Much Scrabble here, we got X one night according to Wife. I didn’t notice it myself, hide like rhinoceros. Wife says her bed here is a fright. She has also discovered complete rotting of webbing of armchair in her room, broken lampshade & probably many other items missed by me. Pity.
Much love, Debo
Darling Woman
Thanks so much for your letter. I wish you had come to Smithfield,1 it was lovely, & a lot more people than last year at much higher entry fee-so they were pleased.
We had Mr Peart,2 Mrs Thatcher,3 the Queen & Prince Philip, & the Lord Mayor of London for notables. I sat next to Peart at lunch, the biggest old fraud you ever met & no more Socialist than you are – all on the side of tied cottages, against capital transfer tax & wealth tax etc (or so he said!). I said it must be difficult for you in the Cabinet if you disagree with them on these fundamental things, he said several of them agreed with him. I expect he just said it all to make lunch more jolly!
Mrs Thatcher said How-do-you-do to me three times! Each time as if she’d never seen me before. As I was the only woman in the party I thought it a little bit dim of her. Once at the entrance, second time in the main ring, third time among the sheep. Oh well.
The Queen was marvellous & truly interested in the animals but we had to spend most of the time in the machinery.
The last day was a tear-jerker, my three years are over. To my horror I was presented with a terrific jewel to mark the end of my term. I really was dumbstruck. It is very pretty – I long to know who chose it.
Much love, Stublow
Darling Stublow
Mr Hine1 telephoned to say that Muv & Farve’s headstone had snapped off in one of those high gales & should he get it fixed up again, so I said yes please. I hope to go to Church there next Sunday & also call to see Mrs Stobie.
Mark & Anne2 were in such good form on Sunday & it was a real joy having them for lunch. I gave them Pot au Feu, & must admit it was delicious & all the guests had a second helping. I might give it to you & Andrew when you come.
Nard says her Memoirs are getting on fast. She says that FOOD comes into it too often. No doubt if I started my Memories it would be nearly all Food!!!
Much love from Woman
Dearest Hen,
I am adoring it here.1 The architecture is an utter lark, all copied from the Dreaming Spires of Oxford in the 30’s but with notable differences, mainly an extraorder heating system so that I got a heat rash the 1st few days here (temp. outside was below zero). I’ve got a lovely huge flat in the college with three sitting rooms, some with extra couches or beds for the Oys2 when they come.
Am loving the students. The first few days were pure torture as I had to choose 18 students (max. size of class) out of 200 applicants, goodness it was difficult. They’d all had to write on a card why they wanted to take the course. Mostly I rather followed instructions of higher-ups (deans etc.) & chose illustrious-sounding people with Rhodes Scholarships. But one boy aged 17 wrote on his card ‘I believe I have the qualifications for a journalist as I am tall enough to look over walls & thin enough to hide behind trees’, so I could see I would worship him, & let him in. A girl wrote ‘There comes a time in every person’s life when he or she must burst into some new form of action’. She’s an athlete, so I let her in mainly because I long to see her burst into some new form of action.
Well Hen shall close with love
hoping you might try writing. Henderson
Dearest Hen LECHEROUS LECTURER1 in REAL LIFE
How really awful that I haven’t written before to your Collegiate address.
The braveness of you, being an old lady professor, I can’t get over it & wd do a good deal to hear you telling the brutes their lessons.
What do you tell them? All sorts of ways to bomb people I suppose, oh Hen, how rash.
Wretched objects, how I loathe students & all their works, they always think there’s been nothing like them before, but my word there has. People between 18 & 22 ought to be put away, well I suppose in a way they are put away into Yale & your TENDER CARE. Well done Hen. (Or are they all 30 & much married with children on their backs – oh no, marriage is out, just children on the backs? Do ENLARGE, I love hearing at long range, it’s just I don’t like having to look at them.)
I’m here for one night, Woman is blooming, it’s a rest cure.
