I am becoming attached to Aga. She now gives me lessons three times a week. We had met at the house of mutual friends who heard my complaints about the German teachers I have hired up till now and, knowing that she could do with the extra money, suggested her name to me. From the moment that she strolled into my office for the first lesson, I might have known that all serious hope of my mastering the German language had vanished. Aga must be about my own age – in the late forties; tall, leggy, she resembles a giraffe, with a giraffe’s expression of absent-minded hauteur. This is her first experience of teaching and she has a novel approach to the subject. “What has prevented you from learning German better,” she says, “is boredom. You will never learn if you are bored. So don’t bother with the grammar. What do you read to relax?” “Simenon,” I replied. “Good. I like him very much myself – we’ll start with him.” “But he writes in French.” “That doesn’t matter. His books are translated into German. You shall have your copy and I mine. We shall read together – you will translate the German into English as we go along, with my corrections, of course.” This system, if it can be called a system, is not working very effectively, as Aga is always breaking into my laborious translating with some startling and scandalous story of life in Berlin under the Nazis when she was employed in some ill-defined capacity in the Foreign Office, or the private lives of our Bonn acquaintance. Her stories, told in a mixture of French, German, and English, often leave the solid ground of fact and leap into the upper air of fantastic fun and cruel wit. When inspiration fails she sinks back on the sofa, opens her handbag, and, extracting a small brown bottle of Unterberg, takes a sip of it and with a sigh turns back to Simenon. (I have myself experimented with Unterberg, the German health drink or pick-me-up – a noxious concoction with quite a kick to it.)
Aga comes of an aristocratic Westphalian family. A brother with whom she is on quarrelling terms now lives in the family schloss, but her grown-up life was spent in Berlin and one can see traces in her of the hectic, sophisticated, despairing Berlin of the twenties when she was young. When the Russians entered Berlin she came as a refugee to Bonn. She has one deep attachment from the Berlin years – Baron Zetsé Pfuel. Like her, he has a record of anti-Nazi courage. He and Aga give the impression of having seen both better and worse times together, and of having been cast up on these shores after the storms of their lives had subsided, leaving them empty of any future. I find Zetsé an attractive figure, with his striking looks and his high spirits which can change quickly to gloom. Like Aga, he has a reckless tongue. Through them I have met some of the refugees from East Prussia and Berlin – they bring with them a whiff of cynical wit and debunking frankness quite different from the Rhinelanders. They form a little world of their own in Bonn, crowded into small, shabby apartments, having escaped with nothing; taking odd jobs where they can find them and free meals from their Rhineland friends and relations. They remind me of the White Russian refugees I knew in my youth.
Aga surprised me the other day with a sudden outburst – “Why do you people pretend to sympathize with us Germans in wanting reunification of Germany? What a farce! We all know that that is the last thing you want. Why should you want a bigger Germany? Of course you don’t trust us. Why should you? Why pretend?” I was on the point of protesting, but to do so would be an insult to her intelligence. I said nothing. The silence marks our mutual understanding and its limits.
31 October 1956. Halifax, Nova Scotia.
I am here on a visit home to see my mother and today I have been walking the streets of the town. Halifax has lost its peculiar flavour of a nineteenth-century garrison town and its look of faded gentility. For a long time people used to say that the citizens of Halifax never painted their houses but let them look shabbier and shabbier to avoid high tax assessments. That reproach can never be uttered again. People have gone hog-wild with the paintbrush and the houses have blossomed out in pinks and greens and pastel shades. Rather touching to see these old-fashioned houses having another fling at life, but so many places that used to be gardens are now Esso stations.
The day of my “coronation,”1 as my mother calls it. Why did I ever get involved in giving this address, particularly in the Cathedral, where I am to make a speech to – among others – the King’s College students? The speech itself is a respectable collection of second-hand ideas expressed in the usual clichés. As I walked across the old golf links, following a path I used to take on my way to King’s College when I was a student there, I thought of what I should be saying to these young men. “Don’t be taken in by vain old buffers like me. Escape if you can from the terrifying conventionality of this atmosphere. Don’t be trapped by fear or affection into conforming over anything that matters.” I looked among the students I saw on their way to the Cathedral for a bespectacled, self-conscious, angular youth – for myself when young – but they all looked very free and easy and neither self-conscious nor angular.
