Out of the shooting season, Bolton was made thoroughly enjoyable for me by the visits of the architect Philip Jebb, whose company I loved and who worked with me at Chatsworth and at Bolton on the estate buildings. I looked forward to our winter picnics, sitting on crates by an enormous boiler in the beautiful sixteenth-century tithe barn (the only warm place available), surrounded by all the familiar paraphernalia of an estate building-yard. Noël Coward’s notion that ‘working is so much more fun than fun’ was certainly the case with Philip. He was always ready to laugh and we often shared critical views about some of the people we worked with. Philip was in charge of adding the Wharfedale Wing to the Devonshire Arms Hotel, with the help of Harry Moon, a Yorkshire architect, who also became a friend. Working with Philip and Harry was a privilege and it was exciting to see the hotel expand from nine to forty-two bedrooms.
Philip died, aged sixty-eight, in 1995. The loss of his influence and good taste was unlucky for this country; he kept the flag flying during the disastrous 1950s and 60s, when the worst architectural horrors were springing up. Professionally he was second to none and was incapable of designing anything ugly. He ensured that the site and scale of a building fitted the landscape instead of imposing a design that had been dreamt up in an office miles away (which seems to be the easy way out for architects today), and the builders who interpreted his work all agreed his drawings were the most exact they had ever worked from. If only more of his work survived.
16
A Minister’s Wife
I
N 1960 ANDREW was made Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, a job he described as ‘not being responsible for making the tea, but for doing the washing up’. In 1962 he was promoted to Minister of State in the Commonwealth Office, a post he held for two years. He enjoyed his four years in government and must have known, by the reactions of all whose paths he crossed, how well he carried out his task. He had a flair for getting on with anyone, no matter who they were or where they came from – the more unlikely the individual the better. His work was not confined to office hours and there was many a diplomatic cocktail party given by the High Commissioner of this or that independent country, and often a dinner as well. Andrew’s stamina was tested and he came out with flying colours. The only fly in the ointment was his boss, Duncan Sandys, whom he found abrasive and not easy to work with. More than once, Andrew saw him make senior civil servants cry with his sarcastic, tyrannical ways. He was also very slow in drafting speeches and memos, and Andrew missed train after train for Chesterfield on Friday nights as Duncan agonized over ‘and’ and ‘the’. It is a pity that Andrew only ever had Sandys as his boss; had he had the chance to work for someone else, a friendlier atmosphere would have lightened his load. I went with Andrew on several official trips to Africa and the Caribbean. Some of it was familiar territory because we had already been to Kenya, Uganda and Rhodesia in 1947, when my father-in-law wanted to invest in land and had asked Andrew to look into the possibilities. In 1947 the flight to Nairobi in a Douglas Dakota took five days, with overnight stops in Brussels, Tripoli, Cairo and Khartoum. From Egypt onwards it was only possible to fly in the mornings, as later in the day the heat had built up too dangerously for the low altitude at which those reliable old planes flew. Over the next three weeks we stayed with nineteen kind hosts, none of whom we had met before – a sure cure for shyness and an experience that I have been grateful for ever since. We enjoyed the free and easy way of life, the beauty of the country and gardens, the richness of the land, and the unfamiliar birds and animals. But I was shocked by the way some of the white women treated their African servants, by their rudeness and the way they talked about their shortcomings in front of them. Independence was a long way off, but resentment was building.
One of our stops was with Lord Francis Scott, a dear fellow and long-time Kenyan farmer. His daughter Pam was the very opposite of the rude women and had started a school and hospital for workers on the family estate. The scandal and mystery of Lord Erroll’s unsolved murder, which had taken place among the philandering, hard-drinking Happy Valley set six years previously, was still fresh in everyone’s minds. I realized that Lord Francis must have known Erroll, Sir Delves Broughton (the suspected murderer) and the other characters involved. I asked him if he had been in it. ‘In it?’ he said. ‘Of course I was in it up to the neck.’ But he was too discreet to enlarge on what he thought about that extraordinary episode.
