Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  There are two schools of thought in England about the invaders’ reception. Shall every man and woman shoot to kill, poison, trap, snipe and stab in sleep every Hun they come across, or shall only the Army and Home Guard deal death? I’m for the former method of ending the war, though whether my courage would stand up to the end I can’t say. I think that the majority feel my way. Papa told us of a man he had seen, an English aviator who had been obliged to bale out (i.e. jump from his aeroplane with a parachute) over Kent. As he got near the ground he could see only rifles and shotguns pointing out of every hedge. Tortured by fear, he guided his parachute in the limited way one can to the bang-centre of a cornfield, hoping that would give him a little time. But no! On landing there was an old farmer a few yards away drawing a relentless bead on him and a soldier following up. He had a horrible feeling that something was behind him and flashing an eye round saw a burly man with a large iron railing in his hands, just about to crown him with it. He managed to convince them that he was a friend and not a foe, but the farmer was so disappointed that he kept his gun aimed at the unfortunate and went on saying: “I’d like to shoot your bloody head off!” I dread to think what would have happened to a Polish hero. Another poor airman falling in a home ditch found an old woman with a scythe bearing down on him. Dame Death, no less!

  Your godfather Lord Beaverbrook yesterday was made a member of the War Cabinet. From the hour of his promotion he changed his tune about Papa. Orders from his boss, no doubt, to cease bludgeoning a colleague. The sheepish Press will take his lead, and so the assault I hope is over.

  The deputation of Hoxton and Deptford mothers never came. I fussed a good deal from 6.30 on, but by ten I felt safe from the visitation. It’s been a good day. When Papa came in he brought a letter from an unknown Colonel who wrote: “Your wife has been the victim of a hoax. The secretary of the man who rang up and purported to be from Hoxton is a swine of a nouveau riche.” Now I am dying for the hoaxer to ring me up again, and I am going to say: “I am rather upset by what happened. I feel I ought to warn you of the danger you are in. What at first I took to be a joke, as you must have realised when I said I thought that the Hoxton man was drunk, has now become, through my talking and laughing about it, a rather serious matter and is quite out of my control. All Mr Cooper’s telephones are naturally tapped by Scotland Yard and I have every reason to believe that they have traced you.” In other words “Scram!”

  Today in the Sunday Pictorial there is a Duff Cooper ballot—a coupon to be cut and sent back to the editor. There is a picture of Papa as a debauched criminal and the coupon says: “He gets £5000 a year for being Minister of Information. Do you think he should hold the office? Yes or No.” Now only cross people who hate you or are indignant fetch a pair of scissors, cut it out and buy a stamp and send it off, and those women who are in love with you, but they are very few. The large majoritv, who are quite satisfied with you and think that the Press is making a fool of itself always and anyway, just dismiss the idea and of course don’t look for the scissors. So today I started buying Sunday Pictorials at the street-corners. Never more than four or six could I get. Suddenly at St Pancras station I found 240, so I shamelessly bought the lot and shall send them scissored and enveloped to friends to send in. It probably won’t make any difference, because by next Sunday Hitler may be here, or interest may be quite dead, or anyway they don’t play fair. For all that I enjoyed collecting them on a Sunday. It was like digging for gold—so many disappointments and then striking a seam.

  I lunched with the Cranbornes and dined with three journalists—Jimmy Sheean, Helen Kirkpatrick and one Robertson, representing P.M. here. We went to the Players’ Club and to the Savoy and then to a flat. We jabbered and drank until the small hours. Papa meanwhile was jabbering and drinking with sixteen English pressmen, chiefly editors who had been abusing and insulting him, guying him and spitting ink in his face for the last ten days. This get-together meal was arranged in the height of the fight by Frank Owen, editor of the Evening Standard. They all told Papa what a good chap he was, and that they approved whole-heartedly of the “snoopers” and that all newspapers use the method. All of which makes me think most journalists exceedingly low.

