The Pursuit of Laughter

by Diana Mitford (Mosley)

  Whether the Scotch are worse than the English in this respect I don’t know. I met some people who were loving a coach tour through Scotland because their Scotch driver was so amusing. They thought him perfection.

  To go back to poor Dr Beeching and his Augean stables: of the two trains I travelled in, one was 35 minutes late and the other 25 minutes late. As a result I could not visit the Burrell pictures in Glasgow Art Gallery because it was already shut. I was sorry not to catch a glimpse of the wonderful pink Matisse which so unexpectedly hangs there.

  ***

  Once on my journey I was obliged by hunger to forget my breakfast-and-tea rule, and eat some dinner. I had Crême Solferino, which turned out to be a tin of warm tomato soup, and Poires Duchesse, which was a pear in a wine glass smothered in frightening green jelly and false cream. I draw a veil over what came between. Where this repast was perpetrated is a secret, but it was not on a train.

  A friend of mine took some foreigners to a noted and reputed restaurant in Gloucestershire (yes, there is such a restaurant and apparently the food is good). Because they arrived at three minutes past two, they were not allowed to have any lunch. The sideboards were loaded with delicious cold food, hors d’oeuvre, lobsters, hams, saddles of mutton. But a rule is a rule in the catering world. My friend took the astonished guests, who were not accustomed to such cruelty on the part of restaurant keepers—an obliging race elsewhere in Europe—back home and fed them on bread and cheese.

  ***

  I love the description in Time of the Kennedys’ music party at the White House. Casals played Schumann and Mendelssohn. Those present included Aaron Copland, conductors Bernstein and Stokowski, Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg, and ‘the grandes dames… Rose Kennedy, Mrs Robert Woods Bliss.’ Then there were Walter Lippmann, George Meany and ‘a sprinkling of Puerto Ricans.’

  Time comments lyrically: ‘The evening was right out of the eighteenth century, it might have been a concert led by Haydn at the court of the Esterhazys or a command performance by C.P.E. Bach for Frederick the Great.’

  Except that in the unenlightened days of the ‘Aufklärung’ Frederick the Great and the Esterhazys would never have had the opportunity to get to know those exotic guests, and except that Schumann and Mendelssohn do not happen to be eighteenth-century composers, and except a few other things…. I suppose Time was being sarky, but who can tell?

  ***

  It was bad luck on Sir Martin Lindsay that the very day he tabled his motion deploring Lord Beaverbrook’s and the Express group’s alleged attacks on the royal family, the Duke of Edinburgh should have chosen to say to the press: ‘The Daily Express is a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal, and imagination. It is a vicious newspaper.’ Sir Martin Lindsay had just said that it was unfair to attack the royal family because royal persons are unable to answer back. The Duke’s counter attack rather spoilt Sir Martin’s knightly gesture.

  I am an assiduous reader of many newspapers and periodicals. I nearly always disagree with the policies advocated by the Daily Express, which is notable for frivolous xenophobia, but I do not find it so scandalous, lying, or vicious as some others I could name, and furthermore I cannot recall a single word of criticism of the Queen in the Daily Express.

  Sir Martin Lindsay says people can demonstrate their disapproval by cancelling the Daily Express and ordering a different newspaper, and so of course they can, all four million of them. Meanwhile, as the Duke of Edinburgh says, it is fun to be rude, and particularly so if nobody sues you for slander.

  ***

  Next time Mr Harold Macmillan makes his countrymen feel embarrassed by wearing a white fur hat when he visits Moscow, or by saying, ‘There ain’t a’going to be no war,’ so that they begin to wish they, or he, had never been born, they might reflect that things could be a good deal worse. Take Camelot. Mr Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, and his wife gave a party at their home in Maclean, Virginia. Mrs Kennedy arranged a small table for three on planks across the swimming pool, and she invited a judge called Mr White and also Colonel Glenn, the astronaut, to sit with her there. She meant the judge and Colonel Glenn to fall into the pool, but according to a report of the party, ‘Mr White, being an old friend, knew what might happen so stayed away. Colonel Glenn managed to retain his balance and it was Mrs Kennedy who fell in. Later, Mr Arthur Schlesinger, the President’s adviser, clad in a light blue dinner jacket, and Mrs Spencer Davis, a personal friend of Mrs Ethel Kennedy, were pushed in.’

