Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  Darling Conrad, Duff rang up and said “How are you, darling?” and I knew at once that he was to tell me something dreadful, and of course it was that Rex had been killed. I minded desperately and Duff was sobbing like a child. Rex was one of the few younger men I really loved, and I’ll miss him, his charm and his art, his sympathy and affection. There is pathos about it that compels tears. Rex was like Fortinbras—fair, dedicated and physically most refinedly made. His spare figure and pale face, the texture of his skin, the fit of his finger-nails, his shining well-set teeth and sweeping hair were those of a delicate and tender prince, making mouths at the event. I have heard no details, only a telegram from B., who likes to be first with news, however bad. What was touching was his fervour, his frame too frail for so much armour but wearing it erectly though it was much too heavy. He’ll be mourned indeed, sweet Rex. He was entirely Christian without pride or envy. Injustice enraged him.

  Chréa

  31 July

  I feel too wretched. I’ve come up here in consequence—left the noise of Randolph and Victor and sought this seclusion. It’s a good deal cooler, but pretty hot though it is 5000 ft above the Sultan’s palaces. There is a gorge nearby where monkeys live. You can go to the sordid little inn, and the monkey-apes come out with their babies clinging to their flat chests, take food, gibber and scoff at you. They sit on my mudguards like heraldic supporters and cover the windscreen with their inquisitive finger-marks. The little restaurant is equally sordid, but one bribes the cook with a cake of soap to make an omelette with one’s own butter, and they dig out a bottle of French wine (Chablis). In every gorge there is a wealth of pink oleanders. Figs fall from the trees. For symbolism you may see olive-trees under whose boughs are piled shells, bombs, ammunition of all kinds and sizes. Waking up here yesterday was like being in a magnifying bubble—the most distant objects brought within your grasp, unknown distances declaring themselves for the first time; a new world where the backgrounds became foregrounds. The hill-tops each carry their protectively-coloured village and kasbah. The more you look the more of them emerge from the lion-skin dryness, like stars that appear after staring at the heavens, or praying mantises only found on their sticks by chance. Sometimes it is cold, blankets and furs, and rolling icy mist. I walked through these strange ghostly conditions with Duff. A still steam everywhere, primaeval cedars looming through the white, sometimes a peep-hole into savage black mountains. If I could take my mind off the bombs in London and Windsor, which I can’t, or if the news of Rex was false, this quiet spot in the silence of the cedar grove would have been like peace. But generally speaking my zest has gone. Rex’s death contributes. My thoughts are of him mostly these days. I remember once his passionate advocacy for fighting one’s war, if necessary without hope. “What has victory to do with it?” I felt ashamed as I had not seen it quite like that.

  6 August

  Doggiest day of all—100 degrees in my bedroom. We eat in the windowless Arab-pillared hall. We get all the hair possible cut off our heads without looking like lamas, and when night comes it will be a scramble for cooler spots. The earth is baked and yet the trees blossom and reblossom as if their feet were in water. I tread the many paths in the garden watching the deprivations of summer, but always some new thing bursts into colour out of what seems scorched earth; red pomegranate flowers now, the vivid jacaranda tree and another acacia-type that drops scrambled-eggs generously. The vines are green as English spring.

  We dined with General de Lattre de Tassigny, the new Commander-in-Chief French Forces in this theatre. He is a romantic figure. One pictures him with Flemish lace laid on his armour. Such intrepid gallantry, such bold effeminacy. Then again he is as modern as a streamline. A local Monty? I think he’s more the local Hitler, not for tyranny but for getting things done. The house had been a sty without light or water. He has made it in two months into a floodlit palace. His wife and son Bernard were there, also the Belgian Ambassador. The rest were staff. The mulberry-skinned guard of honour were late. We could see them tearing into position as we drove up, stumbling over bayonets, their faces almost blanched with panic. We prayed that the General would not hear of it. Duff went with de Lattre to see some flag-and-sunset rites which lasted an hour, executed by the military school of four hundred militaires which he has created in the grounds. Meanwhile Madame gave us the most magnificent description of her husband’s évasion from his prison near Vichy, which was conceived and carried out by her and her son. Then came dinner. Perfect: milk-fed fowl, fresh and tender salad, the right whiff of garlic. The nappe was right (coarse and chic), the chairs covered with interesting canvas (all stuff is unprocurable here). After dinner Nubians in white and rigid sergeants conducted us with torches beneath a sky blazing with stars to a flood-lit court where basket-ball was being played (un match en votre honneur). It lasted a very long time, but what a beautiful game to watch—at least it was last night with these highly-trained young men, all but naked, leaping from the ground like feathered Mercuries and as silently. No scuffle of boots—espadrilles’ softness and an occasional “Merde!” was all one heard. Like some beautiful Greek game with a bit of ballet, played in a grove of pines that freshened you with their hot mountain-smell.

