Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  Is this not extraordinary? Not so much to you but to me, to whom Conrad has talked so much about the Papists and never without contempt or jeers. When K. was converted thirty years ago he did study the Roman Church exhaustively. The more he read the less he believed. He and his whole family are born and raised as Liberal free thinkers. Was it a miracle? Is it the only true and living church?

  Did he do it as thanks to Katherine, who has nursed him so tenderly and who wanted it so desperately? Was he unconscious and willed into it? I put (!!) after ‘by another miracle’ because there is always a priest at one house or another at Mells. We shall never know. I shall talk to the day nurse but if she is a violent atheist or anti-Rome woman she’ll say he was coerced or unconscious. The two old sisters will be horrified and put the crime down to K. They always referred to her as ‘that woman’ anyway. Well, I hope in my heart that he knew what he was saying and doing and that it has brought him peace and resignation as true faith does – dear, dear Conrad. I can’t help adding that conversions on death beds do not happen in non-Catholic houses.

  24th or 25th. I don’t know which. Another rather bad haunted night. Now I’m on the balcony waiting for Dr. Grasset, then we shall go off and lunch at Villefranche and then I must go to Les petits Chanteurs de la Côte d’Azur at Cannes and meet le Père Bienassis [one of the Sitwells?].

  Today came two old trout to lunch – Corise, Marquise de Noailles and her half-sister the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, both highly intelligent and monstrous. The former looks eighty and is sixty-two about and doesn’t try, and has travelled the world, a lot of West Africa, a lot of China, and dislikes her two rooms at the Hotel Balmoral, Monte Carlo, in which she sculpts, paints and writes. The Duchess was much older but still trying, painted to the eyes, with disfiguring dewlaps and still a very roving eye for her own sex.

  April 27th. Yesterday on waking Papa decided to put off his departure for a few days. He is not fit for such a tiring journey, nor for Paris work. His foot does not improve much and when his doctor came for what he took to be his last visit, he sat me down in a chair and read to us both a programme of life and regime for the next four or five months. It was rather alarming and most depressing. He said Papa was in a poor state of health before the attack and that the attack was a blessing as it was an alerte, a red light. That his foie and his reins77 were in an apathetic way, not eliminating poisons, and that this state would return bien que ses urines soient impeccables78 and if he did not sleep with an open window, take a bath and a good rub daily and a big bath once a week with deep massages, be in bed eight hours in the twenty-four, play tennis and golf, eat sparsely of meat, no veal, mutton, pork, sweetbread, sausage, brains, pigs’ trotters, kidneys, game, a little rabbit and chicken and sometimes a little beef, no mushrooms, truffles or pâtés, plenty of veg. excluding peas, beans, cabbage, beetroot, carrots. Fish yes, but not lobster, crab, langouste, oysters, no crustaceans. Only fresh cheese. Nothing to drink but a glass of claret for lunch. If by chance he had to be at a dinner party or long banquet an extra glass need do no harm, always provided that the next day should be devoted to water and fruit. He little knows Embassy life. Then when at last the longed-for holiday comes in August, spend it at Vichy or Contrexeville. That got us both down a bit. For Papa because although he clearly won’t follow it, it must take the gilt off the gingerbread, and my future is to be one of worry and nagging and loss of a husband’s love. But there it is, and O take warning and don’t do yourself too well. Everything is paid for and, unfairly enough, punishment is more disagreeable than pleasure is ecstatic.

  Monte Carlo

  April 28th, 1947

  My darling Conrad is dead. I cannot be too unhappy. He was longing to throw off his weary, disobedient body and the sooner his unconscious humiliation was over the better pleased we should be. He had a lovely serene life with no dramas, no ecstasies, no wife, no children, no tragedies, and great love surrounded him. He had much too, to give. K. he had loved thirty years ago. She was there to hold his hand and guide him to her God, and me he loved and he knew that, though not there, he was secure in my devotion. Daphne [Bath], sweet, rollicking, drunken Daphne, was also one he loved most dearly, and she was there, and the sad old sisters found her most comforting and good. I’ll miss the letters so desperately.