  The Kennedys are so young that they and their personal friends have to push one another into pools at parties. Don’t ask me what the difference is between a friend and a personal friend because I don’t know, but in they all go.

  Only a young country can contain so much youth. Stuffy old European judges and colonels might not want to be pushed fully dressed into swimming pools, but the fact that most of the personal friends are aged between 40 and 50 is the reason for all the fun they have.

  ***

  In the past, I have complained bitterly in this Diary of British Railways and their degraded and unpunctual trains; it is therefore only just to record that a recent journey to Newcastle and back was extremely comfortable.

  The train was hot, in spite of snow outside, and the meals at least half as good as the meals on French trains, which, since they also cost half as much, seems about fair.

  When the Channel tunnel is built the train journey between London and Paris will be roughly the same length as between London and Newcastle, and no doubt all comfort-lovers will choose to travel that way. Quite apart from the chancy weather in northern Europe, which has given rise to the adage:

  Time to spare?

  Go by air!

  it is not everyone who cares, even in perfect weather, for the tedious drive to London Airport and the numberless small irritations inflicted upon the traveller when he finally gets there. Up and down moving stairs which, as often as not, are stationary; herded into ‘channels,’ then being made, after a long walk through the channels, to clamber into a crowded charabanc in order to be driven a couple of hundred yards to the aeroplane—none of this is much fun. Once inside the aeroplane, a deafening roar heralds the distorted voice of the captain welcoming you aboard the aircraft and hoping you will enjoy the flight, in two languages. Does anyone enjoy the flight? One does not fly for enjoyment, but to get from A to B, it might be thought.

  ***

  I often complain about the wrecking of the little that is left of beauty in London, but there are one or two items on the credit side. Chief among these is Apsley House, which, now that it stands alone, looks enormously better than ever it did when it was the end of an undistinguished row.

  On the blank part, where its neighbour was amputated, windows and a cornice are being made. The usual mean grumbles at the cost of this highly necessary and praise-worthy effort makes it doubly meritorious.

  The Duke of Wellington, who generously gave the house and its collection of glories to the nation, must be pleased at how splendid it looks now.

  Few people bother to go in to see the Goya portrait of the first Duke, although thousands went to the National Gallery to look at the empty space where the other Goya portrait, the one that was stolen, had been.

  ***

  Mrs Kennedy is so fond of art that she arranged for the Most Famous Picture In The World to be shown in Washing ton. This picture, which is also supposed to be the Most Valuable Picture In The World, but was not for sale, so that the Richest Country In The World couldn’t buy it, is called by the French, who own it, ‘La Joconde,’ and by the Anglo-Saxons, the ‘Mona Lisa.’

  When it arrived in Washington all the Best People were invited to see it unveiled. So were all the journalists, best and worst, and the television cameras. It was an occasion nobody was to be allowed to miss, because it was the outward and visible sign that the Kennedys were for art.

  There were some complaints afterwards that everybody who was invited to see the picture had seen it b
efore, without being half-crushed to death in the process.

  ***

  Three Russian writers who sent their manuscripts to publishers abroad have been locked up in lunatic asylums by the Soviet authorities. The idea is that anyone in Russia who might come across some of their work would not be influenced by it because the authors are certified madmen.

  The Russians have copied this straight from the Americans, who kept their poet, Ezra Pound, for many years in a madhouse in the most frightful conditions for the same bad reason: he disagreed with the government.

  ***

  I see somebody wrote to the Daily Express urging people to spend their summer holidays at Waterloo. This was supposed to annoy the French, but I imagine it will annoy the Belgians more. It may end by annoying the holiday-makers most of all. There is nowhere to stay and nothing much to do at Waterloo but fight.

