David Harlech’s death in a motor accident is the FOUL news here. You simply can’t imagine how awful the funeral was. In a little cold dark chapel on a hill near Glyn (Harlech, where they lived). The churchyard full of people as the chapel was wee. Those poor children going through it all again as their mother was killed in like manner. And now the children’s children, heaving backs in grey suits sobbing & clinging to each other & the raggle taggle but completely charming mothers & the unmarried one called Alice with brilliant yellow dyed hair, Mary & Lees [2] & her vast untidy sons & Jackie Onassis & Teddy Kennedy, [3] she just the same as ever, he stout & broad as Henry VIII, scarlet face, thin aeroplane sort of suit completely filled by his body, not a patch on his bros I’m afraid.
Andrew is in Ireland, fishing & loving it because there are some fish this year. But the real reason he’s enjoying it is because he is so well. No refreshing drinks for some months & he is cheerful & even fishing himself (which he hasn’t done for years, just watched the others). So isn’t that GOOD.
When they were all fishing I had some Loved Ones for a weekend at Chatsworth – Nicko Henderson & his excellent wife, [4] R Kee, the Mlinarics [5] & blessed Arthur Marshall. [6] I do love Nicko Henderson. He’s a new friend. We meet on the board of Tarmac, can you imagine.
The other day we gave a dinner (Tarmac I mean) & Nicko & I asked the guests & the idea is to get top politicians & one or two industrialists & some of the Tarmac pros to talk to each other about the State of Things.
What wd Lady Redesdale say, asking a lot of people to dinner who I’ve never met. No women except me & when you’ve eaten a bit someone taps on a glass & says now we’ll hear what you all think & everyone (except me of course, too stupid) spouts out a lot of tosh about dollars & exchange rates & employment & unemployment & some of them talk in that new language which is incomprehensible but it is FASCINATING, a new world to me as you can imagine. (A paper belched out by their office about some huge scheme said something was a revolving evergreen facility. Well, what is it?)
So I asked Mr Thatcher, [7] & he came, imagine. He kissed my hand & talked to me about You Aristocrats so I said I wasn’t one & he had a G & T & all was well with the world.
Uncle Harold came. I wd have given much for a camera when U Harold, D Thatcher & the Chairman of Tarmac were squeezed on a ridiculous little sofa (private room at Claridge’s). U Harold oiled up to Mr T like anything to make up for going for his wife in the H of Lords.
Nicko & I are going to America with our employers in April. What a thrill.
I shall think of 1000 other things when this has gone, but there we are.
Much love
Debo
[1] PLF celebrated his birthday on 11 February.
[2] Mary Ormsby Gore, Lord Harlech’s older sister, and her husband (Alexander) Lees Mayall (1915–92), ambassador to Venezuela and Vice-Marshal of the diplomatic corps 1965–72. ‘When Lees was serving at our embassy in Paris, he left me with an abiding memory. Aly Khan gave a big dinner at the Pré Catalan after Longchamp races and at 2 a.m., when nearly everyone had left, Lees was still dancing, alone, with his eyes shut, holding a single delphinium at arm’s length.’ (DD)
[3] Edward Kennedy (1932–). Elected to the US Senate in 1962, filling the seat vacated by his brother when JFK became President.
[4] Nicholas (Nicko) Henderson (1919–). Diplomat and writer. Following his retirement in 1982 as ambassador to the United States, he was appointed a director of Tarmac, the leading supplier of building material. Married Greek-born Mary Cawadias in 1951.
[5] David Mlinaric (1939–). Interior designer, decorator and friend of the Devonshire family. Married Martha Laycock in 1969.
[6] Arthur Marshall (1910–89). Humorist, writer and broadcaster best known for being on the BBC panel show Call My Bluff. ‘At Chatsworth one day, he and I walked across the lawn, heavily populated with people listening to the Sunday band. Someone spotted Arty, then at the height of his TV fame, “Look, it’s Arthur Marshall. It can’t be. It IS!”, and rushed up for an autograph and chat, so delighted to meet the man who made everybody laugh.’ (DD)
[7] Denis Thatcher (1915–2003). DD once asked the Prime Minister’s husband how he kept up with his wife. He replied, ‘Love and loyalty my dear.’ The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley (Fourth Estate, 2007), p. 781.