Honks is in London for three weeks – he is going to debate in the Oxford Union some time. Otherwise there is no real news, it’s all of the country variety of farms & houses & all the multifarious things I do which wd bore you STIFF – like Nancy. (Are you bored? Answer was always STIFF.)
Honks is doing memoirs, absolutely BRILL of course, I had a reading the other night & screamed, then cried, all emotions battered. I believe Pryce-Jones’ book looms, how I dread it. He still puts about that we are all for it, how eccentric. Oh Hen.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Debo:
Darling, could you write a short account of when you & Muv fetched Boud from Switz? Or would you prefer to keep it for your own memoirs? I only want (as it were) a shorthand synopsis.
Nicky [Mosley] says however awful P-Jones’s book is, Boud will one day be a heroine, I mean a tragic heroine. I expect it’s true. It was her love of two countries which went to war which made her resolve to die. A tragic dilemma which she faced with extraordinary courage.
I had a near-quarrel with Nicky about Rhodesia. I feel so terribly strongly about it that it makes me almost ill. It’s years since I felt anything so much. The point of view of people like Nicky is so typically Christian & foul.1 Sometimes I think the Church of England is the fount of all evil. When I said that to Muv she used to say ‘Oh no, Dana; as Tap2 always said, no religion is wholly bad’.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo:
Your account of meeting poor Bird is genius. I must tone it down, but I also remember being so shocked by the vacant smile & orange teeth … How cruel it was, really, to bring her back to life. As to the sheet hanging on the line, it reminds me how good Nanny Higgs & Mrs Healey & everyone were when she stayed with us. A real nightmare.
Now darling two questions & RSVP. 1. Should I call Muv & Farve that, or my parents, my father etc? 2. Could you please discover from Wife whether she would prefer to be out or in? I shan’t be a bit hurt if she says out, but she has been such a big part of my life for such ages I would love just a page or two. When I ask her she evades (you know).
Oh Debo, Nicky’s book about Lady Desborough1 one lives in it, I’ve almost finished & can hardly bear the thought. Made for Wife too & for Andrew. It will be out 15th April but ’twas sent me for review.
THANK you more than I can say for Bird; poor Bird, it kills one. She was so marvellous. About Wife: what I mean is she might prefer not to be in the pillory for having befriended such a wrong-minded person. You are all right because it’s not ‘voluntary’ being a sister! Anyway I can’t do without you.
All love, Honks
Darling Debo:
Nicky writes that he & Verity want to give a party for Kit’s 80th birthday – I’m amazed they realize it will be his 80th. All the family. Kit is less than enchanted but I’ve accepted with joy.
I’m afraid N won’t like my review of the Grenfells. He’s written to say Julian wasn’t a bully – it’s nonsense, he is convicted out of his own mouth or at least in letters to Lady Desborough. He did things, setting on people several against one, that I couldn’t imagine in a thousand years Kit ever doing & it makes me so cross that Julian is supposed to be a perfect knight & Kit a low thug. Truth! Where is it. Deeper than the bottom of the well.
I’m trying to get Muv down on paper, she’s very difficult. It makes me miss her all over again.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
I’m thinking of you writing about Muv – impossible. Like you I miss her much more now. There are a lot of things I should like to ask her & as she was almost the only really tru
thful person I know, the answer would be likely to be interesting, or any way real.
Didn’t she have an awful time in the way of Farve always selling & moving. I should have really resented that. Do you think she liked Asthall best of the houses? She never had what she really wanted, a sort of Wilbury,1 always those overgrown cottages.
The photograph book at Chatsworth with all the bits about you & Sir O leaving prison etc etc has completely disappeared. Very odd & very annoying as it had many a classic in it. Too big to steal surely, & anyway who would want it? Pryce-Jones I suppose.
Much love, Debo
Darling Honks
Tales of Woman. In the days of cooks, she came with a worried (& cross) face & ‘Stublow, ordering with Mrs B is a nightmare’. Then the Game Soup saga—‘You know, Stublow, isn’t GS the loveliest & richest soup you ever laid hands on? WELL, a milky affair came up.’ She remembers meals 40, 50 years ago, even on the boat going to Canada.
