I had sandwiches with D. in the Park. It was not a great success. She had dressed for the Ritz and was not too pleased at my enthusiasm for the simple life. If women only knew how endearing it would be if they occasionally expressed a desire for a cheap, simple meal instead of always exacting their full pound of flesh. But they all act on the assumption that the price you pay for their dinner is the measure of your regard for them. Just to prove to D. that I loved her I took her afterwards to the Apéritif where we had peaches and white wine for the price that would keep a working woman for a week, and I must say that she was right in wanting a smart restaurant as a background. It suited her and made one feel that this was Page 1 Chapter 1 of a new and exciting story. Also it restored my lust for the things that money can buy – smart women, fashionable glitter, all the frivolities that charm the eye. What I really dread from the sober reasonable socialism of the future is the eclipse of style, the disappearance of distinction – for mixed and intermingled with the vulgarity of our age is the survival of pleasant, ornamental, amusing people and things – and one’s soul shrinks from the austere prospect of cotton stockings. The intellectuals do not mind, because they despise the glitter and speciousness of rich life. But the aesthetes – like myself – have their misgivings.
23 June 1941.
Went down to the House of Commons. Eden spoke on Russia.1 He is not impressive – he never sounds as if he really means what he says. It is not that he seems insincere, but there is a lack of conviction or temperamental failure in power to convey his convictions to others. And one feels his lack of intellectual power. A nonentity, although not obstructionist nor actively harmful in any way. I walked through Westminster Hall – the sunlight coming through the gaps caused by the bombing above the rafters in the magnificent roof. The House met in the Lords1 – sitting on very new red leather benches. Churchill spoke about the postponement of the Prime Ministers’ Meeting – a most instructive episode the secret history of which will never – presumably – be revealed to the Canadian people.
Lunched with the Poles – Marlewski, rather boring and vulgar, and Belinski in cool grey flannels with his quiet, sympathetic manner and his cynicism. Poor buggers – the Russians are laying waste their homes as they retreat.
The modern Englishman does not seem to have any desire to impose his will on anyone or even to impose his view of life. I cannot imagine that, even if the war is won, these people are destined to reorganize the Continent of Europe. They have nothing to say to Europe. They do not even believe any longer in their own mission as empire builders. Yet it is nonsense to say that they are decadent any more than the Dutch are, or the Swedes. It is just that what they are principally interested in is improving living conditions and spreading the “advantages” in this island. They are aiming straight for a moderate socialist state run on rational lines – “a little England” of the type which English socialists and radicals have always preferred. People of that sort who may be expected (if we win) to rule England have no use for the Empire which they consider an embarrassment and a bore. They will never apply force to continental politics but will expect continental states to be reasonable – like the English.
The younger writers, painters, and poets who congregate in London and dine in the Charlotte Street restaurants form very much of a club. Most of them are middle-class young men, sons of schoolmasters, civil servants, doctors, colonels, and clergymen – that is to say they were brought up in the religion of snobbery. They are trying desperately hard but usually with incomplete success to escape from the strait-jacket of the English social hierarchy. But who buys their books, pictures, and magazines? Is it the working man? Whom do they like to dine with and spend the weekends with? Is it with the workers? If they prefer the manual workers to their own class, why have they not flocked to join the army? Instead they are, many of them, filling white-collar jobs in America.
4 July 1941.
This war between Germany and Russia has made things seem different all over again. We have entered into yet another phase of the war. This war is like a complicated piece of music – a great symphony in which motifs are started then disappear and reappear in many combinations. Now in a way it is like not being in the war any longer and yet it is not in the least like being at peace. We are back again in the “phoney war” feeling of that first year before Dunkirk. Of course the situation is completely different but the feeling of it is rather the same. The German pressure has momentarily been removed. We are not in physical danger. Apart from this unreal and unnatural war in Syria between Australians, Arabs, and the Foreign Legion our people are not engaged in fighting.
