Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  They wiggled about for a long time to get it into the vein. Once it was in I had to open and shut my hand (gi-me gi-me gi-me) to expedite the precious flow. When the bottle was full it was corked up and sent to an ice box where it is good for three weeks. If we have a lot of raid casualties then they will have a good supply ready. Meanwhile they use what will not last on ordinary hospital cases who would before now have had salt and water dripped into their veins. Blood is much better for people who are desperately weak, collapsing or dying. They then bound my arm up, made me drink tea which I hate, so as to get the amount of liquid I had lost back into my system, and forced me to stay resting on the bed. At last the ordeal was over for good but their last words were ‘We shan’t need you for another three months.’

  July 22nd. A letter this morning from Nanny. I was so delighted to get it. The ship sounds great fun – games – boys – no sickness – but no word yet of how you were impressed by New York. Also this morning the Mirror has a picture of you sitting on your pathetic bottom on your pathetic trunk – I nearly howled. You looked like all the refugees of the world rolled into one wistful little victim of the Nazis’ Follow-my-Leader.

  July 24th. Went to Brighton to see the paralysed Major.22 Found him in high spirits. Owing to being in acute pain, he said. His blue budgerigar was pecking hairs out of his ears and talking to him incessantly. The visit passed in a flash. We both felt so gay, sipping sherry and nibbling chocolates and arguing about the Pope. Last night at about 1 a.m., when Papa was asleep and I was reading, a gentlemanly voice on the telephone said ‘I’m speaking from Hoxton’ (Hoxton is a sadly poor quarter of Greater London) ‘and a great many parents in Hoxton would like to come and see you because they resent your having sent your son to America.’ I was nice to him but cross in myself partly at the time of day he’d chosen to telephone and partly at the general injustice. I said I’d be delighted to see the parents and what day would he come. He chose a day and let me choose the hour ‘between 8.30 and 9 a.m.’ I said sharply. I thought he’d gasp a bit and sure enough he did. He wanted to think I wasn’t called till noon and didn’t of course know of the hard school of frozen legs greeting my waking moments at 7.30. He agreed reluctantly to the hour and I insisted that he should ring me an hour before the date, because in my heart I did not believe the thing. No one serious rings up at that hour.

  July 25th. Another voice bawls into my ear at seven this evening that it is speaking from Deptford and that the parents in Deptford would like to come and have a look at me too. He knew about the man from Hoxton, so I said ‘Do you know I was afraid he could not have been quite sober, ringing me up at that hour?’ ‘Not sober!’ yelled the voice. ‘Mr Wingfield is a teetotaller. He thought you were at the theatre.’ Why not call before the theatre (which I was not at) or next morning? I said he could bring his parents. Both men suggested bringing fifty strong. I said I didn’t see how a hundred adults were going to get into my small room but they could try, and there was always the passage to surge into. I don’t know what I shall say to them and I’m really shaking in my shoes, as I stutter and stammer and gobble and gulp if I have to speak to more than two people at once.

  The canteen23 has folded up on me so now instead of having a happy afternoon tearing and bustling around giving and taking orders, the morning’s telephoning goes on all day except when I go and argue unsuccessfully with the Home Office or the War Office or Scotland Yard. I try cajolery and blackmail and braggadocio and bootlicking and I’m only very seldom successful in increasing efforts to have men put in prison or taken out or children sent to New Zealand or Canada. Papa is attacked daily with great malice by my oldest demon-friend Lord Beaverbrook. He announced to a dinner party of his own adherent yes-men and to two outsiders who blabbed that he was not going to stop until he got Papa and the Minister for Air – Archie Sinclair – out of office. Papa weathers it well but it makes me sick and ill and sleepless all night and yawny all day.

  Today I got a cable from Kaetchen about your going to school at Aikin.24 I hope you will think I was right to say you had better stick to Canada. After all it’s your own country, which in peacetime I wouldn’t think an important factor, but in wartime an Englishman had better, I think, be in a country that is at war with his enemy, don’t you. In Canada you will become a great skater and perhaps a second Grey Owl.25 The U.S. will take you back for holidays. I should like it above all things, that way you’ll learn about both countries. I don’t like to look too far ahead because I want you back so dreadfully and so I don’t want to envisage terms and holidays and more terms, all divided from me by a waste of seas.

