Dearest Jane...

by Roger Mortimer

  Friendship is one thing – marriage quite another. For Roger, John and Desmond, marriage did not prove to be easy. The deep mutual understanding and tolerance established in their shared prison-camp existence made these old friends entirely relaxed in each others’ company. As husbands, my mother largely held prison responsible for their emotional flaws.

  The company of women delighted Roger, who warmed to a pretty face in which kindness, humour and intelligence might be discerned, so long as when her lovely mouth opened it did not spout forth any fanatical or insistently earnest views. As for sex, his letters are stuffed with references to it, most usually in tales of the comedic or tragic peccadilloes of his fellow man or woman, including occasionally his own. The tone and language of their telling is in the voice of one for whom sexual passion seems some way down the list of human compulsions. Affectionate rather than passionate, his view of male/female relations found their best expression in the cartoonists he loved: James Thurber, Osbert Lancaster and Andy Capp.

  Providing you were not a doctor of a different skin tone, a trade union activist, a left-wing female feminist student, a lecturer at a provincial university, a ‘commerssial’ traveller, as he used to say, or a long-haired, unwashed friend of his children, my father was amenable to most forms of social connection. He was always on the lookout for good conversation.

  From his letters, often soaked in cocktails and popping with wine corks, it would be easy to form the view that my father and mother were both rampant alcoholics. For my father, a stack of work was never more than a glass away. I often saw him merry, maybe mightily so, but never drunk. My mother’s smile was brightest over a cup of tea to which she hadn’t added a slug of gin or brandy. When she was on form, her own spirits were quite vibrant enough without alcohol to convert them into a hotter pickle.

  Both as host and guest, my father was what he occasionally called ‘Little Mr Popular’ – a raconteur who charmed and mildly shocked others around the dining table. He often wished people would go home almost as soon as they had arrived and he never outstayed his welcome elsewhere. He did not evaluate a successful social occasion by the hours given up to it – the last thing he wanted was a lunch that lasted until 6 p.m. or a dinner till 1 a.m. Had he been such a guest, the chances of him having the time to digest and relate his adventures in his letters would have been much less likely.

  My Dearest Jane . . .

  The Sunday Times

  [Mid 1960s]

  The Maxwells have moved, a loss I can stand with a fortitude bordering on indifference.

  La Maison des Deux Gagas

  Grand Senilite

  France

  1973

  If you were empowered to ask 12 characters from history to dinner, whom would you ask and why? I fancy the following:

  1 Shakespeare 2 Queen Elizabeth I 3 Marquis de Sade 4 Moses 5 Jack the Ripper 6 Oscar Wilde 7 Gertrude Laurence 8 Cleopatra 9 Fred Archer 10 Jane Austen 11 Marquis de Gallifet 12 M. R. James

  xx RFM

  Barclay House

  14 March [mid 1960s]

  I have a trying week in front of me with two very tiresome dinner parties in London. I have got to the age when I have no desire to entertain other people or be entertained by them. I would far sooner read a book or just think.

  Chateau Marcuse

  Cohn-Bendit

  Deauville

  France

  [Late 1960s]

  We had six people to a dinner party last week. Not a success as Mrs Hislop, who declined champagne and demanded neat gin, was in one of her less attractive moods. She arrived late and announced to one and all that she was ‘pissed’. During the cod au gratin she gave a blow by blow (or ball by ball) account of how she shared a bath at Goodwood with Lord Belper, a story totally lacking both in general interest and aesthetic content. Mrs Cameron stayed the night this week and treated me to a monologue on pre-marital sex in Scandinavia, during which time I sank into a very deep coma indeed while at the same time maintaining – I hope – an expression of lively interest and concern.

  Lord Belper was a racing man and roguish old friend whom my father claimed had never got over the divorce of his parents. Lupin’s riposte was that there were many more individuals who never got over knowing Lord Belper.