I still believe that this German attack on Russia was an act of madness on Hitler’s part. All the experts here said that Germany would easily overwhelm the Russians, but then these same experts said that there would never be a Russo-German Pact and believed up to a week before the attack took place that Germany would not fight Russia. One thing seems at least likely and that is that even the German military machine will be in no condition to attack England for several months after the Russian campaign even if they do succeed in conquering Russia. This means that the attack on England is off for the time being.
Meanwhile we go from one cloudless, high-summer day to another in a kind of daze. The parks are full of soldiers and girls in summer dresses. It is difficult to get a table in a restaurant. My friends indulge their love affairs and their vendettas. Cabinet ministers gossip in clubs and the press print daily jeremiads warning us to prepare lest a worse thing befall us. From the endless plains of Russia comes news of vast combats between alien hordes, between armies of tanks, and our lives may be being settled somewhere between the Dvina and the Dnieper. We know this but we cannot realize it. We seem to be moving in a trance towards the day when Hitler’s tanks are lumbering past the Kremlin and he is ready to settle his score with us. We feel that day must come and may come soon but we cling to the hope – the wonderful, white hope – that the Russians may hold him – may even, though this would be too miraculous to be mentioned – defeat him.
18 July 1941.
I went to the Air Ministry meeting this morning. On one side of the table sat “Chubby” Power, the Canadian Air Minister, and his staff. On the other side were the high officers of the Air Ministry. They are an attractive lot – low-voiced, sensible men without the stiffness or the affectations – and above all without the bloody breeziness – of the army. Our people, especially Power, were moderate, plain-spoken, and willing to waive their own proposals if it was made clear to them that they would impair the efficiency of the war effort.
There was an interesting question over the Canadian request that we should be allowed to publish in the Canadian press the names of individuals in the Air Force who had performed outstanding exploits. This violates the sacred RAF tradition of anonymity for individuals. Power pointed out that it was necessary for recruiting in Canada. He said that the British might think it “Hollywood ballyhoo,” but in our country “you must make things human and above all personal.” It was plain that the Air Ministry did think it “Hollywood ballyhoo,” and that no Englishman in the room knew what Power meant, yet all the Canadians, whatever their inner reservations on other points, agreed with Power on this one. The English could not bear the idea of individuals thinking themselves heroes. We could not understand the blank refusal to admit the human and popular approach – “The home-town boy makes good” myth.
10 August 1941.
Weekend at Miriam Rothschild’s. Waddesdon is another of these monstrous Rothschild houses scattered through the Chilterns, and is a copy of Chambord. The state apartments are closed and the pictures (some I believe are magnificent) sent to Canada. The family are living in a wing and somewhere in the house tucked away are one hundred and fifty orphans and their attendants. It gives an idea of the scale of the house that never during my visit was I aware of their existence. The inhabited part of the house is furnished exactly as it was in the 1880s. It is decorated entir
ely in deep crimson – the carpets, curtains, even the leather sofas and chairs are crimson.
There are certain peculiarities about staying in a country house in wartime, one is the problem of the blackout. When you retire to your room for the night you find that it has been most thoroughly blacked out in several layers. First the extremely tall heavy windows have been securely closed and fastened (these can only be opened by pulling on two long cords with white bobbles attached to the ends of them). Then the shutters have been closed and fastened with mighty crossbars fitting into grooves. The black-out curtain hangs the whole length of the window and then come the long heavy curtains which also can only be made to come apart by pulling the correct pulleys, so that one gazes in dismay at the number of possible cords all twined around knobs. If you pull the wrong combination of pulleys (i.e. one of the curtain cords and one of the cords that open the window) you are involved in a breathless struggle which yields no results save frustration. It must be remembered that the business of opening the windows has to be done in the pitch dark as the light must be turned out before you begin playing about with curtains. One night staying at Stansted I was completely defeated by the combination of obstacles and panting with exhaustion after wrenching at shutters and pulling at cords I took to my bed and tossed all night, in breathless confinement. But at Waddesdon I triumphed, and what a relief to hear the wind sighing in the trees and to feel the soft night air! Then, of course, fumbling your way by the light of a small hand-torch along black corridors filled with unfamiliar furniture, to the W.C. (which one had failed to mark by daylight) or alternatively to the bedroom of your girl-friend is another country-house hazard. At Waddesdon the valet asked me what I would like for breakfast. “Coffee,” he suggested, “toast or anything cooked, sir?” What a question in any English country house! But I stood out for an egg – felt the Rothschilds should be able to manage it – somehow!
