Meanwhile the Russians do not trust us any further than they can see us. The present accusation that certain members of the British Merchant Marine have been expressing anti-Soviet views is not surprising. Sailors have a habit of saying what they think.
Anne-Marie says that the Germans are physically frightened by the Russians and are terrified of the country itself with its immense empty spaces. This may well be so – if it is, it is another proof of the courage of the German soldier as well as of the vaulting boldness of conception which has inspired them – probably the most ambitious offensive in the history of war.
18 October 1941.
The gloom of these times is inescapable. It is a grey Sunday with a warm, restless, futile wind blowing London leaves about streets and squares. There are even dead leaves on the red carpet of the Ritz vestibule, blown in through the swinging door.
19 October 1941.
I cannot get away from the dilemma that Sachie Sitwell put to me last weekend. If we cannot land an army on the Continent now while the Russian army is still in existence and holding the mass of German power in the East, how are we ever to defeat the German army? Why not give up the Continent to its fate and withdraw into isolation just defending our own if it is attacked? Of course we all know that such a programme is an impossibility, that we must go on until the Germans’ will or our own is broken.
22 October 1941.
I was thinking this morning about that time in Boston when we went there as boys with Mother and Aunt M. We had a furnished apartment at the wrong end of Commonwealth Avenue. They thought it would be a relief to have a winter away from The Bower – not to have a house to bother about, and of course it would save money too. But it was not a success – the flat was too small – we were always falling over each other, and there was a horrid little gate-legged table in the sitting-room on which we had our meals. It was so low that we always had to stoop down, to eat. There was always a wind in Commonwealth Avenue and dust blowing and glare on the pavements. One day I went out to the bus in my patent-leather shoes and without a hat. Two girls in the street turned around and made some sort of crack. I felt ridiculous and humiliated. When I think of my youth it makes me angry even now. I feel that I ought to have my own back at someone for all that that vain, timid, harmless dreamer had to put up with. Now I have the weapons – then I was unarmed.
Elizabeth was saying the other day that a sense of guilt seems to be specifically a middle-class complaint – not enough humility and sense of limitations.
23 October 1941.
They were beginning to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square for more aid to Russia. I thought of staying to see what it was like, but it was so cold. There were a lot of scrubby men in dirty mackintoshes with packages of red leaflets. They looked like the sweepings of the Communist Party hoping to stir something up. Charlie Hébert (a Canadian officer friend of mine) was with me – solid, military, well-fed. They seemed to look at him with envious, hating sidelong looks, as if they longed to be strong enough to pull him down.
I should like to have seen the Masseys standing next to Maisky (the Soviet Ambassador) and singing the Internationale at the private viewing of the Soviet films. It is quite a long step from “dear Alba” (the Spanish Ambassador) “the last great gentleman in Europe” and Lord Halifax and “all of us.” When I came here two and a half years ago there was no more devoted adherent of Chamberlain than Mr. Massey. Churchill, of course, in those days had “no judgement.” I could never get Mr. Massey to accept an invitation to Maisky’s (“I feel uncomfortable with that little man”) but the Masseys have followed the English ruling class in the most spectacular somersault in all recorded history and never have they felt consciously insincere except perhaps now they do feel their conversion to the U.S.S.R. a little – shall we say – sudden. The more candid just go on hating communism as much as ever – “Anything to save our bacon.” But they will not feel comfortable for long in this open cynicism. Already the Archbishop of Canterbury has found that communism contains the seeds of Christianity – even if the Russians wear their religion with a difference. A few really consistent Tories are in danger of being locked up in Brixton jail. They are guilty of the unpardonable sin of putting ideas before the interests of England. The English always said they were not interested in an ideological war. Mind you, I think they are quite right, but what does a little appal me is that when the storm is past they will bring back the old prejudices and what is much worse – the “old principles.”
27 October 1941.
The sights – the long tree-lined avenue in Hyde Park at dusk echoing with the noise of soldiers’ boots as they come strolling, swinging, whistling, singing, or alone looking for a girl, and the girls plain – most of them – little working girls in short skirts and sweaters with fancy handkerchiefs around their necks. They know they are wanted – they twist and turn as they walk and break into sudden gusts of giggles and cling to each other’s arms. The whole length of the avenue is alive with desires. There are satyrs behind every tree. Silhouetted against the hall-light soldiers with their girls sit on the deck-chairs on the grassy stretches that border the avenue. The flicker of a cigarette lighter reveals for a long second – the pose of a head – the movements of hands. Near the park gates the Military Police in their rose-topped caps stand in groups of twos and threes hoping for trouble, longing to exercise summary justice.
