Biography: Stanley Victor James Chambers, OBE (1887–1954)

Stanley Victor James Chambers, known as Victor Chambers, was a British diplomat whose career spanned four decades in Central European affairs. His knowledge of the Hungarian language and culture made him a valuable asset to British interests during two world wars and the early Cold War.

Early Life and Marriage

Victor Chambers was born on 19 September 1887 at 3 Keston Road, Goose Green, Camberwell. His father, William James Earl Chambers, was a commercial traveller for the Alfred Alexander Bottle Company. William stayed with the company for fifty years, seeing it merge with other glass firms in 1913 to form United Glass Bottle Manufacturers Ltd.

Victor was educated at West Cliff School in Ramsgate. This was a "mathematical & classical boarding school" run by Arthur Philip Southee, with 21 pupils ranging in age from 8 to 16.

It is not clear when and why Victor first went to Budapest. We do know that in 1910 he was working at the the British Consulate-General in the city (as Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the British Embassy was in Vienna). He might also have been working as a freelance language teacher. He met Hilda, sister of Harry Graepel who managed the Hugo Graepel Machinery Factory, at the home of a Hungarian family called Kelemen.

Victor and Hilda became engaged in 1910 and planned to marry in London. But there was a complication: Victor had not been baptised. On 12 April 1912, he underwent adult baptism at the Continental Chaplaincy in Budapest, with Stephen Kelemen, Harry Graepel, and Harry's mother Emily Graepel as sponsors. This was a discreet solution that avoided the social awkwardness of being baptised as an adult in London society. Three months later, on 20 July 1912, Victor and Hilda were married at St George's, Hanover Square, London, under a Special Licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony was performed by the Right Reverend Bishop Bury. The Special Licence was necessary because neither party was resident in the parish.

The couple's first home was a flat in Zoltán Street (now Nádor Street), Budapest, near the Parliament. Their first daughter, Joan, was born there on 7 February 1914.

World War I

With the outbreak of war in 1914, the British Consulate in Budapest had to close. Victor and Hilda returned to England with baby Joan, and they lived with Victor's parents at their house named "Ashburton", in Forest Hill. A second daughter, Vivien, was born on 15 July 1915. Victor joined the army. Under the heading Regular Forces | Special Appointments, the London Gazette of 6 February 1917 shows him "graded for purposes of pay as a Staff Lieutenant 3rd Class to be temporary 2nd Lieutenant from 1 February 1917".

The Clearing Office (1920–1931)

In 1920, Victor was posted back to Budapest with Britain's diplomatic legation. The family rented a first-floor apartment at 22 Mányoki út on Gellért Hill, where their landlady was Mrs. Szontág. Joan and Vivien had a governess who taught them in German.

The British Consulate was housed in a large property at 1 Verboczy Utca (now known as Táncsics utca 1) in the Castle District of the city. Victor served as Acting Consul and Head of the Clearing Office.

The Clearing Office was established under the post-war peace treaties (the Treaty of Versailles and, for Hungary, the Treaty of Trianon) as a means of settling pre-war debts between nationals of the erstwhile enemy states. Each government set up a Clearing Office through which outstanding debts owed by its nationals to those of the opposing state were collected and paid. The system prohibited direct payment between the parties; instead, the debtor's government collected the sums due and credited them to the creditor's Clearing Office, which in turn paid the creditor. Governments guaranteed the debts, accepting responsibility even where individual debtors could not pay. Victor, as head of the British Clearing Office in Budapest, was responsible for identifying, verifying, and collecting sums owed by Hungarian nationals to British creditors.

In October 1920, Victor obtained a bank loan to purchase land on the Danube embankment adjoining the Graepel factory. This land was later rented to the Richter pharmaceutical company.

Hilda took the girls with her when she returned to England for the birth of their third daughter. Claudia was born on 20 April 1921 at 2 Manor Court, Manor Mount, Forest Hill; she was named after Hilda's brother Claudius, who died when he was 17 years old.

The family re-joined Victor in Budapest early in 1922, where the three girls were schooled at home by a German governess. Victor's diplomatic work meant that he and Hilda had a busy social life. To help, they had a Hungarian maid named Berjee, and a seamstress named Erszi who also helped with the cooking.  Many years later, Erszi went to England where she became housekeeper for and eventually married Robert Chambers, Victor’s brother.

The Chambers and Graepel families remained close throughout the 1920s, spending Sundays together and usually Christmas. In summer, the two families would rent a villa beside Lake Balaton. Victor's daughters later recalled these as "nine happy years."

In 1931, Victor and his family returned to England. He was appointed Secretary to the District Committee of Investigation for the Durham and Northumberland district, headquartered in Newcastle-on-Tyne. This was a statutory body created by the Coal Mines Act 1930 to oversee coal marketing schemes.

Marshall Matters

A 1930 Deed of Appointment named Victor as one of the trustees of a trust fund established for Emily Eliza Marshall (his mother-in-law) under the will of Henry Dickenson Marshall (his deceased father-in-law, who had been managing director of Marshall, Sons & Co).

Marshall, Sons & Co went into receivership in 1934. The Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury of 22 January 1937 reported that Victor purchased part of the assets of Marshall, Sons & Co Ltd from the receiver, though the nature of this purchase is not recorded.

Return to the Diplomatic Service (1937–1942)

On 10 September 1937, Victor was appointed to the Department of Overseas Trade as an Assistant in the commercial diplomatic service. He returned to Budapest in the role of Assistant Commercial Secretary at the British Legation. Hilda and the girls remained in England.

