Perhaps Robert showed David a letter he had received from J.F. which congratulated him on his marriage. The Mad Boy had replied jokily,
Dear J.F.
It was fun hearing from you again and reading it aloud to myself in that mellifluous voice of yours which I remember so well.
Jennifer and I long to come and see you, and receive your blessing. You might read The Bride of Corinth to us.
Yours ever,
Robert H. P.
Doubtless Gerald was intrigued to meet Niven, an ideal man of the times – matinée idol with bright blue eyes and pencil moustache, as well as courageous soldier. Like Robert, Niven was sexually voracious and had ignominiously left the Army following an early attempt to start a career there after school. Unlike Robert, Niven was famously debonair and witty; he knew exactly how to sing for his supper at Faringdon, tempering society gossip (Noël Coward was far from being the only mutual friend) with a cultured and informed appraisal of the war. He would see enough action – including the D-Day landings – to remove any illusions about the romance of war, and claimed that he was scarred for life by his experiences. Jennifer and Prim would have secluded themselves for ‘women’s talk’, probably sitting in Jennifer’s bedroom. Though Prim was two years younger, she was one step ahead with motherhood and Jennifer was very apprehensive about the birth. Prim must have been nonplussed by Jennifer’s choice of husband – she was more conventional and didn’t share Jennifer’s wild streak – but she was kind and encouraging. Her answers would have been soothing: ‘Don’t worry, darling. It doesn’t really hurt. The birth will soon be over. Think what fun we will have together with our babies.’
Jennifer went up to London for the delivery and was admitted to the London Clinic in Harley Street. Her labour was difficult and long, and in the end she was completely anaesthetised and forceps were used. When she woke up, there was a perfect baby girl. ‘All the nurses and doctors keep saying how pretty she is,’ she wrote to her father a few days later, ‘and I must say I think so! She has a mass of brown hair and huge eyes and very long eyelashes!’ No jokes then about whether the grandfather would like to drown this baby in a bucket of water for not being male. Robert rose to the occasion and arrived at the clinic by taxi from Covent Garden, having bought up what looked like half the flower market’s supply. He filled Jennifer’s room to overflowing with hothouse blooms and scented spring flowers. There is no record of the Mad Boy’s reaction to his daughter, but the general consensus was that he was a proud father. And nobody could deny that the baby was beautiful. They decided to call her Victoria – the name of Jennifer’s Aunt Vera, but also a tip of the cap to the old monarch whose presence was felt in so many offbeat ways at Faringdon, and whose name suggested the old-fashioned dignity and security that was lacking in the turbulent days of war.
‘I am feeling wonderfully well and am delighted with my daughter who really is very sweet,’ continued Jennifer to Sir Geoffrey, although it wasn’t actually so easy. The new mother tried to breastfeed but the baby didn’t appear to be drinking well. The nurses weighed her before and after each feed and announced she was not putting on the required ounces. The challenge was enough to make anyone feel tense if not impotent and Jennifer was accustomed to being seen as inadequate since childhood. After three days, she gave up trying and little Victoria was given a bottle. Sugar was added to soothe the baby and cod liver oil for good measure. Jennifer later confessed that she had cried for three days at her failure.362
When mother and child returned to Faringdon after a couple of weeks, Jennifer’s former bedroom had been turned into the nursery and she moved into the Red Room across the landing, which had its own bathroom. A green baize door was put up to close off this section of the first floor and to muffle the sounds of the infant’s cries. Jennifer wrote to thank her mother for another ‘wonderful present’ (i.e. money) and to say she hoped her relationship with Victoria would be as special as hers with Alathea.
I’ve so much to tell you I don’t know where to begin. First of all the Nanny is an angel, though I hardly dare say it so soon. She’s obviously completely reliable and very intelligent too, about feeding etc – as she discovered poor little Victoria’s tummy was very upset, and her bottom was terribly sore as a result, so she has taken her off the sugar and cod liver oil and she is better already. They really should have told me all this in the Clinic and not sent her home in that state. I am thankful to have Nanny, as she is so sensible and is marvellous with the servants – Mrs Law, the cook, is mad about her, and can’t do enough to help her! I hardly dare say all this so soon, but my fingers are crossed.