2 September 1941.
The first time I saw Elizabeth Bowen I thought she looked more like a bridge-player than a poet. Yet without having read a word of her writing would not one have felt that something mysterious, passionate, and poetic was behind that worldly exterior?
17 September 1941.
The night porter said to me, “I don’t want my daughter to be in domestic service – to be a servant. When she is three years old I am going to buy her a typewriter so that it will be second nature to her. I waited until I was fifty to have her, not like some young people who have children right away like animals.
“I look upon you as a friend, not like some of them who look down on me. I have an encyclopaedia – the latest one – Pears Cyclopaedia. What I like about it is it always settles an argument. There is one man on the staff who says to me ‘I don’t care what the book says.’ Now that can only be ignorance or else he envies me and my knowledge.”
I lunched today with de Selliers of the Belgian Embassy and another Belgian, a civil servant, and Berkeley Gage of the Foreign Office. We discussed the settlement after the war in a muddled way. What was chiefly shown up was the great divide which separates the Englishman from everyone else on earth. Gage said that it would be fatal to have another peace of bitterness. He would like the peace conference to take place in Peking. In that atmosphere the delegates would take their time and get to know each other. It would take them months to reach the final solution but so much the better – a peace that was made amid the passions of war would never be any good. Peking was the place – and then he typically added, “I am afraid I am not being absolutely serious about this.” The two Belgians protested – so did I. De Selliers said, “We Belgians – like all Continentals – would want to have things reduced to writing.” “Oh,” said Gage, “if only you Continentals could get tight with an Englishman we would understand one another and trust one another and it would not be necessary to put everything in writing. The English have never been in favour of writing everything down.” De Selliers said, “When you say you do not want a peace made until the passions of war have cooled you mean let us give the Germans another chance – that you will begin your old policy of equilibrium in Europe, playing off one power against another. We want peace made while you are still angry. The work of Bismarck must be undone. Germany must be split up – Bavaria, the Rhineland, Saxony, etc., must be revived as separate states. We in Europe will take the Anglo-Saxon lead – but you must use your power.”
18 September 1941.
There is only one question of any real importance at this moment. Everyone is asking “Why can’t we make a landing in France or Italy or Greece, anywhere provided it is in time to divert some German troops and planes from the Eastern Front before it is too late?” The Russians are on the verge of being pushed right out of the war, and still we do not move. And to think that there are still people in the Foreign Office and elsewhere who want to be sure that Russian strength is annihilated and that G. of the Foreign Office said at lunch the other day before two foreign diplomats, “After this is over I suppose we shall have to fight the Russians.” “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
24 September 1941.
Dinner with Elizabeth Bowen and her husband Alan Cameron and a few writers and critics. So far in my excursions into High Bloomsbury I have not encountered, except for Elizabeth, any striking originality of thought, phrase, or personality but rather a group of cultivated, agreeable people who think and feel very much alike.
Inter-Allied Conference all morning and most of the afternoon – pious speeches in English and French from case-hardened exiled continental politicians who abjure all aggression, talk of the rights of man and the territorial integrity and self-determination of nations. At least Hitler uses a new vocabulary and not this Genevese jargon.
25 September 1941.
Dinner at a dining club got up by Berkeley Gage of the Foreign Office. I sat between Archduke Robert of Austria and de Selliers of the Belgian Embassy, the former rather like someone seen in a distorted mirror. His head seems preternaturally shallow, his neck elongated. He has the romantic Austrian charm which springs from an inveterate superficiality. He never asserts himself, but he is a Hapsburg and one cannot help knowing it. His mother, Empress Zita, and younger children are living near Quebec.
