Please forgive any illegibility in this, I’m scribbling it in the village tavern by the distant beam of the tavern acetylene lamp, with the shadow on the wrong side, so that all this is invisible and illegible. Maniots loom and subside, hatchet-faced men; a Goyaesque chiaroscuro reigns.
I had a double-tailed mermaid tattooed on my left arm, above the elbow, just before leaving London, by a craftsman in Waterloo Road.
I wonder if I was right.
No more, darling Debo, except hugs and tons of love from
Paddy
11 November 1964
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Andrew isn’t minding being out of work ½ as much as I thought he would. He busies about with this & that, a lot of Fishmongering as he is getting near to being king of that strange outfit & it takes a lot of lunches & dinners. Then he’s Shadowing his Commonwealth job in the H of Lords. The whole situation is so fascinating that it’s almost a full-time job watching, & reading the mags. [1]
I hear through a sec at Downing St that the smell in The Cabinet Room is chronic. Six of them smoke pipes & none are clean.
Emma & Toby & Isabel [2] have been in the Argentine for a month. The one letter I have had sounds happy but hot, & they’re living on culled cows. Shades of the cracked eggs & dead chickens from Lady Redesdale’s Poultry Farm. [3]
The book titles you invented for the door in the library are being done by Sangorski [4] & out of extreme honesty the last one is called Book Titles by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
Ann Fleming is having a v rotten time because she is fearfully sad about Ian & is also broke. [5] Doesn’t it seem mad that the lawyers didn’t try & arrange things a bit better. It is a shame.
I do wonder how your house is getting on & if the drawing room cum hen house is taking shape? Do enlarge.
Much love & to Joan
Debo
[1] Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963 and the Conservatives lost the 1964 election. Andrew Devonshire became a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, one of the livery companies of the City of London, in 1941 and was Prime Warden 1966–7.
[2] DD’s daughter Emma married Toby Tennant in 1963. Their first child, Isabel, was born the following year.
[3] DD’s mother kept a chicken farm and paid the wages of her children’s governesses from its meagre profits. ‘My sisters pretended that only cracked eggs, and hens that had died, came into our kitchen from my mother’s poultry farm.’ (DD)
[4] The renowned London bookbinder, founded in 1901.
[5] Ian Fleming had died leaving his estate tied up in complicated trusts.
Saturday December 1964
Mani, but only just
Darling Debo,
I am pleased about ‘Book titles’ by PLF. This means that at least one will still be on somebody’s shelf – viz. your great grandson’s – in 100 years time.
Things are coming to a temporary stop here – for two months, that is. Joan has already left for Blighty and I follow on Teusday, after folding things up here.
It will be lovely to have some proper food again. I look forward to caviar, sometime, the last roes of summer (Sturgeon’s love song: Go, lovely roes . . .). One of the most exciting reasons for return is that Holiday Magazine, in America, have offered a huge sum, and all expenses, for a long article on the Danube, [1] which means a journey all down it, from Switzerland, through the Iron Curtain and all the way to the Delta on the Black Sea. I’m off as soon as I can get Iron Curtain visas. Rather fun?
This is a strange, rambling, jazz-vorticist flat over a taverna on the waterfront, overlooking the sea, caïques, tramp steamers and an avenue of jujube trees all a bit bleak under the winter sun and frequent clouds, early evenings and scarcely a soul about. I do hope you’re about when I return next week. Little to tell, but lots to hear!
With tons of love,
Paddy
[1] ‘A Cave on the Black Sea’, reprinted in Patrick Leigh Fermor, Words of Mercury, pp. 28–39.
25 January 1965
13 Chester Row, SW1
Darling Debo,
I’ve been scribbling here like a maniac (‘Deadline Dick’) to finish my wretched book [1] and make a beeline for the Danube; perhaps next week. (Any chance of you before then?) I am filled with excitement and misgiving about Rumania and, if it’s not compromising or dangerous for them, seeing old friends and loves unglimpsed for TWENTY-SIX YEARS. I meant to talk to you about all this at Christmas, but, brutalized as I was with turkey and plum pudding, clean forgot. I look forward to Vienna tremendously.
