Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  Philip Sassoon had lent us his house at Lympne, and from there we crossed to France and so to Paris. We were rich with presents and cheques and stayed at the Ritz, and I liked being called Madame and wearing a wedding-ring and being happy all the time. We “déjeunéd sur l’herbe,” dined under trees and loved the French and the whole generous world. From Paris we went to Florence, where my old friend Ivor Wimborne had taken Berenson’s famous villa, I Tatti. There I first saw fireflies in their millions. We were shy because we were so newly married and not alone. From Fiesole we motored to Rome, with a night at Orvieto, where we didn’t know that “Orvieto sings,” and ordered bad champagne. In Rome we lived in grandeur at the Grand Hotel (a wedding present from Marconi) and we bathed in the Specchio di Diana and planned to live there. Our destination was the heaven of Lord Grimthorpe’s Villa Cimbroneon the mountain height above Ravello. Thirty years ago it was a day’s journey from Naples. We drove, accompanied by dear faithful Wadey, for three hours in a bus and a few hours in a fiacre, and then a long climb, followed by our boxes on bowed peasant shoulders. The house, set in its vast hanging gardens of lemons and olives and statues and quotations from Omar Khayyam carved on stone seats, seemed all that mortal lovers could demand. With too much zeal we ran down the two miles of hill and steps to the sea, bathed, lay rocking in a boat in the June sun and came back in the evening glow to our dinner cooked by the butler who was also Mayor of Ravello. He gave us a fish curled like a scythe holding a branch of honeysuckle in its poor gills, and wine made on the estate that fizzed a little and intoxicated a lot.

  The next day, crippled by stiffness and raw from sunburn, I could move only on a donkey, and on its back the Mayor led me into the churches and round the altars. We could not bear it to end and thought foolishly that the return would be less prosaic, and also less hot, if we took a ship from Naples to Marseilles. Green as saplings we took berths in the ship that sailed on the day that suited us. It turned out to be a Rumanian troopship packed past its plimsoll line with soldiers. A violent Mediterranean storm blew up as we left. The troops were laid all over the decks and passages and were sick to a man. It was a dreadful journey, but at Marseilles the guns were banging away, not for war but for peace, which that day was declared.

  In London we had no roof to our heads. “We hesitated to return to the charity of Arlington Street. A close friend, Barbara McLaren (shortly to marry the famous Freyberg V.C.), lent us the beautiful house she had built in Westminster. It was from there that we pushed our way to the Peace procession in Pall Mall. I remember only Marshal Foch and the magnificent marching of the giant Americans who carried green wreaths. I think I cannot have looked at the English regiments. The Grenadiers especially must have inclined me to close my eyes.

  Fireworks that night in Hyde Park drew us to dinner in Green Street. The hosts were Norman and Marion Holden, new friends who attracted us and who were to become loved neighbours in Sussex. It was drizzling a little when the first rocket screeched, so I put on some man’s thick coat and rushed with the rest of the dinner-party to the lead roof. The sky was inlaid with fiery particles. The chimney-pots interfering a little with my vision, I must needs in the dark jump on to a slight elevation, the better to see. O fatal step! on to glass and through glass down-a-down two floors, with time enough, as Alice had, to see shelves passing before the thud that was to break my thigh. There I lay, a broken toy, on the floor of the linen cupboard. Through the round hole in the skylight glass I saw my hat, too big to follow my body. Soon Duff was on his knees by my side and above were the frightened faces looking through and down, fearful of asking me how I fared. I fared all right. It was curious to be so calm and collected, even capable of enjoying my efficiency and power. I knew first by a reassuring wriggle that my back was not broken, next that my femur was. My myrmidons I sent in all directions and they all obeyed my orders. It was Peace Night and traffic was virtually off the streets. The doctors to a man seemed to be out celebrating. Our own old Dr Hood, living in the same street, did not answer his telephone.

