by Diana Cooper
Monday 2nd. The Harveys came to lunch, bringing Ava Anderson. A wow it was, Oliver as bad as hoped for, Lady Harvey beautiful – but only I thought so – a faded impressionist, boater worn as a halo. Lady Anderson wearing the same headpiece, but tilted over her intriguante’s little eyes, looked really frightful, a thing for children to run shrieking back to Nanny. A very good smell came from one of them. I asked from which? Ava said ‘Well I did put some Mon Péché in my hair’ – her hair being a dead mat of dye. But she was exceedingly funny about Sir John Anderson showing his bulldogs off in the Cruft’s dog ring. There is a technique – you go at a trot holding high your exhibits’ leads that their heads may be proud and upheld. Sir J. had his chance and missed it, so no prizes.
Chantilly
May 8th, 1949
I’ve been remiss – forgive – and here goes. Papa is going to have his poems privately printed by some precious press, organised by Ian Fleming and Lord Kemsley – no pay but fifty copies given which should cover all Christmas presents and many weddings. I tremble that they will be considered too unmodern (all the better for that in my view) but I don’t like a breath of criticism where Papa is concerned. Half will be actual translations and the other half called translations like E. B. Browning entitles her original verses Sonnets from the Portuguese. I opened the old black tin box of Papa’s letters to find forgotten fragments and got lost in the past and dreadfully depressed. You will perhaps read them one day. They are wonderfully happy letters – never a groan, the antithesis of mine. This week’s bag is my dearest treasure of a glass and red morocco miniature library of classics – the gift of Maurice Baring. Papa took all the little books out to fill an upper shelf (quite unpardonably) and I suppose frankly scrapped the exquisite container. Another dear treasure – Major6 himself, in grey Danish porcelain. It used to stand under a glass globe in that ‘reserve’ room. The globe is there unbroken and the dog’s gone.
We go hand in hand to an osteopath, said to be a genius, Papa for his ribs and the bruised nerve in his leg, and me for my various racking pains. He’s like every other osteopath, just a drain to throw money down. He cracks my vertebrae and glows with satisfaction as though a crack was a cure. Osteopaths have a single punishment and crimes have to be found to fit it, otherwise resulta nada. Papa has to lie on his back to sleep and the snoring has driven me to filling my ears with bright pink wax. This preparation is called QUIES and was used successfully by the wakeful during the bombing of London, but don’t imagine it drowns this noise.
Melanie has had her calf. It’s a boy! (not that sex matters as I get rid of it at once) and we are inundated with milk – at least four gallons, and that’s a lot of milking. There’s no gardener till next week. We have Daniel, the baby Indochink parachutist, and a clod called Quarmi, a farmhand. The paths are all overgrown and covered with branches and twigs, par contre the grass round the façade is grown enough to look green if you lie on the gravel and look along it, and the pansies and forget-me-nots make it a corner of a foreign land that is for ever England.
The new gardener comes in a week. He’s merry but there isn’t one neighbour or commerçant who hasn’t told Jean that he’s a vaurien – good-for-nothing – and a robber of churches. I talked to his patron’s wife this morning. She thinks he’s first class and what I saw of his present garden looked most ship-shape so I suppose it’s the beastly French hating to see a man get a good place. Madame Regnier came round squalling like a jay asking for money for her hens and wood. I have said she shall never get a centime from me till Felix divulges the name of the man he sold my motor pump to. He won’t, so it’s a deadlock. He fears I shall find out what he got paid for it. Jean thinks perhaps £100.
May 9th. I’m all alone. Papa’s gone to Brussels for his Wagons-Lits; the more they meet the worse the Lits are. My dinner has been a cup of hot chocolate, my entertainment the Xword, the radio and writing to you. I was in Paris this afternoon and saw Louise back from a love affair in England with Tony Marreco. My old pal Prince Paul of Serbia, the Regent that was, I lunched with – wonderfully unchanged – liberated from first Kenya, then the Cape. He is so happy now and going to live in Portugal or Switzerland like the rest of the kings; and Louis II, Prince of Monaco, has fallen for the last time and that boring Rainier reigns in his stead.