6 November 1956.
The international situation is taking on a nightmare aspect. Mr. St. Laurent says that the Soviet ultimatum to the United Kingdom does not make him tremble in his boots. That is as may be, but I must get back to Bonn at once. I cannot be caught in Halifax at a time like this, not that my presence in Bonn will make the slightest difference to anything.
13 November 1956. London.
I hate being in London when so much is at stake for the English and when I do not feel at one with them. I am haunted by memories of 1940 when I felt such a complete identity with the Londoners. It seems like a desertion on my part and no doubt many of my friends here think that it is a desertion of them on the part of Canada. Elizabeth Bowen says, “What if we are wrong? If one of my friends made a mistake or committed a crime I would back them up. It is as simple as that.” She has a raging contempt for the U.N. and its moral palaver. I said to Michael the other night, “It is not that I am troubled by the so-called immorality of the Suez action, it is just a question of what the international traffic will bear or will not bear and our assessment is different from yours.” But feeling runs high and one has to be careful even with one’s friends. Anne said to me, “Don’t desert England – how can you?”
18 November 1956. Cologne.
Three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, the hour of my birth and always the lowest point in the week for me; the inexpressibly melancholy sound of voices drifting up to the window from the foggy suburban street. I am trying to go over and over in my mind this beastly Suez affair so that I can decide on the line to take in talking to my diplomatic colleagues and to the Germans. It is one thing to criticize the English to their faces or to my fellow Canadians. It is quite another thing to criticize them before foreigners and before those who hate them. My friend the Admiral came in this morning for a drink. We were both very careful in discussing Suez to keep unemotional for fear of another row between us over politics, and he kept on calling me “Charles” affectionately to show that there was “no offence” after our last argument. I would have reciprocated if I could have remembered his first name. Derek Hoyer-Miller (the British Ambassador) very nice, very friendly and understanding of our position.
21 November 1956.
Today is Repentance Day in Germany and a holiday. I don’t know what they are repenting – they have plenty to choose from. Sylvia and I went for a walk this afternoon in the grounds of Schloss Brühl. It was a fine, clear early winter’s day, the last roses frozen and the walks in the park carpeted with bronze leaves. I came back to read the English papers and felt sick at heart at the pass to which British prestige has been brought, and divided between my certainty that their government’s policy has been a colossal, disastrous blunder and my emotional sympathy for the English, particularly when isolated and when so many are turning against them. Today the servants found a revolver behind the wall in an upstairs room in this house. It has been lying there since street fighting when the Allied troops fought their way into Cologne. Perhaps a German soldier had thrown it there to get rid of
it.
Called on Couve1 and found him very objective over Suez. (By that I really mean that he agreed with me.) But he did say that the situation in France is different from that in England because in France “we are all involved; the whole population except the Communist Party and a few isolated individuals are in favour of our action over Suez.” I again reflected how little like a Frenchman Couve is, with his reserved, cool manner and his English clothes, but perhaps the difference is only skin deep or perhaps it is because he is a Protestant.
25 November 1956.
Another Sunday. Went to the RAF Chapel across the street, which is really just the upper room of a house very much like this one. The Welsh clergyman read with beautiful, unaffected appreciation the lesson from Ecclesiastes, “Remember now thy Creator,” etc. The mournful majesty of it echoed disturbingly around the room. It makes most of the Old Testament prophets sound like angry old men shouting their terrible denunciations and shrieks for vengeance. The clergyman preached against sloth. The congregation of young men sang vigorously. This is called “stirring-up” Sunday.
I hope that in Ottawa they realize that the time has come to help to save the face of the British over Suez. The British will be there long after Eden has gone and will remain the best bet in a bad world. They should not be humiliated, and Canada should be the first to see that. I hope that we are not too much influenced by unreal majorities of the United Nations. As for the Russian ultimatum, shall we yet see Russian tanks rumbling through the suburban streets of Cologne on some such dark Sunday afternoon as this, and where then will be our complaints about being bored?
