Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  Well, the poor nuns were dreadfully upset and felt the leak reflected on the hospital. Raimund wanted me to consult John Foster of S.H.A.E.F. and bring a libel action. I was for ringing up the editor and insisting on a démenti. There was no one in the office till next morning, by which time my poor pillow had counselled me to do nothing. Don’t suppose it’s libellous to be said to have had a face lift (I wish I’d had one), besides it was only an inference. If I’d got them to promise to put in any kind of démenti (which I couldn’t have) they would have twisted it into another poisoned arrow, for their orders from their chief is never to spare me or Papa. What earthly interest is it for them to know where I am? Or to spend days snooping for so dull a piece? Why, three-quarters of the readers no longer know who ‘Lady Diana’ is. It’s a lesson never to do things in secret. The result of it all is that the telephone never stops ringing and all the old mad fans like Ellen Terry’s nephew, Bobby Craig, and Norma Terry the maniac who has troubled me for twenty years, ring and ring and take up my nerves and the nuns’ time. Huge floral tributes arrive which I send straight to the chapel or wards. They are not in my picture of this week.

  St. John’s

  February 12th?, 1949

  Tomorrow I leave this charming establishment. There will be tears all round, chiefly from Nurse Jones who would die for me. She’s a good, bubbling, warm, enthusiastic young woman that I too am fond of. The nuns will take it calmly. I’m told there is a ward here in which all the patients are nuns. I must try and look as I go out. They are all in their white coifs with white sheets pulled up to their chins, not reading, but chatting incessantly like budgerigars.

  Here is some most sad and shocking news. Our Bébé B. dropped down dead but yesterday. He’d had a few warning little strokes but he looked so well and pink, pimpant and glowing, that it was difficult to think him unsound. He was at a rehearsal of J. L. Barrault’s, fell suddenly and did not move again. Looking round in my mind, I can think of no Frenchman I liked as much as Bébé, and in Paris I am now only fond of Swiss Carl. With Bébé I was flattered and comfortable and entertained and really fond of him. One has to remember for comfort that it was the perfect death, not of course from a Catholic point of view, nor a true Protestant’s who prays against such an eventuality in his Litany. He was a great hypochondriac and afraid of death, unable or too weak to postpone the event by avoiding temptations. The drink and the drugs were never put away in spite of the clinic weeks of detoxication and – sad to relate – these frailties had sapped his inspiration and effectiveness. The stage he could still dominate, but not his canvases, and every artistic money-spinner had copied to perfection his little facile drawings. O but he was lovable. I see him most vividly coming for the first time to the Embassy, hair streaking over his scurfy collar, shining little face as clean as a shower in the middle of the old nests of birds and beaten eggs and ash and scent that his beard was stuffed with, septic trousers, always their flies ajar. ‘D’où as-tu ce noir pour tes ongles, mon chéri?’33 Jean Cocteau asked him. ‘De Londres,’ he answered glibly. Once at a picnic in the forest of Fontainebleau he danced like an inspired Nibelung, lightfoot and sans souci. Think what the bande will be like today. I’ve written a sob to Boris.34 I could never bear Boris but I had to write to someone for my own sake, and I suppose the poor sod will be distraught.

  It’s so difficult to think of nuns without their uniform – ‘habit’ one should say. I can’t picture these old girls – or young ones – without their mobled trappings – hair cut to the root, otherwise like other women – me – so strangely different they are from us when dressed, so strangely different from us within – and just the flashy surface the same. This does not apply to monks and priests.

  Feb 13th. Listen, beauty boy. I’ve almost settled to go to the Atlas. Now that I have your dates I would try to meet you in Tangier. What rollicking larks if we could accomplish this meeting, almost worth missing the crocuses that I broke my back and health to plant.

