We rang up the Lady & buried various hatchets on her birthday-I don’t think she noticed mind you but it didn’t matter. I suppose we’ re all raving now-but are we?
I went to shoot with Ian Walker1 today-all foggy & foul which ruined the shoot, but Ld Scarsdale2 was there, well, talk about mad. He & I arrived at the meet before the host & for some minutes there was brilliant blue sky & a huge aeroplane went over miles high up. Ld Scarsdale looked up & said ‘Russian. They often come. Damned cheek.’ Then the fog came down, so we didn’t get any more thrilling bits of inf of that sort. In Train (30 Nov) to London.
Another FURIOUS letter from Nancy more or less saying she doesn’t want any of us. How awful to be so proud, & I freely admit I long for ALL sisters ALL the time. Oh well it’s easier if we aren’t wanted isn’t it.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo:
We had such a day of it yesterday. We were eleven for lunch & then Max asked to come with Ronnie Peterson,1 so that was 13, so I roped in the Count, & we were 14. Also Jerry went twice to Orly, and over to Naunce to take the Harrods. All this with more than good humour because of the thrill of seeing Ronnie Peterson! Mogens was here & he murmured a word of Swedish which drew an unwilling smile. He has been made ‘driver of the year’ by the press. What made the lunch party quite testing was that we’d got a very serious French economist to meet Roy [Harrod], so the two different sorts of people were so utterly unalike that there was hardly a bridge. I had a table of really boring talk about the dollar & its vagaries. The Frenchman started: ‘Sir Roy Arrod, I very much admire you’. Roy then proceeded very very slowly to tell him that I was the only person of female gender to be beloved by Lytton Strachey. I don’t think Frenchie understood one word of this declaration except that somebody, long ago, had been in love with me. It was very complicated.
Max was lovely & he blew in & had dinner, wearing a dinner jacket because there had been some prize-giving ceremony in Paris for which they had to dress. Then he rushed to aeroplane & I think got home to Jean soon after eleven English time-rather marvellous. They had come for the prize-giving, but also for a demo of a fire safety device at Montlhéry & they all came, Jackie Stewart2 included, so Jerry saw the lot at Orly. And John3 got an autograph.
I must describe R. Peterson. He is very tall & slender, with long palest gold hair (like Sophy’s remarkable hair when she was 4) & blue eyes, & tiny perfect hands & weeny feet, & his skin is so fine I should think he never had to shave. One can’t BEAR the thought of the risks he takes.
All love darling, Honks
To wish you a Happy Xmas & 1972 & to thank you for all the trouble you have taken with me this year. I don’t know what I would have done without you especially in the hospital. Wondair. Since you ask (linen bag) I’d rather have the flowers.
Much love, N
Darling Debo:
Sure enough yours came & ’twas worth waiting for. What would one do without your letters, it would be a grey waste.
Naunce had a bad day & I went down & think she felt better because we began to laugh about something & couldn’t stop. She is in the very best mood. She said something I never thought to hear from her lips, viz., ‘Isn’t it extraordinary to think that a civilized country like England could put a man in prison for years, who’s done nothing? I always thought he was in a plot, everyone did.’ (This was evoked by the Cabinet papers which have at last been revealed,1 & Robert wrote about the bit about Kit in S. Telegraph.) Well well.
I have GOT to get a bathing gown for Bahamas, I’ve gone on with my old ones only fit for a beautiful teenage person because I can’t abide the sort of solid kind with falsies attached. Well yesterday I found a fairly pretty one, & it’s nearly £40. Must I? The answer I suppose is yes.
All love darling, Honks
Dear Miss
I was so frantic I sent for the dr but, as I said to him, I know you can’t do anything but I must talk to somebody about myself. I do try & not depress others (exc. sisters & esp. poor Honks) with my woes. He is such a sweet man. He has given me some more drugs so will see. The pain is no worse than it has been from the start but much more constant. I never get a let up in the day & have to take things at night now but I do sleep thank goodness.
I had Hamish [St Clair-Erskine] for two nights, it was a worry really as I was so unwell. He has got £90,000 from a broken trust-1967–1973 very bitter about having been penniless until over 60. He said ‘We would have been married now for 30 years’. Help!! He is very dull & might have been more difficult to get rid of than poor Prod was. I don’t like being married. I suppose too selfish. Anyway it would have been far worse for me this illness with some wretched old husband hanging about & either telling one one hasn’t got anything or else forcing one into ever more hospitals.