  He has written almost every day since 1932. When first I took him to Cardiff ‘Come to Cardiff’, I said, ‘and see me act The Miracle. We can stay at the Angel’. To my great astonishment he said ‘Yes, I will.’ My heart sank a little for although I’d always known him as another Russell’s brother, I was quite an unfamiliar. I confided to Katherine my panic of having him on my hands alone. Should I be able to amuse, would he find the trip worth while? She encouraged me wholeheartedly and said that I must make him a friend, as she felt that when she took the veil (which she has not yet done, but doubtless will in time) she must be able to feel that someone would look after him. So we went together to Cardiff, and it was winter and very cold, and he loved The Miracle and afterwards we had a little supper, and in the morning we walked the town and looked at the great municipal buildings, and he held my hand in his pocket for it was so cold, and he told me he loved me and he told me the same every day until he lost consciousness in death.

  The happiest time of our relationship was the Bognor smallholding days – after the Blitz, before Singapore, when we saw the seasons round, and he helped me to buy and rear first the hens, then the cow and goats and bees and pigs and ducks and geese – the haymaking, the quiet turning of it and gathering of it into the trailer, the singling of mangels, the hoeing, the milking, the cheese – yes, the cheese was the crux of it all. You remember the end, not the beginnings – the acidometer and the drops of the chemical Exlax is made of. He used to say ‘I have never been so happy.’ Are there any better words to say, or to hear from someone you love?

  Then there were ‘outings’ – a journey to Elsinore to see Hamlet, the time Larry Olivier eloped after the play with Vivien Leigh. That was the time too when I bought the figurehead mermaid in Copenhagen – the nude, life-size, with impertinent breasts and arms held high above her head, and Conrad, for the first and last time, was so embarrassed by having to carry her through several Customs and stations – like one does an orang-outang that hangs low and heavy on your hands – that he got ‘short’ with me between Hamburg and I forget where. Then came the hideous moment when we almost lost the mermaid. She’d spent a safe two hours in the consigne79 and at some junction got shifted off, as we feared, to Berlin, but we salvaged her and got her to Queensborough where the English steward said ‘would she like a cabin to herself?’ and I said she would and they didn’t think it funny. They broke her finger stowing her into her berth and half the night in the adjoining cabin I heard hammering – the ship’s carpenter, like a surgeon, had an emergency call to mend a mermaid – but it all brings Conrad back to me from the long years ago.

  The crossword is Conrad too, and reading Trollope aloud during blitzy nights at Bognor when I’d sit on that low chair by the fire and knit you socks or sew a cheese up in muslin, while Conrad would read and sometimes have to pause for silent laughter, about Madame Neroni and other Barchestonians. He always said ‘These are the happiest days of my life’ in spite of it being wartime, and Portsmouth being illuminated with chandeliers in the sky, and though bombs were falling wildly. Once the shutter got loose and as I opened the drawing-room door on to the garden to attach it, a big explosion blasted off its hinge, and frightened us horribly. We had to sit then in the firelight as with the shutter had gone the blackout, and we were too shaken to go to bed. He was always wise and sound and uncensorious of morals and his own rare humour was better than any other – angle, fancy and delivery. O dear, O dear – I don’t think I’ll write any more or think, with love, of the check suits, the turned-out toes, the stoop, the haircut by the ploughman with the help of a pudding basin, the deerstalker cap I gave him, the zip bag that brought his modest accessories and a pound of b
utter, eggs, the first primroses, the ‘short-legged hen’ and some ‘pretty little tiny kickshaw’. He loved to give me expensive presents, but wanted them always to be great luxury – jewels and furs and the ‘doing up’ of a drawing room, and didn’t really like paying for a cow or a Frigidaire.