  The game over, we made a tour of the apple-pie-order camp. The boys were marching off to their canvas quarters at Bersagliere speed, each detachment singing a different song as it strode—Auprès de ma Blonde, Sambre et Meuse, Madelon, and others. The place was like a pre-war exhibition with a floodlit hospital and a lecture amphitheatre in the most exquisite classic Moorish style, the foundations of which were not laid six weeks ago, and tents open-flapped, electrically lit, neat as models, each with its enclosure and gravel design of regimental badges at the entrance.

  I don’t know how much all this faultless organisation of chic, discipline and capacity for getting the difficult done is worth. The dictators had it, and it didn’t do them or their countries much good, but it certainly impressed me last night, just as the Berlin Sports-palast impressed Lord Londonderry.

  8 August

  The whole place has become a little Dead-Sea-fruitish. People leave daily never to return, no others of interest take their place; understrappers step into strappers’ shoes. There is a feeling of fin de saison, and that saison the last. No one makes a plan or arrangement of life or work or pleasure, as it is not worth while—not time now. The few left are boring and talk only of Paris. I can no longer put over my act about Algiers being “palpitant.” It isn’t any more. This toy is no longer new. A.F.H.Q.’s departure has slackened and dimmed things. The boiling humidity enervates. I want to come home and see you, and for the bombs to stop, and for my sisters’ sons to be saved. The only soldier I cared for and prayed for nightly is killed. The pain of Rex’s death is still with me every hour. My hair will soon be as white as yours. I look so old that I shall feel shame even before your tender eyes.

  11 August

  The exciting news is that Duckling is due here at 8 a.m. today (top secret). I’m so excited. It’s 7.30 now, like Christmas morning when one gets up too early in childhood and hardly knows what to do till stocking-time. He’ll only be here for three or four hours and (hush, hush) Wormwood has refused to see him, not rudely but firmly. I must go and distribute soap and towels, bumf and stationery, and try to make order of chaos. Lord Gort and the A.D.C. arrived last night and we’ve just packed them off.

  12 August

  Duckling came yesterday. Such preparations! “Perfume the chambers” with jasmine. Due at 8.30. Everything topsy-turvy and exciting. Duff and Randy for the airfield, me left to put the ship in shape. Duckling’s telegram announcing his arrival added a message to Wormwood to the effect that he would be happy to shake his hand. Duff went to deliver this invitation, explaining that for security reasons the how-de-do would be better chez nous. No good: Worm would rather not. No persuasion moved him, so after dinner Duff and a Frenchman started concocting a letter of advice and appeal which was sent as a last hop
e.

  At 8 a.m., when I was waddling round the house dressed as an Arab straightening the divans, putting white wine on ice, Palewski arrived with a sealed answer. I asked him what it said inside. He said he didn’t know. I said wasn’t it maddening? He said wasn’t it. I asked had he (Gaston) done his best? He said indeed he had. The conversation continued in this vein for a bit, then he left and it dawned on me that perhaps he was quite ignorant of what I was talking about. This theory was rather underlined by his saying as he left: “I think on the whole this letter is satisfactory.” So I handed it to Duff with a certain confidence when he arrived. The envelope only contained another addressed to Duckling. It said that as his stay here was only for a few hours he thought it more considerate not to disturb his rest—blah, blah, blah. Silly idiot! Why must he carry on so, just as things seemed much better and after the bouquets in D’s speech? So snubbing for Duckling. Such a flop for Duff. Now when he, Duckling, returns via Algiers, which he speaks of doing shortly, the invitation will not be extended; in fact I don’t suppose Charlie will even hear of the visit.

