Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  Aboard the good ship DJENNE off Spain

  March 14th, 1949

  It’s hardly worthwhile dating my letters, if what Papa writes me is true. ‘You left Paris on February 23rd. Your first letter, written in the train, was dated Feb. 16th. Your second letter, still travelling, was dated March 25th. The third letter (you had obviously given more care to the question of dating) bore the superscription March 27th or 28th, 1949. You got the year right anyway. In No. 4 you are less meticulous, heading it “No idea of the date. It’s Monday” which internal evidence leads me to suppose was Feb. 28th. In No. 5 you temporarily abandon the problem of time, but in No. 6 I gather from the heading that you are in Africa and that it is March 4th and still 1949.’

  I’m told I’m to go to London with him on March 21st (I can’t – too much planting to be done) and have some knee treatment there (quite useless for a few days) until you come back on the 25th. ‘We’ll all have a jolly weekend (where?) and go to School for Scandal on 28th. Return France next day and keep J.J. with us until he has to return which I suppose will be about 6th, on which day we leave for Madrid for a meeting of the Wagon-Lits. We stay there until Sunday 10th on which night I have reserved sleepers for Seville (!). We must stay there until Easter Day for the biggest bullfight of the year and we must leave there on Monday night 18th (sleepers reserved) going straight through to Paris where we arrive the 20th.’

  Meanwhile I set the Duke of Alba a snare into which he has plopped. I asked him if he had a pull with a hotel in Seville, as rooms can’t be got. Result: he’s asked us to stay in his palace. They say that staying with Alba you drive to the bullfight in semi-royal state, like the King at Ascot.

  Papa says the brave crocuses, daffodils and primroses are pushing their way through the snow, many more than last year. Good.

  I was disappointed about not getting to Gibraltar. I got a seat on the first plane but could get nothing to bring me back. Don’t imagine I didn’t ring up the Air Com. Spencer (?) Gib. and ask him to send me back, but he said he wasn’t allowed to take civilians (moments like those make one regret the dashing days of the war). I couldn’t wait for a following day’s return, as this good ship was due to leave at 7 a.m.

  The trip to the south of the Atlas excelled all hopes. Let’s see what happened since I wrote. There was a nice picnic arranged by me to Asni – a village and kasbah in the foothills. We had our delicious lunch of chicken and asparagus stuffed into light rolls, and then we sprang on to mules and rode up through the glistening air and shimmering olive leaves to the Kasbah. From there you look down, a few metres only, to the flat mud roofs of the village, with occasional groups of squatters picturesquely distributed. An old man invited us to tea and down we went through a warren of clean mud streets into a Christian crèche – mangers, kine and humans in draperies. Out of the crèche we climbed – a pole instead of a ladder – to get to the flat roof. Here we squatted on straw mats while the hosts brought us delicious mint tea. From the different roof levels came little puffs of aromatic smoke, and one of these chimneys blew us out a pretty little giggling shy girl of twelve. She was a bit frightened of being stolen and soon disappeared down her chimney again.

  The great trip started at 8 a.m. next day at the Pasha’s. Here we formed a cortège of four cars and drove slap into the Atlas. By 9.30 we came to an earthly paradise, a château Kasbah buried in blossoming fruit trees, olives, gushing mountain streams, green-yellow willows, buds and flowers. The little dependant Caïd was there to receive the Pasha and his followers and guests. His retainers, fifty strong, were lined up to salute their feudal lordship. We were led on to the sunlit court carpeted with rugs and took our places for le petit déjeuner. Same as le grand, plus porridge and drop scones and honey. I said it was not so unlike the English breakfast I remembered as a child at Belvoir, i.e. porridge, with sugar and thick cream (these last we were spared at the Caïds), next a choice of at least six hot dishes – kidneys, fish, grilled chicken, kedgeree, scrambled eggs, rissoles. These were often rounded off by a boiled egg for the robust. The permanent sideboard of cold ham and chicken, pork pie, cold game, a galantine and potted meat, was always there for the taking. Stratas of starch shaped into scones, buns, Belvoir fingers, toast and new bread filled gaps, and jam and honey smoothed it all down. (Of course I never heard the end of my thinking everything like England.)