  ***

  Probably most people were taken by surprise when they read that Sir Winston Churchill had been made an honorary citizen of the United States. They wrongly imagined that he was one already. He has always seemed very much a part of his mother’s country, and has I suppose done more than any other single person to put it in the materially pre-eminent position it now occupies. From the American point of view he has earned citizenship many times over.

  The message he sent across the Atlantic to be read at the ceremony is sad, in the context of today. It is over twenty years since Churchill proclaimed that he had not become first minister in order to preside over the break-up of the British Empire. Thus what happened was the opposite of his intentions, but many of us said at the time, if he lives long enough he will see it break up as a result of his policy: his ‘great allies,’ Soviet Russia and the United States, will make sure of it between them.

  He has lived; he has observed the inevitable; and he emerges from his twilight to say: ‘I reject the view that Britain and the Commonwealth should now be relegated to a tame and minor role in the world.’

  But for him and for the politicians who succeeded him there would never have been the smallest doubt of a ‘fertile and glorious’ future for Britain and the Commonwealth. There is no doubt of it now provided Britain will join with the rest of Europe to make the greatest nation the world has ever seen.

  ***

  Mr Harold Wilson said in Parliament: ‘There is something nauseating about a system of society which pays a harlot* 25 times as much as it pays its Prime Minister, 250 times as much as it pays its Members of Parliament, and 500 times as much as it pays some of its ministers of religion.’ Dame Rebecca West, commenting on this in the Sunday Telegraph, writes: ‘Nobody sensible would go to a night club to see Members of Parliament coming down staircases dressed in sequins and tail feathers.’

  Wouldn’t they? I am not sure. As a confirmed loather of night clubs even I might be tempted from my hearth for such a Roman holiday.

  * Miss Christine Keeler, who wrote her life story.

  ***

  Mr Nehru has never been one of the most beloved foreign politicians in this country, in spite of his command of our language, his long terms of imprisonment under the British Raj, and all his other advantages and accomplishments. Now, how ever, there is sure to be a great swing in his favour. An opposition leader in the Indian parliament has angrily accused him of spending 3/6d a day on food for his dog. English people are bound to approve of this little extravagance; dogs to them are what cows are to the Indians, and they would rather vote for somebody who spent too much on his dog than too little. It is unlucky that Mr Nehru’s dog has only just become a celebrity; there is no doubt that the massive aid to India would have been more kindly looked upon here had people known that some of it might find its way into some dear doggie’s bowl.

  ***

  The French wireless has a general knowledge programme. The other day I heard a boy who had chosen Napoleon as the greatest man of the nineteenth century asked his reasons for the choice. He replied after some hesitation: ‘Well, he managed to annoy a good few people.’

  Nearly every day one sees in the papers that some school master or other has forbidden boys to wear their hair with Beatle-like fringes. The masters’ job is to impart learning and good manners, and it is not good manners to make personal remarks about other people’s fringes. The way you cut your hair is a matter of fashion, and anyone who lives long enough will have the amusement of hearing schoolmasters of the future, who were boys when the Beatles were boys, forbid their pupils to brush their hair off their foreheads.

  ***

  Headline of the month: LORDS IMPOTENT IN FACE OF FECUNDITY. The House of Lords debated the population explosion, and suggested several ways of damping it down, to which, doubtless, no attention will be paid. Since their last debate on the subject two years ago the population of the world has increased by a hundred million.

  ***

  Although I sometimes love the amusing expressions they invent, I am not very partial to the way Americans use our language. ‘He does not have’ in place of ‘He has not got’ strikes oddly on English ears. Worse even than that, however, is the barbarous expression, ‘as of now,’ which is constantly cropping up in articles and speeches in the US. It means ‘now,’ and one would have thought ‘now’ would do.

  ***

  Sir Isaiah Berlin, writing on the subject of Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches: ‘This is the kind of means by which dictators and demagogues transform peaceful populations into marching armies: it was Mr Churchill’s unique and unforgettable achievement that he created this necessary illusion within the framework of a free system without destroying or even twisting it.’

