Dearest Jane...

by Roger Mortimer

  The telephone is being used with an abandon that might lead one to believe that all calls are free. They may be so to you but not to me. All those local calls add up to a very big total and I want them cut down. If you have long-distance calls please find out the cost and notify me. If you have had any such calls in the past three weeks, please let me know.

  Please be careful about leaving lights on when leaving a room. Over the months the amount of money wasted in this respect is considerable.

  The time is fast approaching when you will be living away from home. It is no bad thing, therefore, to practise a little economy. Please remember that basic income tax is 8/6d in the £ and for some of my work I only receive 2/6d in the £ owing to supertax.

  Yours ever,

  RM’

  ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune,’ quoted my father regularly. A decent-sized home in the country, private education for his children, social entertaining and holidays abroad may sound reasonably posh but did not signify loads of dosh – or what my father called ‘treacle’. Bills hung in a heavy chain around his neck.

  However, my father enjoyed little shopping expeditions for treats, sweets and ice creams and eclectic household items, which gave him great pleasure – not least for the shopkeepers he encountered, like ‘the bearded lady’ in the village shop at Finchampstead. Sometimes, after a trip to London, when he was feeling flush, he might come home bearing a smart new holiday outfit for my mother, in bright colours – shocking pink, turquoise or orange. He showed commendable patience in occasionally taking me, an indecisive and uncertain shopper, to buy a new outfit. In common with most men from a military or services background, Roger was always keen to keep moving and get on. It was exactly the same when we later went round gardens together – no loitering or lingering to bask in the scent of a perfect rose.

  Lists of my father’s household chores – ‘fatigues’ – would crop up in his letters.

  ‘Barclay House

  9 October [mid 1960s]

  I must now do the boiler, get the drink up from the cellar for a dinner party, select the glasses, chop up some kindling wood, lay the fire, fill the log basket, fill the coal bucket, fill the cigarette box, clean my evening shoes and scrape tomato soup stains off my dinner jacket, pick some flowers, chuck out the old ones and telephone fifteen boring people. A man’s work in the home is never done.’

  At the end of the day my father sank into his expansive armchair to read a book – newspapers would have been devoured at breakfast time. Beside him like a monument was his large Bakelite ‘wireless’, tuned to classical music on the 3rd Programme in the evenings. Later in the 1950s, a television was purchased – viewing strictly rationed. My father would turn on Tonight with Cliff Michelmore, whilst I sat impatiently, praying that I would be allowed to stay up and watch a proper programme like Emergency Ward 10. I can remember being astonished that my father, with his low boredom threshold, was prepared to gaze at that craggy-faced individual, Malcolm Muggeridge, and listen to his seemingly interminable pontifications.

  Comedy programmes – well, of course my father adored them, either on TV or the wireless: Round the Horn, Hancock’s Half Hour, Jimmy Edwards, Harold Lloyd, Dad’s Army, Till Death Us Do Part to name just a few of them. Maybe they put him in the mood to later ascend the stairs to his study and write his children another letter.

  My Dearest Jane . . .

  Budds Farm

  8 April [late 1970s, on pig paper]

  Charles is spring-cleaning the kitchen with praiseworthy zest and has unearthed many curious and sometimes not wholly desirable links with the past. When I went to fill the log basket this morning, a rat of remarkable size was perched on a pile of wood and making himself very much at home.

  The Sunday Times

  23 October 1972

  I trust the Yorkshire air is suiting you and that you are not lonely away from the Smoke. Your mother tells me you are making your house very nice. I think she visualises you as a future President of the WI and Paul as joint-master of the Bramham Moor.

  A little cottage near Harrogate was our first home in the north. My father always expressed interest in my home life but, in terms of letters, I only fed him a trickle of responses. It was quite a challenge to respond rewardingly to such a polished letter writer – and laziness played its part.

  Loose Chippings,

  Soames Forsyte

  Wilts

  14 June 1970

  We have had a four-week heat wave here and the garden now looks like the remoter part of the Sahara; I have twice seen a mirage on the croquet lawn. Your poor mother has joined an allegedly smart ‘Country Club’ at Silchester. I was taken to bathe there on Thursday and while doing the breaststroke rather gracefully side by side with a Junoesque Swedish au pair girl, one of your mother’s fellow members went through my small kit and removed every penny from my trousers.

