Dearest Jane...
Page 8
‘We don’t want to lose you,
But we think you ought to go.’
It would be kind of you, therefore, to let me know your plans; not just dithering generalities, but firm intentions.
Yours ever,
D
Barclay House.
27 April 1967
I miss you very much here and the house is deplorably quiet without you and Charles. I expect you may feel a bit lonely and homesick for a day or two but I think you will find Eton quite a friendly place and you will meet plenty of people of your own age.
A colony (household) of bachelor beaks (masters) at Eton, desperate to secure a cook for a term, handed me the job. How kindly and indulgently they treated me; I was fascinated by them. The youngest, now Sir Jeremy Greenstock, rose to become a high-profile ambassador at the United Nations; Mark Phillips became a housemaster – as did Howard Moseley and dear, splendid Michael Meredith (Eton Librarian) – to my future sons. Michael Kidson was legendary for lavishing his affable brand of derisory wit upon his pupils, other masters and myself. Always on the side of the boys, he bailed out my brother more than once. Fifteen-year-old Charlie, aka Lupin, visited me regularly for tea, snacks and surreptitious cigarettes.
Barclay House
April 1967
Charles is really very pleased to have you there; inspire him to work if you can. He made a typical remark after we left you last night: I asked him who the masters were and his only comment was ‘The one that hadn’t shaved is rather nice.’ Your room looks quite pleasing; let me know if there is anything you want. I will bring back some sausages from Newmarket next week and drop them at the Corner House for you. Don’t smoke too much or try to be bright and chatty at breakfast.
Best love,
xx D
Barclay House
30 April 1967
I thought it might cheer you up as you toil at the stove cooking for the beaks at the Corner House to receive a letter. I hope you will establish a new standard of food at Eton and banish forever boiled cod and caper sauce followed by cornflower shape. Now the warm weather is here, an imaginative hors d’oeuvres is delectable, followed by lamb cutlets and new potatoes. If your clients show signs of losing weight, block them up with a tremendous suet roll, washed down with a tin of golden syrup. Boiled beef, dumplings and young carrots form an excellent stopper too, particularly if preceded by a bowl of thick pea soup nourished with cream. Keep an eye on that irresponsible but not entirely detestable brother of yours and ensure that even if he declines to work, he occasionally washes and changes his socks.
If you fall in love with a beak, choose a rich one. Preferably not a scientist of leftist views. I suggest a classical scholar with a nice place in Wiltshire and a villa in the South of France.
Budds Farm
Autumn 1967
So glad you have landed yourself a nice job in London entirely on your own initiative. You will soon be able to employ your brother (or me) as butler – chauffeur – social secretary!
Best love,
xx D
If only I could remember which job was being applauded!
Budds Farm
28 April 1968
I hope you are behaving with suitable decorum now you are living alone in your super-luxury flat in the heart of fashionable, exotic Notting Hill Gate. Today the de Mauleys are coming to lunch so no doubt we are in for a feast of lively, intelligent conversation (‘Does Jane see lots of nice people in London and go to lots of lovely parties?’). I think I shall say you are walking out with Tariq Ali.
Lady de Mauley could be relied upon to promote the necessity of meeting the right people.
Budds Farm
Tuesday [1969]
I hope you are conducting yourself with bourgeois decorum and are giving no practical demonstrations of your approval of the permissive society.
Budds
6 May [late 1960s]
I trust you are well and are living up to the exacting social standards of darkest Islington. Your dear mother of course fears the worst and seems to think you would be better off with a nice chaperone somewhere near Pont Street.
Sois sage,
xx D
183 The Turf Club
Monday [January 1970]
It is very kind of you to ask me to dinner on the 23rd bearing in mind the long-established fact that parents tend to be odious with their children, and children only slightly less so with their parents. What costume shall I wear? My old blue three-piece, betraying to one and dreary all my middle-class background, or a bottle-green wig, spangled pyjama suit (displaying emerald in navel). I trust your various 21st birthday parties go off well and I personally see no difficulties, but from your poor mother’s point of view it is as complicated as the Versailles Peace Treaty and probably as unsatisfactory, too.
