Wait for Me!

by Deborah Devonshire

  Having no wish to see my family and friends I went to a hotel in Eastbourne. My hair – what there was of it – seemed to be even more shocked than I was. It stopped growing for three months. My spell in Eastbourne coincided with Wimbledon fortnight and I have never been able to watch the tournament on television since.

  He came back to Chatsworth, doubtful of the success of what he had endured, and started drinking again. Matters reached a head in September 1983. We had guests staying for four days’ racing at Doncaster and Andrew’s behaviour was out of control and frightening to watch. After two days I telephoned the counsellor in despair and asked her what to do. Without hesitation she told me to tell the guests to leave. (Three close friends immediately understood the desperate situation; the others said they were Andrew’s guests and were staying.) She instructed me to cover my bedroom and sitting room with dust sheets and leave the house. The idea was to give Andrew a shock, to make him think that I had left for good – and for all I knew I had.

  Stoker and Sophy were indispensable to me during those knife-edge times. Emma and her husband Toby were stalwart supports and asked me to stay for an unlimited time, but in the event Stoker and Amanda took me to Bolton Hall. After a few days, the telephone rang with an agonized request from Andrew, ‘Please will you come back?’ I said I would if he would give up drinking once and for all. ‘The miracle occurred,’ he wrote. ‘I realized that apart from all the suffering I had caused, I was not my own master. I decided this slavery must stop once and for all.’ He went into a nursing home for four days to ensure that no alcohol remained in his blood and started to take Antabuse, the pill you cannot mix with alcohol without feeling extremely ill.

  For all of us at Chatsworth it was indeed a miracle. Andrew slowly got better physically, which must have helped him resist the longed-for drink. Those of us who have been spared such craving cannot understand how hard it must be to give up a lifelong habit. But Andrew did it and for two decades, until the day he died, he never had another drink. My optimistic nature had faith in his resolve and I was proved right. A laden drinks tray was always in his study, to the astonishment of friends who knew his medical history, but he never went near it. The nightmare was over. People he had been unable to face came back as though nothing had happened and he began to take an interest in things he had avoided for years.

  The turnaround was all the more remarkable as he was beginning to go blind. Eventually he could not see to read, a terrible deprivation, and radio and television could not take the place of books. As his eyes got worse, he could no longer recognize faces, so the endless engagements in Derbyshire and elsewhere, which he had started to honour again, must have been difficult, and people thought he was cutting them when he failed to speak to them. Yet in spite of the effort it cost him, he continued to play his part to the full until shortly before he died.

  Despite the worry of Andrew, which was always in the background, I enjoyed entertaining at Chatsworth; not the official sort where hosts ask people off a list and guests accept because it is part of their job, but having friends to stay. Not long after we moved into the house Cecil Beaton came for a night or two. I was proud of a new border outside the Orangery which was planted with clashing bright-red plants and a few orange flowers – a startling antidote to the pastel colours then favoured by garden designers. I took Cecil to see it. ‘It’s arful,’ he bleated. ‘It’s a retina irritant.’ Cecil lived at Reddish House in Broadchalke, one of those Wiltshire houses that are so pretty and easy to live in that you feel nowhere could be as good. It was stuffed full of anything that had caught his eye, and because it had caught his eye it became fashionable. Baubles, china objects, ornaments, shawls, bronzes were scattered over every surface, including in the conservatory where watering the plants must have been a tricky job. I stayed at Reddish when Sophy was at nearby Hanford School, and when I fetched her back for lunch my heart was in my mouth as the ten-year-old swung her heavy winter coat, narrowly missing the piles of precious objects.

  Cecil was a wonderful host, taking petits soins everywhere for the comfort of the guest. Perhaps it was a bit too theatrical, but theatre was part of his trade. During the war Rex Whistler, Lady Juliet Duff, Cecil and several other talented and sophisticated people who lived near the Pembrokes at Wilton House, got up a pantomime. Heil Cinderella was made unforgettable by Cecil as an Ugly Sister. Wearing an unadorned black velvet dress – no brooch, no necklace, nothing but a thin, long-sleeved slinky creation described by dressmakers as a ‘sheath’ – he swayed about, tall and maidenauntish, singing, ‘Don’t look now, there’s Hitler close behind you.’ It was one of the best things I have seen on stage.