Nothing much has been happening here. Joan and I went to Northumberland for a very funny weekend to see her little godson, H Harrod married to Lucy Lambton, [2] which was both very funny and great fun. I went to see Orson Welles’ The Trial with Diana Cooper and Ricki Huston [3] (neighbours in Little Venice) three days ago. Towards the end Diana got up and said ‘I think I’ll wait in the car!’ I thought she was bored stiff, but quicker witted Ricki jumped up and after her, then me, and just in time to catch her before collapsing in a faint. She came round in a chair in the foyer in a jiffy. The cinema people – girls, manager – were marvellous, and enslaved when Diana said ‘You have been kind. Don’t judge me by this ugly Mau Mau headgear I’m wearing’ – a sort of black wool busby – ‘I’m really a beautiful blonde’, then ‘I can’t think why I fainted. Perhaps it was the sight of Orson Welles in bed.’ (Furore.) She was absolutely alright again and we sat up drinking and gassing away till two.
Meanwhile tons of fond love and hugs from
Paddy
[1] Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966).
[2] The writer and photographer Lady Lucinda Lambton (1943–) was married to Henry Harrod (1939–) from 1965 to 1973.
[3] Enrica (Ricki) Soma (1930–69). Beautiful Italian-American ballerina who became the fourth wife of the film director John Huston in 1950. Mother of the actress Anjelica Huston. ‘Once in Naples we had had dinner in a trattoria when a tremendous wind-storm blew up the rubbish from the street and plastered it over the trees and telegraph poles. We pretended it was a surrealist exhibition or auction. An evening newspaper, Il Messaggero, stretched on a wall was the best of the lot. I said, “I’ll have that, even if it ruins me.” Her eyes widened and she clutched me with desperation. “DON’T TOUCH IT ,” she whispered. “IT’S A FAKE.” ’ (PLF)
17 August 1965
Bolton Abbey
Skipton
Yorkshire
Darling Paddy,
Sophy & I loom for a night in Athens on 10th Sept on our way to stay with Anne [Tree] in Spetsai. Any possible chance of you both being there, and having dinner with us?
It would be such a terrific treat to see you. We will be staying at The Great Britain (what a surprise).
Too stiff from much shooting to enlarge on anything. Much love
Debo
[1965]
Mani
Darling Debo,
How lovely you coming to Greece!
Joan, alas, has to go back to Blighty on the 8th, so I’ll be here in solitary state, in a blue tent on the headland where the house is going up. You could either doss down in Joan’s evacuated tent, or stay at the tiny hotel in the village (terrible loo but otherwise rather nice. No rot of that kind up here; we cut out the middleman and vanish into the middle distance with trowel and scroll). I might be in the absurd art-nouveau flat that we’ve got. I would be coming in every day to have a look at the building. My theory is, there must have been a time when Chatsworth was only holes in the ground. Actually, there’s a bit more to show now, three beautiful arches, several walls, doors, window holes, but all open at the top still. One’s quite liable to get ½ a ton of rubble on top of one’s dome. But I do long for you to see the place, which is really lovely.
There’s been some coming and going at the little hotel. Magouche with two beautiful daughters and Janetta with ditto & Julian Jebb, [1] then
Barbara & Niko Ghika, with one Rothschild daughter Miranda [2] and her tiny Algerian daughter called Da’ad, aged three, tremendously tough, like a tiny little wire-haired weight lifter, very wild with her spoon at table, but no wilder than Maurice B[owra], who is also here now. He has gone deaf, but as ebullient & funny as ever.
Tons of love
Paddy
[1] Julian Jebb (1934–84). Journalist and television producer.
[2] Miranda Rothschild (1940–). Daughter of Victor, 3rd Baron Rothschild, and his first wife, Barbara Hutchinson. Married Boudjemaa Boumaza in 1962.
