Selina lent me a proof copy of the book about Diana Cooper2 & I know Colonel will rush for it & he’s referred to as ‘my grinning spotty friend’, awful. Duff is quoted as calling Kit ‘a snivelling bolshevist’ – I think those were the words – in the twenties. But then Kit was having a wild affair with her so I don’t suppose he was v. popular with Duff & of course about the war they took opposite points of view. John Julius was sent pronto to America whereas Kit, from prison, opposed the same thing being done with Micky [Mosley]. The Coopers sound much more ghoul in this book than they were in real life I think.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased to get home as I was yesterday.1 Various things made me really long for the Temple. Max & Jean were so kind & so were Al & Cha,2 & the little boys3 were incredibly nice, but I don’t know quite why (between you & me) I was frightfully sad & almost in tears (nobody knew it) nearly the whole time. Even every signpost one saw brought back so many memories, it was awful.
Then the first evening in the dark I fell over a kerb onto a very rough pavement & grazed my knées deeply (what Kit wd have said ‘knocked the noughts off’). The knées hurt very much & seemed to get worse all the time, it is strange how many things touch them, one’s skirt, bedclothes (only a sheet it was so hot) & then without thinking one sort of pushes a door with a knée, anything of that sort agony, very hard to get in or out of bath, really dozens of annoyances. I seemed to have lost all sense of balance & had to look carefully at a chair in case I sat on the floor & not on it. Anyway all is well now but it made me feel a hundred years old.4
It is so lovely here just right. Emmy & Jerry have done something really wonderful, they’ve washed all the festooned blinds which having been beige, or really brown, are now snow white. I wish you could see the difference it makes to sitting rooms & drawing room, oh how inter-esting.
All love, Honks
Darling Debo
It’s SO good of you to bother about me. I am afraid I just can’t see a Dr at the moment. I can’t even do up my hair, or dress, or anything. I promise to stay in bed & not risk falling down. PLEASE DON’T COME. I am fit for nothing. Al & Cha are coming to dinner but I’m going to ask them not to visit me, in my room I mean. Emmy looks after me PERFECTLY.
Now the telephone is broken again, I hear the person but nobody hears ME. It happened before. I will send Jerry to complain.
PLEASE don’t worry I shall be all right I KNOW I shall.
Love darling & so many thanks for worrying but don’t worry. There’s nothing anyone can do, I only want Kit & he can’t come.
Honks
Dearest Hen
After many alarums & excursions they’ve brought Honks to London – she’s in the London Hosp in Whitechapel, under a great Dr (one of those professors called Mr who make lesser drs & nurses shudder, you know the kind) who Max knows because he’s the head of the team of drs who look after the motor racing drivers.1
While I was staying with her in France she had a relapse & is paralysed down the left side, that arm & leg don’t work. It was AWFUL & happened gradually, I always imagined quite the opposite. Anyway her mind & her face are perfectly OK but she is very thin & weak, can’t turn over in bed & all that. Now she’s being properly nursed she looks much better & is v. brave of course, laughing about some of the worst things & the dr (who I haven’t seen yet) says he’s hopeful of getting her to walk again but guesses he can’t do much with her left hand. This is all depending on her staying the same, viz. not having another stroke. No one can tell if that will happen. So all the drama (ambulance-plane etc) is over & it will be a long haul of slowly getting better I HOPE. Old John Betj has made great progress. He is older than she is, and already had Parkinson’s quite badly. OH DEAR. BODIES.
Much love, Yr Hen
Dearest Hen,
What absolutely foul news, Diana’s stroke. In fact you’ve had such a beastly time altogether re illnesses of various kinds. I am sorry & can’t say how much I sympathize. Can only say they (illards) are jolly lucky to have you to help.
Much love, Yr Hen
Dearest Hen,
Have you ever read the Book of Job? A jolly good read, might even cheer you up in the circs. Anyway do keep up the medical bulletins. A friend of ours had the sort of operation Diana’s sounds like from yr. letter, & he got completely OK; the drs. had been in dire doubt about it, as anything to do with the head can be so awful. I wonder if that was why she had those headaches? If so, the op. might cure them.