Lovely sunny morning. I’ve got three roses out, I mean from last year. They are quite different from when young but very pretty!
Much love, N
Get on
It’s quite incredibly pleasant having Honks. When Wife was here too we were a sort of full house, & I wish you’d been as well to make a flush (with Woman).
Yesterday the Portlands1 came to lunch. We were in the Stag Parlour because when the electric cuts2 are on the lift won’t work, & the five of us were sitting happily at a tea table, just finished a rec pie, & were looking at the blackcurrant fool, spoons poised, when the phone rang wildly and the v. nice girl who works it said in an odd sort of voice ‘I’ve just had a call to say a bomb will go off in the house in an hour’. Well that was rather a funny thing to say in the middle of lunch you’ll freely admit. So everyone was told to go out of the house, Nanny said she couldn’t because she hadn’t fed the baby, so I had to say ‘Can’t help that, please go out of the house’. So we all gathered in the hall & Sonny [Portland] put on a coat of mine & we went to the lodge to wait for the police. They took 20 minutes to come which I thought was a bit off. The Inspector said ‘Would you like me to search the house?’ I said ‘Do but it will take you a bit longer than the ½ hour we’ve got left before we go up’. He said we could look for boxes. I said ‘You’ll find plenty’. Meanwhile Woman flew off to put her new car out of the way of flying glass (never mind the Velazquez) and Nanny had legged it towards Baslow with a pramful of two objects. Maud & Miss Feeney appeared and many a gardener, odd man, carpenter, agent etc etc.
When the hour was nearly up & we were getting dreadfully cold & bored an old man said to Woman ‘When they said an hour in the first war it was nearly always an hour and five minutes so I should wait a little longer’. I said to Sonny ‘I’m so sorry this should happen when you come to lunch’ and he said ‘Oh my dear it’s most amusing’. Giving it 10 minutes over we went back & finished our pudding. So that’s our news really. Most amusing. I’m so glad the man didn’t say three hours, we should have been even colder.
The electric cuts have produced a rash of very good silver candlesticks all over the house. But as they tell one when it’s going to be off there is no thrilling element of surprise.
Last night Honks & I had dinner with Woman. It was SUPREMO. Head Soup (out of) & Scotch Collops. No pouding. Huge coal fire. Bottle of wine she had smuggled from France. Would that you had been there.
Going wooding now.
Much love, 9
Darling Soo
Somebody rang up & said they liked what you & I had written in the Observer. What did we write? Do tell. The Ob rang up when I was very bad & God knows what I may have told them. I never see it.1
Did you see the Mosleys on American TV?2 They seem to have been made a great fuss of-next they’ll be off to China no doubt. One interviewer said ‘What did your father do?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Nothing?’ I remember being asked the same except that I said English people made such huge amounts from the slave trade they’ve never had to work since. Sir Oz was cross with Honky & said she ought to have answered ‘he was in agriculture’ but, as she says, that would have been a plain lie.3
Do ante up a spo
t of news
Love, Susan
Darling Sukie,
Thanks awfully for yours of 24 Feb – I’ve been away, so only just got it.
The Obs – well I’ve never seen it, although the brute of a lade who rang up promised to send. But I think you said that sisters are a shield against cruel adversity, and I said I thought you were the cruel adversity, or something like that. Oh how beastly of me, but do admit you were, a bit?
I didn’t see the Mosleys on telly, how maddening, never even knew they were on telly until someone told me they’d seen Sir O. on the Today Show. Fancy that, I suppose it was Cord’s first time in the US?
I’m so sorry that horrible pain keeps up. The Hen says the excellent Bristol Dr will be going to see you in April? Oh I do hope he’ll do some good.
My book’s coming along all too slowly. The hope is to finish it by end of summer & then scram to Europe.
Much love, Susan
Darling Sooze
You are dreadful. The only thing is, if one is such a Beast of the Apocalypse, I can’t think why one keeps up relations – let alone come here & shake one’s pillow. Anyway, I’m being well paid out for a spot of teasing I can tell you.
