by Diana Cooper
Another Paris torture was going to see a new French Academician received by his peers. The Academicians wear the most beautiful embroidered tail coat, like Papa’s gold one but in different shades of green on a black cloth. A scarlet ribbon of the Légion d’honneur gives it an accent. Two old men made speeches of half an hour each in a suffocatingly hot atmosphere. The President was inaudible and everyone is over eighty.
AT CHRISTMAS 1946 I left Eton. In those days of compulsory National Service I had been accepted into the Royal Navy, but my call-up could not occur before my eighteenth birthday the following September. It was agreed that I should put in six months or so at a French university. At this stage in my life I had a passion for foreign languages and had deluded myself that I was quite good at them. (Ten years later, when I tried to learn Arabic, I discovered how wrong I was.) In French, thanks to three hour-long lessons a week from the age of five, I had been fluent since childhood; Eton had taught me passable German; and at the age of twelve I had persuaded a godfather to give me a Linguaphone course in Russian. But in all three – and particularly the last two – there was plenty of room for improvement, so Strasbourg was clearly indicated. Alsace had been part of Germany between the Franco-Prussian and the First World War, and again during the second. Virtually every educated citizen was bilingual – or trilingual if you count Alsatian, which sounds like German spoken by a Welshman. Here, it seemed, was the perfect place in which to polish up my second foreign language, and the fact that the university boasted the best Russian faculty in the country gave me high hopes for progress in my third. Peter Storrs – nephew of the still-celebrated orientalist Sir Roger and Director of the local British Reading Room – was asked to find a suitable local family prepared to accept me as a lodger. His choice fell on a young lawyer, Paul Schmidt, and his wife Betty; it could hardly have been a happier one.
A word must now be said of Louise de Vilmorin who, to my great surprise, only now makes her first appearance in the story. Looking through these letters, I am astonished that my mother had not mentioned her before, since she had been part of all our lives. She was a poet, novelist, singer and raconteuse of genius, and my father had fallen seriously in love with her at first sight in November 1944, less than two months after his arrival in Paris; my mother, who never minded his affairs so long as the object of his affections met with her approval, loved her almost as much as he did – to the point where Parisian gossips were even speculating on a threefold relationship. This it was not; but Louise returned her love in a similar degree. At the beginning of 1945 my parents actually gave her a room of her own at the Embassy; she slept there for weeks at a time, and was there almost every day for lunch or dinner – frequently both.
I, at the age of fifteen the only member of the family not in love with Louise, was nonetheless knocked sideways by her charm. It happened quite often, when she was staying in the house, that my parents would be out at some official reception and she and I would lunch alone together. She would talk to me exactly as she would have talked to a grown-up, greatly improving my French and reducing me to howls of laughter with hilarious stories about her childhood and family. Afterwards she would pick up her guitar and teach me dozens – literally – of old French songs, a repertoire that would prove invaluable ten or fifteen years later at sticky diplomatic dinner parties in Belgrade and Beirut. I remember too the three of us – my mother, Louise and me – driving off on a week’s holiday in the south-west, leaving my father working in the Embassy.
Gradually, after perhaps two years, my father grew restless. Louise was broken-hearted; but she recovered, taking up first with Orson Welles and later with André Malraux.23 (During this last relationship she tended to call herself Marilyn Malraux.) She remained a close friend of my father until his death in 1954, and of my mother and me until she herself died on Boxing Day 1969.
Paris
January 1947
I miss you terribly. Will you have enough to do? If no classes or lectures are obligatory and if there is no examination to work for? Should you not have some coaches who will take you privately two or three hours a day? I wonder how cold it is. Here one is curled and shrivelled by the temperature – roads icebound and very little heating. In London there is no heating at the Dorchester. They explained how it was lacking in order to be sure of keeping the hot water supply boiling. The next day there was no hot bath.24
I went to An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley and enjoyed it only fairly. I saw beloved Bloggs who asked often after you and of you. There were, of course, a few Emerald meals. The cold made her a bit testy. There was Born Yesterday, a new American comedy produced by L. Olivier – good enough. There was Victor25 to give me lunch at Wilton’s and to spoil that lunch by bringing Tess, so that I couldn’t ask him if his marriage was doing well. Which reminds me – don’t get engaged or married in Strasbourg. You must see a world of women before you pick one and don’t get picked yourself, especially not in the street or bar. They’ll contaminate and deceive you and most probably give you diseases of all kinds and so méfiez-vous now you’re on your own and keep yourself and your love for something or somebody almost exactly like me, with a happier disposition.