I DO so hope your next will bring better news of the invalids; can only say how immensely LUCKY they are to have ye on board at this point of time.
Well Hen much love –
longing to see you in December. Henderson
Hen just after I wrote the above a BURGLAR was here. Quelle horrible surprise as Nancy (or you) wld say. I’d gone out for a bit, came back, heard a bit of a bang on me back porch – sort of a terrace, with glass doors – & there he was, trying to break in. So I called out a cheery ‘Hello, there!’ & he was gone in a trice. Agile fellow, means climbing up a fairly steep thing to the windows. He called out a cheery ‘Goodbye’, thank goodness. So be looking for ‘Elderly Oakland Woman Bludgeoned to Death’ (we don’t say old in this country, thought impolite). Anyway it was rather shaking; I was SO relieved when he scrammed away, also thought it far preferable to aforementioned b. to d. In other words I was quite filled with gratitude to him for buggering off. However I did do one awful thing: rang up police, who came pronto. I DO hope they don’t catch him, in the circs, as he did no harm. If they do catch him, I may well refuse to testify against him because of the total hell that awaits him should he be sent to prison.
Oh darling Debo I’m so horrified to think of the bundle of useless helpless old bones that will be dumped on your doorstep.1 I shouldn’t allow it. Am fit for nothing & can’t see light at end of tunnel.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
You must have thought me so strange when you got back from the shoot last night. You see I was feeling SO sad at leaving that I couldn’t even get courage to go to the kitchen & say good bye except with terrific effort, I felt like going to sleep (eternal rest).
In the hospital I several times had doubts as to whether it wouldn’t have been better just to let me fade away. I’ve lost my darling, & lived to see all my children doing what they seem to love doing & more or less successfully. Then of course I was saved & went up to you, & what with YOU, Chatsworth & its denizens, the beauty, the kindness, the laughter with friends & acquaintances & so on, a will to live came back as I got stronger. Isn’t it all so strange & hard to explain. Also I felt (& feel) that with my Times letter I can still defend Kit as no one else really is in a position to do, & possibly (not certainly) influence Nicky in his Memoir1 a bit. (One has to remember that fond as we are of each other we do NOT see eye to eye politically.) Well then the sweetness of Max & Al & Cha & Jean & Jonathan all those things somehow have made me feel life is worth while for a few more years. But the big thing was YOU darling & all your loving care, medications galore, everything thought of without having to be asked for, & bed arranged to look over that heavenly park, & Nijni Novgorod2 drawn back by me before dawn so that I could see the light coming. You can never never know what you have done to make me want to live. Not that it matters whether I do or not but here I am perfectly well & it is your doing.
When I’ve seen Sid [Watkins] & Mike3 I will write again though really I mustn’t become too egotistical & absurd.
Jerry drove so smoothly I slept all the way up. I was tired with the sorrow of leaving. Then I slept most of last night as well. Oh how interesting.
Debo how can I ever tell what you have been to me.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
So good of you to telephone & it cheered me up no end. You see these three nights are the anniversary of those terrible nights last year – I
know it’s really the 3rd he died, that is early tomorrow, but in my mind it was last night because it was between Monday & Wednesday that he was so restless & early Wednesday (today) he died & I live through it all over & over again. I don’t believe in anniversaries, quite meaningless, but one just can’t help one’s thoughts. I had a good cry & only hope I recover for County & Lydie [de Pomereu], I shall I’m sure. Being so near to death myself has made me see it all in a new light, we all have to die & once you have become either very ill or very helpless life has absolutely no meaning & is simply a burden, as it was becoming – had become – for him. Perhaps he knew he was dying because each time I rushed for his bell he said such wonderful things, as if he wanted to be sure I knew all that he felt. I was so stupid it never occurred to me & I can’t forgive myself for not being with him at that terrific moment. Oh darling I shouldn’t burden you with these memories & thoughts but there’s only you one could say them to.
