Wait for Me!

by Deborah Devonshire

  I will never be sure whether Pam’s professed dislike of children sprang from her unhappiness at being childless. We never spoke of it, but it was obvious that Derek did not want children. When she became pregnant, he took her to the north of Norway and drove for miles over bumpy roads with the inevitable result of a miscarriage. Her dogs, which Derek also adored, took the place of children. Trudy, the first of her long-haired dachshunds, was a special favourite and Pam’s highest praise for anything, human or animal, was, ‘just like the little dog herself’.

  In April 1936 Muv took Unity, Decca and me on a Hellenic cruise aboard the SS Letitia. The purpose was Education. An impressive list of lecturers was advertised, including Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the London Museum at the time, and all was set for an uplifting fortnight round Greece with stops in Turkey and Asia Minor. We thought a cruise was for fun and romance and we treated it accordingly. On the first night Muv called us to her cabin. ‘Now, children,’ she said, ‘we must all stick together.’ What a hope. Decca fastened on to an unsuspecting fellow called Lord Rathcreedan, half-hero, half-butt. I expect he was suitably embarrassed by her attentions but equally intrigued. Unity discovered a political adversary in the Duchess of Atholl, a small dark woman known as the Red Duchess because of her support for the Spanish Republicans. She looked as if she had never enjoyed herself or laughed in her life. Towards the end of the fortnight, for the entertainment of the passengers, she and Unity had a political set-to on the platform used by the lecturers.

  There was one man we took against. He had a beard, wavy fair hair and wore a hairnet on trips ashore. ‘He looks like a chicken,’ Decca said, and so the Chicken Man he was.

  Heaven, I’m in heaven

  And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

  And I seem to find the happiness I seek

  When I’m out with the Chicken Man

  Dancing beak to cheek

  Decca sang, looking straight at him, getting as close as she dared.

  I want my wings about you

  The things about you

  Will carry me through to heaven . . .

  We named one of the distinguished academics who we wished were not on board ‘the Lecherous Lecturer’, for no reason other than we liked the alliteration. (In Love in a Cold Climate Nancy turned him into Boy Dougdale, who did have a taste for young girls.) We were always playing with words. ‘In a way’, was ‘in an Appian way’ to me and Decca. It did not mean anything, it just seemed to suit.

  I found a handsome man on board called Adrian Stokes, ‘incredibly old, over thirty’, I wrote in my diary. He looked like a blond eagle and I fell for him. He was a painter, art critic and ballet-lover, and when I got back to London he took me to Covent Garden to see the Ballets Russes. We saw Léonide Massine and the three ‘baby ballerinas’, Tamara Toumanova, Irina Baronova and Tatiana Riabouchinska, and Alexandra Danilova in Symphonie Fantastique, Shéhérazade and L’Après-midi d’un Faune and, my favourite of all, La Boutique Fantasque. At sixteen, I was not allowed to go out alone with a man so Nanny Blor came as chaperone. Goodness knows what Adrian (or Nanny) made of this, but it was the rule, take it or leave it, and luckily for me Adrian took it. Fixed in my memory is the 10 p.m. delivery of letters at Rutland Gate. I was always hoping for one from Adrian and used to sit in the hall ten minutes before the post was due. When, absolutely to time, a loving letter fell on the mat, squashed between Hansard and various circulars addressed to my parents, it was unbelievably exciting.

  One of the Letitia’s last ports of call was Constantinople, to see the Blue Mosque and other necessities. The highlight was a visit to Topkapi Palace where two pathetic eunuchs were on show to the tourists. The idea was to get them to talk in their squeaky voices. When we got back to the ship, Muv summoned us to her cabin. ‘Now, children,’ she said very slowly, ‘you are NOT to mention those eunuchs at dinner.’ We dined every night at the Purser’s table and the poor fellow must have had enough of us.

