Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  February 6th, 1947. Paris

  Another dress show last night chez Lanvin. Rather better clothes shown under far worse conditions. Small low rooms packed like Calcutta’s hole – dense with smoke. Blazing light deforming one’s face which was mirrored, for one’s torture, from every wall. Really painful hard-arse chairs and lasting two hours. Michael Duff, David Herbert, L.L., Rufus Clarke, Jacques Franck, Jubags, none of us good for a buyer. One’s eyes hurt too much to go to sleep fortunately. I’d had a wonderful and funny lunch with the two English playboys46 and a Wop lady, a lunch of a memorable scallop dressed in cream and truffles washed down with a fresh Alsatian wine. I only like Alsatian or German wines in white, that’s the truth. White burgundy stinks – Château Yquem is an exception, a freak, a favourite.

  Duff and I have taken to clandestine meals in obscure restaurants. It’s great fun and takes us back to walking-out days when I always had lunch with him secretly at one, and made my Arlington Street luncheon at a late 1.45.

  7th. Nothing is going to budge Juliet – her son and David are so awful about her. I think they must have said something to her, which doesn’t do any good for she asked me just now eating our salad and cheese in the salon vert (Duff was at a wine connoisseur’s lunch at the Gyp Ambassador’s) would I tell her when I wanted her to go, and I can only answer ‘stay as long as you can’. I did add that the bedroom situation is a problem, that I have Gen. Morgan, S.A.C. Med.47 and his aide and his mistress Clare Beck and Lady Rothermere and Peter Quennell and Auberon Herbert all to house next week, but she doesn’t mean to take off till Sunday 16th. The whole staff has taken wings to London today for the Churchill wedding48 – there is not one member of the Military Department left to deal with S.A.C. Med. Gen. Salisbury Jones, Rufus, Christopher, Eric Duncannon, etc. Teddie’s gone too and Twinks49 goes tomorrow leaving me with parties of twenty. Charlie Anglesey is gravely ill, may die. He had an operation on his prostate gland and has pleurisy and heart and blood transfusions. I should not mind if I was the family. I like the ‘She first deceased, he for a little tried To live without her, liked it not so died’ spirit for the long happily married. But, Raimund tells me, Liz, the others, all save Rose, who is probably going to get on with her projected holiday in Switzerland, are screaming and gnashing their teeth. What has he got to live for? Lonely evenings, unknown before, daughters dutifully taking turns to visit him. No more merriment – just winter.

  André comes to my bed to tell me that he’s not one to talk, in a household, but do I realise that Jean, maître d’hôtel, has set himself up in the room where the telephonists used to be and has had it done up ‘en style princier – tout à fait comme s’il était chez lui’.50 I did not think it mattered much, but what does matter is that when I did mention it to that dolt Teddie he seemed quite disinterested and completely ignorant of it. The loafer Lucian, Teddie’s No. 2, uses Raoul, chauffeur, to drive him about for his chores, so Raoul has struck I’m happy to say. The red Austin and blue Austin are liquidated, the truck is no more. It’s serious.

  February 10th

  It was so lovely at Chantilly that Michael and David and I walked through the stilly ice-bound forests. A conference of swans from all around had assembled on a still liquid piece of the lake. Duff in tails had gone off to sign various peace treaties in the Quai d’Orsay. Ann Rothermere and Peter Quennell have arrived from a rainy Monte Carlo. I hope you are coming this Sunday. I shall have had a hard week – the house full and a lot of heavy entertaining.

  February 11th. Last night Papa dined with the President and I joined him after like an Arab’s wife. The ladies were brilliant, but the cock-birds en smoking51 and no music detracted from the elegance. As usual a swarm round the buffet and the other rooms empty.

