In Tearing Haste

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  A mag called Derbyshire Countryside says it believes on GOOD AUTHORITY that the proprietors of the Stag Parlour near Bakewell are Andrew & me. A good bit of detective work, eh.

  Now I must take Richard [Garnett] to look at things like a gate post I’m very fond of. I wonder if he’ll see the point, he doesn’t always, he’s so logical & that particular gate post isn’t. Then we’re going to the site of the National Hedging & Walling Competition which took place on a farm near here in Oct ’85. Hedgers & wallers came from all over. They had to do a chain each. Well, I thought, a cut & laid hedge was a beautiful thing but just a cut & laid hedge. I had no idea of the different styles, for instance Welsh is totally unlike Northamptonshire. They’re for keeping in (or out) different animals, see; steers & sheep & all the variants of them, v local like the breeds, some sheep being more escapist than others. So the result is like knitting patterns, same idea of making a bit of stuff but gone about in a different way. Or basket work. So clever it defies description.

  Anyway 15 months have passed since these geniuses have done their work & we’re going to see what the hedges look like now.

  I expect you’re yawning with boredom by now so I’ll spare you a descripo after we’ve seen them.

  Andrew has gone to Constantinople with Anne [Tree] & one of her daus. I have been in two or more minds as to whether to ring him up & tell him Uncle Harold has conked, to get a telephone call there wd make him in a fever of nerves. Anyway I have cleverly made them have the funeral on Mon instead of today which is what was threatened, so he’ll be back as planned.

  The Macmillans are all at war with one another, the saddest thing that can happen to a family I think. Much non-speaking & jealousies, some are drunk, some have been drunk & aren’t any more, some have a glimmer of charm, but most none. When you think of Aunt Dorothy, & the old boy for that matter, it’s odd. She WAS charm.

  GOOD NEWS. Jim is going to do the Bachelor Duke. [1] Apparently he’s long thought of it & we never dreamed he would but have stalled over others who wanted to do it. So now I’m pleased, no one is more suited to the job, do admit.

  I bet you haven’t read all this. Now to the Gate Post.

  Happy New Year.

  Much love to you both

  Debo

  We’re doing terrific clearing in the garden, the impenetrable thickets of self-sown yew, holly, sycamore & foul Rhododendron ponticum, so you can see things a bit. Lo & behold we discovered a statue I had never seen before. Knocked from its plinth, engulfed in rhodies. So I rushed for the Bach D’s Handbook & there I found it, an Athenian altar, that’s the plinth for the statue which obviously never belonged to it. The altar is 4th or 5th-cent BC, he says, & has got a civic (according to the BD‘s Handbook) inscription. Oh do come & explain it. A bit of a thrill, finding it.

  [1] James Lees-Milne’s life of the 6th Duke of Devonshire was published as The Bachelor Duke (1991).

  * Like shooting with two guns without a loader, quite a feat.

  [Undated]

  Dumbleton

  Darling Debo,

  Do you remember when I came to Dingley Dell to stay, when Uncle Harold and Sybil Cholmondeley were the only others, except you and Andrew. Andrew went off to inspect some young people, I can’t remember where, only that he had got a badly torn shirt, which caused worry. Mr Macmillan and I went off for a walk, and, after a few moments, a pheasant flew across the path, and I said, ‘What a lovely pheasant!’ Mr Macmillan said, ‘Yes. And we’re very lucky to have them.’ I asked him why, and he said, in that slightly cavernous voice, ‘It’s entirely due to the Roman occupation of Britain. The junior officers were very fond of them, and collected them in large numbers. I believe there was a certain amount of rivalry about which centurions had the most or the handsomest birds. It went on for centuries. In the end, of course, in 410 A.D., in the reign of the Emperor Honorius, the order came for all the legions to be recalled to Rome, but they weren’t allowed to take their birds with them, so, very reluctantly, all the centurions let their birds go. There must have been thousands of them. Anyway, they survived the Picts and the Scots, and the Saxons’ invasion.’

  He had a wonderful knack of delivery, half-solemn, half light-hearted.

  Tons of love from

  Paddy

  16 March 1987

  As from Flat 2, 51 Lennox Gdns, SW3

  Or messages left midday at White’s Club.