There was an article on prisons here. Most of them are medieval buildings, & treatment more or less the same. But there is one which makes every Fr. tax payer see red*: it’s like a businessman’s hotel with bed sitters & running music & so on. But the man who wrote the article said if given the choice he would rather be in one of the old ones (& I bet so would I).
I’m reading Les Misérables & so should you. That & Monte Cristo1 wonderfully describe the hopeless feeling that prison must give & the awful situation after one has been let out. (Not in the case of MC who immediately became the richest man on earth!)
I wonder if you’ll see old Don Harrod, his white beard stained with, I fear, whisky. I gave yr address but it’s probably 1,000 miles from where he is. Billa, now Lady Harrod because the old Don is a Sir, came for 10 days & was so kind. I was rather bad at the time. It’s funny how people differ & some are so wonderful if one is in pain – the best of all is Mme Guimont my femme de ménage – all sisters are perfect.
Best love Soozy Woo, N
Susan, now don’t be like that, after all it is but the Teaser Teased, wouldn’t you say? But you sounded BITTER, saying I don’t know why you bother to keep up relations etc. Anyway I still don’t know what the Observer said, as nobody sent it & I haven’t seen it. Do send, if you’ve got it. And also do stop being cross; it makes me v. sad as I thought you’d be AMUSED. (That is, assuming they did not misquote.)
Thanks for info. about the Fr. businessmen’s club prisons. Mine’s going to be about how the supposed to be kind prisons are far crueller than the known to be vile ones – my dear Susan how would you like to be forced to go to GROUP THERAPY as a condition of being let out on parole?
We are vaguely hoping to come to England etc in Sept, hoping the book will be finished by then. Can I still come & see you, in spite of all?
Much love, Susan
Only a word to say I’ve got the Legion of Honour – you may imagine I’m terribly pleased. Gilly [Madame Guimont] for some reason simply furious – Hassan pleased. Gil sniffed just like Blor would have & said she wondered if it was true – I showed her the medal after which she sniffed & said no more.
I wish you were here to go & buy me the little red buttonhole I don’t dare ask Gil! Do be pleased!
Love, N
I’m also a bit better thank goodness. U wair so good.
Darling Soo
You are kind but don’t send prison books I’ll read yours. Everybody seems to agree that the kind prisons are worse than the old sort. In the Venetian lagoon there is an island looney bin, marvellously beautiful, 18th cent. A looney dr friend of mine went to see it with a letter for the Governor who said I suppose you’ve come to see the chapel & was amazed when it was the loons. My friend said they are treated the same as in the 12th cent but it makes no odds, all lunatics are miserable & in many ways we make them more so.
I’ve got the Legion of Honour (for my œuvre historique) – busy sewing it into all my clothes. Susan I fear you will snéer but all the workers of my acquaintance are pleased but I suppose they are all Uncle Toms.
Teresa’s Hons & Rebels1 has even fascinated Honks so perhaps I’ll send it to you? Say yes or no – you are prob. too busy. There’s a fearfully funny account of her barging into a luncheon party & making a speech to Enoch Powell,2 oh how brave.
I’m very bad but clever Woo has found a lady to bring my brekker on the days (Sundays & Bank Hols) when Uncle Hassan prefers to lie in the arms of his Spanish mistress. I can’t fend for myself at all, the pain is too bad & that’s partly why I so much dread your & Teresa’s revolution. The nerve specialist said, what I seem to have noticed, that it must be very painful & there is no cure. Rather a mercy, no more horrible & expensive treatments. But for the moment I am in euphoria, you can’t think what heaven after all these horrible months. The pill has a slight disad. I tumble about like a Russian doll, fearfully giddy. The servants hate it although I explain it’s not the least dangerous – for one thing I have warning: everything goes black & white like an old photograph. I admit it’s a bore. Hassan is having his holiday. He writes ‘votre fidèle serviteur’3 – when he left I was in the depths & he was so good & kind. I do hope for his sake I shall pick up as it must be lowering for him.
Mary McCarthy’s book4 is quite dazzling, you will – or will have – adored it. But isn’t it touching that the Americans still go on seeing themselves as simple good & honest compared with the twisty Europeans!! The rest of the world regards their cold cruelty with terror. You must be having a field day, almost too much copy, with your prisons. When?