  Chantilly. I had a moving farewell and left the hospital with Nurse Jones in tears. I distributed six jars of my own dear bees’ honey, bought a pair of bedroom slippers, green, a pair of smart black shoes, a pair of dark green trousers, un pullo vert rouge,35 a funny kind of cap. In the afternoon after a bite with Chips, who looked blotched and crooked as though he’d had a stroke, I went off shopping again. At four, whacked into drowned fury, I hurled myself into the restful luxury of the Leicester Square cinema, where I giggled over Mr. Polly, then to Liz’s and Rai’s, then to The Heiress with Liz and Peter Q. Then to the station and Brighton and an ideal taxi-man of sixty-five who talked about his clothes. He had a suit of good blue moulded to him for his wedding – it cost a guinea, and his daily drink at the old Bell used to be a pint of coffee (black) and a big rum mixed ‘that kept the cold out’. ‘The others they like 2 to 1s (2 gins to 1 whiskey).’ Listen, I arrive Gib. on 24th or 25th and go to Tangier – can you work for the same dates for I could put you up in an Arabian Nights house belonging to Barbara Hutton.36 Try your best.

  Marrakesh

  March ?3rd, 1949

  The great thing is not so much new blood for refreshment but being new blood to others. I keep the table in roars. I’m considered the wittiest, funniest, most original angel that ever visited this dull earth. It’s put the morale up splendidly, though it does no good to the knee. I’m a bit behind on my day-book so let me tell you briefly that we got off at mid-day on a certain Monday, that we were hours at the two frontiers of Spanish Morocco, that we ate ham in fresh breads and Rumpelmeyer cakes while the fools filled forms, that we drove through the clear radiant air, through fields of wild blue iris, past camels and poor donks and that we came to Fez at about sunset or 6.30. They made rooms somehow. The men slept together. We walked in the souks. The goods have sadly degenerated even since ’44. When I think of the cheap fascinations of the ’30s, the shoes and djibbahs and silks and leathers and dyes and corals – now it’s really the refuse of European village shops, not a yard of real silk anywhere. It’s a national unknown. Gleaming rayon is substituted, plastics, membraneous belts and bags in place of leather, cotton jumpers instead of djibbahs. Too, too sad.

  Spices they can’t change, and flowers and fruit. There are still the artisans too, hammering copper and planing sandalwood, the beggars and the filthy water-seller with a bell and tepid water in a bloody goatskin, but there’s no temptation to buy. P.L. gave me an inferior dressing gown and Mary bought one that suits her fairness, otherwise no purchases. Next morning we did some mosqueing and souking and left at noon for the south by a mountain road. Lovely it was and not frightening, but slow enough to give us lunch at 4.30. What a strange place it was – l’Auberge d’Henri IV – no town, no clients, delicious food eaten on a stoop in the sun, washed down with good red wine. We sang straight through lunch, when Drian remembered that he’d a friend called Dampierre, a resident Colonel en poste nearby, so he was telephoned to and off we rollicked to Kasba Talla where the little outpost was preparing for a Bal Musette. The sweet fat Colonel in his cumbersome native cloak and his wife in her smart gent’s grey flannels with jewellery, lots of female understrappers cutting bread and hanging up festoons. An accordionist was at once sent for. Mary and some understrappers executed a sensational Russian dance. A lot of brandy was drunk – I think it was brandy – and we whirlwinded ourselves away and drove till midnight brought us to the old Mamounia and the charming balconied rooms that look on palms and eternal snows.

  I imagine it’s the 3rd of March. Yesterday was a lark. Brilliant weather, very hot by day and cold by night. Simone was round by eleven to take us protocolairly to the Pasha. I’ve rather come round to him – dressed and swathed as an Arab, he looks very distinguished. The beggars at the gate, the splendour inside I like. The house we paid our first call upon seemed to be some kind of pavilion and not the biggest palace. He is almost speechless and one eye is now much lower than the other, but he walks too fast for me and, like all his tribe, likes the walk
to be hand in hand or little finger in little finger. He showed us round his house, all built by himself but quite traditionally – the usual collections of chiming clocks, a bust of Winston and very pretty individual little bookcases for Marlborough, The World Crisis, etc. We left him promising to return for dinner at nine and repaired to the European guest house where I should be staying, but even Simone who lives there must see that the change from sunny Mamounia among my friends to the cold hideous dirtyish bedroom she can offer me, would be too much. Anyway I’ve laughed it off. So we sat on her sunny terrace and Drian said he’d like to smoke a pipe but that he’d forgotten his tobacco, so Simone clapped her hands for a slave to ask the Pasha for some pipes for me. A selection of all kinds were brought in a trice and other funnier ones continued to arrive along with a packet of tobacco with a picture of ‘Prince Albert’ (Ed.VII)37 on the wrapper. We wandered across to another pavilion – a stately pleasure dome empty of anyone – velvets, brocades, carvings, dense carpets, four windows open to the four winds, full sunlight, flushed faces and good humour. They are all pretty nasty about the one whose back is turned.

