Eventually another priest appeared, who took them into parts of the Vatican not normally seen by the public and gave them tea and biscuits. It was a most satisfactory demonstration of the fact that her powers were not yet fading. But, ‘You can see why I was glad Papa hadn’t come.’
Her morale needed some such boost, for on a short visit to Holland earlier that year with her son, she had been disconcerted to find that her knee hurt and she grew tired. Duff wished that she would recognize she was growing older and could not do all she used to do. Diana would not accept defeat so meekly. Defiantly, she went to a monster exhibition of Flemish art and did not skimp a single picture. The European-American hand, she decided sadly, had lost its cunning. The Chinese, perhaps, could still do work of quality but we ‘have pressed buttons for too long now, tapped type-keys, used machinery whenever possible and got used to “the pot of paint thrown in the public’s face”’.
Rich friends continued to lavish hospitality on them. They stayed with Daisy Fellowes on her yacht and had their car pushed into the harbour; by drunken sailors, thought Duff; by Communists, Diana told the press – ‘They hate my husband!’ They stayed on Loel Guinness’s new yacht too. There was debate about the name. Diana? Gloria, after his wife? Gloria Mundi? Better Sick Transit, suggested Diana. Bestigui’s great ball at the Palazzo Labia in Venice was the apotheosis of rich friends’ entertaining. Even the Aga Khan said he had never been to a better party. Costumes were to be of 1743. ‘We can always be cheapjacks (what are they?)’, mused Diana, ‘or itinerants, or blackamoors or tumblers, or Ambassadors from Lapland or the Gobi.’ In the event she was the centrepiece of an Antony and Cleopatra tableau after Tiepolo’s mural in the same palazzo. She was dressed by Oliver Messel and Cecil Beaton, while herself feverishly sewing at a sack for Duff so that he could take a flask of brandy with him – Bestigui parties being notoriously short on alcohol. She arrived by gondola to find four thousand people massed outside the Palazzo Labia cheering each new arrival. She stepped out assisted by her negro pages, wrote Susan Mary Patten. ‘I don’t think that I ever saw anything more beautiful than that – the light from the palace windows falling on her face and the pearls and the blonde hair.’
*
John Julius was by now twenty and up at Oxford. The year before he had been sent to improve his French at Strasbourg. His mother warned him not to get engaged or married. ‘You must see a world of women before you pick one and don’t get picked yourself, especially not in the street or bar. They’ll contaminate and deceive you and most probably give you diseases of all kinds, and so méfiez vous now you’re on your own and keep yourself and your love for somebody almost exactly like me with a happier disposition.’ Dutifully he kept free from the harpies of Strasbourg, but long before he had seen even a village of women he was engaged to Anne Clifford, a talented artist and daughter of Sir Bede Clifford, former colonial governor and member of an old Roman Catholic family. Duff and Diana approved of Anne but deplored the timing; insisting that at least the wedding should await the end of John Julius’s period at Oxford. ‘Good and pure and strong,’ Diana found Anne. ‘I admire her very much for her beauty and her sense and her not smoking or drinking or lolling, for her uprightness and her fun.’ Her only faults were her mother and her Clifford voice, for neither of which, Diana charitably conceded, could she properly be blamed. Her Catholicism left Diana unmoved; indeed, the only person to be disconcerted was Evelyn Waugh, who had expected indignation at the thought of the noble house of Norwich falling to the papists and instead found acquiescence, even approval.
Her friends assumed Diana would be jealous at the thought of her only child being removed from her so young. Diana was herself uncertain about her reactions and relieved to find that she was already resigned to John Julius’s marriage. ‘Once he made his own friends I knew my day was over and accepted it easily,’ she told Katharine Asquith. If loss there was, she had lost him when he went to Oxford. Besides, he was being particularly nice to her: ‘I don’t know if it’s pity for the old girl or feeling loving and tender all round.’ She reassured her son that she did not feel even a flicker of resentment. ‘Jealousy is very rare in my case and is reserved entirely to sex.’