? January 1947
L.L. and I and Juliet and Cecil and General Béthouart26 came over by Newhaven and Dieppe on Sunday. England (East) already gripped in snow, we had to take the train to the port. Once aboard L.L. and I lay in our twin beds, boots, hats, veils and gloves all in place and slept on and off, while Cecil and Juliet tossed about in the visible next cabin. It was rough and pleasant. From deck to car at Dieppe (even the passport stamper came to the car with the equipment) so we were home again at 5.30. Miss Rosamond Lehmann is a beauty with a dense chunky cloud of grey hair (first quality) and Miss Vivien Leigh is also a beauty on a minute scale. She is so beautiful that all the hideous hats she tries on become beautiful on her impeccable little head and I see she finds it impossible to select the one that suits her best. She is as sincere and good as her face proclaims. We dined, just the house-load which made ten, and on Monday night we had a tremendous party – super-star ‘Colette’ 74-year-old genius of letters on the arm of her nanny-husband, bare feet, a quantity of shawls and everyone flat on their stomachs en hommage. Cocteau,27 of course, and Marcel Thiébaut.28 Nothing would move them until 2 a.m. and now I can’t write any more but in future I’ll take a carbon copy of my diary to Conrad and keep you up to date. All, all love. Write as often as you can.
Paris, Jan. 29th, 1947
So there was a cocktail for the British Hospital at the Officers’ Club and another at Madame Faramont where Hoytie for reasons due to her sobriety took charge of the presenting of all the Americans to me. They were legion and she did not know their names – so it came to ‘I want you to meet this very nice Colonel’ or ‘this distinguished veteran’ and then there was the Marivaux play accompanied by the Laurence Oliviers – a deep sleep for all all of us, altho’ I’m sure it’s charming. This followed by a fantasy in mime where the great actor Barrault does Pierrot and his wife of fifty does Columbine with bare old legs – most unappetitlich29 and this was followed by the back-stage visit. Champagne in the dressing room, bed at last. Golly it’s cold, face, feet, hands and heart all shrivelled and stiff.
The mornings are very mouvementés these days says André the huissier.30 This morning was Hogarth – here was Madame Porthault of the fabulous sheets, luxe, moyen-luxe et grand-luxe, the last category are paid with gold and loss of vision. Miss Lehmann was fingering them enviously, and has fallen for three nightgowns made for Queen Mab which will put her back at least £50. My description of Vivien Leigh’s beauty had put them in a twitter, so when she came down in a depressing little darkest red rest gown, her sweet face innocent of the slightest dust of powder or of a streak of pink on her beautiful ashen mouth my shock was almost as great as theirs. Louise looks like death and acting like the symbol of life, telephoning and weaving exaggerations. Cecil slouched in with Don Quixote grey hair in a short
flannel plaid dressing gown. Larry Olivier in a smart brocade one kicked his way in, his hands holding a pair of Empire oil lamps in urn form – a present for a good hostess.
The tapissier31 brought news of the hanging of George III and his Queen Charlotte in the anteroom. Jacques (ici Londres) Franck32 came to look at the perfectly beautiful good repair tassels the Office of Works are trying to force me to send home in order that they may tear the silk off and replace with new because they cannot make new wooden moulds and cannot waste the silk put aside for the job. I can only quiet them by promising to get some wood moulds made here – hence Jacques’s presence. Twenty press men with cameras were stampeding next door in their efforts to get Rosamond Lehmann who was eventually flung to them. A doubtful suspicious fellow, a friend called Momo Aveline called for orders and got the following: 1) Get made two gold forks, we hope at his own expense to replace the two lost out of my eighteenth-century picnic canteen that the Angleseys gave me at my wedding. 2) Sell a ring for Juliet. 3) Look at the wooden fringe on my bed and get some second-hand like it, as that too cannot be made in England. Teddie, the incubus, stands in the middle of all this, grinning while I fly at him. Why has he not got me footballs for my regiment, ordered two months before Christmas? Why are all the cars out of order with five men to repair them? Why has Roger, valet de pied, gone to Rome and Naples to see a soi-disant33 godmother die, at our expense with a living allowance and boasting that he is taking secret papers for the Ambassador and that he is to look out for a villa for son Excellence? When they’d all gone and I’d lied Juliet out to lunch I had a tray in bed with Rosamond by my side and I like her enormously, shy and affectionate, grateful, unspoilt, slightly devitalised, beautiful.