  In 1976, Lady Bird Johnson, widow of President Johnson, brought her daughter Lynda Bird to Chatsworth. We laid on a tour of neighbouring houses, gardens, villages and public buildings in an attempt to show our part of England at its best. Andrew and I were delighted to have the chance to get to know our guests: a more easy-going, charming pair you could not hope to find. Before they left, Lady Bird told me that she was going to Greece that summer and was reading up on its ancient history. ‘I’m trying to figure out . . . who . . . slew . . . who,’ she said, very slowly, in her lovely Southern accent. As their car was about to drive away, I said to Lynda Bird, ‘Do stop at Sudbury on your way south, it is so well worth it.’ ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘Mother is just about Housed Out.’

  In 1979 an exhibition, ‘Treasures from Chatsworth’, travelled to several American museums. I was asked to the opening at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and Lady Bird invited me to visit the Johnson Ranch in Austin – all new worlds to me and exciting. The foreword to the exhibition catalogue was written by Professor Sir Anthony Blunt, keeper of the Queen’s pictures. He had been to stay at Chatsworth to see the works of art and I had looked forward to his visit. Nancy and Diana had been to one of his lectures in Paris and had fallen for him, and I knew he was revered by his pupils.

  In the event I was disappointed and found my guest difficult to talk to. Andrew was away, and dinner on the two nights Sir Anthony stayed seemed to drag on. Perhaps he had expected me to invite people to meet him; he was certainly bored. I was thankful when the time came for him to leave and take his cold eyes and unpleasant personality with him. What followed was unexpected. Waking in my hotel bedroom in Fort Worth on the morning of the opening at the Kimbell, I turned on the television and there, filling the screen, was Sir Anthony’s thin, gloomy face and the scandal of his exposure as a traitor. The telephone started ringing. In view of this extraordinary development, should we withdraw the catalogue from sale? After much discussion, it was decided not to. The catalogue sold out and more attention was paid to it and its disgraced author than to the finest exhibits Chatsworth could provide.

  Lady Bird Johnson gave a great deal of her time to me and took me to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, where I saw letters by Evelyn Waugh in his neat little handwriting, and many works by my hero, Edward Lear. Anyone who can write a poem like ‘The Akond of Swat’ or paint such landscapes as The City of Syracuse at Madresfield Court, is worthy of reverence. After poring over these treasures I happened to look up and see, on top of a display cupboard, three cardboard boxes marked ‘Jessica Mitford’ in large letters. I asked if I could look at them. The librarian told me apologetically that the contents were unsorted, but he brought one down and in it were random notes in my Old Hen’s writing – dinner engagements, shopping lists and the like. When later I asked Decca how they had got there, she told me that the Center had paid a huge sum for what she was about to throw away. Wonders will never cease, but I was delighted to find a bit of home in that distant land.

  Back at the Ranch after dark, Lady Bird took me to the garden to show me her jacuzzi, the first I had ever seen. We got in and splashed about, lit by searchlights and surrounded by security guards. Neighbours came for dinner and arrived in their own planes. Late at night we stood and waved goodbye as the neat little jets took off into the starry Texan sky,
as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. The next morning, Lady Bird asked me if I would like to go with the cowboys to round up some cattle. Of course I would. I was not disappointed by the handsome men, dressed as I had often seen them in films with Stetson hats, check shirts, leather chaps, cowboy boots and spurs, but I was surprised when they pointed to a helicopter instead of a horse, and up and off we went with a cowboy at the controls. The Hereford cattle were driven along by this noisy machine, which dipped and wove as it herded the beasts into the open gates of the corral. I enjoyed this new experience, but wondered why the cowboy pilot had bothered to put on his spurs.

  When Uncle Harold was very old he came to stay for weeks on end. By then he was becoming infirm and walking was not easy. I met him one afternoon in a passage looking rather anxious and forlorn. ‘The trouble with this house,’ he said, ‘is you have to throw double sixes to get out.’ He slept in the red velvet bedroom, which opens on to a busy first-floor passage, and sometimes liked to go to bed early with tea and bread and butter for supper. One evening he heard us talking outside his bedroom and could not bear to miss the chat. A figure in pyjamas and dressing gown emerged, demanded champagne and spent a cheery evening with people generations younger than himself. He knew his lines and spouted them to his audience. Sophy often longed to be anywhere else as she had heard it all before, reminding me of Jeremy Tree at glorious Ditchley during the war. Winston Churchill used to stay there at full moon, when Chequers and Chartwell were easy targets for enemy bombers, and held forth at the dinner table. Most of the guests were spellbound, but not Jeremy, who longed to go to bed and whose wide yawns while the oracle spoke did not go unnoticed.

  After lunch with us Uncle Harold retired to a chair in his bedroom, holding a cigar over a wicker wastepaper basket – can you imagine anything more dangerous? He was nearly blind and had taken to Talking Books, especially Trollope, which he must have known by heart. One day he told me in a very serious voice that something odd had happened to Trollope and he could not make it out. I looked at the packet and saw it was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. When Andrew was in London, I was often alone with Uncle Harold. No good at politics, I was nevertheless fascinated to hear about the people he had known and worked with for years. Such were his good manners that he never hinted that he would have preferred a more intelligent dinner companion and treated me as if I were a fellow ageing ex-PM. He was easy to laugh at, but also easy to laugh with. When Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister, she asked him to go and see her. ‘That was a good idea,’ I said. ‘Did you talk?’ ‘No – she did.’

  It was to have private talks with Uncle Harold that the Prince of Wales came to stay in June 1984. What Uncle Harold told him I do not know, but they made good friends and the Prince felt his time was well spent. He reminded me recently that he had asked for a reading list to fill the gaps in his knowledge, and that Andrew and Uncle Harold had scoured the bookshelves to produce one. He says it is invaluable to him still. Thereafter, the Prince stayed at Chatsworth whenever he had an official engagement near by and he was often able to stay on and fit in a day’s hunting with the Meynell. In December he used to bring sack loads of Christmas cards to sign – a chore which meant putting an extra table in his room for the seemingly endless piles. The Prince liked the freedom of being able to walk in the woods and over the moor, exploring unknown country. If he did meet one or two walkers and they recognized him, they respected his privacy, greeted him and walked on. One winter weekend I drove him to see the beautiful, late eighteenth-century mill at Cressbrook. A ‘Road Closed’ sign stopped us just before we reached our destination. The Prince got out of the car and knocked at the door of a nearby cottage. After a while, a man answered and the Prince asked him if we could drive on. The man scratched his head, stared at the visitor and said, very slowly, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

  There was usually a big party of friends when the Prince came to stay and we enjoyed it to the full, but there was no opportunity to get to know him well in a crowd of people who all wanted to talk to him. In March 1988, however, the Prince was in a party of skiers holidaying in Klosters when an avalanche overtook them. He narrowly escaped death but two of his close friends were buried, one of whom died. It was a shattering experience. When the mourning survivors got home, it occurred to me that the Prince, whose diary is crowded with hardly an hour to spare, now had a few days ahead of him with nothing planned. I talked to Andrew and we decided that I should ring up the Prince’s private secretary and say how pleased we should be if the Prince would come to Chatsworth to do just what he liked – walk, talk, be with us or stay alone – and to our delight he accepted. It was during those days of slow recovery from shock and the death of his friend that I got to know him. Our friendship has lasted through good times and bad for both of us, and I value it more than I can say.

  From the early 1990s my New York friend Jayne Wrightsman, the designer Oscar de la Renta and his wife, Annette, stayed with us every summer. As they always came at the same time of year, there was a limit to the variety of flowers that the Chatsworth head gardeners, Jim Link and later Ian Webster, could produce for the dining-room table. Good and spectacular though the rambler roses were, we soon got through Bobby James, Himalayan blush-pink and the like, so I tried chickens. A Buff Cochin cock was washed for the occasion and sat on some hay in one of the rectangular glass containers made many years ago for the batteries of the turbine house. He was a steady old fellow and made no objection to his new surroundings. A couple of hens of uncertain ancestry occupied another glass container and, as luck would have it, there had been a hatch of Welsummer and White Leghorn chicks that morning so just before dinner I put them in little china baskets lined with hay to keep them warm. The Paul Storr silver wine-coolers were filled with brown and white eggs, and our driver, Alan Shimwell, who was helping with the chicken side of things, slipped an egg into the so-called nest which held the two hens. Our efforts had the desired effect on our American guests, but the old Cochin cock remained unmoved by their loud reactions to his and his consorts’ presence; and the chicks presumably thought it was all quite normal as they had only been alive for twelve hours.

