Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  Then there was George Moore—George Gordon Moore, who hailed I believe from Detroit. He was certainly not eligible. I had met him at Stanway—a most unusual man of thirty-six, Red Indian in appearance with straight black hair, flattened face and atomic energy. I understood very little of what he said, but I caught his unclear accents of admiration. I “penetrated his consciousness,” he said, and he courted me in his own exaggerated way although he had a wife and children. He gave me to understand that these hindrances could be liquidated and that his every living hour and his vast fortune would be dedicated to me—to me and to Sir John French. He moved in a shower of gold. He doled it out on the just and unjust and on his whims. His riches were evident but maybe an optical illusion, so his countrymen said. Harsh things they whispered—“Kicked out of the States,” “Just a crook,” but we all believed in him, especially the Charteris family, whose protégé and patron he was. He had no snobbery. I would have liked him a lot had it not been for his infatuation for me, which frightened me into flight.

  He loaded Letty and me with presents, Letty being now a Charteris and I his idol—silver foxes for Letty and an ermine coat to the ankle for me (my mother chose it from Jay’s), a monstrous little monkey called Armide with a diamond waistbelt and chain, Maupassant’s works in full morocco, countless éditions de luxe, a cream poodle called Fido cut en papillon with pompoms and bracelets of fluff and a heliotrope bow, and twice weekly, wherever I was, arrived a box the size of a coffin full of Madonna lilies.

  It seems odd today, and no doubt seemed odd at the time, that we were allowed to accept such presents. I never thought it strange because my mother saw no harm. She liked the children to be spoilt and enjoyed nothing better than choosing gifts from wise men.

  George Moore’s devotion and admiration for Sir John French led him to buy a huge corner house in Lancaster Gate and there install the General. It was a ghastly house, which in the war was to be a shelter and playground for our diminishing Coterie. The dreary little parties he gave in 1913 developed under the stress of early war into uproarious ones behind barred doors which were called by our enemies the “Dances of Death.”

  A foreign eligible didn’t carry the same stigma. Count Clary for instance was very eligible. He taught me the Viennese waltz and we would spin ourselves to a standstill to the strains of Cassano’s band. Count Wilczeck was eligible, so was Count Hoesch, another Dream Waltzer. But the most eligible of all was Prince Felix Youssupoff. He was later to kill Rasputin, but at that time he was an innocent at Oxford and deeply in love with my sister Marjorie. A mystic, and of transcendent beauty, he sang to his guitar the Russian gypsy songs, now so hackneyed, then new to us. At the many fancy balls he wore his eighteenth-century Russian dress of gold and pearls and sables and aigrettes, with embroidered boots and jewelled scimitar. He rode in the procession with me at the revived Eglinton Tournament. This historic second-time failure took place at Earl’s Court. The tickets were fabulously expensive—twenty pounds, I think—so very few were sold. The challengers were the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Ashby St Ledgers, Lord Craven, Lord Tweedmouth and others. Lady Curzon was the Queen of Beauty and I was a lady of her Court. Letty was part of the musical ride mounted on ordinary-looking horses loaned by the Household Cavalry. The Queen of Beauty’s steed was little better. These well-bred animals were not dramatic enough for me, nor were the ugly Elizabethan costumes, so I designed myself a black velvet Holbein dress (quite out of period) and hired Richard II’s stage horse, Roan Barbary, with mane and tail that swept the ground. It was as broad as a circus galumpher, but never mind. Felix wore his Russian robes and mounted himself on a mettlesome snow-white Arab, foaming and flecking and pawing. Of course they were cross with us for cheating, and another score was marked up against me. I see why—now. Publicity was building me my pedestal. I never encouraged it knowingly. I think I was not aware of it. If I was, I simply didn’t care.

  I prayed for Marjorie to marry Felix. I bought her a Hugo’s Russian Grammar, but her heart was set and its desire at hand. In a few months she was engaged to Charlie Anglesey and sailed away from me in a fine yacht, and I knew that, as with Letty, we could never be the same to each other again.

