Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  The faithful Collins drove us down to Wilton. Bobbety and Betty Salisbury are here and Tony, the Pembrokes’ dull son, dined. The house is still occupied by the Army but why there should still be a partial blackout interiorly I don’t know. It was very gloomy last night but the brilliant weather this morning exercises its despotic sway.28 I’ll get up and go and see Juliet. It’s unpopular but I don’t care. I had to ask the host for a glass of port last night and say he mustn’t discriminate against sexes. All the women were parched.

  Wilton

  October 1st, 1948

  The weather beams and grins and gilds this lovely country with heavenly alchemy. It is in a way unlucky that whenever I come back to my native land it is to the West Country on the rare days when sky and earth are radiant with purity and colour, and so always on the verge of regret I fall right into the pit of it and wish that we had not exiled ourselves. Papa is not so frail. Lady Pembroke – Bee – is sixty-fourish, straight as a bamboo stick and the same width and consistency. It’s difficult to define how absurd, humourless, rather nasty and slightly pathetic she is. Your godmother Betty, one of our most mischievous fun-pokers and scoffers, stirs me up to her own boil of derision.

  Reggie, the Earl, has at the age of sixty-five subsided into senility. He was one of those often-quoted crossword solvers – quite ignorant, frivolous and dense, he could polish The Times off while his egg was cooking. O the change! Now, slumped in a chair, through rheum and phlegm he croaks questions at Papa and Bobbety – ‘What’s this? What’s thirty-two across? What’s three down – unpunctual Australian bird?’29 At meals Betty and I can’t get the poor old bird – he’s like a jackdaw – to respond at all. The seven of us sit down to our meals on the stroke of the appointed hour. In front of the host and hostess, mid the fine napery and Georgian spoons and forks, are two jars of sugar and butter.30 Betty was asked to bring hers and Bobbety’s, so theirs are on the table too. It’s ingenious if you’re mean, because when Bee says ‘Reggie, give Diana a little of your sugar’ it’s impossible to accept any.

  Bee and Juliet can’t be said to hit it off, and there’s a struggle and a feeling of guilt if one goes from the big to the little house at Wilton. I had a date to go to Juliet the first morning. Bee smelt a rat and came to my bedroom, where I was putting on with satisfaction my new bottle-green corduroy skirt. ‘I hear you’re going over to Bulbridge – I’ll walk you there.’ So she did, through the lovely park, past lawns and cedars from Lebanon, past follies and over gushing rivers. ‘We lunch at one. Don’t be late’ – always the sergeant-major. Bulbridge was prettier than ever, Juliet contented and full of sneers about Bee. We talked Latin names of flowers and studied out-of-date catalogues and when I left I also left my basket as an excuse to return. After lunch Betty and Bee and I took a long walk round the park and farm. She has a tone of conviction that makes you think she knows, but experience of an hour teaches you her abysmal ignorance of nature, animals, and common facts. I got guiltily back to Bulbridge for my basket and a drink.

  October 2nd. Wonderful day, all glister and gold. Bee early to my room. I told her, mantling a bit, that I was going to Salisbury market with the Hoffs. I funked adding Juliet’s name. ‘O you’re going with Liz and Raimund, I might come with you.’ ‘Well, you know Liz isn’t an early riser,’ I said, indicating that I had a sort of lovers’ tryst with Raimund. This she seemed to respect and told me not to be late for departure to shooters’ lunch. Gay with guilty escape, we all had a lovely morning in the market and shops of Salisbury – the cathedral, the Close, the streets, the bustle and charm of it all! I bought a red Hungarian shawl for myself or Louise, a blue handbag, a pair of rubber boots for 12/- and I was back at 12.30. Bee saw the whole happy party arrive back from the fair and realised she had been duped. I felt sorry. Liz had told me that Bee knows she has no one’s affection and no love from her children, and that she spoils everything, poor beast.

  October 3rd. Sun just darting through the autumn mists. We are to visit Cecil this morning, then eat our lunch monotonously, then beat it perhaps secretly to Juliet’s for dinner, and London after. There are sometimes as many as seven huge golden Labrador dogs in the sitting room, all well groomed and well trained, and subdued until someone moves to go out – then chaos falls and tables turn. Bee and Reggie can’t get through a sentence to us without talking to the dogs at the same time – ‘Sit’, ‘Basket, Bumble’, ‘Gently, Brandy’, I don’t seem to be able to finish with Wilton.