She found some attractions in the role of mother-in-law, with the chances it offered for giving advice to all and sundry. John Julius was urged at all costs to avoid being common, for instance by calling Anne ‘darling’ or pet names, or showing any intimacy in public. ‘In private la question ne se pose pas,’ she added somewhat ambiguously. She offered useful tips for married life. ‘A man’s strength with a woman is her terror of losing him, irrespective of how much she loves him.’ John Julius should bear this in mind if Anne came over acid at any point. Anne found her warm and welcoming, though making it clear that in John Julius she was securing a treasure whose worth she must realize and whose happiness must be her chief concern. Anne was slightly alarmed by her, but much more amused and stimulated. The first time she saw her mother-in-law-to-be in full cry was at dinner with Louise de Vilmorin. She was struck by the way Diana encouraged her to exhibit her talents. The older woman so stage-managed things that she was soon sitting with a waste-paper basket on her head while Anne sketched her as the Madonna. Anne recognized what she felt must be the most important single reason for Diana’s social success; the fact that though she loved to be the centre of attention, she felt any occasion less than a success if others present did not also show themselves at their best.
John Julius married in 1952. A few months before, Diana stated the credo by which she felt their future relationship should be governed. ‘Whenever you are in pain of heart or body,’ she told her son, ‘or in despair of jams, dishonour, disillusion, nervous apprehension, drink or blackmail, you may rely on your old mother trudging through snow and through bars to perjure and to betray, to murder or – most difficult of all – to behave courageously to help you. But in your smooth days I must be courted and petted and needed, or I can’t react. I was ever so with lovers too – neglect never roused me, only true love and cosseting got good exchange. I’m thankful that you have not turned out a pederast and I suppose I’m glad not to be Mrs Coward or even Mrs Beaton, but they have recompenses.’
There were times when Anne was to think the terms a little stiff but on the whole she felt that Diana gave a great deal more than she received or expected to receive.
*
Duff had become sixty in 1950. Diana felt that even his resilience could hardly survive this awful trial. ‘I can’t bear you to mind,’ she told him. ‘I’d much rather mind myself than see you sad over a matter of days. Dear love, you’re always telling me the best is still to come.’ So he was, and so, to his mind, it was. He found himself as happy as he could remember having been in his life, concerned only that Diana was less content. The solitary flaw was his health. For most of his life he had lived intemperately, he had eaten and drunk too much; now it was beginning to tell. ‘I study his every gesture, gurk or twitch, determined with dread to find him in bad health’, wrote Diana, and though she was perfectly capable of manufacturing major tragedy out of a cough or itch, hard evidence in the shape of headaches, indigestion, sleeplessness, was accumulating to support her fears. In May 1953 he was taken violently ill in the night, uncontrollably vomiting black blood. He was rushed to hospital and the haemorrhage stopped, but not until he had lost a dangerous amount of blood. When Diana saw him the next morning she was dismayed by his appearance – ‘bleached he was – with hands like plaster-casts and face of wan ivory’ – but he was cheerful, even ebullient, and seemed to be enjoying the experience. The only thing that dismayed him was that his diet was confined to milk, boiled rice and asparagus – a régime that convinced him he must recover and come home as soon as possible.
Meanwhile there was the Coronation taking place in London. Diana’s first instinct was to stay in Paris with her husband, who was clearly too ill to travel. Duff insisted that he was in no sort of danger and that of course she must go. Cor
onations did not happen every day and provided exactly the blend of pageant and romantic flummery which she loved most. Diana did not need much convincing. She felt for the royal family and the institution of monarchy that combination of irreverence and passionate loyalty that is so often found among the British of every class: the royals were there to be gossiped about, mocked affectionately, sometimes sharply criticized, but they were a vital part of national life. When Lord Altrincham published a modestly critical article about the monarch in 1957, Diana was warm in the Queen’s defence. ‘Have you ever heard of “tweedy” as an adjective?’ she asked her son. ‘Is it pejorative? I should have thought it meant sensible, flat-shod, wise, honourable people who work in the country, die in the wars, save what they can for their many children.’ When Princess Margaret renounced Peter Townsend – ‘I blubbed. I think it’s noble and splendid of her if she’s set on him, as I was told by inner rumour that she was.’