  My father had taught me to drive a car when I was nine. We went into the big, flat field at Swinbrook called the Prairie and I was put through the paces of gears, accelerator, brake and clutch. The movement called ‘double declutching’ was easily mastered when there was no traffic and only endless grass to drive over. My father was extraordinarily patient (he was not, however, entrusted with teaching my mother to drive – one of my sisters had to do that) and the result of his tutorials was that I passed my test on my seventeenth birthday. The examiner seemed to be on my side. We drove down a lane and he asked, ‘What does that sign mean?’ ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Do you think it’s a humpback bridge?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘a humpback bridge,’ which indeed it was. I have a feeling examiners would not be so helpful now.

  High on the list of places I loved going to was Cliveden, the Astors’ palace overlooking the River Thames. The younger sons of the house, Michael and Jakie, were two of the funniest, most attractive fellows I knew. I whizzed over from High Wycombe in the new freedom of my third-hand Austin Seven, a ramshackle object that looked a bit odd parked next to the Royces in the forecourt at Cliveden. But it got me there and that is surely the point of a car. The huge house, the very height of luxury, was arranged for the comfort and pleasure of its guests: flowers such as I had never seen – young apples trees covered in blossom, and jardinières full of pelargoniums arranged in blocks of colour; a vast red velvet sofa in front of the hall fire, big enough for several people to sleep in; the white and gold panelled dining room, imported lock, stock and barrel from Madame de Pompadour’s dining room at the Château d’Asnières. Adding to the continual excitement was the uncertainty of whom I might sit next to and what on earth I would talk to them about. Mr Lee was the king of butlers and the superb food was handed round at speed. At a crowded Sunday lunch, Lord Astor’s valet, Mr Bushell, helped at table. He was unable to resist a grumble and when handing the soufflé to Jakie, I heard him say in a loud whisper, ‘Life’s a bugger, Mr Jakie.’

  Nancy Astor was the star. Small, upright and sharp as a needle, she was a born entertainer – often at someone else’s expense. She would fix her ice-blue eyes on her victim and stop them dead in their tracks. A dreary educationalist from the Midwest was droning on and on until she cut him off with, ‘That’s very interestin’’ (a Virginian, she dropped her g’s) ‘but I’m not interested.’ She was the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons and was heckled one day by another Member. ‘Why don’t you think before you speak?’ he jeered. ‘How do I know what I think till I’ve heard what I’ve said?’ came her quick reply.

  She was always kind to me, perhaps because she saw me as no threat to any of her four sons. They had many serious girlfriends to whom she could be unfriendly, but I was never one of them and I loved her. Michael and Jakie pricked any pompous bubble coming from the mouths of the motley crew of politicians, writers, clergy and royal people who gathered at Cliveden. They both became MPs after the war, if rather unwilling ones. Michael had a safe seat in Surrey which he treated in cavalier fashion, disappearing for months at a time. His Chairman needed him on urgent business one day, but no one knew where he was. Eventually he turned up and got a ticking-off, to which he retorted, ‘You must take me as you find me – if you can find me.’ I was lucky to have been an extra in the theatrical performance that was Cliveden in those days.

  The rules of the game of staying in other people’s houses were incomprehensible to those who had not experienced them. They were brought home to me when I spent a glorious winter week with Gina Wernher at Thorpe Lubenham in Leicestershire. Her mother, Lady Zia, was a great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I and her father, Sir Harold Wernher, was Master of the Fernie Hounds. I was lent two superb horses, a revelation of what tip-top hunters could be. To lend a horse is always risky and I was flattered to be trusted with these two beauties. The niceties of behaviour meant that you simply proffered grateful thanks for this generosity, but should you need a stamp (cost 1½d) you must p
ay for it. You may not use the telephone or send a telegram, unless you had broken your neck or some other disaster (in which case you must pay for the call). You may not leave your car right by the front door, nor should you lock it or take the key as this would be a slur on the honesty of the household. As a female, the downstairs lavatory was strictly out of bounds.