  SS Bernadette Devlin (and God help all who sail in her) somewhere off Clacton

  [Early 1970s]

  On Friday I went off to lecture the Garth and South Berks Hunt Supporters Club in a white building, once the Women’s Staff College, at Frimley. Your mother emphasised it was a very smart and formal affair. She came decked out like the Deb of the Year’s mother at Queen Charlotte’s Ball and I was in evening clothes with only faint traces of Heinz tomato soup on the flies. Unfortunately your dear mother had, for a change, got hold of the wrong end of the stick and everyone else was clad as for hunter trials at Tweseldown on an inclement winter afternoon. I felt like the manager of a provincial cinema who feels obliged to stand in the foyer wearing a dinner jacket before the 1.45 p.m. performance. However, it all went off alright and I had a very good supper, sitting next to an elderly lady who would have made an admirable commanding officer of the 11th Hussars.

  I am off to dine with Schweppes tomorrow. I have had a card asking if I prefer oysters or caviar.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Budds Farm

  6 May [late 1960s]

  Mr P now seems to be bedding down with Mrs Scott, ex-wife of the individual who pissed off with the second Mrs P. Mr Parkinson has many virtues but is a very poor picker.

  Maison du Vieux Crapaud

  Burghclere

  1 January [early 1970s]

  Had dinner with the Parkinsons; Desmond’s daughter Anna Louise, now at Clare College Cambridge, is a sweet and intelligent girl who does not thrust her obviously ‘advanced’ views down the narrow gullets of elderly bourgeois guests.

  Anna Louise, daughter from Mr P’s first marriage, became a BBC journalist and a writer. Anna sent her mother a copy of my earlier book, The Coldstreamer and the Canary, describing the POW experiences shared by both of our fathers. Her mother, now in her eighties, was moved by the emotional wartime revelations of her first husband as a very young man. During their marriage, like many others of that period, Desmond had maintained his stiff upper lip.

  The Crumblings

  Cowpat Lane

  31 January [early 1970s]

  Mrs Hislop gave me a most indecent Christmas card made worse by a highly suggestive message inside. Your mother later retrieved it from my wastepaper basket but luckily she did not know who it was from or there would have been a minor explosion. It was not a traditional happy family Christmas chez Hislop. On Christmas Eve, their younger son invited his mother to fuck off (twice), declined to apologise, and shortly afterwards was given £25, shoved into a Newbury Kwiktryp Taxi and requested not to darken the portals of the parental home again. Not quite the sort of scene conjured up by the Revd Harold Anymore-Empties in his annual Yuletide Sermon.

  Love,

  xx D

  Budds Farm

  9 March [1970s]

  Mr and Mrs Hislop came over before lunch on Sunday; Mrs H is a real old tippler and knocks back glasses of virtually neat gin with the carefree nonchalance of a healthy baby lapping up Ovaltine.

  Gormley Manor

  Much Shiverings

  3 February [early 1970s]

  I had lunch with J. Surtees at some smartish midday club and drank a great deal of port, felt dangerously skittish for about 35 minutes afterwards and extremely unwell for 24 hours after that. We lunched with the Maxwells at Sandown. Peter Willett sat next to a rather hairy black beetle who revealed himself as William Hickey of the Daily Express.

  Peter Willett, a family friend in Yateley, was also a distinguished racing writer. He and my father shared many car journeys to race meetings and, more significantly, worked in tandem on a number of books. Having not seen him for over forty years, I tracked Peter down and went to see
him. When parents are gone, all too often so are their friends, particularly when you live a great distance away. It was a joyful and unexpected bonus to rediscover Peter, aged ninety-two, still driving and fully on the ball.

  Loose Chippings

  Soames Forsyte

  Wilts

  14 June [late 1960s]

  I got very sloshed at Martin Gilliat’s annual fiesta, so much so that I accepted an invitation from my old friend Helen Adeane to go to the Garter Service at Windsor Castle tomorrow. Not my tasse de consommé at all and the fact that I let myself in for it is further proof, if such was needed, of the evils of drink. Dinner at the Turf Club (£24.18s.7p) with the Surtees and the Burnaby-Atkins. Your poor mother got a bit edgy and I thought she was going to crown me with a bowl of imported French strawberries. Yesterday I had to ring up Mr Jock Whitney, one of the richest men in America but quite ‘civilised’ (to use a favourite adjective of your mother’s!). I rang up at 11.30 a.m. and the call was answered by a valet who, to my delight, used the royal ‘we’. ‘We had a very late night, Sir, I regret to say, and we are not awake yet. I think it is advisable that we should sleep on.’ I am lunching with Mr W next week.