The ‘Au Revoir’ Home for Distressed Gentlefolk
Barbara Castle Crescent
Brookwood
Surrey
22 July 1970
My Poor Improvident Child, not entirely to my surprise you seem to be thoroughly disorganised and in grave financial difficulties. I have therefore instructed Mr Featherbole of Lloyds Bank to cable you £30 forthwith at your current poste restante address. It ought to arrive tomorrow. Your brother set off at 9 p.m. today; at 9.45 he was back, having forgotten his luggage. At 10.15 he was back again having forgotten his razor (an item which will probably not be over-employed). He is a very likeable moron. Louise, who has had a bad school report, sends her love. Thank you for the photograph. Can it have been you in a herringbone suit and slight beard?
I had left my job as an advertising copywriter for a summer on a Greek island, travelling with Paul who had taken his typewriter to do some writing. A writer at heart, his first bestselling novel was published in 2007 – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – one of many. Lupin drove out to join us for a spell. He arrived four days after we had left. Back in London, I became distracted by different people and activities.
Le Petit Bidet
Burghclere Les Deux Eglises
Sunday [November 1970]
How is your curious existence progressing? What are the latest episodes in this heart-gripping serial that plumbs the depths of human emotions and strikes a new note? Have you succeeded in busting open that terrifying monopoly in the creation of bizarre shoulder bags that was threatening western culture, nay even civilisation itself? Are you still in the throes of a meaningful relationship with the trendy, avant-garde critic of wet and dry groceries whose name continues to elude me? What pulsating dramas are being steamily worked out behind those prim Georgian facades of groovy Gibson Square? No one tells me anything and I’d like to be told – though not at any great length.
My phase of making beautiful handbags was of little appeal to my father. The trendy avant-garde critic was funny, clever and sanguine Scot, Colin Adamson – still a true friend.
Ward No 27
Mortimer Home for the Mentally Under-Privileged
Nuthampstead
Herts
[Late 1970]
I enjoyed seeing you last week and thank you for helping. I thought you looked well despite efforts, worthy of a nobler cause, to maintain members of the tobacco trade in full employment. I’m sorry if your own life is giving you trouble. I wish you would get another job. I think you are squandering your talents. The fact that most of your relations are mad, egocentric, irresponsible, unreliable, financially incompetent and hysterical – in fact a truly lamentable collection of middle-class dropouts – is no excuse for you to make a morose hash of your own life.
Best love,
xx D
My father was right. However, things took a happy and decisive turn in April 1971 when I became engaged to Paul.
Budds Farm
May 1971
We are meeting Dr and Mrs Torday this week. I expect from what they’ve heard of us they’ll nervously be awaiting two total lunatics; I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. To promote a merry f
amily atmosphere for your nuptials, I have decided to dismiss my worries about Charles from my mind and to wash away my resentment in a copious flow of stimulating alcoholic beverages, with the East Woodhay Silver Band playing ‘Here’s to the next time’ in the background.
Your affectionate father,
xx
In July, we married in St Mary’s Church, Islington, with a reception in Chelsea.
The Sunday Times
1 October 1972
I am delighted to hear from your dear mother that you have moved to a very attractive house. Stet Fortuna Domus! Harrogate is (or used to be) a sort of poor man’s Baden Baden. I once stayed there for the St Leger (1937) and was permanently sloshed in the Majestic Hotel. The waters at Harrogate are good for the liver but somewhat unpredictable in their immediate results. When I was a boy an old admiral warned me never to trust a Harrogate fart. Coarse counsel but wise.
After a year we left London when Paul was offered a job with a company near Leeds. We bought a cottage close to Harrogate.
The Sunday Times
The Editor in Chief’s Office
Midnight [1972]
I am content that you seem happy in Yorkshire but of course wish you were not so far away. However, I intend to motor to Harrogate before long to take the waters since my liver and kidneys are howling out for treatment. I shall look forward to taking a number of delicious meals chez Torday.
