Decisions as to what to keep and what to throw are curiously wearing. Every scrap of paper, every ornament brings back its history with it. You pick them up and put them down, wondering. There is no doubt that throwing away is a kind of cleansing and you feel better afterwards. But you immediately want the thrown thing back and have to dig in the bonfire box. The drawer of my bedside table contained a horrid, ancient, floppy leather cover for a book. It held my mother’s ABC Railway Guide and now encloses private papers from the lawyer. The ABC was a remarkable source of pre-war, pre-Beeching information to do with trains, their timetables of long ago – all, alas, irrelevant now – including the Early Closing Days for every town where there was a station.
My new house is spacious and sunny and has all the attributes beloved of estate agents. But the great thing about the Old Vicarage is its atmosphere. It is benign, serene, welcoming, good all through. Is the feeling left by the holy men who lived here? Do other Old Vics have the same legacy – intangible, but invaluable and very apparent? In 1838, the incumbent was Francis Hodgson, who went on to be Provost of Eton. He was a friend of Lord Byron and had his likeness in a marble head by Thorvaldsen. This somehow found its way to Chatsworth, but I am glad to say it is now back at the Old Vic. In 1856, the Reverend Joseph Hall was the vicar and remained in that office for fifty-one years. He must have known the place fairly well, a comforting thought in the restlessness of the 2000s. When the Reverend Harry O’Rorke arrived in 1908, the house was enlarged to accommodate his family of seven children and eight indoor servants. The widow of the last vicar to live here, Mrs Iola Symonds, is hale at ninety and often comes to see her old stamping ground. She had twenty-two rooms to look after. I have planted a tulip tree in the middle of her tennis court, which makes me feel guilty of desecrating the old playground.
The old vicars lived well here. The garden and outbuildings cover nearly two acres. A table to seat twenty would easily go into the dining room. There were fourteen bedrooms till 1972 when, wisely, the house was split to become the first semi-detached Old Vicarage in the country. There it has remained and I am the lucky tenant of what could be described as a rambling family home. The view to the west is lovely and gloomy. It reminds me of a hymn which fascinated my sisters and me as children: ‘Within the churchyard, side by side, are many long low graves.’ A few Jacob sheep are penned there, doing service as grass keepers. Joseph Paxton’s memorial is far grander than those of the Dukes of Devonshire and makes a good shelter for the lambs, all in the shadow of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s enormous 1868 church. The nearness of the churchyard underlines the fact that this life is finite and ‘in the twinkling of an eye…’
March 2006
Newly Laid
‘Uncle Matthew’ At The Lady
You could not imagine a more unlikely candidate looking for a job at The Lady than my father, David Mitford. He had just survived a bullet wound in the Boer War, which destroyed a lung.
In 1902 he had been thrown on an ox cart and covered with corpses when someone noticed a hand slowly winding and unwinding fingers. ‘There is someone alive at the bottom of that heap,’ shouted the keen observer.
He was indeed alive and joined the wounded – although no one expected him to live. Three or four days later, he was deposited at the hospital in Bloemfontein from where he began the long voyage home and his even longer convalescence.
Shortly after his return from South Africa, my father proposed to my mother, Sydney Bowles. But he had first to ask the permission of her father – and my grandfather – founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady, Thomas Gibson Bowles.
‘How do you propose to support her?’ Gibson Bowles had asked.
‘I’ve got £400 a year, and these,’ my father answered, holding up his hands. They married on 6 February 1904 and lived in London, in a tiny house in Graham Street, Pimlico.
I believe Mr Bowles gave them a three-month cruise on his yacht as a honeymoon and found his new son-in-law work at The Lady, without the formalities of form-filling beloved by the bureaucrats of today.
My father reported for work accompanied by his pet mongoose, whose job was to get rid of the rats in the nether regions of The Lady building. He immediately became not only popular but loved by the staff, from cleaners to editors, always acknowledged by him as his equals.