Well Honks … more soon.
Much love, Debo
Darling Honks
I’d have given anything for you to have been here last night. Woman got out all the papers re standing for the Parish Council of Caudle Green (Brimpsfield really) from her Unscratchable1 and Derek P[arker] B[owles] made us all literally die. She is truly wondair. She isn’t going to be there for Polling Day neither has she canvassed a soul. Nevertheless she is now referred to as Councillor and her opinion is keenly sought re everything from drains to foreign policy. The answer usually ends up ‘so I wrote a furious letter …’
She adores being teased by someone like that.
Well Honks, this is only an Interim Report. Longer & better will follow.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo:
I screamed about Councillor Jackson & could picture the scene. Do let me know the dénouement, was she elected?
My silly book is almost finished. I’ll show you the bits about you of course. Debo, the game soup is wondair but can you think of a Woom story which isn’t funny. I can’t put the bagless cow1 & the game soup & then just leave her at that. Of course I’ve said she was noble (& so she was) about our release. I’ve drawn a veil over her quickly putting down poor Grousy & Edna May2- she probably had to but it was so sad just hearing about it in prison.
I dread Pryce-Jones’s book.
I’ve got a long bit about Lady Evelyn3 in me book, do you think it’s awful of me not to ask Bryan first? She is very attractive in it but naturally very eccentric too. I couldn’t bear to be made to drop it. It’s all so long ago, nearly half a century*.
All love darling, Honks
*It’s the only fairly non-dull bit in the book.
Darling Debo:
I wrote to Deacon asking her to tell the contents of her pouch1 about the Duchess of Windsor dying all alone & (according to Anne-Marie von Bismarck) rather hoping for a sign from her in-laws that they do realize how she is dying. I admit it’s a strange desire on her part but thought I should pass it on. I got such a wonderful letter back with the time-worn tale that the Windsors are blamed because his abdication in 1936 made George VI die in 1953 (or whenever it was) & that being K & Q not only killed him but half killed Cake. So out of loyalty Deacon thinks her pouch contents may not wish to send a flower or whatever it is. Well, if Cake hated her spell as Q I’ll eat my hat & coat, & then how about all the Christianity & chat about widows, the dying, & forgiveness of sins, & loving one’s enemy etc. Isn’t it richly hypocritical (BURN please & don’t tell Andrew). I never can get over Christians, their unkindness is so much deeper than ours. What could it all matter, we shall soon be dust & turned to clay.
We got some rain, overjoyed. We went to see Sauguet presented with his sword,2 you know he’s a composer, well they’ve made the hilt this shape (like a treble clef, can’t draw it) don’t you think a clever idea. It was such fun all the loved ones including the Count, seldom seen now because of his big Bridges.3
Such a marvellous letter from Woo whose village shop has conked & she’s bought the entire contents for a song.
Oh darling when shall we ever meet again, Kit shows no sign of wishing to move.
All love, Honks
Darling Debo:
I’ve got the [Pryce-] Jones book, a proof copy. It is very nasty. Yet fairly difficult to attack in a review, because most, or at least many, of the foul things purport to have been said to Jones by ‘Old friends’ of Birdie, therefore unless one goes for the said friends! The nastiest, well one of the nastiest, is Mr Float, Woman’s intended.1 He (apparently) told such an obviously false story of Bird saying, in connection with the abdication, that Cake was like a shop girl. It is so particularly offensive & silly &, as we all know, Birdie had strong race feelings but not so much as a soupçon of class feeling & thus it’s just something she couldn’t have said.