  No time to mope—she was happy and I had friends and more friends and many that I loved whole-heartedly. There were Raymond and Katharine Asquith, and Viola, now married to my adored Alan Parsons, Felicity and Iris Tree, Phyllis Boyd, just coming into my life, and then all the young men who were making and moulding me and would so soon be lost. The favourites were Edward Horner, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, George Vernon, Denis Anson, the Grenfells, Sidney and Michael Herbert, Tommy Bouch, and Duff Cooper.

  I can’t remember exactly when I first knew Raymond Asquith. I remember the jubilation of two families when Katharine Horner and he were married, but it was some time later that they, living in Bedford Square, became the greatest influences on my youth.

  Katharine was beautiful, serio-comical, and knew about the Rights and Wrongs that I had never thought to weigh. Though in many ways she was my opposite, she was my pattern. She explained literature and ethics in the Turkish bath over the Gunter’s ices, while I sketched her a becoming dress for the next fancy ball. Duff, so newly in my life, loved her hopelessly. I loved Raymond hopelessly. Happiness was never complete if they were not there. He was ten years older than the eldest of us, yet of all of them he was the most discipled and loved. Everything he taught me by example became direction through my life. I cannot write about Raymond.

  Duff had been brought to our house one dancing night by the Manners cousins. He was young—three years older than me—and a little shy and famed for every accomplishment I loved—poetry, daring, charades and romanticism. There was no sudden sympathy. He grew into my life as I into his. Never with him alone did I suffer my fears or flee from his scrutiny. From the first meeting he wrote me love-letters, sometimes three a day, in the lightest vein and gaiety. The first one, in answer to my acknowledgement of a cheque (we played a great deal of poker, too high in theory but the money rarely left the Coterie), reads:

  Dear Lady Diana,

  I adore the way you spell my name. Please always spell it so. It looks like the picture of a crocodile, and is alone well worth two guineas. The ball was worth much more to me. It made an epoch in my life and will not be forgotten for days.

  We must play again and dance again, please.

  Your DUFF COOPER—

  or as you much more amusingly would write—Cooowper.

  My calligraphy was always and remains even worse than my spelling, which is atrocious and so phonetic that I write bs for ms when I have a cold.

  And then what of the script itself? I have always known that you wrote with your feet, but this alone is far from sufficiently explaining the look of your page. Foot is the member but what (in the name of Art and Science) is the instrument? The Koran is said to have been written by Mahomet on shoulder-bones of mutton with a mother-of-pearl pen 1500 miles long, but what do you use? A boot-jack, or coconut, or candle-end? Or just any old thing picked up for a song at the Caledonian Market?

  Or again:

  Your letter was divine though very unintelligible. Mr Browning might have envied your obscurity as much as Mrs Browning might have envied your brain. But what I nearly did understand rather frightened me, for it seemed that beneath all your sweet ravings you were making a frantic effort to write sense.

  In 1913 Duff went to Hanover to learn German for the Foreign Office examination, and from there to France. From Germany came the letters that I learnt to rely upon:

  Well, well do I remember stumbling up the stairs of Arlington Street, dazzled by a vision that waited at the top, but on that occasion I was not only dazzled but dumbed and felt in fact like stupid Dante:

  Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare

  La donna mia quand’ella altrui saluta,

  Ch’ogne lingua deven tremando muta,

  E li occhi no l’ardiscon di guardare.*

  I’m late for d
inner, late for the play but never too late to mend.

  DUFF

  In the following early spring there was a long low-fever illness in the Trees’ house rented from William Nicholson at Rottingdean. I was several weeks in bed. I saw myself the girl in a decline. Down the village street at Hillside lived the young men on a reading party (my mother never could be free of them) and they would wave at my pale face at the window from their horses, and it was there that Duff’s poems touched my heart, and I would look for him through the window more eagerly than for the others:

  Rottingdean

  24 March 1913

  A sonnet written in a quarter of an hour and a noisy room because I thought it would make good fun for an invalid. Don’t as you love yourself show it to a soul, and don’t rate my intellect by its merits. But get well quickly for the love of heaven, or I shall swear never to write you an elegy.