27 November 1956.
Lunched with the diplomatic colleagues. And endless discussion over protocol. If you are giving a dinner “in honour” of someone, is it possible to put the wife of the guest of honour on the right-hand side of the host – in other words, higher up than invited Ambassadresses? The answer of most of the colleagues is “No, it would be grossly improper.” The Italian Ambassador has sent members of the Diplomatic Corps an invitation to dinner for the President of Italy, who is visiting Bonn, but he has sent it in the name of the President instead of in his own name. The question arises whether a Head of State can issue invitations when he is on foreign soil or whether it must be his Ambassador who does this.
By tacit agreement, Suez and events in Hungary are not discussed in a diplomatic group of this kind, but only between pairs of individual ambassadors, to avoid emotional rows.
The Yugoslav Ambassador called, an intelligent man more interested in politics than in protocol. He is bitterly disappointed by the turn of events in Hungary but he is more anxious to blame the West than the Russians.
30 November 1956.
In the evening, dinner at the Campbell-Walters’. My host, the Admiral, was in a melancholy and silent mood but Mrs. Campbell-Walter more than made up for it. Their daughter, the beautiful Fiona, was there with her new husband, the millionaire Heinie Thyssen. She was wearing the famous great pearl which he has given her and which has had so much publicity in the press. Fiona is that rare article, a real beauty – not just pretty or handsome or attractive, but a Beauty. She combines this with very quick wits. She is very unselfconscious about her looks. I thought of how the greatest beauty of them all, Diana Cooper, talks of “the face” as if it were not part of her but a valuable possession which had to be taken care of. Heinie Thyssen’s attitude towards Fiona always seems to me to be that of a connoisseur who has added to his collection rather than that of a lover. He has indeed collected at least one earlier decorative wife in addition to so many superb works of art. Fiona’s younger sister Sheila was there. She is a pert, funny girl and greeted me by saying, “How are you, you old whisky-slinger?”
Reading Beckford’s diaries. They are very fascinating reading but any diary has a certain fascination for me, even the most trivial ones. We are buying another dog, this time a Schnauzer. We thought a little brother might be good for Popski, whose ego is getting completely out of hand. The only trouble is that I suspect that this new puppy is a “disturbed personality.” He has a very mad look in his eye.
Tonight we are giving a dance in honour of Roger Rowley’s daughter Andrea, who is eighteen. Everything has been left to the last moment. At this very moment workmen are pulling up half the loose tiles in the dance floor and hammering in some new ones. They say they will cover them with some quick-drying cement that will dry in an hour, but I picture it sticking to the shoes of the dancers and rooting them to the floor – a motionless ball. Then “they” sent only half-bottles of champagne, so that there is only half enough, so that we are involved in an illicit deal with the French Club – but will the champagne be here in time for the dance? We have asked far too many people for the size of the house. It is a physical impossibility for 110 people to dance in that hall, and still acceptances are coming in, including people who are not on any of the lists. Who the hell, for example, is Lord Chelsea? I think it must be a spoof name.
1 December 1956.
The dance seems to have been a great success. It certainly went on long enough. I got so exhausted at one point that I retired to the w.c. and sat there reading Beckford’s diaries with a whisky in my hand. The door unexpectedly opened and two of the girl guests came in. They gazed at me in horror and amazement and fled.
There is a ridiculous flurry in the German socialist press today against the Canadian Army, saying that a Canadian soldier bit the ear off a German in Dortmund during a row over parking a car. The press have been after me on the telephone about it, one journalist asking me if I could make “an educated guess” as to what had really happened.
19 January 1957.
Back from Ireland after staying with Elizabeth at Bowen’s Court. Got into a conversation on the plane with a young Irishman who was returning from London to live in his native County Cork. He said, “You get tired of the city, but in the country there is nothing to get tired of.” I pondered this elliptical remark.
