[9] Catherine Walters (1839–1920), courtesan. Her nickname ‘Skittles’ is thought to have originated from her employment at a bowling alley near Park Lane. Her classical beauty was matched by her skill as a horsewoman: the sight of Catherine riding along Rotten Row in Hyde Park drew huge crowds of sightseers. She counted among her many lovers the Marquess of Hartington (later the 8th Duke of Devonshire); Napoleon III; and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII). She was also Blunt’s first love, and he remained infatuated with her for the rest of his life.
[10] ‘The Souls’, a loosely knit but nonetheless distinctive salon that flourished in the late nineteenth century. Its members included many of the most distinguished English politicians and intellectuals. They enjoyed playing stické, a form of real tennis. Diana and Duff Cooper were members of ‘The Coterie’, many of whom were children of the original ‘Souls’.
[11] Three novels by R. S. Surtees (1805–64): Ask Mamma (1858), Hawbuck Grange (1847), and Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour (1853). Many of Surtees’s novels were illustrated by John Leech.
[12] Sarah or Sairey Gamp, the sloppy, dissolute, and usually drunk nurse in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. ‘She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond.’
[13] She was eighty-one.
[14] Lady Wentworth’s former husband, Neville Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl of Lytton (1879–1951), soldier and artist. They had divorced in 1923.
[15] Sir Charles Peake was British Ambassador to Greece, 1951–7.
[16] Probably one of the miniature portraits by George Sanders known to have been in the possession of Lady Wentworth, at least one of which has never been reproduced. There is some evidence that Lady Wentworth may have overpainted one of these portraits, not necessarily to its advantage. See Annette Peach, Portraits of Byron.
[17] Two Irishwomen, identical twins, domestic servants at Crabbet Hall, who earlier had served tea.
[18] Diana Cooper’s granddaughter Artemis, who would eventually write Paddy’s biography. PLF compares her to a variety of apple with a distinctive orange and russet red colouring.
[19] Lady Diana’s secretary.
[20] The oldest substantial book to survive antiquity, a manuscript containing the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.
[21] A seventeenth-century house, now owned by the National Trust, set high on the Sussex Downs.
[22] A Palladian house, built in the Georgian period, also now owned by the National Trust.
[23] A village on the West Sussex coast, now effectively a suburb of Bognor Regis.
[24] ‘That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!’
Robert Browning, Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, 1845
[25] Miss Wade, Lady Diana’s maid.
[26] Diana’s son, John Julius. He had inherited the title Viscount Norwich on the death of his father.
To Ann Fleming
22 June 1954
Poste Restante
Hydra
Greece
Darling Annie,
It’s very exciting to think you may be here in about a month. Joan got a letter a few days ago from Eroica Rawbum, [1] and he seems very keen. Joan wrote to Eroica, painting rather a primitive picture, not to discourage him, but as a sort of insurance policy against disappointment. But the truth is it’s getting better and better every day, and I’m sure you’ll love it. It’s a large house on a steep slope with descending terraces like a Babylonian ziggurat, a thick-walled, whitewashed empty thing surrounded by arid reddish rocks and olive and almond and fig trees, and the mountainside goes cascading down in a series of tiled roofs and a church cupola or two to the sea, which juts inland in a small combe ten minutes’ walk below (quarter of an hour up!). About three miles of the Aegean sea separate Hydra from the Argive coast of the Peloponnese – succeeding stage wings of mountain on the skyline, each one a paler blue than the one in front. The sun sets in the most spectacular way over these mountains and the sea, and every night Joan and I watch it from the top terrace drinking ouzo, then eating late – about 9, when it is dark – by lamplight at the other end of the terrace. There has been a full, then a waning, moon the last few nights, making everything look insanely beautiful. A great scraping of cicadas all day. So do come! I know we’ll have the greatest possible fun.