  Keep in touch!

  Darling Debo,

  Two weeks ago a nice man rang up and said ‘Sir Something Greening here. The Queen was wondering whether you and your wife could dine at Windsor on April the 7th and stay the night?’ Joan, having picked up the phone in her bedroom, said ‘I can’t. I’ll be in hospital, [1] but he can,’ so threw in one. I was surprised, and wondered if you and Andrew could have had a hand in it – or Deacon? I long to meet beforehand, and learn about the reefs and shoals.

  Tons of love,

  Paddy

  Here’s a snatch of imaginary overheard conversation from notebook.

  ‘He has no scruples at all.’

  ‘Oh really? I just thought his voice hadn’t broken . . .’

  [1] For a hip operation.

  22 May 1987

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  WHERE IS YOUR PRIMROSE McCONNELL NOW? And what is it? A kind of gardening tool, a cattle breeder’s handbook, a classified list of subspecies of potatoes, a pneumatic jack for tractors? A kind of effervescent hairwash? [1] The only McConnell in the DNB is William McC (1833–1867) an illustrator, who did pictures for various publications, viz. The Months and Upside Down; or, Turnover Traits. Could he have been her father? Is it a picture or a BOOK? The latter doesn’t sound very like you . . . But there’s no mention in the Oxford Companion to Literature, and the only McC in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a small town in Illinois. Admittedly our Enc. Brit. is the 11th edition, published early in the century.

  You see what I’ve been reading. C Russell says it might end in the Chatsworth library unless Debo has it buried with her. Is it a heart-shaped locket with a spring and a faded curl inside? I’m counting on a P.C. pretty soon, to put me out of my agony.

  I am enjoying these letters. You and Daph get a marvellous set of dewdrops, and Diana [Cooper] a deluge. One gets a pretty clear picture of what he was like, but do tell about him a bit.

  It’s suddenly summer here. Masses of swallows, but not a single tourist yet. Joan hobbles further and further every day and in a month or two will fling away her ashplant (one of the twisted ones from the Kenilworth rare-cattle show) like a Lourdes pilgrim. She is busy clipping a rosemary hedge with heavy shears at this very moment, so all goes well.

  What news?

  Lots of love,

  Paddy

  [1] PLF was reviewing Letters of Conrad Russell, edited by Georgiana Blakiston (1987), in which he read that Russell (1878–1947), a Somerset farmer and the fourth son of Lord Arthur Russell, had willed to DD his copy of The Agricultural Notebook, a standard work of reference for farmers, first compiled by Primrose McConnell in 1883.

  DD shooting at Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire. ‘Describing a shoot to a non-participant is as bad as going over games of golf or bridge, so I spared Paddy the bother of reading about it’

  DD in her sitting room at Chatsworth

  Ann Fleming in the blue drawing room, Chatsworth, 1966

  Diana Cooper

  Philip Toynbee and Jessica Mitford, 1966

  Andrew Devonshire and PLF in Peru, 1971. ‘We had been included, as minor amateurs, in a mountaineering expedition in the Andes’

  Jacket design by John Craxton for A Time of Gifts (1977)

  Niko Ghika and PLF in Corfu with a tabletop painted by PLF showing Greek and Latin names for the winds

  PLF at Dumbleton

  Joan Leigh Fermor at Tramores, Andalusia, staying with Janetta and Jaime Parladé

  DD and her working sheepdog, Collie

  HRH the Prince of Wales and Sybil Cholmondeley
on her ninetieth birthday, 1984

  DD with her sisters Diana Mosley (centre) and Pamela Jackson (left), 1980s

  PLF and Xan Fielding at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Crete, 1991

  Joan Leigh Fermor in the Mani

  Elisabeth Frink (left) and DD at the installation of Frink’s War Horse, April 1992

  DD with her granddaughter Stella Tennant, Chatsworth, 2006 (photograph Mario Testino)

  From DD’s letter to PLF, 23 September 2006

  DD and PLF. Edensor, February 2008 (photograph Bridget Flemming)

  7 June 1987

  Lockinge Manor

  Wantage

  Darling Paddy,

  It has SORT OF ended up in the Chatsworth library, if you count the few books I like & have in my sitting room or bedroom. I was amazed when it turned up after dear old Conrad died. Inside is written After my death this book is to be given to Debo With love Conrad Russell, XII night 1947.