  I’ve learnt all about Simone. Peasant background. At the age of fifteen and a half the heir of the château seduced her, and his family, furious and fearful for their son, did all they could to separate the lovers. She, légèrement enceinte,38 eloped with him to Morocco, where they were apprehended by the police (orders from home) for détournation de mineur.39 He was sent home guilty, while she cried and moaned and was pathetic and deserted. The right hand of Lyautey,40 General Berriau, then married her. He was some forty years her senior. Not unnaturally it was the death blow for him and, dying, he put his child wife’s hand into El Glaoui’s and said ‘Don’t let poor Simone starve.’ She went back sorrowing to Paris. The Pasha, also in France, called with renewed condolences ‘et tout de suite il m’a violée’.41 That was all to the good, for since then, so she tells us, she is a free wife to him. ‘Souvent quand il fait l’amour et c’est l’heure de la prière, il se lève, il dit ses prières puis il recommence.’42 She’s pretty awful. Papa would die of it, but it’s a great amusement to me. She reads us her morning’s courier – one from Colette. One can’t imagine the old man still being a love, though the lickety-split walk showed vigour. In the afternoon there was sightseeing and the great reservoirs and the tombs and the souks and always the snowy background. The private golf course too, unlike any other, green as Ireland in this tawny bareness – Coca-Cola in a ‘Stop Me’ at the door. He has seven sons – all types épatants according to Simone, and all loathing one another.

  At nine we dined in the main palace – a lot of ceremony and groups of great fat Nubians draped round doorways. He greeted us at the door, rather dingily dressed in greys and brown. Davies makes his burnouses, djelebiahs or whatever they are called, but he makes them of lounge suiting and it’s all wrong; Moors should be dressed in spotless white. He’s got a splendid little bar – mobile, I think – like an illuminated miniature Alhambra. There were nuts and chips and kickshaws and little glutinous squares of hashish to sex you up a bit. Dinner very good, followed by ‘diversions’ – eight fattish, pretty ugly women jiggled around with brass cymbals on their fingers and a man with the most primitive of stringed instruments. Then a chorus of boys jiggling too. I think the Glaoui must suffer dreadfully from the tedium of watching such shows for seventy years. The dance and the jiggle and the tune have not been changed for centuries and were never inspiring, but I liked it all right as you can well believe. I go on boring everyone with the word Tellawet, which is the name of his château féodal in the Atlas but I don’t know if we’ll make it.

  Marrakesh, N. Africa

  March 4th, 1949

  It’s the Moorish meals that get me down. Fortunately the nauseating taste of the oil saves me from eating some of the dishes, but some of the twenty courses are excellent. The tortilla, always delicious, and a certain chicken, soaked in tomatoes cooked with onions and honey, were handed or helped, European fashion. One estimates vaguely what one is likely to eat and restraint is easy but with the great dish in front of you, one picks on and on till one sinks under the excess. This happened yesterday – the second lunch at the guest house. We did some sightseeing and souking, but my knee and my fatigued digestion brought me to rest at six and I settled to stay abed and miss dinner. P.L. was anxious to see boys or girls dance in the quartier réservé, but the concierge here was so discouraging that the plan was renounced, so while he wrote some letters we ordered dinner for three at my bedside. I dressed up as a yashmaked odalisque on my bed, the lovely Mary padded the bosom and hips out with my sachets and jersey, veiled her face, kohled her eyes and played castanets (à la danse du ventre) with two bedroom keys. Drian put on a fez and a mackintosh and a carpet rug over his shoulder, so when P.L. came back the quartier réservé had come to him. This story has very little interest but it serves to show what infantile high spirits still obtain in our parti carré.