  Two days ago Professor Bowra of New College,52 identical with Isaiah and David Cecil, dined and told us New College had dreadful teachers and was pretty generally rotten, but that the undergrads themselves were the nicest in the world. A Frenchman of the Quai d’Orsay, Couve de Murville,53 also dined and when we discussed a book in two volumes, each thicker than a telephone book, just produced by Paul Reynaud, I came close to a most embarrassing blob. I said ‘The title is far the most sensational and amusing part. Tordant.’54 ‘What is the title?’ Froggy asked. I saw it then, and seeing it I could feel my torso and feet flushing scarlet. Quickly I diverted the subject to a headline in a paper Papa was holding. The title was La France a sauvé l’Europe.55

  Another day Simon Levi56 took me to the early Flemish exhibition, one after my own heart. I believe sincerely that the European-American hand has lost its cunning. It is no longer capable of workmanship. That school of painting had it superlatively combined with genius. The Chinese I suppose still can use their slim hands and control them to their fancy’s whim, but ours have pressed buttons for so long now, tapped type keys, used machinery whenever possible and got used to ‘the pot of paint thrown in the public’s face’ because it is all we can do and otherwise must acknowledge defeat. These good French Impressionists have invented ingenious light and colour methods only to cover their deficiency, but as their colours come out of a synthetic tube and are synthetic too they’ll fade (unlike the hand-ground pigments of the Flems) and then what will be left?57

  Mr. Bevin came yesterday accompanied by his Ancient, Bob Dixon.58 At the time of his arrival (Papa and Bidault waited an hour and a half at the airfield) we had a businessmen’s club from Cardiff cocktailing below. They were on a goodwill mission to Prague, the whole depressing thirty of them. Jan Masaryk on a visit to Cardiff had visited the club and in his over-colloquial English had no doubt said ‘You boys ought to come along to my place sometime – we’ll show you a good time in Czechoslovakia’ – little meaning it perhaps, but they took him at his word and were on their way. There were perhaps six French people in the crowd, but Ernie didn’t know that when he went to have a drink with his Cardiff pals. They gave him a resounding hand. Of course it made their party. He made them a splendid h-less speech bidding them God speed and urging them on their return to Wales to do all in their power to encourage a higher coal production. ‘We want to put this great country on its feet again, we want to feed it coal etc. etc.’ The French listened ecstatically and left feeling warm and happy that all their factory wheels were spinning round.

  Now we come to last night’s dinner. Rosemary59 came, a sober figure in black. ‘John made me promise not to get tight – you don’t think I’m tight, do you, Lady Diana?’ I gave her a stiff whisky and she sat down in a dream and meditated alone. There were three South Africans and sweet Nancy Rodd60 and Eve Curie and the Millards61 and some strays. Bevin said goodnight at about 11.30. I looked desperately round for Bob Dixon to guide him into the lift. Bob had vanished comme le camphor so I piloted him myself. What was my nearly great surprise when he suddenly clasped me into his arms with the strength and immobility of a bear and buried his podgy face in my neck. So we stood for a full minute, or an eternity, then with a very slow utterly relentless gesture he shifted his mouth to mine. No struggles could have affected the situation. As well stand up against the mountain-weight of lava. I was agonised at the thought of Bob Dixon coming in and writing me down as an office-hunter seducing the boss, but as far as I know he did not see anything unless it was the lipstick that transformed poor Ernie into an end-of-the-evening old clown Joey. He asked me to stay the night. Could he have thought I would? Still there’s life in the dear old dog and courage and character and humanity and a lot of other nice things, and if he likes to be foolish late at night, he should be indulged.

  Not one word to a soul about Ernie. I have not even told Louise.

  I JOINED MY parents for the Easter vacation in a villa that they had been lent near Monte Carlo. One day Mr and Mrs Herbert Morrison62 came to lunch; soon after their departure my father complained of feeling ill and was found to have a high fever. At first we attributed this to the Morrisons; alas, it proved to be the beginning of a long illness; he was to live nearly sev
en more years, but he never completely recovered.

  Roc Fleuri, Monte Carlo

  April 21st, 1947

  When I left you tee-to-tumming round with a curly blonde, I stepped into the Rolls, rising above a faint call to go to the loo. Half an hour later however I was driven to saying to René Picot63 Je veux descendre un instant. J’ai horreur des toilettes des hôtels.64 Relieved, I went to sleep over the middle arm one pulls down in the car and was woken forty minutes later by René announcing our arrival. I missed you terribly. Papa asleep and calm. Next morning – yesterday – I thought of you a lot and wondered if John65 had been sober and if the brakes had held and let a thousand fears beset me. I suppose Papa improves but it’s very slow. His voice is still like a canary’s and his eyes stare and his movements are as slow as growth in a plant and I have panics that penicillin alters people, but his energy is good for writing and reading and he does not stare into eternity so long.