  We came to another son’s, Mahomet’s, country seat at 11.30 where we were immediately handed a bowl of fresh milk and dates – country manners. I forgot to say that through the little breakfast there was Berber music off-stage, and that emerging on to the big court after the meal there were a hundred women standing in a square clapping and singing and jiggling. The thought of lunch at 12.30 paralysed me into ill humour, made worse by Simone goading me ‘to be nice’ to the Pasha. The lined-up servitors outside numbered a hundred or so, the house was built high over a ravine, well watered and rich in fruit and oil and corn – most beautiful, though inside it had been Turkish-Bathed and Wagon-Lited up at fabulous expense. The poor Mahomet, having greeted his dad, faded out to deal with the twenty-four dishes. We had to look at the lot cooling in the corridor – no apéritif, I can tell you. Even El Glaoui I think was bothered by the glut of food and waved a few dishes away untasted. The second roast sheep, for instance, was repudiated and the petits pois (Paul-Louis’s passion) were whisked away from him before he could finish the common dishful with a spoon, which shocked us at most meals.

  Poor Paul-Louis made a frightful gaffe. You remember how I often laugh at the inevitable reference to the sheep’s eye when Arab mechouis are mentioned. That somebody has to inform you how the guest of honour has to eat it is a certainty. I claim that in N. Africa at any rate it is not the custom. (I’m not drunk, but in the train on March 15th and it shakes.) So Paul-Louis to prove me wrong arranged with Mahomet behind the scenes that eyes should be on the menu. The unfortunate host, probably unable to tell his guest that the joke was in doubtful taste, ordered that a plate should be handed to me individually, on which rolled one eyeball, pupil down, and another static one in a bed of bleeding fur. I tried to smile through my disgust but the Pasha was clearly outraged and the offending squint was swept away with a gesture and his temper remained unhappy till our departure.

  At 3.30 we shook all feudal dust from our feet and soared over the Atlas in the smooth Cadillac – P.L., Mary, Drian and me. The road was not frightening, very high, a bit of snow here and there. The foolish chauffeur Achille drives like a snail and to my liking. At nightfall we came to Ouazarzat and to a gîte d’étape (French equivalent to the resthouse of our colonies). I stayed in one of ours in Malacca once. There’s a great difference. We had the cleanest simplest rooms, each with a shower and boiling water, delicious dinner and accueil, deft service, fresh smooth linen. From Ouazarzat on there is not one thing, house or person that is not part of the Berber picture – not an ad, not a pump, not a ‘How could they’. A kasbah which forms a village was first marvelled at but the drive through the Valley of the Dades surpassed almost anything I’ve ever seen in surprising beauty. Of course ‘surprise’ had something to do with the gasps of Ohs and Ahs, and the time of the year too, for feathering and flattering and bedizening these clotted hundreds of pink and yellow rugged mud fortresses, crenellated and ornamented, were clouds of almond and cherry blossom mixed with the silver of unleafed fig trees. All the French administrative buildings and gîtes d’étapes are built like kasbahs, the barracks and the prisons too. The Berbers are generally on horseback, the men heavily veiled, against the dust I suppose, and women wear all their jewellery and silver and amber parures.

  We lunched at a place called Tinertin and made some little excursions up valleys and back again as snow made detours impossible. That night we dined with a Resident-General at a place called Ksar-es-Souk. They could not put us up so we had to stay at a private enterprise inn called Roi de la Bierne – pretty bad, better say no more about it – no bedbugs but O dear, the drains. The next day took us
over the Atlas again through Azrou to Fez. The day before had been too lovely and this second day was rather anti-climatical. Paul-Louis would drive very fast on mountain unparapeted roads and only yielded his place to the chauffeur when I cried. Lunch was gay. Mary and P.L. climbed trees after it and while we rested before dinner, this tireless man went out to the souks and bought five carpets and God knows how much embroidery junk. The bargaining, not the goods, is what he’s after. His success in beating his fellow down to less than half the price asked stimulates him like strong wine. I bought a nice white fur rug for one of my bedroom floors, but nothing else.

