by D. J. Taylor
Difficulties of working with HM. (1) His enthusiasm. (2) His vagueness. (3) His terror of offending Hardinge. (4) His lack of stamina. Rushes about like the youngest member of the backstage staff at the school concert, full of good notions, arresting phrases, &c., but no idea of what he wants to do. Then loses interest, grows petulant, drops cigarette ash all over the paper and asks: ‘Well, how far have we got, then?’ when a child could have told him that we have not got anywhere. Sulks. Says, when gently chided, ‘If that’s your attitude, I don’t think we shall get anywhere at all.’ Then instantly repents, declares that the job couldn’t be done without me, I shall have his eternal thanks, &c. All very tiring and much worse than anything I ever experienced with Cochran.
I began by asking him: what, in a sentence, did he wish the speech to convey? This produced such a torrent of windy rhetoric that I tried again. Was there anything that he thought he should not say? He replied that he would not wish to contradict, or call into question, the policies of the Government. Very well, I agreed, but did he consider it acceptable to offer the Government advice, not to seem to influence political decisions but to reflect on them, as it were, from the impregnable vantage point of experience and hindsight? ‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ HM said. His line, as I take it, is that his memories of the Great War have convinced him that military conflict is an inconceivably bloody thing, and the sooner this one ends the better. The real problem, of course, will come when he gets on to how this might be brought about.
Anyway, I sketched a couple of paragraphs about his sympathy for the men dragged away from the comforts of hearth and home to serve their country in distant lands afar, to which he appended one or two trivial corrections—HM always has to make at least one annotation on anything given to him to sustain the illusion that he is in control—and then said that he approved and we ought to meet again in two days’ time.
Struck by the terrible incongruity, not to say the bathos, of it all. This slim, sad little man with his butter-coloured hair going grey and a permanently bemused expression on his face dashing off for notes he has written on scraps of paper and now mislaid, or sending footmen off to find back numbers of The Times, in a great high-ceilinged room with white-panelled walls from which the paint is flaking away, and equerries bouncing in every so often to announce that the Spanish ambassador will be here directly, with Hardinge’s tread always sounding beyond the door, and the footmen looking like schoolboys and reverential undertakers by turns, and oneself imagining that one has walked by mistake onto the set of an immensely ill-conceived stage play, but smiling all the while like the Cheshire Cat, for, as Hardinge has several times reminded me, HM is prone to lowness of spirits and likes to have people around him who are zealous and enthusiastic. As if one could not have worked that out for oneself.
And here is another problem, which has nothing to do with HM. Why have I not yet told Ramsay about this? Answer: because Ramsay will make difficulties. For a start, he will try to interfere. And I suspect—no, I know—that he will make demands it will be impossible to fulfill. The task, as I see it, is to do the best I can and present Ramsay with a fait accompli. If not, I shall simply end up as a telegraph-boy going back and forth between the two of them.
Still, there is a certain quiet satisfaction in these endeavours. Half a dozen times in the past week someone has telephoned me with a ‘Beverley, darling. Where have you been? Your friends say you are becoming a recluse.’ Well, before very long I shall be able to tell them!
4 December 1939
Three letters from friends in New York during the past week urging me to join them. Apparently the pages of the American Sketch and other periodicals will be ‘open to me’ if I choose to do so. All very gratifying, but I flatter myself I have important work to do here.
Another session with HM. This one lasted two hours. This constant attendance on the royal person is dreadfully exhausting. For a start, one always has to be on one’s best behaviour, which is a bore. After all, if one is working on a libretto or a musical comedy, one can always turn round to one’s collaborator and call him a bloody fool. I daresay if I called HM a BF I should end up in the Tower with the key thrown away.
Then there is the necessity to indulge every little foible and vanity that raises its head. This morning, for example, I had to listen to a frightful rodomontade about HM’s prowess on the ski-slopes—the kind of conversation which, had anyone begun it in a gentleman’s club, would simply have been laughed down. Still, at any rate he means well. Came up with a phrase about his being ‘a soldier of the last war, whose most earnest prayer was that such a cruel and destructive madness should never again overtake mankind.’ This I put into the text unaltered.
Hardinge a touch less suspicious. I daresay HM has shown him a paragraph or two. Greeted me in the corridor with a nod and the remark ‘Good work, Mr Nichols.’ As if one was a bricklayer who had just put up a new wall in the palace grounds!
The way in which we go about our work would make an interesting psychological study. If I am cautious, HM is suddenly in favour of bold statements and forthright expressions of his opinion. If, on the other hand, I decide to inject a little ginger into the proceedings, HM instantly backtracks, says the Government ‘wouldn’t like it’ and there will be ‘no end of a row.’ Just at the moment we are stuck on the question of whether it would be proper for him to express a desire for peace—this in the most general sense. At first HM fears this may seem ‘defeatist.’ Then, when I insert some bromides about the efforts of men of goodwill being concentrated on a speedy resolution to the conflict, &c., says that this is not tough enough and should be pitched stronger.
All very difficult.
