Our route took us to Victoria Street and then we were lost. Neither the coachman nor our farm men knew London and our only communication with them was by a string attached to a button on the coachman’s coat. Energetic jerking told the coachman something was wrong but not what. Poor Andrew was sweating with anxiety that we would be late and Stoker would not find Moucher. He lowered his window, a tricky business as it was made of thin real glass and the leather strap that held it was so highly polished it could have slipped from his hand. He put his head out, craning round so the coachman could hear his instructions, ‘Turn right, turn left’ – a scene that delighted the crowd – till at last we arrived at the entrance to the Abbey.
All was then plain sailing and the organization faultless. Stoker was whisked away to find his Granny, while I joined the female side of the congregation and Andrew the peers. I have never seen a photograph of the massed peeresses and it is a pity if there is none because, young and old, they made an extraordinarily beautiful sight. They had worked hard to look their best: the country ones had been to the bank to get out the family diamonds and the town ladies had spent early hours at the hairdresser with splendid results. Everyone was dressed alike (except for me with my bare shoulders) and the effect was like the chorus in a sumptuous film production.
All eyes were on the monarch, who was dedicating herself to the service of her people. When the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on her head the peeresses put on their coronets and the sea of arms in white gloves rising in unison was unforgettable. The Abbey was lit for television cameras and the dimmest corners were visible for the first time. It was a spectacular and moving combination of splendour and solemnity, a bringing together of Church and State. (I wondered what the Californian communists, my companions of the previous year, would have made of it all.) Moucher carried out her part to perfection. I had never seen her stand so straight before and it enhanced her beauty. Stoker was indeed reliable, except for one enormous yawn which happened to be caught by a photographer. I have no recollection of what happened to us afterwards, how we got home or how we spent the rest of the day, but I was keenly aware of my good fortune at being in the Abbey with history being made in front of my eyes.
Twenty-eight years later Andrew and I were invited to the Prince of Wales’s wedding to Lady Diana Spencer. Celebrations began two nights beforehand with an evening party for hundreds of people at Buckingham Palace. Emma, Andrew and I dined at Chesterfield Street, where we were joined by Father Harry Williams, who had been Dean of Chapel at Trinity College, Cambridge, when Prince Charles was an undergraduate. Harry was worried about his clothes: an old grey cotton overall worn over a short black cassock that stopped well above his ankles and gave him the droll appearance of an overgrown French schoolboy.
There are two entrances at Buckingham Palace when big parties are held and the invitation clearly stated our time of arrival, but the whole of London seemed to be making for the palace at the same time and there was a long queue to get in. We were fortunate in having an ‘entrée’ pass, given to diplomats, government officials and a few others, so we were able to go through a side door by the Queen’s Gallery where we found a milling throng and an apparently stationary queue waiting to get up the stairs. We spotted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Alec Douglas-Home and Quintin Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, who was wearing old-fashioned court dress with lace ruffles and knee breeches and looked like a mischievous boy with his hair scraped down. We were all staring sadly at the queue when some knowing person said, ‘Let’s take the lift.’ So this strangely assorted company, including portly Father Williams, took the lift and when the door opened we found ourselves spat out just where the Queen and Prince Philip were receiving their guests.
The spectacle was better than any film. The women had all made an effort to look their smartest – rare today – and were wearing new, or anyway clean, dresses, and had got out anything that shone to put in their hair. The men, some in unfamiliar foreign uniforms, looked splendid, and there was the usual sprinkling of Africans in multi-coloured robes. The palace brings in outside staff for these occasions and some of the footmen’s uniforms did not exactly fit. I often saw old friends among the retired butlers and looked out for Henry Bennett, who had been a footman at Chatsworth before going to be page to the Queen. (The Queen called him ‘Bennett’ and I called him ‘Henry’, which made me feel in the swim.) I did not see him that evening – he was probably in the rarefied atmosphere of the supper room where the Queen and the royal family were entertaining their foreign guests.