  Oh how IGNORANT you are, you who I thought knew everything.

  P McConnell BSc FGS, Yeoman Farmer, North Wycke, Southminster, Essex, made the 9th edition in 1919, revised & enlarged & dedicated to Captain Primrose McConnell MC who of course was killed in action on the Salonika front in 1918. 1st edition 1883. It contains EVERYTHING & how to do EVERYTHING from explaining Gunter’s Chain to how much stoking a man can do in a day (poor man, an awful lot), Ville’s Dominant Ingredients of Manure, the classification of Wheats, Germination Data, points of the Kerry Cow, diseases of sheep (sturdy, braxy, scab etc. I expect you know how to deal with these).

  So you see why I preferred it to jewels. [1] Of course I was too stupid to take him in properly. I knew I loved him but didn’t know why. He was IT. Daph darned his tweed hat of sheep colour with bright red wool & he was so pleased. Don’t you love the snap of him sewing up his cheese.

  I’m trying to get on with my book & have boldly sent the bits on the Game Department & Agric Shows to R Garnett & await his fiercely critical comments in terror because if he says it’s hopeless I CAN’T begin again. Now for ‘Woods & Farms’, squeezed between Tarmac AGM & some queer Social Events like a dance at Cliveden on election night given by J Goldsmith, [2] & tons of people to stay including the American Amb & ten attendants. Nicko is coming here in a minute & we buzz up to Chatsworth to have six American concrete people to lunch tomorrow, Tarmac-induced. The head concrete man has got a piano in his aeroplane & he plays ‘My Way’ to the sky as he floats around his quarries. Do admit one gets hold of some odd people in Life’s Rich Tapestry.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] Conrad Russell had asked DD whether she would prefer to be left jewels rather than the handbook.

  [2] James Goldsmith (1933–97). The billionaire businessman gave a dinner before the dance at which DD found herself sitting between her host and a media man, who, ‘in the way of such people, didn’t turn up until the pudding – MURDOCH. Goldsmith had blue, eagle eyes that bored into you. They were one of the weapons that contributed to his presence and charm.’ (DD)

  17 September 1987

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  I’ve been in Pittsburgh, setting off yet another exhib of drawings from here. I boldly addressed 600 grown ups in a tent & rattled on for ¾ of an hour. Poor them. But you know how polite they are, they never stirred.

  I was killed by kindness & am home ½ dead but re-amazed by their interest in things like this old dump.

  Everything pounding along here v nicely. The Pss of Wales comes on Sunday to see to a thing to do with National Parks. What shall we feed her on, always a worry as she prefers the fridge to the table I’m told.

  Much love

  Debo

  27 September 1987

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  I was horror-struck when shown that Daily Mail interview, done six months ago, and forgotten. The maddening thing is, it’s mostly my fault, viz. given after luncheon and a great deal too much to drink. The interviewing lady wanted to hear all about parachutes, generals, Crete, etc. I said I couldn’t go on about that, as it’s such stale news, so we drifted off into embarrassing things about childhood years etc. The interviewing lady was perfectly nice, and wanted to be nice, so the fault for all that hugely embarrassing stuff is one’s, more’s the pity. A sharp lesson. [1]

  The day after it appeared, someone rang up whom I last saw when we were both nine. (N.B. Break off at this point, and, though it’s against all your principles, read one page – p.4, and ½ p.5 – in the Introduction, letter to Xan, in A Time of Gifts. I think it’s high up on the right hand wall of Andrew’s Englishman’s room. One always spots one’s stuff, like a cow with a lost calf, fields away.) Well, as I was saying, the chap on the phone was a fellow juvenile delinquent or semi-loony in Maj Truthful’s School at Salsham-le-Sallows – really Maj Faithfull’s at Walsham-le-Willows – in Suffolk. It was fascinating, all the details he remembered about that extraordinary place. I was deeply in love with the gardener’s daughter (aged 10), called Eileen Fairweather. He said she was fearfully pretty, so that’s nice. But he finished by saying ‘We have another remote link. I’ve moved back to Suffolk recently to be on the spot for our first grandchild, Kate Heywood-Lonsdale, Amanda’s [2] niece.’ He must have gathered that you and I are pals. I can’t remember him at all.