19 February 1985
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
A headline in The Lady re theatres:
NEW PLAYS
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Well, even I know that’s not a new play.
And a headline in the Farmers Weekly:
BIEN VENUE – A GOOD RAPE
I think that’s all for now.
Much love
Debo
21 March 1985
Mani
Darling Debo,
About DIM PARCIO, I give up. Do explain.
Olives. There are between 50 and 100 different kinds, black, deep purple, dark green, pale green, and some – never seen them – almost white. ALL the ones down here (the best in the world) are purply black, not very big, but marvellous. After picking ( Joan, Léla and some village women, with Petro, our Léla’s hubby, sawing and pruning in the branches) they are loaded in sacks, the teams of donkeys take them to the old press in the village, a terrific grinding and clatter, then out streams – first trickling, then a gush – the jade green oil, which we dip bread in and munch in ecstasy. It tastes bitter at first, but perfect in a few days; then it comes back to the house (clippety-clop) in things like flat-sided milk cans and is poured into a vast metal circular tank, which lasts us for a year, and plenty to give away. The rest we sell. Léla splits some of them and marinades them in brine, for hors-d’oeuvres for a week or two. Table olives are much bigger, beautiful smooth ovals, kept in their own oil, which lasts forever. These are obtained by grafting, which also changes the shape of the leaves – much longer and floppier.
I love your description of the Tarmac PR luncheon. Revolving evergreen facility, indeed.
We’ve got a fellow-writer called Bruce Chatwin [1] staying, v nice, tremendous know-all, reminds me of a couplet by O Goldsmith:
‘And still they gazed and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.’ [2]
He’s a great pal of Jackie Onassis.
Please keep in touch, and tons of love from
Paddy
[1] Bruce Chatwin (1940–89). The writer, who had been a friend of PLF since 1970, spent seven months in a hotel in Kalamata writing The Songlines (1987). After his death, his ashes were brought to Greece by his wife Elizabeth and buried near PLF’s house in the ruins of a Byzantine chapel that he had always loved. He had become Orthodox at the end of his life.
[2] ‘The Village Schoolmaster’, from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem The Deserted Village (1770).
2 April 1985
Lismore Castle
Co. Waterford
Darling Paddy,
All v jolly here & exactly as ever. We’ve been coming 38 years & lots of things are unchanged, various patches of damp & such like I mean.
Americans take it in the summer & it seems they aren’t too keen on holes in the carpets so we’ve got to explain that it’s smart to have them. Uphill work.
Clodagh [1] is still afloat, & Mrs Farquhar, [2] 83 & 86 now. One has lost a bit of a vocal cord & the other has had a stroke but goes on the same as ever & said furiously when you’re 90 they take away your driving licence. I rather wish they’d done that at 86. She can’t see a thing & is all over the shop.
I’ve been asked to review the newly republished (paperback) of the D of Bedford’s killing book called How to Run a Stately Home. [3] He is a card. I’m enjoying doing it. *
Much love
Debo
DIM PARCIO = NO PARKING in Welsh. Rich, isn’t it.
I’m going to America with Tarmac. We’re looking at
quarries, sandpits & concrete blocks. Imagine what a help I shall be to them. The wonderful thing is having Nicko Henderson on the board, a boon companion if ever there was one.
[1] Lady Clodagh Anson (1902–92). A spinster neighbour of the Devonshires at Lismore. ‘Andrew’s Granny Evie and Clodagh’s mother were connected by marriage. She was the only person I knew of Anglo-Irish background who was accepted by the inhabitants of Lismore and beyond as one of themselves. She kept unusual hours and did not wake till lunchtime. She loved her garden, but it was often dark before she was ready to start work, so she gardened by the headlights of her ancient car and when the battery failed she wore a miner’s lamp so as to be able to go on weeding late into the night. She was a regular churchgoer to the magnificent Church of Ireland cathedral in Lismore. When the service started at 10.30 she always half an hour late and came in with a clatter of banged doors and dropped books. It was decided to start the service at 11, to give her a chance. She made the same noisy entrance at 11.30. The service wasn’t delayed any further or the congregation would have missed lunch.’ (DD)
[2] Elizabeth Farquhar; an outspoken neighbour of the Devonshires.