At 1.30 a.m. Andrew announced, ‘We’ll go home now.’ His sight was beginning to fail and parties had become a strain. Once he had decided he wanted to go home, home it was with no waiting about. But that night it was not so easy. The crowd was still huge and I could not remember which stairs to make for to reach our waiting car. I was almost desperate when I spied Lord Maclean, the Lord Chamberlain, whom I had known when he was Chief Scout. I collared him and said, ‘You’re a Boy Scout, how about your good turn for the day? Show us the way out.’ He looked surprised but, good Scout that he was, took us downstairs and shoved us into the passage that eventually led to the side door.
The next day I was sorry we had not stayed longer. Emma did, and at the very end of the party some high-ranking soldier cut down the balloons from the ceiling with his sword. There was a stampede of dowagers, fighting like mad for the blue and white souvenirs to take home for their grandchildren. Emma managed to get three, one for each of her children.
The following night we joined a vast expectant crowd for the firework display in Hyde Park. Part of the magic of those days and nights was the warm, still weather – the first fine days of a miserable summer – and going out at night was like going out in a southern country. It seemed to take for ever to get dark but when at last the fireworks began they were spectacular. Getting away, however, in a surging mass of half a million people was difficult. The crowd was not pushing deliberately but could not help doing so as they were being pushed from behind and several people were crushed against a barrier on Park Lane.
As we were being swept along in this human tide, I nearly fell over a small old woman. I asked her if she was all right and whether she had anyone with her. She was naturally very frightened and said she was alone. Andrew and I got her between us and waited behind a tree while the crowds surged by. She told us she lived in Brixton and I asked her how she was going to get home. ‘I’m not going home,’ she said, ‘I’m going to spend the night on the pavement in the Strand to see the Prince go by tomorrow.’ The last I saw of her was walking purposefully towards Piccadilly, determined not to miss any of the fun. She was typical of many of the people in the crowd that day: a Londoner and an ardent royalist, and nothing was going to prevent her from showing her colours on such an occasion.
Another memorable celebration of that decade was Sybil Cholmondeley’s ninetieth birthday, which was held in great style at Houghton in 1984. ‘You simply can’t imagine the beauty of it all,’ I wrote to Paddy Leigh Fermor:
That staggering Stone Hall set up for such an entertainment made me think I should never see anything so beautiful again, gold plate dug from the cellar by D Rocksavage, orchids on every shelf because the present-givers mostly plumped for flowers & somehow Sybil IS orchids, daffs wouldn’t do, Sèvres china and the room itself, decorated & yet hardly because of it all being one colour viz. stone. Oh heavens it was wonderful. All their old servants came out of cotton wool to do the job & do it they did most wonderfully.
Cake [Queen Mother] wore something shimmering as per, Pss Alexandra a terrific tartan thing in silk with huge sleeves, Dss of Kent came dressed as a clergyman – black silk with white collar & cuffs – we all made a monster effort, jewels galore &, a rare thing, there was exactly the right number of people. Surrounded by the Oudry White Duck, many a Gainsborough, Sybil’s mater by Sargent, the Holbein of a squirrel & ‘my brother Philip’s Things’ positively gaudy among the indigenous Kent kit, F
rench clocks surrounded by sort of diamonds, eastern this & that all one size too small but adding a lot, the royal people, seven minutes of block busting non-stop fireworks seen through the fat glazing bars & the old glass which is full of swirls & distortions, fires & flowers everywhere. Oh do try & picture the scene. SHE wore a pink cut-velvet & satin dress made for her mother in 1901. The Duke of Grafton said some good words after dinner, & she, swearing after that she had no inkling anyone was going to do that, answered most brilliantly. She quoted from Horace Walpole something about dowagers being as common as flounders. The fact that the Queen & all the rest of her push were there made the dreamlike feeling more so. Those rooms were made for all that & so was Sybil. I kept thinking how lucky I was to be there.