  I’ll post this now and tell you if the hundred mothers engulf me or if they are just a hoax. Get hold of a typewriter when you can because you write with much great abandon on the machine, unlike everyone else.

  July 27th, 1940

  Darling Monster, the deputation of Hoxton and Deptford mothers never came. I fussed a good deal from 7.30 on but by ten I felt safe from the visitation. It’s been a good day. When Papa came in he brought a letter from an unknown colonel who said ‘Your wife has been the victim of a hoax. The secretary of the man who rang up and purported to be from Hoxton is a swine of a nouveau riche.’26 Now I am dying for the hoaxer to ring up again, and I am going to say ‘I am rather upset about what happened. I feel I ought to warn you of the danger you are in. What at first I took to be a joke, as you must have realised when I said I thought the Hoxton man was drunk, has now become through my talking and laughing about it a rather serious matter and quite out of my control. All Mr. Cooper’s telephones are naturally tapped by Scotland Yard, and I have every reason to believe that they have traced you.’ The other good news of the day was that the Queen has settled to adopt the Queen’s Messenger idea which I sent her (not alas my own). It seems that special women with their headquarters in Buckingham Palace and armlets round their arm arrive at the home of anyone whose child has been killed or wounded by air raids and bring comfort, help, sympathy and a roll on which to inscribe the child’s name, and some token from the Queen – like soldiers get medals.

  There is a famous American called Wild Bill Donovan, who was a colonel in the last war commanding the 59th Division. (They made a film about him which you may see.) He was awfully good to Papa in N.Y. last time and gave him two or three dinners of representative men – lawyers, journalists, financiers, politicians, heads of enterprises, writers, everything. Now he has arrived in London practically straight from the President’s arms, to see and report on how things are shaping over here. I asked him to dinner tomorrow and got Winston to come and meet him. The only fly in the day’s ointment was when Wild Bill rang me up and said he simply could not get out of dinner with Joe Kennedy the Ambassador. I’ve heard since that Joe is in such a rage over his coming to England that he threatened to resign. ‘If-he-can’t-report-to-the-President-then-he’d-better-go-and-Bill-can-do-it-himself’ line. So I’ve got Winston up from the country under false pretences, but he’ll be just as happy and less strained.

  July 28th. Dinner was a great success. Rex27 and Caroline28 came too, Rex with a tough military moustache. He says that there are not so many hairs, but each one is thick as a hedge, so they make a brave show. He was dreadfully funny about his agonies as an inexperienced subaltern of the Guards. He was told suddenly to form his men up and march them to church. Every order he shouted produced greater chaos, soldiers scuttling in opposite directions forming sixes and sevens instead of fours, or is it threes now? At last he found himself isolated in the middle of the parade ground. One day’s more experience would have taught him when in doubt to say ‘Carry on, Sergeant-Major.’ Standing in a row to be inspected, he realised he’d forgotten his collar. The colonel inspecting felt it so apoplectically that he was robbed of speech, which didn’t return to him till he came to the next officer, who got the whole blast of blimp rage for having a loose shoelace. Poor Rex – he’s not suited to the life. He can’t paint, so he has no money at all because the littl
e pay accorded to him by a country at war has to keep the wolf from his mother’s door. This is a sad bore at the bar, and Rex likes a bar as much as you do and drinks of a strengthening nature a good deal more than you do, and now the tired youth has to pretend to like a glass of rain best.

  I just turned on the radio and by ill luck got the news in Welsh. It was so funny, like this: ‘Llanfair Duffcooper pwelliwin gegerereth duffcooper sinscreillio gogooth Duffcooper.’ Torture, too, not knowing what they were saying about poor Papa. Poor Papa indeed, the papers get worse every day. He made a very very good speech in the House. I went to listen and he counter-attacked the press, which is bound to have the result of more mud in Papa’s eye, but things will be better after this outburst, I am sure. Perhaps invasion will put it right.

