Her account of Kennedy’s funeral, that terrible Thanksgiving of 1963, is so heartfelt it is difficult to read. Afterwards she is sympathising with the ambassador David Ormsby Gore and his wife. ‘It will be very difficult working with the new administration – no intimacy, no shared memories and no jokes.’ And the jokes aren’t the least of it so that her account of even this wretched weekend manages to end on one. Fog having diverted the funeral party to Manchester, this means a night at Chatsworth where she recalls the (very thin) Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home, wondering if perhaps he crept into bed and lay very still she wouldn’t have to change the sheets for Princess Margaret who was coming the next day.
I’ve never thought of Alec Douglas-Home as much of a joker but that’s the thing about this lady. She brings it out in people. Good for her.
I Married
I married:
The twice mayor of Buxton
A Knight of the Garter
The chairman of the Lawn Tennis Association
A parliamentary under-secretary of state
A minister of state in the Commonwealth Relations Office
A freeman of the Borough of Eastbourne
A holder of the Military Cross
The chairman of the British Empire Cancer
Campaign for twenty-five years
The patron-in-chief of the Polite Society
An Old Etonian
A Knight of the Order of St John, Derbyshire
A steward of the Jockey Club
A peer of the realm
A Major in the Coldstream Guards
The patron of twenty-seven livings in the Church of England dioceses of Derby, Bradford, Ely, Southwell, Chichester, Sheffield and Lincoln
A member of the Horserace Totalisator Board
The Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Derbyshire
The prime warden of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers
The author of a book on a famous racehorse
A member of the Garden Society, Society of Dilettanti, Grillion’s, The Fox Club and The Other Club
A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge
A vice-president of the London Library
The president of the Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables, Putney
A soundly beaten Conservative parliamentary candidate for Chesterfield in the 1945 and 1950 general elections
The president of the Devonshire Club, Eastbourne
The president of Derbyshire County Scout Council
The president of the Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association
A member of the Western European Union, Council of Europe
The president of the Royal Commonwealth Society (who was sacked after an excellent speech on Rhodesia)
The president of the Building Societies Association
A member of the Roxburghe Club
An honorary doctor of law at the University of Manchester
A Privy Counsellor
The author of an autobiography
An honorary doctor of law at Memorial University of Newfoundland
The president of the Matlock and Eastbourne branches of Mencap
A vice-president of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
A member of Brooks’s, White’s, the Beefsteak and the Turf Club
An honorary doctor of law at the University of Salford
The president of the National Deaf Children’s Society
The first peer to join the Social Democratic Party, which he left to sit on the crossbenches in the House of Lords (and was then abolished)
The Master of the Worshipful Company of Farriers
The runner-up in White’s Club ‘Shit of the Year’, Private Eye, 1974
The president of the Royal National Institute for the Blind
The chancellor of the University of Manchester
The major shareholder in Heywood Hill Bookshop and founder-donor of the Heywood Hill Literary Prize
A president of the Bakewell Agricultural and Horticultural Society
The president of the Conservative Friends of Israel
The president of Derbyshire County Cricket Club
An honorary doctor of law at the University of Liverpool
A front bench spokesman in the House of Lords on transport
The president of the National Council for One Parent Families
The patron of the Barnardo’s Year of the Volunteer, 1986
The president of the Longshaw Sheepdog Trials
The president of the Federation of West Derbyshire Mental Health Support Groups
The proprietor and chairman of Pratt’s Club
An honorary Colonel of Manchester and Salford Universities’ Officer Training Corps
The president of the African Medical and Research Foundation (which runs the Flying Doctor Service)
An honorary member of the French Jockey Club
The president of Chesterfield Football Club
The president of Eastbourne College
A trustee of the National Gallery
The chairman of the Chatsworth Estates Company
The president of Chesterfield and Darley Dale Brass Bands
A man after whom a variety of sweet pea was named
The patron of the Midland Cairn Terrier Club
I have changed my name three times but I have only been married once.
Deborah Mitford (1920–) married, in 1941, Lord Andrew Cavendish (1920–2004). In 1944, on the death of his elder brother, Andrew inherited the courtesy title of Marquess of Hartington. After his father’s death in 1950, he became the 11th Duke of Devonshire. In spite of being a government spokesman on transport, he never held a driving licence; he was never the owner of a Cairn terrier and was piqued at being voted only runner-up for the White’s Club award (Lord Lambton was the winner). This list of his offices and distinctions is by no means exhaustive.
The Land Agents’ Dinner
Anyone who chooses land agency as a profession has to know everything about everything, from drains to fine arts, from roads to Rembrandts. He must be able to talk in their own terms to lawyers and loonies, gamekeepers and golfers, ploughmen and planners, prime ministers and policemen. Land agents can do just that and a thousand other things besides; they are the people who cheerfully face the problems that will affect the future spirit and appearance of the country and the villages to which we are all devoted.
They and their wives have to be ready to face any emergency. The great-aunt of a friend of mine was married to the Sandringham agent during the reign of King Edward VII. Queen Alexandra used to wander into the houses round about, taking with her whatever guests she had staying. One day, the agent’s wife was, as usual, bent double in her garden when the maid came rushing out shouting, ‘Come quickly. Come quickly. There are THREE QUEENS in the hall and I don’t know what to do with them.’