The Nursery is the prettiest room I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait for you to see it, and Victoria looks so sweet in her cot. She has been lying out in the sun in her huge pram, and looks very well and beautiful
. . . It’s looking too beautiful here. The garden full of primulas of every colour, and grape hyacinths everywhere.
The head gardener [Mr Morris] has just died and now we have no gardeners at all except an old man, who’s really the woodman, and there’s such a lot to do at the moment – it’s very worrying, and we can’t get a land girl as there’s nowhere to billet her. How I wish we could get someone like Ackland [the gardener at Oare], but I suppose that’s too much to hope for.
In the event, the nanny didn’t turn out to be such an angel and there were several others over the first year or so. Baby manuals explained the ‘proper’ way to care for babies, which was a strict feeding regime on a four-hourly cycle, plenty of lying outside in a pram to get fresh air, and a strict avoidance of ‘spoiling’ their character by too much indulgence. This approach was not a natural one for Jennifer’s lenient character, but the nannies tended to make sure that both mother and baby accepted that ‘Nanny knows best’. Having been accustomed to this mantra since her own childhood, it was easy for Jennifer to surrender to Nanny’s command. Each time the nannies were sent away, Pixie was sent for to help out until a replacement was found.
CECIL BEATON’S PHOTOGRAPH OF THE NEW FAMILY WITH THEIR NANNY
If Robert had rejected Jennifer in the early months of their marriage, they appear to have established a modus vivendi after their daughter’s birth. Robert was busy on the farm and now that Mr Morris had died, he had to solve the problem of the gardens too. Jennifer was inevitably wrapped up with Victoria, even if she had help, and there were various visitors who came to stay and to admire the baby. It was Gerald’s reaction, however, that was the most surprising. During all his years at Faringdon there had been exotic bird calls, avant-garde music and, recently, the Yankee twang of American soldiers trooping up the back staircase, but none produced as unfamiliar, even disconcerting a sound in the house as a tiny baby’s cry. Gerald loved animals, but a mewling newborn was far beyond his remit. Some of his friends had children, but they were not of particular interest to him. (He would surely have chuckled in agreement with Nancy Mitford’s bon mot, ‘I love children – especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.’) The green baize door had seemed like the erection of a barrier between him and the baby, but then something unforeseen happened: he liked the little girl. It helped that she looked so lovely, but it was surely heartening to see this new life, tucked under lacy blankets in her impressively sprung Rolls-Royce of a perambulator and pushed along the drive for walks. Gerald felt old, there was a war that seemed to be destroying everything he loved, but here was a small sign of hope.
‘Gerald was unexpectedly nice to babies,’ remembered Billa. ‘When Victoria was a child he was frightfully good and nice. I remember him discovering how to get the pram up the front steps. Can you imagine it? I remember him saying, “I’ve discovered how to do it by turning it around.” It was so unexpected of Gerald.’363 Friends were flabbergasted. Lord Berners pushing a pram! Whatever next?
Gerald asked Cecil Beaton to come and take pictures. Back from one of his many trips as a war photographer, Cecil swallowed his dislike of the ‘Horrid Mad Boy’ a
nd obliged, setting up tableaux to capture the essence of this implausible new family. The props were familiar objects – a gilt cockerel, the portrait of Henry VIII that was ‘after Hans Holbein’, exquisite flowers that always flooded the house in the good old days and still managed to put in an appearance. In some of the pictures, the baby is held by her father or mother, who are both handsome but tense.
GERALD WITH VICTORIA. ‘GERALD WAS UNEXPECTEDLY NICE TO BABIES’, SAID BILLA
In some pictures Gerald takes on a grandfatherly mien. Sporting one of Mrs Beazley’s knitted skullcaps, he cradles the frothy-dressed little girl in his arms. This is the nearest he could ever come to having his own child or grandchild and he was enjoying it. The Sketch published some of the photographs under the title ‘Faringdon House-Party: Lord Berners and the Heber-Percys’. Robert and Jennifer (in giant sun-hat) are shown with the pram, his hand over hers on the handlebar. Cecil was probably revelling in directing them for his camera, forcing the Mad Boy to act like a responsible father, yet revealing the strain between the parents. Jennifer and Robert are looking in different directions, appearing almost stranded in a sunny tangle of overgrown garden by the orangery that Mr Morris’s demise had left like a romantic, eighteenth-century wilderness.
