Dear Lumpy

by Mortimer, Louise

  The Miller’s House

  8 August

  Dearest L,

  Had an excellent lunch with the Popes today: really good stewed plums and cream. Emma L-R called in for a drink with her young man of whom I formed a goodish opinion. Dr Yates goes on holiday today: he is tasting wine and food in Burgundy. Lupin has left for Zambia. Piers is doing something to underprivileged boys in Dorney, just outside Eton. Nidnod bought Chinese prawns for supper last night from a caravan in Kintbury. Reckon I was lucky not to get salmonella. At the Popes I met a funny little man called James Holford whom I first met at Wixenford in 1919. His parents removed him in 1921, fearing his morals were being corrupted (by no means improbable). At Eton he coxed the eight. He went into the 15/19th Hussars: Loopy may have known him. If I can get seats in October, will you come to Show Boat with me? I saw it at Drury Lane in 1928!

  Love to all,

  D

  Show Boat was a huge success. My father got into the spirit, tapping away to the songs. I think I even saw a little moistness around his eyes.

  The Miller’s House

  9 September

  Dearest Lumpy,

  Thank you so much for having us to stay. You are certainly making your house very comfortable and attractive. As for Rebecca and Benjamin, they are everything that grandchildren should be – or hopes they will be. Sorry the picnic aborted. Having eventually found our way from you, the joke is that Nidnod thought she was in Lynmouth the whole time she was circling ghastly Ilfracombe. We went to Lynmouth on Sat: Nidnod bought herself a bath-mat and me a jumbo ice cream and a key ring with my name on it! Good strawberries for dinner on Sat: also roast duck. We got home today in 2 hours dead. This evening we go to a golden wedding beano with hymns and speeches! I shall love that! Poor Nidnod is suffering from depression and needs a holiday.

  Love to all,

  D

  Have a good time in Norway. Take warm undies.

  I actually managed to have my parents stay in Devon without incident.

  1990

  The Miller’s House

  Saturday

  Dearest L,

  V. pleased to see you looking bronzed and well after your holiday. Benjamin is good fun and looks happy.

  The day of Pam’s funeral a letter arrived to Pam from a Senior General. In it he expressed his sympathy with Pam over Ken’s death. I know Generals are apt to be thick but this takes the professed bun with almost insolent ease.

  Nidnod went cubbing today but came home early as she felt awful (and looked it, too). I twisted my knee putting my trousers on today and am as lame as a geriatric camel. I can’t go to Ascot in consequence. I found a spider as big as a mole in my bath this morning. Luckily Jane did not find it or she’d have had a fit! I hope you had a jolly evening at Slough, less posh than Ascot I suppose. My horse is called ‘Owners Vision’ (why?). It is a big common brute that could pull a brewer’s dray. Do you know the difference between a war-horse and a dray horse? The former darts into the fray, the latter farts into the dray.

  XX D

  Having no children, my aunt and uncle were devoted to each other. Uncle Ken was Aunt Pam’s carer for a number of years and was completely devastated when my aunt passed away.

  28 February

  Dearest L,

  How are things going with you? I hope you have not had a lot of tiles blown off! It has been very stormy here but we have had so far only one power-cut. My type-writer is kaput so now I have no car and no writing machine. Combined with my ill health and Nidnod’s tantrums, life is not exactly a bowl of cherries. The Gunns came to dinner on Saturday. Diana is a real nut-case, albeit a charming one. She has an ever-loving husband; both drink neat whisky. Diana’s mother is 96, totally gaga and it is a full-time job looking after her. Nidnod is only 69 and I suppose easy by comparison but she finds me more or less impossible and I find her looking at me as if nothing would give her greater pleasure than to hear I had been squashed flat by a no. 19 bus or perhaps a no. 22 on Sloane Street. The new Kintbury District Nurse is Portuguese and rather attractive. While I was waiting my turn in Surgery last Monday a man had a heart attack. We are lunching with the Watkins today and to Nidnod’s horror are scheduled to watch racing films afterwards. I hear Lupin’s blood is in a somewhat unsatisfactory condition. George Wiggan is very ill with hepatitis in Africa and his wife and daughter have flown out to see him. On Friday I lunch with Burnaby-Atkins. He and Jenny are just off on a Pan-Am special offer trip to Mexico which includes a free car for a week and several days free in a post hotel.