  London later. Cecil was charming. Mrs. Beaton31 very uppish indeed. ‘I laid the terrace down’, ‘My house is wonderfully dry’, etc. Bee had cheated Bobbety out of £2 on the books. God knows what she’s done with me.

  The weather has collapsed, and we drove back through drizzle and dense motor traffic in time to see a delightful Carol Reed/Graham Greene film The Fallen Idol. Now we’re in our narrow beds together laid.32 I had a dreadful pang passing Emerald’s corner.33 I used to hate her ringing me in the night and talking without end. I wish she would tonight.

  Verrières34

  October 1948

  At Elsie Mendl’s. Hot as July. Hostess in slim cool white crêpe-de-chine, hat shady and summery, big bow gripping it on under the chin. In a chair of course at ninety-four (but attributing weakness to the chilly summer), transparent skin, fresh and unlined and unbagged and free of make-up. She complains of having no mind or memory, but she can tell a very complicated story of crooks and mergers, involving names galore, without an effort. I got Mr. Bemelmans35 and the King of Yugoslavia. His Queen, admired by many but not by me, was dressed in stuffy sage-green serge. I was dressed a bit stuffy myself in a new number made of red and black tartan, the black lines cleverly reduce the waist to a wasp’s, on my head a beautiful little embroidered red cap of Louise’s. My shoes let me down a bit and two left-hand gloves didn’t help, but I was considered a bit of a dernier cri and the basket instead of a bag greatly admired. Bemelmans was exceedingly amusing about the visitation of Hollywood on Rome and the Pope. Zanuck (is that his name?) took His Holiness a newly designed collapsible streamlined staybright-shelled, plastic, portable altar. It was much appreciated by that monkey Pacelli36 who could not resist playing with it throughout the interview. He, Zanuck or another character, when asked if he wished a medal blessed, drew from his pocket not a coin but the script of his new film (‘Give it every chance’ I suppose). Another man produced rosaries to be blessed – not beads or a chain as expected but a big ball of knitted aves and paternosters to be cut off by the yard.

  Elsie disappeared for a rest after lunch and I returned to Verrières, stopping by the roadside to listen to Orphée aux Enfers on my radio. The sun baked down on me and I fell asleep. It would have surprised a policeman if he’d opened the car door and found it loud with music and red-and-black tartan and an unconscious woman slumped in her seat.

  Everyone asks me if my husband is writing a book – I answer ‘I don’t know’. It sounds so silly, but Papa has always been superstitiously secret about his literary projects. I know he has planned a book about Venice and one about Shakespeare and one about the Embassy in Paris, but has he carved out the initial chip?

  [Paris]

  October 12th, 1948

  Last night I went out with the oboeist Godley. I had been deputed to speak to him about his dirt. He arrived tiré à quatre épingles37 but I did it all the same, playing a double game and landing Nancy and Alvilde with his wrath from wounds. He took it well, however, and promises to do better. We had a horrible little dinner cooked by ourselves in the kitchen and went to a film Dédé à Anvers that is stark enough for the French to wonder why it passed censorship. I slept bang through it so received no corrupting flash out of it. Stumbling sleep-walking out of the theatre, we felt hungry, and it was 1.30 and a Monday, but we found a delightful Café de la Sorbonne in the Boulevard St. Michel (a place to be noted by night-starvers) and we ate eggs and bananes flambées and drank a grog américain. Next to me sat a romantic couple, arms and legs inter
twined, and look of such ecstasy on the pretty blonde’s face that I drew the oboeist’s attention to her and my rasp rang out in appreciation of their love and the reflection of their love on their surroundings. I made a loud piece on this theme when the man turned to me saying ‘I think I should tell you I’m English’ and then ‘Didn’t I know you at Oxford?’ to Wynne. We kept up fifteen minutes conversation about mutual friends. Wasn’t it a curious foundation for acquaintanceship?

  So no bed for me till 2 a.m. and I woke up at seven thinking I must have started meningitis, so appalling was the headache. It’s gone now and I’ve done my chores for English friends – pink satin for Oggie’s bosom, dark blue mascara for Enid’s dear little lashes, net curtains for Wade, brandy for Chips, champagne for Henry.38 I’ve tried on a yellow skirt and a pink-satin-checked-with-grey picture dress. Its bodice is made of roses only. I do my best but I’ll always be a bum.

