Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  Chantilly

  January 26th, 1949

  I’ve always been half hoping to hear from or of you. Now it’s too late, I imagine you off timber-shivering today. I know Gibraltar. I don’t suppose you make Gov. House – if you do look at the strange cartoons in the cloisters, look (naturally) for the monkeys and for nylons 9½, twenty if cheap. Loel turned up yesterday, recovered, bounding, full of schemes. He’s got a new yacht which he’s taking down now to the Mediterranean. I’ve told him to keep an eye open for Cleopatra.

  The 22nd came Russell Page to stick sticks labelled lilac, syringa, etc. plus lots of roses in the garden, which forced me to neglect the Saturday guests, Lady Alexandra Howard-Johnson,20 her brother Lord Haig and her ghastly husband, our Naval Attaché. Lord Haig had fou-rire21 at lunch at his brother-in-law’s account of how he marks down in a little book every ten franc tip he gives so that he knows that life costs him £7 a day. Poor Sandra, the wife – I see only the side Noémi tells me of – she cries and she cries and she cries and is quite unbalanced. Her mother, the F. M.’s wife, died barking.

  In the evening came the Pattens and the charming Waldeners. She is young, English, Jewish, he won the Derby and they are neighbours. I felt fine except for my poor knee and ate well. In the night I woke at three and groaned till morning with indescribable malaise and misery. I went to the loo with no hope of nausea explaining anything, leant over the basin and let out a noise that clearly woke everyone in the house, though the servants above were too delicate to admit it. A paper bag the size of a factory punched by a titan might have sounded the same. Greatly relieved, I went back to Papa’s arms to feel as ill as ever in the morning. I had fever and aches and thought I cannot get up to face sixteen curiously assorted guests, but in the end my noblesse obliged me and of course once on the stage and its blaze and out of the shadow of the wings, I perked up and what a funny mixed salad they were – Madame Simone Berriau and a Dutch husband arrived long before anyone else. She is Queen of the Atlas on account of being El Glaoui, the Pasha de Marrakesh’s mistress. She was an actress singer and he is a very successful so rich theatre owner. She it is who invites me to the Atlas. She swathes herself up worse than me, wraps fur and feather round her face and dare not take off her coat. Her husband’s only use was as a recipient of a Talleyrand in Dutch.

  Berriau, Drian22 and P.L.W. all start on the great Atlas trip on the 15th inst. and are set on my going with them free in motors down France and Spain, but I can’t be so long away nor under such a compliment to Paul-Louis. I shall suggest going ten days later by train and joining them in Africa – ten days in the Atlas and home – for the daffodils that take the winds of March with beauty.23 I think slow motoring with curiosities might pall.

  The answer from St. John’s and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in St. John’s Wood was so unusual for today that I read and reread. They say any day and so I’ve settled for Sunday. No one knows my destination but you and Papa and I suppose Cardinal Archbishop Griffin who I read is to be a fellow patient. White-winged nuns float around and I shall hear the bell that summons tired faithfuls to offices at all times. I look forward to it – Winston, Balzac, radio, patchwork, letters, diathermy, diet. Hope the result won’t let us down.

  London

  St. John & St. Elizabeth

  Monday, February 1st, 1949

  You really are a pig-child not to have sent me any word of your departure. This morning I had the temerity to telephone Chatham only to be told Cleopatra sailed early last week. I shall ring up Liz tomorrow for news. I didn’t want to telephone anyone but I am driven to it by the hardness of your heart or the tightness of your head or the hand of God.

  Last night Papa landed his acceptance to dine with the Chambures on to me, and a cruel evening it was except for the cuisine which makes ours like a dog’s dinner. I got the Governor of the Banque de France, Baumgartner, very nice, and a Mr. (Gentille) Alouette of the Quai d’Orsay – hell. Old Charles de Chambure, I suppose, saved it by never drawing a breath. He’s been Ambassador in Russia of the Czars and in Rome under Musso. He knows me intimately and called me Lady Georgiana all evening, catching himself up and apologising and re-slipping, and he always tells me how his wife Marie will never forget my beauty hunting at Belvoir on a high horse. She’ll be remembering the bells on my toes next, for she never saw me mounted. Marjorie and Letty used to hunt on very poor horses, lent or bought cheap as crocks. They wore brown riding habits – I don’t believe other people did – billycocks, buns and thick veils and were said to go ‘like smoke’. So the old man talked through dinner, through the move and on to the end, to me and the other lady bores while Louise was having a better (though not good) time with the men in another salon. My escort and I lost the Ambassador between the porch and the car. We were to drop him. We found him doing pi-pi against a plane tree at the gate.