  April 29th. Papa really better and we’re off tomorrow morning. The house, books, food, wages of three hired servants (all unnecessary), washing, mineral water not wine, unordered flowers and apéritifs which you drank like water, cost close on £400 for four weeks. Heating, gas, electricity, telephone still to come. Luckily Papa went into the Casino to cash a cheque and risk those old counters that had hung about his bedroom so long, and won £120, so that helped a bit. The chemist’s bill was £10 and the doctor’s may be anything between £50 and £100.

  The weather is lovely. The Hoffs go the day after tomorrow and join us in Paris. I shall have less than a week to wait for you. All is packed in readiness. Antoinette shall have 2000 francs, the concierge a bottle of champagne, the concierge’s wife a bottle of sherry, or Chérie as Leon80 writes it, and the hirelings a nice shake-hand.

  * * *

  1 Napoleon’s return from his Egyptian expedition in 1799 had launched a craze in Paris for all things Egyptian.

  2 One evening Bébé Bérard, gloriously unkempt, with ash-covered beard and shoulder-length hair, brought his little pug dog, which instantly deposited a small turd on the carpet. Unhesitatingly he picked it up and put it in his pocket. My mother always said it was the best example of good manners she had ever seen.

  3 Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, then based at Versailles.

  4 Women’s Voluntary Services.

  5 Entertainment for the forces.

  6 The only post back to England was by diplomatic bag, personally escorted by a King’s Messenger.

  7 The very first evening, on their journey down to the dining room, they were much embarrassed to find themselves sharing the lift with Mr and Mrs P. G. Wodehouse, recently released from internment in Berlin.

  8 ‘It is my fiancée, 12 rue de . . . who is the cause of my death.’

  9 Winston Churchill’s first official visit to France after the Liberation of Paris.

  10 He had died in New York in March 1943.

  11 ‘Very badly dressed, alas, like a beautiful woman with a bad toilette.’

  12 A shop for smart children’s clothes in Portman Square, no longer in existence.

  13 Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

  14 Permanent Head of the Foreign Office.

  15 Wife of General Georges Catroux.

  16 Wife of René Massigli, French Ambassador in London 1944–54.

  17 The fire brigade.

  18 Mr and Mrs Bogomolov, Soviet Ambassador.

  19 General and Mrs Georges Vanier, Canadian Ambassador.

  20 Georges Bidault, French Foreign Minister.

  21 Teddie Phillips, the Embassy Comptroller. This proved to be an extraordinary adventure, but as my mother and I were there together there are no letters describing it. I have told the story in full in my memoirs, Trying to Please.

  22 Half-term.

  23 French novelist, art theorist and politician.

  24 This, be it noted, was nearly two years after the end of the war.

  25 Victor Rothschild had recently married Tess Meyer.

  26 Former C.-in-C., French Army in Austria.

  27 Jean Cocteau, novelist, playwright, artist, designer and film-maker.

  28 Writer.

  29 Unappetising.

  30 White-tie-and-tailed doorman.

  31 Carpet fitter.

  32 Interior decorator who had broadcast regularly from London to Occupied France during the war.

  33 So-called.

  34 Publishers.

  35 Not yet dressed.

  36 Cario, the Schmidts’ Airedale, which had taken a violent dislike to me.

  37 With severe flu.

  38 Garbage.

  39 An after-dinner acting game, not unlike charades.

  40 Joan,wife of Sir Alan (Tommy) Lascelles, Private Secretary to George VI and, briefly, to Elizabeth II.

  41 A French-language programme (M.Oberlé was one of the amis) which was transmitted to occupied France during the war.

  42 Charles Ritchie, No. 2 at the Canadian Embassy, later High Commissioner in London and celebrated diarist. The story of the dog’s dinner was perfectly true – he told it to me himself.

  43 Edward Molyneux, the fashion designer.

  44 ‘Too late’, ‘the ugliest’, ‘it stinks’, ‘twenty years later’.

  45 After the Schmidts, the Schoen family were my greatest friends in Strasbourg.

  46 Sir Michael Duff and David Herbert.

  47 Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean.

  48 Mary Churchill was marrying Christopher Soames, former Assistant Military Attaché at the Embassy.

  49 Twinks Baring, Social Secretary.

  50 ‘In princely style – for all the world as if he owned it.’

  51 In black ties.

  52 He was actually Warden of Wadham.

  53 Maurice Couve de Murville, Prime Minister 1968–9.

  54 Hilarious.

  55 France Saved Europe.

  56 French art critic.

  57 My mother, it will be seen, was scarcely one of the avant-garde. One evening we were invited to the apartment of Gertrude Stein, to whom she confessed as much. Miss Stein explained that art had progressed in a dead straight line, and asked her at what point on that line her understanding stopped. ‘Roughly Cimabue’ was the reply.

  58 Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, and Sir Pierson Dixon.

  59 My father’s secretary (see Directory).

  60 Nancy Mitford (see Directory).

  61 Guy Millard, a member of the Embassy staff, and his wife Ann.

  62 Then Deputy Prime Minister, later to succeed Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary.

  63 The Embassy chauffeur.

  64 ‘I must get out for a moment, I hate the facilities in hotels.’

  65 de Bendern, my father’s secretary.

  66 A tiny cube of bright blue dye which, paradoxically, made white laundry look whiter.

  67 Our favourite bar.

  68 Conrad was on the point of death.

  69 Injection for the kidneys.

  70 Austerity restaurants introduced for wartime Britain.

  71 Disappointed.

  72 Ice was delivered to the door before most people had refrigerators.

  73 A nearby village, where Polly Cotton, an old friend, had a house.

  74 Slang. She never wore a wig in her life.

  75 A country house in which, on 8 September 1890, Sir William Gordon-Cumming was accused of cheating at baccarat while playing with – among others – the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). Sir William sued his accusers, but lost his case. The Prince was called as a witness, and was forced to admit that he had been playing a game which was at that time illegal.

  76 Father of Rainier, then reigning Prince of Monaco.

  77 Liver and kidneys.

  78 Although his urine is impeccable.

  79 Left luggage office.

  80 The Embassy footman.

  8

  ‘I feel as though I were getting married’

  LONDON–PARIS–CHANTILLY, DECEMBER 1947–FEBRUARY 1948

  J.J. Cooper, Writer CMX 847514

  H.M.S. Royal Arthur

  Corsham, Wiltshire

  December 30th, 1947

  Darling Mummy and Papa,

  Here I am – on board at last, a sailor of the King’s Navee, writing you instalment No. 1 of my log. I am writing it at 21.45 hrs (this is the best I can do as I don’t understand about bells yet) in my bunk, with half an hour before we pipe down. Lights out at 10.15.

  The food is not too bad. You queue up outside for about two minutes, then walk in, clasping your own mug, fork, knife and spoon which you keep for always, and take back to your hut afterwards to
wash up. On your way in, your mug is filled with a thick soup (more profitably used as gravy) and a slice of bread is thrust into your hand, quickly followed by a steaming plate piled high with shepherd’s pie or whatever it may be, mashed grey potatoes and a second veg. While you are trying to arrange all these in two hands in such a way as to fool yourself you’re not going to drop them, another plate appears, covered in steam pudding or (today’s choice) a slice of treacle tart. Not very good, but might be worse. You stagger in under your lunch, trying to balance the pat of margarine on the bread, and settle down at the first empty place at any of the six or seven big tables. Nothing to drink at lunch but the gravy-soup. At tea however (consisting of bread and margarine and jam) and at supper (same as lunch without the pudding) there are huge pots of steaming tea up and down the tables, already milked and sugared and tasting strongly of anti-aphrodisiac.

  All the seamen’s jobs are gone, I’m afraid, so I had to be a writer after all . . . Writers travel as much as the seamen, and I may be off to anywhere in the world in six months. Disadvantage of being a writer: no bell-bottoms, or blue collar, or round hat or anything. Just a dark blue woolly suit with shirt and collar, black tie and peaked cap. Like a Petty Officer, only not quite so grand. I look slightly more important but all the glamour has gone.