  The trouble with newcomers who try to write about old England is that, no doubt through ignorance of our aged institutions, they perpetuate rubbish like the above. To imprison hundreds of patriotic people without charge or trial, and hold them in prisons and concentration camps for periods of up to five years as Churchill and his government did, can hardly be described as neither destroying nor even twisting the framework of a free system. Possibly Sir Isaiah Berlin has never heard of habeas corpus during his sojourn among us.

  ***

  A friend writes from New York saying that whereas three years ago he was warned not to walk in Central Park after dark, this time he was told on no account to risk walking there at all, even in the daytime. He adds that nobody in his senses would ‘ride the subway’ (American for ‘go by tube’) at night, because even in a crowded carriage you may be knifed, and your fellow passengers would bury themselves in their favourite comics, pretending not to notice the corpse in their midst.

  The day after I got this letter, I read in a paper that in future every underground train is to carry an armed policeman, in an attempt to check the number of murders.

  The strange thing about these killings is that they are apparently not done for any special reason, like robbery for example. In this they resemble the murder described by André Gide in Les Caves du Vatican. As far as I remember, Lafcadio kills a man in the train between Rome and Naples, in order to find out what it feels like to be a murderer.

  ***

  The Tory candidate who won the by-election last month is supposed to have wrecked the new image of the Tory Party. His crime or worse, his blunder was that he was educated at Eton. I don’t imagine this was altogether his fault; most children have to go where they are told, and many of them would in fact much prefer to stay at home. An exception was the late Lord Bracken, who sent himself to school after interviewing various headmasters (or so he used to tell us).

  In any case, the last three Conservative Prime Ministers all went to Eton, and the one before that to Harrow, and it is only during the past few months that it has been ordained that nothing less than grammar schools will do. To have been to Eton is as bad, almost, as to have been caught shooting grouse.

  It is somehow typical of the poor old Tories that they should be taken in by rubbish of this kind. Although there are many better schools than Eton, and many more profitable
sports than grouse shooting—bingo, for example—it is not Eton and grouse that make one despise the Conservatives, it is what they have done to England. Their African policy, the subservience to America, the refusal to go into Europe: none of these evil things has much to do with education or pastimes.

  A Talent to Annoy

  GERMANY

  Fly on the Wall

  The author of Eva and Adolf tries to be a fly on the wall, for its subject is Hitler’s private life. According to the publisher the book has been ‘painstakingly researched’.

  A clever man of my acquaintance uses a good formula when he is not certain of something: ‘Don’t know, so won’t say’. To get at the truth about the sexual life of any individual is difficult; in the case of a politician or public man anxious to keep his private life to himself it is almost impossible. Although I met Eva Braun a few times and thought her pretty and charming, as to her affair with Hitler I don’t know, so won’t say. On the other hand, when it comes to Unity Mitford I know a great deal. The short chapter devoted to her is inaccurate. I counted twelve errors of fact. It would be tedious to list the inaccuracies; the most important of them is a scene supposedly enacted at Wahnfried, the Wagners’ house in Bayreuth.

  According to Mr Infield, Eva Braun and Unity both stayed there as guests of Hitler, in the house and in the annexe, for the festival. One evening Hitler and Unity were seen by a maid in a ‘compromising position’ on a veranda sofa. While the maid watched, Eva Braun, passing by, saw what was going on. She ‘stared for a full minute then turned and disappeared into the darkness.’ Everything about this tale is bogus. Anyone who knew Wahnfried would see its inherent implausibility, for during the Festspiele it is full of people, the family, musicians and other guests; a busy Bayreuth street would have been as good a choice for the scene described. But in fact neither Unity nor Eva Braun ever stayed at Wahnfried in their lives. Frau Winifred Wagner (the distinguished daughter-in law of the great composer) directed the festival and was hostess of Wahnfried in those days. She writes: