by Diana Cooper
August 29th, 1940
My birthday and a sweet telegram from you to wake me, one from Kaetchen too and some flowers from Hutchie and some more from Euan and a cartload from brute Beaverbrook. Last night we had one of our overseas dinners and at midnight Papa gave me a £100 note. Of course it has to go straight into the pile I’m collecting to pay the taxes with, still it was nice to handle it for a short while. A raid was on from 9 p.m. till 4 a.m. but we paid no attention and I slept through the All Clear. The sirens go so incessantly that one gets confused as to which went last.
August 30th. We had a nice dinner with H.G. and Bedbug and Erica Mann56 last night and a long sleep and no warnings, though I heard the intermittent drone of the enemy wing all night. Phyllis and Juliet57 got a big bomb about fifty yards from them and are atrocious bores about it. No one wants to hear of other people’s bombs. Only one’s own interests one.
Raids twice today. The second found me for the first time in a shop – John Lewis’s – trying to buy a purple felt. To my horror I discovered that unless one tore to the door one was locked in until the All Clear and that the nervous pedestrians are locked out of the good shelter. There must clearly be changes. All arrangements are made of course for a devastating knock-out raid and not of course for these sc-air [scare] raids, but things will get adjusted. I lunched with Hilary58 and drove him back in Dodgems to his club in Pall Mall. As he got out with fearful difficulty something happened that only happens in the cheaper kind of music halls – an undiscoverable nail in the dilapidated upholstery caught his threadbare alpaca pants just exactly where he sits and tore three sides of a square exposing a yard of shirt and a great deal of real pink flesh. Poor old man – on the steps of his smart club too. I could not follow in to sew him up either. The indignity was complete. He had to limp up a long flight of outside steps with in one hand a whacking shillelagh and the other spread across his shameless behind.
Papa and I left London to the tune of the siren in our pram,59 filled to brimming with trunks, books, gas masks, tin hats, guns and cartridges, my yachting cap and a Mexican sun hat. It was raid warning till we got to High Wycombe – everyone at his doorstep, an army of A.R.P. men with tin hats and armlets appear like the dragon’s teeth did out of the ground. Planes overhead but one can’t tell what’s Jerry and what isn’t. No gunfire. We came at last to Milo’s house, where were only Fred and Violet Cripps and Maureen Stanley. A night free from sirens but the dark skies buzz always.
August 31st. Such shameful shooters I never saw. There had been of course talk of an early start. Partridges fly better early, but they didn’t muster till 10.30. They dragged themselves out about eleven. At 12.30 Violet came to me to say that a message had come – would we fetch them home in cars? We came upon them in some stubble, each dragging one weary middle-aged foot behind the other. Papa might have had a swim in the Serpentine. His thick tweed jacket was drenched. It’s rather pathetic. For a year now none of them has had any exercise at all. Fred sits in the N. corner of Scapa Flow in an office without a friend. Papa hasn’t left London till last week since I can remember. They fell on their lunch and put the afternoon’s shooting out of their heads for the rest of the day. Maureen Stanley, Papa and I then came on here – Ditchley. Air activity as usual, but I have had a very happy pre-war day going round this lovely country swishing into other people’s drives.60 A nice American from the Embassy called Butterworth produced unlimited petrol. I was really quite happy and forgetful of the war. Tomorrow Papa is to shoot again and leave afterwards for the London front in Dodgems. I’m sad that the holiday is over, but I’m hoping to return next Sunday as Papa has a speech to make in Oxford. The country is laden with fruit, the branches bow, the fields are very dry and the stubble yellow.
September 1st. The air activity is frightful in these parts but no warnings, which makes a delightful change. The English don’t know when they’re beaten. That’s why they win – ignorance is bliss. All this is a prologue to the announcement that in the middle of the Battle for Britain, Brendan61 has bought himself a country house. I’ve long had my eye on it. The poor old sweet is very ill with antrum and sinuses, black decay and pus pockets, and squirts and nose-blows and general bloat and sleeping dope. He is thin and pale and his blazing pate is silvered. He was so excited about his new acquisition and we had to motor for two hours across country without signposts to see it. And at last there and showing the garden and rooms and river, I could see that he didn’t like it any more, but that’s human nature. He’ll like it again the next time he’s there.