I do not know if Thomas Gibson Bowles explained to him what were his responsibilities as deputy general manager, but I imagine he had to study the fashions of women’s clothes in 1904 and presumably had to peruse the many classified advertisements from governesses and nannies to gardeners and nursery maids, and from rooms-to-let to corsets. (Holiday cottages were yet to be invented.)
Mr Bowles never asked my father for a job description. Had he done so the answer would have divided his time thus – cheering on his mongoose in the course of his mongoose duties 80 per cent, all the rest 20 per cent.
My sister Nancy was born on 28 November 1904 – the first of six disappointments. My mother was longing for six boys, but girls appeared one after the other, only punctuated by one boy, Tom.
My father was tall and handsome. Nancy nicknamed him Great Agrippa from Struwwelpeter (‘so tall he almost reached the sky’) when he announced around tea-time, ‘I am going to get out of my good clothes’, and came back in a dressing gown looking just like the figure in the book.
He was the originator of all the jokes in our family. Nancy picked these up and exaggerated them for the character of ‘Uncle Matthew’ in two or three of her novels and my father was also the model for ‘General Murgatroyd’ in another.
My father was a great ally of my sister Jessica and myself. When we complained about the horrible lunches served at the day school we went to in Beaconsfield for two terms, he took matters in hand at once. Believing in going straight to the top, he entered the headmistress’s study armed with nothing more than his blue eyes and irresistible charm. He won. He got what he, on our behalf, wanted – which was to be excused the unrecognisable scraps of old cow steeped in a stew of their own juice – and henceforth a banana was our lunch.
My father was adept at taking on that formidable female, who insisted on having ‘For those in peril on the sea’ sung at every assembly, in honour of her brother, even though he was safe and sound on his ship with no sign of war to interrupt his naval career. Such determination must have proved useful with some of The Lady’s doughty readers with whom I imagine he had to deal.
He never wrote anything for the magazine himself. That was not his talent. He just got on brilliantly with the female staff and most of The Lady’s readership.
I have often wondered if he had to answer some of their letters criticising aspects of the magazine. I rather hope not, because his idea of women (unless they were beautiful) was less than sympathetic. My mother once asked him why he had to be so early at the Army & Navy Stores when he went to do his shopping. He used to leave his dogs outside and wait patiently until the doors opened at 9 a.m. ‘If I am any later I am impeded by inconveniently shaped women,’ he replied – ‘inconveniently shaped’ because of the parcels they were carrying. He was too polite to push and shove, so he had to be there first.
On the rare occasions when my mother invited a friend to lunch, if he did not like the unfortunate woman, my father would say, after she had gone, ‘Why did you invite that meaningless piece of meat? She was a dismal, worthless sort of creature…’ These remarks never reached The Lady or Mr Bowles might have had second thoughts about my father’s suitability for the job.
My father was unread, because in early life he had read White Fang, by Jack London, and loved it so much he did not ever want to read another book. My triumph of last week was getting a copy of it from the internet for £2. I felt I had landed a big fish and was so proud, but I expect I shall be like my father and will never want to read another.
When the war broke out in 1914 my father joined his old regiment, the Northumberland Fusiliers, so his time at The Lady came to an end. But he had learned a l
ot about publishing from his father-in-law’s firm, which I am glad to say survived his decade there and has gone from strength to strength.
The Ballad of the Cappoquin Boathouse
In 1932 Lord Charles Cavendish married Adele Astaire. She was at the very top of her career as a singer and dancer with her brother Fred, but gave all this up when she married Charlie.
I do not know how much it meant to her to drop her acting career, but it was final and she never went on the stage again. Fred, as we know, went on to make ten films with Ginger Rogers as his partner that were acclaimed by all who saw them.
Lismore Castle, its garden, farms and woods covering thousands of acres in County Waterford were given to Charlie Cavendish as a wedding present by his father, Victor, 9th Duke of Devonshire.
