Charting a Course to Espionage and Intrigue
Spy Story #8: A summary of A Family Spy Story to date + the start of Marjorie and Gordon’s covert operations abroad
When I first started writing this story almost a year ago, I was beginning my own path of discovery. I’d read my grandmother Marjorie Tilley’s testimony about her time abroad, but I hadn’t spent much time thinking about how to tell the story. I knew it would be important to start at the very beginning, not only of the espionage and intrigue, but of my grandmother’s education and emergence from adolescence into adulthood.
After all that backstory, Marjorie and Gordon have finally set sail on the transatlantic voyage that will mark the beginning of their European espionage assignment. If you’re just getting started following Fetch Me Home, this post summarizes A Family Spy Story to date, and begins the story of their spy adventure abroad.
Where There’s a Will
Marjorie Tilley first met her future husband when she was 12 years old, when Gordon was 17 and uninterested in the young, quiet adolescent girl living in his friend Albert Bard’s boarding house. Six years later, she emerged into adulthood, an attractive marriage prospect.
In 1931, the summer before her senior year, Gordon persuaded Marjorie to attend a summer course at the Workers School in New York, exposing Marjorie to advanced Marxist ideology and Communist economic arguments for the very first time.
The semester before, Marjorie had completed a course on Modern Russia, instructed by Lucy Textor, an accomplished female professor at Vassar College who traveled frequently to the Far East and Russia and had a great deal of sympathy for the “Soviet Experiment.” Studying with Professor Textor had primed the pump. Her studies at the Workers School likely fueled her outrage at the failures of the American government to take action to address the overwhelming levels of poverty facing America’s working class, and her resolve to do something about it.
The girl becomes a woman
As an immigrant relegated to drudgery, Marjorie's mother Bertha wanted more for her daughter than she had the chance to achieve herself. Instead of obligating her to house chores, she required Marjorie to study, expecting dedication and academic performance from her daughter as the reward for her own personal sacrifice. Her only child, Bertha raised Marjorie with love, care, and a clear expectation that she would use her keen intellect, and the opportunities provided to her, to make something of her life.
Yet, when Marjorie graduated from college in 1932, her future prospects were much less certain than they seemed when she graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class in 1928.
By 1932, Gordon was photographing and transmitting covert information in New York and running covert operations in Panama. He tried his best to keep Marjorie in the dark. But eventually she found out, and she wanted in.
I like to imagine what Marjorie must have been thinking about her options:
“I refuse to be just another look-pretty, cook-pretty housewife. I am excited to help Gordon in his craft, to become an expert photographer skilled at capturing and transmitting covert information. And at the same time, I get to take a stand for something I believe in, to defy the exploitations of capitalism that have gotten us into this mess to begin with. It’s impossible to know yet if the Soviet Experiment will work, but at least those people have an alternative!”
During this time, Gordon’s handlers were a man named Walter, the head of the Soviet espionage service in New York, and Frank, the head of Soviet intelligence in Britain. After sending Gordon to Panama, they both agreed to send Gordon to Europe. At his insistence, Marjorie was allowed to go, too.
Fresh Recruits
It’s impossible to know for certain when exactly my grandmother Marjorie “became” a spy, but it happened sometime between when she graduated from Vassar in May 1932 and when she boarded a ship bound for England in May 1933... Marjorie made many choices that would change the direction of her life in immutable ways. But she didn’t do it alone.
They married and set sail for England in May 1933.
Fascism Comes for Europe
To fully appreciate the implications of their assignment, it’s helpful to remember the backdrop of geopolitical events.
When Marjorie chose to marry Gordon and become a spy in 1933, she did so against a backdrop of social catastrophe. Entering college in 1928, she may have imagined an easy, bright future stretching out in front of her. But now the future of the world was at best uncertain, and at worst, grim, with the mismanagement of capitalism at least partly to blame. Working to advance Communism was both her best available career option, and an opportunity to support a nascent, hopeful alternative to a seemingly failing system.
A great deal was happening on the other side of the pond, too.
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg.
From January to March 1933, Hitler consolidated a German dictatorship, fanning fears of the “Communist Threat” in response to the Reichstag fire to justify his demands for greater power. Taken together, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act effectively suspended civil rights, legalized imprisonment without trial, disbanded state governments, and allowed the Chancellor to sign legislation without parliamentary approval in Germany. But in many ways, the Communists were a scapegoat. While Josef Stalin had been slowly consolidating power in the Soviet Union, he had not yet shown himself to be a ruthless dictator, maintaining the cover of “collective leadership.”