  The guests scattered on different missions, one to the nearest chemist to fetch chloroform (I knew that moving me would be horribly painful and that a self-administered whiff would tide me over), another to St George’s Hospital to borrow a splint. Viola agreed to break the news to my mother. I told her to say “Diana has broken her leg again.” Another friend had the task of finding my hero, Sir Arbuthnot Lane. A new nephew called Hirsch found a doctor on his own and brought him to me triumphantly. This feat caused me my only qualm, for, coming into the linen cupboard, he covered his face with his hands and said “Poor girl, poor girl.” The planning worked like a clock. My mother arrived. Lane applied the splint. The chloroformed handkerchief numbed the pain of descent to a bedroom. Morphia quick—goodnight all—no one need worry.

  Next day Lane set my thigh and again I was to lie, this time my leg hoisted high into the air with suspensions and extensions, for six weeks in a drawing-room of the Holdens’. It was August. The hosts left London and me in possession, my bed dolled up traditionally in a silly fantasy of four spotted muslin curtains rising to a centre of tricolour ostrich feathers, designed, I imagine, to disguise my high-flying leg. But there was much less frivolity and nonsense, no balloons or budgerigars, no officers in khaki or Prime Ministers or hilarity. I was a staid married woman, happy though broken, and Duff would be with me for an hour at lunch and from seven until the morphia was allowed to work. Morphia was nothing new or sinister or in the least menacing to me. In hospital I had given patients injections by the score. The restricted allowance for sufferers was already widening in the hospital world. It was buyable without prescription at any chemist in the early days of the war (a tube of quarter-grains was always sent in our war parcels of brandy, handkerchiefs, pencils and pocket classics) and I had come, in the days of my first broken leg, to treat the drug as a friend and then as a staunch partner in times of stress. I had welcomed it as a giver of Chinese courage and stimulus and ultimately dreamless sleep, and not as a knock-out drop. So, desperately uncomfortable as I was, on hardest planks, leg in air and no means of altering my position in bed, I would claim my daily “shot” at an hour that corresponded with Duff’s time off, that I might be gay and stimulated for the happiest hours. He had learnt to drive Lord Beaverbrook’s car very badly. I would recognise the frenzied hooting and jams of brakes and gears as he drove into Green Street. Sister Manley of the Rutland Hospital was my nurse. She cosseted and loved us both. It was too good—too good to be good for me, I thought, so I sent for a mesmerist to save me from the doctor’s warning of addiction. Well-famed he was, with a hundred cures to his credit. Like most young people I had been fascinated by hypnotism, and now was my moment to test its efficiency in calming those hideous sleepless nights. The good magician came to tell me my lids were getting heavy and to work with faith and tirelessness. How could I disappoint? Of course I closed my eyelids, of course I breathed heavily, of course I let him tiptoe out of the room before I called for my giggling nurse to give me a dose of the real stuff. Henceforward we kept two charts, one for the dedicated hypnotist: “natural eight-hour sleep” and another for the doctor: “¾ gr. morphine at 10 p.m., nine hours’ sleep.”

  I remember it as a happy time, but everything was happy. I swallowed my pride in returning to Arlington Street on a stretcher. Back I came to the golden drawing-room with my husband, my nurse, my morphia and a silly kitten called Kitty Marlow which we had bought on our one “day out” at Marlow before my fall. My parents were at Belvoir and Mrs Seed from the lodge cooked for us. I soon graduated to a wheelchair. Duff, dressed in a black cloak-coat, white silk scarf and top hat, would wheel me round London. I would be in my trousseau “best,” diademed in seed-pearls, for parties. Both of us would be mackintoshed for rain. Immediately after the war taxis were scarce and together we would wheel all over London to dinners, to plays, and pride ourselves on arriving first. The quartet I had loved at Chirk, which included Désiré Defauw and Lionel T
ertis, came to play for me, and Olga Lynn would sing. Artur Rubinstein too would play us the things we clamoured for—Chopin and Albéniz. Once he hired a hearse to transport me in my chair to a concert in Hampstead. It was too far for Duff to push me. Besides, Duff never really liked music: he preferred silence. We did some entertaining. Max Beaverbrook and Edwin Montagu and Winston dined to make up a difference, and Iris Tree returned from America with her charming husband Curtis Moffat.