  Tons of love,

  Paddy

  [1] PLF, interviewed by Lynda Lee-Potter, revealed that he had run wild as a boy. ‘When people first met me I made an excellent impression . . . It was only bit by bit they realised they had a fiend on their hands. At home I was always allowed absolute freedom. I always had total confidence based on nothing whatsoever. I was never diffident, and not being frightened of things is frightfully important.’ Daily Mail, 9 September 1987.

  [2] Amanda Heywood-Lonsdale (1944–). Married DD’s son, Peregrine, 12th Duke of Devonshire, in 1967.

  31 October 1987

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Hope you’re OK. It was FOUL not seeing you when you were in the land of the living. Actually the living are fast dying. R Heber-Percy, and now my Benefactress of Swinbrook [1] & lo & behold she has left me the Mill Cottage, so wills are thrills & mills there’s no doubt.

  It needs Seeing To. I went down there last week & reminded myself of the olden days, same apple tree thank goodness, & I measured my bedroom, 7′ x 8′, just the right size.

  I’m struggling with my book. I’m on the farms now & enclose the bit about the sheep sale for your editorial eye. Throw away.

  My dear Wife is here. She has been knocked about by the gale. Her woods are a sad sight she says & the noble garden cedars have curtsied & are in heaps on the ground. Unscathed here.

  I’ve been in America with Nicko Henderson. A better travelling companion you couldn’t find, ne’ery a cross word in spite of days spent at cement works & hovering over quarries in a helicopter. The door burst open three times, you can imagine my screams. Then dinner with the cement-ers. Quite testing.

  Roy & Jennifer Jenkins [2] are staying here. She is head of the National Trust & their AGM is in Buxton. He has become head of Oxford & had to make heaps of speeches in Latin, well you know all that. I think they’ve made him a lord & she is certainly a dame & so it goes on.

  Emma is here. Her rugs were a huge success at Chelsea Crafts Fair, no wonder I say. [3]

  Much love

  Debo

  Really & truly the captions in F Partridge’s book of photos [4] are v embarrassing. How could she fall for that.

  [1] Marion Buckland; a friend of DD’s aunt Dorothy Mitford, and a keen member of the Girl Guides. ‘Apparently she had no dependants. She left me the Mill Cottage and the adjacent Mill, with the option to buy the Swan Inn from her executors, because she thought I loved the place and its associations more than anyone else.’ (DD)

  [2] Roy Jenkins (1920–2003). Bon viveur statesman and political biographe
r – a combination rare in public life – who, according to his friend Sir Nicholas Henderson, depended greatly on the support of his wife, Jennifer, whose judgement and quiet charm brought her a successful career in the public and private sectors. Created a life peer in 1987, in the same year that he was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

  [3] Emma Tennant made and sold hooked rugs.

  [4] Frances Partridge, Friends in Focus: A Life in Photographs (1987). The caption to photograph 179 reads: ‘The Duchess of Devonshire gracing Ham Spray with her company during a bottling session of some Spanish wine.’

  16 November 1987

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  I don’t expect you’ve read any of that book [1] yet. I do wish you would; what’s the good of writing them? I promise that there are lots of jokes you’d like. Take a leaf out of your sister Pam’s book!

  I can’t tell you what a heap of letters was waiting, and it keeps on growing, all to be answered. This one doesn’t count, as there was none from you (nor expected: only later), and it’s all the result of publication.

  It’s marvellous bright autumn weather here. I charge about the mountains every afternoon. They are covered with cyclamen and crocuses. There is a bit of sensation here at the moment. Some human remains – quite recent ones – have been discovered in a bag of fertilizer under a bridge near a mountain village, but only a third of a person. A baker disappeared from a nearby hamlet four years ago. The rather sinister boulangère said he just walked out on her one night and never came back, so speculation abounds.