  Conrad wrote in August:

  Our parade (Lord Birdwood reviewing) was very successful. I got through the drill as well as most or better. I think that the men enjoyed it. It’s extraordinary to find oneself in the ranks, with the General saying: “Well, my lad, what were you in private life?” “A farmer, sir.” “Were you wounded in the war?” “No, sir.” “It’s always you big chaps who escape.” And then at the Fall Out of officers one doesn’t fall out. But O that I should be doing this at sixty-two! The Field Marshal said that the Norman Conquest was two thousand years ago, and that Buonaparte’s invasion was defeated by the elements. Was it? I thought it was the Battle of Waterloo.

  Bang, bang, bang! goes Jerry.

  I must go out and pen the sheep. It’s the first time I’ve ever penned sheep. It sounds so romantic. Then I change into regimentals, then high tea and patrol until midnight. I’ve been given a bayonet and belt, a fine pair of marching boots (size ten), chevrons to denote my rank and the silver badge of the Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert’s Own) to wear in my cap. We have Jellahabad as a superscription. We did simply wonderfully there in 1841, but of course you know that.

  In the afternoon I took the cows on the green and read the Analects of Confucius.

  My letters to John Julius continued:

  The London raids have begun, as usual less bad than I anticipated. It happened on a day when I could almost have welcomed a bomb to destroy me utterly, because at five minutes to midnight I had said, to please Desmond MacCarthy, that I would broadcast in a programme called “And So to Bed,” in which people whose name is at all well-known read and comment upon a favourite verse or piece of prose. I settled that I would give them “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” It pleased my own American love-complex. I thought that twenty lines and the five verses would last five minutes all right. Papa wouldn’t or couldn’t help me, so I sweated blood to put twenty lines together. When at last I thought it could go at that, I found that by reading slowly it took just two minutes. I tore off to the shutting London Library and got a life of the authoress and against time dug out of the two fat volumes two episodes that I hoped would pass muster. At 11.45 I was at the BBC with my pathetic script rustling in my moist hands. No sooner had I got to my studio on the third floor, when there was what is called a blue light—almost the red, which means “Take Cover,” so down we went to the basement studios. I swear to you that I was longing for the light to turn red, in the belief that such trivial talks as mine would give way before government directions. The light wouldn’t change, so I was for it. I don’t know how it went. I think not badly. Anyway I didn’t boggle or splutter, and my tongue, though too big for my mouth, did not twist. Papa, listening at home, said it was all right, but Wadey asked me what programme I had been in. I told her, and she said that she had listened to the news at midnight but had not heard me. I said she must have. She said no. She had heard a woman talking about the war, but it wasn’t me. I let it go, but of course it was me. I suppose that the old rasp was quite unrecognisable. All to the good!

  The second raid took place when I was asking to see a man at the M.O.I. about getting some rooms in the actual building for me and Papa to live in, and he said: “I’m afraid that’s the warning.” The whole million souls who inhabit the Ministry trooped down to the basement where the big boys conduct business as usual. One dreads curiously enough (once reasonably safe) not bombs but boredom, and the fear that it may last four or five hours. There were tin-hatted decontaminators, theatres and Red Cross nurses, firefighters, all grades of ARP. Papa was sitting in a sound-proof room with his big shots round him and fifty telephones, maps, signals, lamps and gadgets. He might have been conducting a war from G.H.Q. Armageddon.

  I got some friends to talk to and was jabbering aw
ay when a male voice shouted “Quiet please!” Silence followed, and then “All firemen upstairs.” Of course I thought the bomb had hit us. Next order, after the jabbering was again quieted, was: “This passage to be kept clear for Red Cross ambulances.” Corpses next, I thought, but it was the All Clear, thank God, and so far no news of anything destroyed.

  17 August

  I went to see poor shrivelling, shrinking, palsied Maurice at Rottingdean today. I took my tin hat along. I do not think he will bear the front line much longer. Compulsory inactivity under bombing is not to be borne. He had best take his last patience to Laura Lovat in Scotland, where there will be fewer alarms. The high white cliffs are bristling with guns. I can’t see how even the Huns are to scale that height of chalk.