From Kenya we went to Zanzibar, the island of cloves and giant turtles that moon about on the seashore looking as old and gnarled as Elizabethan oaks. There was no glass in the windows at the Residency and the warm sea breeze came in, as did birds of all kinds. The hospitable Sultana herself made scones for us. Later we went to Uganda in a tiny plane and were met on a grassy airstrip by a young couple from Government House. ‘We’re only acting,’ they told us. ‘So are we,’ I said, ‘we don’t usually go on like this.’ (Not being versed in diplomatic language I did not know that ‘acting’ meant playing the role of a superior.) Andrew and I loved the glorious greenness of Uganda and when we returned fifteen years later for Independence we were delighted to see it all again.
My chief recollection of Southern Rhodesia, where we stayed with the Governor General, Sir John Kennedy, and his wife, Bungs, is of Andrew’s fury at being made to go to a children’s party. The old-fashioned colonial code of conduct still applied to a ridiculous degree: at a reception one night, a woman guest, who had driven miles through the bush, was turned away because she had forgotten her white gloves. On the way home we had a long wait at Benghazi airport while we changed planes. In those days the little airport was not exactly luxurious and we tried to get out of the dust and into the VIP lounge, where we had spotted two deckchairs. We were soon turned out quite roughly and cut down to size by being made to sit on the sand floor till the trusty Dakota was ready to take us to our next stop.
Andrew’s time in the Commonwealth Office coincided with the independence of eleven British colonies. In 1961 we went to Nigeria to attend the celebration of that country’s first anniversary of Independence. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe (known as Zik) was Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of the Federation, but Britain retained a High Commissioner in the shape of Antony Head. We stayed with him and his wife, Dorothea, and it was a breath of fresh air to find these old Wiltshire friends (their home was near Salisbury) in Lagos.
The High Commissioner’s residence was bang on a lagoon and had been built at vast expense by the architect Lionel Brett. He had had an unequalled opportunity to create a beautiful building – modern architecture is well suited to the tropics – but the result resembled an oversized chicken house. Downstairs was one huge open-plan room for dining and sitting, which looked dangerously like an airport lounge. A staircase sprang from there to what can only be described as nesting boxes, bedrooms with sloping wooden ceilings which gave the feeling they might be lifted at any moment to see if you had laid an egg. They had no balcony – surely the first necessity in a hot climate – and you could only open the windows by climbing on to the high window sills and dragging them down with all your might, like you do in Continental trains.
There was no escape from official duties. Andrew did his stuff marvellously at the schools, hospitals, universities, maternity homes, slum clearances, housing estates, sports grounds and government offices that we went round till we almost dropped. Antony Head’s ADC was Pips Royston, a new face to us and excellent company. Pips banged on the door of our room soon after lunch one day when we were trying to snatch some sleep. ‘Hats and gloves at six,’ he announced. This was in order to meet Oba Adele II and other local rulers. These exotic gentlemen were not in their first youth and they danced for us half-bare, their extra flesh wobbling in time to the steps. They reminded me of heavy horses displaying at an agricultural show and I immediately liked the look of them.
My crowning moment in Lagos was to have been at a football match when Zik, then at the height of h
is popularity, invited me to accompany him in his official car for several circuits of the football pitch and present the cup to the winning team. Alas, my moment of glory never came as the match was a draw, but I had an unexpected instant in the spotlight. A huge crowd received Zik with acclaim as we drove round the pitch but by the second circuit they had started to laugh loudly. When we got back to where Antony and Dot were sitting, I asked one of the officials why they were laughing. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘they thought you were Zik’s new wife.’ From Lagos, we went to Kano in Northern Nigeria, where the landscape was quite different and the climate hot and dry. We saw extraordinarily beautiful houses built of mud and an Emir sitting under a tree in full white robes, quietly pronouncing judgements.