In the expensive restaurants at this hour pink, well-scrubbed schoolboys masquerading in guards uniforms are drinking bad martinis with girl-friends in short fur capes and Fortnum and Mason shoes, who have spent the day driving generals to the War Office or handing cups of tea and back-chat to soldiers in canteens. Grass widows in black with diamond clips or pearls are finding the conversation of Polish officers refreshingly different from that of English husbands. Ugly vivacious ATS are ordering vin rosé at the Coquille. A film actress (making the best of a patriotic part at present) is just going through the swinging door of the Apéritif with David Niven at her elbow. Ageing Edwardian hostesses whose big houses are now shuttered and silent are taking little naps in their hideouts on the third floor (“so much the safest floor, darling”) at Claridge’s or the Dorchester. Cedric (in a yachtsman’s jacket) and Nigel are hipping their way through the crowd of pansies in the Ritz bar (they all have the most madly peculiar jobs in the Ministry of Information or the BBC). At the Travellers’ Club Harold Nicolson in his fruity voice is embellishing a story as he settles on the leather sofa. Anne-Marie is sitting on the side of her bed at the Ritz making eyes at herself in the mirror and trumpeting down the telephone in Romanian French. It is a world of hotels and bars and little pubs that have become the fashion overnight – of small drinking clubs run by gangsters who make a nice profit out of prostitutes and the dope racket – packed with RAF pilots, Canadian officers, blondes, and slot-machines, and perhaps a baccarat table in the upstairs rooms.
And along Piccadilly from the Circus to Hyde Park Corner is an incessant parade of prostitutes, and out of the black-out an acquisitive hand on your arm and “Feeling lonely, dearie?” “Hello, my sweet,” (in a Noël Coward voice) or “Chéri.” In Berkeley Square the railings are down. An old man is making a bonfire of dead leaves beside the little pavilion in the centre of the garden.
28 October 1941.
Until this war began I never felt that I was a member of a community and that I had an obligation to others. The idea of “doing my bit” had always seemed to me a piece of schoolboy morality, not applicable to me. I was still the bullied schoolboy who gets his own back in the end. Now this attitude seems to me not so much wicked as childish and dangerous too. It was because so many of us thought that “the world” was something alien to ourselves which owed us the plunder of a living and as many privileges as we could lay our hands on that we are in our present spot. That lonely but pleasurable anarchism we shall never enjoy again in my lifetime. We shall never be safe enough to afford it. We are bound together now either in brotherhood or in fr
aternal hate. After this we either have a state based on human relationships or we have civil war.
2 November 1941.
I suppose I ought to cultivate the society of solid civil servants instead of rococo Romanian princesses and baroque dilettantes.
8 November 1941.
I have been reading with singularly little pleasure some modern poetry in Horizon magazine. What can you expect of poets who keep on thinking about “the happiness of the common people,” as if happiness could be an “ideal.” They remind me of those thick-headed Babbitts who drew up the American Declaration of Independence and who announced “the pursuit of happiness” as a political aim. The poets’ contemporary left-wing opinions have no real political significance; they have not faced up to the fact that the new world for which they are rooting will be just as immoral and selfish as the old. They still believe in Santa Claus. To me that makes all that they have to hint about the future childish and silly. The only hope for the future is that more political intelligence will be applied to our problems so that the machine will not break down again. It is first of all a technical problem. But that it will be a better world for poetry to flourish in is poisonous nonsense.
10 November 1941.
I used sometimes during last autumn’s air raids to say to myself in a stupid bewildered way, “I wonder if those people in Berlin ever think of the hell we are going through.” Now I feel quite sure that they never did. We never stop to think that they are now having just the same terrifying experience. We shut our eyes to that fact and only think how many bombers we have lost. The capacity for sympathizing with other people’s troubles seems to have completely dried up. Do we ever think of the thousands of starving people in Europe? Do we sympathize with the sufferings of the Russians? I doubt it. Think of our sympathy for the persecution of the Jews in the early days of Hitler. It seems that now the response to suffering is dead. Peter Quennell was saying the other day that he was surprised at the apathy of the people over the Russian war news on which, after all, our skins depend and that the fall of Moscow would hardly make people buy an “extra.” We have long ceased to find the war thrilling – any excitement in the movement of historic events is gone. There is a vague but persistent worry in people’s minds about the coming air raids this winter, but like everything else this is accepted as inevitable. The truth is that the war has become as much a part of our lives as the weather, the endless winter, and when the ice does break there will be no cheering in the streets.
So far as I know we have only one fascist poet in England – Roy Campbell – and his poetry is worth reading not only as poetry but as fascism. It is full of vitality, blazing with heat and colour. He is a Catholic and a romantic. He rides a high horse and takes you for some splendid gallops although he comes some bad croppers. The croppers in taste and feeling are mostly the result of showing off – for the poet rams his legend down the reader’s throat. He is the gay and spirited cowboy herding on the plains of Castile with a rose between his teeth and a song in his heart and cocking snooks the while at the suburban “Charlies” as they trot obediently to their city offices. Such uninhibited posturing takes us back to the early days of the Romantic movement when every man was his own Byron. All the same it is rather refreshing to find someone with the spirit to cut such capers, and if Campbell has a touch of Byronic silliness he has a touch of Byronic fire too. For the man is a poet and his poetry strikes sparks. It is easy to see his faults, his damn “picturesqueness,” his blatancies, and his lack of discrimination. The first poems in the series called Mithraic Emblems are his most careful works and some of them are magnificent. In the second poem “The Solar Enemy” he sweeps into his stride.