  28th. I gave up to fussing about my London retreat and what to take. Books, nightgowns, caps, shawls, a fine white embroidered wool bed cover (much admired), writing materials, pills, clock, the china Algerian, Browning, etc. It’s all in, including the rotten radio that doesn’t work. There was time for meals, so we lunched with the Charles de Polignacs where to my pleasure was Colette, the famous old writer. She flatters me and I flatter her a lot. She’s seventy-fiveish with a younger servant-husband, a Dutchman. I wished I had brought a copy of Talleyrand to give him.24 She is dreadfully crippled with I imagine arthritis in the hips – two sticks and a mass of shawls and rugs and coats and scarves of sombre colours, and protruding at bottom two very flat white naked feet, brightly pedicured. The other end (on top I mean) is in a cloud of smoke – hair – but to my eyes indistinguishable from a halo of true smoke – lovely. Then there are painted cat’s eyes, the same top and bottom. I think we are both fascinated by each other’s eyes. She pulled up her sleeve and showed me a little thread of pearls I recognised as mine but I had no recollection of ever giving them to her, neither had I missed them. I betrayed no surprise, only pleasure that she should wear it. She said the old Prince of Monaco (the fishy one) used to hold little octopi in the hollow of his hand and she thought it so charming, so did I. The others all screamed.

  Papa hasn’t been sober for two days. He dined at the Travellers’ with those dreary old gentlemen. I believe he’s the youngest of the gang. It’s the Committee.25 They dine very well, play a bit of bridge, enjoy it so much that at 12.30 they go off for a spree. This time at 2.30 they made for their homes, old Somebody Something at the wheel, and bless me if the car wouldn’t start. See them all push-pushing till they got it to the river (risking strokes) from where there is no downhill. A passing car shoved them with its bumpers – resulta nada. Another passing taxi was traitorously hailed by Papa who hired it and rolled in at four, very wobbly but so delighted with the fun he’d had that I lacked the heart to scold,26 or to kick him out of snores to wake the dead and the Seven Sleepers and all adders with a jolt.

  Yesterday I arrived. A very bad get-off from Rue de Lille. Passport, put carefully in basket, not to be found. Everything ransacked, books shaken, ashpan sifted, everyone blamed, Embassy warned to warn the authorities, found by Jean under the car seat in the nick of time. Wadey would have gone down on her own idea, fished it out and shoved it under one’s nose without comment. These servants think of nothing. Journey uneventful, calm and expensive, except for no cabin and no lunch, glassy sea, no pick-ups, taxi easily found. ‘St. John & St. Elizabeth, please, Grove End Road.’ ‘O.K. lady’ and I arrived.

  St. John & St. Elizabeth

  February 2nd, 1949

  This hospital is out of the National Health racket and Cardinal Griffin of Westminster is upstairs. The porter showed me to my room at seven when I arrived. It looked pretty small and gloomy and threadbare, but then I couldn’t see the outlook which next morning was revealed to me in all its splendour of wide gardens and trees pressing through large modern style windows each side of an angle and outside a spacious balcony. The walls are bare and dirty, an aust
ere crucifix the only concession, meagerish bed, fairish linen and sordid bed-table, cupboard with no hanger, well-placed light, h. and c. I’ll be all right. There’s an armchair too, and a table that pulls up astride the bed. A kind and common nurse came and checked me in. Next of kin? Age? 21 guineas a week! Any false teeth? Any drugs? Temperature and pulse – Bovril – Sister will be round. She came round – an unsmiling ramrod of the old Guy’s school. I felt a probationer again, trembling before ‘Strings’ – trained nurses, so called because their caps were tied on. Strings were called by the name of their wards i.e. Sister Charity, Sister Eyes, Sister Isolation, unaccountable Sister Theatre. They weren’t old though they seemed so to me, and some were sympathetic, even kind, without smiles of course. Matron was naturally old and breathed sulphur and flame.