In September there was a christening at All Saints’; the arched wooden door in the wall was opened and family and guests trooped through into the churchyard. The seven-month-old baby was dressed in an elaborate, lacy christening gown at least a yard long and was given the middle name Gala, presumably after Dalí’s indomitable wife. Gerald composed some music in honour of the occasion and played it on the church organ. Photographs show the parents with the godparents and Gerald as the symbolic pater familias, bursting with pride. Even Robert is beaming in some of the pictures. Jennifer looks delighted – dressed in a clinging raw-silk suit with a perky hat. Clarissa was there, as she often was during those times, still very close to Gerald, but uninterested in the rest of the household. In the photographs she looks unamused.
CECIL BEATON’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LORD BERNERS AND THE HEBER-PERCYS PUBLISHED IN THE SKETCH. JENNIFER AND ROBERT PUSH VICTORIA’S PRAM THROUGH THE OVERGROWN GARDEN
The godparents were chosen from both sides of the family: Prim Niven, as Jennifer’s oldest friend, who came in a sensible wartime coat, and Aunt Nora (Geoffrey Fry’s older half-sister), who couldn’t make it to the ceremony. Robert chose Michael Duff, the man who had introduced him to Gerald twelve years earlier. Michael had been an RAF intelligence officer for the Eagles – a group of American volunteers who fought with the British before the US joined the war – though according to some, he was mostly ‘arranging their parties’.364 After contracting jaundice in Tangier on a reconnaissance expedition, he was invalided out and was now managing Vaynol, which had become a hospital. He signed himself into the visitors’ book as ‘Tired airman’. The final godparent was also in the RAF, first as a rear-gunner and then as a physicist: Derek Jackson (married to Pamela Mitford) was too busy working on British air defence and improving bombers (for which he was much decorated) to attend the baptism. Both godfathers were, like Robert, men who normally favoured men but who got involved with and married women – Jackson managed six times.
VICTORIA’S CHRISTENING AT ALL SAINTS’, FARINGDON. FROM LEFT: ROBERT, JENNIFER HOLDING VICTORIA GALA, PRIMULA NIVEN, MICHAEL DUFF, GERALD AND CLARISSA CHURCHILL
Friends of the Faringdon triangle continued to be amazed by the almost surreal turn of events; it was the perfect subject for entertaining, if partially inaccurate, gossip. Frances Partridge wrote to Heywood Hill, ‘Babies are in the air all right – Isobel [Strachey] has been describing Jennifer Fry’s, which is a Bright Young Person already – exquisitely beautiful with huge dark eyes and hundreds of young titled godparents.’365
The guest lists at Faringdon and Jennifer’s sporadic letters to her mother give the impression of a life as pleasant as any could be given the continuation of the war.
My darling Mummy,
. . . We have been to Oxford this week to see Noël Coward’s new plays which were very enjoyable, especially one called ‘Present Laughter’ – just as good as anything he’s ever written – and one called ‘This Happy Breed’ – ten years of family life on Clapham Common and obviously sincere and straight from his heart but somehow didn’t quite come off. Though there were some excellent characters – a wonderful Christian Scientist sister-in-law – Joyce Carey.
You must try to see them when you’re in London. We went to see him afterwards and he is just as attractive as I’ve always thought – tremendous charm.
It was lovely seeing Prim and David [Niven] last weekend. They seemed so happy.