  Because your skin was whiter than the snows

  Which jealous winds of March have blown away,

  These cruel harbingers of summer say

  “We will not bear her whiteness—nothing grows

  So pale in summertide—the whitest rose

  Seems yellow in her hands.” So cruel they

  Blew bitter poison to you yesterday

  While you were gathering the pale primrose.

  But I who never cared about the spring,

  Fonder of autumn’s faded brown and red,

  Sit wondering what the summeriest day can bring

  To make me up this spring day that is dead,

  Sit wondering how the birds have heart to sing

  Now that the glory of the spring is fled.

  A sonnet every few hours is my prescription for every malady. Deal kindly with it as you did the first. The poetry gambit is a bit old-fashioned in the twentieth century. But I like old methods best, and I hope you will find the sentiments very affecting and the numbers monstrous ravishing.

  I saw a ghost-white face look down on me,

  Ghost-white and spirit-beautiful—and then

  As by enchantment I was back again

  In the far fairy world of chivalry.

  And such a white lost maiden I could see

  Shut up by magic and by evil men,

  Watching with weary eyes that wondered when

  The fairy prince would come to set her free.

  And that which conjured up such ecstasies

  And made me dream in high romantic strain,

  See visions of wild terror and wild bliss,

  Of knights that fought and loved and died in vain,

  Was nothing more and nothing less than this—

  A lily face against the window-pane!

  London

  March 1913

  Here is a very hasty sonnet while waiting for dinner. I did not want you to blame poor God for withholding from you the daily nourishment for which you prayed, especially as he is so careful of the sparrows. But don’t thank him for it—thank me. Your prose is as welcome as my verse.

  I have a message from the flowers to bear,

  For as I came along they cried to me

  ‘Oh listen to us, of thy charity,

  For we would send a message unto her.

  Her casement is so high we never dare

  To climb and whisper to her—therefore we

  Have chosen out of many only thee

  To write to her and be our messenger.

  Oh warn her that the Spring has come, and say

  That in the land of flowers we cannot tell

  Who is the Queen of Spring, whom to obey,

  For while she lingers ’tis impossible.

  Oh! let her not make all too long delay:

  Go thou to her and say “Get well, get well.”’

  Later from Hanover he wrote:

  19 April 1913

  I hope you are still ill. I cannot bear to think of you as quite well and with a hat on. Also you will appreciate an unexpected letter from me so tremendously if it finds you in bed.

  Art thou still ailing, pretty one?

  How dost thou dare be ill?

  Now that the laughing Spring’s begun,

  Now that the sun

  Makes promise to fulfil

  All our wild hopes of summer fun,

  Why art thou ailing still?

  “Ailing” is a bad word, isn’t it? But can you think of a better? However let’s go on with it:

  Pitiful primrose, droop no more,

  Hold up thy golden head,

  For May is knocking at the door,

  And all her store

  Of garments white and red,

  Her motley mummeries of yore,

  Are waiting to be spread.

  Throw open wide the door to May,

  Let her come in to thee.

  She shall with kisses charm away

  All thine infirmity.

  So shalt thou see

  How sweet it is to play

  The livelong day

  With such a joyous playfellow as she.

  I think that will do for the present, so will leave it at that.

  By the way, I always meant to ask you whether you would marry me or not? Probably not. I am mouse-poor and should be a vile husband.

  Next summer a delightful house in Venice was taken by Maud Cunard, who had become real in my eyes—real and unique—and who was to be loved and served by me until her life’s end thirty-five years later and mourned to this day. She asked my mother and me to stay in September. Nancy, her daughter, was there and Harry Cust and Ronald Storrs, also the Prime Minister and Margot Asquith and Elizabeth their daughter.

  In another palace, once Lady Laird’s, lived for a month my nearest, my very dearest friends. Fired, I think, by my accounts of Venice and her people, George Vernon had taken this palazzo on the Grand Canal and brought with him the Raymond Asquiths, Billy Grenfell, Duff and his sister Sybil Hart-Davis, Denis Anson, Edward Horner, Irene Lawley and Felicity Tree. “In questa casa ogni sera è festa,” a gondolier had said in answer to a newcomer’s question about its “feasting presence full of light.”