  Today England was white with German leaflets. Everyone delighted, because we love to see any inefficiency on the part of the Germans, and to think that they should go to the expense and danger of sending us only what we ourselves have published causes great rejoicing. Martin looked in this morning, all the better for having been torpedoed – at least he looked it. He is a captain now, so is Mr. Wu.29 Charles, too, an exquisite grenadier,30 often comes to see me. I thought it was love at first, but I’m not sure that it isn’t for my petrol coupons that he comes. Dodgems is so abstemious that I don’t use half my ration. Miss Marler is married to Mr. Wakefield, an engineer. She is Daphne to me now. Her husband has to open dud German bombs that drop about very often. The last one he opened was stuffed not as you might have thought with explosive matter, but with old Berlin newspaper. So someone in Germany disapproves of the policy of his country. I wonder how it seems to you, looking at us from the outside – very different from the inside view? I expect so.

  Tell America we’ll hold on all right with our arms and teeth and nails, but tell her too to hurry up. Always my grateful love to Dorothy, Bill and Kaetchen. Write often. Don’t forget it’s a hard world – in America one is apt to, especially staying with the Paleys. Your report has come. I’ll copy it out for you next time. This term doesn’t really count. Because the term was measle-term, but not keeping your mind on things seems your greatest crime. Tell Kaetchen to teach you concentration. He’s failed with me but you are younger.

  August 4th, 1940

  Your godfather Lord Beaverbrook was yesterday made a member of the War Cabinet. From the hour of his promotion he changed his tune about Papa. Orders from his boss, no doubt, to cease bludgeoning a colleague. The sheepish press will take his lead, and so the assault I hope is over. Today in the Sunday Pictorial is a Duff Cooper ballot – a coupon to be cut out and sent back to the editor. There is a picture of Papa as a debauched criminal and the coupon says ‘He gets £5000 a year for being Minister of Information. Do you think he should hold the office? Yes or no.’ Now only cross people who hate you or are indignant fetch a pair of scissors, cut it out and buy a stamp and send it off, and those women who are in love with you, but they are very few. The large majority who are quite satisfied with you and think the press is making a fool of itself always and anyway just dismiss the idea and of course don’t look for the scissors. So today I started buying Sunday Pictorials at the street corner – never more than four or six could I get. Suddenly at St. Pancras Station I found 240, so I shamelessly bought the lot and shall send them scissored and enveloped to friends to send in. It probably won’t make any difference because by next Sunday Hitler may be here, or interest may be quite dead, or anyway they probably don’t play fair. For all that I enjoyed collecting them on a Sunday. It was like digging for gold – so many disappointments and then striking a seam.

  August 5th. A lovely long letter from the Cat31 this morning and one from George Moore* enclosing a photograph of you and him and Kaetchen on the top of the Empire State. You look very happy and indeed the letters tell me how good and nice you are. It all sounds like a fairy story for you, and I am as jealous as a prisoner. Today is a Bank Holiday and I never realised it. Business as usual, the shops open and hundreds of gentle-ish-men with their coats off digging in that patch of earth opposite St. George’s Hospital. The Battle of the Press versus Ministry of Information is completely over. Olive branches are waving everywhere. Papa has won, but he must see that this does not happen again. We always knew the Ministry was a hideous shapeless chaotic mess and a lot of people are being sacked and one can only hope the new ones won’t be worse.

  I lunched with the Cranbornes and dined with three American journalists – Sheean, Helen Kirkpatrick and Mr. Robertson representing P.M.32 here. We went to the Players Club and to the Savoy and to a flat, jabbering and drinking till the small hours. Papa meanwhile was jabbering and drinking with sixteen English pressmen, chiefly editors who had been abusing and insulting him, guying him and spitting ink in his face for the last ten days. This ‘get-together’ meal was arranged in the height of the fight by Frank Owen (Evening Standard editor). They all told Papa what a good chap he was and that they approved wholeheartedly of the snoopers33 and that all newspapers used the method. All of which makes me think most journalists exceedingly low.