Send a little word.
Love, Soo
Dear Miss
It was so good of you to come I’m afraid I was very depressing. I know what a nuisance I am to Honky. I know I ought to bugger off into a nursing home & be heard of no more but it would be prison for life; if I did it it would only be for her sake. But knowing her & our relationship, in the end it might be yet more of a nuisance. You know she only comes here about twice a week & in a way the worry is that I’ve got a pain. In a nursing home I’d be utterly wretched as well, miserably unhappy & pointless. You must see that the present crisis is slowly calming down, it has been very bad. In future I won’t tell Honks that I’m having one, she must be protected. I can see Sir Oz is fed up & I don’t wonder. Oh what an affliction to fall on one. This is the fourth summer & though at the start I was much better in myself the pain was the same – I remember old Marie crying when she saw me. What’s so extra horrid is feeling so ill, no doubt from the drugs. Nevair.
So Miss don’t force me into a hospital. Admit I goodly spent 3 months in one last year really only to please you & did all the vile things, lumbar puncture & so on, for nothing. Admit oh do.
Love, N
Darling Debo:
Naunce has got a CBE!! She said on (very faint) telephone ‘I’ve got CBE’. I was horrified & said ‘Got what?’ (thinking ’twas a new illness). Well it has cheered her up & made her feel better, is it not perfect. Between you me & doorpost she was telling me (after d’Honneur) that nothing would induce her to accept an idiotic English equivalent. I believe people often say that but seldom do same. (I know Uncle Harold is an exception, & in a small way so was Evie Waugh).1 About Naunce I am so pleased because all these things really & truly do help her. She said something very disarming: ‘What I love about my CBE is thinking of all the people it will annoy’.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
Something I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages, of terrible all round pathos. Last time Wooms was here we spoke of Rignell & the war & she suddenly said ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t always kind to Nanny & the boys’. I quickly said ‘Oh Wooms you were, it was wondair of you to harbour them’.
But of course it
’s true, & one of my great (past) sorrows is that not only did I miss all those years of them, but they had no love from any one except Nanny [Higgs], who was marvellous but definitely not like our Nanny. It is not only a waste, but I’m sure was very bad for them. It just couldn’t be helped. Even Nancy would have been MUCH better I’m certain. Woo just couldn’t help it. She doesn’t like children, & then she’d also got none & probably half wanted some. Muv would have been good, & you ideal, but it wasn’t possible. Very unlucky, in such a big family, that they went to the only one who really hates children, wasn’t it. I never thought Woo wd ever say it, poor Woo, not her fault in the least.
P.S. Very lovely about Garrett’s garter1 is it not. I must say of all our friends he & Frank [Longford] would have seemed (in those days) the least likely to be given it. I don’t know the moral of that. (No, Brian Howard the LEAST likely, but nevertheless very unlikely.) He deserves it & so does Frank.
To go back to the war, when Al & Max came to Holloway Al used to say over & over again ‘I don’t live at Swinbrook,2 I’ve got a HOME, I go there every night. It’s in Russia. I’m Mr Russian.’ It was so sad the emphasis on home, it killed one. Then aged 12 he was torn from Crowood. It doesn’t bear thinking of. ‘You think I’m asleep, but you see really I’m at my home’. Oh Debo.
Darling Honks
Now Honks, the war & the boys. It doesn’t bear thinking of. It was odd, looking back, that Muv didn’t get a bigger house & have them, but of course Birdie was nigh on a full time job with the bed-wetting & everything else. Of course I was too stupid & too young. The Mackinnon interlude was an odd one, I can’t remember how long it lasted. It’s honest of Woman to admit to not liking children. The other thing is that everyone has something untoward which happens in childhood (or thinks they have in later life, viz. Em & her lack of education, Nancy ditto etc etc. I must admit I’ve got no complaints, I adored my life till Swinbrook went & even after that. I never ceased to be grateful that I was taken away from that awful school) but of course their experience was specially odd & beastly. What you must have suffered, as you were such a specially maternal sort of bloke, doesn’t bear thinking of but perhaps that’s what’s turned you into a saint. Yes, Honks, quite likely.
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