  The Casa Cunard was more staid. Mr Asquith was interested in his daughter’s friends and I was one. A lot of my passion for Venice came from him and his Baedeker, and the gruelling questioning of an evening on the day’s learning. On his arm I would climb the stairs of the Miracoli Church and plan to be married there. (From its slippery steps Elizabeth fell into the narrowest and slimiest of canals.) Hand in hand we would gaze up at Colleoni, read from The Stones of Venice, peer at the Carpaccios in S. Giorgio de’ Schiavoni, then quite invisible from darkness, and buy presents for Margot or white Longhi masks for the evening’s masquerade.

  This was a time when Conservatives did not speak amicably to Liberals. Margot Asquith had always been in our house and we in Cavendish Square to children’s parties. My contemporary, Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, frightened me. Though a bit younger she was far in advance of me intellectually and in social graces. Violet Asquith and her ringlets I had been in love with at Mrs Wordsworth’s dancing classes. Cyril Asquith, the Judge to be, I can see turning scarlet head over heels, but I do not remember Mr Asquith until he was Prime Minister and I was aged seventeen. I used to go rather surreptitiously to Downing Street. It flattered my snob side, but also I really loved Mr Asquith. He delighted in the young and the young’s conversation, and would talk of poetry and people and weddings and jokes, and he wanted to hold one’s hand and feel equal and comforted.

  In Venice on his birthday we dressed him up as a Doge and hung the sala with Mantegna swags of fruit and green leaves and loaded him with presents, tenderness and admiration. I think he was ecstatically happy that day.

  But in spite of my poor mother’s misery, it was to the Casa delle Feste I was always trying to escape. There were the young, and no authority or sobriety. There was dancing and extravagance and lashings of wine, and charades and moonlit balconies and kisses, and some amateur prize-fighting with a mattress ring and s
econds, and a girls’ sparring match and, best of all, bets on who would swim the canal first, Duff or Denis Anson, and in their evening clothes. I can see Duff now, jacket flung to me, miraculously climbing up one of the great posts that moor the gondolas at the entrance steps—posts quite fifteen feet high and in part slimy from sea-water. There were some wires for creepers to climb along from one post to another, and with no other help he swarmed to the top in a trice and dived into the black canal. Denis I had no eyes for, but I heard him plop and saw them both breast-stroking to the other side. Duff won. What fun we thought it! And it was done for love of one of us, or so exploits were always said to be done in those romantic days. (I knew a man who ate a centipede to please or amuse his wanton love.) The canal exploit was much condemned next day. It was the first over the years of scandalous “goings-on” by the English in Venice.

  All of us, pretty and unconventionally dressed, were naturally followed and stared at by the perambulating Venetians on the Piazza at night. Today, no longer wearing their own black shawls, they are surprised at nothing, but there was a general new look in everything in those last years before the first war—a Poiret-Bakst blazon and a budding freedom of behaviour that was breaking out at the long last end of Victorianism. We felt it and revelled in it.

  One evening our knot of gaping citizens seemed smaller and less interested than usual. “What shall we do to people the Piazza?” I said thoughtlessly. It was enough for Denis Anson, with the help of a piece of soap, to throw an epileptic fit in a space at one end of San Marco’s. In a moment a crowd had coagulated, plus a posse of carabinieri. The sad case of Denis’s infirmity was explained to these alarming men of the law by Charles Lister, who was an attaché at the Embassy in Rome. The epileptic would be taken home by his friends, he said, and he offered apologies for causing a scene in a public place. The officers moved off, the crowd solicitously followed the poor Englishman, who within three minutes had sprung like a mad ape away from his keepers and flung a far worse epileptic fit in another part of the Piazza. Repetition was too much for the police, who this time frog-marched him off in the direction of the Bridge of Sighs and clapped him into a cell, from which the long-suffering Charles Lister had to extricate him next morning, using the Embassy as leverage.