Five years later, on Boxing Day, Sybil was found propped up in bed, specs on nose, book in hands, dead. Oh how I loved her.
In 1996, the Queen honoured Andrew with the Order of the Garter, which dates to the fourteenth century and is in the personal gift of the monarch. It is the highest accolade of all and I have never known Andrew so thrilled or so moved. We were at Lismore when the letter from Buckingham Palace arrived, and he waved it above his head in joy. I thought back to the thousand and one things he had done for every kind of organization in Derbyshire, to the years of public service he had given elsewhere and to the countless evenings he had spent at functions when he might have been in his book-lined sitting room, and I thought how well deserved this honour was.
The ceremony in the Queen’s ballroom at Windsor Castle is witnessed only by those being admitted to the Order, its existing members and their spouses. Andrew and Timothy Colman, the two newly appointed knights, were presented one by one. I described what followed to my sister Diana:
They get dangerously close to the Queen who does something with a ‘collar’ & something else with a sort of dressing gown cord. She is highly practical, quick & neat & of course the ‘presenters’ are not and fumble with the cord etc etc till she grabs it herself to get on with the job. The language is thrilling, ancient & frightening, nothing but battling with things & people. All v. moving, partly because it has happened since Edward 3rd & partly because of the slowness of each movement, like a slow-motion film.
Then a long wait for disrobing. All of us round the walls while the Queen says how-d’you-do to everyone, followed by Prince Philip, Friend [Prince of Wales], Cake [Queen Mother] & Pss Anne. Another long wait & drinks & cigs for Denis [Thatcher] then lunch in the Waterloo Chamber. I drew husband & son, & Andrew 2 queens. I had exactly the same Nature Notes talk to Prince P that we had done 2 months ago when I last sat next to him. I wonder if he noted it, not I suppose or he’d have thought of something else. Friend sweet as always.
Then, after fairly ages, the wives & Denis went out into the brilliant sun to walk down to St George’s Chapel between the crowds of people who had tickets to be on the walking route.
I greatly looked forward to the annual Garter ceremony and to lunch afterwards, with the long table, the flowers down the middle, the speed with which the delicious food came – no hanging about for a slow eater – and the lottery of whom I would sit next to. I used to pray that it would not be Ted Heath but, with luck, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, with his long and distinguished army career; a man in a million. But whoever my neighbour was, it all passed too quickly. The procession from the castle to St George’s Chapel was like a scene from some ancient drama, the knights in their velvet robes and black hats with white feathers, and the heralds dressed as playing cards. The Order is limited to twenty-four non-royal knights. As the gift is for life, many of them are old and there are always a couple of wheelchairs. Andrew’s driver told him that the other drivers ran a sweepstake, betting on which of these venerable ladies and gentlemen would be the next to create a vacancy. Lord Longford used to arrive in a London taxi, which looked funny squeezed between the Bentleys. He climbed in and out with difficulty and the danger of some important bit of his clothes coming off was ever-present.
As with so many English ceremonies, the men in their finery made even the smartest women look dim. We hen pheasants walked down the hill to the Galilee Porch and had a moment to glimpse the invited crowd on either side of the road – I seldom managed to pick out the Chatsworth contingent but knew they were there – before trooping into the Chapel and settling ourselves in the stalls of the Quire. Above us hung the Garter banners and you needed a doctorate in heraldry to know which coat of arms was whose. Back up the hill to Windsor Castle for tea and proper iced coffee, then off home to real life until the following year.
I go to far fewer parties today, but the one given in 2009 by Sister Teresa Keswick, someone I have loved since she first came to Chatsworth as a friend of Stoker’s in the early 1960s, was a corker. Held at the Carmelite Monastery in Quidenham, Norfolk, it was to celebrate Teresa’s twenty-five years in the Carmelite Order. As a girl, Teresa was immensely popular, throwing herself wholeheartedly into whatever was happening, and making it ‘go’ – the opposite of many of her contemporaries, most of whom were silent and hidden under a curtain of hair, their jerseys pulled up to their ears. They were no help to me, poor old hostess, and I had to carry the whole thing – except when Teresa came. Now, for a quarter of a century, she had led a monastic life of prayer, toil and fasting.