29 November 1965
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Such a lot of water etc since I last wrote.
The chief bit of water is that we had a monster shoot here on Sat, a record since the war, and one of the guns was Sybil Cholmondeley. [1] I can’t tell you how really marvellous she was. I believe she’s 71 but even not counting the shooting she was marvellous, down for brekker at 9 & ready for formal conversation – challenging sentences like ‘I’ve been to Petworth twice & never seen anything in the least remarkable’.
I went to the Opening of Parliament, v pretty, but I’m sorry to say the Peeresses smelt, well, the Duchesses did anyway. Surely they couldn’t have rolled.
Much love
Debo
It’s the French lady’s birthday. She’s 61, impossible to have a sister of that age surely.
[1] Sybil Sassoon (1894–1989). Married 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley in 1913.
2 May 1966
Lismore Castle
Co. Waterford
Darling Paddy,
Thank you so much for sending your book. You really are a sport & do you know I’ve practically decided to read it, as I note it is far from stout & is peppered with snaps – all encouraging to one of 9.
Next day
The Dame has loomed and bought a house at Versailles [1] before she came. What a step to take, it made her heart beat.
Andrew says we are ruined by the new taxes in the Budget, but I’ve heard that before I think.
Ld Antrim & R Fedden are leading a lot of old women on a National Trust cruise round Ireland & they are coming here next week.
I think that’s all for now. Thank you again 1000 times for so kindly sending the vol. I am delighted to have it & v grateful.
Much love
Debo
[1] Nancy Mitford moved from Paris to the Rue d’Artois in Versailles at the beginning of 1967.
1 July 1966
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
The two picture worms of Christie’s David Carritt & Brian Sewell [1] were here re-valuing the drawings for insurance.
I can tell you no cabaret has given such entertainment. We went after dinner into the library & they opened the boxes & wrote their idea of values down on bits of paper. Their faces & comments were so lovely. Things that looked exactly the same to us were marked up or down with such huge differences & names of what sounded to us like Italian hairdressers were bandied about till we were reeling.
I have become a sort of slave to a new passion which is the Shetland Ponies I have got. We have got three rather good ones & we show them – I can’t tell you how exciting it is. We got a 2nd prize at the Highland Show & it made my heart beat as if I’d nearly won the Derby. The other Shetland fans are fascinating like all specialists. The Royal [2] is our next outing on 8th July. Please pray.
Much love
Debo
[1] David Carritt (1927–82), art historian and picture dealer; and Brian Sewell (1931–), outspoken art critic for the Evening Standard.
[2] The Royal Agricultural Society of England, of which DD was President in 1995.
[1969]
[Visiting card]
Mani
During the war, Sir E Codrington is said to have put out an order which ran: –
The Coldstream Guards, in future, will shout ‘Hoorah’ and not ‘Hooray!’ when storming a redoubt.
Many Hooray Henries must have looked at each other sadly.
I wonder if Andrew ever shouted it when charging across southern Italy? [1]
I have worked out a mnemonic (way to remember) your postal code: ‘DINNER EARLY FOR FIVE! ’IPP (’IPP ’OORAY’) [2]
[1] Andrew Devonshire, who served in the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards, saw active service in Italy 1943–4.
[2] The Chatsworth postal code is DE45 1PP.
Fairly early July 1970
Mani
Darling Debo,
This is a fine time to be writing a bread-and-butter letter – in fact it’s not one – too late – only that it encloses a 1000 thanks for that lovely weekend. You can’t possibly imagine how fascinated I was by the trip to Newmarket, and seeing those two fine steeds do so well. I felt a bit like a debutante being led into some mythically wicked haunt in Paris by an expert old hand. You were good about stopping for drinks, don’t think that the altruism goes unremembered!
