The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [38]
At the beginning of December 1915 Cumming took on Colonel Freddie Browning, who had been working in the Ministry of Munitions. The forty-five-year-old Browning, who became Cumming’s de facto deputy, was a celebrated cricketer and one of the best amateur squash-racket players in England. By the time he came to work for Cumming he was also a well-known man-about-town and successful businessman, being, among other things, a director of the Savoy Hotel in London. ‘He lived his life’, recalled Sir Samuel Hoare (who also worked for Cumming during the war), ‘as he played his games – with style, with temperament, and with boundless courage.’ Hoare described him as ‘the most inspiring force behind the most secret branch of our Military Intelligence’.11 Frank Stagg also remembered him fondly: his ‘hospitality was unbounded’ and his ‘relations with “C” were inimitable, he brought happy evenings to the old man by having gay parties with all the stage beauties that he had at call – and in more serious ways [though here Stagg expressed himself rather ambiguously] he was the perfect link, seldom doing anything himself but linking up with those who knew what was what in any particular line’.12
Cumming’s Bureau grew steadily throughout the war. By the summer of 1915 he had over thirty Head Office staff, including seven officers, eight clerks and twelve female typists. The women were obviously an important part of the team, though in November one of Cumming’s subordinates accused him of ‘partiality with the typists – particularly Miss C., instanced my taking her & 4 others to Westminster Bridge one Sunday dinner hour’, and alleged that he ‘chose the typists on account of their social position’. Although most of Cumming’s female staff were unmarried, he seems to have had no prejudice against employing married women, nor even of sending them abroad, though this may have reflected a preference only to send more mature women to foreign posts. It was, nevertheless, in sharp contrast with practice elsewhere in the civil service. In the Foreign Office, for example, women were obliged to resign on marrying. In May 1916 Cumming noted ‘Miss [. . .] for Malta; Mrs [. . .] for Alexandria’; in June, ‘Mrs [. . .] (did’nt like her!) taken on for Switzerland’; and in February 1917, ‘Mrs [. . .] & Miss [. . .] left for Italy.’ Cumming, the ace motorist himself, also employed women as drivers. On 28 June 1916 he engaged ‘Miss [. . .]’ to be a ‘chauffeuse’. Evidently she was very capable, for just over a fortnight later she was taking the ‘Merc’ (Cumming apparently having no objection to a German car) from London to Paris. Perhaps reflecting his reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man (and with a penchant for old-world courtesy), he also took an interest in their dress, even to the extent of going to see the Quartermaster-General of the army in November 1917 ‘re lady drivers’ uniform’. He recorded in his diary that a secretary going to Egypt in January 1916 was not only to be paid £20 a month but also to receive an ‘outfit’ grant of £30. Freddie Browning, ‘distressed at the way the female element on the staff had [only] buns for lunch . . . got a canteen built on top of Whitehall Court, extracted a chef from the army – an old savoyard – and used the buying agencies of the Savoy to secure cheap food at a time of food stringency’. Perhaps he overdid it, for in February 1918 Cumming was reprimanded by a representative of the Food Controller for holding excessive ‘Staff Mess stocks’.