5 December 1939
Thinking that I deserved some relaxation from all these strenuous efforts on my country’s behalf, and not having had any word from y, who I suppose is hard at work designing scenery for plays that will never be produced at the Everyman Theatre, Finchley, I picked up a Guardsman in the park and took him back to the room I keep for such purposes in Maddox Street. Gave him £2, which was well worth it. In fact, felt practically torn in half, so much so that it was all I could do to hobble to the taxi-rank and get myself driven back to Hampstead.
Sitting drinking the extraordinarily weak China tea which HM will insist on having served up to him, six hours later, I found myself marvelling at the incongruity of it all, and what HM might say if he knew what I had been doing. On the other hand, one has heard the most lurid tales of HM’s youth, turning up at ‘that’ kind of party dressed as a geisha, taking the frankest interest in goings-on his father would have had people shot for, &c. He is, I note, completely incurious about all aspects of my life beyond this room—that royal self-absorption of which one hears so much. On reflection, perhaps this is just as well!
Finally decided that I had to grasp the nettle and tell Ramsay what was afoot. As I anticipated, he was hugely excited. Said that I was a national saviour and ought to have a knighthood. Then, as I had also anticipated, came up with a list of points which the speech ought to contain. ‘The King must call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a peace conference to be held on neutral territory—Switzerland, say.’ I told him there was not the slightest chance of the King saying this in an address to the Empire, and we had to proceed by stealth.
After a while Ramsay calmed down—he is extremely nervous, I notice, jumps at the slightest noise—and saw the sense in this. ‘Well, he can at least say the war was a mistake? Simply the result of people believing foolish propaganda?’ I said I did not believe there was any chance of this, either. Ramsay looked rather crestfallen. ‘Well, if he is not going to say anything at all, I don’t see the point of it.’ Tried to explain that there are more ways of getting what one believes across than a direct statement, and that it might be possible to convey a very strong impression of HM’s position without its being a kind of giant advertising hoarding. In the end Ramsay accepted t
his.
The problem, of course, is that one is caught between two rampant egotists, neither of whom has an ounce of subtlety in his head.
Began to appreciate—not that I did not realise it before—that I am playing a very dangerous game. If it fails, I shall make an enemy of Ramsay. If, on the other hand, it succeeds, I shall make an enemy of a great many other people, as well as setting in train something whose ultimate consequences can only be guessed at.
Well, that is a risk one will have to take.
6 December 1939
With the help of certain acquaintances at the BBC, I have been investigating the circumstances in which the broadcast is made. In the old days it was recorded at Sandringham, to which the King traditionally retires in the middle of December. But of course HM loathes Sandringham and won’t go there—apparently he has only set foot on the estate once since his accession, and stayed only long enough to order that all the peach blossoms from the hot-houses be sent to Mrs Simpson. At one point he announced that he wanted to spend Christmas at Fort Belvedere, but Hardinge argued against this and so he will be at Windsor.
The important thing is that the broadcast will be relayed ‘live,’ meaning that whatever is written down in advance, and whatever may have been shown to Hardinge, or indeed to the Government, need not actually be what HM says. Not sure if HM is aware of this, but think I ought to make it my business to let him know.
Interested to find, in this regard, that Downing Street has expressed a keen interest in what the King intends to say. In fact, Hardinge tells me that he has twice been asked for a preliminary synopsis, and that Churchill—who apparently used to advise HM on his speeches in earlier days—has volunteered his services. Told Hardinge that a synopsis should certainly be forthcoming and that we should get on very well without external help.
7 December 1939
At long last, and to the neglect of all manner of professional duties, not to mention one’s social life, we have an outline. Or at any rate an outline suitable for Downing Street. HM will begin by reflecting on the dark period in which we find ourselves. He will recall his own experiences of military service in the Great War and offer sympathy and encouragement to those engaged in the current conflict. He will then consider war’s privations for those on the home front—families kept apart from their loved ones and so forth. He will stress the value of our Imperial ties, and how such a conflict brings together people in far-flung corners of the world united only by their fealty to the British flag. Finally he will express his confidence in the ability of our armed forces, on land and sea and in the air, and express a pious hope for a speedy resolution.
Left a copy of this on Hardinge’s desk.
8 December 1939
As I foresaw, synopsis did the trick in spades. Hardinge now apparently disposed to regard me as an ally. There is talk of the ‘signal services’ one is performing. If Hardinge really knew what was going on, he would have a seizure, but never mind.
HM’s attitude like that of a schoolboy bent on an immensely laborious practical joke. The conspiratorial air he maintains at these times is extremely comical. Not sure, amid all these clandestine goings-on—there was a moment the other day when Hardinge came into the room unexpectedly and a particularly incriminating sheet had to be hidden under a copy of Debrett—that I like him very much: petulance, high-handedness, small-mindedness, slightly virtuous air of the reformed rake, &c., all rather tiresome.
