Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  The last month of 1935 worked out like this. Dividends received: £141. In hand: £166, i.e. £307. Cheques drawn in December: £303. This leaves £4 to the good at the end of the year. When I say “cheques drawn” they include the Dominican’s money, my godson’s present and your £100 present. You must keep your eyes peeled in Paris for ideas, or if you saw any pretty little tiny kickshaws in Paris that you specially fancied you could spend part of it there. Or ought we to keep the whole thing to blue in one go? My actual income in 1935 was £1683. It is a high record. £300 goes on my share of Oxford Square and commitments before I start spending. The farm takes £300 pretty regularly. As far as money is concerned, I am most fortunate and I think that you are too. The third anniversary of going to Cardiff together will be January 13th, and I can’t remember what my life was like before.

  Today un soleil d’Austerlitz, and I’m making a Christmas calendar for Katharine. I’ve done your page in the calendar (Cupids all round your picture, verses underneath) and I’ve got a good picture to illustrate “the dark house and the detested wife.” Some version reads “the detected wife”—a very poor reading.

  The electric light is in tonight and Mrs James [general servant referred to as Mrs Jimjams or Mrs James of Sutton—see The Diary of a Nobody] says: “It is awfully bright but perhaps we shall get accustomed to it.” She was nearly killed in the first five minutes as she fiddled with an electric heater and a knife. Some bluish forked-lightning came out and played round her person but did no harm to her. It looked like “the chair” for Mrs James of Sutton.

  The cold continues. I have the same job every morning now of going round the cattle-troughs with cans of hot water to thaw the pipes. How did mammoth elks etc. drink in Siberian Arctic waters? Did Nature teach them to suck ice? Our southern bullocks simply stand round the trough and moo in dissatisfied tones and wait until I arrive with the boiling water.

  I see that two thousand swans have died of cold at Copenhagen. Did they all sing first?

  I wear vest and drawers made for East Coast wild-fowlers, mittens and two pairs of gloves and earflaps of deerstalker tied down always. The postman at Chantry went out on night duty with exposed ears and is frostbitten. His ears will turn black and then fall off.

  The carter and I went out after luncheon and brought in the yearlings. I was afraid that the cold might possibly kill them. The carter kept saying to the yearlings as we drove them through the deep snow: “Poor little toads, poor little toads.”

  The cold is less bad and I enjoyed taking the milk to Mells Park before breakfast. Quite still, sparkling sun and lots of rime. This is my Christmas letter. Forgive me my trespasses. I am not always as nice to you as I ought to be. I see no fault in you, and you are nicer to me than anyone has ever been. After that I can hardly ask you if you are fond of me, nor need I say whether I am fond of you. I expect we both know the answer, and I greatly hope that the answers are true for all time.

  Calendar-making progresses, but I must leave the task and go to Bowood. I mean to take the party in carefree devil-may-care spirit. I mustn’t make this fuss about nothing.

  The man who made me the (refused) offer for sows is dead. I said: “Was it sudden?” The answer was: “He was riding home from Trowbridge market and he said: ‘I’m going to die’ and with the same he did.” I repeat the actual words.

  I forgot to say that I have left you £1000 in my will. Affection is the only motive.

  Next Conrad writes of old Teddie, a labourer, in the Temple Club Workhouse, and of how

  He praised the food, the nurses, the concerts and wireless, the sweets and tobacco. A foretaste of Paradise. He only asked for “a duck’s egg or two, from running water.” I thought that I could not have heard right. “Don’t bother, sir,” he said, “I’ve written to Mrs Dando about it. They have beautiful running water at Mrs Dando’s place.” I asked if ducks in running water laid nicer eggs than the ones in ponds. He stared at me in bewildered astonishment. It turned out that he wouldn’t dream of eating an egg from a pond-duck. He couldn’t believe that I didn’t know the difference, as though one asked Duff if French Burgundy was any better than Australian. Did you know of this important distinction?

  The policemen caught two Frome men stealing my holly and on Sunday morning they are coming from Frome to throw themselves on my mercy. Of course I don’t want a prosecution. But can one stop the police prosecuting if they insist on it?