September 2nd. Papa has to speak on the Children’s Hour programme. I’ve never seen him more hot and fussed and sleepless over a speech. I wonder so much if you’ll hear him. The Empire will, but perhaps not the U.S.
September 3rd. Drove all the way home through an air raid. I didn’t like it. One’s mood makes one brave or jittery. All Clear at noon and no guns. A nice letter from Hilary not referring to his trousers, but none alas from you.
* * *
1 West House, Aldwick, was two or three miles from Bognor Regis. As pretty – its garden led straight out on to the beach – as it was uncomfortable, it had been my parents’ country retreat since their marriage.
2 Ronald and Nancy Tree, whose son Jeremy had also travelled to New York on the Washington.
3 On 3 July 1940, the British fleet attacked the French navy in the harbour of Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, to prevent the French ships falling into German hands; three battleships were sunk.
4 Countess de Janzé (see Directory).
5 The Gardener at Bognor.
6 Maurice Baring, writer.
7 A rather better idea proposed at that time was to recite to suspects the following limerick:
A young engine-driver named Hunt
Once took out his engine to shunt;
Saw a runaway truck
And by shouting out ‘Duck!’
Saved the life of the fellow in front.
and to see whether they laughed.
8 My mother’s maid (see Directory).
9 7 July.
10 AEW Mason, novelist.
11 Venetia Montagu, very old friend of my mother.
12 An American journalist.
13 Her tiny wartime car – an Austin 7 as I remember.
14 The law required that – to frustrate possible parachutists – every car left unattended must be immobilised by removing the distributor head or by some other approved method.
15 Lady Colefax (see Directory).
16 On landing in New York I had indeed been surrounded by journalists. To the question ‘Do you think England will win the war?’ I was quoted, somewhat imaginatively, as answering with the words ‘I am convinced that she most assuredly will’ – which would have been an insufferable remark from a ten-year-old.
17 Queen Elizabeth, married to King George VI, mother of Queen Elizabeth II.
18 Raimund von Hofmannsthal (see Directory).
19 The expected German invasion.
20 A highly successful campaign designed to stop alarmist rumours.
21 Kipling’s poem.
22 Maurice Baring.
23 She had been working every afternoon at a YMCA canteen.
24 A huge school in South Carolina. I don’t believe the possibility of my going there was ever mentioned to me.
25 A pseudo-Red Indian (as we called them in those days) who lived on a lake in Saskatchewan and wrote several books about ‘his people’ and beavers. He was a hero of my childhood, but was later found to have been born in Hastings.
26 I don’t know what this means.
27 Rex Whistler, the painter.
28 Lady Caroline Paget (see Directory).
29 Evelyn Waugh.
30 Unidentified.
31 Kaetchen (see Directory).
* See here.
32 An American evening newspaper.
33 ‘Duff Cooper’s Snoopers’, allegedly employed by my father.
34 Grouse shooting had begu
n a week earlier than usual.
35 The Duke of Windsor.
36 Milo Cripps (see Directory).
37 VADs: members of the Women’s Voluntary Aid Detachment; ARPs meant Air Raid Precautions. It was never normally used in the plural, as here. She must mean Air Raid Wardens.
38 Brother of Guy Benson, husband of my mother’s sister Letty.
39 Olga Lynn (see Directory).
40 Wyndam Baldwin (see Directory).
41 Conrad Russell.
42 An intensely anti-isolationist play by Robert Ardrey, starring Michael Redgrave.
43 In the old sense of the word, of course.
44 Author and critic; an old friend.
45 Albert and the Lion and other verses by Marriott Edgar were superbly read on the old 78 rpm records by Stanley Holloway, in a strong northern accent.
46 The house was now occupied by Daisy Fellowes.
47 Lady Ursula Manners (see Directory).
48 The so-called ‘Canadian Boat Song’ has been attributed to half a dozen different writers, including Scott, Hogg and Lockhart.