At Chatsworth we have been very lucky in the marvellous people who have ruled in the estate office. Until my father-in-law died, there were seven agents spread around the country from Carlisle to Eastbourne. His mother, Evelyn Duchess of Devonshire, carried on a running fight with all of them. She loved interfering almost as much as I do. The unlucky Hugo Read, who looked after Hardwick Hall where she lived, was the recipient of many a sharp note, usually on her favourite subjects of woodworm, dry rot and drains. She stayed on at Hardwick after 1957 when the government took it for death duties and transferred it to the National Trust. In her eighties, she became a prime exhibit herself, always joining the visitors for tea. On the subject of the tearoom, Hugo received the following note from her: ‘Mrs Norton still makes her horrid little pink tarts, but they seem to have been enjoyed by two Nottingham businessmen.’
Her husband, Victor, the 9th Duke of Devonshire, was a real countryman. He loved cricket and when he saw to his distress that, in spite of a large intake of likely lads in the way of subagents and pupils, the Chatsworth cricket team was not doing too well, he got annoyed with Mr Hartopp, the agent. In desperation, the latter put an advert
in several local papers which read: ‘Wanted. Plumber for estate maintenance work. Must be a good wicket-keeper.’
The duke’s head agent, Sir Roland Burke, was also honorary director of the Royal Show and for many years it was more or less run from the Chatsworth estate office. Burke served his apprenticeship at the Royal, starting in the lowly role of assistant steward in the Poultry Tent and ending up kneeling on the straw in the showground to be knighted by the King. When my father-in-law succeeded, one of the first things he decided to do was to get rid of Roland Burke. He couldn’t bear him. But the difficulty was how to do it. My father-in-law was a very kind man and rather shy. He spent ages composing a speech for the awful interview. He decided to hang it on economy and made up a long rigmarole about how the estate could no longer afford the luxury of a head agent. Burke arrived and the duke began, ‘Regretfully it is necessary to make some cuts and economies…’ but before he could get any further, Roland interrupted and said, ‘I have been thinking along the same lines and realise that economies have to be made. Therefore, I am quite prepared to sacrifice my third groom.’
Those of us who live and work in the country must all be acquainted with autocratic and authoritative gamekeepers – a race apart, who are accustomed to special privileges because of their special position. At Chatsworth there reigned for forty-five years the ultimate in the profession – one John Maclauchlan. He lived in a house with a Paxtonian tower, had his own chauffeur and called the Duke of Portland ‘His Other Grace’. He and the old Duke of Devonshire used to tool round the country in the back of a huge brown Rolls-Royce (not that the duke ever referred to it as such but would order the ‘Stink Hog’ to be brought round). It was driven by Mr Burdekin, the duke’s chauffeur, whose instructions were never to exceed 25 miles per hour. On the rare occasions when he went a little faster, Victor would bang on the glass partition with his stick and shout, ‘Burdekin, Burdekin, what do you think you are, a crazy cow with a tin tied on its tail?’
Maclauchlan had the ear of the duke and always got his own way. He heartily despised Sir Roland Burke and the other agents. Once when King George V was shooting at Chatsworth, the King turned round before the start of the best drive to see a group of eight or nine men standing, as he thought, uncomfortably close. ‘Who are those men?’ he asked Maclauchlan. ‘Oh, take no notice of them, Your Majesty. They are just a posse of agents. Shoot them if you like.’ When Andrew and I first went to live in the village of Edensor, next to Chatsworth, Mr Maclauchlan sent for me (there was no suggestion of his coming to our house). I arrived, of course, at the right time, was shown into the parlour by his daughter and the great man entered. ‘Lady Hartington,’ he said, ‘I have sent for you to tell you that you can go wherever you like.’
I often think Victor Duke and my father would have made wonderful keepers. Victor would have been a tremendously conscientious and steady beat keeper, and my father would have been a terrifying head keeper with his entrenching tool at the ready. Poachers would have been what the newspapers describe as ‘at risk’ in his domain. Both men understood the ways of birds and beasts but neither was what my father called ‘literary coves’. My father would not have wasted time reading – a trait I have inherited from him and one which made my sister Nancy call me ‘9’, as she said that was my mental age. She used to address envelopes to me as ‘9 Duchess of Devonshire’ and introduced me to her smart French friends as ‘my 9-year-old sister’ when I was well over forty.
My father’s attitude to reading was most sensible. He only ever read one book and that was White Fang. He loved it so much he never read another because nothing could ever be as good. ‘Dangerous good book,’ he used to say, ‘no point in trying any more.’ I remember an unfortunate woman coming to lunch with my parents. The reason I remember is because no one outside the family was ever asked, so it was a very special occasion. The poor soul was ugly, something my father didn’t allow – the sort of woman he called ‘a meaningless piece of meat’. It was the time when everyone was talking about Elinor Glyn and her work. Casting round for a subject to break the silence, I heard our guest say, ‘Lord Redesdale, have you read Three Weeks?’ My father glared at her. ‘I haven’t read a book for three years,’ he replied (an exaggeration as it had been twenty since he had read White Fang).