  We arrived the next evening at Tangier. We kissed Drian goodbye at Fez. Mary came with us to see a property of agricultural interest to P.L. but not to me. From there she went back by Arab train to Marrakesh and we finished our journey through the Spanish Morocco frontier. They take roughly two hours to get you through. We got to Tangier too tired and too late to do more than peck unanimatedly at a bit of hotel dinner. David was around and he had put freesias in my room. P.L. and I shared a suite, sitting room dividing and single bath. Completely compromising, but I’m too old and too tired for it to matter, and I do not think Paul-Louis has a shadow of sentiment (sentimental sentiment) for me any more than I could ever have had for him. I’ve been a splendid travelling companion, always mellow and smoothing of French susceptibilities. I’ve opened a few doors for him, but not more than he’s opened for me; I’ve cost him a pretty penny and he can afford it, and think he’s very fond of me. I’ve fought fatigue and boredom at times and won, that fortunately he does not know.

  I’m attached to Tangier – it’s a capital and not a tourist town. We took a cocktail in Jay Hazlewood’s47 minute Arab house – the prettiest thing that ever I saw. The tiny courtyard and different layers of roof all pricked with candles, the rooms and windows, the sills, the birdcages and witchballs all carried their burning candles. Nothing like the ‘living flame’ for lightening my spirits. It’s like a hard bargain to Paul-Louis. An antiquaire had given me a little pipe like a reed and a packet of some curious weed. It may have been hemp or hashish or marwarah or what have you. Two puffs from the doll’s bowl of it and it’s out – the pipe and the candles dissolved my glooms and gaily we took ourselves to the Parade, a funny restaurant run by Hazlewood. Flamenco singers had been ordered for the nonce and by good luck a famous Spanish dancer with her English lover was dining at another table and, in her coat and skirt, danced like only Spanish gypsies can. There was a lot of clapping and Olés. The party waxed furiously. There were bouts of Lambeth Walk and Reels. Hunt the Slipper was too difficult on account of my arthritical knee (not better but much worse), David’s and Bat’s48 slipped disc and Janie Bowles’s49 tubercular hip, but we had a fine Sir Roger de Coverley.

  Next came the Saturday Gibraltar disappointment. David and Tony Porson and I, only a little the worse for wear, lunched at a funny garden joint on the hilltop outside the town, and there was Jessie to take leave of at 6.30. Charming distinguished Jessie Green. She lives on £280 per annum and has a fat Fatima dressed in pink brocade to wait on her, a dachshund, a motor car, a garden of lilies and fruit trees and the grace of a queen.

  SO, AS SHE had hoped, my mother had wangled an invitation out of the Duke of Alba – the grandest grandee of Spain. The visit was only moderately successful, not least because my father’s health was once again giving her cause for anxiety.

  Palacio de las Dueñas

  Seville

  April 13th, 1949

  There’s a little boy here of six months, a descendant of the great and loathsome Duke of Alba who tortured the poor in the Low Countries and descendant too of an impure love between James II and Arabella Churchill. He’s called Carlos or Carletto, and Jimmy Alba loves him more than parents as a rule love children, because the tiny pink cherub represents true (as he thinks) blue blood, and that blood his own. We’ve had ten hours on end in his company yesterday in a cumbersome Cadillac from Madrid to Seville, so there isn’t much I don’t know about the Duke of Alba.

  I sat between him and Papa. When Jimmy wasn’t looking at his watch Papa, who kept his in his closed hand, was opening it to look at the time. When Jimmy wasn’t picking at his face, Papa was picking his poor nose. Papa had coughed all night and been doctored with Argyrophedrine. I’d not slept a wink for sweating (with fear of his death) and consequently diarrhoea, so the long ten hours through the country of Cervantes – Castile – through narrow mountains and deeply down into Andalusia; the pause for a good lunch at a government-run inn, the mosque/cathedral at Cordova, the courts of the mosque smelling so strongly of orange blossom that one wanted to swoon and become part of the ecstasy – all these things were stained by apprehensions and listening for Papa’s breathing and expressions. ‘Why is his mouth slightly open? Isn’t one eye more closed than another? Are his veins, those in his hands, rather swollen? I mustn’t pull up his trousers to see if his ankles are coarse or refined.’ Too silly. The night before had been as good as sleepless because of a new reason for my ill humour, fatigue and leg défaillance, namely Parkinson’s Disease – progressive and paralytic, endured for eight years by Maurice Baring, who had an agitans added. It also brought slow death to Lord Wimborne.