  Mr Miller spat repeatedly and said that he couldn’t get Prince’s smell out of his nostrils. An owl is hooting in the firtree as I write. I can see his body against the sunset. It sways each time he hoots.

  The electric-light men came back to work, the lousiest set of apes I ever struck. We have used fifteen units at ninepence in sixteen days. Poor Mrs James is appalled at the cost.

  Now the Manor House has gone off to Longleat to see the “Longleat Follies”—Lord Bath as the “Big Bad Wolf,” Lady Wey in tights. It’s slapstick and all the fun of the fair and a howl of fun from start to finish. I’m glad I’m not there.

  Yesterday the two holly-thieves appeared to ask for mercy. They were straight out of Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part II), Bull Calf and Mouldy, the recruits. One had a semi-idiotic defect of speech. I forgave them and bade them sin no more. Mrs James of Sutton couldn’t have spoken more seriously of their crime if it had been incest or simony.

  My sister sits by the fire embroidering and doesn’t know that I am writing you a love letter. She said of the Duke of W. that he had “an illicit love for another man’s wife” and perhaps she meant me too. Anyhow, I felt guilty.

  In the Revolution of ’48 Lamartine took Aunt Sligo (aged about eight) driving round Paris with him in his victoria. In the victoria were a number of lévriers (his favourite dogs) and he made speeches to the Paris mob from the carriage. Aunt Sligo saw the Tree of Liberty planted in the Place de la Concorde and the mob dancing round it with hands joined. The burden of Lamartine’s speeches was that the millennium was at hand, that peace, goodwill, liberty, prosperity and purity would rule. What would he think of France now? He was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government.

  If I die please prevent Maurice writing any poetry about me (if you can) and don’t cry or wear black or send any flowers. If you wish you can light a candle for me at the Catholic church in the square near the Jardin des Gourmets. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. It is all in the Book of Job. We must try to keep calm and enjoy the good bits of life, which after all do exist too. I think that you have done splendidly so far. Goodness, harmony and wisdom are the pith of your being. It would be a very queer thing indeed if we knew what the purpose of the Universe was, and even if God explained it, should we catch vaguely at what His drift was, seeing that we often can’t understand the crossword puzzle even when we see the answer?

  K. Charles Martyr. He nothing common did or mean etc.

  The Journal of the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire has come. I’ve been reading about the Lesser Bush Baby, a lemur from the Gold Coast only about two inches long. They will sleep in your pocket all day, but at night they grow lively. Though so tiny one of them can take a standing jump six feet high! Before jumping they spend a long, long time estimating the leap and mentally measuring and bending their tiny knees. If they fail in the jump (a fairly frequent occurrence) they don’t fall lightly like cats. On the contrary, they crash down like aeroplanes and hurt themselves most severely. They eat termites, pawpaws and avocado pears. Later I shall be telling you something curious about wolves and badgers.

  Ah! I was to tell you something about wolves. The last person devoured by wolves in France was in 1918 (October, so not very cold weather) and then not in the Alps or Pyrenees but ten kilometres from Chalus (Haute Vienne). Wolves always increase when there are wars. I suppose because gamekeepers and all vigorous young men leave their homes. When wolves get hydrophobia they go into villages and bite everyone they see. Thus in a small Russian village a
wolf bit thirty-five men and twenty-three women. More than half of them died of it. The office of Lieutenant de Louveterie is said to exist in some of the Départements “down to the present day,” like the Pest Officer in our own country. The Lieutenants de Louveterie were abolished in the French Revolution, but the depredations of the wolves at once became so terrible that Boney had to re-institute them.

  I do hope that your cold is mending and that you are established at Belvoir with your husband and your son and are happy there. I didn’t give your little boy a present for reasons which you would think good. I think he is a very nice boy. I am genuinely fond of him, though I am not one of those men who get on well with children. I like the mothers better.

  I learnt at luncheon that we have negro relations in Grenada. As black as soot they are, and the descendants of my grandmother’s uncle, Mr Ross. He kept a negress and their bed was unusually fruitful.

  It’s Christmas Eve and I am sending off this delightful and witty letter with all my love. All, all, all.