We have got lovely sun & I have been wooding, yes, & feeling perfectly well. A bit worried about my hair which has bald bits. Oh Debo you have been SO wonderful.
All love, Honks
Darling Honks
I have been too awful about writing. There hasn’t been a single day without some major something, usually combined with some ghoul journey, all those wasted hours in a car are v. tiresome but will go on till the hotel1 is finished. Now Richard Garnett2 is here & today & tomorrow we struggle with those long bits of paper plus 115 photographs. He is so good, he is going to do the index himself.
Now then. I knew you would have an AWFUL week over the first days of Dec, I dreaded it because I knew you would re-live the whole thing day by day & did I ring up or do anything, NO. AWFUL of me.
Do stop saying no point you being alive, one of the great points is being receiver & reader of a letter like this, what would I do if you weren’t there. And what would all those others do, children & grandchildren, Emmy & Jerry, Woman & all. RSVP. So Honks brace up please & get on with the wooding.
But don’t think I don’t realize what those days were like.
Much love & VERY SORRY for not being in
touch over your awful week from Debo
Darling Debo
Debo, my hair. Don’t laugh. It’s not only a shaving brush, but like so many shaving brushes it’s partly black. Now what can this mean? I’ve never had a single black hair. I was so hoping for gleaming white like Aunt Iris & Farve. Well, pepper, salt, & black. Do be sorry. Also it is literally made of wire.
I am not reading the mountain of letters1 but I did read one from General Fuller2 who says of Churchill ‘What a mountebank the man was’. I also found a P.C. from the laureate from Ireland signed Sean O’Betjeman. How is he by the way?
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo:
Yesterday I had an evening outing, going to Carmen with Cha & her friends in an old theatre in the slums where one sat on wooden benches.1 I loved it but was terribly tahd after (though Jerry whizzed me home in twenty minutes, empty roads) so shall not go out again, but before the opera, at Cha’s, SID [Watkins] came, Debo he is so marvellous. We had pink champagne & a deep talk. Apparently he was called in to poor Naunce, too late to avoid the useless operation on her back (spine). It was too amazing the way he remembered every detail of her case. I asked whether, had it existed then, the scanner could have diagnosed what was the matter with her, & he thinks it could have. Poor Naunce.
On a more frivolous note, I mentioned my piebald hair. He didn’t ask to see it but just said airily ‘Yes, you never know what sort of hair will grow’. So there we are. I suppose one might dye that bit. Cha loves Sid just as much as I do.
The clear-up continues. I have to force myself to do it.
All love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
I have been terribly sad about Kit. To tell the truth I always am & probably always will be. Laughing etc means nothing. He is at the back of my mind & no 5 minutes goes by without sad thoughts & (however illogical) I blame myself all the time. I don’t think the awful sorting of papers has got any thing to do with it. He wrote so little that wasn’t political. What courage he had never to let frustration make any difference. I hope Nicky will bring that out. (Heaven knows what his book will be like.)
Such a strange thing, Max has found Grandfather’s Peking diary, a private diary, with dread SEX mentioned & not mealy mouthed like the published books.1 Of course it must have been among the books Uncle Tommy sold at Newcastle, & I bought, like your diary.2 What luck it turned up before J’s book3 rather than after.
All love, Honks
Dearest Hen,
Your article in The Dial.1 These days, all US mags have a thing called Checkers. Checker’s job is to ring up the author & verify sources, spellings etc. For instance if you’ve spelt MacDonald two different ways (Mac & Mc) which is right? If you have quoted from a book, where can checker find said book to verify quotation? A huge lot of nonsense, & fairly new, but they all do it now.