30th. The Lions’ cocktail party was most brilliant. All the éditeurs,34 Plon and Gallimard and Lafout, writers like Mauriac, Aragon, Malraux, Vilmorin and actors, beauties, odds and ends, all fans of Lehmann or Leigh. Jenny Nicholson, granddaughter of old William, daughter of Robert Graves and wife of Alexander Clifford said could she come and see me tomorrow a.m. as she wants to write an article, a very nice one about me for the Mail. I said anything she likes as long as she does not put it in interview form, so she’ll come and what will she find, I dread to think, over and above the night-capped woman in the imperial bed.
31st. This morning – more sheets and chemises being shown, Momo coming with the wooden fringe already found, the house party en déshabille,35 the press this time champing for Vivien, while Cecil was snapping Rosamond and Jenny Nicholson was appraising the scene kindly. When they’d all cleared out on their separate ways she remained and told me a lot to please me – how many embassies she has studied but none compare at all to this one – how she asks the French always what they think of me and the splendid replies she gets. How ambassadresses ought to be paid – for if they work the way I do they deserve it and if they are lazybones it might stimulate them.
Jacques Février has come back and been to lunch and tells me a lot of good about you. I love you and don’t like that dog.36
February 1st, 1947. Paris
Worst month of the year survived. The big trees I see through the window are snow-covered – there must be four inches on the balcony. It lends light to this gloomy hour of eight. Cecil B. is in bed (fortement grippé).37 The Oliviers are still with us. Jubags is making far distant engagements, it looks like a lifer. The reigning Princes of Liechtenstein have returned refreshed to their principality, a relief to me as they haunt the bedroom floor. Hamilton Kerr, once an M.P., now nursing Cambridge, came to dinner – with nice accounts of J.J. in Strasbourg. ‘Very good manners – he shakes hands with everyone.’ Good old Embassy teaching, effective on the Continong, embarrassing in England. I remember Hutchie used to ‘shake’ on arrival and departure due I suppose to a childhood spent or half spent in Monte Carlo. Have you had whale steak yet on your menu? Pepys ate it. That we should come to this! It will be Jumbo next. Trunk soup.
Sunday. All so quiet not a mouse stirring. Cecil languishing in bed. The Oliviers are sleeping or working but not playing, Juliet doggo, L.L. gone to Verrières and Papa reading lessons in church. I am now going to write in innocence and silly assishness to Canon Bate of the Colonial Continental Church something and tell him that our Padre is good and well loved and that we don’t want him to be snatched away and the Bishop of Tanganyika, who has not left his post for twenty-seven years, put in his place. The Padre sent me round two suitcases stuffed with clothes, lace and feathers, bequeathed him by a Greek princess. He wanted my advice on their disposal, thinking them to be of a certain value. ‘There’s one dress made entirely of brilliants, another beautiful black lace creation. The underclothes are marvellous and you should see the feathers.’ Alas, alas, I had the sad advice of jumble sale when I opened the boxes and saw the saddest mess of tattiness imaginable. 1918-waist-round-knees numbers. Cheap and bad when new – of the underclothes Marguerite used a single effective word – pourriture.38
Del Giudice, the film magnate, once the independent producer of such films as Henry V and In Which We Serve, now sucked into the monopoly of the Rank combine, came to lunch and bored our pants off, and to dinner came Mr. Roger Furse who is doing the clothes for L. Olivier’s film of Hamlet and M. Buchel the Oliviers’ assistant, both nice boys – we played The Game39 afterwards and the Oliviers acted worst.
Feb. 3rd. We are very fond of the Oliviers – I’ve seen all the sketches for the Hamlet film and they are wonderful. Vivien is to play Ophelia. Cecil still sneezing away. Duff read short stories (one good, two bad) by Elizabeth Bowen aloud to us while I stitched myself a gipsy skirt of silk – and for dinner the lot of us – six – went to Verrières where there was ice on the bathroom floor. The Game was played afterwards and Larry Olivier, rather too well oiled, was quite awful to Juliet – talking to her as one might to a disobedient dog, authoritative, very amusing for us I’m ashamed to say, but I hope she did not notice it too much. Our Oliviers leave us today and Lady Lascelles40 takes their place, a disadvantageous exchange.
