Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  I took Enid and Oggie out yesterday morning. We visited furriers, tailors and jewellers – quite the morning of the femme du monde. Alas we are none of us that. Enid fitted a smart coat of Black Watch tartan – shoulders padded to Atlas width. I made a criticism and mentioned the new look and bottle line, but Enid’s a big girl and the narrower she builds her shoulders the vaster grows her bust. The furriers called me because of my design for a little evening wrap – Conrad’s old silver foxes disintegrate (‘Madame porte ces foxes miteuses?’)19 and I visualised a soft-as-soap chinchilla caress of a coatee lined with flesh-coloured satin (seta pura)20 and a bunch of Parma violets nestling in its folds. Miss Pratt, furrier to Princess Elizabeth and friend to Oggie who loves towering over her, said she’d get me patterns of rabbit from Mr Goodchild,21 and that’s as far as I got.

  My lunch was with Pope-Hennessy, James, writer and son to Dame Una, biographer of Dickens and others. I was a little shy, he’s twenty years younger than me and nervous himself. It was all right and having talked so much of the Bloomsbury quarter and nos. 90, 92 and 9422 we went to take a look at them exteriorly only. I did not feel deeply – it’s all too long ago perhaps. I was very happy there – my first house. David Herbert and I had a rendezvous at three. I was dreadfully sleepy but determined to rouse myself and enjoy an outing. Chips was in the hall, so we got an invitation to the Maharajah of Baroda’s cocktail party at 6.30. Papa reeled in en route for Ditchley. He drew with pride from the cupboard his new Inverness coat – light-coloured, stiff with youth and from its pocket pulled a little roundabout Gorblimey23 hat – a comedian’s – Sid Field’s. To this startling costume he added a pastel-shade muffler and a smart gold-headed stick – Edward VII. Papa thinks he is pretty correct in dress and deportment and conventional and would pass unnoticed anywhere. Once he wore pale flesh-pink shorts all one season at the Lido in Venice.

  Sleep was gaining on me again and my yawns set David a-yawning, so we decided to lie ourselves down on the twin beds and take forty [winks]. Both afraid of snores, we both said that occasionally we snored. Both gave a grunt on dropping off, heard his or her own and changed position.

  January 13th, 1948

  Papa doesn’t seem too well. He hasn’t got up and says he has a headache. I do hope it’s only last night’s party. Last Saturday Mr. Wu came round (it’s Wu week) with the illustrations for his new crematorium book. Excellent. He was in good spirits and friendly to the world, till the unfortunate James Pope-Hennessy called to take me to lunch with Maud Russell24. He then closed like a clam and in spite of my introducing him to a ‘fellow author’ only opened up enough to spit out some black poison. So rude was it that James admitted afterwards to great discomfiture. It was worth it for me for the pleasure I got at Wu’s discomfiture on realising when I made him une observation that he was not only a respected writer but a dearly beloved Papist. For Wu there are no indifferent or inadmirable Papists. Raimund and Liz called for me in their car – lovely it was driving to Ditchley, with the radio blazing out the Third Symphony and the heater full on and the windows opening and shutting it seemed at desire’s order. Liz took it all as natural. I’m still staggered by the magic of it. I hated your not being with me and saw us sitting in the Ford unable to leave a programme.

  Ditchley as beautiful as ever and almost as comfortable (no, nothing like. Electric fires in the bedrooms instead of blazing logs and bells not answered and rooms of course shut up), but with the most disconcerting Rebeccaism25 about it. Every object, picture, colour of flower, arrangement, design bought, placed and grown by the first Mrs. Tree is untouched and the poor second26 fears to give an order to the servants, and Mr. Collins the butler who loved Nancy and shared her interests of garden and furniture, textiles and porcelain, keeps his eyes forever fixed on her uncertain ways. She is pure and good and beautiful and ‘intellectual’ and humourless. Poor girl, I wouldn’t be in her haunted boots.

  Early next morning off again as I was engaged to lunch with Mr. Wu and far too afraid of him to chuck. ‘Where would you like to lunch? I thought the Ritz?’ ‘O no, Bo, not the Ritz.’ ‘Why don’t you like the Ritz?’ ‘O because it’s common, the wrong people still think it’s smart, the food is uneatable. It’s like being on the S.S. Lusitania, but still I’d rather lunch at the Ritz than choose a place that you’d criticise throughout the meal.’ So at the Ritz we lunched, together with 200 endimanchéd27 strangers. The waiter put us in the centre of the room, as sort of navel to this undistinguished body. The waiter in answer to Evelyn’s demand for drink said ‘Red or white?’ ‘What do you mean?’ said Evelyn. ‘Well, you can ’ave a carafe of either.’ Before Bo had time for his stroke he added ‘O, I see, you wants it bottled.’ ‘Is there no wine waiter or wine list?’ gasped Evelyn. All this a great joy to me.