Though nagged by constant fears for Duff’s well-being, her morale soared as soon as she arrived in Coronation-struck London. The decorations she found at first disappointing but they grew on her ‘with the English faces which were the great decoration. Finest hour over again; 1940 at its rarest, nothing too difficult for anyone, all for all and wild gaiety and cockney jokes.’ The night before the ceremony she walked down the damp, chill Mall to see ‘the Belsen camp of happy sufferers – giant French letters spread over them, sou’westers, Everest equipment’. Then it was back for brief sleep, a struggle into ‘a dead lady’s ducal robes patched up’, and dawn departure for the Abbey. One by one the great ones arrived: Princess Margaret, ‘rather dusky and heavy featured’; the ducal husband, ‘bigger, better, newer robes than the others, padded to a François i er width by admiral’s epaulettes.’ Then the touch of bathos, the emergence of seven maids with seven mops, dressed ‘as in smart American Hot-Dog stands in hygienic white overalls and caps. At circuses they sweep up elephant droppings but what could those fairy royal feet have left – soles that had not left red carpets since birth?’ At her side Lady Mowbray twittered in panic because her husband had to walk backwards down the steps with a long train. ‘He’ll never manage. He has to put on his spectacles to read the Oath and with them on he can’t see the floor.’ ‘Couldn’t he snatch them off?’ asked Diana, ever helpful. ‘I told him to, but he’s so dreadfully obstinate,’ whispered the despairing Lady Mowbray. Lord Mowbray survived his ordeal and Diana’s heart leapt as the ceremony moved towards its climax: ‘It could not have been more moving and true and touching because of the size and grace of the central figure.’
She returned to Duff enthused with the delights of London and more convinced than ever that this must eventually be her home. She found her husband better then she had feared but not as well as she had hoped. Over the next few months he gradually picked up his strength and by the winter seemed almost himself again. ‘I am so glad the darling old hot-cross-bun is really better,’ wrote Lady McEwen from Marchmont, where they went to shoot in December. Then it was on to the Michael Duffs’ at Vaynol for Christmas. A cruise to Jamaica was to complete the convalescence; arranged with great difficulty and now dreaded by Diana. Duff had a heavy cold when they left Vaynol and was coughing painfully by the time they reached the Colombie at Southampton. It was eleven on a cold, wet night when they boarded, to be greeted by a bevy of captains, pursers and other magnificos. ‘Get rid of them all, I feel rather sick,’ muttered Duff. Diana made everyone go away, then pleaded with him to give up the trip and get off the boat. It was impossible, said Duff. The luggage was aboard: there was no tolerable hotel in Southampton; besides, sea air was just what he needed to cure his cold and set him up.
Diana was by now haggard with worry, but forced herself to remain silent and not irritate Duff by asking constantly after his health. Next morning he seemed a little better but was obviously restless and uncomfortable. At last Diana asked him how he felt. ‘Not really right,’ he answered. ‘And at noon it happened,’ she told Cecil Beaton, ‘a rush to the bathroom and a bigger, redder haemorrhage than he’d had before. “Poor child,” he said, “you said you couldn’t go through it again.” I regretted then so often having whined if Duff drank so much as an extra glass of red wine – “Please not, I can’t go through it again.”’
Diana found the ship’s doctor and Duff was given morphia and the drug with which their French doctor had equipped them. With proper hospital attention he might have pulled through, but at sea, and with the boat now tossing severely, there was little hope of checking the loss of blood. ‘I became uncommonly calm and executive,’ wrote Diana, and, ‘I recognized this calm as a fatal sign.’ Though she could not admit it even to herself, she had decided that all hope was over, ‘hence the calm – it’s hope that makes one hysterical’. The doctor and the jolly old infirmier scoffed at her fears, there was no question of Duff dying, he was not even seriously ill. ‘Do they think I am going to die?’ asked Duff, with the same calm as he would have inquired whether dinner was ready. With relief she told him that they had pooh-poohed the idea. ‘It was true, true, but I think if at that moment they had told me his end was so close I would have told him.’
