Faul Lines
Page 33
The beautiful leather boxes of “Supernatural Realities As Experienced By Frank And Mary Wooster” contained envelopes and small packages, with accompanying pieces of paper, usually type-written, telling a tale about Frank’s Donatello look or some token of the love she had sought so desperately. Nobody consciously throws out these odds and ends but somehow, in the mysterious return to reality, the boxes seem to become empty of their own accord. Don Fosco’s campo is so overgrown with weeds that it is hard to locate. At Montesoni, the door of the marble safe had a keyhole, and whoever vandalised and smashed it all up no doubt thought there was something inside to loot. The nearby church is a centre for the rehabilitation of young drug addicts. Nobody has any information how it happened, but Mitzi and Frank’s car immured underneath the crypt proved to be a rusty old Fiat. The rising market in vintage Armstrong Siddeleys must be the explanation.
Instead of a will, Mitzi had left a letter of intent, which opens with the sentence, “Je, soussignée, divise mes biens en quatre,” – I the undersigned divide my goods into four. A day came when all her descendants and their spouses gathered in the Faisanderie. This was Elie’s moment. Each of us received a dossier complete with lawyers’ pink tape. On the basis put forward in this dossier, he then said, there was no legal obligation on him to compensate Mitzi’s other branches. It speaks to the power of Elie’s personality that nobody present had a comment. At a silent and humiliating lunch, a jeroboam of Château Lafite from a vintage in the 1920s stood on the table, as much as to state, Swallow that.
Bubbles reminded Elie of conversations in which he had assured her that compensation would be paid. “Tu rêves, ma pauvre fille,” My poor girl, you’re dreaming – the condescension of this answer stuck in her throat. The lawyer whom Bubbles and I consulted was confident that Elie would have to pay us for our share. Gradually his energy faded, however, he answered letters slowly and then not at all, he wouldn’t accept telephone calls, he didn’t ask to be paid either. We understood that we would have to make our case ourselves. In the Ritz in London of all places, Philip and Elly and I had a confrontation with Elie. You are accusing me of being a crook, said Elie and he got up to leave. If you leave, Philip replied, you are admitting you are a crook. Elie sat down.
The knowledge that Elie had taken advantage of us affected me like an illness. I remembered a pun that he’d referred to himself, one depending on the double meaning of the verb voler, to fly or to steal. “Quelle est la différence entre un canard et un banquier? Le canard vole de temps en temps.” What’s the difference between a duck and a banker? A duck flies / steals from time to time” (implying that a banker is stealing all the time). At an appointment with him in the Rothschild bank in Paris. I reminded him that Granny Wooster’s letter of intent was a moral commitment to fairness and equity. He listened quietly and said, “Je sais au fin fond de moi-même que tu as raison,” I know in my innermost self that you are right. We agreed to do a sum. Liliane wished to sell us her share of San Martino, and taking that and other legitimate expenses concerning upkeep at Royaumont into account, he made out that we owed him money. Do the sums again, I said, and the upshot of it was that he paid Bubbles and me twenty five thousand pounds each.
The moment that I knew that he knew he had behaved as he should never have done, I pitied him. Poor fish, he’d have to live with himself. That was already difficult enough, since he had a mistress and an illegitimate daughter. The relationship between these two and Lily and his other children preoccupied him to the end of his life.
Probably he had spotted an opportunity to acquire Royaumont cost-free, and couldn’t resist the temptation. Some deeper and darker impulse may have been governing him. Having possession of the château, he never spent a single night in it, nor did Liliane or any of their children. For over thirty years the house remained shut and abandoned just as it was, the contents all in place, mouldering, spoiling, draining the affection that had been put into it and the pleasure it had given. Was this a function of his marriage? You don’t love me enough, he might have been trying to tell Liliane, you married me for my money, well, it has the power either to make or to destroy your family, and I’ve made the choice for you. For a single day in May 1996, the house was opened for a black-tie party celebrating Liliane’s eightieth birthday. Jessica and Candida came but Adam had more urgent things to do. In a speech to the guests, Elie said that Liliane had been the love of his life, whereupon he choked. Towards the end of their lives, they invited themselves to dinner in our house. Almost at once Elie began to quarrel with her at the top of his voice over the question whether we would eat in our kitchen or dining-room. In a move that served to symbolise their relationship, she went and sat by herself with the result that they chose to eat their meal separately. I never saw him again.