  This morning was a London fog and got me properly down as it didn’t try and lift till noon, when la reine de l’Atlas came round with a dashing son of Glaoui to take us to lunch with another son about thirty miles away. It was a very pretty bled (i.e. ranch or farm) with a severe house like a tawny unornate Doge’s Palace. This son, less glamorous and gigolo-looking than the two others I have taken in, I thought delightful. The house was the simplest and in a way most Europeanised with bookcases as a background to the divans. It made me long for a bed next a wall of books. The hosts always start you off with a neat whisky as an apéritif – a thing I can’t gulp. Champagne for lunch itself and twenty-two courses. Drian played the entertainer this time – really very amusing he and S. Berriau were with their stories. The Arabs laughed immoderately and genuinely. They have all been educated in France, so I suppose are au fait.

  After our glutting and singing of highly indecent songs, full of gros mots43 that I don’t understand but have to pretend I do, we watched the lazy women picking up oranges to put in baskets that they carried away on their heads. The fruit trees are in blossom and the oranges heavy on the branches. Then there is the background of snow and through it all my poor knee. We were home in time to call on Madame de Janay who used to come to the Embassy. She lives in a minute house in the Arab quarter and is never returning to France. We had the treat of a European sit-down dinner at a restaurant in the town – I ate a sliver of ham, Mary nothing, P.L. some salad and asparagus and Drian tucked into meat. Next a fiacre and a guide and two cloppety-clops took us to a small clean Arab room in some hidden part where three little boys of twelveish and their musician danced and their master led. Unnecessary to tell you that the bare beauty of it all, the extraordinary charm of the immaculately clean little boys who, I imagine, are taught like geishas the art of affectionate demonstrations and general charm (they had been part of the Pasha’s troupe the other night and their old master pretended that they were allowed to dance for no one else) was made ugly by the 1000-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling – unnecessary also to tell you that I got it out and six candles substituted. Really it was very very pretty. The little boys’ gay smiling faces, their kissing of our hands and burying their smiles in our laps, delighted me.

  Tangier No idea of the date – it’s Monday

  [March 7th, 1949]

  We are still chiming in harmony and unison (a paradox) and all goes as well as I have power to tell except for my poor leg which robs me of all lightness and makes me tired in a quarter of the time. We had a second Arabian meal with Menebi, son of my old darling, in the house I have often been to. The successor is more sophisticated and has suppressed the myriad timeless clocks and undecked brass bedsteads. He has laid two of the most beautiful carpets in the big hall – they look like desirable Aubussons and were made at Wilton. Jessie Green was of the party, which had been arranged by David and her for me and my friends. This of course did not suit Simone Berriau, the Protector of Pashas. It was exceedingly amusing. Jessie speaks Arabic as her first lan
guage and has dandled all the Menebis on her lap. Her first remark to Simone breaking into French was ‘Vous ne parlez donc pas la langue arabe, Madame?’44 Sim got the place of honour at the divaned low table pulling me down on her right. Jess said ‘J’aimerais mieux attendre l’invitation de mon hôte.’45 S. won on this one because the host wouldn’t even come into the room, though a group of brothers and cousins ate at the other end. S. went on handing titbits to Jessie to show patronage but Jessie held her own and got in some wounding back-handers. My bande said ‘C’est tout de même joli de voir quelqu’un de vraiment bien élevé.’46

  Before the blow-out we’d visited first a crumbling villa lost in flowers and we’d called on an extraordinary couple half Belgian half American – crazy Hell’s-a-Poppin sort of house. The bedroom boasted of a bed of silver clouds and cherubs, a big piece of verdure tapestry, one outsized macaw, one big white cockatoo, two grey pretty polls all uncaged, five or six dog baskets untenanted, and in the small bathroom opening off this menagerie at least fourteen tiny Mexican animals called dogs yapping from their communal box. Crucifixes, Buddhas, emperors’ heads, antiquaire’s junk of all countries and epochs filled in the gaps. The garden was jammed with dangerous dogs and cats enclosed in an agreeable den to keep them safe from the Alsatians. There were a million pedigree fowls and there were unbuilt stables where the horses were due to arrive and be installed the next day. Sleeping Arabs strewn everywhere – very unusual, as all the Tangier residents are.

  Paul-Louis is next to Papa in childish enthusiasm and high spirits and a great extemporiser of verse. He sings his snatches when he’s not jabbering. He’ll take all the teasing you can give him, which is irresistible. Mary’s beauty is incomparable – the princess and the pea type.