49 She was desperately trying to arrange for the release of refugees – mostly Jewish – from Germany and Austria who had been interned on the Isle of Man and elsewhere.
50 Home of Euan and Barbie Wallace.
51 Bognor.
52 Our local newsagent.
53 A long stretch of grass dividing our garden from the beach.
54 Chewing gum.
55 At that time I had no idea that he was in fact her father.
56 Daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann.
57 Juliet Duff (see Directory).
58 Hilaire Belloc.
59 Dodgems, which was about the same size as a pram.
60 A weakness of my mother’s. She could not see an open drive gate without swishing into it to have a look at the house to which it led. It was this habit of hers which led to her discovery, a few years later, of our house at Chantilly.
61 Brendan Bracken MP.
3
‘Only one thing matters – not to be overcome’
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1940–JUNE 1941
Preparatory School
Upper Canada College
Toronto 12
15th September, 1940
My darling Mummy and Papa,
I do so hope you are still well and happy. I am writing this on that memorable 15th of September, my birthday, and the first I have ever had at school. Isn’t it awful? What is worse I am not allowed out this weekend. Apparently I shall have to have an enormous birthday cake for tea and ice creams.1 Still, it is Sunday and we are going to church, and so I think it will go quite quickly. I hope so, anyway.
We do not seem to be doing much work yet. Just arithmetic tests and the reading of the Iliad, which the masters don’t seem to care about. They just say ‘Read the Iliad’ in the tone of voice which doesn’t seem to mind whether you like it or not. But still, it is not for me to talk yet, as we have not properly got into the term so far.
There is a sweet shop on the school grounds and it absolutely ruins me as it is about the only thing to spend money on and we are allowed 25 cents a week.
I have lots more to say, but I shall have to stop as we only get ¾ of an hour to write letters in, and now we have to go to church.
Lots of love,
John Julius
MY PARENTS HAD devoted much thought to the question of my education during my absence in the New World, and since my father’s heart was set on my going to Eton in September 1942 it was decided that I should go to school in Canada, where the curriculum was based on the British model. The Preparatory School of Upper Canada College was finally chosen; accordingly, after a happy summer with the Paleys and their two small children in Long Island and in Maine, in early September I was put on the night sleeper to Toronto. The pattern was henceforth established. School meant Toronto; holidays were always to be spent in the USA.
But this chapter is not about my schooling; it is about the Blitz on London; and, as a description not just of the event itself but of what it felt like to have to endure it night after night, it seems to me that it could hardly be bettered. And the letters never lose their humour. October 20th, 1940 is, I think, a case in point.
September 5th, 1940
This is my first letter to Upper Canada College and I hope to heavens it will still find you as happy as can be expected. The first day, even weeks, must be a bit difficult but you have always met obstacles and disappointments and troubles of all kinds with a smile, and I think you will always do that. Keep it up and remember that if you are really unhappy things can be changed.
I’m dreadfully tired. Last night I never closed an eye. I went to dine at Coalbox’s. We were ten strong and after dinner she had the highest class of what is called chamber music – a violin, a viola and a piano. At nine the warning went and I felt a little jumpy on account of Box’s house being as frail as a pack of cards, and Queen Anne2 cards at that. We hoped the music, Bach and Handel and Mozart, might drown the bombs. It was stifling hot with windows blacked out, and clothes sticking to our backs and behinds and legs. We sat with rapt musical faces but every time the thud of a bomb was heard, we’d all surreptitiously give each other a meaning look and being timorous I would sweat a little more. I left about 1 a.m. There seemed to be a lull in the noises.
I got home by taxi to find Papa fast asleep. I undressed in the dark and dared not turn the light on to read, which would have encouraged sleep to come to me. The All Clear wouldn’t go and the wakefulness was supported by the watcher on the Dorchester roof walking up and down so very near my head. It kept me aware of how little covering there was above us. At five the All Clear blazed away and I thought ‘Now I’ll sleep’, but within a very few minutes heard a salvo of bombs and shortly after that the old wailing warning started again. At 6.30 the All Clear and at nine another warning. It’s exhausting if you are not fear-proof, as we should all be by now.
