My History: A Memoir of Growing Up

by Antonia Fraser

  So that was a failure. The success was our visit to Bernard Berenson, for whom Patrick had worked at Villa I Tatti before his yacht trip to America. It was a success, that is, for Vanessa and myself; I’m not sure that Patrick and Thomas in their different ways shared this view. The great man was now in his late eighties, a small but very dignified figure, with a well-trimmed silver beard; he was wearing a lot of clothes for such hot weather, as well as a hat, but that only added to his impressive aura. “B.B.,” as he was known, was presented to us as the pre-eminent authority on Renaissance Art, and Patrick’s hero; I knew nothing of his more controversial history with the art dealer Joseph Duveen. Vanessa and I found him to be extremely benevolent in a delightfully paternal manner, as though it was an especial pleasure to encounter young ladies like ourselves. We were placed on either side of him at lunch; he smiled warmly at us. B.B., however, showed no similar desire to be paternal towards my brother Thomas, who was put at the bottom of the long table under the arches; either that or Patrick, scenting trouble, had influenced the placement.

  Patrick, if it was indeed his initiative, was right. Towards the end of lunch, Thomas leant forward—he had to lean a long way to make himself heard—and said in a loud voice: “Mr. Berenson, you have made a pretty good thing out of the Renaissance, haven’t you?” B.B. did not miss a beat. He continued to smile, a smile that included Vanessa and me, and might even have included Thomas. He gave no acknowledgement whatsoever of the importunate question. Twice more, the demanding voice from the bottom of the table was heard. Each time B.B. smiled on. Eventually Thomas gave up. Yes, a great man indeed.

  My romance with Patrick did not last, not because of the importunities of my brother, for whom he retained a strong if exasperated affection. (In later years, in arguments over family pictures, Thomas probably felt the same.) For all my hopes and sighs and wishes, his ardent protestations and plans, Patrick and I were simply not meant to spend our lives together. The trouble was that we both found difficulty acknowledging the fact to each other, given the heady relationship we had enjoyed while I was at Oxford. It was understandable—I was still only twenty when I left and Patrick four years older.

  There was undoubtedly a certain amount of deception on both sides, due to this shared reluctance to say goodbye. For my part, those summer nights in Oxford, my last summer term, could not really pass without romance of some sort; and as for summer days, what are punts for, if not for gazing upwards in rapture at the manly figure in charge? From Patrick’s point of view, he was now in London, and once more every maiden’s dream.

  In any case, in a mysterious but timely fashion, my historical work had suddenly returned into my life with renewed significance. Having malingered over medieval History, on a sudden impulse I chose a completely different special subject. This was known as “The Making of the Ententes” and referred to the period in the first decade of the twentieth century, in which various diplomatic alliances were constructed in Europe; arguably these Ententes would lead up to the First World War, although the precise connection is still debated. I cannot now remember why I defiantly chose a special subject so far from my earlier declared medieval interests. And it was defiance: I was delicately warned that it might harm my academic prospects. The implication was that I would be regarded as a historical flibbertigibbet. I suspect that in the first place I got interested in the character of Edward VII, who played a major role in these events. (Did that define me as a flibbertigibbet?)

  What I did not know at the time of my choice was the fact that this whole period was a special interest of my father’s. To me, Frank at this point was a dedicated politician, and I had not cared to investigate his academic career. The final job he held in the first post-war Labour government was that of First Lord of the Admiralty. By his own account, Frank hesitated before taking it: it was his past which still haunted him. “Was it really possible that I, with my own inglorious war record, could supply leadership and inspiration to the finest Navy in the world?” Mr. Attlee persuaded him to accept with the cheerful reflection: “The Navy survived Winston and Brendan—it will probably survive you.” Five happy months followed, in which we had the use of Admiralty House, remarkable for harbouring in winter the so-called Fish Furniture, the wondrous Regency suite in the shape of dolphins from the Brighton Pavilion. This coincided with the Oxford holidays. All too briefly, my entertainment of my friends in London took on a remarkable lustre.

  In the General Election at the end of October 1951, Labour was defeated and Frank’s spell in the government came to an end. He returned in due course to Oxford, the place he really loved, and thanks to the influence of Robert Blake (so Frank always said) resumed teaching at Christ Church. It was in this way that father and daughter coincided at the University, and Frank became my unofficial tutor on “The Making of the Ententes.” It was an extraordinary timely discovery that my father was a thrilling tutor just as I was approaching my final year: more than that, just as I was working on a subject which really intrigued me.

  It marked a new stage in our relationship and an exciting one: suddenly my beloved but abstracted parent reading a book who left all decisions to my mother, was transformed into a vigorous, argumentative historian who enjoyed debating the subject as much as I did. I might actually be reading his same book. The coincidence led to a kind of obsession with the whole pre-First World War period in general, Sir Edward Grey in particular. It never quite left me. When I was contemplating writing a work of History, shortly after my first marriage, I suggested the title Summer 1914 to my publisher. It was not a serious suggestion—with two children in eighteen months, I really just wanted a lawful excuse to read History books instead of The Adventures of Babar. I did accept a hundred-pound advance, but then honourably returned the money—as I recall it.

  A little while later the publisher rang me: “Someone has written your book,” he said. The author was Barbara W. Tuchman and the book was The Guns of August, alternatively known as August 1914. Immediately on first reading, this became one of my favourite History books and has remained so: the mixture of scholarship, readability and a quality which I will call humanity entranced me. I had a further reaction. In part, I felt, accurately enough, that I could never have written that particular book half so well; another part of me felt that one day I might at least try to write a similar kind of book almost as well. It was an inspirational experience, as when I read Garrett Mattingly’s The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, or Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic in 1971; the latter in particular showed me another way of writing History and profoundly influenced my study of women in seventeenth-century England, The Weaker Vessel.

  There is a footnote to the Barbara Tuchman story. Invited to the American Embassy to meet the distinguished historian herself, I was overwhelmed with hero-worship for this pleasant, confident, middle-aged American lady with her elegant dress and well-arranged silver hair who had achieved so much. I could say nothing to her. When I explained this to Harold, he responded sympathetically: “I felt just the same way when I met Denis Compton.” From a cricket fanatic to a History freak, it seemed exactly the right comparison.

  The time for Schools, as the examinations were known, arrived. To show seriousness, we had to wear sub fusc, that is black-and-white clothes, black ties for the men, black stockings for the girls (to show something else, I chose to wear black nylons with saucy seams down the back, the sort that kindly Americans had bestowed on girls in the war; invigilators looked at me with disapproval but could not find that it was actually forbidden).

  The day before, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II had taken place. I received a ticket to a stand facing down the Embankment, from which I would see the girl Queen arriving as yet uncrowned for her destiny, but would then be able to depart for last-minute frantic study. There seemed a splendid allegorical meaning to all this: I too was a young woman seeking her destiny, although it happened to be in the rather less glamorous Examination Schools of Oxford, rather than Westmi
nster Abbey. My ruminative mood was suddenly disturbed by raucous shouts of glee as I crossed the forecourt of Parliament to reach my stand: the successful climbing of Everest had just been announced. Luckily, the young Queen, looking so tiny, so fragile, in her coach more than satisfied expectations. And I was soon able to trail back to Chelsea where my parents now lived in the week.

  I walked alone along the Embankment for half an hour without seeing a single human being, only birds along the river. I felt like someone in a science fiction movie, alone in a world struck by some out-of-space disaster. But these fresh meditations were interrupted when I realized that all the human beings were sitting indoors, with their heads towards the real portents of the future, their new television sets.

  As to the examinations which followed, of course I did not get a First. How could I? I had not done nearly enough proper hard work over three years to fulfil any such expectations. But hope springs…because I was twenty and hope is mercifully impartial. Afterwards it was on balance gratifying to hear a rumour that I had done so well in my Ententes paper, and so badly in a medieval one, that there had been some doubt whether the same person could have written both papers. If true, it was a tribute to my father. As it was, he would perform one further good deed in the interests of bolstering me up.

  Frank took an acute interest in my degree; this was not entirely due to the possibility of parental pride (or disappointment). As we shall see, he was a master handler of disappointment, no doubt because that searing experience of failure in the army stayed with him. In fact it wasn’t just my degree. As an academic in his early career, he took a keen interest in all degrees and remembered them long after in later life: When Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister, I recall Frank throwing in the fact that he had got a Fourth.

  In July, I received only a short perfunctory Viva, the oral cross-examination following Schools, by which a student might raise her or his degree up a level in answer to questions. From this I knew immediately that I had not got a First. To receive an un-Viva-ed First was extremely rare, and certainly not in prospect for me.

  I went back to LMH and into the coin box by the porter’s lodge. I rang my father.

  “Dada, I’m awfully sorry but I haven’t got a First.” Frank did not even pause. Quick as a flash he said: “Oh, I’m so glad. Because if you had, you would never have got married.”

  About ten years later, I remembered the exchange and out of curiosity asked Hugh whether he would have married me if I had got a First.

  “Oh, but I always thought you did get a First,” he replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JEUNE FILLE IN PUBLISHING

  “His name is George Weidenfeld,” said Elizabeth, “and he’s a brilliant young publisher.” She added: “He’s very interested in offering you a job.” This was her edited version of a conversation regarding my future which in George Weidenfeld’s subsequent account went somewhat differently. He sat next to my mother at some London dinner party and mentioned that he was looking for a new recruit to his newish firm Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He wanted a girl to balance a young man from Cambridge, Nicolas Thompson, recommended by Hugh Trevor-Roper. As he outlined his needs, George waxed eloquent, particularly on the subject of languages, which were highly necessary for his European-minded firm but he found sadly lacking in most young English people: French naturally, perfect French, German (he was publishing a lot of war memoirs), Italian, which he spoke fluently himself, useful Spanish, Swedish, Swahili…the list went on and on. At all points Elizabeth nodded vigorously.

  This she-paragon should also be immensely intelligent, and, if still at university, sure of getting a magnificent degree at the end of it. The she-paragon should also have unrivalled social talents (what would now be called people-skills). Pretty, of course: I learnt later that George did not contemplate the possibility of women in his universe who were not attractive, as a result of which all of them were—or, more to the point, felt that they were. Elizabeth kept up her vigorous nodding to the end. When it was clear that George had at last exhausted his specifications, she did not hesitate: “Look no further. I have just the girl for you. She is my daughter Antonia.” George admitted to me later that he was slightly surprised that Elizabeth did not even pretend to advance any other candidates. A lunch was duly arranged at the house in Chester Square where George lived with his young wife Jane Sieff and new-born baby Laura.

  The prospect of joining a publisher came as a welcome relief to me at Oxford, after my mother’s first ambitious plan for me, that I should go into the Foreign Office. This meant passing a stiff exam; furthermore at that date a woman left the Foreign Office if she got married. There was a third element to be considered: I would have been a rotten diplomat. (It would be thirteen years before my mother’s ambitions in this direction were finally gratified by the diplomatic success of my brother Michael.) Then Elizabeth gradually let slip George’s requirements, especially about languages, and I began to feel like the peasant girl in the fairy tale whose father persuades the prince to marry her by promising she can spin straw into gold.

  It was true that lunch passed merrily enough and to my secret relief no other language but English was spoken. Nothing was said about a job since the conversation was mainly about the naval review which had followed the recent Coronation. Fred Warner, a diplomat, urbane and amusing as all diplomats should be, who had been in the navy in the war, held the table at a roar with his account of all the marine antics. I lacked the nerve to raise the subject of the future when I left. In fact, it was not until September that I had the wit to telephone the firm and begin rather gingerly: “My name is Antonia Pakenham and I wondered…” George’s secretary was terse. “You’d better come in on Monday.” I had no idea whether I was expected but with the pressing need to earn my living (my modest allowance ended when I left Oxford), I thought it best not to enquire further.

  George might have been my mother’s idea of a young publisher, but he did not seem young to me. He was actually in his early thirties at the time but he looked no particular age. A Jewish refugee from Austria, son of a dispossessed university professor, he resembled the French King Louis XVI, husband of Marie Antoinette, except that he suffered from none of the poor young King’s difficulties with women: George loved women and women loved him back, particularly as he had the best chat-up line in the world at his disposal: “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” Pause full of meaning, then: “I believe you would write a very good book.” He was also (unlike Louis XVI who was portly and clumsy) a deft and graceful dancer. George’s enormous rolling eyes, like gooseberries, were ever on the lookout for new projects, new books, new areas of the publishing world to conquer.

  His was already a remarkable success story since the day in 1938 when he arrived in London with the helpful address of a boarding-house in his pocket: Belgrave something. Thus he found himself in Belgrave Square where, to his faint surprise, there was a large party going on of not particularly helpful people. Luckily, the policeman in the square was on his side. He advised George that he probably was not looking for the house of Mr. Chips Channon MP; inspecting the paper, he directed him to Belgrove Street, near King’s Cross. The time would come when Weidenfeld & Nicolson would publish the celebrated ultra-worldly diaries of Chips Channon: sweet revenge.

  With his talent for languages, George got work with the BBC, evacuated to the country in wartime: he told me that he used to bicycle round the lanes of Gloucestershire, a marvellous image, wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows; this appropriately rural garb was the fashion tip of his mentor Flora Solomon, described in his autobiography as “the remarkable Russian-Jewish grande dame who ran the staff welfare department at Marks & Spencer.” Contact Books which followed was originally founded as a cover for Contact magazine, a means of circumventing the government’s restrictions on new periodicals at a time of paper-rationing. The first publication of Contact Books was called New Deal for Coal. The author was a young man hoping to bec
ome a Labour MP in the 1945 General Election—one Harold Wilson.

  Weidenfeld & Nicolson was founded in 1949. Nigel Nicolson, the co-founder, was the son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; by 1953 he had become the Conservative MP for Bournemouth and, busy with his new political career, was no more than a benevolent presence in our lives. His father on the other hand was not noticeably benevolent towards Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and the gossip of the time suggested that he had not been happy at his son linking his fortunes (and his name) with that of a Jewish refugee. It was true that Harold Nicolson had briefly joined Mosley’s New Party in the early Thirties, but then he had withdrawn support when Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists; Nicolson had then been a prominent advocate of rearmament in the House of Commons. I was a reluctant witness of what was undoubtedly a sincere attempt to put paid to the ill-natured gossip about his disapproval. Unfortunately it went the way of many other good intentions—that is, created further trouble.

  George began to give those dinner parties for which he would become famous and remain so, for over sixty years. But the dining room at Chester Square, unlike the first-floor drawing room, was not very large. So far as I was concerned, George pioneered the social convention of asking a great many people in after dinner, following a meal given for very few. This of course demanded that the privileged few finish their meal in good time and adjourn upstairs…this did not always happen. How could it when the talk was so entertaining, the company so infinitely amusing? Too often the many, on arrival, would have to pass the dining room from which emanated the noise of the privileged ones carousing. On the occasion in question, the butler discreetly muttered in George’s ear, and he waved a lordly hand in my direction: “Miss Pakenham will go upstairs and keep him company.”