  I was taken round Mrs S’s garden last Wednesday. It is enormous – 19 acres – and full of rare shrubs. She is mildly eccentric and goes in for astrology, faith-healing and water divining. Her husband walks two paces in rear and keeps his mouth shut. I once saw him handling his garden fork in a manner suggesting that it would give him greater satisfaction to plunge it into the torso of his ever-loving wife than into the richly manured soil where he was standing. The house is lush but vulgar, with a touch of the Regent Palace Hotel and one of the more expensive cinemas in Birmingham.

  Love,

  xx D

  The Old Troutery

  30 January [early 1970s]

  I hope you enjoyed your visit to the Lake District and have undergone cultural experiences of value. I always associate the Lake District with Gaffer Wordsworth and torrential rain. Needless to say, I have never been there. What indeed do I know of England bar Aldershot and London, W1 and SW1? The answer comes in unquavering tones: SFA. Do you ever read a rather inferior periodical called ‘The Spectator’? It recently contained a longish letter by Diana Gunn defending pornography. Somehow I cannot envisage that ethereal creature really enjoying a cinema bleu but I think the point she makes is that she does not wish other people’s little pleasures to be curtailed. I dare say she is right. I doubt if pornography does much harm and is usually hilarious rather than erotic.

  Your dear mother has grown some lovely hyacinths and is justly very proud of them. I believe Hyacinth is quite a common name among the male Prussian aristocracy. There was a very odious officer in the SS (a body most Prussians of the old school avoided like the plague) called Graf Hyacinth von Strachwitz. I know a rather pompous old boy who carefully conceals the fact that he was christened Narcissus. It has been very chilly down here and my consumption of whisky macs has bordered on the impermissible. All the trendy racing set are off to the Seychelles. As for myself, I hope to have luncheon one Monday at quite a good hotel in Bournemouth. When I went there just before the last war, there was an old man of immense pomposity staying there called Colonel Cornwallis-West. He had been very good-looking in his youth with a penchant for elderly ladies. When 24 he married Winston Churchill’s old mother who was in her late forties. She was a bit young for him so he took on a swarthy old actress called Mrs Patrick Campbell. On account of these exploits he was known as ‘The Old Wives’ Tale’.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Hyper-sensitive and of swan-like beauty, Diana Gunn and her husband Peter were both writers.

  Budds Farm

  [1973]

  I hope you have been able to buy your house in Hexham and that you are furnishing it in lavish and luxurious style so that you can entertain for the local Hunt Balls and Conservative Rallies. Here, my dahlias are very good; the rest of the garden is curling up at the edges like a British Railways sandwich.

  La Morgue

  Burghclere

  [1974]

  I am very, very bored today. It is too wet to take the dogs out, let alone garden, and I am up to date for once with all my work. I wish I had a very large supply of extremel
y potent drugs: all I possess is one aspro tablet somewhat soggy from a long sojourn in a damp sponge bag. I may be driven to going out and having a drink with Mrs Hislop.

  The Olde Igloo

  Burghclere

  17 January [1970s]

  Thank you for sending my glove. It was careless of me to leave it behind and has resulted in slight frostbite in the exposed hand. We have been more or less under siege here but conditions were only really unpleasant for three days when we hardly had the heating on at all and there was no hot water. My car was stuck in the garage for over a week, the post van could not get down the lane, and of course there was no hope of a tanker being able to fill up the oil container. However, we had no lack of logs, alcohol or sustaining groceries. Many other people had a far worse time. Mr P has not been able to get rid of his alcoholic mother-in-law and I doubt if he ever will. She does not do many miles to a bottle of John Haig. Nidnod rather enjoys a crisis and is quite happy unblocking sinks etc. provided I remember to applaud.