I spent three days at Chantilly on the way out: Diana was more adorable than ever, a saint in helping to organise tickets, visas etc. in Paris like a tremendously responsible sister. I do worship her, I must say. She’s got a heavenly broad-brimmed hat with a huge black satin bow hanging down the back. My train’s pace was slower than a slug’s, creeping across North Italy and then through Yugoslavia (which seems inhabited by a gloomy lot of brutes) and at last into Macedonia and Greece. I found Joan in Athens, hotfoot from Beirut, Damascus and Cyprus, and brown as a berry, as the saying goes. We are both turning mahogany at a great rate; but I suppose it’ll all peel off, leaving one pink as a baby’s bum once more . . . There’s lots of lovely swimming and goggling (the fish, I must admit, are the size of tiddlers compared to Goldeneye) and lying about in the sun; also sitting about in the harbour drinking retsina at night. I’ve got a marvellous empty studio to work in, where I write away all day like a fire hydrant. Cyril and Baby [2] may come next week – I wonder how Hydra will stand up to the Skelton blight?
Do make serious plans about coming here. Meanwhile, heaps of love from
Paddy
Best love to Ian, also to both from Joan.
[1] PLF’s anagram for Maurice Bowra.
[2] Barbara Skelton (1916–96), novelist and socialite, married to Cyril Connolly. They divorced in 1956.
To Ann Fleming
18 September 1954
c/o Niko Ghika
Hydra
Darling Annie,
Very many apologies indeed from both of us (1) for neither having answered your lovely long letter, full of exactly the sort of thing one wants to hear – it was a masterpiece, and by far the best of any ex-Hydriot [1] so far; and (2) for being such laggards in saying ‘thank you’ for The Dynasts. [2] It really was kind of you to remember it. Joan is now in the thick of the first vol. – the second, which is reprinting, will follow soon, your bookseller says. It arrived just as we were about to run out of books. That green detective one, The Gilded Fly, [3] which vanished so mysteriously, miraculously materialised on the hall table yesterday!
You were missed a great deal by everyone, including the servants, who still talk affectionately of Kyria Anna. Soon after you went, I got a letter from Kisty Hesketh, [4] introducing her brother called Rory McEwen [5] and a pal called Mr Vyner. [6] You probably know the former, v. good looking, and a champion guitar player it seems, and probably very nice. They both seemed wet beyond words to us, without a spark of life or curiosity, and such a total lack of conversation that each subject died after a minute’s existence. We had sixty subjects killed under us in an hour, till at last even Maurice and I were reduced to silence. Joan did her best, but most understandably subsided into a bored scowl after the first few hours.
We heaved a sigh when they vanished after two days that had seemed like a fortnight . . . Your fortnight, I must say, passed with the speed of a weekend. Joan saw Maurice off in Athens, another sad wrench.
Diana, JJ and Anne [7] finally turned up on the 2nd September. The last two left four days ago and D. is still here. They were not nearly such a handful as we feared, in fact very nice and easy and resourceful, Anne painting away industriously, or wandering off independently with JJ, who gave us lots of splendid guitar playing – always stopping in time & not boring at all. I think they enjoyed it very much. Diana, who is in your old room, seems as happy as she is anywhere now, and is very easy and unfussy, enjoying everything, loos, odd food, garlic, ouzo, retsina, etc., mooching about in the port, darting off to Athens, once t
o see Susan Mary Patten [8] off a caïque (but she wasn’t there), once to see the Norwiches off, returning both times laden with Embassy whisky and so on, which was gratefully lapped up. We had a very entertaining old Greek friend for last weekend, Tanty Rodocanachi, [9] which was a great success, lots of funny stories and old world gallantry . . . But Diana’s presence proved a magnet for other yachts, first of all Arturo Lopez [10] in a very sodomitical-looking craft, done up inside like the Brighton Pavilion, a mandarin’s opium den and the alcove of Madame de Pompadour. Chips [11] was on board, le Baron Redé, a horrible French count called Castéja [Lopez-Willshaw’s son-in-law] and a few other people who looked unmitigated hell, but I didn’t quite manage to take them in during our two hours on board. We all felt a bit bumpkin-ish as we clutched our weighty cut-glass whisky goblets and perched on the edge of satin sofas. We were put down at the little restaurant down the hill, to the wonder of the assembled crowds; and the Balkan dark swallowed us up. They were off for the Cyclades and Beirut.