  So Sister left me an old blue pill as a treat. I slept well after a long and lovely read of Madame Bovary. I finished her off to be ready for Winston in the morning, which unfortunately started at seven, a nurse jolting me out of a deep sleep. You never see the same nurse twice running, so they never learn your ways or care about you, and you can’t care about them in consequence. All the young ones are the class of ward-maids, and remember absolutely nothing. I wonder if it’s the war or atoms, or the radio waves harnessed through our bodies into our sets. I have to tell them to give me my medicine, to tidy the bed or room, to take the tray away – just like the servants. If I put Jenny to bed I look round, open the windows, see the water and glass are near, matches in case, no light in her eyes, etc. That used to be the joy of having a nurse with a shiny white starched belt and cuffs and gleaming apron. These ill-spoken half-baked sluts have no heart and no head. Matron is a nice old Irish peasant, a Sister of Mercy, hooded and draped in cleanish white, under-Matron the same. The rest are 50 per cent nuns – one a dream of beauty, quite young, as tall as Louise with her starched hood pinned up for action into an elaborate moyen-âge coif. I must learn why she is a nun. She looks radiant, so does little Sister Celestine though she’s too shy to speak. My beauty is Agnes, meaning lamb.

  I’ve read Winston nearly to the end (it’s my third day) and lived in it panting and having to put it down from emotion. His style delights me – always the child’s word in serious sentences ‘His Majesty’s Fleet lolling around in the Mediterranean’ and in purest prose he tells the reader of his good fortune of being able to sleep by his own will – however grave the situation, however taut and terrifying the crisis ‘I can always flop into bed and sleep and wake refreshed’. He was First Lord in 1914 and mobilised the Fleet (as Papa did in ’38, thereby giving Chamberlain another chance to avoid war at Munich, for the mobilisation shook Hitler and depth-charged the General Staff). On the declaration of this war he was given the Admiralty after eleven years out of office. ‘On this the Board were kind enough to signal to the Fleet “Winston is Back”’ (Floods of tears). You’ll have to read it.

  I brought the broken radio back. It’s obviously had a heavy fall which those varlets never admitted. They said a valve had got broken, but omitted to mention that even the carapace is in pieces. However two men-menders arrived after threats and bribes and took it away and brought it back. It’s good enough. I scarcely hear the Third Programme but they said they never met anyone wanting it. I said ‘Can I get foreign stations?’ ‘Nobody listens to them’, they said, so I’m left with Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh and Mrs Dale’s Diary.

  One really feels in The Gathering Storm that Winston was born and trained and forced fallow and released for the great moment. No one in the Cabinet during those eleven years seems to have been preparing and learning and making contacts and assembling information, figures, technical detail, following the infancy of radar, magnetic mines, even atom potentialities, as he was and it was to him that the world figures came and wrote for his views – and beside all this he was writing Marlborough, building walls and a cottage with his delicately pretty hands, painting and travelling. What a paragon!

  The juke box is playing the Siegfried Idyll. We once tried it as a duet. Like many another it wasn’t a great success. Talked to Rai this morning. He was laughing madly. Liz is not going to Africa, so I don’t suppose I will. Kitty and Charles Farrell go to Singapore. Papa comes over today. I hope he brings me a line from you. If you get a day off, go to Tangier. David will be there probably. Ask at the chief hotel (a Moroccan name like Mamounia only not) for Miss Jessie Green – a well-known Englishwoman. Say you are mine and she will do everything to help and put you in touch with David. Papa arrived having left his attaché case behind with all my mail, but nothing from you he said.

  John & Lizzie27

  February 3rd, 1949

  Winston says of us English that we hate drill and we have not been invaded for a thousand years but that as danger comes nearer and grows we become progressively less nervous; ‘When it is imminent they are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless.’ I hope it’s true of you – I don’t altogether think it’s true of me. He adds ‘These habits have led them into some very narrow escapes.’