  I went over to Daisy’s villa in the morning to exchange a bottle of whisky for two bottles of claret. Papa was to be allowed a glass for lunch. The day was unreliable in sky. Lady Katherine Lambton came to lunch. I have known her all my life – an aunt of Betty Cranborne (Salisbury) and mad like all the St. Albans family. Her eldest brother, the Duke, was in an asylum all his life. The present Duke, her brother, thinks aloud and in consequence is frighteningly rude. Kitty’s hair is rinsed Reckitt’s Blue66 but she looks good enough and entertained us with spite and sparkle at lunch. She shuffled off to spend her afternoon in the cuisine [casino] while Papa and I took a drive along the Upper Corniche and back by the Lower. This outing marks a stage of convalescence. Another stage was marked by his sitting up to dinner. I took a walk at 6.30 missing you more than ever. I walked up behind the house and came to many nice poor gardens, with running rills and olives and lemons and roses and stairs and crops and bridges. I looked my worst – trousers, scarlet shirt, milking coat and a straw hat and when I got into Rue des Moulins, I heard a group saying ‘Lady Diana Manners’ and I started round as one must at the sound of one’s name and thereby gave away what I would gladly have denied.

  Papa asked for a surprise and I found a little basket of strawberries that have this morning proved a big success. It’s 9.30 a.m. and I wish I was expecting you in from tennis and that we had Quicks67 to look forward to. This old diary will entirely change its character written to you and not to my poor still living Conrad.68 Please, dull as it is, don’t lose it for one day it may amuse me to read of the good old days.

  April 22nd. My life is a bit dull but Papa’s mending is the consolation. Dr. Grasset comes but once a day. We still have the tedious formula to get through – blood pressure contraption, temperature, listening with his whole head to Papa’s chest, all three dimensions, heart, hearing, tapping with fingers on finger, piqûre pour les reins,69 looking at les urines, c’est très bien. At 12.30, the day brilliant and warmer, we set off to La Réserve at Beaulieu – the type of place I particularly dislike. Château de Madrid prices, but without the ‘unusual’ and without the market of new produce or the drop into the sea or the independent and furious waiter. Papa made me swear not to have a row about the bill, so I resolved not to see it. All the major-domos and waiters lay flat on their stomachs as we arrived. I dressed as l’Ambassadrice in olive-drab, Papa with clothes hanging on his weakness as on a scarecrow. The beastly place spelt the wrong sort of luxe, yet everyone is taken in by appearance. I had hors d’oeuvres, (uneatable) square of beetroot as at a British Restaurant,70 no onions, no sardines, a stale bit of tunny, while Papa had smoked salmon too salt to swallow. Half a bottle of claret was brought like a newborn baby in a Moses cradle, and newborn it was, and full of dregs and sediments. After fifty minutes, twenty of them storming, the boiled chicken and rice appeared – all right – what we’ve all had all our youth in the nursery and no better. That was all. An inferior pianist and violinist kept up a melancholy caterwaul and the bill was 3,000-odd. Even Papa was décu.71 As a meal it couldn’t compare with Le Puy or for that matter home here.

  We drove on to Nice hoping to buy a Michelin ’47 and failed and drove home by the Upper Corniche to the Sunday papers and some letters. I took a very long walk at six and bought enough of the unicorn material to make a shirt. I turned hairpinwise back down a street that led me to l’Escale. The port was very noisy and gay, a lot of Froggy sailors newly arrived, teasing the girls and generally rollicking. I stopped to pass the time of day with Madame Quick and had a quick one at a little table by myself reading my letters in the sunset. How I missed you!

  This morning the sun was radiantly hot at seven. I did not sleep too well so I thought I’d go and have a look at the market. Dear seven – I always love the different things people are doing that can only be seen at seven – ice-blocks melting at every door,72 doorsteps being scrubbed, all the commères with their baskets, children going laughing and running to school. I bought a bunch of radishes (there was nothing much else except arum lilies) for Papa and have just gone to bed again to write you.