In August 1962 Princess Margaret represented the Queen at the celebrations to mark the Independence of Jamaica. The British delegation was led by our old friend Hugh Fraser, Secretary of State for Air, who was accompanied by his wife, Antonia. We travelled with the royal party in a Britannia Bristol, a flying drawing-room, for twenty-two hours. When we arrived it was all very formal with the usual programme of official events, which meant hats, gloves and best evening dresses for Antonia and me. Our friend Drue Heinz, generous patron of the arts and the literary world, had kindly offered to lend us hats. By early August the events of the Season when Drue would have needed hers were over, and we took our pick. Trying them on in London turned out to be more fun than wearing them in Jamaica, where it rained enormous drops of warm water that created a sticky, frizzy mess of hair and straw. The American delegation to the celebrations was headed by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who was disappointed that Princess Margaret was the centre of everyone’s attention and did his best to steal her thunder. At the celebratory ball Andrew offered £10 to the first of our delegation to dance with the Vice-President. I am sorry to say that Antonia won hands down and that I never even managed to be introduced.
The Jamaican Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante, was the living double of Obbie St Albans and whenever I saw one of them, I always thought it was the other. Like Obbie, Bustamante had a teasing nature, which in his case took the form of leading a bloody revolution against colonial rule. In their inimitable way, the British government imprisoned him and then installed him as leader of his country. Bustamante was a great figure in his native land and I found him no less impressive when he came to England for a Commonwealth prime ministers’ meeting. I saw him again at a dinner at Buckingham Palace, mischievous as ever.
In October 1962, Uganda was next on the list and we flew there for an unforgettable week of festivities. It was like a fancy-dress party with people wearing national costumes not just from Africa but from all over the world. Jomo Kenyatta, who was staying in our hotel, minced about whisking his fly whisk, and was followed by two tall, sinister-looking bodyguards. He pinched the room that had been given to Lord Carrington, who was leading the British delegation. We gave a dinner party one night when the Princess Royal (theirs not ours), an old lady with a crew cut, came in her slip; we kept thinking she must put on her dress soon, but the slip was the dress.
The Kabaka (Major General Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa II KBE), King of Buganda, was a most attractive man, with that indefinable quality that drew all eyes towards him. He lived on top of a hill in a palace made of bamboo. Two of the big parties were held there and on both occasions the Ugandan electricity (never very reliable) failed, the lights went out and the Kabaka minded – a diplomatic party in the dark is hard to manage. The Kabaka’s son and heir, Prince Ronnie, was seven years old at the time and we were delighted to find that his tutor was Mark Amory, an Oxford friend of our daughter Emma. Never knowing who you were going to meet next was what made these outings such fun, and Mark was a big help in explaining the locals and their way of life.
In December 1963 we were in Kenya to see the British flag being lowered. It was another case of poacher turned gamekeeper: Kenyatta was made leader of the country after being imprisoned for seven years by the British. The Duke of Edinburgh represented the Queen at the celebrations and there was the usual confusion along narrow mud roads; we were following Prince Philip’s car and it looked for a moment as though we would be late for the flag ceremony. At the ball afterwards Andrew danced with Kenyatta’s wives, two black and one white. As we left, the new President presented him with a fly whisk, a traditional honour to an official visitor, which Andrew always kept on his desk. The name Devonshire was well remembered by the new Kenyan government because in 1923, Andrew’s grandfather Victor Duke, in his capacity as Secretary of State for the Colonies, had issued a White Paper declaring that, ‘Primarily Kenya is an African territory. . . the interests of the African natives must be paramount.’