  Papa’s come, but I won’t see him and only talk on the telephone. No word from or of you. What can it mean – you’ve never been as naughty. I’ve finished Winston this evening and feel lonely without him. I’ve plunged into another Flaubert, L’Education Sentimentale, but am sticking as in a bog. I’ll have a course of Maurice Baring in between. There is an enormous apathetic pigeon on the bare tree at my window wondering if it’s going to have quads. Pigeons in London used to be entirely dung fed, now with only iridescent oil to peck at I wonder they stay. Pigeons are always in towns – rara avis in the country – curious now that horses, their stable food, have been outlawed from the streets. Nancy writes from Paris – she has been to tea at the Embassy and writes before the story fades, but there wasn’t much to it. Lady Harvey had rung up to say she had a cousin staying. An excuse to ask her own friends. There were only about five guests, but for all that tickets were issued for cloaks. There was only the cousin and two rawish new attachés and Barley and Cecilia and Kitty [Giles] wearing contact lenses. Nancy it seems had never heard of them and nearly fainted with horror. ‘Under the lids, darling. It’s the sort of thing that as a child made me not want to live.’ Then there was a letter from Rosemary (send her a p.c.) rapturous about the New World and Truman and the inauguration parade, cowboys and girls, teenagers throwing cartwheels, all the fun of the fair, but no letter from my only son, so no fun.

  Feb. 4th. I’m disappointed about Cardinal Mindszenty.28 I’m afraid he’s even frailer than he feared he would be (to save his skin?). He seems to have recanted, wishes to support Church and State in future, pleads guilty, admits to having asked the U.S. Embassy in the person of little Seldon Chapin (Algiers colleague) to get him away by aeroplane – 4000 dollars offered. All the evidence is based on letters written and received by him, found buried in a canister in his garden. How were they found? Why were they kept? Is it a frame-up? U.S. and England have been officially refused their requests to send an ‘observer’. That’s this morning’s news. I talked to Noémi the moronic about Jenny’s castello. She said ‘Il paraît qu’en Italie il y a de jolis petits coins.’29

  February, 1949

  Your longed-for letter arrived this morning. Papa told me the day before yesterday it had come and was en route. O I did enjoy it and laughed aloud, a thing I rarely do (unlike you and Papa).

  Sugar Daddy Weiller rang up. The N. African party is still on. He suggests my travelling with la belle Madame Teissier,30 meeting them at Marrakesh and from there a week into the Atlas. I ought to do it. They are not quite my kind – if David Herbert came I’d not hesitate, but will he leave his boys? I can’t invite a bunch of them – if only they were normal and I could arrive with three swains all my own while Madame Teissier had to make do with Paul-Louis and Madame Berriau’s Dutch husband.

  To go back to Morocco. My inner eyes see this Atlas expedition as Chréa31 and mules and cedars and long treks – the pack mules, a desperately long day
of sweat and loss of direction and suddenly when thoughts of death by exhaustion and exposure weighed on one, the silhouette of a high Kasbah, trumpets signalling arrival of strangers, slaves, torches and all the splendour and beauty of barbaric luxury within, baths of rosewater, gazelles and fountains in my bedroom. Instead it will be American limousines whizzing one up canted roads to the doors of an Edwardian stone house, from which blares a radio, a blaze of light from the ceilings and all the discomforts of a second-class hotel. There’s the rub, but I’d better go.

  A lot has happened here since I wrote. I told you – or I didn’t – that the Evening Standard was on the warpath. We’d scotched them with a lie, I thought, but three days later they had two paragraphs in the Londoner’s Diary. I nearly had a stroke. ‘Lady Diana resting’, my whereabouts, ‘Sir Alfred [!] tells me she’s only resting’, the price of the room, ‘She visited a plastic surgeon before going in’, ‘She wears dark spectacles and her face is swathed in light bandages’, then my age,32 which I resent (stupidly) and a bit about my rheumatic legs – altogether too horrible and malicious. No one knew but Papa, who is no blabber. It must have come from the hospital itself, and we suspect the mother of a girl appendix opposite. She’s a Mrs. McCorquodale and I knew her twenty-five-odd years ago and never could like her. The nurses knew she saw me going to the Diathermy Dep. and recognised me. My spectacles are put on to hide some acid I was given to put on my cyst that drags the lower lid down (it’s done no good) and chiefly so that people like her should not recognise me, and also out of a kind of vanity that forces me to hide myself when all the aids are not there, even from the nuns and maids. ‘Can that be her? That funny old thing’, my inner ear hears them saying. The ‘bandages’ is my poor little bald-pate nightcap which I forget (its being so familiar) arrests attention.