  This evening was quite another picnic. At 7.30 the farmer and I were sitting in my room talking, naturally, about guerilla warfare. (The professor of Conrad’s Home Guard course at Osterley is an experienced veteran of the Spanish Civil War.) Suddenly Conrad said: “There goes the raid-warning.” Some people, though sharp-eared, can’t hear a bat; it is out of their ear’s register. I have that peculiarity when it comes to raid-warnings. I took his word for it and down we went to the lounge. I fetched out the despatch-case with the diamond dolphins, trembling diamond spray, other precious stones, essential papers and passports, £200, powder, rouge, brows and lashes and a comb. But I forgot book, knitting, gas-mask and tin hat. It didn’t matter because it only lasted a quarter of an hour, but I was ashamed of my lack of method. The lounge was full of quite gay people ordering tea and cigarettes. A few streetsters came in and many freaks came out of their rooms for the first time. Even the elevator boys said that they had never taken them up. I suppose some went to the shelter, but I think very few. When we all got back to our eighth floor, Wadey pointed out an enormous column of black smoke about ten miles away. I don’t yet know what it was.

  Our greatest relief these days was to get to the country on Saturdays, leaving the last-trump capital for the Surrey hills or Sussex or (happiest of all) Ronnie Tree’s house at Ditchley near Woodstock.

  Ditchley

  7 September

  I’m at Ditchley again. Papa met me here. He had been discussing the propaganda of war-aims and the future with Professor Toynbee at Oxford. After dinner the butler came in and said that the Home Guard were being called out. Talk and games continued, and Ronnie Tree went to telephone to Oxford. He came back with as long a face as you can pull without breaking, and said: “It looks like the real thing this time. The Home Guard is being called out and the church-bells have been told to ring by the code-word.” Nobody seemed to believe it much. Papa got on to the over-calm Ministry, who said that they knew of no invasion. Many parts of the country had had the order and it was a mistake. The London docks had had a knocking about and the raid was still on.

  Now I’m in bed and I’ve broken a valuable lamp, and so that is weighing on me as well as the war. I’ll have to confess my clumsiness to the hostess in the morning. O dear, O damn!

  Ditchley

  8 September

  A bad-news Sunday. The raid last night, as you will have read, was on a far bigger scale than we have had before—damage, death, fire and I fear much agony. Hannah Hudson, the wife of the Minister of Agriculture who lives at the gate here, has heard that her little house in Smith Square has collapsed. The two maids in the basement spoke to her quite unharmed and unflustered. Chapel Street may be a heap of ruins for all I know, with your little grind-organ and my ski-boots hanging incongruously from a beam. I went to church by myself. It was an Intercession Sunday with prayers against dismay, cowardice and many other things, and I prayed hard, knowing my need of their opposites.

  In the afternoon I went to see the Ducal Marlborough baby being christened at Blenheim in the parish church. It was touching and lovely, and tiny Winston (the baby) was godmothered by Clemmie Churchill, looking most radiant and gay. There was champagne and tenantry on the lawns, and nannies and cousins, and healths drunk, all to the deafening accompaniment of aeroplanes skirmishing, diving, looping and spinning in the clear air, teaching children to be pilots. No alarums or excursions this Sunday evening, although Randolph’s wife, straight from Chequers, told me that invasion was fully expected now. I asked Nancy Tree to send me to sleep with a pill. She gave me two black things, like you put down horses’ throats. Boluses? I remained refreshingly unconscious until 1 p.m.

  Conrad writes: When we went off this morning we were told to stay in uniform if possible, and to take our guns to work with us. So you might picture me minding the cows on the green with a rifle slung on my back, like the Bulgarian peasants we used to see out of the train.

  Ditchley

  9 September

  Darling J.J., Another appalling raid on London last night, and it’s there that I am repairing today. The days have an autumn nip in them and a later sunrise, cobwebs and dew and a yellowing leaf—all too beautiful and always cloudless, and the senseless inglorious attrition from the sky goes on.