  Afternoon siestas for both but under separate roofs. At six I bustled off to Victoria to meet Louise and Hubert de Chambure off the Golden Arrow. I was much too early and thought I’d fill time and exile sleep with a cup of tea in the buffet. There were only a handful of people wanting a cup, but I was told to stand in the queue. This I did, and resting my black handbag on the marble bar to delve for my purse which didn’t happen to be there, I inadvertently broke a rather good big wineglass. I ran to the hotel of the station and producing credentials asked them to change me a cheque, explaining (too quickly) the difficulty of my situation. Of course he said no and of course I said what the hell. Louise arrived and Hubert de Chambure so I gave them a nice bite of dinner in my sitting room. Papa returned from Ditchley at midnight and bed was good and sleep profound.

  The next day I was conscious all day how much better I am. I think another year of Paris would have brought me jittering to my grave. Sleep has improved a bit and despair more absent. It’s you, O horror, who are as bad as ill-health. In three weeks I’ve had one letter. I know when it comes it’s a bumper but I have to wait too long for news.

  14th. Then it isn’t three weeks only two and a bit. I dread the tedium of my letters once I get into my retreat. What shall I have to tell? I’m going to a home near Tunbridge Wells with diet sheet, resolves, Conrad’s letters and mine. I’ll tell you the address when I know it and I’m telling no one else. The English will think I’m curing in France, and vice versa.

  Nothing much to say about yesterday – a lot of Louise and shops and a lunch at the Frog Embassy. Madame Massigli has left the Ambassador never to return. Food scrumptious. Massigli incomprehensible in either language.28 I got Sachie Sitwell on the other side.

  Papa’s opening huge packages of new clothes from Leslie & Roberts29 – suit after suit. I can’t look.

  January 17th, 1948

  69 Rue de Lille

  It’s a long time, or so it seems, since I wrote. What has been done in the interim? I changed with a telephonic squeak and the flick of the fingers the whole of my business operations. ‘Trousers’, the figurehead of Trower, Still, Keeling, Mortmain, Dally & Dolittle I have sacked; Mr Allday the accountant also sacked; Drummond’s still to be sacked and everything put into the subtle Jewish hands of Mr. Hart of Gilbert Samuel & Co. Trousers was like the conjuror (Victor’s) – drops the cards, loses the certificates, a great exponent of the ‘law’s delay’ in his own profession. New Broom Hart has filled us with hope as only the biased new can. There was, of course, another dinner with Emerald at which Papa did a talking marathon. Harold Macmillan was longing to place a word but could not. Louise never opened her mouth and the Treasury official, Mr. Ricketts, had no chance to justify his office, which was Papa’s blitz target. Then dear Jenny Nicholson who’s been ill came to lunch with me – sweet as ever, asking a lot about you and alas going to America to join her husband at once, so no help to me in my new life in Paris. I feel as though I were getting married. Always before when life has changed from England to America, Malaya and North Africa it’s been temporary job movement. This time it’s true change and I feel weak. It will get better.

  On the 15th I went to Bognor. The sun made the
new paper and paint glow and shine most welcomingly. Louise, Papa and I and Wadey picnicked. Papa went by car to call on Hilaire Belloc en route and we three went by train. He found Hilaire less to pieces in appearance than he expected – his beard was clipped, his flies buttoned, his movements controlled but his mind, while working perfectly for whole periods, even giving vent to witty remarks and song, would suddenly wander into voids. ‘Don’t you remember, Papa, that Mr. Duff Cooper was Ambassador in Paris?’ said his Reganish daughter. ‘Ah yes, let’s see, you succeeded Lord Lyons, didn’t you?’ Lord Lyons’s tenure of office was in the last century. And then again he asked tenderly after you and was interested in every detail of your conditions and ten minutes after he had heard everything there was to tell, he enquired again with complete ignorance.