On the boat to Folkestone
Friday, May 13th, 1949
I’m sitting in the Captain’s cabin between Calais and Folkestone. I’ll be in London by four, trying out a new route. It enables me to get to Salisbury tonight. David will meet me at Victoria and whizz me down in his car.
Last night Raimund and Papa and I dined with the Windsors in Paul-Louis’s house rented by them. The feast was for Harry Luce.7 The company was far from distinguished but the appointments – my dear, the appointments! She’s dolled the gloomy house up wonderfully. On entering one is conscious of the freshest, most elusive scent of flowers (an artificial product) that doesn’t stale or die during the course of the evening, a cold perfume that seems to wake the spirits to innocence and joy. Wallis herself in fine repair, dressed in what might be the stiffest Persian black and gold kaftan with springing skirt off the floor and plain oriental neckline, more ravishing when the stand-by-itself material turned out to be transparent against the light and featherweight, and some very fine diamonds worn negligently. The Duke looked his withered self and never made head or tail of anything I said. The stairs were flower-lined, rather commonly as for a wedding. The dining room entirely candle-lit, footmen in royal scarlet, the faithful black Caribbean in the same livery. Paul-Louis’s magnificent ’orse’s ’ead of the Greek period carefully concealed for reasons known only to Wallis.
Eve Curie had changed her type – tender she looked and berry-brown, with no Abyssinian hairdo or austere army expression, instead glamour, coils and gentle eyes and smiles. Everyone else there seemed to be called Allen, except Geoffrey Parsons and wife and some other Time and Life or Fortune and Mr. Tony Biddle. The table had so much upon it that I got bewildered – Saxe Negro slaves and monkeys and fruits falling from Nymphenburg cornucopias and flowers and candles and boxes for toothpicks and cruets of course, and matches individual and cigarettes in gold boxes and five equal-sized knives, ditto forks in white Dresden china (I had to ask which to take for what and further blotted my copybook by using my side plate as an ashtray instead of a gold dish). The Duchess had to reprove me. Raimund made it all possible. I saw Papa doing a turkeycock with Murphy, the Life man who wrote the Duke’s memoirs for him. Raimund excelled himself in funniness. He had a splendid piece about a tête-à-tête dinner with Luce. It is the object of the staff to make it clear to the boss how high is the price of living in Paris, and R.’s account of his dodges to get the bill up, the ordering of what looks cheap and is expensive, the simple compote in which he got half a bottle of liqueur poured, I can’t remember the multi-dodges. When he told it, Teddie said ‘Why didn’t you tell the waiter to stick the price up?’ It was very characteristic, I thought – of course Raimund couldn’t have got it across his lips. Teddie maybe always does, or takes a rake-off.
The farmhand named Quarmi, who helps while we have no gardener, talks in a quite unintelligible way. Enunciation and accent and technical-of-the-land words allow me to understand very little of his message. The only piece I got in toto was when he told me that his daughter of twenty-five was in hospital with a fibroid in her womb. I told him not to be unduly anxious, it was most common to women and that I used to carry one myself. He replied ‘Oui, mais Madame n’a jamais uriné noir. On peut uriner jaune, rouge et même bleu, mais Madame n’urine jamais noir.’8
I’ll post you this and write from Wilton. Papa goes to Opio today. There’s a man who’s being tried by law for curing people of everything except cancer and V.D. with footbaths. All the doctors admit it’s miraculous so I’ve wired Papa to bring me back some Tisane Mégère. To fit in any gap between footbaths and osteopaths I’ve consulted Dr. Salvanoff, Professor of the Universities of
Moscow, Pavia and Berlin. He’s near a hundred and guarantees me a total cure. It’s a whole-time job – seven different pills always to be taken half an hour before a meal that I don’t take, baths with a secret fluid added, private parts to be thickly vaselined before immersion, so many drops c.c. in such a degree of heat increased every second day. Tuesdays and Thursdays are sort of overtime days, with twice as complicated a regime. There are compresses too and a hot water bottle laid on my liver for forty-five minutes morning, evening and after lunch – rather nice that. I need hardly tell you that he attributes everything to liver. Jean’s is in fearful shape – yesterday I think really because he feared to go to Paris on account of the socks Mireille would give him if she thought he’d slept with his wife. He told me that he was vomiting all the while, in the train, in the car, or if he walked twenty yards.