All the independence ceremonies followed roughly the same pattern: celebratory lunches, dinners, garden parties, cocktail parties, a grand ball, and then the lowering of the British flag and the hoisting of the ‘new’ country’s own. Inevitably, there was an element of tragicomedy about these events, and emotions were mixed; the initial surge of elation and optimism that followed the lowering of the flag was often the signal for an outburst of violence and corruption. It reminded me forcibly of the triumphant British coal miners who, after the 1945 General Election, basked for a moment in the feeling ‘we are the masters now’, only to find themselves back underground with nothing changed. On our way home to England from one of these ceremonies, we were waiting at Kano airport with some newly ex-District Officers when one of their wives, horrified by her omission, suddenly gasped, ‘Oh! I forgot to take down the portrait of the Queen.’ I thought it a sad and telling remark; it was indeed the end. What was the future for these excellent people, who had worked so hard to build something that was so soon to be undone?
Let no one get the impression that these trips abroad were anything but work all the way. Andrew had to stick to a government brief in his speeches, which he did not find easy because he preferred speaking off the cuff. There was endless talking to strangers and having to change clothes several times a day, according to what was on the programme. ‘You try a few protracted dinners between the Canadian Minister of Labour and the Jamaican Minister of Education,’ I wrote to a friend. But in spite of these drawbacks there was always, without exception, some amusing incident; we met outstandingly interesting individuals who eased the way, added to which was the excitement of seeing new countries. Although it was always a relief to get home, I would not have missed it for the world.
Andrew’s job involved not only travelling but also looking after the new Commonwealth heads of state when they came to England. In 1964 it was the turn of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, for an official visit. As often happened, the Commonwealth Office was at a loss as to what to do with him over the weekend. Answer: send him to Chatsworth. We invited Bobbety and Betty Salisbury and other friends to meet the Sardauna, and expected him and his entourage for lunch at 1.00 p.m. We waited and waited and waited. At 3.30 p.m. the cars finally appeared. Out piled not six people, as we had been told to expect, but thirteen. The only extra food I knew we had in the house was ham. Goodness knows what Mrs Canning found for our Muslim guests, but it could not have been the ‘accursed’ pig.
The Sardauna was friendly and his robes smelled deliciously of herbs. The 3.30 p.m. lunch passed off well, we thought, and the party went round the house afterwards. They stopped by the portrait of Henry VIII and the guide told them about his six wives. This was met with indulgent laughter – the Sardauna had quite a crowd himself. To our surprise, after a late tea the party began to say goodbye – we had been expecting them to stay the night. We later discovered that they preferred the floor to the comfortable four-posters that had been made up for them and, thinking we might be insulted, had decided to leave rather than risk offending us.
Another visitor was the Shah of Persia. He was inspecting factories round about and it was thought by his hosts that a visit to Chatsworth might end the day satisfactorily.
This quiet, handsome, serious man arrived for tea in a helicopter. My mother-in-law, who was staying, said to me, ‘He’ll be tired, you must offer him a bed so he can have a rest.’ The Shah was in the prime of life and would, I think, have been astonished if I had done as she advised, so I quietly forgot about it and we got on with tea. I had always admired the Shah’s beautiful wives. Farah Diba, a vision in Dior and a worthy queen of the Peacock Throne, was voted one of the world’s best-dressed women several times. I was disappointed that she was not with him on this visit.
The President of India, Dr Radhakrishnan, came to stay at Chatsworth in 1963. He was a silent academic whose religion did not allow him to eat meat, fish, chicken, eggs, milk or cheese. That left little but peas, pulses and fruit. It was not easy to devise two dinners and a lunch for him, but we managed somehow. Andrew and I took Dr Radhakrishnan round the house, pointing out objects that might interest him. He never uttered a word – neither a comment, nor a question – until we reached the Orangery at the end of the tour, at which point he turned to Andrew and asked, ‘Has the Queen been here?’
After the 1964 General Election when Harold Wilson’s Labour government came to power, Andrew was offered the job of Shadow Minister of Transport in the House of Lords. As he could not drive a car, he thought this was not a good idea and retired from active politics in the Conservative cause. He continued to attend the House of Lords but never again held a senior job.
Wait for Me! Page 24