  In my chair on Saturdays and Sundays we went house-hunting, chiefly in Bloomsbury, which I had always fancied for its Georgian houses and tree-shaded gardens, and there in Gower Street we found one. My mother not only approved but longed to get her creative hands on to plans for improvements. Already she was realising that a daughter dependent and poor gave her more scope for help and invention than the others who lived secure in their married estates. In my eyes the house was beyond compare. It had particularly beautiful Adam chimney-pieces and rounded corners to the large-windowed rooms. A wall knocked down left a spacious hall. There was a dining-room on the ground floor giving on to a strip of garden with four forest plane-trees. The polished stone stairs had a classic ironwork banister. There was a drawing-room whose three sash-windows looked on to the street—one eighteenth-century row reflecting the opposite houses. On the garden side was a library lined with books, designed with broken pediments by my mother. Above were two more floors. But what gave the house a unique character was that we were able to crash through to the first floor of the house next door, and there I had my bedroom and a drawing-room-sized bathroom. Eight years later when my son was born we crashed through again into the house beyond and made a bedroom and sitting-room for Duff.

  The furniture and books and linen and silver were distributed about. The fat cheques bought beds and brooms. I had my dear Wade, and Duff his Napoleonic manservant Holbrook. A housemaid and cook were hired, also a “tweeny.” Our rent was £90 a year, with £100 added for the extra floor. The lease of fifty years had cost £750, which included the decorating and the fixtures. We had what was considered the minimum of servants, five for the two of us, and we had £1300 a year. My mother helped me to paint my huge bathroom. We took a tracing of a Chinese paper at Belvoir and together on ladders we painted the white trees and birds and cages and butterflies on a pale green ground. It had a marble perspectived balustrade and, as at Belvoir, a marbled dado. The bath was hidden in a lidded coffer marbled to match. There was a large sofa, a pretty fireplace and gilded looking-glasses. The Dame aux Camélias gold-and-turquoise bottles and brushes and boxes lay on the Chinese Chippendale table, while the handsomer, less-loved dressing-set looked too big and too grand for the bedroom. All the floors were carpeted white to the walls. I felt a queen in a fairy story and could not ask for more. “What a quarter, Violet, what a quarter though!” Lady Scarbrough exclaimed to my mother, hands raised in horror. But hers were the only ones not raised in admiration.

  Never were two people as happy, but we must not rest on our laurels. Duff had always had political ambitions, but for him to leave the Foreign Office needed money. Money had to be spun from somewhere even for the life we were living. Max Beaverbrook had been helpful and had commissioned four articles for his new Sunday Express. Duff had written them for me. I had agreed to be editor of a paper called Femina that was short-lived, but I was only a figurehead and had no hand in its death. I felt a fortune was to be made in America if I had the nerve to seek it. But what would Duff do while I worked for it in Hollywood? He could write his projected book on Talleyrand, but then could he write? I never had enough faith in myself or in those I loved. I could not believe in his powers of oratory which he assured me he had, nor in his pen to write anything but jokes and poems and letters of love. Still we talked a lot about “The Plan” and meanwhile kept our eyes and ears open for opportunity.

  Mine saw and heard a man who arrived one ill-starred day. His name was well known because his brother was successful and respected. He suggested to my delight that I should be director of a company he was floating to distil English roses into essence. What could be more alluring? I accepted gladly and said I thought £200 a year would be splendid pay. Who else did I know who would like to be a director? “Viola Tree, of course. She lives next door.” Viola gleefully said yes. Poor ignorant fools, the pair of us! Occasionally the gentleman would blow in to tell me everything was booming to a start, and his colleagues had suggested that I might like to be chairman at an extra £500 a year. Can a duck swim? Of course I would. Once he drew from his pocket some samples of scent-bottles and sprays and left me to count my unhatched ducklings.