  Love to you all,

  RM

  Detention Centre 392

  Burghclere

  1 February [1970s]

  It is raining hard here and doubtless we shall have floods here soon. The de Mauleys are punting over for lunch. Thank God January is over. It has been a hideous month for most people. Owing to the gravediggers’ strike, local corpses are being placed in the deep freeze of Jackson’s Stores. Your mother has a new boyfriend, a retired naval officer in spectacles who lives at Wash Common. He is of a serious nature and was obviously put out when I said there were more dotty admirals than dotty generals, there being a great many bonkerinos in both categories. Not much local excitement except the case of indecent exposure near the old bandstand in the Victoria Park. Lucky to have much to show in this weather! As John Pope used to say, it’s a case of more wrinkles than inches!

  A good friend of my mother, Lady de Mauley had a certain glamour – and grandeur. In their earlier phase as committed pony-club mothers, their mutual competitiveness added an edge to their friendship.

  Very Near the Overflowing Drain

  Burghclere

  11 May [1980s]

  How is your garden progressing? I think you have, fortunately, quite a flair for cultivation, and as a certain lady observed to that restless fellow Napoleon, ‘Vous ne savez pas quelle bonheur on peut trouver dans trois arpents de terre.’ (You do not know what happiness can be found in three acres of earth.) Your mother has decided to try her hand in the garden and has pinched a favourite corner of mine for her own efforts. She has quite a good eye for the garden, much better than I have, but she is very impulsive and allergic to advice. We have hired a Mr Fisher to come in and do housework once a week. He is a saucy old toad described by his wife as ‘a marvel with a Hoover’.

  xx D

  Your Garden This Summer by Enoch Dungfork (alias RM) Radishes are no trouble but encourage wind.

  Beetroots are not much trouble bar for thinning out. Who wants to eat beetroot, though?

  Peas get eaten by birds and it is cheaper to buy them.

  Marrows are easy to grow on rich dung. They look smashing at the Harvest Festival but are somewhat dreary to eat.

  The Bog Garden

  Burghclere

  [1981]

  I am conscious of not having written to you for rather a long time but I don’t in fact write much during the summer. I’m too busy and hardly have time to sit and think. ‘Rest! Rest!’ said Florence Nightingale. ‘You have all eternity to rest in.’ In addition I am compelled to face what Churchill called ‘the surly advance of decrepitude’. Doctors say gardening is bad for the elderly who use, and strain, muscles never otherwise employed. By dint of much labour I got the garden in quite good order for Ascot week.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Home Sweet Home

  Sunday [1980s]

  The garden is very horrible, all straggly and windswept. I sometimes think I prefer concrete. I loathe Sundays. I think this is a hangover from the miseries of Sunday at Eton.

  Le Grand Hotel de Bon Confort et de Repos (I don’t think) 14 January 1973

  Our new ‘daily’, Lorraine, is an agreeable woman but does not realise the perils inherent in trying to engage me in conversation when I am reading ‘The Times’ newspaper at breakfast.

  The Bracket

  Much Slumbering

  Beds

  [Mid 1970s]

  The husband of our daily Lorraine says he wishes to God he was a bachelor! I think he’s got something there.

  Many Cowpats

  Burghclere

  [1972]

  There is nothing to report in the garden bar the presence of a large and extremely likeable toad who looks like Reggie Maudling without his spectacles.

  Budds Farm

  29 April 1973

  The garden is tidy but brown and dry; there is a big friendly toad in the lupins called Nigel. He looks pensive and ill-pleased with the world for which I can hardly blame him.

  The Grumblings

  [1973]

  Mr Randall has just trapped a very tiresome female mole called Ulrica who was ravishing the lawn.

  The Miller’s House

  [Early 1980s]

  Old Randy is here today: judging from what he achieves, I imagine he plants weeds rather than hoes them.

  Chez Nidnod

  The New Caravan Park

  Burghclere

  [1970s]

  There have been some trendy parties in Burghclere lately with much stripping of improbable individuals – our doctor being one of them. Nidnod is worried that we are excluded from these bucolic saturnalia.

  The Old Damp Ruin

  Much Shivering

  Berks

  9 December 1980

  My social life is on the upsurge: I have been asked to a bridge competition to partner a lady of 87. Yesterday I had the urge to cook and made a chocolate cake. Much to my surprise it has turned out a stunner and I am asking some charming ladies in for elevenses.