Budds Farm
31 January 1973
Just a brief note to wish you and your ever-loving husband a successful New Year and what the prayer book calls a happy issue out of all your afflictions; which includes your driving test.
The Sunday Times
2 April 1973
It really was nice seeing you – and the esteemed P. Torday, too, this weekend and your visit gave Cynthia and myself a lot of pleasure. Of course I’m sorry you are off to live in Northumberland – I must look it up on the map one day – but one cannot expect one’s children to spend their lives within an hour’s drive of the old soaks at home. The best way to keep in touch will be by correspondence; I will endeavour to write to you once a week and I hope you will try and do roughly the same.
Change was on the way again. Following the tragedy of the death of my mother-in-law in a car accident in Kenya, Paul brought forward his long-term plan to go and support his father in the family engineering business near Newcastle upon Tyne.
Budds Farm
[1970s]
I’m sorry I was short with you on the telephone. I ought not to have answered it as I was doing something I thought (mistakenly) was important. Your mother is entertaining 4 men in the kitchen including a postman press-ganged into moving a swarm of bees. Your mother has monopolised the conversation and not even a bee has managed to get in a buzz. Am now off to do a vase for the flower show.
xx D
The ‘important’ activity that I had disturbed was the boiling of his breakfast egg. He hated the telephone.
HM Office for the Deciphering of Ancient Documents
19 Sludge Street
London WC1
[1970s]
I sent a page of your last letter to a local handwriting expert, Mrs Eunice Thribbs. I did not reveal your identity and she drew the following conclusions: ‘Your Pakistani friend is a victim of recurrent malaria and his consequently shaky hold of a cut price biro has led to malformation in much of the script. A modest knowledge of the English language, in particular the spelling of words containing more than one syllable, adds to the problems of even a pertinacious reader. I conclude that the writer is male, over seventy years of age, several times married, has suffered from trench feet, is willing to please but is handicapped by scanty education and an unfavourable environment. His religion is Primitive Methodist, his favourite dish curried rabbit and his colour shocking pink. Lucky day – the martyrdom of St Vitus.’
xx RM
Budds Farm
15 June 1974
I wish you and the highly esteemed Paul Torday were here as it is very hot and conditions are ideal for croquet and jugs of Muscadet with the unexpended portion of yesterday’s fruit salad floating around on top.
Budds Farm
28 August [mid 1970s]
It is very kind of you to invite the Budds Farm mob up for Christmas; personally I would as soon have the Kray gang. I will certainly give your generous invitation most serious attention. Why, you may ask, does the old dodderer not accept at once? The reasons are as follows. While in full appreciation of your comfortable house, bounteous hospitality and stimulating company, I rather dread in midwinter two car drives of inordinate length particularly with the car loaded to the roof. Also, as one gets more and more senile and decrepit, one is reluctant to leave one’s one own home and is happier amid the old familiar lares et penates. However comfortable the beds, I never sleep well away from my own bracket, although sometimes the non-stop drone of your dear mother’s voice induces a form of coma not totally un-reminiscent of blissful unconsciousness. I am sure all the other members of my family are looking forward to coming to Hexham and would be bitterly disappointed if they were prevented from doing so. My present inclination, therefore, is to send them with my blessing and some money for petrol and to hold the fort here with the dogs. I think your mother will be in far better form without me and will find ample compensation for my physical absence in the knowledge that she can make the wildest and most inaccurate statements with rather less fear of contradiction.
This didn’t prevent my parents from spending Christmas with us in Hexham and, two years later, at our next home, a rented farmhouse near Corbridge – Brocksbushes.
Budds Farm
27 December [late 1970s]
It really was kind of you to shelter the Budds Farm Oldsters under your wings and to take such unremitting trouble to give them a very happy Christmas. I don’t often get champagne for elevenses! (Unfortunately.) I like Brocksbushes very much indeed. I very much enjoyed occupying the ‘Senex suite’ which greatly reduces the danger of grave injury when falling out of bed.