  London looked just the same. Conversation is restricted entirely to bombs. Phyllis de Janzé, whose war-work is smelling out spies, has had her pathetic house burgled in the black-out and her furs (her ratcoats, catcoats, stoat and weasel coats) all taken. What will the thief do with them?

  There are six or seven raids a day. One copes with them fairly well. People say: “You know there’s an unexploded bomb in Montagu Square or Buckingham Palace?” or “Lansdowne House has gone. Hadn’t you heard?” One could bear it better if one could see any end to it. Of course it’s there (the end, I mean), but one can’t see it yet. Is it the beginning of an invasion scheme or is it just to break our spirit? It won’t do that.

  It’s not really the place to sleep, the eighth floor of the Dorchester. I never close an eye, but Papa sleeps like a baby in a pram, cheek on hands. One hears those vile machines and the whistling and thuds, and then one starts waiting for the next and counting the watcher-of-the-sky’s steps overhead. I cannot bear to look out of the window. There always seem to be great fires ringed round. The All Clear goes when light comes, and at last one sleeps for an hour—and then one looks out on to the next day and there are no fires, and one cannot believe that so much can have gone on and so much yet be standing and unchanged.

  There was a big row tonight between Papa and me undressing and in different stages of nudity. Our gun was banging away outside and the thuds were hideous to hear, and I said that we must go down to the basement. I had meant to all that day, and had taken precautions to stop argument such as “I haven’t got a suitable dressing-gown” by buying him a very suitable shade of blue alpaca with dark red pipings. “I think you’re too unkind,” I’d say, pulling off a stocking. “We can’t go down; I’m too tired. Besides it doesn’t make any difference where you are.” I was beginning to cry and give in when the guns gave a particularly violent salvo and the look-out man popped his tin-hatted head in at the door saying excitedly “You are advised to take cover.” This was a break for me and it settled Papa, who then donned his Tarnhelm outfit with the slowness of a tortoise, and down we went. I had arranged with the management that if I achieved my purpose we could have two rest-beds in the Turkish bath. So there we slept in hygienic comfort and, to my mind, greater security. The dynamo makes a nice Enchantress or Clipper noise, so that you hear the bombs less, and our own big Hyde Park gun doesn’t blow your head off as it does above ground. Still we are encouraged by its bombast because we feel it is some kind of answer and the noise is said to exhilarate.

  30 September

  Last night we dined with a lot of French—Mademoiselle Eve Curie, Monsieur Palewski, airman and politician, all violent de Gaulleites. The guns, bombs, orchestra and jabber deafen and bewilder, and the more you try to escape the danger and noise of war with light music, food and wine, the more you think of the East End, the homeless, and the fires raging nearby. While the Huns are turning London’s heavens into hell, they are not doing much harm to our factorie
s for war-production. Therefore unless resistance breaks (and there is no fear of that) they are wasting their pilots, ammunition and confidence. Eve Curie told me that she had been on a tour of provincial ARP shelters with Lady Reading. All the little children of five have Mickey Mouse gas-masks. They love putting them on for drill and at once start trying to kiss each other, then they march into their shelter singing: “There’ll always be an England.”

  Thousands of mothers and children are being got out of London each day, but even now they are unwilling to go, and act very strangely when they get to the outer country. At Mells, for instance, ten or twenty women arrived at noon, who had been all night in the train and four hours in a church at Frome in the early morning. The first thing they asked Katharine was: “Is there a Lyons here?” When she said “No” they gasped and said: “What, no Lyons! How often does the bus go to Frome?” “Twice a week,” she said. Well, believe it or not, no sooner had they swallowed their dinner than half of them walked the four miles to Frome to get back to streets and see the shops. Another twenty arrived at Daphne Weymouth’s and asked for shelter. Although her house is packed already with evacuated crippled children, she said she would manage somehow and tore off to the local town to buy them blankets, pots, stoves, etc. £20 she spent, and when she returned staggering under her load, they had gone—vanished, and no word left of explanation.