  I think all the people I know in this area (including myself) who are thoroughly depressed should line up and take a running jump in the River Kennett, having first filled their pockets with large stones. I did hear something about Lady de Mauley but I’ve forgotten what. Peter Walwyn lads’ hostel was burnt down the other night but luckily no lives were lost. Mrs Grace Walker lunched here on Sunday. She is 86 lives alone and is the nicest and most intelligent woman in Kintbury. Dr Yates is off to Paris, his motto is ‘Most diseases are incurable my job is to try and make them more bearable’.

  XX D

  Love to all

  My father is truly lost without his good old-fashioned manual typewriter. Under pressure, he bought a Japanese electric typewriter which was not a great success and soon taken back to the shop. Incapable of ever getting the upper hand in any commercial transaction, he part-exchanged his new, hardly used, electric typewriter for a second- or third-hand manual typewriter. He could not have been happier.

  1991

  Dearest Lumpy,

  Thanks for your pretty card. I’m glad you enjoy working for the Conservatives. I fear you’ll be out of a job by the next election. Very damp and cold here. We go to London on Thursday: I rather dread it. Your mother has fibrositis and wants to go to Baden Baden for a cure. She is off to Jersey for a week in July if she can find a keeper for me. I’m not looking forward to Ascot, I’m too old for that sort of lark. I enjoyed seeing Rebecca the other day and liked her shy friend from Dorking with out-of-door teeth. All my dahlias have expired.

  Best love, D

  Much to everyone’s surprise I have got a job working for the Conservative agent for Kensington & Chelsea. As my qualifications are minimal I am happy just to stuff and stick envelopes. My father took to calling me at the Conservative office every day. He had a soft spot for Charlotte Blacker, who had given me the job, and I think he was hopeful she might answer the phone and cheer up his day.

  Dearest L,

  What ghastly times we live in! The Gulf, The IRA, terrorism, unemployment, ghastly weather! I don’t seem to have had much peace since that day in 1916 when I was doing French with Miss Shaw my rather pongy governess when a lot of aeroplanes flew over Cadogan Gardens. We only discovered later they were German. Years later during a dock strike I was marching guardsman down to Smithfield when an elderly striker shouted ‘You wouldn’t shoot your fellow workers would you?’ and my platoon Sergeant shouted back ‘Yes I would Grandad and in the balls!’ My mother, of all people, worked in a canteen during the general strike and was generally acknowledged the Queen washer up! She washed up – it was the job she liked above all – in two major wars and various big strikes. When I was about 10 Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot by Irishmen on his doorstep quite near to where we lived. The murderers were caught and hanged. There was a particularly sordid murder about the same time in the house where Aunt Boo lives now. Uncle Tony, my mother’s brother and my godfather, was a splendid character, the larky mobbing type. He was arrested on his 21st birthday party for breaking up a Masonic dinner at the Café Royal and careering down Regent St waving the master mason’s insignia. He hated the war, got an MC, was badly wounded and was killed when his ambulance was hit by a shell. He gave me a gorgeous tiger skin when he came back from India, my mother pinched it for an evening coat but I got it back in the end. My father went off to Le Torquet for a beano and in his absence Ellis the butler drank up all the hock in the
cellar, peeing in bottles after he had emptied them. At about that time we had a parlour maid called Kate Murphy who was pissed at a dinner party and passed out carrying a tureen of turtle soup. Another butler attacked Mrs Tanner the cook with a carving knife and another one, who had come from the Camerons, tried to have the footman.