Very sadly, Adele and Charlie lost the three babies born to them and Charlie suffered from alcoholism which hastened his premature death at the age of thirty-eight in 1944.
Adele remained at Lismore Castle, but Charlie Cavendish’s will stipulated that the castle and estate should go to my husband Andrew if Adele married again, which she did in 1947. This was a wonderful gift to Andrew because, as the second son of a duke, he had not expected to inherit any of the family property.
Andrew and I were married in 1941 and had no idea of the tragedy to come when his elder brother, Billy Hartington, was killed by a sniper when leading his men into a village in Belgium in September 1944. Suddenly Andrew was his father’s heir.
This totally unexpected series of events was then added to by the equally premature death (aged fifty-five) of my father-in-law, Eddie, 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1950. So Andrew assumed responsibility for all the Cavendish family properties including Lismore Castle and it became my job to look after the decoration, furnishing and housekeeping of these amazing houses.
However, all this was in the future when the youthful Richard Baldwyn visited Cappoquin with a touring theatre company and encountered Charlie Cavendish in a manner familiar to all who knew him.
With the author’s kind permission I quote his letter as I found it:
Dear Deborah Devonshire,
…There are one or two ‘overlaps’ in our lives and one in particular that I feel might amuse you. It concerns Lord & Lady Charles Cavendish and Cappoquin [a charming village a few miles downstream on the river Blackwater from Lismore Castle]. To tell the brief story I am enclosing a few paragraphs from a book21 I wrote of incidents in my life…I was a 17-year-old actor in a company touring Southern Ireland in 1938.
With admiration and all good wishes,
Richard Baldwyn
Cappoquin was certainly one of the more unusual venues of that summer. Stunningly beautiful, it was only a village with a river running through it. The ‘theatre’ was the boathouse and the auditorium was where the boats were stored in the winter and repairs carried out.
For our visit, the area had been cleared and some eighty chairs installed. The lucky eight in the front row had just enough room to sit with their knees just above the level of the eighteen-inch stage.
The actors had to use the whole width of the building – there was no room for ‘wings’. Entrances therefore had to be made either through a door stage right straight on to the bank of the river, or through the only other door stage left which opened straight on to the river itself.
A boat, therefore, had to be moored alongside so that actors could leave the stage in as dignified a way as possible, stepping out into a somewhat unsteady craft.
If the playwright had insensitively arranged for the actor to make his next entrance from stage right, he would have to ferry himself round the back of the boathouse to the bank. I can’t remember how the dinghy then got back to its vital mooring – perhaps there was a spare one.
For our last performance on the Saturday night, we were all very excited because Lord and Lady Charles Cavendish had booked all eight chairs in the front row. Lady Charles Cavendish had been Adele Astaire, Fred Astaire’s sister, and had left the stage when she married.
We had been warned that His Lordship was a very heavy drinker but we had not expected to find him asleep when the curtains parted. Even worse, he was snoring and, only two minutes into the play, he stretched his legs on to the tiny stage so that we had the choice of going round them or stepping over them.
Despite these little difficulties, the evening went well and we learnt later that not only Lady Charles Cavendish but all Cappoquinians would have been surprised – even worried – had His Lordship behaved in any other way. He would be awoken at the end of each act and would join the applause before making the most of the intervals and then returning to his slumbers for the next act.
We had our usual quota of practical jokers in the company and it was inevitable that one of them would indulge on that evening…It happened just before the end of the play when a male member of the cast had to make a dramatic exit left. He opened the door and swept off. There was a loud splash. The boat had been removed.
Fortunately it was a comedy that night and laughter was in the air. The audience knew exactly what had happened and even His Lordship had removed his feet from the stage at the final curtain as rapturous applause and calls of ‘encore’ echoed through the village.