Marjorie couldn’t have realized that she would ultimately be helping one dictator fight another. Instead, she would have seen herself protecting “the Soviet Experiment” from the fascist threat of an increasingly expansionist Nazi regime.
At the same time, the United States remained more concerned with the economic fallout of the Great Depression, with little concern for political events unfolding in Europe.
Take a look at The New York Times frontpage from March 27, 1933, the Monday after Hitler’s successful consolidation of power:
You’d have to flip to Page 4 to read an explanation of the Enabling Act.
Both Britain and France, however, would have been hard at work, investigating the covert activities of their westerly neighbor and shoring up their own defenses. The Soviets would have a great deal to learn by siphoning their intelligence. But Russians were under suspicion, fed by the Nazi hysteria about the “Communist Threat.” American agents with credible cover stories would be able to maneuver much more freely to effectively build relationships with European sources.
The Plot Thickens
Gordon, a pilot, used this credential to gain a non-official cover for their operations in England, obtaining a contract to sell infrared ray apparatuses on a commission basis in Europe which could provide an entree to European industrialists, military engineers and the like. As soon as Marjorie and Gordon arrived in London, Gordon’s first task was to travel to Delft in Holland, to order a sample of the infrared ray, to support his cover, and Marjorie’s first task was to find a suitable apartment for them to live in.
By the end of June, they had successfully sublet an apartment at Swan Court in Chelsea for 4 guineas a month.
From the moment Marjorie and Gordon began their sojourn abroad, their biggest point of tension with Frank and their other Soviet handlers was about money. Frank, who was now fully in command of their work, was a profligate spender, who seemed intent on using his assignment to enjoy the European high life and, as Marjorie said, use his position to “economize on other people.”
By the end of June, it became clear that Frank and Gordon could not reach agreement on how much money Marjorie and Gordon would require to live, so a meeting was organized in Berlin for Gordon to make his case directly to a higher Soviet authority. After only one night in their new apartment on Swan Court, Frank ordered Marjorie and Gordon to travel to Berlin, where after a period of waiting, they met with a supervising official from the Russian espionage service in Moscow, who had come to Berlin for a conference with the active European chiefs.
But before Gordon could make the case for their expenses in London, the subject of discussion turned to France. Both the Chief and Assistant Chief of the espionage service in Paris had had to leave suddenly, and the organization needed a new Assistant Chief who spoke French to manage their local sources. Having previously lived in France, Gordon was fluent in French and well-acquainted with French culture and customs, making him highly qualified for the position.
Before leaving Berlin, Gordon requested he be given a contact through whom he could directly relay intelligence to Moscow. In response, Frank introduced Marjorie to a man named Jack. By serving as the intermediary, Frank said, Marjorie could protect Gordon’s cover as Assistant Chief.
Marjorie described Jack this way:
“He was about 35 years of age, medium height, rather plump. He had sandy hair and blue eyes. I understood him to be of Russian origin, although I do not know what kind of passport he had. I know that he spoke English quite fluently though with a strong accent. He had spent quite some time in America active in the espionage service, late in the 1920s.”
Designating Marjorie as the primary liaison with Berlin also helped Frank preserve his lavish lifestyle.
“Frank was also motivated in doing this by his desire to prevent my husband from getting too close to the center,” M.. lest he make it known that the accounts had been padded, for instance, and lest he make too sharp criticisms of the inefficient work which was going on under the direction of Frank and the other members of the organization who, like Frank, were only desirous of making their soft jobs last as long as possible. He was also of the opinion that I would be ‘more manageable’ than my husband and would also assist in keeping my husband in line.”
Marjorie offered this testimony with 20/20 hindsight and full knowledge of the power struggle that was yet to come. She’d felt the warring impulses of duty and defiance before. The future, it seemed, would be no different.
“While duty and defiance might often find themselves at odds, there was no question that the women of my family had made a tradition of both. Never let someone else tell you who you get to be. Don’t surrender control of your life, if you can help it. Make your own way, and chart your own course. Marjorie’s life had been shaped as much by her commitment to fulfill her mother’s dreams for her education as it had her willingness to defy convention and set off on a wild spy adventure in Europe. Ricocheting back and forth between the need to both uphold and defy expectations made for a bouncy ride.”
Already, they could feel the volatility of spycraft pushing them in a new, uncertain direction. As Marjorie and Gordon made their way back to London to resolve their existing obligations and prepare to travel to Paris, they both must have wondered: What happens next?
—
Did you listen to the audio recording? What did you think of this chapter?
1933 Date Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1933-key-dates