29 September 1941.
“Take it from one of the best living novelists that people’s personalities are not interesting,” Elizabeth said in a dry voice. “Except,” she added, “when you are in love with them.” Her books show much that you would expect if you knew her only as an acquaintance, her intelligence, her penetrating eye, her love of houses and flowers. These things you would have gathered from talking to her in her drawing-room. But there are certain passages in which her peculiar intensity, her genius, come out, which would be hard to reconcile with this cultivated hostess. That purity of perception and compassion seem to come from another part of her nature of which she is perhaps not completely aware.
This afternoon, Elizabeth and I went to see the roses in Regent’s Park. For days we had been talking of those roses, but I could never get away from the office before nightfall, and it seemed as if we should never go together to see them. Then one perfect September afternoon she telephoned to say that if we did not go today it would be too late – they were almost over. So I put away the Foreign Office boxes in the safe, locked up the files, and took a taxi to Regent’s Park. As we walked together I seemed to see the flowers through the lens of her sensibility. The whole scene, the misty river, the Regency villas with their walled gardens and damp lawns, and the late September afternoon weather blended into a dream – a dream in which these were all symbols soaked with a mysterious associative power – Regent’s Park – a landscape of love. A black swan floating downstream in the evening light – the dark purplish-red roses whose petals already lay scattered – the deserted Nash house with its flaking stucco colonnade and overgrown gardens – all were symbols speaking a language which by some miracle we could understand together.
Weekend staying with Mi
riam Rothschild. She is a remarkably handsome woman, heavy dark eyebrows, dark eyes which nothing escapes, a slow deliberately cockney voice, and a free-ranging bold experimental intelligence which is beautiful to watch, an antiseptic wit which can puncture a pretension or exorcise a neurosis, a glorious capacity for gossip and fantastic invention. Add to these endearing qualities that she is a respected research scientist, is keenly interested in problems of airplane construction, is an authority on plant and animal life, buys and looks at modern pictures, runs her own business affairs, sits on Jewish welfare committees, and manages a large agricultural estate, and one has some idea what her energies must be. With all of this she has the most generous good heart for people in trouble, and is the most loyal friend and the most ruthless critic. People are frightened of her because her intelligence is free and she does not bother with English circumlocutions.
1 October 1941.
Old men in clubs are puzzled by the Russians’ successful resistance. “My nephew who was in the Navy was out there after the last war, time that Denikin was fighting in the Crimea, he used to tell me, ‘You can never organize the Russians to do anything. They are feckless, absolutely feckless.’ Everyone said the same thing – now how are they managing all the organization of a modern war?” “Well,” says another old boy, “scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar – you know they are slow to rouse but once roused – why at Tannenberg five divisions of them marched unarmed straight at the Germans.” “What beats me,” says a third club member, “is that the Orthodox Church is praying for the success of the Soviet Union.” The attitude of officialdom about the U.S.S.R. is “Necessity makes strange bedfellows.” When at one moment optimists were proclaiming the possibility of a Russian counter-offensive which would drive the Germans back across the borders, people in London were already getting very exercised about the possibility of the Russians being the ones to liberate the Poles, Czechs, etc., instead of the English. The idea of a smashing Russian victory and communism in Central and south-eastern Europe appalled them. What would suit them best would be a stalemate in the East with the Russians holding the Germans, and if by any – as it now seems – remote chance the Russians did seem to have the Germans on the run – they no doubt would do their (probably successful) best to stop any more aid to Russia. As it seems unlikely that we shall ever have a land army big enough to finish off the Germans ourselves that seems a somewhat dog-in-the-mangerish attitude. It is worth noticing that the argument which you hear quite freely expressed now that maintenance of the Russian army in the field is the only way of defeating Germany on the European continent implies that if Germany had not attacked Russia we ourselves would never have been able to defeat Germany, which is true enough but used to be hushed up.
Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783) Page 14
