All in One Basket

by Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire

  Anyway, this Work is then the subject of a long rigmarole, beautifully printed on smart paper to make it seem less beastly. But in the middle of some unreadable paragraphs are sentences that strike an ice-cold note. For instance, there is talk about the Resolutions that will be passed if the publishers go into liquidation (which they will if they keep on taking books like mine) and the fate of the Author if he or she fails to deliver the Manuscript by a certain date. (He/she has to look sharp and pay for everything forthwith.)

  Now I always thought of manuscripts as those immaculately written things on parchment, like Bess of Hardwick’s accounts, with swirling, squiggling E’s. Not at all, it just means a dreary old typed mess. Rather a relief, I must admit, because if one had to learn to write like Queen Elizabeth I on top of everything else it would be the giddy limit.

  Then the publisher mentions something very worrying about what is going to happen to the books that go to the Philippines. Why this remote group of islands has to be singled out as a likely market and how the Filipinos could possibly be interested in the colour of curtains at Chatsworth, I really can’t imagine, but suppose Uncle Harold or someone knows.18

  There is only one comforting bit in the whole of this lengthy document. It says, ‘The Publishers shall not destroy any stock or sell it off as pulp without first informing the Author of their intention and offering the Author a few copies for personal use.’ think that’s jolly nice of them. But what on earth is the author going to do with his few copies? He couldn’t want to read them because he’s written them. You can’t eat them, take a taxi with them or plant them in the garden; you can’t wear them or smoke them; they’re no good as rat poison; you can’t slate a roof with them or even make a decent garden seat. Never mind, it’s kind thought and one must be grateful for that. And so the contract maunders on to its incomprehensible legal conclusions.

  The work part of the Work is very difficult to do with the telephone and other aspects of real life going on at home. So took a room in a hotel by the sea for a few days. Absolute failure. The other denizens of the place took pity on an old woman holidaying alone and talked to me all through breakfast, lunch and dinner, both in the residents’ lounge and in the darkest corner of the bar. So I took my exercise book to one of those glass-lined bus shelters you find on windswept English beaches, settled happily down, and lo and behold another lone woman came and sat beside me and started telling me about her dog. So I chucked it and went home. I only tell you all this in case you have the fancy to do the same yourselves one day. I think it’s better to stick to farming and gardening, Agriculture and Horticulture.

  The only thrilling part of all this is being paid for the twaddle you have written. A cheque arrives (the exact sum having been decided upon months ago so you had given up hope) and it looks really pleasing to the eye. But don’t bank on it when you’ve banked it. Look again at the bit of paper and you’ll see many a percentage deducted for one reason or another. VAT is mentioned and is horrid. Soon I expect VAT will be payable on VAT and so on, ad infinitum, till a minus sign wins the day. The final insult isn’t, we have to admit, to do with publishers. It’s the tax. And this almost makes the game not worth the candle. But it’s all good clean fun. So out with the foolscap and on with a new one.

  1982

  Flora Domestica: A History of Flower Arranging, 1500–1930

  by Mary Rose Blacker

  Flower arranging. Oh dear, I thought (having been to so many public functions where flowers are stuck sideways in their holder so the horizontal gladiolus stalks can’t reach the water – a worrying style still practised in many a town hall). Never fear. This book is a wonder from start to finish. The author sees the subject with a scholar’s eye and recounts the history of indoor fashion in flowers, from the sixteenth century until it reached a zenith of extravagance some hundred years ago.

  It is said that cooks are prone to bad temper because their art is destroyed. The transitory nature of flower-arrangers is similar, but luckily for us it has been a subject beloved of artists over centuries and part of the fascination of this book lies in its illustrations. The familiar Dutch pictures of the seventeenth century, when it was cheaper to buy a painting of a tulip by an established artist than obtain a bulb of the precious plant itself, show glorious mixtures of flowers stuffed into containers of all kinds, including the incomparable blue-and-white Delftware brought to England by King William III’s Mary. A few generations later, it’s back to nature and we are exhorted by Batty Langley, the eighteenth-century Twickenham gardener, to make arrangements in a ‘loose manner, so as not to represent a stiff bundle of flowers void of freedom’.