  Martin Gilliat was the Queen Mother’s Private Secretary with a reputation as a munificent host. Helen Adeane was wife of the Queen’s current Private Secretary, and the aunt of Carolyn Lloyd, aka HT, my oldest friend, who regaled me with stories of Lady Adeane’s filthy sense of humour and passion for practical jokes. To complete the trio of courtiers in attendance, Freddie Burnaby-Atkins was another entirely delightful POW friend of my father and, at that point, Princess Margaret’s Private Secretary.

  14b Via Dolorosa

  Burghclere

  [Early 1970s]

  Went out to dinner and we sat down at 10 p.m. by which time we were all sozzled. Two elderly guests were quite delightful. Less delightful were a common (horrible word but it fits) little publisher of rubbishy books and a wife who took a great dislike to me from the word go and did not attempt to conceal it; and a one-eyed tycoon with a wife who writes knitting articles for women’s’ magazines and smokes pot and indulges in LSD to show how she is in sympathy with ‘the young’.

  Schloss Schweinkopf

  Grosspumpernickel

  Neuberg

  [Early 1970s]

  Many Thistlethwaytes are due to lunch here on Sunday; they always cheer me up and to some extent restore my faith in human nature. Did you see that poor Anthea Dingwall had died? I shall always remember her biting my ear when I was ordering rice crispies and two bars of sunlight soap in Tices’ Grocers. Bye-gone, happier days!

  xx D

  In those Yateley days, I used to pop through a hole in the hedge to play with my next-door neighbour, Anthea Dingwall. She was the youngest of a big family, whose company I enjoyed because they were all older and, to my mind, more fascinating than my own family, and far more overtly and constantly affectionate to each other. My father, who liked them well, nonetheless mocked at their endless embraces, an unlikely version of which he received in Tices’ Grocers from poor Anthea. Her fine military father, Johnny, was gigantically tall, well over six feet.

  Budds Farm

  31 October 1972

  I went to a wedding on Saturday; with natural reluctance and only because the bride’s old Mum, Ag Clanwilliam, is an old girlfriend of mine and I have never met a member of her sex with a sharper or more rollicking sense of the ludicrous. I had some fun with her ever-loving husband, Gilly, too, when we were both young, enjoyed the good things of life and were only mildly handicapped by the fact that we never had any money at all. It was typical of Gilly that when he did not have enough treacle to buy a pair of spats for a canary, he bought the biggest Bentley that ever had been made and which, when driven from Camberley to the Bag of Nails nightclub, required the petrol tank to be refilled at Staines. I suppose the sort of night life available at the Bag of Nails and the Old Forty Three simply does not exist nowadays. I sometimes wonder what happened to the girls at those establishments; some married into the peerage and others, more wisely, into the beerage.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Gilly Clanwilliam was an Army officer contemporary of my father to whom my father was devoted, along with his wife, Ag. They had six daughters. I wish I had known them.

  Clarkson’s Winter Sunshine Cruises

  Runcorn Wharf

  Manchester Ship Canal

  [1970s]

  Last night I went to the Lords Taverners Dinner at the Café Royal which was followed by a boxing tournament afterwards. The dinner was really bad; I sat next to a rather haggard person called Boulting who is in the film trade. He seemed very agreeable. The dinner with Schweppes was excellent but otherwise of quite relentless tedium. We seem to be going out to dinner almost every night and my one evening shirt is showing disconcerting symptoms of battle fatigue.

  The twin Boulting brothers, John and Roy, were both successful film directors and producers.

  The Sunday Times

  16 September 1973

  A woman came to dinner who is the pillar of the local Conservative party and looked like a cockatoo with a slight smell under her nose.

  Budds Farm

  23 September 1973

  I called on Major Surtees in London and got quietly sloshed on port in the middle of the afternoon. How agreeable it is to have a few old friends one can talk to with uninhibited frankness. We know each other far too well to try any bullshit or the commoner forms of self glorification.

  Hypothermia House

  Burghclere

  October

  [late 1970s]

  On Sunday we went out to dinner with Penrhyn Pockney and his wife.