  Our Saviour’s birth is celebrated

  I lay abed until 8.30 and I wondered if our lives had any purpose, or do they signify nothing? And I could come to no conclusion. If your life has been a happier one because of my life, that ought to be enough. I think it is enough.

  On the Feast of Stephen

  Very hard frost. Bright sun. Lots of glittering rime. I caught the third rat at Wheat Mow.

  There was the taximan Lane’s row about a sudden refusal to supply paraffin. Mrs Jimjams says that Lane lately drove a friend of hers to Frome and “what he didn’t say about you, sir,” was “something awful!” It seems that the Borgias were saints compared with me, and that it’s doubtful if a sixth-century Pope could teach me a new vice. O would some power the giftie gie us etc. etc.

  Russet has calved, so all the four heifers have calved. We shall sell the calves tomorrow and then we shall know how the mothers milk. I took Ernest into the field and taught him their names. “Is that Diana with the white rump?” he asked me. And I said: “Yes, Ernest, it is. You can tell Diana by her white rump.” Oh dear!

  In winter-time Conrad had long hours for his books, and I would get the cream of his reading:

  Tonight I finished the Aeneid. I began in February and calculated to take a year. As you see I finished five weeks before schedule. I don’t quite know whether to read it through again or read the Georgics. I suppose it would really be more sensible to read the Georgics. This might take three or four months. Or I might read De Rerum Natura, which would take two years.

  I’ve been reading in Gooch about Madame de Remusat and Napoleon. He was a horrible man and I’ve never thought him anything else. Everyone who knew him hated him. It’s curious what frightful oafs his family were, including his mother. Josephine thought that Napoleon “had seduced his own sisters one after another.” I never heard it, but I suppose she thought what she said and meant incest. What is odder than this though is that Bishop Burnet thought that Charles II committed incest with his sister Henrietta. The Bishop was in a good position at Court and wrote a History of his own Time.

  I’ve finished Volume I of Mahan’s Nelson, taking me to 1790. His character has begun to deteriorate under Lady Hamilton’s influence. I find it a painful story. He has been openly disobedient to the orders of his Commander-in-Chief, Lord Keith. It isn’t easy to see why he was ever forgiven.

  We’ve got Lady Hamilton on the scene now, hot and strong. Mrs St George (mother of the Archbishop of Canterbury) said of her: “Bold, daring, vain to folly. Her dress is frightful. Her waist is absolutely between her shoulders. Her figure is colossal. Feet hideous. The bones large. She is exceedingly embonpoint.” Lord Minto said: “Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity and is growing every day.” Others comment on the dirtiness of her hair. One of the naval officers said: “I thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman.” It is a curious case of infatuation, as the doting certainly went to extreme lengths and ruined his character.

  “Pick up hay in Brown’s Bottom” is the order of the day. The word “day” makes me think of der Tag which is the day after tomorrow, I hope, so don’t forget, my sweet Diana, to tell me if I am to arrive for luncheon or at some later hour.

  And now I must thank the Major [Maurice Baring] who has sent me good Father d’Arcy’s great work on the real and the supposed Nature of Belief, in which many errors and fallacies are exposed. Bless you, sweet Diana.

  I should very much like to have seen Lady Hamilton, not for her beauty but for her fatness. How fat was she? About 1801 people who saw her in 1797 were saying: “She is if possible more immense than ever,” and “an unusual degree of corpulency” is mentioned. Nelson and Lady Hamilton had codes for writing to one another. Nelson was “Thomson” and Lady Nelson was “Thomson’s aunt” and so on. People must have been either bigger mugs or more charitable in 1800, as a great number believed that the relations of Nelson and Lady Hamilton were innocent, among them her husband. Didn’t they notice anything when she had a baby? And I’m not sure that she didn’t have two. I can’t make it out.

  I went over to Bulbridge where I found the affable Pembrokes. Then came Lady Horner and then Katharine from London. She had waited 1½ hours for you, an appointment that you didn’t keep. So I spent the evening and part of the night wondering if you had been in a motor accident.