  Bognor was in splendid shape. I should let it for a decent sum. Your pathetic school pennants still disfigure the walls of one room. Mr. McCaffrey I liked exceedingly – a man of hope who clearly loves work and prefers to make what we need. Wade’s fowl alarmingly big and not laying at all. Edith30 getting an old girl. Shall I replace her when the time comes? It’s dreadfully uneconomic. If I’m not there to cut and carry people’s lawns and odd corners of grass and plant the mangels and kale and single them and hoe and pull them up and fertilise the ground and lime it and carry dung to it from the other meadow, the farmer has to be paid to do it all and the hay must be bought at fantastic prices. In the end it supplies Wadey31 and her few neighbours with milk and butter.32 I ought to make the consumers of the produce pay the purchase and upkeep of the new cow, but who is to organise it? I don’t see my way clear in any direction at the moment.

  Our last dinner was at Coalbox’s – a galaxy of stars – Vivien and Larry, Vita Sackville-West C.H.,33 Harold Nicolson her husband, Thornton Wilder,34 Rex Warner, etc., etc. I rather enjoyed myself. Louise and Papa loathed it. A row on coming home – Louise and I distracted by having to sort and address the Echo de Fantaisies35 and do a hundred last chores and Papa with two business letters to write – he has not had much else to do – lost temper, head and good manners and said he couldn’t do anything for the upset we caused and flounced to bed, red with rage and refusing to wish L.L. goodnight. I, of course, was too angry to say anything and went to bed silent as a gaoler and deaf to his pathetic apologies. ‘I know I’m spoilt’, he said ‘but I am sorry.’ ‘One can’t cure hurts with apologies always’, I said. So we slept cross. We had ordered our waking at 7.30 for the 9 o’clock Golden Arrow. Papa deliberately did not wake me till after eight. Was it fear? Was it tenderness? Was it just not thinking? Anyway when I awoke Wade had disappeared to a leisurely breakfast which kept her until 8.15, and 8.30 was zero hour. You’ve never seen such panic, porters all over the place sitting on trunks that were past all hope of shutting, me nakedish screaming, odd parcels to be tied, the guns, the cartridges, Papa’s red box, things to be left for my return, things not to be left, get a taxi, get two, register what, leave this with Lady Cunard, my pipi to be sent to the doctor,36 pandemonium. We made it, but Papa was more securely locked into the dog house. I let him out on the S.S. Invicta – we couldn’t arrive in Paris like two sticks. We dined, très Vilmorin, at the Escargot – three brothers, Louise and others. So a new life begins tomorrow which I won’t embark on now.

  January 19th, 1948

  We had a rollicking lunch with Eric and Donald37 at Gafner’s – moules marinières et Camembert pour Maman, pour ne pas trop dépenser.38 Prices are worse. Eric has to be earlier at the grindstone. 9.15 is to be aimed at. Barley is paying no attention to the order. Donald thought out a queer little dig at the Harveys and stole from some film studio a hundred feet of film representing the Harvey arrival in Paris. The film was not processed, therefore negative instead of positive, and Donald had it run off by mistake at the Embassy weekly film show. Funny – because as you know negative would show Sir Oliver as a black man in a white suit.

  Lady Harvey took the Bishop of Tanganyika and two other divines and Barley to show the library after luncheon and said, so curiously I think, ‘It’s a beautiful room considering the difficulty of books.’ To me, who have been brought up to the cliché of ‘there is nothing that furnishes a room like books’, it seems an extraordinary statement. She took her party through the bathroom, so carefully planned to be Napoleonic, saying ‘My predecessor made this room since she was so fond of N. Africa.’ That could have meant nothing. It was only the rug that had a black man on it, not an Arab or Berber, and the rug was no longer there. Still they all say Maudie is very nice – no candles and top lights and they don’t like the grey of the dining room. Pauline’s chamber39 becomes a musée.

  Gaston [Palewski] brought his blemishes40 and there was a moment when to Gaston alone I said ‘Je me sens un peu perdue.’41 ‘Pauvre Diana,’ he said and a huge lump had to be swallowed or it would have fountained up to my face.

  At eight Papa and I sallied out (Liberty Boat or shanks’s). It was fairly fine and we thought Michaud would do as a bistro. Of course it was shut and on we staggered through what had become quite a formidable rain. No umbrellas, fineries getting spoilt, the fallen rich par excellence! On and on past gloomy ones, shut ones and at long last to the glowing beauty of Porquerolles with its ‘all alive’ oysters and lilac and mussels – I ate a cup of fish soup and we both had a coquille St. Jacques. We ordered some riesling and the man brought champagne. ‘Take it away. We asked for moselle.’ ‘C’est Madame qui vous l’offre’42 – another lump but a happy warm lump. So we walked back home, orphans of the storm but the better for the champagne and the gesture. I cried a bit in bed. Papa was kind and comforting and didn’t scold me for being silly – because it is silly as I was for the last two years always ill and often in despair in the Embassy – but there it is. I hate to have left the beauty of the house and the power to give pleasure.