But this was nothing compared to five days ago, when a giant steam yacht (with an aeroplane poised for flight on the stern) belonging to Onassis [12] came throbbing alongside. It was followed by an immense three-masted wonder ship with silk sails, miles of corridor, dozens of Impressionist paintings, baths to every cabin and regiments of stewards, belonging to his brother-in-law, Niarchos. [13] They have made 400 million quid between the two of them, and own, after England, USA and Sweden, the largest merchant fleet in the world, all under Panamanian flags; and all, it seems, acquired in fifteen years. We only saw Niarchos, who is young, [14] rather good looking, very drunk and tousled, not bad really. On board were Lilia Ralli, several blondes, a few of the zombie-men that always surround the immensely rich, Pam Churchill & Winston Jr. [15] Sailing beside it was another three-masted yacht, gigantic by ordinary standards, but by comparison the sort of thing one sees inside bottles in seaside pubs. This was also Niarchos’s, a sort of annexe for overflow, soi-disant, lent to Lord Warwick, though he is plainly some kind of stooge. [16] He looked like a Neapolitan hairdresser run to fat. We did a certain amount of drinking and social chat on the big one (spurning Lord Warwick’s cockleshell) and wandered through labyrinthine corridors gaping at the fittings. I gathered from Pam C. next morning – the focus of all eyes on the quay in pink shorts, gilt sandals and a-clank with gems – that it’s pretty good hell aboard: no sort of connecting link between all the guests, disjointed conversation, heavy banter, sumptuous but straggling meals at all hours, nobody knowing what is a test. Diana, Tanty, and the Norwiches got a lift in this to Athens (D. returning next day), and Joan and I trudged up to fried salt cod and lentils and garlic. We learnt on Diana’s return that the massed blast of our five breaths nearly blew the whole party overboard. There is something colossally depressing about contact with the very rich. What I want to know is: why the hell don’t they have more fun with their money?
Modiano’s Cyprus article was the best I have seen so far. [17] After you left Athens, I accompanied the whole of the demonstration: oaths in front of the Unknown Warrior’s tomb, the burning of the Cyprus sedition proclamation, also of bundles of Union Jacks, cries of ‘Down with the English! Down with the Barbarians!’, then, from the steps of the University, an awful incendiary speech from the Rector that overstated the case so much (he ended with an undying curse and anathema to the English!) that nearly all the sensible Greeks feel ashamed. What a bore it is, and so foolishly unnecessary.
Niko G [hika] comes back next week, but may not be able to stay on, as he is a lecturer in Athens. Joan returns sooner than me, so I’m going to keep my teeth into Hydra till the last possible moment. In spite of all the goings on, I’ve managed to keep on scribbling. I hate the idea of another uprooting and would like to stay till winter starts.
Thanks again, dearest Annie, for The Dynasts, and do please write another London newsletter! Lots of love from Joan and Diana, also to Ian, and from me. All wish you were here.
Love
Paddy
[1] i.e. their guests in Hydra.
[2] An ambitious verse-drama in three parts (1904, 1906 and 1908) by Thomas Hardy, set in the Napoleonic Wars.
[3] Edmund Crispin, The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944).
[4] Christian Mary ‘Kisty’ McEwen, Lady Hesketh (1929–2006), politician, journalist and educationalist. After the early death of her husband, she was left a widow with three young sons at the age of only twenty-five. In the 1950s she organised the annual charitable fancy dress ball of the Royal College of Art, where PLF was a regular guest. Among her remarkably varied activities was a stint as rugby correspondent of The Spectator.
[5] Rory McEwen (1932–82), Scottish artist and musician.
[6] Henry Vyner (1932–96), a neighbour of the McEwens in the Borders.
[7] Diana Cooper and her son John Julius, with his wife Anne.
[8] Susan Mary Patten (1918–2004), one of Duff Cooper’s mistresses and later a leading political hostess in Washington. She had her hair done daily on the chance of a sudden invitation to the White House.
[9] Constantine Pandia ‘Tanty’ Rodocanachi (1877–1956). Before the war PLF translated his novel Ulysse, fils d’Ulysse into English. It was while visiting Tanty and his wife in the spring of 1935 that PLF had met Balasha Cantacuzène.
[10] Arturo Lopez-Willshaw (1900–62), homosexual Chilean millionaire, who lived with his lover Oskar Dieter Alex von Rosenberg-Redé, aka Alexis, Baron de Redé (1922– 2004). Lopez settled $1 million on Redé shortly after they became a couple in 1941, when the latter was nineteen years old. Their parties were famous; the world of Lopez and Redé has been described as like a small eighteenth-century court. Nevertheless, Lopez continued to maintain a formal residence with his wife, Patricia, in Neuilly.