  XX D

  In the final year of my father’s life things went downhill quite quickly. It was really hard for the whole family. Sadly this is the last letter I received from him. As is often the case he became very clear about the early years of his life but would forget what had happened that morning.

  This little ditty would always make me laugh when my father recited it:

  Poor old banana stood up in bed.

  Along came sausage and bopped him on the head.

  Poor old banana fell down dead.

  Tripe and bananas brown bread.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my brother Charlie, aka Lupin, who has been the driving force behind Dear Lumpy . . . as well as being a constant throughout the trials and tribulations in my life; Tim (Partington), my brother’s partner and my best friend who has provided endless emotional support; finally to Victoria Young who is the angel in my life.

  Read on for a sample chapter of Dear Lupin, published by Constable.

  1967

  The Sunday Times

  3 February

  Dear Charles,

  I hope all goes well with you. I never seem to hear of you unless some disaster, major or minor, has taken place. Owing to lack of communication on your part, I have not the remotest idea of what is going on at Eton or how you are progressing, if at all, in your work. Jane has not come down this weekend and I have no idea what she is up to. Nor do I know where she is living: she might be on the run from the police judging from the rapidity with which she changes her domicile. I had a bad and painful attack of gout last week and now I have a throat infection and am partially deaf. Getting old is revolting and I hate it. Poor David Gundry, who stayed at Barclay House a couple of times, was killed in a car accident last week. He went off the road at 90 mph and that was that. A tragic waste of a young life. We are now off to lunch with the Hislops. Last week we went to the theatre and saw ‘The Secretary Bird, which is very light but by no means unamusing. Inspector Barlow and the man who plays his boss were sitting just behind us. I had to drive to Doncaster and back last week which was rather tiring. Louise is home and seems in good form. She is the one member of this family that gives me no trouble.

  Best love,

  D

  I am now fifteen years old and enjoying a somewhat undistinguished career at Eton College. In an end-of-term report, my Classical Tutor sums up the situation thus: ‘Nero was content to roll in the dust in order to collect his laurels. Mortimer however seems merely content just to roll in the dust.’

  Budds Farm

  23 May

  Dear Charles,

  It was nice to hear from you again after rather a long interval! I’m glad to hear that life seems to be going reasonably well. What has happened to Ordinary Faulkner to make him so cheerful? The prospect of getting rid of you, I suppose! I am going over to Eton if I can tomorrow for Charles Gladstone’s Memorial Service. I woke up this morning with the house stinking of oil and full of smoke. One of the boilers had gone all wrong and a chimney was on fire, too. I switched the boiler off, opened the windows and went to bed. I saw a hideous car pile-up on Saturday. Two cars – a Zephyr and a Cresta – were upside down and one had gone over a ditch and into a field. Two people were killed. Louise and Jane come home tomorrow. Thank God it is slightly warmer today. I have had a couple of barmy letters from Gar. One of Mr Luckes’s cows got loose in the garden and was a great nuisance. Are you keen on pictures by Toulouse-Lautrec? If you are I will send you a book on him. I think in future I shall call you ‘Lupin’ after Mr Pooter’s son in ‘The Diary of a Nobody’. I’m sure Mr Kidson would agree it is very suitable for you.

  Yours ever,

  D

  And so I take on the name of Lupin, the disreputable son who was the source of much of Mr Pooter’s worries.