Johnny de Lucinge is rather horrid, he apologized to me for having had any truck with Jones. So silly of him. Paulette2 quite nasty, also a few sort of Hungarians I never knew. The most surprising is Mary Gore,3 extremely voluble & quite horrid. What a contrast to Pempie!4 I thought Mary was really fond of Bobo & it gave me a shock. However one must say this: obviously with anyone who would talk he would go on & on with questions for two or three hours. Then no doubt he boiled down the result to a page or so of just the disagreeable remarks. What made me angriest was Mabel [Woolvern] (fancy listening to someone over ninety) who said Farve had said ‘Mabel, I can never lift up my head again’ (when Bird came home). Can you remotely imagine him saying such a thing to anyone let alone to Mabel. Jones is the worm of worms. Of course all the emphasis is on Streicher,5 that was Birdie’s fault, I admit, for her statement saying ‘I want everyone to know that I hate all Jews’. Jones obviously tried & tried to get people (e.g. the Streicher son) to say Bobo had had an affair with him. Of course such an idea is completely mad & luckily they all say so. He was about two feet high & wildly unattractive. Oh Debo it all makes me long for poor Bird & to defend her with tooth & claw but it’s not easy.
Hamiltons (the publishers) have just gone. He came to read my twaddle. Rather marvellous after thirty years hard publishing to be so keen to read a typescript. There he was hour after hour hard at it. I’ve got a bit more to do – a difficult bit. He was v. nice & flattering but I’m afraid really it’s quite boring. I’d give anything for you to be here this minute & for us to go through Jones together.
All love darling, Honks
Dearest Hen,
The book: Yes I have seen it (draft manuscript, not the published version). I suppose it’s mainly a tour de force of research, as he went to Germany & saw many who knew her there then, also various hitherto secret documents & papers. There’s lot in it I didn’t know about, but then I wouldn’t as I never saw her after 1937. But her real character doesn’t come through. I expect it would have been far better if you’d agreed to talk to him, & taken him up on his offer to let you make changes in the MS. I asked him to quote the bit I had about her in Hons and Rebels,1 so he did, & I was glad of that as it was the best way I could find of describing her in the end; although actually the inner Boud is almost impossible to describe. Once he was determined to go ahead with it, I thought it would be best to put him in touch with people who really knew her.
Jessica’s recipe for salmon, sent to Deborah, 18 August 1976.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Steake,
Thanks for your letter of 3 Sept. The worm’s book will not be published yet which is a relief. I don’t agree that it was a mistake not to discuss Bobo with him. We couldn’t have given him any idea of what Bobo was really like because as I see now his only wish was to write a book to make a sensation & that is why he has made it so pornographic, in other words to sell to that kind of public. If you had also refused to help he would no doubt then have given up. Some of the photographs were in Muv’s album so I suppose you gave them to him. You could have asked us first if we wished them to be published. The album full of newspaper cuttings & photograph
s that Debo always had in her drawing room can’t be found anywhere. Did you borrow it perhaps as I believe you are writing your life. If so we would all like to have it back.
The grandsons must be sweet now, just the age which I like almost best. I am hopeless with babies & small children.
I am off for a short holiday to Switzerland, back home early in October.
Love from Woman
Woman:
I was absolutely enraged by your foul letter, implying that I’ve stolen one of Debo’s scrapbooks & given P-J photos from one of Muv’s scrapbooks.1 As you well know, Muv left all hers to Jonathan Guinness so why don’t you get after him. I have practically no photos of Bobo, & have given none to P-J. There are, obviously, huge amounts to be had in newspaper offices & I suppose that is how he got them.
Once & for all, the sequence of the P-J book:
1) As I told Debo at the time, I advised him not to go ahead without access to Bobo’s papers, left to J. Guinness by Muv.
2) He went & saw Diana, who apparently whetted his appetite & told him all sorts of things that I for one didn’t know about Bobo.
3) Ditto, his interview with Nancy published a few years ago in D. Telegraph.
4) Seeing he was determined to proceed, & had in fact gone to Germany to see various decaying old Nazis such as Putzi Hanfstaengel or however he spells his hideous name, I thought best to put P-J in touch with people who could give a more sympathetic view of Boud than he would otherwise get from her – so to speak – public life: Rud, Timmo, Clementine etc.
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