Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree (born September 26, 1897), was a journalist, investor and Conservative MP for the constituency of Harborough, Leicestershire.
Tree's father was an English real estate developer, while his mother was daughter of Marshall Field, the founder of Marshall Field's department store.[1] Born in the United States, he was educated in England.[2]
Tree edited "Forum Magazine" in New York from 1922, and in 1926 became involved in investment on the New York Stock Exchange, before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.[3]
Tree returned to England with his wife Nancy in 1927, and became involved with politics with the Conservative party. At first the couple took a 10-year repairing lease on Kelmarsh Hall near Market Harborough, Northamptonshire which Nancy redecorated with help from Mrs Guy Bethell of Elden Ltd.
In November 1933 Ronald was elected to represent Harborough in Leicestershire. In the same year, the couple bought Ditchley House and Park near Charlbury, Oxfordshire as their home, and it was the decoration of this house which earnt Nancy the reputation of having "the finest taste of almost anyone in the world." She worked on it with Mrs Bethell and the French decorator Stephane Boudin of the Paris firm Jansen.
Tree was among a small group who saw the rising Nazi party in Germany as a threat to Britain, and using his home as its base he became friends with the groups leader, Winston Churchill. Churchill and his wife Clementine dined at Ditchley on numerous occasions from 1937.
In February 1938, after Anthony Eden resigned as foreign secretary from Neville Chamberlain over the conduct of foreign policy, Tree himself became a follower of Eden, known then as the "Glamour boys," a pejorative term used by the Conservative Party whips' office, headed by David Margesson.[4]
On the outbreak of war, the security forces were concerned by the visibility of both Churchill's country house Chartwell - its high geographic location, and the fact it was south of London, making it an easy returning home target; and the Prime Ministers retreat of Chequers - its very visible from the sky entrance road. Churchill had use of the Paddock bunker in Neasden, but only used it on one occasion for a cabinet meeting, before returning to his Cabinet War Room bunker in Whitehall. However, this created additional difficulties on clear nights when a full moon was predicted - so the authorities looked for an alternate site north of London. Tree offered Churchill use of Ditchley, which thanks to its tree coverage and no visible access road made it an ideal site which Churchill was happy with. Churchill first went to Ditchley in lieu of Chequers on 9 November 1940, accompanied by Clementine and his daughter Mary. By late 1942, America had entered the war and the security at Chequers had improved, including covering the road with turf. The last weekend Churchill attended Ditchely as his official residence was Tree's birthday on 26 September 1942. Churchill's last visit was for lunch in 1943.[5]
Churchill gave Tree a job in the Ministry of Information, where he met American co-worker Marietta Peabody FitzGerald. Although both were married, the pair began an affair.
Although Tree was bisexual and twenty years older than Marietta,[6] at the end of World War Two, Tree and Peabody divorced their respective partners, and then married on July 26, 1947. Marietta moved into Ditchley, but found herself bored with English country life. Tree and most of his friends were conservatives, and Democrat Marietta found herself isolated. Recognising his wife's unhappiness, and for the first time in his life short of money, Tree sold Ditchley and agreed to return to New York with Marietta, her daughter Frances FitzGerald and their own daughter Penelope (b. 1949),[7] and his butler Collins.[8][9]
Marietta immediately joined the Lexington Democratic Club, and two years later was elected the county chairwoman. She was elected to the Democratic State Committee in 1954. In 1952, Marietta became involved in the Presidential election campaign of Adlai Stevenson, and in the later 1956 campaign - both defeats. This did not put her off politics, and John F Kennedy appointed her to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1961.[10]
Marietta had started an affair with Adlai Stevenson between his two failed Presidential campaigns, but Ronald Tree was unfazed by this an even invited Stevenson to the couples houses in New York, Barbados and London. Marietta has turned down the option of returning to her earlier lover, the director John Huston, even when he had given her a role in his 1960 movie "The Misfits." It was while walking in London with Marietta that Adlai suffered a heart attack, and later died at St. George's Hospital. That night in her diary, Marietta wrote, "Adlai is dead. We were together."[11]
Penelope Tree became a fashion model, who was arrested on drugs charges in 1972. Ronald Tree died of a stroke on July 14, 1976 in London; while his wife was in New York.