In November, Coward came to stay at Faringdon and afterwards wrote to tell Gerald how much he had enjoyed it. He had evidently liked the new feminine elements in the household, as he joked: ‘Give my love to Jennifer and Victoria. I am trying to find the latter the second movement of “Sacre du Printemps” for Christmas because she is an old-fashioned girl.’ Jennifer managed to make trips up to London, leaving Victoria with the nanny and catching up with her old friends. She often made an appearance at Cyril Connolly’s parties, held with Lys at his flat in Sussex Place. They were filled with members of the artistic and literary set, whether in uniform or not, and among the scruffier, arty girls, Jennifer struck a glamorous note with her perfect outfits and elegant hair and make-up. On one visit to London, Jennifer met her disreputable former flame, Hamish St Clair Erskine, who had just arrived back from war. Bizarrely, given his reputation for being a dandified ne’er-do-well, he had been awarded the MC for bravery. Having gained a commission with the Coldstream Guards, Hamish managed to blow up a German tank and survived serious wounds. He ended up in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp, from which he escaped by doing what he had always enjoyed – dressing up as a woman. He hid from Nazis in ditches – probably dressed as ‘the Marchesa della Piccola Mia’, suggested Nancy Mitford when she heard the tale.366 James Lees-Milne went for drinks with Hamish and found Jennifer there, and she entertained them with stories. Apparently, wrote Lees-Milne, ‘She once laughed so uncontrollably in the High Street, St Albans, that she did herself a mischief, as my Aunt Dorothy expresses it. People noticed, yet she could not help herself. It happened outside an inn. When she looked up she saw the name of the inn was The Waterspout. She was so convulsed that she started all over again.’367
Extensive travel by car was impossible, given petrol rationing, but Mr Webb’s taxi was regularly used for both the inhabitants of and visitors to Faringdon – within the prescribed twelve-mile radius. When they had to go further, say to Oxford, they would be met by another hired car at Kingston Bagpuize to take them the rest of the way – something like changing horses in pre-motoring days. Mr and Mrs Webb had a daughter the same age as Victoria, and when Phyllis Webb drove Jennifer to Faringdon station or out to the shops, the two women compared notes on their babies. The Webbs’ black-and-silver Armstrong Siddeley was later replaced by several impressively large, albeit left-hand-drive, American cars, brought over by the US servicemen stationed in Faringdon; they struck a jaunty note in the quiet country lanes.
In addition to his farming activities, Robert joined the local Auxiliary Fire Service, an organisation through which part-time volunteers went on night duty every few days, supplementing the full-time professionals in the National Fire Service. There was look-out duty up on the Folly and an enormous water tank in the middle of the Market Place ready for emergencies. The Mad Boy was kitted out in a dark blue uniform with brass buttons and a cap with a badge, and, according to local sources, made the whole thing great fun, taking beer down to the headquarters and creating a party atmosphere whenever it was his night on duty.
Gerald, meanwhile, continued writing music. He was commissioned to produce the soundtrack for The Halfway House, an Ealing Studios film, and later wrote an orchestral version of the polka (that had first been played for the hospital Christmas pantomime in Oxford), as well as on
e of his most mischievous and popular songs for Alberto Cavalcanti’s 1944 film, Champagne Charlie. ‘Come On Algernon’ is a music-hall parody, full of double entendres, that tells of insatiable, youthful and above all female sexuality. It features Daisy, always sighing, begging and crying to Algernon:
Come on Algernon,
That’s not enough for me
Give me some more
The same as before . . .
N NOVEMBER 1943, after three years in prison, Oswald Mosley was released due to ill-health and he and Diana left Holloway amidst much popular protest. They were placed under house arrest and stayed at first with Diana’s sister Pamela and her husband, Derek Jackson. ‘For the first time for three and a half years, we slept in soft, fine linen in soft, warm beds’, albeit with journalists lurking outside who would write up the Jacksons’ yapping dachshunds as ‘baying hounds’.368 When the authorities realised that the notorious traitors were staying with a man who was doing secret scientific work for the Air Ministry, they were quickly instructed to leave, and moved with their two sons to an inn called the Shaven Crown in the Cotswold village of Shipton-under-Wychwood. Gerald went to visit them there and Diana managed to get permission to go house-hunting, accompanied by two policemen. It should not be surprising, given her immense charm and beauty, that she persuaded the officers to let her stop off for luncheon at Faringdon House. She described herself as ‘in the seventh heaven, to visit the charming house once more and eat Gerald’s delicious food and listen to his jokes was like being transported back in time to happy days before the war’.369
The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me Page 26