Duff, white and frail, was now being sick every two hours. ‘His trouble was torturing thirst – he was allowed no water, for the bleeding had to stop and I could only give him drops on my fingers, and he said once “It’s you. The others would give it me.”’ It was 31 December. As Diana sat by her dying husband, the clamour of singing and laughter floated up from the dining-room where the passengers were celebrating the Réveillon. It was a macabre backcloth for the tragedy, and for the rest of her life the sounds of New Year’s carnival – the laughter, the music, the popping of corks – were to haunt her with signal potency. In the early hours the sickness stopped, ‘but what was left? Not enough to colour his flesh or turn his heart into beats; no hope of transfusions of another’s blood – the sea still rolling – his breath shorter – no pain – no consciousness.’
He lasted through the night and the next morning but slipped away with the daylight at 3.30 p.m. the following day. Diana spent the last hours in the adjoining bathroom, slumped in exhausted apathy. The doctor urged her to come to the bedside. She refused. If Duff recovered consciousness she would be there, otherwise she would leave him to die alone. ‘Un peu de courage!’ urged the doctor. ‘It was not a question of courage. I did not want to watch him unconsciously die. I greatly hope no one but strangers will watch my last breath. I heard no sound though I was within three yards or less. I dreaded the groans – no sound – he faded like the day and left me the night.’ She could not even bring herself to look at him, though before she left the cabin she bent over his sheet-swathed body ‘and kissed what I felt was his brow and said “Good-bye, my darling, my darling.”’ She was physically exhausted, emotionally void, and yet in a curious way felt a sense of liberation. ‘Looking back and writing about it all makes me realize that never in my life have I felt more natural – perhaps it’s not strange, but I’d imagined myself a grief-stricken woman feeling embarrassed or savage or shy. None of these things.’
The ship docked at Vigo and a charter-plane flew Diana and Duff’s body back to Paris. ‘Diana came down the steps looking like an angel from Chartres Cathedral,’ wrote Susan Mary Patten, ‘Very beautiful, very calm.’ Photographers and journalists thronged around but another close friend, Kitty Giles, flung herself against Diana, arms outstretched, and walked backwards to the car, shielding her from intruders. An evening followed of bright chatter at Chantilly, before Diana fell into drugged sleep. She woke at seven the following morning and insisted that Mrs Patten should identify a quotation for her – ‘I wish I could remember it,’ wrote Susan Mary, ‘for it was lovely – about being very cold and alone but it not mattering, because the Elysian fields are warm.’ Then Diana sat up, practical as always. ‘This is no good, Susan Mary, you and I reading poetry. It would be better to have breakfast.’
The cortège moved on to England. Duff w
as to be buried at Belvoir, but Diana stayed in London. A few months before she had told John Julius that she almost never went to funerals. ‘Public ones I grace by official duty, but not the burials of those I love. The idea jars upon me; exhibition of grief, the society duty side, does not, in my heart, fit.’ Till the last moment she was uncertain whether she would react differently when the moment arrived for Duff to be buried. She did not. ‘I did not want to hear the clods fall or be the central tragic figure, to court or dodge photographers.’
In London, she spent a few days of fierce sociability, finding in an endless procession of friends and acquaintances some relief from the pressure of her own misery. Great offence was caused by a letter of condolence beginning ‘My dear Diana’ and ending ‘Yours sincerely, Evelyn Waugh’, but word of her indignation got back to the author and he made amends with a hurried note to ‘Darling Baby’ from ‘Bo’. He visited her next day to find her in consternation because Lady Juliet Duff had taken it on herself to ask Lord Salisbury to read the lesson at Duff’s Memorial Service. Diana at once telephoned him to insist that he must not be embarrassed by the request, she would never have dreamed of asking him herself. Only when she checked her flow of apologies did Lord Salisbury get a chance to say that there was no task he would be more honoured to undertake. ‘She was very wild and witty, full of funny stories,’ Evelyn Waugh noted in his diary; and everyone who saw her in those few days remarked on her febrile animation.
The Memorial Service was the day after the funeral. Diana lurked in a side chapel and saw almost nothing but Churchill with tears streaming down his face, heard little except for the murmur of surprise when The British Grenadiers was played as a voluntary. ‘The obituaries treat Duff as a mixture of Fox, Metternich, Rochester and the Iron Duke,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh. Only The Times was sharply critical in its final judgement. Few widows need expect to hear their recently perished husbands treated with scorn or hostility, but Diana had more right than most to find comfort in the press and letters of condolence.
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