  1968

  Budds Farm

  28 January

  Dear Charles,

  Your mother came back rather sad and depressed after seeing you yesterday. You may think it mildly amusing to be caught poaching in Windsor Great Park; I would consider it more hilarious if you were not living on the knife edge, so to speak. I know there is always a temptation for boys who fail to make their mark at work or games to try and gain a reputation as a law-breaker and a defier of authority. I trust you will not give way to that particular temptation. If you do, judging from your past record of folly, you will end up with the sack from Eton or with gaol. Doubtless you regard me as a monumental bore, tolerated at times only because I fork out some cash, but senile as I am I probably know a bit more about you and your friends than you seem to realise; and what I know, I do not necessarily like. As you are so clearly reluctant to discuss your future with me, I have written to Mr Addison to ask for his advice on that point. I have suggested you are wasting your time at Eton. I shall also ask whether in his opinion you are sensible enough to be allowed at large in Paris with Soames. I hate writing to you like this but I do care so much for you and it is distressing for me and your mother to see you making such a hash of your opportunities. No doubt you resent my advice and reproaches now; perhaps in ten years’ time you will realise that I was trying, possibly ineffectively, to help you. I’m not God and my advice is not necessarily right, but as I care for you I must do what I can within the limits of human error. At least you have parents that love you; some people do not even have that consolation.

  D

  I am quite happy with my little escapades although nobody else is. ‘The knife edge’ referred to is the fact that I am on a final warning following a flogging from the headmaster as punishment for visiting a certain ‘Denise Bunny’ in London one night. A couple of appearances in Maidenhead magistrates court for riding a 750 cc Ariel motorcycle without a driving licence or any other paperwork haven’t really helped much either.

  The Sunday Times

  12 March

  My Dear Charles,

  I am writing to you in confidence so please do not discuss this letter with anyone. That silly young ass Simon Sandbach has got himself into a real muddle and is now in a mental hospital, where he will remain for at least six months. I think he has been drinking and sampling drugs, too. It is really very sad. I have known people do very stupid things at Eton with regard to drink, sex, gambling and, more recently, drugs. I implore you not to experiment even in the mildest way with drugs. Probably you have not the slightest intention of doing so, but it is quite easy to be tempted by others who may regard the experiment as harmless which of course it is not. I think on the whole you have plenty of common sense but as you grow older you may tend to find life at Eton tedious and restrictive; if you do, don’t commit some act of folly that could have dire consequences for yourself. It would be much better if you left and did a job of work if you honestly felt that Eton was no longer of any benefit to you and that you were no longer of any benefit to Eton. Perhaps this letter is unnecessary, but it is a worry to me when a boy like S. S. suddenly goes right round the twist. It is all too easy to go off the rails at Eton and once off it is not simple to get back on again. I rely on your common sense to keep within the bounds of decorum!!

  Yours ever,

  D

  Any letter starting ‘My Dear Charles’ is generally well worth avoiding. This particular letter contains much excellent advice, all of which goes totally unheeded.

  1969

  Budds Farm

  16 January

  Dear Charles,

  I assume you got back safely last night. Time is running short so do try and get through this half without disaster and without a chorus of disapproval and despair from the unfortunate masters who have to try and teach you something. Unless Mr Addison and Mr Kidson can
provide strong arguments to the contrary, I propose that you leave Eton at the end of the summer. After all, you are not interested in work or games and you have no ambition to assume responsibility in your House or in the school as a whole, so what would be the point of staying on? I suggest that on leaving you either go into the Army for three years or alternatively I will give you a single ticket to Australia and £50 and you go and earn your living there for a couple of years. I think you need to stand on your own feet and not rely on the efforts of others. Before you go into business, you must learn a little about life so that you have something to offer an employer. I have just had a letter from Aunt Joan asking me whether you received a Christmas present from her as she has received no acknowledgment. As in other matters of life, you are childishly idle about writing letters, thereby giving the impression that you are both ill-mannered and ungrateful. If people can bother to give you a present, the least they can expect is that you rouse yourself from your customary state of squalid inertia and write and say thank you. It was disgraceful that you were still writing thank-you letters on the last day of the holidays. Surely you can see for yourself that your idleness and refusal to do any little task that is in the slightest degree irksome renders you totally unfit for adult employment? I am very fond of you but you do drive me round the bend.

  D

  Dad is getting rather stressed out. The idea of joining the Army or going to Australia for a couple of years is not really what I have in mind.

  Budds Farm

  26 February

  Dear Charles,

  We really must formulate some plans for the future. Various questions have got to be settled.

  1. Will you leave at the end of the Summer Half or would it help you to stay on?