Almost immediately after leaving Blighty, I flew to Athens, found Joan and Michael Stewart, [1] our glorious Ambassador here, & his v nice wife called Damaris, and we sped to Smyrna, where a Land Rover was waiting. Off we set for a Grand Tour of known and unknown classical sites in Southern Turkey: two and a half weeks in this amazing vehicle, changing places in the back where one lolled among brightly woven Caucasian rugs and saddlebags (mostly me). Sounds slight hell, but actually wonderful, owing to the niceness of the company, the jokes, the frequent pauses for drinks and picnics beside mountain streams, lolling under the poplars while the wine cooled in purling brooks. M Stewart is a perfect man, brilliant driver, excellent scholar, ex China expert at the V & A, slight limp from a polo fall. What was so astonishing about all the Ancient, Classical, Hellenistic (ah, oui! ), Greco-Roman & Roman ruins was a) the enormous quantity (oh lor), (b) the comparative completeness, (c) the size, whole cities with temples, theatres, agoras, markets, stadia etc, (d) the absence of anyone else there: only a few nomads, with a score of camels or so grazing in the orchestra stalls. In lots of them, ploughed fields and wheat ran right in amongst the debris. The temples had false floors of bright-green waterweed; shallow quadrangles for millions of frogs – convolvulus & morning glory, & brambles twisted up the shafts of the columns, and on the capital of each of these was a stork’s nest, full of young storks learning to clatter their bills like castanets while their parents glided and swooped about the wreckage after the frogs. Some of these cities were perched high up in the Taurus Mountains, overgrown with jungle, like the ruins of Angkor or Mexico, others shot out into the sea, moles and quays sloping underwater, a maze for mullets. Masses of splendid bas-relief and marble moulding, all pitched headlong by old earthquakes and treasure-seekers dead for centuries.
The coastal mountains are cloaked with all this magnificent stuff; v tall mountains, too, appropriately culminating in Mt Climax – steep pine-forests with terrific gorges coiling down to bay after empty bay, nothing but goatherds and charcoal burners, every now and then a fast and deep green river with a mythological name. North, the other side of the Taurus Mountains, sweeps the Anatolian plateau, marvellous windswept pale skies, oceans of corn, flocks, oak woods, troops of half wild horses, mud-brick villages pronged with minarets (all fitted with loudspeakers, so that the idle muezzins, bawling into a mouthpiece at ground level can shirk their thrice-daily spirals). Rivers and storks again, cuckoos, hoopoes, bee-eaters, orioles and a billion larks. The Anatolian Turks are nice rough fellows; we dossed down in the unplumbed mysteries of their dwellings, mindful of the fact that kind hearts are more than cabinets . . .
There were magnificent old Seljuk bridges for caravans, and, every few leagues, an ancient khan or caravanserai, with accommodation for man and camel, hundreds of them, vast arched and gathered warrens of masonry, like Gothic cathedral architecture with knobs off, giant hollow fossils. In Konya, the capital of the old Seljuk (love that word) sultans, one
is surrounded in the lanes by unfrocked whirling dervishes, forbidden to whirl in Atatürk’s day, now sad grey-beards mooning about among the tombstones, or bubbling away morosely at their hookahs, and brooding on their fled youth when they were such splendid all-rounders. It seemed a bit of an anticlimax to be back among the sweat and the Sirens of Smyrna, just before coming back here. Nobody can do anything there in summer, it seems, except hunt for a cool place to snooze. The British Consul’s son, half Greek, half Maltese, likes it, though. Bursting into French ( pause for response here) he said: ‘Comme c’est doux de ne rien faire toute la journée, et de se reposer après.’ [2]
No more now, darling Debo, except v v many thanks again and do come. Do you want any more book titles? Annie wants some too, to make up for the void of Ian’s strange collection; [3] would you mind if some were the same? Hands across the shires?
With tons of fond love,
Paddy
[1] Michael Stewart (1911–94). Ambassador in Greece 1967–71. Married Damaris du Boulay in 1951. ‘What a good, generous, warm-hearted man. The nicest ambassador we’ve ever had.’ PLF to DD, 21 March 1985.
[2] ‘How agreeable it is to do nothing all day and to rest afterwards.’
In Tearing Haste Page 14