[3] Reprinted in Counting My Chickens, and Other Home Thoughts (Long Barn Books, 2001), pp. 150–2.
* For the Field not the Times Lit Sup. Surprised?
4 April 1985
Lismore Castle
Co. Waterford
Darling Paddy,
Bruce Chatwin. OH how unfair you knowing him. He wrote a book (if it’s the fellow I think it is) which I so adored I’ve never really felt like another. [1] You know what I mean, like my Dad & White Fang. [2]
How ghoul if he’s a know-all, but I wd like just to see & smell him to see for myself. Or is it like meeting royal people & actors, better not? Have you always known him?
I’ve got my Deity here, John Smith, [3] the genius of the Landmark Trust, & his well-named wife Christian. We’ve done the rounds in a day, the Lodges, Youghal, church, deanery & Sir W Raleigh’s dump, Ballynatray, & home via Dromana.
Cheered to see smoke coming out of a chimney at Ballynatray but oh the sadness of the little church. You know the one where they had to dig up one grave to plant another body & there used to be bones all over the place. It’s an impenetrable thicket of laurels, brambles & sycamores now, no bones to note, & they’ve taken the roof off the church (it used to have a fireplace with a brass surround, do you remember?) & filled the doorways with concrete blocks, really dog in the manger behaviour, just because THEY don’t want to get in doesn’t mean ONE doesn’t.
The Garda lads (three of them who go everywhere even with me now) looked at it amazed & said Sure t’would be easy to restore, well it wouldn’t but no English policeman would say that wd they.
Clodagh came to lunch. J Smith was suitably riveted. J Smith VERY IMPRESSED at me knowing you.
Anyway it’s Chatwin I want to know about & of course your arrival in England & coming to Chatsworth.
Much love
Debo
[1] On the Black Hill (1982), winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award.
[2] DD’s father, Lord Redesdale, like his fictional alter ego Uncle Matthew in Nancy Mitford’s novels, was said to have read only one book in his life, Jack London’s White Fang, which was so good that he had never wanted to read another.
[3] John Smith (1923–2007). Financier and philanthropist who founded the Landmark Trust in 1965 to preserve unusual historic buildings, which are then let out as holiday homes to the public. Married Christian Carnegy in 1952.
24 June 1985
As from White’s or
Mani I suppose
Darling Debo,
Jock [Murray], fearful of my slipping between his fingers, keeps on thinking of new and vital things to be done, so I’m STILL not off; but I’m going to try and make a break for it, back home by the weekend. I feel smitten down by a sort of melancholia, rather a rare thing with me, and for no specific reason, except everything seeming gloomy and hopeless – I dare say subconsciously banks, hostages and rain have something to do with it. But I long to slink off.
No more now except lots of love and thanks to you both from
Paddy
27 August 1985
Mani
Darling Debo,
When we got back, there was a disco opening at the top of our road 400 yards away and, as our valley acts like a megaphone, the mad jittery racket after sunset was hell unloosed, and we thought we were going mad. Well, it continued for a fortnight, during which not a soul went there, and suddenly there was silence; and now they are gone. We thought we might have to draw stumps forever. It was a close shave.
Two or three weeks ago the telephone rang, and it was Coote Lygon, shyly announcing that she and the Mad Boy had decided to get married. [1] It’s the best news one has heard for a long time. Hip hooray! I can’t think of a better presiding spirit for Faringdon. The only thing is, I hope Rosa [2] doesn’t slip strychnine into her soup.
Scarcely anyone has been here, and I must say, I don’t blame them in August. But tomorrow John Julius and his Mollie [3] appear for a week, which we are looking forward to in our rustic isolation; then a dribble of guests all through September, and on 1st October we meet Xan and Magouche for a tremendous sight-seeing ramble of baroque towns, churches, Schlosses, and so on, in S Germany and Austria, which I love. I slightly dread one aspect of this trip: while in Blighty, probably through guzzling so at Dingley Dell, I put on five kilos, as I discovered to my dismay stepping on the scales when I got back. Well by dint of abstinence, clean living and swimming about a mile a day, I’ve managed to drop eight, and it’s still going down. I emerge svelter and browner from the waves each day. But what will Germany do to all this? With the terrible example of everyone all round one wolfing it down like ogres?