  October 13th. 8 a.m. at Verrières. I buzzed down here at midnight after an amusing dinner at Nancy’s. Her sister Hartington39 has arrived. She’s ever so pretty and funny – a lovelier Nancy – more frivolous and perhaps a little funnier and more exaggeratedly Mitford. She is quite worthy of the name which evokes the Whigs of Devonshire House, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, her daughter who married Granville and lived in my Embassy, and Harty Tarty the Hartington of the day and Lady Caroline Lamb, the niece of the house who married Lord Melbourne. It’s a fascinating period of life and letter-writers which you will love to read about. The Duchess had some painful affliction of her eyes and one of the treatments she submitted to was a tight string round her throat which made the eyeballs bulge out. When sufficiently prominent they applied leeches to the jellies.

  October 14th. On board the good ship Arromanches, Newhaven-bound and utterly empty. I’ve no passport – good, it’s the second time I’ve left it at home. Papa has a theory that Magna Carta doesn’t admit of them, so I’m trying it out – and what is bad I’ve no money. So magic is our name in France that neither discrepancy seems to matter a pin. I had a rather miserable drive in flooding rain and a broken windscreen wiper, but Beethoven, Bach, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart solaced me. The great excitement was the arrival (note the date) of your first letter. You wrote 28th and said it would not start for eleven days so it only took three or four days. You were cold and wet and inundated and happy. It must be hot by now. I’m so jealous of you.

  Yesterday I took Nancy and Debo to Dior’s collection – a few wonderful things but a whole lot quite unwearable. The bulkiness of them is too uncomfortable. They seem to be made of felt, generously padded, yards and yards of umbrella-like pleats. The place was jam-packed – some clients sitting on the curve of the stairs, where no view was obtainable.

  Back at Chantilly three or four days later. I never wrote in London – it was too hectic. I dumped my luggage on Oggie – no it’s no use, I’ll write in the train to Rome.

  Train to Rome (for the Wagon-Lits)

  October 20th, 1948

  I left you plonking my luggage onto Oggie – her luxury flat a bower of beauty. By the bed a glass of water, a china slipper of cigarettes, pencils and paper, telephone, bell, books and candle, aspirins, cures and calmers for all ills, and herself a rose in satin padding – and eggs, brioches, cream and sugar. Then I packed alone into Sir William Rootes’s motor and crept down to the wilds of Surrey to lunch with Flora and Diana Russell.40 The day was shining and lighting the brightest autumn reds and golds that ever I have seen. One is always surprised at the glory and speed of the spring, but autumn does vary and this year it’s a macaw.

  To Flora’s first. They both have broken hips causing them to drag and revolve in half circles as they walk. They both have lovely little houses (ten minutes in a car apart). Both houses are packed with memories, closely hung with pictures, every one of interest and association, nearly all relations painted by themselves, landscapes visited, old private theatrical programmes painted on satin from Woburn (‘the Bedford place’). Then there are cactuses and seedlings on the windowsills, ambitious seedlings like tree peonies and oleanders and giant hemlocks and ledges, crumb-strewn at the open windows for braver birds. Something of Verrières, but much less sophisticated. The two of us bundled over to Diana’s house. She is younger and had endimanchéd41 herself and so had Flora. She offered me a glass of sherry. Flora had passed into another room. I accepted greedily. Pouring me out a half glass she called to her sister in a scarcely audible voice ‘Do you want any, my dear?’ ‘She hasn’t heard’, I said, knowing she had not been meant to hear. ‘She isn’t likely to want any’, said Diana, throwing up a prayer that she would not have to pour away another drop, but I was merciless and bawled ‘Come and have some sherry, Flora.’ I don’t think she wanted any but we were secretly in the game together, so she poured herself out a bumper. Diana paled. There was nothing else to drink at lunch and a very meagre meal. It was all brought in together and plunked on to a dumb-waiter. The kitchen communicating, the ‘sweet’ might have waited for the first course to be eaten, but no. Luckily it was apple charlotte, which was able to burn our mouths after the very few minutes the preliminaries took to swallow. They didn’t want to talk of Conrad – too embarrassed perhaps. I did, but didn’t. They were loving of me for that reason.

  That evening I went to a play with Cecil – two in one by Rattigan called Playbill – the first a very gloomy schoolmaster play,42 good, sad and moving, with Eric Portman, the second the old rehearsal farce – this time Romeo & Juliet in a provincial theatre. You would have cracked your sides, being less blasé. The theatre was unheated, with the chill in it that freezes one’s enthusiasm for the play. Kitty43 was throwing a party in her new smart upper-part in Eaton Place for the sisters of the bridegroom.44 The wedding was started for me at this supper and went on from delight to delight to its last grain of sympathetic rice.