For several years after both of them were dead and buried in the cemetery at Baillon, a scrubby little village a couple of miles away, Royaumont stayed a sort of shuttered tomb, a Sleeping Beauty taken out of time. A massive catalogue from Christie’s arrived in the post. There was to be a three-day sale of the entire contents of the house. Attending the auction in Paris, I was taken aback by how dingy the pictures and furniture looked now that they were out of context. The Thomire table had lost its splendour, the Bosio statue of Cupid was kitsch. These possessions had come Natty’s way unbidden and he had no use for them. Long settled in New York, he was making a clean sweep. True to his promise to Granny Wooster, he was not selling the château but emptying it and all the outbuildings prior to converting and then leasing them to a company that manages conference centres. Granny’s room is being restored and will eventually be used by guests.
Scaffolding was up on the house the last time we were there. The past is over and done with. The fault lines have played out. We went on the usual little pilgrimage past the lakes to the Gros Chêne. Here Max had scattered Eugène’s ashes, and Elie had scattered Max’s ashes. One day the weight of the immense branches overhead will bring down this historic and magnificent tree.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my cousins Elly and Philip (more formally Elena Bonham Carter and Felipe Propper de Callejon) for their willingness to share memories and to encourage without reserve. Dr Lore Mayer’s researches into the Springers in Vienna and E.V. Jones’s researches into the Pryce-Joneses in Newtown, Montgomery, have been invaluable. My father’s papers are in the Beineke Library, Yale University, and every member of the staff whom I met was truly helpful. Another debt of gratitude goes to the Huntington Library for allowing me to quote letters from or about my father catalogued in its archive, “Patrick Balfour, Kinross Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.” It has been my great good fortune that Roger Kimball had confidence in this book from its inception and carried Rebecca Hecht and the exemplary team at Criterion Books with him. Beyond and above everyone else, my thanks are to Clarissa, fellow-traveller for so much of the way.
INDEX
Note: In the index titles of rank are given only when mentioned in the text.
Abdy, Sir Robert and Iya, Lady, 191
Abekassis, Isaac, 188
Accame, Guido and Pat, 141
Acton, Sir Harold, 40, 193–4, 240
Agresti, Monsignor, Bishop of Lucca, 244
Akhmatova, Anna, 255
Albany (chambers), Piccadilly, 252, 263
Albert (Royaumont groundsman), 11
Aleichem, Sholem, 225
Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 126
Alison, Barley, 290
Allatini, Eric, 34, 209, 294
Allatini, Hélène, 209, 294; Mosaïques, 34
Allenby, Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman, 1st Viscount, 68
Almásy, Janos, 312
Almásy, Mädi, 312–13
Alt, Rudolf von, 135
Amalia (lady’s maid; Mali), 113
Amies, Hardy, 326
Anderson, Benedict, 226
Annan, Noel: visits Castle Hill Farm, 199; on Alan’s jealousy of David, 286; and di
spute over David’s Unity Mitford book, 317
Anstey, John, 290, 292, 303, 310, 323
anti-Semitism: in pre-war Europe, 24; in Middle East, 33; in France, 281; see also Jews
Apponyi, Mary, 104, 198–9
Arab Bureau, 67
Arabs: in Palestine/Israel, 282
Arafat, Yasser, 297–8, 299, 301
Arendt, Hannah, 283–4
Armstrong-Jones, Antony, 245, 279
Ashcroft, Peggy, 254
Astor, John Jacob, 1st Baron, 222
Astor, Michael, 258–9
Athenæum Court, Piccadilly, 193–4
Athos, Mount, 258
Au Pilori (French journal), 179
Auchincloss, Louis, 218