  As more exotics arrived in this country, so did the variety of flowers grown in orangeries increase. In 1773, Horace Walpole wrote from his Gothic fantasy, Strawberry Hill, ‘My house is a bower of tuberoses.’ The Sèvres factory in France and Wedgwood in England produced exquisite vases of all shapes and sizes to hold such wonders. Houses such as Osterley led the way with garnitures of up to thirteen pieces lined up on the mantelpiece. The National Trust has a band of volunteers at Osterley who recreate some of the eighteenth-century arrangements using flowers of the period, and that beautiful house is worthy of a visit for this reason alone.

  Early nineteenth-century nurserymen, sniffing more business, began hiring out plants for receptions in the great London houses. Teams of gardeners were sent in to set them up and earned praise for their ‘happy disposition’ of plants at routs and fêtes. Sometimes the lady of the house did the job herself. There is a glorious description of the stout Duchess of Gordon in 1810, up a ladder, dressed in a dimity wrapper, ‘knocking in nails to hold a garland of laurel over a picture’, doing what ‘she can get none of her awkward squad to do for her’, before reappearing as hostess in ‘the brightest spirits and the brightest diamonds’.

  Soon palm trees appeared (at Chatsworth even banana trees). The gardeners and their ‘decorators’, as the arrangers were called, became increasingly ambitious until they went completely over the top and festooned everything, from chandeliers to plant boxes, in masses of flowers and leaves. ‘Fences’ of orchids and peonies erected along the tables made it impossible to see your fellow guests. Lady Monkwell, invited to dinner to meet Mr Gladstone, could only hear him for the hedge of peonies in the way. Lady Aberdeen scattered autumn leaves on her tablecloth. (They look like potato crisps but never mind, they were a change from ferns and carnations.) A monstrous innovation was the ‘banded dish’, a dining-table decoration that consisted of concentric circles of brilliantly coloured flowers arranged on a plate. There is an illustration of it from an American magazine of 1869 and it is the only ugly picture in the book, inexplicably chosen for the dust cover.

  Hothouses proliferated in the gardens of big houses. At Waddesdon Manor, which had four acres under glass, a staggering variety of flowers was produced, including forests of Malmaison carnations that are notoriously difficult to grow. I am happy to say that they have appeared again at Waddesdon in profusion – an example of how everything at that house is done in slap-up style. The book is stuffed with anecdotes and reminders of the luxuries of times past. I shall have to go to Lyme Park to see the tobacco plants in the Bright Passage and to Polesden Lacy for a whiff of Mrs Ronnie Greville, that extravagant perfectionist.

  My only criticism is of the illustrations of flowers in fireplaces. In our climate, fireplaces are for fires not flowers. The spirits sink on a cold June evening to see a bunch of roses where the welcoming glow ought to be. This is a tiny point in an otherwise perfect book. I hope Mrs Blacker will now tell us what happened to Floral Art from 1930–2000. She must.

  July 2000

  Book Signings and Literary Lunches

  Publishers sometimes think it is a Good Idea for an author to do a book signing to give their book a shove. The author is invited to a bookshop where an apparently inexhaustible supply of the wretched things is piled in heaps round Exhibit A, the author.

  The staff in the bo
okshop are kindness itself. They have put a table and chair in the cave of books with familiar covers, so you feel at home. The signing has been advertised and it is a matter of pride to the staff, and terror to the author, to see if anyone turns up. When the appointed moment comes, the author settles in the chair, armed with pen and specs and, with luck, some would-be customers shuffle into view. Even if they have come on purpose to buy the book, they look at several identical volumes as if there might be a difference between one copy and another.