Those on stage were desperately trying to be professional and control their laughter as the curtains parted for the first call. The audience insisted on more calls, shouting for the missing member of the cast. Eventually the victim, soaked and dripping with river, crept on stage to join the line but even then the mob wasn’t satisfied. He had to take a solo call before the rest of the cast returned for the final curtain.
The Cavendishes insisted on staying and plying us with drink from the local bar as we struck the set in preparation for our departure in the early hours of Sunday morning. His Lordship regaled us with stories of the number of touring shows he had slept through in the boathouse.
Beautiful Chickens: Portraits of Champion Breeds
by Christie Aschwanden, photographs by Andrew Perris
The telephone rang and it was Mark Amory. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he asked me to review Beautiful Chickens. I said yes at once. I already had a copy of the book, given me by the staff of Heywood Hill as a Christmas present, so I knew the fun I was letting myself in for.
The chickens are beautiful indeed. The Frizzle, for instance – a spoilt lady coming out of the hairdressers where they have forgotten to comb out her curls – is truly surreal. But not as surreal as what I overheard a woman telling a friend at the Reading Poultry Show many years ago, long before political correctness had been invented: ‘I put my little Japs in the bath.’ She was staying in a hotel, so what the chambermaid must have thought I cannot imagine. Obviously her Japanese Bantams had to be in pristine shape before they went in front of the judge. The fragility of their tails, which are longer than their bodies by miles, must cause anxiety to their owners.
Some of the birds appear to be in fancy dress. The long-legged Modern Game, standing proudly on stilt-like legs, looks for all the world like Monsieur de Beistegui, who gave the ball of the century in Venice in 1953. So as to be easily recognised as the host, he stood on stilts to greet the onrushing convives. The feathers of the Sebright can be gold or silver, set off by a brilliant red wattle and comb. There you have Jacques Fath, ultimate couturier, whose extravagant costume for the ball was lavishly embroidered with silver and gold.
Another in fancy dress is the Rumpless Tufted Araucana, whose claws are awesome. Her shocked expression makes me wonder if her tail has been plucked out by a rival in the fashion stakes. The black and brown Faverolles is a smart French lady guest and the Scots Dumpy, short in the leg and heavy in the crop, is a kilted friend of mine. A bit of a frump, her stubby legs, with no ankles, go straight into her feet.
The photographs in the book are fantastic and the poetic descriptions, eloquently written by a poultry expert, are instructive and repay careful reading. I would have liked even more about the
chickens’ varied personalities. Each one has its human counterpart. Welsummers are so shy they disappear into the corners of the poultry yard. But their eggs, dark brown like the tweed made from Black Welsh Mountain sheep, make them well worth the trouble.
Not illustrated in the book are my favourites, the despised crossbred Warrens. They make charming companions, lay an egg nearly every day and are the friendliest, cleverest birds you could ever wish for. There is no such thing as equality in the feathered world and Warrens are perfect examples of the pecking order. When the new, point-of-lay pullets arrive the best and most beautiful of them immediately establishes herself as chairman of the lowly Warrens and never relinquishes her post. She is always first at the trough and remains there until her crop is full to bursting. This self-appointed leader clings to her post for life. I know several of her human counterparts who seem to have done just that.
I would like to add to the description of the Appenzeller Spitzhauben. I think I was the first importer of this decorative Swiss bird, which flies like a pheasant and wears an Ascot hat. In the mid-1970s, my sister Pam came back from Switzerland to live in England and wanted to bring some of these intriguing creatures with her. I wrote three times on her behalf to the Ministry of Agriculture, as it then was, to get permission to import some hatching eggs. I never received an answer so took the law into my own hands and brought a dozen back with me after a visit to Pam. I stopped on the way home to stay with my sister Diana in Paris, where her matchless cook spied the eggs in my luggage and unpacked them for an omelette. I rescued them just in time, put them into my incubator when I got home and delivered them to Pam when the chickens were old enough to live happily without a warming lamp.
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