  Monte Carlo

  April 23rd

  O dear, I’ve just finished with the most horrible night. I went to bed too early, because we old birds without duties or drink or possibility of playing games of chance against each other, since money is no object, can’t keep awake after ten. Papa’s leg is uncomfortable and his instep still hurts. We had rather a nice day. Pride swallowed and digested, we met Hugh Sherwood and Daisy as their guests at the Château de Madrid. I had a few nice little sharp yet conciliatory phrases to fire at the insulting mâitre d’hôtel, but he lay doggo and never showed his ugly face. We ate salmon and strawberries and afterwards Papa and I went on, in the Ford this time, to Opio.73 All the olives looked alike and the terraces too. The gardens had more flowers, the branches more birds, but Polly was out. We had a rocky walk to a bench in her garden, where I flopped Papa down looking quite exhausted and in pain.

  Last evening we talked about his having a pain in his foot, sometimes feet, for a long time, and sometimes a numbness in a nerve running down his thigh. Of course in the small hours awake I began to build a castle of Spanish horrors. What fell paralysing disease was he beginning? Was he to be another Reggie Fellowes or Maurice Baring or Lord Wimborne who had years of Parkinson’s Disease, or Lord d’Abernon who was worse and couldn’t be heard when he spoke. For years I’ve said ‘Pick your feet up, Papa.’ Now I find his voice so weak, and you said his writing was feeble. Well you know what I can do to force fear into my veins and sweat and have diarrhoea. I’m told that when you are very frightened nature opens a floodgate in your system and adrenaline steeps your blood and gives you supernatural force with which to run or wrestle or climb or hit out and fight, but if you are wallowing in your adrenaline with no outlet of physical energy, the sensation – even pain – of the state is almost unendurable. That’s my state very often, and O last night. Aspirins were unavailing, the loo saw a lot of me, my sheets were drenched in sweat.

  This morning it’s much hotter than previous days. The orange blossom outside our windows has broken its buds and let out all the sweetness. Papa has had a very good night. His foot has hardly any swell in it. I unbuild that demon’s castle. Why shouldn’t it just be chronic gout, fanned to inflammation by the toxic condition his disease has put him into? His voice is definitely stronger. I took a squint at his writing and that looked all right. He’s a lot more elastico. It is only a fortnight ago that his temp. was 104.

  Later. So encouraged, I went to the wig-fixer74 who washed my hairs in oil and made them half as thin as they are. Then in the open Ford with Papa to lunch with Muriel Wade, once Muriel Wilson the daughter (now sixty-five) of the man whose house the great Tranby Croft scandal75 belongs to (if you don’t know the story remind me to tell it you). Willie [Somerset] Maugham was there and Monseigneur Pierre de Polignac76 and the garden was known to be the loveliest on the Riviera, and so it is, for it is a garden in an olive grove. Then we came home and a lady came to see me, and at seven
I took a long walk Roquebrune direction and up and along well above Roc Fleuri and came down upon it. A new moon on her back, slim as a beam, nightingales (yes, nightingales) singing and a clash of smells. I did love it but deep in my heart was the dread of the night.

  The night was not too good.

  I got today two letters from Katherine. Conrad [Russell] is still alive but near his end. Listen to this. You could hardly believe what I read and I’d better quote:

  Last night a miracle happened. I went in to him at nine as I always do after he has been put ready for the night. And he called me and said ‘I want you to send for a priest. I have made up my mind. I want to be received into the Church.’ I nearly fainted with astonishment because – I don’t know if you’ll believe me, and if you don’t nobody will – I had never said a word to him about it. I had said some prayers by his bed sometimes which seemed to soothe him, but I had been much too afraid to say anything else, and it never occurred to me as a possibility now, though I knew in the past that he had thought about it from time to time. The day nurse said to me hastily ‘He doesn’t know what he is saying’ but he repeated it and by another miracle [!!] a priest we know very well was staying with the Palairets in the cottage next door. I fetched him and he talked to Conrad and was satisfied that he was quite clear and he was received there and then and anointed. In the morning he talked of it again. I wondered if he might have forgotten but he hadn’t at all. I am so happy about it. It seemed like a direct answer to prayer, perhaps Maurice’s. Please be glad too. He is so safe now and his mind is so beautiful. I never realised the full beauty and storedness and wonder of it till I nursed him all this month, and this in spite of all the bad times.