  The wedding day broke bright. I shopped a bit and had to give a long time to dressing. It came off, I think – very dark, very thick silk – almost to the ground – minute waist, very open neck, a geranium between the breasts to perk them up and a red felt tricorne with veil. We lunched with Cecil. Papa wore a frock coat and top hat, grey and black buttoned boots, blazing white waistcoat. Caroline and Liz endimanchées out of all recognition – hats and feathers and artificial flowers, twice the make-up and all their colours chosen for violence.

  The Thames had overflowed on Chiswick Mall, not badly, but it had caught about a dozen cars parked near the verge and they hunched there crookedly and funnily. The little Chiswick church had the gaiety of a village wedding. There seemed to be no London street, but only little shuttered houses brightly painted, all their windows packed with smiling faces. Queen Mary arrived in Cambridge blue, blue toque and dog-collar to match, umbrella and shoes like skis. Henry led her up to the front pew and then waited for his bride, supported by Laurence Whistler45. The McLaren little girl (Rose’s), Arabella and Octavian von Hoff were the pearls in a pretty jewel of other children dressed in pale pink velvet – scuola di Tommaso Lawrence. The Bishop of Lichfield (full canonicals) left his newly-weds at the altar and advancing to the chancel addressed us to some tune, reminding us that we were not merely onlookers and sports spectators but partaking in a sacrament, and awfully like Christ at Cana. Coming out I saw poor little Coalbox bent double in silver fox. She can only see now a dreary circle of ground beneath her eyes. I told her to stay put and I’d find our car and drive her to Letty’s Walpole house, half a mile away. I wasn’t long about it but she couldn’t wait (enthusiasm not to miss departure and arrival too strong) and I picked her up almost at the goal. She bowls as fast as a hoop.

  Mr. Charles Morgan had erected a marquee in the now rainy garden and filled it with twenty dozen champagne. The light of the tent was becoming, the eats superb. Ghosts that only weddings evoke were all there smiling and drinking. The bride I scarcely saw – a veil for the sacrifice (Papa had started to cry on arrival of Queen Mary – I held back for the bride). I saw her next behind p
aper rose leaves and waving hands but what I saw was good, sympathique and unshowy. The last cheers dying, Mr. Morgan and a few select still there to talk it over, Cary, Liz, Rai, Papa and I left for Bognor, which my next letter will tell you about.

  Still train to Rome

  October 21st, 1948

  So we came to Bognor 8 o’clockish. On the Sunday night there was a memorable storm, deafening noise and rain flooding everything. The result was the ugliest of crossings from Newhaven to Dieppe. The sea bucketed us about and our lunch and glasses and bottles bucketed over the fiddles put up for security, and lots were broken while Papa and I ate our unattractive meal voraciously. There is no pride like the pride of not being sick when all around are catting and spewing. At Dieppe the real troubles began. The car had possibly been tinkered with. It didn’t get us home till ten. Breakdowns of all kinds. Papa was splendid, running uselessly but willingly in search of help and finding none. Forges-les-Eaux was never lucky for me. It was near there that I got snowbound in ’45. Tuesday there was lunch at Nancy’s with David Herbert. No one got a word in on account of accounts from me of the wedding. There was Louise en grande beauté, dressed in her Hungarian model made of loud shepherd’s tweed with black braids and frogs and fringes plus twenty huge gold and jewelled trèfles46 and earrings and jewelled bracelets, radiant health and excitement over a new victim, David Bruce – Virginia’s [Clarke] brother-in-law – O Law! Where will that end?

  Early back to Chantilly to prepare the house against the party for Gaston’s Gaullist meeting. It was – the evening I mean (not the preparation, which consisted of summer flowers, dahlias, delphiniums, daisies, roses, enough to fill four big vases from the garden) – not a success. Mireille surpassed herself with eggs in pastry and two poor Aylesbury ducklings brought up by hand and a pineapple baba sweet to set before a king. It was set before Gaston, Nancy, Alvilde, Ali Forbes and Jacqueline de Contade at 8.15 and Gaston started fussing at 8.45. Dinner was bolted. Papa wouldn’t go on political grounds and we had to stand in a hall without a wall to lean on. A chairman spouted for half an hour, Gaston for an hour and a half – when I gave up and went, followed by all but loving faithful Nancy. Not that Gaston is not to the manner born an orator par excellence, adroit, trained, voice-produced, very-clear of very-clear, but after an hour my head span, my legs felt like wool and I thought there was danger of fainting or vomiting so we went out and sat on the cold wet step without the hall where Gaston’s unrelenting voice rose and fell with the same penetration as from within.