At his best, inevitably, when he forgets who one is for a moment and talks about his early life: his naval training at Dartmouth; Queen Alexandra feeding him toffee out of a paper bag; experiences on the staff in Flanders. Uses army slang expressions that went out twenty years ago. No interests, so far as one can see, beyond his relatives, society high life, its ramifications. Will say, with appearance of great curiosity, ‘Isn’t she related to the Duke of Milford Haven—on her mother’s side, that is?’ Amusing, and of course important, as all this is, it will be a great relief when it is all over.
And the greatest difficulty is not HM, or Hardinge, with his ponderous confidences and his ‘signal services,’ but Ramsay, who will not let one alone and sends three or four telephone messages a morning demanding to be ‘kept in the picture.’ Thinking that a certain amount of haughtiness might now be in order, I told him that I really must be given a free hand, and that the thing most likely to upset the apple-cart was extraneous interference.
One other thing. I shall certainly not be attending a meeting of the Faction in the near future. Victor says the entire organisation is riddled with informers and that at least two of Ramsay’s fanatical young ladies are working for MI6! Imagine the indignity of having every casual remark that one utters at one of these gatherings earnestly recorded for the benefit of some tough young man in Jermyn Street!
And so we press on. Ramsay quietly furious that his suggestions are not being given more weight. HM schoolboyish and, I infer, not having the faintest idea what the consequence of all this may be. Hardinge pitilessly deceived. Myself modestly confident that some real shift in our national destiny may be achieved, and—let us be honest about this—horribly afraid of what the outcome may be if it all goes wrong.
Chapter 11
Party Chambers
Three weeks before Christmas, against all expectation, Desmond decided to give a party. There turned out to be several reasons for this. One was that the first issue of Duration, though selling well, needed a further stimulus that only the arrival of several dozen people to drink cheap red wine on its premises for three or four hours at a stretch could provide. Another was that Desmond had chalked up so many social debts in the course of putting the magazine together, eaten so many free lunches, and performed so many semi-comic turns in so many hospitable drawing rooms, that he now felt under an obligation to pay some of them off.
But there was a third explanation, more abstract, in the last resort even philosophical. As Desmond put it: ‘There haven’t been any parties since I don’t know when. Everyone’s morale needs a boost. There are any number of one’s friends who won’t be in England three months from now. And Christmas is coming, too. I think we owe it to ourselves to let our hair down. Those of us that have any, that is.’
And so eighty or ninety invitations had been sent out—to literary editors in Fleet Street cubby-holes, to the denizens of Chelsea basements mouldering in the late-autumn fog, to elderly society hostesses whom Desmond had cultivated in the halcyon days of his ’20s youth—and forty bottles of a fiery Algerian procured from a wine merchant with whom Peter Wildgoose was on friendly terms.
Of the Duration staff, only Anthea positively disapproved. She said: ‘I think it’s a perfectly terrible idea. One of Des’s very worst. Nobody will come who’s the slightest use to the magazine, and it will get into the gossip columns and make Des look even more foolish. And then there’s the money. I shouldn’t wonder if it costs poor Peter £50, just for the privilege of watching a lot of people he doesn’t know getting drunk at his expense and trying to steal things.’
The party was due to begin at seven o’clock on a Friday night. At half-past five Cynthia found herself closeted with Anthea in Desmond’s office—newly swept for the occasion and with the desktop cleared—cutting up carrots and spring onions for a dip.
‘This is unbelievably awful,’ Anthea said. She was in the worst mood that Cynthia had ever seen her, and had earlier that afternoon sent a girl from the advertising agent’s away from the office in tears. ‘Why Des couldn’t get hold of some smoked salmon or canapés rather than ransacking somebody’s market garden, I shall never know.’
‘I don’t think you can get smoked salmon at the moment,’ Cynthia said, rather apologetically. ‘I went out to dinner the other evening and they’d taken it off the menu.’
‘With your American friend, I’ll be bound,’ Anthea said. She sliced into a chunk of carrot so viciously that a piece of it broke off and slam
med against the foot of the bookcase. ‘You know, I really am going to have to have a serious talk with you about him before too long. Is he coming this evening?’
‘He has to stay late at work. He said he might try to get along around nine.’
‘Well, take it from me, he won’t be missing anything.’ Anthea threw the handful of carrot pieces and spring onion fragments onto a plate and began to arrange them into a curious kind of mosaic. ‘Have you ever been to one of Desmond’s parties? I gather they used to be quite something ten years ago when he was living with that Carrington woman in Montpellier Square. Now they’re just dreary. Bloomsbury-ish, if that’s still possible. Poor old Peter stands in the background wringing his hands with misery, and then just when you think Des has forgotten about it altogether he’ll turn up with some extraordinary old personage who was dandled as an infant on Dickens’s knee.’
‘I think somebody said he was bringing Mrs Gurvitz.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Who is Mrs Gurvitz?’
‘I think she was “the toast of 1927,” whatever that means. Desmond knows such a lot of odd people. Have you seen these?’
‘What are they?’
‘They’re letters that have come in about the first issue. You know how Desmond made a point of asking anyone who read the magazine to tell him what he thought. Well, that’s what people said.’