  Nearly all my contemporaries smoked, which was not only acceptable, it was usual. I did not as Farve forbade it. Food fads did not exist or were certainly not discussed. The idea of answering a dinner invitation with a note of what you could or could not eat would have been preposterous and did not happen. Punctuality was essential and you must not keep the grown-ups waiting. You must try to talk to your dinner neighbours and not sit hunched, silent and hidden under a canopy of long hair (like the girls of the next generation). The status of an unmarried girl was low but as soon as she married, even if only eighteen, she qualified as a chaperone. All very odd, but that is how it was in 1937.

  At Castle Howard there were no grown-ups. The parents of Christian, Mark, George, Christopher and Katie Howard had died by the time I first went there. (My mother told me that their father, Geoffrey Howard, had a glass eye and used to surprise people by tapping it with a fork at meals.) The freedom of being able to say and do what you liked was rare in those days of convention. At Castle Howard the rules were there for breaking and we had riotous fun in that glorious house with no one to tell us to stop. Mark, two years older than me and my great friend in the family, was handsome in spite of a broken nose, clever, and with an infectious enthusiasm that made him popular wherever he went. His rambunctious family was full of wild Stanley blood, and Liberal politics and religion were subjects of fierce argument under Vanbrugh’s roof. There were Bonham-Carters and Toynbees galore, intellectuals and politicians in the making, all arguing, with Christian, aged twenty, the eldest of the group, shouting to be heard above the din, and spitting in her hurry to get out her words. She became a Lay Canon and was active in bringing about the ordination of women – no doubt she would have been the first female Archbishop had she lived fifty years later.

  Decca did the Season in 1935. She said she ‘rather guiltily’ enjoyed it, but it was obvious that she was longing to get away from home and begin a life of her own with people who shared her strengthening left-wing convictions. Perhaps she was jealous of Unity, who by this time had made friends with the German leaders, and her success may have driven Decca further into the opposite camp. Muv saw it all and understood Decca’s unhappiness. She cast around for something to engage her attention and decided to take us both on a world cruise. It was an example of her concern for each of us when we most needed it – I am sure she did not want to go for herself but thought it would fill a gap for Decca. To make it even more fun, she suggested that Decca bring a friend, so Virginia Brett, a fellow debutante, was invited to come too.

  In January 1937 Decca went to stay for a weekend with a cousin, Dorothy Allhusen, where she met another cousin, eighteen-year-old Esmond Romilly. He had run away from Wellington and had already seen action fighting for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and was planning to return. For Decca it was love at first sight; romance and ideals rolled into one. It was the perfect match at the perfect time – except that the world cruise was now nearly upon us. How could she go to Spain with Esmond and escape into her dream? Esmond devised a cunning plan. They forged a letter purporting to come from Mamaine Paget, a debutante friend of Decca, in which they pretended that Decca had been invited on a motoring tour of northern France with Mamaine and her twin sister. This tempting invitation was for two weeks, so Muv would be reassured that she would be back in good time for the cruise. Muv was completely taken in and, even though it was cutting it fine, she wanted Decca to enjoy herself. Perhaps we also looked forward to two weeks without her discontented presence in the house.

  On 7 February Muv and Farve saw Decca off at Victoria Station to catch the boat train to Dieppe, where she was to join the Pagets. Or so they thought. After waving goodbye to her, my father never saw her again. The plan was for Decca to meet Esmond on the train and for them to make their way together to Paris to obtain a Spanish visa for Decca. When they arrived, however, they were told they would have to apply in London. In Dieppe, while waiting for the ferry to take them back to England, they discovered that the fictitious address that Decca had given Muv actually existed. There were letters waiting for them and Decca was able to answer a letter from Muv, sending her news of the imaginary sights she had seen in France.