  Lady Horner asked me at breakfast where I was going for Sunday and I said: “Bognor.” She did not smile at all into her beard. She merely said: “D’you know Grandi?” I said: “No.” She said: “Never meet him when you go to London?” I said: “No.” She said: “He is a great lady-killer.” I said: “Oh!” She said: “Oh, yes, women are simply mad about him. He is a great charmer and so fascinating. Women simply can’t resist Grandi.” I said: “Oh.” Katharine to tease me said: “Don’t you meet Grandi at Bognor?” I said: “No.” Katharine said: “I suppose Diana doesn’t ask him the same Sundays as you.” I said: “I suppose not.”

  Nelson has left England for the last time. Lord Minto went to Merton to see him on the last night and Lady Hamilton assured him that her love and Nelson’s were pure. They had had two children and one of them was asleep in her cot upstairs at the time. Nelson signed his letters to her “Your loving father.” Do you think that we would put up with this nonsense now? Shouldn’t we simply say: “Come off it”?

  Nelson called Napoleon “Mr Buonaparte,” and Wellington called him “Napoléon,” using the French pronunciation. Nelson pronounced Edward “Ed’ard.” Was it the usual way at that time? Nelson’s daughter was called Horatia. At first they called her “Thompson” or “Tompson” or “Tomson” as a family name. Nelson’s last letter of all was to her, signed “Father” and telling the tiny child to obey “our dearest Lady Hamilton.” So odd to admit the fatherhood and deny the mother.

  Horatia grew up and became the wife of Rev. Mr Ward. Her grandson is living in Bath (Mr Nelson Ward). A most unattractive man. I know him. The other brother I knew too at Pulborough and he was an Admiral! As like Nelson as two peas. I always believed that Clarkson made him up for the part. Lord Nelson (we went to Trafalgar House together) simply descends from Mrs Bolton, Nelson’s sister. Oh! and I knew George Matcham too, the great-grandson of Catherine Matcham. She was Nelson’s favourite sister. Old Mr Nelson (Rev.) had eight sons, and there was not one legitimate descendant of any when Nelson died, so an earldom was created and passed to the dreadful, underbred Boltons. And I could write pages on how the Dukedom of Brontë (in Sicily) got into Lord Bridport’s hands, but I am sparing you.

  I’ve done the death of Nelson. Impossible to read it with a dry eye. I didn’t know that he called it “telegraph” when he sent a signal. “Mr Pasco, will you telegraph?” he says. Collingwood was very much irritated by it all—“I wish Nelson would stop telegraphing.” I think “Kiss me, Hardy” a most surprising episode. Hardy wasn’t surprised and kissed him on the cheek, but a little later when Nelson’s eyes were shut he kissed him again on the
forehead and Nelson said: “Who was that?” Hardy was the only man who spoke his mind to Lady Hamilton. She hated it. She never said “Kiss me, Hardy,” I’m sure. I don’t think that Lady Hamilton loved Nelson. He was a tiny man, always ill and feeble and not naturally brave. Like you he suffered from fear and mastered it. Vanity was the sin that did most beset him. And boasting.

  My grandmother acted charades with Lady Hamilton. Lady Hamilton did enact Medea and my grandmother one of the children that Medea murdered. This was at Dresden (with Nelson) in either 1800 or 1801. She was very frightened by Lady Hamilton.

  The Times hadn’t much to say about Kipling. He was the greatest English writer alive, but they were very guarded about it. I remember his beginning, and Mamma talking about him to Aunt Madeleine and saying: “It can’t be his real name.” Aunt Madeleine said: “It’s impossible. It can’t plainly be his real name.” Mamma said: “But why choose a name like that?” Aunt Madeleine said: “It might be a sort of joke on drunken stripling.”

  The King’s health worse, I take it. The next thing, I expect, will be: “Go bid the soldiers shoot.”

  Chinese Gordon was murdered fifty-one years ago today. Wolseley (son of “All Sir Garnet”) and I were sent to the War Office to ask if it was true. I see myself just as I am now, but suppose that I looked like John Julius.

  Cuckoo-pint and dog’s mercury are showing in the woods, the first signs of spring. I shan’t be able to find you a primrose for some time.

  I read today in Gronow’s memoirs: “Some of the most magnificent fortunes of England have, in the first instance, been undermined by an extravagant expenditure on jewellery, which has been given to ladies married and unmarried who have fascinated their wealthy admirers and made them their slaves.”