  It is strange how few people seem to be buying the book for themselves. He/she picks one up, looks doubtfully at it, turns it round and says, ‘It’s for my mother, actually.’ Younger customers say, ‘It’s for my grandmother, actually.’ ‘Oh, good,’ says the author, ‘that is really nice of you. What shall I write in it?’ Long pause, while the buyer considers how the recipient should be addressed, as the author can’t very well call someone else’s mother/grandmother ‘Mummy’ or ‘Granny’. So the Christian name is chosen. It has to be spelt out, especially if it happens to be Sheila, a trap with a good chance of ‘gh’ at the end. Luckily, the most usual name is Margaret and, as far as I know, there is no peculiar spelling there. But names get ever more unlikely and you have to listen carefully to the invented ones.

  The next customer tells her life story. That’s fine as long as there is no one behind her, but it can make the attention wander if you see one or two people who are obviously in a hurry and don’t want to hear of far-off school days or a shared Oxfordshire childhood. Then comes a man, rolled umbrella if in Piccadilly, tweed coat and pale trousers if in Burford. ‘Three copies? Oh thank you. What shall I put?’ ‘Just your signature, please.’ Quickly done and off he goes. Obviously an excellent fellow, the sort the wireless calls a decision maker. Usually, the messages to be written are pretty ordinary. As yet, I have not had the one a famous author of my acquaintance told me about. A man formed up and asked nervously, ‘Could you put “For Marlene – sorry about last night”?’

  Bookshop regulars spot the chairs and the pile of identical books and dart in the opposite direction to avoid having to buy out of pity something they don’t want. They ask, ‘Where are the maps?’ or ‘Are there any books on beavers?’ and make off like lightning.

  With luck, the pile has diminished in the hour which has passed. So have the customers. Now you can have a good talk to the shop staff and find out what is really selling while you sign a few copies for stock. The devotion to books of the staff or owner of the shop, as the case may be, shines out and you come away wondering about the charm of the written word.

  A literary lunch is another matter. Three authors parade their wares by talking about them after two courses of so-called food for which people have actually paid. Usually there is not much literature on show because the books are ‘popular’ (or the lunch would be a failure). One of the speaker-authors tells doubtful stories in his allotted ten minutes, to the joy or embarrassment of the audience according to their taste. The other authors look at their watches, mindful of a train to catch. Eventually they all move to the tables where they are to sign and the rubbishy book disappears while the other two, over which the writers have taken real trouble, remain in their original piles, sadly slow to move.

  At one of these entertainments I found myself in the company of Jeffrey Archer (before he was famous) and Arthur Marshall, who was indeed famous both for his inimitable radio performances in which he would turn into the school matron and, more important, as a television star. His book roared away. He became a dear friend, the best company ever, and stayed with us at Chatsworth several times. One hot summer day we were walking across the big lawn crowded with people lying in heaps listening to the Sunday band. A woman spotted him: ‘Is it?’ I heard her say. ‘It can’t be…IT IS!’ and round they came like bees to honey, for a word, a signed bit of paper, anything to remind them they had actually met the man who made them laugh.

  I sometimes read about the other author at that strange Literary Lunch but I have never seen him since.

  September 2007

  The Tulip

  by Anna Pavord

  From the dedication to Valerie Finnis, the acknowledged queen of English gardeners, this book is a rare treat. Taking as its subject a single genus of flower, it is written by a scholar and reads like a thriller.

  There cannot be anyone who does not love tulips, if only because of the time of year of their flowering. If roses are synonymous with summer, tulips are the tangible evidence of spring. Of course we love them but we may not know that their story is as fascinating as the flowers themselves, with ‘a background full of more mysterious dramas, dilemmas, disasters and triumphs than any besotted aficionado could reasonably expect’. It certainly is.

  The native habitat of the tulip extends from Ankara to Tashkent and it was from Turkey that the first bulbs (or roots as they were called) came to Europe. In 1559, a Swiss botanist described seeing its ‘gleaming red petals and its sensuous scent’ in a Bavarian garden – the first known report of the flower in western Europe. The traders of the Dutch East India Company introduced it to Holland, where it soon became the object of ‘tulipomania’, and the madly desired flowers began to change hands for prices far above rubies. The usually stolid Dutch lost their heads over the striped, feathered and flamed flowers, that mysterious ‘breaking’ of colour which was caused by a virus. It was these flowers that commanded the wildest prices. The mania spread to France. At the height of the madness a man swapped his brewery for a single bulb. The crazy trade reached its zenith in 1637, when the inevitable crash came and trading was banned. Boom and bust is nothing new.

  Protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution in Europe in the late sixteenth century took the valuable and easily carried bulbs to use as currency in their adopted countries, including England. They were soon taken up by nurserymen who supplied the owners of the formal gardens fashionable in the seventeenth century. The fancy spread quickly and amateur growers, known as ‘florists’, joined the tulip train and kept many of the choicest strains going throughout the eighteenth century. Clubs sprang up and tulip shows with attendant feasts were organised. By the 1820s, the rivalry between clubs in the north and the south of England was intense. Inter-club rows of mammoth proportions were commonplace and jealous rivals destroyed each other’s tulip beds. At a Lancashire show, the finest entry (according to its owner) was stolen during dinner before it could be judged. Experts differed on standards of judging and views about the form of the blooms; insulting letters to horticultural journals flew to and fro. Judges had to be men of courage. The chapter on ‘The Florist’s Tulip’ is comedy bordering on farce.

  Of the many societies formed during the last century, only the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society remains, where the blooms are shown in beer bottles as of yore. Tulips were the passion of artisans, and workers in the dark satanic mills fulfilled their artistic longings through the beauty of the flowers. The lack of a garden did not stop one engine driver in Derby – he grew his along the railway embankment.

  The Tulip is too heavy to read in bed but once you have started there is no question of going to bed so it doesn’t matter.

  December 1998

  Unstealables

  The trouble about book thieves is that they don’t see themselves as such. They borrow and forget with no criminal intent. But they pick the best without fail and leave a gap, unnoticed probably for months, and then you want the missing book for a quote, a story – or all of it – and it’s gone.

  I seldom read for pleasure but every now and then something takes my fancy and I mind so much when I’ve finished that, like my father, I can’t bear the thought of beginning another. In an effort to keep my loved ones, I have got them penned, as it were, in my bedroom. The hard core is by friends and family, from grandfathers to children, and some of them have lost their spines in the rough and tumble of life in a hanging bookcase. They are all precious, of course, but too many to go into here. They includ
e Park Top: A Romance of the Turf by Andrew Devonshire, a book that reveals as much about its author as it does about the famous filly, bought for him as a bargain yearling in 1965 by his friend and trainer, Bernard van Cutsem. And there’s A Fine Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford. When she was working on this autobiographical book, I asked my sister what its title was to be. ‘The Final Conflict’, she replied. I wasn’t listening properly and thought she said ‘A Fine Old Conflict’, which is what she decided on.

  The others are a motley lot and all prized. I made a list of a few some years ago: Fowls and Geese and How to Keep Them; Book by Lady Clodagh Anson and Another Book by the same author; What Shall We Have Today? by X. Marcel Boulestin; Priscilla Napier’s autobiography, A Late Beginner; Another World, the first twenty years of Anthony Eden’s life; The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley by Diana Petre; The Prince, the Showgirl and Me by Colin Clark; Rio Grande’s Last Race and Other Verses by A. B. Peterson; The Best of Beachcomber; Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders; The Anatomy of Dessert (1933) by Edward A. Bunyard; The Curse of the Wise Woman by Lord Dunsany; Peter Rabbit; Ginger and Pickles; Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, and Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.

  There are also the essentials: The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Verse; The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman and The Oxford Book of English Verse (1922 edition). The latter is inscribed ‘Unity Mitford from Uncle George, Asthall, August 1925’, with ‘11 years old’ added in childish writing. Some years later, Unity wrote in it again, ‘U.V.M., St. Margaret’s, Bushey’ – the school she loved and from which she was sacked. Since my sister’s death, this volume, printed on India paper, has been my travelling companion. ‘Lament of the Irish Immigrant’ by Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin, which brings tears to this day, has been eliminated from later editions. Why?