  We arrived punctually at 7.45 as requested but dinner was not dished out till 9.15 by which time I had consumed a great many of Mr PP’s excellent cocktails. I have no recollection of the food I ate or whether I participated, tastefully or otherwise, in the conversation. I do remember kissing a blonde lady and claiming her (untruthfully) as a relative. I did not get the impression that my hostess was all that sorry to see us go. The following day was a buffet lunch given by Mr Parkinson to celebrate his 60th birthday. We were invited for 12.30 but owing to a sharp tiff in the cook-house between Mrs P and her mother, the latter of whom exists on a purely liquid diet, the groceries did not appear till 2.30; by which time one and all were up to their tonsils in gin. Among the guests was a sinister man from MI5 and a rich brewer with a very thin wife; also a small general accompanied by a wife whose consumption of drink was hardly assisted by the occasion which in fact I enjoyed very much.

  Penryhn Pockney (his real name) is married to Jane (des Voeux), sister of Elizabeth Aird and Susan Caldecott, my mother’s cousins and also local friends.

  Budds Farm

  [1970s]

  It is 4 p.m. and Nidnod is wrapped in deep slumber on her bracket. She fancies a spell of Egyptian PT after lunch and today she has a good excuse as last night she was prinking about on the dance floor till 2.30 a.m. We left here at noon and I had engaged a very nice room at the Jockey Club at Newmarket where we had a good rest and some zizz. We were due to dine with Henry and Julie Cecil at 8.30 p.m. and were just leaving when Nidnod noticed a message on the bedside table stating that dinner had been postponed till 9.30 p.m! Luckily some of the picnic had not been consumed as we were getting peckish. The button came off my shirt collar but by some miracle I had brought a spare evening shirt with me. We duly arrived at the Cecils, neither of whom had ever spoken to me or Nidnod before. Both said they were too tired to go to the dance! There were about 11 people to dinner including old Bunty Scrope’s wife (née Sykes). There was also a rich widow whose mother was descended from Pushkin. Henry Cecil has immense charm and is a brilliant trainer; his ever-loving wife has great charm. Plenty to drink. We went on to Cousin Tom’s dance; a superb affair held in Tattersalls Sales ground. The weather was perfect; two days previously there had been the worst thunder storm at Newmarket this centur
y. The decor was fabulous and the flowers most beautifully arranged. You could sit outside the whole evening if you wanted. I am told Charles Blackwell was v. sloshed but never saw him. Your mother bore her years very gallantly and was pleased with her hairpiece until Twitch turned up and with exquisite tact, told her it looked as if a rat had died on her head. Anyway, Nidnod tucked into the win or lose with a will and she really did enjoy herself, cutting pre-war capers with Lord Desmond Chichester and Arthur Budgett. There must have been several hundred people there, a lot of whom I actually knew. We left at 2.30. We came home this morning; Nidnod had a nasty hangover and in the car was reduced to drinking pineapple juice out of a tin can. Suddenly autumnal here. Out to a big lunch party tomorrow; Nidnod is basking in social sunshine.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Tom Blackwell was my father’s first cousin – more of him later – and Charles was his son. My mother was not at ease with the Blackwells but gratifyingly my parents were able to enjoy Tom’s exceptional party together. Henry Cecil, one of the greatest racing trainers, died of cancer in June 2013 and was honoured by a minute’s silence at the opening of Royal Ascot a week later.

  Budds Farm

  20 February 1973

  Mrs Cameron has been here for six hours and has not yet drawn breath or spoken a word of sense so I am going to wash my hair.

  My father was not always in tune with the Scandinavian views of Agnete Cameron, fine, forthright, Danish godmother to Lupin.

  Budds Farm

  [1970s, on pig paper]

  The Surtees had a supper party for 30 in their barn. The browsing and sluicing were beyond reproach and I enjoyed myself with a platoon of recently unmarried women. A very agreeable young gentleman who is just going to Eton said he supposed I had been in World War I which makes me about 84. I often feel it but it is disenchanting to realise I look it as well. On Friday I went to a huge party given by Ian Cameron who is High Sheriff. All the Berkshire Mayors were there: unlike the Metropolitan Police, they could hardly be described as a fine body of men. A band composed of members of local schools played Cole Porter and Noël Coward and played very well too. A trombonist of about fifteen rather took my fancy and I was later able to offer her a sausage on a stick and a stuffed tomato but there was not much time for enlightening conversation.