How can one convey the fascinating flow of Elizabeth’s talk, the pictures of places and people, the continual surprise and pleasure of her choice of a word, the funniness, poetry, and near-brutality of her view of a situation? One day we went off to the wedding of the daughter of the farmer who lives by the gate of Bowen’s Court and who was marrying a young man who has a shop and runs the post office in Kilmallock. The very young bridegroom was as pale as ashes. After the wedding the bride and groom were photographed standing in the church porch and off we drove to the wedding breakfast in a country hotel twenty miles away. There were clans of Hodginses and Harrises, all “strong farmers,” all Protestant. Their Catholic friends who could not go to the church stood at their doors in Kildorrery village and waved the bridal party a send-off. At the wedding breakfast I sat next to old Aunt Hodgins, toothless but talkative. We spoke of Life and she said, with a sidelong glance at me out of her bright blue eyes, “And what are we all hoping for?” There was Irish whisky and champagne and a speech from the eighteen-year-old best man, a country boy, in which he compared the bridesmaid to the Queen of Sheba.
On another day we drove over to Muckross. Elizabeth said of that wild, steamy, strange County Kerry country that it suggested temperament, with an unexplained, unreasoning flash of joy followed by darkling, curdling weather when the lakes turned from sunny blue to black. She showed me some of the Bowen topography, the scenes where some of her short stories are placed.
Elizabeth says that her next book is to be called A Race with Time. She says that she knows its title but not yet exactly what it is to be about. There will be a “star-shaped” plot with characters and events converging on a point in time. She is working very hard at her present book, writing all morning on most days and in the early afternoon. She says that when a woman becomes a widow she goes back to the arts and crafts of her youth in attaching friends and combining people and, in order not to be lonely, returns to her earlier gregariousness.
Talking of writing she said, “I could giv
e a very good vivid description of the road past Headington where I used to walk every day, but who would want to read it unless something happened there?” She says that she does not want to write a subjective autobiography. She wants to invent, or rather that it comes more naturally to her to invent.
19 February 1957.
I have excluded from these diaries almost any reference to office work or mention of members of the Embassy staff or descriptions of any official business or negotiations with the German government. I have absolutely no wish to write about such things, which anyway are covered by memoranda and dispatches in the office. Then there is another consideration – security. I have always been almost excessively “security-minded.” In addition, this house is full of German servants of varied backgrounds. Then Bonn is, I think, riddled with spies of different persuasions. The result of all this is that the diaries have a very unbalanced look as though I were a man of leisure who did nothing but go to parties and never did a day’s work. The truth is that I very much like office work and very much enjoy the transaction of business. Indeed, my main complaint about this post is that there is not enough business to transact. As a result of leaving out any political or diplomatic record the diaries would be of less interest to readers, but this does not matter as I do not intend that there should be any readers. I have provided in my will that all my papers should be destroyed at my death. Why then do I write the diaries? It is a compulsion, like smoking.
21 February 1957.
I went over today to Dortmund to open an exhibition of Eskimo art. I have already opened three exhibitions of Eskimo art and am becoming sick of the sight of it. This exhibition was in the museum at Dortmund and the museum officials had told me that they had very few funds to provide refreshments, so I sent over several cases of rye whisky. The people at the museum had never seen rye before and the Director asked me if it was “a kind of liqueur or a sort of wine.” After the speeches were over, tall glasses filled with undiluted rye whisky were handed round on trays and drunk recklessly, so that before the reception was over everyone was more or less drunk. It was by far the most successful exhibition of Eskimo art I have ever attended, although towards the end of the evening things got somewhat out of control. A German art critic came to me and said that he knew that the Eskimo objects were not genuine but were copies made in Germany of objects sculptured by a German sculptor called Arndt. However, he promised that he would not reveal this in the article he wrote in tomorrow’s paper about the exhibition. I could not convince him that he was mistaken. He went on repeating in a drunken fashion, “I promise not to tell, Your Excellency, I promise not to tell,” until two tears began to run down his cheeks. One of the senior officials in the museum was a large, masculine lady with a broad, noble forehead, wearing on her finger an outsize signet ring. She seemed strongly attracted by a chinless young woman from the Cultural Division of the Foreign Office and they ended in a warm embrace and the promise that they would spend the evening together. The reception ended with group photographs which I shall certainly treasure.
Diplomatic Passport : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946-1962 (9781551996790) Page 12