[11] Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (1897–1958), homosexual, American-born Conservative MP and diarist.
[12] Aristotle Socrates Onassis (1906–75), billionaire Greek shipping magnate and businessman, who amassed the world’s largest privately owned shipping fleet.
[13] Stavros Spyros Niarchos (1909–96), another Greek shipping tycoon.
[14] He was then forty-five.
[15] Niarchos’s mistress, Pamela Churchill (1920–97) (later Harriman), ex-wife of Randolph Churchill and mother of Winston Churchill, Jr.
[16] Charles Guy Fulke ‘Fulkie’ Greville (1911–84), 7th Earl of Warwick, lived abroad for much of his adult life. He became the first British aristocrat to star in a Hollywood movie, and was nicknamed ‘the Duke of Hollywood’ by the local press.
[17] ‘A Quarrel between Friends’, The Times, 19 August 1954, written by Mario Modiano, Athens correspondent. Nationalist agitation for an end to British rule in Cyprus and union with Greece had led to an upsurge in anti-British sentiment. See page 111.
To Freya Stark
25 October 1954
c/o Niko Ghika
Hydra
Dearest Freya,
Very many thanks indeed for having ‘Ionia’ [1] sent to us. It arrived yesterday, after what must have been a delayed journey. I have only darted about in it, and the bits I have alighted on have been entrancing, and make me long to follow your and Herodotus’s tracks. The quotations from the Greek anthology are beautifully chosen, and seem to turn up so fortuitously and casually, as a delightfully uninsistent proof of all you are saying. It’s going to be a great treat, I can see.
I think Jock has made a fine job of it. It’s beautifully printed and bound, and your photographs are jolly good. There is one that I turn back to often, as it seems to symbolise the situation (to me, that is, who hasn’t been there) in the former Greek parts of Asia Minor: the one of your guide, a heavy, rather oafish, empty-handed lout planted as inertly as a sack of potatoes on the capsized capital of a broken Greek column. An agreeable bumpkin, I feel, with quite a nice smile; but he oughtn’t to be there . . . The picture is almost heraldic in the simplicity and directness of its message, like the Red Heart of the Douglas [2] or the Bloody
Hand of Ulster. [3]
It seems very quiet here now, with just Joan and me in the place, and all the summer visitors have migrated elsewhere. Diana, with John Julius and Anne, stayed about three and a half weeks. She seemed very happy, as much as she is capable of, that is, and one has never seen less of a fusspot about the comparatively ungracious living of the place. The rains have begun intermittently, and all is quiet and perfect for work, and the pile of MSs grows like a ziggurat. I wonder how you are getting on at Asolo. I’m going to keep my teeth into Hydra as long as possible, all winter if Niko Ghika will let me, as it is the perfect workshop.
Thank you again, dear Freya, for your lovely present, which will provide many happy hours. I’m longing to see the next volume!
With love from
Paddy
(also from Joan)
[1] Freya Stark’s Ionia, A Quest (1954) was followed by several more books on Turkey: The Lycian Shore (1956), Alexander’s Path: From Caria to Cilicia (1958) and Riding to the Tigris (1959).
[2] As he was dying, the Scottish King Robert I (‘Robert the Bruce’), is said to have asked his ally and friend Sir James Douglas (c.1286–1330) to carry his embalmed heart to Jerusalem, where it would be presented to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Douglas set out for the Holy Land, but was killed fighting the Moors in Spain, and the embalmed heart was returned to Scotland. Later Douglas lords attached the image of Bruce’s heart to their coat of arms, to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies and to exhibit the prowess of their race.
[3] The Red Hand of Ulster, originally a Gaelic symbol with its roots in ancient Fenian culture, has been appropriated by Northern Ireland’s unionists and loyalists.
Since 1953 Lawrence Durrell had been living on British-controlled Cyprus, working as an information officer and editing the government-funded Cyprus Review. For Durrell, this was an increasingly testing time, given his philhellenic sympathies and the deteriorating situation on the island.
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