  How I run on. I like Jimmy. He’s of another age, a long past age. He talks like I suppose Spanish grandees spoke in the time of the Catholic Kings – husbands and wives are put into male plurals, thus ‘the Duke and Duchess of . . .’ are called ‘the Dukes of . . .’. For instance I liked him saying as we passed some municipal buildings plastered with ‘Patria, Pro Patria, Gloria Patria’ etc. ad nauseam ‘I disapprove of all that. One’s life belongs to the King and one’s honour to God only.’ Rot in a way, for one might say ‘King’ means patria, but it didn’t in the middle centuries – nationalism wasn’t invented and Jimmy is still in Christendom. We arrived here at seven. What does one see of a town, looking wearily out of car windows? Nothing, but there seemed to be flowers and the overpowering smell of orange flower and in the centre of a maze of tiny streets we drove into the interior of this lovely palace, lost in roses the size of peonies and bougainvillea breaking over walls like great billows, lemons and lilies and court after court with fountains and flowers – really beautiful it is.

  The servitors were at the door, the baby awaiting the grand-dad’s arrival, the English nanny, respectful up to a point only, was at the door to present the chubby charge. The gracious Duchess daughter was also in attendance and we were shown to our rooms, each big enough and high enough to house a forest tree. Tiled floors, baroque wall decoration, Franco-Spanish beds and furniture, h. & c., uncompromising porcelain lavabos, cupboards in plenty that one only saw in servants’ bedrooms in my childhood, stained mahogany deal with no pretensions, on the other side of the passage and anteroom, both hung with the period of prints and lithographs and daguerreotypes that I can look at for hours, are a row of Victorian well-plumbed bathrooms. All Sir Garnet.

  Dinner at the unearthly earliness of 9.30 meant only Jimmy, his daughter and us two. His darling old sister can’t eat at these early hours and so dines and lunches out and jeers at Jimmy. We picked her up at 11.30 on some street corner. It’s hard to know what we are actually doing. Although one may have had the plans explained in English, one can’t hope for the incessant changes that occur in an improviste evening to be translated. Anyway we left in a station wagon, owner-driven, and made our way with Jimmy’s sister (not Jimmy) and the darkness and some friends, through the full-moon-lit street to the outer wall of the Alcazar where last night a certain Virgin was being processed. The crowd was very gay, no suspicion of religious respect or knees coming into it, but ‘Stop-Me’s, of sweets and toys and general relaxation.

  The procession was a revelation. It takes an endless time to pass as the huge catafalque which carries the Virgin, dressed in gold and jewels and hardly visible for candles in silver candelabra and silver canopies and treasure of all sorts, has to be carried by forty or fifty men who cann
ot see or breathe as they are underneath and covered by the valance. The human tread gives the holy figure a dancing progress, quite different to the effect of wheels. Before her goes in the same fashion Christ carrying his Cross, or before Pilate, or some other scene of His life, and hundreds of men all carrying candles in very high white sugarloaf hats that turn into masks with slits for eyes, all carrying real candles. There is fortunately no electric light to outshine the mystery. The Virgin’s candles are so numerous and bright and big that one’s eyes dazzle. Sometimes a ‘spontaneous’ starts a song in crudest praise of the Virgin, then all must stop till he has finished his Te Deum. Of course I wished you had been there, but Papa was quite good, and Doña Sol, Jimmy’s sister, has a passion for the processions and goes on all night from one to the other. The next one we picked up at the door of her church where those gigantic processional chairs have to be manoeuvred into the narrow entrance. Sometimes it’s impossible, so a man with a ladder runs up and takes off the Crown of Thorns and all haloes and then without an inch to spare it scrapes in and the crowd applauds. I enjoyed it very very much but I don’t know that five days of the same will continue to satisfy. Today we have done some gentle sightseeing with the host – the museum and two Virgins in their church preparing for their outing. The rich lend their diamonds for her bedizenment, so soldiers with carabines guard not her wooden person but her treasure.

  Palacio de las Dueñas,

  Easter Sunday, April 17th, 1949

  Easter Sunday, and bells pealing, cocks crowing, cats yawling, Spaniards kissing and kissing, the Duke’s aunt bawling away into the telephone and Papa, poor Papa, snoring to drown all these noises combined. I don’t like to rouse him although it’s near eleven, because poor Papa’s in a poor way, but it’s best to start the saga where it was left off.