What news of the Airedale – it haunts me rather. Try and go in for an exam or is that not possible? I’m afraid you’ll have no urge for work. I’ve found the German books and send them you as well as two ‘Lifes’. Wadey has sent your watch. I’d better wait till somebody is travelling to Strasbourg. I think of you all the time.
February 4th, 1947. Paris
Lady Lascelles has arrived. I’ve had no talk with her – she is a very dull lady to me – no low-down on the King and Queen. I’d been out all day visiting a film studio where an English company is producing an English picture, because exchange and other difficulties makes it cheaper and easier than in England. I enjoy getting back for a few hours to that happy life – so sufficient to its unreal self, with no place for the true happenings. There was the gay lunch at 11.30 with the director Terence Young and L.L. and Eric Portman, the lead, and others in a canteen, and then getting out the sets and seeing again what I remember so well – yawns, yawns, yawns. Everyone waiting, yawning, the workman at the lights, the star waiting for the lights, the scenario people, the cameramen, one wonders always who it is that holds things up – cold excessive, which perhaps encourages the yawning.
I came back pretty frozen, and got into bed to warm and to avoid the droppers-in, and Joan Lascelles arrived to find me night-capped and in curling set, against a dinner party, with Laurence and Vivien Olivier and Cecil Beaton leaning over the bedstead sphinxes. I don’t know what she thought – she is the symbol of England at its dullest and maybe its best. I’m sure she does not like the unusual. We gave quite a dinner for her, the Vaniers (her choice), and M. Delbos, Min. of State, L.L., Juliet, Cecil, M. Oberlé ‘des 3 amis’ (BBC 1940).41 Canadian Ritchie42 famous for having eaten the dog’s dinner and got thro’ it rather than offend his hostess, whose servitor had put it before him either in abstraction or a vengeful mood, Eric Duncannon, etc. M. Delbos my right-hand neighbour told me of his two years in solitary confinement at Orienburg. To
start with he talked aloud to himself, but gave it up – he had no books for a year and later German ones. He taught himself the language but not to speak it. Never cold, always hungry. I turned gaily to General Vanier with ‘imagine, imagine this man was without speech for two years’ and he said ‘Did Duff tell you about our son?’ I remembered full well that his son, six foot eight, strong and vigorous, exceedingly good-looking and exhilarating had newly taken Trappist vows. The General, saint that he is, thinks it’s an honour and privilege that he should have been so chosen by God. ‘He is a mystic you see, and I feel certain that in a few years he will be talking to God as I am talking to you. Besides how grand it is to embrace an order of that kind, no small easy order,’ etc. etc. I asked what his mother thought, she is equally devout, and he said she was honoured too. I asked if the honour stopped her tears, mine were dribbling away as I spoke. He said, no. Juliet shows no sign of moving house. She talks so blithely of Friday week, she must do things on the day after that.
February 5th. Lady Lascelles goes today – three nights in slow trains to Klagenfurt, no such good news of Juliet. David Herbert and Michael, her son, are at the Ritz and she has said nothing to them of her probable séjour. Last night L.L., Jubags and I, dressed like empresses, went to the first dress collection of the season chez Molyneux. Band, buffet and champagne starting at 9 p.m. The other onlookers were chiefly belonging to the press in hats and snow boots. We looked unusual but I think it pleased Edward Mol43 – with whom we had to sit. The collection was as usual, devoid of imagination or novelty or even taste. L.L. and I enjoyed giving the dresses names and writing these names on the programme, on the blank for comments, names such as ‘Trop tard’, ‘le plus laid’, ‘cela pue’, ‘vingt ans après’.44 We then mislaid the programmes. Duff was meanwhile taking Lady Lascelles to a gala in honour of Marivaux at the Comédie Française. She admitted to me this morning that she’d hated it. Duff had slept deeply and enjoyed it in consequence. Joan had lunch on a tray in the salon vert cowering over the fire, and will have dinner before catching her train, equally alone in her bedroom. It’s just too bad but c’est comme ça and I was always engaged. Delighted with your last letter and photograph you seem to like. In which you become a cynic of forty-eight. I won’t lose it, then you can have it life-sized. Your life sounds beautiful, full of work and play. Miss Monique Schoen45 calls on me tomorrow. I’ll be sending jam and coffee and cigs. Great fun if you come for a Sunday – let me know number and hour and I’d call you. Love and kisses from us both. We do so love you and prize your sweetness.