We lunched with old Hilary who never mentioned his trousers and later Papa went to Oxford on a job and I motored myself down to a house Barbara Rothschild is living in nearby. Hutchie and Mary were there and we had a cosy evening, occasionally breaking talk off to listen to the unmistakable intermittent drone of a German plane high overhead. When the devils fly over us they desynchronise their engines. This makes it much more difficult for the detectors to pick them up. We do the same over Germany, so both countries can recognise the enemy by its broken buzz, like a much more drawn-out telephone ‘engaged’ signal. I slept soundly till 9.30 because of not fussing about whether Papa was sleeping soundly. And now it’s
September 7th and I’m at Ditchley again. Papa met me here. He’d been discussing the propaganda of war aims and the future with Professor Toynbee at Oxford. After dinner the butler came in and said the Home Guard was being called out. Talk and games continued and Ronnie Tree went to telephone to Oxford. He came back with about as long a face as you can pull without it breaking and said ‘It looks like the real thing this time. The Home Guard is called out and the church bells have been told to ring3 by the code word.’ Nobody seemed to believe it much. Papa got on to the over-calm Ministry who said they knew of no invasion. Many parts of the country had had the order and it was a mistake. The London docks had had a knocking about, and the raid was still on. Now I’m in bed and I’ve just broken a valuable lamp, and so that is weighing on me as well as the war. I’ll have to confess my clumsiness to the hostess in the morning. O dear O damn.
September 8th and a bad news Sunday. The raid last night as you will have read was on a far bigger scale than we have had before – damage and death and fire and I fear much agony. Hannah Hudson, the wife of the Minister of Agriculture, who lives at the gate, has heard that her little house in Smith Square has collapsed. The two maids in the basement she spoke to were quite unharmed and unflustered. Chapel Street may be a heap of ruins for all I know with your little barrel-organ and my ski-boots hanging incongruously from a beam.
I went to church by myself. It was an Intercession Sunday with prayers against dismay and cowardice and many other things, but I prayed hardest against those things knowing my need of their opposites.
No alarums or excursions this Sunday evening, though Randolph’s wife4 straight from Chequers told me that invasion was fully expected now, that Saturday night there was every indication, including isolated parachutists. Four Germans too had arrived in a rubber boat and said they were going to fight for us and that they abhorred Hitler and all he stood for. We were just going to take them to our bosoms when parts of a powerful receiving set were found on their persons. She told me the Ministries were to leave London – this I knew to be untrue so after that I didn’t believe anything she said. Mrs Hudson’s boy arrived to say the house in Smith Square had not crumbled to pieces, only glass and doors broken, but the brand new French Officers’ Club in the same square, also the Melchetts’ house, were no more.
Sept. 9th. Another appalling raid in London last night and it’s there I’m repairing today. The days have an autumn nip in them and a later sunrise – cobwebs and dew and a yellowing leaf – all too beautiful and always cloudless. London looked just the same. Conversation is restricted entirely to bombs. Phyllis has had her pathetic house burgled in the blackout and all her furs, her rat-coats and cat-coats and stoat and weasel coats and tippets all taken. What will the thief do with them? I had a dinner party tonight for the American Ambassador – Oliver Stanley and Jean Norton5 and Pam Berry and Hutchie and Jimmy Sheean. There’s a bad A.A. gun just outside that bangs away and bombs drop all the time but our talk drowned some of the noise and a glass of wine gave me a bit of Dutch courage. It’s really not the place to sleep, the eighth floor. I never closed an eye but Papa sleeps like a baby in a pram. One hears that vile machine and the whistling and the thuds and then one starts waiting for the next and counting the watch-out man’s steps overhead. I cannot bear to look out of the window. There seem always to be great fires in a dotted ring all round you. The All Clear goes when light comes, and at last one sleeps for an hour and then one looks out on to the next day and there are no fires and one cannot believe so much can have gone on and yet so much be standing.