Enemy of my inward night
And victor of its bestial signs
Whose arm against the Bull designs
The red veronicas of light:
Your cape a roaring gale of gold
The scarlet of its outward fold
Is of a dawn beyond the world.
24 November 1941.
Visited by my familiar devils which I fondly thought I had exorcised. I do not know what brings on these attacks when I am reduced almost to idiocy by ridiculous nervous compulsions, tics, obsessions, and all manner of foolishness. I used to think they were brought on by living “too chaste” but that can hardly be the case at the moment. Or it may be discovered when they have my brain in a bucket that there has been some recurrent form of pressure on it.
My finances are in a bad way which means dining alone in clubs and missing good chances. Now is the time for culture to come to the rescue and fill up the void. She seems to come on lame feet.
Went with Miriam to a party given by Lady Victor Paget for Bea Lillie.1 Noël Coward sang “London Pride” in a manner which I found all the more revolting for being sincere. There was a gathering of pansies and theatrical blondes interspersed with Lord S. and latest girl-friend and Hore-Belisha2 – an obscene spectacle. Old Lady Crewe3 having a “diplomatic” conversation with the Counsellor of the Washington Embassy. David Herbert4 looking more racé than he knew. General atmosphere: a réchauffé of a gay twenties party with everyone looking that much older and trying to get back something which is not there any more.
29 November 1941.
Weekend at Miriam Rothschild’s at Ashton. Miriam is becoming a friend – she certainly has no time for me in any other capacity.
She was talking about her cousin Baron Louis’s imprisonment by the Nazis in Vienna. He was kept in solitary confinement in a space four feet by six feet. His glasses were taken away from him and he was not given anything to read. He was not ill-treated physically. Almost every day some neighbouring prisoner was taken away and shot, and he was continually expecting to be the next. One thing that worried him was that he was never able to make out how the Germans’ minds worked. For instance, they legalized every step they took to deprive him of his fortune in the most tortuous manner instead of just grabbing it. One day a whole string of lawyers came into his cell laden with account books. He thought, “Now it has come – they want me to sign something which will show that I have been swindling the shareholders.” The lawyers said, “We regret to inform you that there has been a swindle in your affairs.” “Yes,” he replied, “I know. Who have I swindled?” “No, Baron, it is you who have been robbed.” Then they explained to him in detail how one of his agents in Germany had been cheating him. The lawyers then went away leaving him baffled that when they were robbing him they should take the trouble to show him that someone else had been cheating him.
One day Himmler was announced in the cell. He came in, sat down and after a few platitudes said, looking around at the absolutely bare cell with nothing in it but a palliasse and a chair, “Now is there anything you want?” “No,” said Baron Louis, “but what I should like to know is why I am here.” Himmler’s face clouded – looking at him coldly he left the room without a word of reply. Three or four days later a parcel arrived for Baron Louis from Himmler. It contained a pink satin eiderdown for his bed. (This is pure surrealism.)
There was a Belgian Jewish banker staying at Ashton. He and Miriam talked about their connections and friends on the Continent. They have cousins in every capital in Europe. I got an impression as they talked of the international haute juiverie of the days before the Nazis – energetic, experimental, cultivated, sensual people, fond of sport and pleasure and by far the best educated aristocracy the world has ever seen. He struck me as an almost sentimental idealist who would change once he got into his bank into a steely intelligence. He is now serving in the Belgian army. There was also a young Hungarian who was in the Pioneer Corps. He said bitterly, “I am not allowed to have the honour to fight the Nazis although I hate them worse than any Englishman.” I do not like what I hear about the Pioneer Corps. It seems to be officered by a poor type of English officer who has been a flop in his own regiment. Half the NCOS are English – half are foreign. He says the English NCOS are the bad lot who have been got rid of out
of their own regiments.
4 December 1941.
Elizabeth has been telling me how she goes about writing a novel. She talked about The Death of the Heart. I see the two women in The Death of the Heart as the two halves of Elizabeth. – Portia has the naïveté of childhood – or genius. She is the hidden Elizabeth. The other woman is Elizabeth as an outside hostile person might see her. But all this is my own surmise and not what she told me. She said that besides this Eddie-Portia theme there was a second situation – that of the poor unworldly girl who comes lonely with her pathetic trunk containing all the things she owns to live in the house of grand relations. Portia is in the position of the governess in Jane Eyre.
Baudelaire quotes Edgar Allan Poe who said that no one would dare write a book called My Heart Laid Bare which was true to its title because “the paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen.” That is not quite what I am afraid of. My pen is not, alas, fiery. I am afraid to face my own smallness.
Elizabeth says that T. S. Eliot told her that without alcohol he could never have got in the mood for his poems. That is good news!
Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783) Page 15