After Britain declared war on Hungary on 7 December 1941, Victor's colleagues in Budapest - British diplomatic and consular staff - were interned before being repatriated through neutral Portugal in April 1942 as part of a diplomatic exchange. Victor was not amongst them; in the summer of 1939 he was instead recalled to London and seconded to Bush House. The evidence for this is:

• a statement in Hugh Graepel's written account that Victor returned in 1940;
• a family memory passed on by Betty Lanyii (Emmy's daughter in Budapest) that Victor was working for the BBC during the war years;
• a not-yet-substantiated claim that the Foreign Office List for mid-1939 records him as being on "special duty" – the standard diplomatic parlance for personnel seconded to the Ministry of Information or the BBC's European Service;
• a suggestion (unsubstantiated at present) that the Hungarian writer László Cs. Szabó, an early BBC broadcaster, noted that the "Londoni Rádió" was organised by a British diplomat who spoke perfect Hungarian and had been brought back from Budapest specifically to provide "political and linguistic guidance" during the war.

The BBC Hungarian Service (1939–1944)

The idea that Victor was involved with the Hungarian Section of the BBC European Service has appeal because it makes perfect sense. The first broadcast of "Londoni Rádió" was made on 5 September 1939, just two days after Britain's declaration of war on Germany. It is well documented that Foreign Office staff were seconded to bridge the gap between the Foreign Office's policy requirements and the BBC's editorial standards.

The Allied Control Commission (1945–1947)

Following the Soviet capture of Budapest in 1945, Victor returned to Hungary as Commercial Secretary of the British Political Mission. Because a peace treaty was not yet in place, Hungary was under the authority of the Allied Control Commission (ACC), chaired by Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov.

Victor served as the primary British economic liaison to the ACC. In this high-stakes environment, he was responsible for:

• Protecting British Assets: He fought to prevent the Soviet Union from seizing British-owned industrial assets, particularly in the oil and manufacturing sectors, which were being claimed as "German reparations."

• Economic Stabilization: He acted as the chief observer and advisor during the Hungarian Hyperinflation of 1945–1946, the most severe in history, attempting to maintain trade channels for British goods.

• Diplomatic Transition: He navigated the complex bureaucracy of the Soviet-dominated occupation to ensure British commercial interests were represented before the formal restoration of the Legation.

First Secretary (Commercial) and OBE

When the tenure of the Allied Control Commission ended on 10 February 1947, Victor resumed the normal duties of the First Secretary (Commercial) at the British Legation in Budapest. Hilda joined him in Hungary.

Victor was appointed an OBE in the 1948 New Year Honours (London Gazette, 30 December 1947). This was in recognition of his "exceptional service under difficult conditions" in a post-war Hungary that was being forced to become a communist state. Later in the year he handed over the commercial portfolio to his successor, Edward Philip Southby and returned to England.

Arrest in Budapest

In December 1949, without recompense, the Graepel Company in Budapest was nationalised and all its assets seized. For the next six months, Hugh Graepel lived with relatives while trying without success to obtain exit visas so that he and his wife could leave Hungary for England. The Hungarian authorities did not want him to leave and were playing a bureaucratic waiting game with him. Also during 1949 and into early 1950, Victor tried to sell his Budapest property (rented to Gedeon Richter & Co, a pharmaceutical company) in order to pay off its mortgage, but he too was blocked by the Hungarian authorities.

It seems likely that Victor travelled to Budapest in the summer of 1950 in the hope of being able to resolve these problems. In the event, he found himself in police custody, as witness this translation of a report by the Hungarian State Security Authority:

Chambers Viktor’s personal circumstances can only be described as follows: he is 53 years old, a retired diplomatic attaché, currently a resident of London at 13 Dacres Road, Forest Hill. He is approximately 182 cm tall, has blonde hair turning grey, a balding head, a round face, and is clean-shaven.

He was taken into custody on July 5th, and during the arrest, he had no complaints and did not raise any objections. The order for pretrial detention has been announced, and after informing him of his rights, he acknowledged and accepted the ruling.

We do not know if Victor was put on trial, nor when he returned to England. We do know that he was in England to meet Hugh and his wife when they finally managed to escape Hungary in early 1951.

Family

Victor married Mary Emily Catherine Hilda Graepel (Hilda, also known as Maidie) in 1912. They had three daughters:

• Lilian Joan Chambers (Joan, 1914–1984), who married Jack Long in 1939
• Vivien Gwendolen Graepel Chambers (Vivien, 1915–1986), who married John Still Lewis in 1939
• Yvonne Claudia Marshall Chambers (Claudia, 1921–2007, named after Hilda's brother Claudius) who married Cherry Grainger

The three sisters were close friends throughout their lives and continued to speak Hungarian amongst themselves, especially on the telephone, much to the annoyance of their children in later years.

Death

In his later years, Stanley Victor James Chambers suffered from heart problems and Hodgkin's Disease (a cancer that originates in the lymphatic system). He died on 2 October 1954, at the age of 67.

Detailed Timeline

Sources

1. General Register Office (GRO): Birth Record (Q4 1887, Camberwell, Vol 1d, p 914) and Death Record (Q4 1954, Surrey, Vol 5g, p 714).

2. The London Gazette: Supplement 38161, 30 December 1947, p. 12. (Appointment to OBE).

3. Foreign Office List (1947): Harrison & Sons, Ltd. (Listing for S. V. J. Chambers, Commercial Secretary, Budapest).

4. Borbándi, Gyula: Nyugati magyar irodalmi lexikon és bibliográfia. Budapest: Hitel, 1992. (Confirms role as first BBC Hungarian Programme Organiser).

5. The National Archives (Kew): FO 371/48464 - Records of the British Political Mission in Hungary and correspondence regarding the Allied Control Commission.