  While she was in London, Decca composed another letter to Muv telling her that she had run away with Esmond and asked Peter Nevile, a friend of Esmond, to deliver it to Rutland Gate when instructed. By this time Esmond had fallen in love with Decca and they decided to head for Spain, visa or no visa, and get married. In mid-February Decca wrote to Muv from Bayonne (hundreds of miles from where she was supposed to be) saying that she was staying with the twins longer than expected, but would be back by 20 February at the latest. Muv had a premonition that all was not as it should be. She rang a Paget aunt in London and learned that the twins were in Austria. Decca had vanished. My parents had no idea where she had been for the last fortnight or how to begin to find her. They were desperate.

  Rutland Gate was like a morgue. No gramophone. No one laughed. We talked quietly when we did talk, going over the same old ground again and again. Where had she gone? And why? Was she alive? Someone sat permanently by the telephone. Farve contacted Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office. Decca was a missing person. On 23 February, after what seemed an eternity, Peter Nevile arrived at Rutland Gate with Decca’s letter. ‘Worse than I thought,’ said Farve when he read it. ‘Married to Esmond Romilly.’ Peter Nevile tried to persuade Farve to give him a story to sell to the newspapers (Decca and Esmond were short of money) but Farve was disgusted by the idea and sent Peter packing.

  Muv wrote immediately to Decca at her last known address in Bayonne, begging her to come home. The web of deceit was as much a blow to my parents as her actual disappearance. In the hopes that it might help find her, Farve gave an interview to the Daily Express and a full-page article appeared headed, ‘PEER’S DAUGHTER OF 17 ELOPES. SPAIN SEARCH’. It carried a picture of me instead of Decca. Tom advised us to have the paper up for libel, which we did, and the case was settled out of court. I was awarded damages of £1,000 on the grounds that the article had put me out of the marriage market for the rest of my life, but even this unexpected windfall meant little to me. I had lost my old Hen. I adapted Harry Roy’s song ‘Somebody Stole my Gal’ to ‘Somebody stole my Hen / Somebody stole my Hen / Somebody came and took her away / She didn’t even say that she was leavin’.’ Too true.

  Decca and Esmond were traced to Bilbao. Peter Rodd came up with the idea of making Decca a ward in chancery so that she could be extradited legally and placed under court supervision, which indeed happened. Nancy and Peter went to France to try to persuade her to come home but without success. Soon after this, Muv made the journey to Bayonne where Esmond and Decca were now living. Decca told her that she was pregnant and when Muv got home she persuaded Farve and the judge that the marriage should go ahead.

  I did not go to her wedding. There was a long-standing plan for me to visit Florence after the now-abandoned cruise, with Margaret Ogilvy, my much-loved cousin, to learn some Italian and see the sights. My parents said I should stick to the arrangement. Perhaps they were sparing me an emotional meeting with Decca after the nightmare of her elopement, perhaps they were afraid that the press might fasten on to me for a story. Her disappearance was devastating and severed the deep ties of childhood for ever. Although fears for her safety were now in the past, a mixture of misery and anger was still very much with me. Looking back, I realize that Decca could not have told me about Esmond and her plans as it would have put me in an impossible position, but at the time I could not see it. So I went to Florence. My diary tells of the famous galleries, museums and buildings, and o
f our visits to San Gimignano, Padua and Siena. If we had seen the Palio, the horse race round the Piazza del Campo in Siena, I might have taken some notice, but the memories I have of this slice of my education are of delicious bread and coffee and little else.

  Decca and Esmond were married in Bayonne on 18 May 1937. Esmond’s mother, Nellie Romilly, and Muv were present. Muv wrote to me that afternoon:

  My Darling Stubby,

  There has not been a minute to write till now . . . this morning Decca came early & we had a great rush to get her ready in time for the wedding at 12 o’clock. I took a silk dress from Harrods for her to be married in and we bought a hat and brown coat and brown shoes and gloves in about half-an-hour. She looked very nice in all her new clothes and Nellie had brought a suit for Esmond and he looked quite smart too & a red carnation in his buttonhole. There was quite a small crowd outside and of course the frightful newspaper men with cameras. The Daily Express man of course surpassed himself and said to me could he ask me when our consent was given to the wedding. I said yes he could ask but that I should not answer.