examinations.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Secret Well Kept by Constance Kell. Copyright © 2017 The Estate of Lady Kell. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Caroline Coverdale, great-granddaughter of Sir Vernon and Lady Kell vii
Introduction Stewart Binns, author and filmmaker 1
Chapter 1 Moscow 15
Chapter 2 Journey Through Canada 22
Chapter 3 Japan 30
Chapter 4 Shanghai and Active Service 34
Chapter 5 Boxer Rebellion 38
Chapter 6 Relief of Peking 43
Chapter 7 Tientsin 49
Chapter 8 Visit to Tangshan 58
Chapter 9 Railway Staff Officer at Shan-Hai-Kuan 63
Chapter 10 We Make Friends 70
Chapter 11 A Distinguished Visitor 75
Chapter 12 Shan-Hai-Kuan Reverts to Chinese Control 79
Chapter 13 Peking 84
Chapter 14 Farewell 91
Chapter 15 Trans-Siberian Journey 96
Chapter 16 Home Again 99
Chapter 17 New Plans 105
Chapter 18 Some Fruition 114
Chapter 19 War 122
Chapter 20 Air Raids 129
Chapter 21 Return to London 135
Chapter 22 War Ending 142
Chapter 23 Steps Back to Normal 149
Chapter 24 Visit to South Africa 157
Chapter 25 George VI Comes to the Throne 166
Chapter 26 Preparation for a Second World War 174
Chapter 27 Resignation from MIS 183
Notes Dr Chris Northcott, author and lecturer in Intelligence and Security Studies 191
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