I’ve just been reading Loved Ones and enjoying it very much; but was rather mortified to see that the Derek story, ‘No, that wasn’t the name’, didn’t come in. [4]
One of the cats killed a snake last night, quite long, with orange, black and white spots. It looked terribly dangerous but the book says it’s a harmless rat-snake, and indeed, halfway along was a huge bulge, which must have been a rat. It resembled those pictures of pythons or boa constrictors digesting bison in The Wonder Book of Nature.
Do send news; tons of love from
Paddy
Joan did enjoy her stay with you.
In the Introduction to my new book – the ‘thanks’ part – I’m thinking of putting ‘– also to the proprietors of the Stag Parlour near Bakewell, for revision’. [5] That’ll make them scratch.
[1] Robert Heber-Percy and Lady Dorothy Lygon married when they were both aged seventy-three and parted a year later.
[2] The cook at Faringdon, the house that Robert Heber–Percy inherited from Lord Berners after they had lived there together for eighteen years.
[3] John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich (1929–). Historian, only son of Duff and Diana Cooper, married Mary (Mollie) Philipps as his second wife in 1989.
[4] See PLF to DD, 6 August 1980. Diana Mosley’s pen portraits of friends included a chapter on her former brother-in-law Derek Jackson.
[5] PLF worked in a downstairs room at Chatsworth, known as the Stag Parlour, ‘for fevered sessions’ of revision on Between the Woods and the Water.
7 December 1985
Mani
Darling Debo,
Now. (a) What did you think of the Annie book? [1] I thought Mark made a very good job of it, though I would have left out the harrowing letters, especially Ian’s, when things started going wrong. What about you? (b) How did the Nancy book [2] go?
(c) How are you? More later.
(d) About two months ago, Joan and I flew to Frankfurt, where Xan and Magouche were waiting, in order to start a giant baroque journey next day, so settled in a smiling hamlet on the banks of the Rhine in a huge castle called Johannisberg where dwells a
marvellous Russian Pss Metternich, [3] a pal of Magouche’s. The most fabulous Hock in the world is made there, and most of next morning was spent in catacombs scooped out of the castle rock; there were spacious halls here and there, with tables and candles and rows of gleaming glasses and bottles, a sort of competition was afoot, where we sat and sipped various nectars beyond compare, then sped down the Rhine to another Schloss, inhabited by a frightfully nice Scotch Pss of Hesse that her familiars call ‘Peg’, [4] you probably know her, very funny and welcoming. She was in a bit of a wax about Tony Lambton’s book, [5] thinking it inaccurately rotted all her people-by-marriage (‘and why did Stinker Lambton say I was like only a rather jolly vicar’s wife, instead of just a jolly one?’) After this castle-life, we went seriously to work, scouring the Rhineland, Württemburg, Swabia, Franconia, Bavaria and Saxony for these extraordinary churches, which I still haven’t entirely taken in, tho’ I gaze at their pictures non-stop. The trompe l’œil ceiling paintings are perfectly summed up by a pre-war French song (‘Quand notre cœur fait boum!’) [6] of which some of the last lines are:
Et le bon Dieu dit BOUM
Dans son fauteuil de nuages. [7]
These gave cricks in the neck in uncounted staggering intervals.
Well, it was a wonder. We darted into the Tyrol and out again, slept in a lorry drivers’ hotel in Salzburg (no others available), then back to wonderful Passau, where two other rivers – the Ilz and the Inn – join the Danube from either side, under flatiron-quays piled high with architectural wonders, and turn the river for a mile or two into a tricolour with their differently hued currents. I love the Danube, and feel bound up in it since my early days, a sort of honorary merman.
We followed it slowly downstream to Vienna, where those Lippizaner horses were only exercising in the Hofburg (they had just got back from a visit to Blighty – did you go and see them?) instead of going through their fascinating and neurotic paces at home. We went and had delicious coffee and squashy cakes at Demel: that Regency Rumpelmeyer’s in the Kohlmarkt next door.
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