  So Duckling arrived and walked across the beautiful morning-lit court in khaki with harlequin chest, heavy and weary, a little infirm and unsmiling, but in ten minutes the talk began to flow and, with the flow, the grins and fun, the youth and strength. Randy all smiles and love, shouting him down, abusing his colleagues, especially Anthony. We four sat for an hour or so jawing while the others had baths. No one had the Louis XIV breakfast prepared; they had all eaten on the plane. Our staff behaved unnecessarily tactfully, Freddie doing a total disappearance for the morning, God knows why. I meanwhile was feeling iller and iller. Your old doctor rolled in after his bath and Duck was nannified off by his valet to have his. Then it was iced white wine and off at noon, and I went giddy and couldn’t focus and retired to my bed, miserable.

  20 August

  I’m off to Rome. Suddenly last evening at Chréa the exciting news was telephoned. All was set for 6 a.m. Monday. What to take? How correct in dress to be? How military? How naval? How English eccentric? The valise I had relied on had unaccountably disappeared. Randy or the Arabs have won it, I suppose, so I’m reduced to a piece of luggage bought in Algiers, guaranteed to break or ruin by chiffonage anything put into it. I like it despite its shortcomings, for it belongs to a Sir Richard Burton or a Mameluke or a Kinglake and appears to have been made by the unskilled of Abyssinia.

  Dawson’s assistant, little bright Squadron-Leader Boucher, appeared at 6.30, and after hurling back an amytol and weighing my handbag down with half a bottle of whisky, we got away. Here I am on a Liberator (old tried model) without a glass oubliette piece, thank Goodness. The sanitary bin is there with no veils, but the journey should not last more than four hours.

  Rome

  It was six when we arrived in Rome, by jeep, yellow-red in the setting sun and looking more beautiful than I remembered. There is little traffic, horse-fiacres for the rich, trucks for the army; priests and populace all look as they did. I do not see the rich elegance, the fine clothes and fashion I was warned of. At the Grand Hotel there was a flutter of messages from Randolph, Evelyn, the British Embassy and a letter from Lady Charles saying that, as Winston was staying, she couldn’t put me up and would I dine that night, and a lot of panicky messages from Security and staff members over getting me there.

  Evelyn appeared, quite recovered, and well-meaning, though his ownership of Rome and its churches is going to end in a spot of trouble, I fear. Then Randy blasted in full of gaiety and affection, and I forgot his tricks and his manners, and met him with a glad, full heart.

  The Grand Hotel is an old-fashioned sort of Ritz translated for the nonce into a kind of Kremlin, men with tommy-guns at every door, because all the big-wigs, with the exception of Duckling, were staying there. Like the Kremlin too there seemed to be no charge for anything—rooms free, and if I signed bills for breakfast or drinks for Randolph or Evelyn, nothing more was heard of the item.

  At the Embassy dinner there was Jumbo and U.S. Generals and Admirals, and a jumble of bouts-de-table. I didn’t do at all well with Duckling because my face reminds him instantly of de Gaulle. This gives him apoplexy, so I turn from him to Ambassador Kirk, who tells me that he can’t bear eyes, mouths or any orifices (“mucus, just mucus-holes”). I turn with a new subject to Duckling, but again my face transports him back immediately to de Gaulle, and apoplexy envelops him. It’s made our meetings impossible.

  I pretty well hated the evening and it dribbled on till midnight. Duck was in his state ducks with my slippers on his webbies. I’ve written to him and said it must stop or he’d best not see me.

  I saw the Pope carried shoulder-high through two throngs of Allied soldiers, blackamoors, Poles and ordinaries, and he touched one per cent of the rosaries held up to him.

  I’m to go back by U.S. Naval plane. (It’s not true that Dawson always flies.) I expect half the feathers will be out of its wings and it will have the gapes, but I must get back.

  Dining at Ambassador Kirk’s I heard on the wireless that Paris was liberated. I should be with Duff. “My sense is with my senses all mixed in.” Destroyed with dread I feel.