  I am shopping in Whitchurch this morning. I am very popular there. (Query: Why? Answer: I am younger and jollier than most of the inhabitants.) Last week I went into the general stores and sang:

  ‘How much are the crumpets in your window,

  The ones with the holes going through?’

  That went down very well.

  Little Shiverings

  Burghclere

  [1980s]

  I have bought a new motor, a very cheap Citroën made of cardboard and tin. It has a dashboard like a Lancaster bomber, not one of the knobs being remotely applicable to everyday motoring. Your mother has bought a fridge: I have stumped up for a new carpet for the downstairs loo, the present carpet looking too much like a map of the Solomon Islands.

  [Late 1970s, postcard]

  I hope you’re all having a good time at the seaside. Yesterday I got sloshed at lunch at the Walwyns and spent a lot of money at the Lurcher Show. Colonel Mad came to lunch here on Friday. He is an alcoholic diabetic. The cat made a huge mess in the bath this morning. I sent a cheque to Louise and her dog Chappie ate it. Nidnod on very good form.

  xx D

  Colonel Mad was Private Eye’s name for Jeffrey Bernard. In his ‘Low Life’ column in the Spectator he once applauded Roger’s History of the Derby Stakes as the best racing book ever written. My father asserted that it was only the booze that impeded Jeffrey Bernard from being a top racing writer. When Jeffrey temporarily decamped from Soho to Berkshire, without a car, he wrote himself a letter every day thereby ensuring a postal delivery to his cottage – and a lift in the post van to the local pub, ready for opening time.

  Chez Nidnod

  25 September [1970s, on pink pig paper]

  Thank God I have only 748 pages of this porcine writing paper left. I’m not sure Lloyds Bank really like it. A hideous start to the morning: I woke up, switched on the wireless and the Croydon Salvation Army Band was playing ‘Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam’. I then tottered
to the bathroom and had to evict from the bath a platoon of exceptionally large and healthy spiders whose attitude was distinctly hostile. However, morale was restored by drinking champagne in the sun with the Bomers. I went blackberrying yesterday and was accompanied throughout by an amiable bullock. We are now on good terms and he answers to the name of Nigel.

  Chez Gaga

  Burghclere

  [1974]

  I called on the vicar last week and found him nude except for an exceedingly scant pair of Eton blue swimming trunks, and a beret. I unloaded a great deal of jumble on him for the church fete.

  Chez Nidnod

  Sunday [late 1970s]

  I hear you have been seen at the local hunt ball. I always thought you might end up by becoming a typical member of the Northumbrian sporting community and I shall not be surprised to hear of you taking riding lessons before long. I never really liked hunt balls all that much; hideous memories of wheeling enormous women round the Corn Exchange floor to the strains of the ‘Blue Danube’; slightly intoxicated young men making what they believed to be hunting noises and going down on the floor to worry the hearthrug. Since my photo appeared in the local paper, I am almost a celebrity and am treated with rather less disdain than usual in Jacksons Stores and the local public house.

  Best love and my respects to your ever loving husband,

  RM

  Budds Farm

  Spring 1974

  Your dear mother took me to a party given in a draughty village hall by the Kingsclere and Whitchurch RDC. Sweet sherry in minute glasses, pickled onions, presentations and speeches. I was cornered by a voluble Welsh parson who was a great hand-kisser; he might have kissed mine but for a largish biro stain.

  Castle Chaos

  Burghclere

  22 October [late 1970s]

  The dahlias have been wonderful. I really grow them to annoy garden snobs who affect to despise all colour in the garden bar white and grey, and who mutter ‘Surrey stockbroker’ when they see a herbaceous border.

  La Maison des Deux Gagas

  Grand Senilite

  France

  [1973]

  My herbaceous border, which was looking proud and handsome, has been battered to the ground by a storm of the sort that upset Ovid so much as left Rome for exile: ‘Me Miserum; quanti montes volvuntur aquarum’ etc. (Ah me! What mountain waves around me flow.)