So the other day I was sitting about thinking no harm when a call came from checker at The Dial. ‘Sorry to trouble you’ (said she) ‘but did your father refer to people he didn’t like as “a meaningless piece of meat?”’ And lots more along that line. I was shrieking with laughter, & saying ‘Yes, yes, yes’ – finally, asked her what it was all about. ‘We have an article scheduled about your sister Nancy’s TV programme.’ ‘Who wrote it’, I asked? ‘Not at liberty to say, but a close relation of yours.’ HEN!!! Of course I twigged straight away that it was ye. Longing to see finished product; checker promised to send same. I’m doing one for TV Guide (to coincide with N’s telly series of her books, due here in March); as I more or less shot my bolt in the Foreword for the books, am hard put to it.
Much love, Henderson
Dearest Hen
Letters X-ing like mad, sorry. I just wrote when yours came. But with me it’s always NOW or NEVER: I’ve got a huge file called Letters to be Answered. In a year or two, these go into a far huger file called Letters Never Answered. (Would never happen to yours, Hen. If no answer after a year you’ll know she’s dead, she’s expired, she’s so neriogely1 put out her tongue.)
There was SUCH a killing thing on telly last night – I was watching the non-news, a sort of early bit before the actual news. Re a book2 in England that proves the Devonshires are descended from J.C., & a v. short thing of Andrew saying ‘Preposterous! This will annoy a lot of people’ or words to that effect.
Well – I suppose it IS annoying, Hen, but do admit a bit of a shriek to come on it all unexpectedly?
And fancy Sophy being a descendant of. Do give her lots of love when you write & ask her to intercede for this lost soul with her great-great (to the Nth decimal point) grandpapa.
Much love, Henderson
Darling Debo
I have been reading old letters. I’ve got dozens of pre-war ones from Mrs Ham. A very very kind one from Farve after Birdie’s funeral. None calculated to cheer one up.*
The sun came out yesterday, a rarity. Do you know I believe that thing on my brain was nature’s way of saying life is over, & that the wonderful cleverness of the way it was removed & life saved was most likely a great mistake. A few years ago I suppose I should have died. But perhaps not, I might have been a vegetable annoying you all. I asked Sid but he says they don’t quite know.
I am so dying to see you & it’s so good of you to have Rosie [Macindoe]. She is a perfect guest, just sitting & knitting.
I cry for nothing, even seeing the bulbs coming up set me off. I hope to be better before I see you. I miss Kit more, not less.
All love darling, Honks
Dearest Hen
A v. sad thing, Derek Jackson died yesterday. He had had an awful time, had a leg off a few months ago & they were threatening the other one so I suppose he was spared longer torture.
Woman & I were poised to go to the funeral (Switz) but we noted from her phone call last night that the wife wd rather we went to
a memorial in Paris later. Honks minds terribly. He was a staunchly loyal friend all through the war & after, never cared a hang what anyone else thought & lent his house when they came out of prison. She minds things far more than most people, & has got another dying person in poor old Geoffrey Gilmour, he is a bit of yellow skin stretched over a skeleton, cancer, oh dear.
Much love, Yr Hen
Dearest Hen,
Writing in a huge rush to say The Dial arrived with yr. article & I must immediately have my say re same (am off in 30 mins, not yet packed but writing na’therless).
Well I thought it was marvellous, oh you were so good re Farve & Nancy. I so adored them being a pair of comedians & all that bit; ditto, all the last several paragraphs about Nancy & above all ‘comic & indom. spirit …’ the whole last paragraph.
Forward to bones to pick: YOU never had a new dress? The Wendy frocks – yours was new (being the smaller & hence, I suppose, cheaper size) & it was mine that was copied by Gladys. Have you still got yours? Mine disappeared somehow, in various moves.
Main bone: Education produces people as alike as peas in a pod? All I can say is it would have to be an enormous & v. distorted pod, not like any pods I’ve seen. Leaving out the boys, just mentioning a few girls that we both know: Emmas, Good & Bad;1 Polly Toynbee;2 Selina Hastings; Marina Warner3 (not sure you know that one). As unlike as any peas I can visualize, all educated chapesses. Really Hen be rethinking, or I shall ring up the Checker to say you’ve got the facts off.
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