  The following year I had to think of something better. Piglets. The glass containers were pressed into service again and half a dozen piglets, replete from a long drink of milk from the sow, lay sound asleep on their straw beds in the middle of the dining-room table. The decoration did not last long. ‘This really is too much,’ said Andrew after the first course. ‘Henry, take those pigs off the table.’ So Margaret Norris, manager of the Chatsworth Farmyard, who had arranged the mise-en-scène, came back, packed up her beloved piglets and took them home to their mother. The following year there was no more livestock; I had done my best, but that was it. I resorted to Old Master drawings on miniature easels in front of each place, which I thought might appeal to our guests as both Jayne and Annette are the recognized backbone of the Metropolitan Museum, which goes in for that sort of thing. I do not believe the Raphaels, Rembrandts and Co. were splashed by gravy or ice cream, and after dinner they returned to their cold, unwelcoming, air-conditioned, thrice-locked shelves. I would rather be one of Margaret’s piglets any day.

  Entertaining is full of pitfalls. The Spanish Ambassador to London, Santiago de Tamarón, and his wife, Isabella, came to Chatsworth one summer weekend. Santiago is an admirer of Paddy Leigh Fermor – who he said was his reason for wanting to come to England – so we had a bond. He had given a memorable party for Paddy at the embassy where all Paddy’s fans and would-be imitators recited, sang at the top of their voices and jostled for attention. Paddy himself was in Greece so we asked some other friends to meet the Tamaróns. I was about to introduce them to Isabella when my mind went blank. Her name had gone out of my head and, in a panic, I said, ‘May I introduce you to . . . Mrs Thing?’ Instead of leaving in a bait Isabella was amused. We have remained friends and she now signs herself ‘Thing’.

  I met the sculptress Elisabeth F
rink when I was staying with Edward and Camilla Cazalet, old friends who live in Sussex. Army-bred, blue-eyed, beautiful and quick to laugh, Lis was not at all what I expected and had that larger-than-life personality that has to be felt rather than described. Some of it survives in her work and the pieces I love best are her animals – horses and dogs of such exceptional quality and character. The pick of the horses, I thought and still think, is War Horse 1991, which I fell for when I first saw it in plaster in her Dorset studio. I have always preferred heavy horses to thoroughbreds, Shires and Shetlands to racehorses, and here was the epitome of all I admire: tail plaited, ears back, head and eye giving warning that he is about to strike and bite. I wanted so much to see him at Chatsworth and knew where I would put him. After the usual hurdle of persuading the Trustees to buy him, War Horse arrived, as did his maker, keen to approve his situation and to supervise his installation. He had travelled in a horse box (what else) and was transferred to the bucket of a JCB that trundled through the garden, driven by Brian Gilbert, the precision expert. Brian could move a china war horse without damaging it and this bronze fellow presented no difficulty. Lis approved of the spot at the south end of the canal, facing out over the Old Park where his ancestors must have grazed. I was thrilled by the whole performance and by the fact that Chatsworth now possessed a monumental example of Lis’s art. I too own a couple of her works, thanks to the sales of a book or two: dogs that are to the life.

  Lis and I shared a love of poultry and she wrote to me one day telling me that her favourite cock, Reggie, had been unwell and that she had taken him to the vet. It conjured up such a picture: a distinguished Dame of the British Empire, Companion of Honour and Royal Academician, sitting, cock on lap, in the queue in the vet’s waiting room. It was to no avail: Reggie died. Lis herself was already mortally ill when she came to see War Horse installed and, to my lasting regret, soon followed Reggie into the next world.