The ‘Senex suite’ involved a double mattress on the floor of a bright yellow bedroom.
The Olde House with No Loo Paper
29 December [early 1980s]
Thank you both so much for giving us such a happy Christmas which I assure you was greatly appreciated by Cynthia and myself. Your charming house was beautifully warm and the browsing and sluicing were of a high order. The ‘groaning board’ reminded me of two lines by F.J.B. Snelgrove (The Byron of Upper Norwood):
‘Where grapes and grouse commingle gaily,
And capers mix with capercailye.’
I think your particular brand of hospitality, based on a judicious mixture of solicitude and laissez faire has everything to recommend it. Thanks for all your presents. I am wearing the red socks and drank tepid Nescafé out of the pig-mug. Give my love to the scholar and the athlete.
With Love and gratitude
xx D
The scholar and the athlete were my sons. Yes – we had moved again. Our landlords needed Brocksbushes for themselves, so we bought enchanting Matfen High House when property prices were peaking.
The Old Damp Ruin
Burghclere-under-Water
3 January [early 1980s]
Paul still stands impeccably high in Cynthia’s estimation (a bit annoying for me) and she leads acquaintances to believe that he is a cross between Sir Winston Churchill and St Francis of Assisi.
My mother Cynthia is now irretrievably known by her nickname – Nidnod.
Loud Screechings
Burghclere
2 March 1981
It was a great pleasure having you to stay and your brief visit made me regret all the more that you live away up north with the Eskimos. It was most agreeable, too, having the highly esteemed Paul Torday to stay, and both of you were not only extremely helpful but very tactful with Nidnod who has the lowest combustion point of any adult resident in this country: or in Europe for that ma
tter. Paul was probably the success of your mother’s birthday party. More seriously, watch your husband carefully and try to ensure that he does not work too hard. It is quite an easy thing to do, to work too hard, and then the penalty is very severe. I once had a commanding officer who was dead keen on what he termed ‘rest discipline’. In his own case, his particular form of self-denial included two large glasses of gin and French before lunch, two large glasses of vintage port after a snack of steak and kidney pudding, marmalade roll and stilton cheese, this frugal diet being followed by deep sleep on a sofa till 4.30 p.m. when the waiter aroused him with Indian tea and muffins, sometimes a generous slice of plum cake as well.
Mind you look after your health and as far as possible lay off that dried up camel crap which is commonly referred to as tobacco. You have a lot of nervous energy. Do not be too prodigal in its expenditure.
Love to you all,
xx D
The Old Ice Box
Monday, January 1979
Of course being 30 years of age is a rather depressing landmark though nothing like as bad as 40 when many members of your sex enter the dreaded realm of Old Bagdom, never to return. I was 30 the year the Second World War started! I have had a fairish ration of life since then, some of it rather awful, some not unamusing. I long ago realised that happiness was an unattainable target and settled for contentment: which sounds stodgy and probably is. I cannot compare the lives of your generation with those of my contemporaries since circumstances are so entirely different. In my day members of the middle and upper classes (both sexes) did not marry as young as they do now. Men in particular had years of comparative freedom from domestic responsibility and if they possessed any enterprise at all they had a very good time one way or another. A young man married at 21 was reckoned odd or boring: of course, girls who marry young nowadays are sentenced more or less for life to an existence of nanny, cook, housekeeper, dog-doser, part-time chauffeur, hospital nurse and entertainer of her husband’s friends. My mother never changed a nappy, sat up with a sick child and felt quite exhausted after ordering meals (one sort for the family, another for the servants). Probably most of your existence will be lived after 30 and at times you will feel frustrated and depressed, but as long as you can keep on speaking terms with your family and have a few loved and loving friends, life will produce many compensations. Of course as you grow older you do not make friends in quite the same way as you did when you were younger: you are not so close and you do not exchange confidences in the old uninhibited way. Friends too are apt to move on to a different level when they marry or you yourself do.