Auschwitz, 34, 209
Austria: Anschluss, 105; Alan praises, 122; Nazism in, 124, 126; Germans occupy, 133
Ayen, Duc d’, 13
Ayer, A. J., 74
Backer, Evie, 307
Backer, George, 278
Bacon, Francis, 260
Badini, Giuseppe, 332
Baird, Sandy, 86
Balfour, Patrick see Kinross, 3rd Baron
Balkans: David writes on, 303
Banting, John, 86
Barber, Samuel, 263
Bargebuhr, Professor, 288
Barker, Tex, 275, 307, 340
Barstow, Sir George, 73
Barstow, Oliver, 264
Barstow, Phyllida, 263
Bathory, Elizabeth, 292
Battersby, Martin, 197
Bauer, Gerard, 278
Bayreuth, 245–6
Beachborough (prep school), Northamptonshire, 207
Beaton, Cecil, 26, 78
Beaumont, Comte de, 13
Beaumont, Tim, 268
Bedarida, Lucia and Federico, 190
Beerbohm, Max, 238
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Alan writes on, 102
Belfond, Pierre, 319–20
Bellow, Saul, 319
Below, Colonel Nicholas von, 313
Ben-Gurion, David, 281
Beneš, Edvard, 143
Benjamin, Walter, 175
Berenson, Bernard, 239, 257
Berkeley, California, 309
Berkeley, Freda, 218
Berkeley, Lennox, 218, 226; Nelson (opera), 249
Berlin, Aline, Lady (née de Gunzbourg): at bat mitzvah, 30; as bridesmaid at David’s parents’ wedding, 31; in Lisbon, 170; and Harry d’Avigdor-Goldsmid’s M.C., 195; letter from Poppy on David, 199
Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 255–6, 259, 277, 317
Bernanos, Georges: Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune, 139
Berthelot, Philippe, 122
Betjeman, (Sir) John, 7, 32, 245, 277; Summoned by Bells, 78
Betjeman, Penelope, 257
Biarritz, 178–9
Bill, Edward Geoffrey Watson, 334
Birkenhead, Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, 2nd Earl of, 237
Birley, Eric, 202
Birley, Robert, 88, 239
Bishop, Adrian, 97, 281
Black Jews (Harlem, New York), 290
Bletchley Park, 201–2
Blondel, Nadine, 179
Blum, Maître Suzanne, 315
Blum, Zoltánné (née Springer), 209
Blunden, Edmund, 289
Blunt, Anthony, 269
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 35
Boase, Tom, 254, 262
Boer War (1899–1902): Harry Pryce-Jones in, 60
Bonham Carter, Elena (née Propper; David’s cousin; Elly): childhood, 16; on Mitzi’s not knowing mother, 22; birth, 127; at Montreuil, 151; evacuated in war, 161–2, 173; in Zarouz and Cannes with David, 176, 180; whooping cough, 181; taught by governess, 213; in Switzerland, 214–15; and Elie de Rothschild’s violence, 232, 234; marriage, 257; sues municipality for neglect of Montreuil museum, 335; confronts Elie over disposal of Mitzi’s estate, 336
Bonham Carter, Raymond, 257
Bordeaux, 164–6
Borges, Jorge Luis, 95
Borotra, Jean, 15
Bosio, Baron François Joseph, 16
Bowra, Maurice, 86, 96–8, 281
Bradbury (English nanny), 179
Bragg, Melvyn, 316
Braun, Ernst and Bella, 155, 168
Brazil: Alan visits, 94
Breker, Arno, 319
Breton, André, 98
Brett, Dorothy, 289
Briggs, Arthur, 220, 252
Bringeon, Madame (Zarouz hotel owner), 175
Brod, Max, 281
Brown, Mr and Mrs (Kent neighbours), 196
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: ‘I write with ink’, 62
Brüll, Erna, 168
Brüll, Dr Siegfried, 113, 122, 128, 133–5, 168, 209
Brunard, M., 168
Bubbles see Propper de Callejon, Hélène
Buccleuch, Mollie, Duchess of (‘Midnight Mollie’), 271–4, 284–5, 308, 327
Buccleuch, Walter Montagu-Douglas-Scott, 8th Duke of, 171, 285, 308
Buckingham Palace, 73, 128
Buckley, William, 324
Bucşani, 117, 121, 145
Burns, General George, 248
Busche, Mrs (Alan’s housekeeper), 328
Bute, John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of, 186
Butler, Mrs (Vere Pryce-Jones’s help), 74
Butler, Richard Austen, 267
Caccia, David, 265
Caccia, Harold (Clarissa’s father), 54, 264–5, 301
Caccia, Marjorie, 266
Caccia, Nancy (Clarissa’s mother), 54