  This morning a message from the Chancery. Can Colonel Fane be ready to start for Paris tonight? Freddie didn’t bat his devil’s lid. Now it’s after lunch and I can’t bear myself at all. It’s record heat. I have a stye i’ the eye, I’m soaking, tired and ill inside. I can’t breathe.

  I feel dreadfully about Dicky Cecil’s death, and now a Lansdowne boy, and David Wallace, and Rex, O Rex!

  29 August (my birthday)

  Darling Conrad, This is the last letter of this batch. Things move very fast. Saturday, 2 September, is chosen as day of departure. Freddie Fane, Teddie Phillips, Holman, Reilly and some typists left this morning for England, then Paris. The Government has gone. I feel sad—a lump in the throat—because it can never be again, and because it has been sunlit and strange and unlike real life.

  Those who were left were straining to be gone, to be free and to be in France. Duff was glad to leave North Africa. It had not held for him, as it had for me, the same beauty nor yet the relief, for he had never envisaged defeat and he now looked forward eagerly to the struggles and demands of Paris reclaimed. I alone dreaded departure from this temporary yet vital, substantial yet dreamlike, domain. Algiers possessed me.

  Black doom was retreating and the Powers of Light ever on the march, scattering the enemy before them. This rich pagan earth, after our five years of war’s austerity, was a promised land.

  The once-hated house in which we had slunk around, unwarmed, unwatered and unfed, had become a palace of two worlds—of earth and of heaven. My heart felt more than ever before open, generous, almost selfless. It could offer all it had to the thousands that rushed or wandered through our courts, to the great men and women of five continents, to the smiling prisoners, to the humble and meek who had learned with rejoicing and ease to integrate. Where rats had scuttled now shimmered a gazelle’s ghost, two disdainful peacocks, a little silver cat, great Fatima the cow and a nuzzling donkey. Good-bye to them all; goodbye to the flowering trees, Judas and jacaranda, to the Valley of La Femme Sauvage, to the Marabout’s shrine, to the white domes, the Arabian arcades. Never more …

  The last night, my mind a little disordered by imminent loss, I found intolerably hot. I walked the moonlit paths of our wide garden and noticed that, as in shallow waters on the beach, the temperature was patchy, and colder pools could be discovered. Like an unhappy somnambulist I was subjected to the fearful labour of dragging my mattress, pillow and mosquito-net down flights of narrow stairs, through impeding doors, over park, over pale, thorough bush, thorough briar, to my marked oasis. The net I tied to the limb of a frail tree. Beneath it I stretched my mattress, and there I composed myself and slept, to be woken within one small hour by a frantic cloudburst whipped into arrows by a hot hurricane that disbranched my roof-tree and streamed my net up into the semblance of a white
witch. I fled whimpering to the house.

  Next day we took off from Maison Blanche bound for London. I should see my son and Conrad, my sisters and many friends in a few hours. This comfortable thought mitigated the sadness but could not dispel it.

  We flew over Tipaza’s ruins, syrens silenced now by the engine’s roar. Goodbye! Chréa’s cedars fast vanishing behind us. Never more … A long farewell, Tombeau de la Chrétienne, the last hive on our bee-line towards home and victory. My tears could not be stopped, and they had to be silent ones, for they were out of place and hysterical on so happy a day. They would not stop and for many years talk of Algiers would summon them back in my eyes to everyone’s amusement.

  Re-arm for Paris. No need to worry about trop de zèle, but surtout pas de faiblesse.

  I remember very little of London. There are no letters, as Duff, Conrad and John Julius were all three in hugging distance. The flying bombs had been blown to bits, so I was spared that horror.

  Emerald held her court at the Dorchester. Nothing was worse materially. Spirits were gladder, not higher. We seemed tired and no longer spurred by menace. John Julius still wore his open expression; his hands and feet were outsized and his hair recalcitrant as a pony’s. The nephews were all alive and whole. I stayed long enough to order some clothes suitable to Paris, not to me—what we called “like other people” dresses and some humourless hats. No more clowning. I must try not to swell the list of mad English ambassadresses.

  * Winston’s nom de guerre of the moment.

  CHAPTER EIGHT