Sister Teresa has three brothers and countless cousins, many of whom stayed the night before the party at Hatfield House, as did I. The joy of that night with Robert and Hannah Salisbury was made all the more remarkable for me as I could remember the old days at Hatfield when Roman Catholics were frowned upon. The people who mounted the steps of the bus that took us to Teresa’s celebratory Mass could not possibly have gathered together under that roof when I first knew the place in 1943.
The chapel was full when we arrived. Teresa was the only nun visible and the service was taken by priests. I do not remember much of what was said, my mind was full of thoughts of Teresa as a young woman. Even now, forty years later, I still feel her absence whenever there is a gathering of her contemporaries. After Mass, we left the chapel and stood outside on the gravel. The guests fell silent while Teresa’s eldest brother, Henry, began to speak. Teresa stood next to him holding a large bell.
Henry’s words were full of teases and memories of old days and suddenly the two of them were back in the nursery. Teresa was listening, laughing and crying in turn, and when she sensed that Henry was about to say something out of bounds, she rang the bell loudly to muffle his indiscretions. It was a sublime performance on both their parts. After these formalities, Teresa whirled around making sure her guests were fed and given champagne. When it was all over, she retreated into her silent life of prayer.
24
The Others
A
FTER MUV DIED, Nancy wrote to Gaston Palewski, ‘I have a feeling nothing really nice will ever happen again in my life, things will just go from bad to worse, leading to old age and death.’ Those words were a rare exception to her usual effervescent cheerfulness. She never had the happiness that most women seek; luck plays such a big part in meeting the right person at the right time and that luck eluded her. She made her own way through her own efforts and was rewarded with the enormous success of her books, but she never had the wholehearted love and support of a husband, lover or children. Even her sisters were ignorant of her innermost thoughts, and her disappointments remained private. She never complained and gave an everlasting impression of light-heartedness and jokes. After Don’t Tell Alfred she said she had run out of plots for novels and turned, with equal success, to history. Voltaire in Love demanded serious research and she worried about her eyes and the long hours of reading tiny print; Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King, both best-sellers, were acclaimed by historians and the reading public alike. Of her last book, Frederick the Great, she said to me, ‘It’s not only the best book I have written, it is the best book I have read,’ which was greeted by ‘Oh, shut up,’ from me, as she knew it would.
Nancy’s
annual visits to Venice were as regular as clockwork. While writing her history books, she stayed in a small hotel on Torcello and spent the day in her room working. Day-trippers invaded the island but as soon as they had gone, Nancy went out to look for a discarded Continental Daily Mail. In latter years she stayed with Anna Maria Cicogna in her house on the Grand Canal and went every day to the Lido where she lay baking in the sun, venturing from time to time into the tepid sea. Could that annual overdose of sun have led to the cancer that eventually killed her?
Nancy had a wide circle of friends including Field Marshal Montgomery. It was an unlikely friendship on the face of it, but you did not need much imagination to see that he had a great deal of Farve in him. Added to these familiar traits was a comic side that came to the fore during his television interviews when one could not help laughing at his certainty that he was always right. (It is high time the BBC gave us a repeat of his unique performance.) Nancy used to lunch with the Field Marshal at Fontainebleau when he was Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, and she recounted these visits in some of her funniest letters to Evelyn Waugh:
He is terribly like my Dad – watch in hand when I arrived (the first, luckily) only drinks water, has to have the 9 o’clock news and be in bed by 10, washes his own shirts, rice pudding his favourite food. All my books by his bed and when he gets to a daring passage he washes it down with Deuteronomy.
Wait for Me! Page 35