  Yesterday we went in Rufus’s car to Chantilly. The light was brilliant – the snowdrops earlier and much bigger than other people’s and the house was as hot as a conservatory but in dreadful chaos – discouraging chaos – much broken, too, by unowning hands. Old Man Regnier gloomier than ever. His sullen face showed so little interest when I asked him about the motor mowing machine that I thought it was a failure and didn’t work. He will spoil all the pleasure in my garden. There seem to be a lot of musical instruments belonging to you.

  Paris, January 19–20th, 1948

  Not so much to tell you this morning. Arrival of Rufus with the dawn – hunter home from the hill at Baden Baden. He killed des biches which I think means does and I think of Louise on the fête of St. Hubert at Mortefontaine, crying over the cruelty of the chase and adding Pensez que ce sont des herbivores.43 We ate at Michaud – omelettes and kidneys and red wine. We’d had a fancy, L.L., André,44 Papa and I, to take a trip to Madeira by boat. One could get in they said at Havre or Cherbourg, stop a day at Bordeaux, another at Lisbon and Vigo and stay a week in Madeira among wild arums, huge straw hats, red and white hessian boots and wheelless vehicles on runners, and return to Lisbon and a motor that would take one home to Paris. So to Cook’s I went. O, what a falling off. Nothing to be done, no ships go anywhere except a few occasionally to South America, overloaded with emigrants, cargo boats non-existent, one Portuguese ship a month from Lisbon to Madeira and back, but no bookings made. Ichabod, ichabod.45 Too many cooks and not a drop of broth.

  Wig fixing at the Bristol. I found the Chef du Protocol M. Dumaine peacocking up for his fine duties, hair and nails both being beautified. Quick home, me to meet Carl Burckhardt, only a minute with him but a pleasant one. He was neither fat nor thin. Sometimes he’s as fat as Nestlé’s chocolate and at others he is Greco-ed down and dragged ugly with empty flesh bags.

  The Dorchester

  January 24th, 1948

  I haven’t written for days because my life in London is flustered and unrhythmical. The ferryboat on Wednesday night wasn’t bad. We boarded our wagons-lits46 at 8.30, did the crossword and bedded down and slept l
ike logs, to be woken by a crashing jolt proclaiming, it seemed to me, that the train had hurtled over a rock – due I imagine to an unexpected drop or rise between the line and the boat line. From then on a clanking of chains and the titanic hurling of iron bars on to other iron bars, Vulcan’s million hammers and a metallic din kept us wakeful. Once on the sea it was rock-a-bye baby and a fresh, pretty breakfast to greet us in England at 8.30 a.m. Pale green everything – upholstery, paint, grapefruit, napkins, limitless butter and sugar. Then to Mr. Hart, our new business man, with Daphne [Wakefield] and to Dr. Something about my poor leg.47

  Brilliant lunch at Box’s and the great first night of Anna [Karenina]. I adored it but I don’t think other people did and the papers did their worst. Vivien looked much older (always worrying to me) but I put it down to an ageing coiffure. Cecil’s done a splendid job with the silhouettes and details. Some anachronisms I noticed – not Cecil’s department – a cocktail table on rollers, a revolving door to the hotel, and twin beds. Raimund defends twin beds and says ‘Central Europe’ but I’ve never seen an old-fashioned house with twin beds. The lover48 is a common stick, and the love scenes are bad, quite bad, but the others are all good and Vivien moved me so much that I couldn’t stop crying and was still dripping when I got to Oggie’s supper party. This naturally cheered the Oliviers up no end for they felt I think that the film wasn’t the height of success.

  There was Gladys Cooper49 and Ali Forbes, the Moores50 and Caroline and Clarissa and the Hoffs (gatecrashers) and Johnnie Mills51 and lady and Chips and by degrees having eaten all the lobster (Oggie’s) and the foie gras (mine) and drunk all the cham (mine) people drifted off to the very sordid ball at the Vic-Wells – fancy dress and a lot of ugly nudity, men dancing together and all smelling rather. I went because I could see that Oggie’s song was half sung and she wanted to go and wouldn’t without me, but I didn’t enjoy it or admire it. Chips walked me round the throng and soon I got entangled in a new (or perhaps it’s old) dance on the Spreading Chestnut Tree plan – ‘Throw your left hip out’ or something not very dignified.52