  He never called again. In his place came a policeman with a subpoena, an order to be in court as witness in the case of a man obtaining money under false pretences. Irish blood fears the police. I flew to the telephone to warn Viola, but the law had us in its arms, and trembling with fear of it we sought out Hutchie* to stand and watch for us. It was quite humiliating. In court the prisoner’s appearance had changed from a man-about-town to that of an old lag, collarless and unshaved, who could not have deceived a child of four. How much money had I put into the company? None. How did I imagine I could be a director without shares? I didn’t know. How had I been educated? At home. Confused and ashamed after this pi-jaw from the magistrate, I left the court resolving to be more careful, while the poor culprit was led away to the cells.

  We lived above our means and were never in debt. This marvellous achievement was due to a reconciled and loving family, good friends, treats, foreign holidays, Paris jaunts, dresses without bills (first Ospovat, later Molyneux, faithful till our retirement, Chanel and Patou). Blind to my fantastic luck in these worldly ways, I did not consider it wonderful. Clothes were only trappings, and useful for our treats, but I could have managed perfectly with my needle and a fashion paper.

  We were asked to stay at Cap Ferrat. From the smart hotel where we were lodged we would sneak out in shame (I can’t think why) in the dead of night to the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo. There we were delightfully dogged by good fortune. We won at chemin-de-fer at every session. I can see us returning, still on tiptoe, at dawn to kneel beside our bed and count the paper gains. They came to close on £200. Deauville next—twice we went there invited by the hospitable well-wisher Lord Wimborne. It was a little too smart for me, but not for Duff, who could revel better than I could and play with more zest. I liked sitting under the apple-laden trees sipping cider and bathing with Lord Beaverbrook in the cold unattractive sea, and was even proud to be a nurse to the host, badly concussed by a polo accident. Leeches were prescribed. Guy’s had discarded leeches, but, being unwilling to boast of English advance, I had a shot at making them ingest and regurgitate his blood with success. The old doctor was pleased. He was a tired old man who prescribed my patient some patent tranquillising bromide. I read its wrapping of directions—mode d’emploi. It told me to give le malade une cuillière à soupe at bedtime. His brother and Duff, after a meal silent in homage to Death’s advent, had both separately left the house, ostensibly for a breath of air. They met at a party on Solly Joel’s yacht, while I alone in the house, beneath a shaded light, was measuring out the drops and coaxing the poor man to swallow them. At earliest dawn he was dreadfully calm, and re-reading the medical folder in fear, I felt certain that the cuillière à soupe meant a teaspoon and not the large ladleful that I had administered. My blood froze with dread of manslaughter—worse, murder—for he might leave me a legacy. The motive would be plain. His pulse I could hardly feel. Quick, a looking-glass! It clouded still beneath his failing breath. I rang and rang the bell until a sleepy valet appeared, whom I told to run full speed and tell the doctor that His Lordship’s pulse was about fifty, so come at once. Holding the testing looking-glass in one hand, searching for a pulse with the other, I waited beneath the noose’s shadow for half an hour, only then to hear that the doctor would not displace himself and that he advised me not to be anxious. With morning came a nurse from Paris, and I handed over my pati
ent with my guilt untold.

  His brother and Duff had spent my gruesome night happily in the Casino. I never was very happy in casinos. Today I am desperate, alone and in search. Once at Deauville I lost Duff among the dancers and gamblers. Asking everyone vainly if they had seen him, I requisitioned a Rolls-Royce to take me back to the villa, and finding there an unlaid-on bed, I felt sure that Duff had been knuckle-dusted and robbed of his winnings. Running back to question the crowds again, I could see that they thought me in the throes of suspicious jealousy. “Fools,” I said; “it’s not adultery I mind, it’s assassination!”

  * St John Hutchinson, the eminent criminal lawyer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Plan

  A FORTUNE had to be made, and the next opportunity was a very handsome offer from a film director called J. Stuart Blackton. He was said to be the first man to put a story on the screen. Up till then it had been documentary, street scenes, some reels of the Delhi Durbar, and budding slapstick. But Hollywood had risen above Mr Blackton and he had come to England (“there the men are as mad as he”) to try again with my help. He made me a preposterously big offer for two films, to which I, as usual, said “Snap.” There was no deflecting him from his plans, which I could see needed adjustments that were never made. But what did it matter? It was exceedingly exciting and amusing and anachronistic and profitable.