  August 6th. More squaring of the press today. A dinner party in our sky [eighth floor] sitting room for Lord and Lady Camrose, owner of the Daily Telegraph, Lord Ashfield too and Shakespeare Morrison (Postmaster General). Eight of us, and I ordered grouse – half each at fantastic expense as it’s the first day of shooting,34 and then Papa brought Crinks Johnson (Department of Trade) in as a ninth and with a mouth drooling like a retriever dog’s I had to say ‘No’ to mine. ‘O no, thank you, as a matter of fact’ swallowing the mouth-water with squelchy noise, ‘I never liked grouse.’ Papa told us of a man, an English aviator he had seen, who had been obliged to bale out and as he got near the ground he could see only guns and shotguns pointing out of every hedge. Tortured by fear he guided his parachute, in the limited way one can, to the bang centre of a cornfield hoping that would give him a little time, but no, on landing there was an old farmer a few yards away drawing a relentless bead upon him and a soldier following up. He had a horrible feeling that something was behind him and flashing an eye round saw a burly man with a large iron railing in his hands, just about to crown him with it. He managed to convince them he was a friend and not a foe, but the farmer was so disappointed he kept his gun aimed at the unfortunate, and went on saying ‘I’d like to shoot your bloody head off!’ I dread to think what would have happened to a Polish flier in our service with at best a few words of German and a flood of Polish. ‘Dead for a ducat’, as Shakespeare would say.

  August 8th. All the people I love and respect are longing for the invader to come. Your poor Mother was never as brave as that. I would rather victory was achieved by famine and revolt in Europe than by hideous hordes in England. The people sing and hammer and swear that here at last the enemy will meet with a new and devastating experience – defeat. Good, but still the war goes on, and they write their loss off and call it a preliminary skirmish. That august man I went yachting with in ’3635 says he thinks every soul in England is mad not to see that we are doomed. Well, maybe.

  August 10th, Sunday. I went yesterday to consult Mrs. Massey (wife of Vincent Massey, the High Commissioner for Canada in this country, brother of Raymond Massey the actor) about your new life in Canada. Upper Canada College, Toronto, is your destination, poor puppet. I think though that it sounds good and that you will be happy there. Milo36 and probably many other English boys will be there, and everything they told me sounded right for you, but of course it’s only hearsay, so you must promise to tell me exactly how you feel about it when you get there. I know that you are good and naturally happy and brave and good at making the best of bad jobs, so I shall believe and approve your judgment and move you only if after a real effort to adapt yourself you are unhappy.

  I fear my letters are very dull and uneventful. Coming from the war, they should read much more blood and thundery, but it’s only outside this inner fortress of London that the air is disturbed. We live on
‘report’ and thank God we believe it. Daily the battle intensifies. ‘Is this really [the invasion]?’ is the commonest question. One dares not hope that it is. Tonight Papa and I go to Woodford, a town in Winston’s constituency, for a large meeting. It is in Essex, though not quite in the front line. Still it’s a likely place for a dive-bomber. He’d catch a few thousand people closely packed, plus that old warmonger your father. The best answer to be given to Papa’s attackers (and remember it in case of need) is – those that Hitler hates most are Churchill, Duff Cooper and Eden. Judge from this fact how far they should be trusted.

  Monday August 12th. We should be shooting grouse over bonnie purple heather today instead of stewing in offices, but the poor birds paid their debt to nature and sport a week ago. It shows when such traditions break that there’s a war on. They didn’t bomb us last night at Woodford. It was a terrific to-do – the band and the Mayor in scarlet and his aldermen and his mace, and the Home Guard, and the V.A.D.s and A.R.P.s,37 all in procession, and crowds in thousands. The speech relayed to crowds outside the hall and everyone cried and cheered and yelled ‘Good old Duff.’ We drove home in brilliant moonlight through the suburbs to the heart of this strange city. It doesn’t seem strange any more – as normal it is to me as the lights and Rollses and the displays in shops seem to you in N.Y. I lunched with Rex Benson38 and Lesley. He had been around inspecting foreign troops and he told me (what was news) that we have part of the real Foreign Legion in this country – wonderful troops, he said, as highly disciplined as the Guards and of every nationality – many Germans among them. The Poles are next best, Belgians worst, Dutch medium. I went next to Olympia where I was told help was urgent. The Free French are billeted here – the free and the keen-fighters. The ‘free anti-fighters’ are at the White City, huddled and bored and frightened. I found nothing to do except to sew tricolors on to the shoulders of new arrivals, speak French to them in my inimitable way, sell them toothpaste and bootlaces, and promise to procure two girl-friends for two particularly nice very young Frogs. I shan’t go again, not enough doing.