How surprised my grandfather-in-law and my father would be at the change in standards of housing in the country now. They didn’t live to see bathrooms, let alone the double garage, central heating and downstairs lavatory which are now the order of the day. The two men were like a very ancient friend of mine who invited me to shoot in Gloucestershire recently. We were walking through a wood, miles from anywhere, when we came upon a ruined cottage – just a chimney stack, a couple of steps and a heap of stones. My friend looked lovingly at it and said, ‘It’s the most extraordinary thing, you know, you can’t get a feller to live in a place like that any more.’
They would have understood Mr Hey, our beloved friend who looked after Bolton Abbey for many years and who in old age grew to look exactly like the grouse he loved. Mr Hey was, to say the least, careful with money. He was once telling me about a tenant who was getting restive about the length of time it was taking to put a bathroom into his house. ‘We really must do something for him,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ve given him a shower.’ ‘Have you, Mr Hey?’ ‘Yes, I’ve taken a slate off the roof.’ He used to send the most fearsome bills after our annual stay at Bolton Abbey, every conceivable item written into them, almost including the air we breathed. The last line was always the same: ‘Mousetraps – 9d.’ I could never understand why we couldn’t reuse the ones from last year. But that’s agents for you, they have to balance their books somehow.
January 1983
The Small Garden
by C. E. Lucas Phillips
Of the vast number of books on gardening – fat, shiny and heavy with photographs – that fill our shelves this has long been my favourite. First published in 1952, it met a post-war enthusiasm for beautifying your plot. This reprint is good news indeed.
The author was a handsome Brigadier, decorated for distinguished service in both world wars. He was also an inspired writer, an original who holds the attention of the reader with his instructions on even the duller aspects of gardening. He tells us he is an amateur writing for amateurs. Too modest, but it is an encouragement to beginners and succeeds in making us want to try to get it right.
It is nothing if not thorough. The basics are explained, the step-by-step stages that lead to the pleasure of growing whatever you fancy, for anyone who knows one end of a hoe from the other. There is a glossary and a cultural calendar (it is a comfort to see ‘cultural’ used in this context and not coupled with ‘heritage’, describing some outrageous kind of art). Lucas Phillips tackles the vexed problem of plant names in the same robust way as the other difficulties met in learning how to deal with the vegetable kingdom. Many of his instructions are positively poetic: compost, its components and how to mix them, the value of liquid manure of a ‘deep tawny hue’ (but when it comes to adding ‘a trifle of soot’ you may have to admit defeat should your house be without coal fires). Other unlikely subjects are so well described they carry you along with intense pleasure.
There is much to go into before you dig. Fifty pages go by before he puts spade, fork and hoe to the earth. There are some surprises in the chapter on tools (‘The Gardener’s Armoury’): ‘the dibber should be handled with care…in unskilled hands it is a menace to the infant plant.’ I never looked on the good old dibber as a menace but his reason for the warning is logical.
The seasons and the work they bring are explained in simple language you cannot forget. Digging and manuring in the autumn allows the frosts to break up newly dug clods, working on particles of soil moisture as it does on water pipes, bursting and crumbling heavy soil into a fine tilth with great efficiency. The comparison to domestic burst pipes brings this process of nature home to every British householder. Early-spring east winds, with the
ir ‘harrowing breath’, bring you to the coming of summer and the author begs you not to disturb the roots of established plants when keeping the ground clear of invaders, but a little light hoeing ‘to slaughter the weeds’ is in order.
I know of no other gardening book that engages our interest in subjects dull as ditch water and vaguely unpleasant as well, apt to be skipped in search of something more attractive. You have to read on for fear of missing some descriptive gem and you remember what he says because of how he says it. His language gets better and better. Cuckoo-spit: ‘Inside a mass of frothy spittle is a curious soft creature which, on disturbance, will attempt to escape by weak hops.’ You can’t beat it.
He is at his most lyrical describing the plants he loves. The lesser known species anemones, for instance, ‘have a chaste and porcelain beauty’, fragile and virginal. Eremurus are ‘elegant ladies of hyacinthine appearance of 6 ft stature and more. Expensive…Beware slugs.’ The best he can say of the easily grown Valerian is ‘Beloved by Winston Churchill’. He does not spare us his dislikes and warns that after flowering in ‘barbaric splendour’ in late spring, the Oriental poppy is a ‘grizzly mess’. You can’t have one without the other. Salvia splendens is a ‘pillar-box red bedding plant which startles the optic nerve in August’. Cecil Beaton had the same anti-scarlet prejudice and called this salvia and its colour-mates ‘retina irritants’.
The pages on roses produce their own loving descriptions. How Lucas Phillips would have enjoyed the modern tribe of new/old roses which answer all needs with their scent, vigour and complicated beauty. Looking to a brighter future, he barks out orders to amputate newly planted ramblers to within 15 inches of the ground, thus preventing any flowers in their first year, and makes sure we obey by adding that this is ‘a cardinal injunction not to be funked’.
All in One Basket Page 14