California State University, Hayward, 304
Callimachi, Princess Anne-Marie, 212
Calmann, John, 259
Cameron, James, 293
Candolle, Roger de, 2754
Cannes, 173–4, 179
Cardew, Father, 238
Čarnogurský, Ján, 321
Carr, Raymond, 262
Carrington, Peter Carington, 6th Baron, 317
Carter, Jake, 74
Carter, Mr (Kent farmer), 196–7, 215
Cassill, Verlin, 289
Castellane, Marquis Boni de, 30
Castellane, Sylvia de, 179
Castle Hill Farm, Kent, 194, 196–9, 203, 208, 212, 221
Caterham, Surrey, 248–9
Cattley, Thomas, 225–6
Caute, John (David), 260–1, 316
Cavendish Close, St John’s Wood, London, 219–22
Cavendish, Lady Elizabeth, 244–5
Cazalet, Edward, 3
Cazalet, Peter and Zara, 3
Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 303
Chamberlain, Neville: visits Hitler, 140, 142; speech on outbreak of war, 152
Channon, Sir Henry (‘Chips’), 249
Channon, Paul, 250
Chapelle, Bonnier de la, 190
Chapple, Mr (headmaster), 207
Charles, Oatsie, 326–7
Charras, France, 159, 161–3
Chatwin, Bruce, 260
Chavanel, Louise, 14
Chavasse, Christopher Maude, Bishop of Rochester, 7
China, 327
Churchill, Sir Winston: appoints Lord Lloyd to office, 125
Churchill, Winston Jr (‘Baby Winston’), 232–3
Clayre, Alasdair, 257–8
Cleaver, Eldridge, 304
Clonmore, William Forward-Howard, Baron, 78
Closed Circle, The (David), 300–2
Coats, Peter, 250
Cobden-Sanderson (publishers), 6, 94
Cocteau, Jean, 96, 98
Cohen, Arthur, 287
Coldstream Guards: David serves in, 248–51
Communism, 317–18, 320–3
Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 237
Conachy, Dr, 306
Connolly, Cyril, 75, 99–100, 117, 129, 199, 246, 260, 278; Enemies of Promise, 76; The Rock Pool, 257; Where Engels Fears to Tread, 70, 72
Connolly, Deirdre (later Levi), 260
Connolly, Jean, 100, 117
Conquest, Robert, 283
Cooper, Artemis
, 99
Cooper, Douglas, 237
Coppi, Fausto, 215
Corso, Gregory, 259
Coston, Henri, 319
Coward, Noël, 170, 208
Cox, John, 262
Craig, Maurice, 71
Creightmore, John, 310
Crevel, René, 98
Crewe, Quentin, 238
Croisset, Francis de (born Franz Wiener), 125
Crook, Arthur, 287–8
Cukor, George, 289–90
Cutmore, Miss (Cutty; nanny), 119
Cyprus, 300
Czechoslovakia: and Munich crisis, 143; anti-German, 145; Soviet invasion (1968), 321
Czernin, Ferdinand, 122
D-Day (6 June 1944), 203
Daily Telegraph, The, 292, 300
Daniels, Tony, 321
Darcissac, Dr (Proust’s dentist), 38
D’Arcy, Fr Martin, 275
Darène, Dr, 206
Darlan, Admiral Jean François, 190
Darwish, Mahmud, 282
David-Weill, Mrs, 167
Davies, Dr (of Builth), 311
d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Chloe, 195
d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry (Harry), 3, 194–5, 208, 278, 310
d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Rosie, Lady, 194–5
d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sarah, 195, 259, 278, 310
Dawnay, Alan (David’s great-uncle), 65–9, 87
Dawnay, Guy (David’s great-uncle), 59–60, 65, 68–9, 80, 87, 95
Dawnay, Colonel Lewis, 60
Dawnay, Lady Victoria, 60, 64
Day-Lewis, Cecil, 129
Dayan, Moshe, 298
Deauville, 304
Demarçay (French consul in Tangier), 190
Deprey, Fr Pierre, 243
Deutsch de la Meurthe, Emile, 29
Devonshire, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of, 245, 315
Devonshire, Deborah, Duchess of, 245, 314–15
Dickinson, John, 86
Dix, George, 222
Djilas, Milovan, 303–4
Dolerw (house), Newtown, Wales, 55–6, 59
Dollfuss, Engelbert, 103, 105, 124
Donaldson, Frances, 39
Doucet (Elie’s butler), 233
Douglas, General Sir Charles, 65–6
Douglas-Home, Charles, 3
Douglas-Home, Fiona, 3
Douglas-Home, Lady Margaret, 3
Down You Mad Creature (David’s skit on Odyssey), 262
Drabble, Margaret, 268
Drancy (Paris holding camp), 209