Chantilly
May 24th, 1949
Back again in Chantilly with new gardener (idiotically wifed) installed.
My luggage into France far excelled any baggage I’ve risked before. It seemed so formidable for the ferry train that, tired and with a heart faint from exhaustion, I got a man from the Dorchester to take me and my paraphernalia to the station. As he was not allowed past the Customs he wasn’t worth his hire. The line-up consisted of a suitable suitcase, a butler’s tray to which were tied two prints (very large) of nabobs, three baskets of plants for ‘bedding out’, a lot of earth attached to avoid wilting and consequently unliftable by me, the old basket very full of Winston’s life and flower catalogues and last minute parcels, a basket with stick and wheels made only in England full of old shoes and strange pieces known in old Bognor days as ‘improvised utensils’ for the dairy, a hat, two large size skimming dishes (unprocurable in France), stray coats, a pair of new rubber boots and twelve quacking Khaki Campbells. It’s nice to be able to tell you that the whole ‘lot’ went through the frontiers like a dose of salts and that the ducks kept all the passengers awake. They are only four weeks old but their lungs can drown the ferry noises. This trip, had the ducks drawn a quiet breath, one might have thought oneself in 1940 again. There were alerts, All Clears and tremendous artillery fire. Alvilde in the next cabin and I both thought we’d been, like the governesses at Trianon, translated back to D-Day. In Paris Jean was waiting with no bad news. It comes out as one discovers it.
Chantilly
May 25th
Mr. Wu was expecting me to lunch with Nancy and Christopher Sykes, whom he has engaged as a courier for his continental trip. ‘Make a note of that, Sykes’, he says when the Petit Palais or a remarkable glove shop is mentioned. Wu’s books have made him so rich in every country that money is not thought or talked of. Everything has to be done in the tourist spirit of 1910. So in that vein we met them at Fouquet’s bar and drove (to their disgust in my camionette) to Maxim’s, where we had a rather inferior lunch in orange artificial light, with a lot of chi-chi and a whacking bill. I had chores to do and they had a Turkish bath ahead to sweat out their last night’s debauchery. Christopher can’t eject one word now.9 It’s not nerves for he’s very happy as a courier, spending another’s money with no questions asked. Nancy thinks it’s his wife’s fault.
O I forgot, we didn’t make straight for our chores and baths but took in Père Lachaise on the way. We wanted to have a look at Nancy’s narrow bed – the gift of Tony Gandarillas10 one day when drugs and drink got him without resistance. So there she will lie in a little stone sepulchre between Tony in corpse and a two-month old son,11 till the Last Trump. I’d heard for years of this famous cemetery, where great names are as common as unknown ones, but as we couldn’t find a porter to give us a plan (there are ninety acres) we found neither Nancy’s hole, nor Oscar Wilde’s nor the miracle-working one, nor Chopin nor my darling Bébé, scarce cold. It must be one of our next outings. That night I dined with the same party at Rue Monsieur, plus the Colonel, but as I’ve started my whole-time regime I wasn’t the life and soul, and thought in consequence the evening was a sad failure for all. Quite surprised I was when Wu said afterwards how much he’d enjoyed it.
Next morning I met Papa at 9 a.m. from Opio. On a lead he led not a miniature black poodle as expected, but the prettiest eight-month-old golden slip of a cocker, more sentimental and maudlin and silkily ingratiating than you can hope. ‘Willow’ is her name and she’s totally untrained and Papa is so in love that he thinks of putting off his business trip to London next week. His trip had not been as happy as hoped. It had rained incessantly, but Loel had given him this well-bred puppy so the trip was worth the disappointments and the hundreds of pounds all the meals cost him.
David’s House at Wilton. The next morning I was stirred out of my insomnia by the chorus of English birds and blazing sun. One of the pleasures of David’s house is that you need not raise the voice to speak to those in other rooms, like a dormitory. All morning we marketed and I bought dozens of common plants (all easily got in France) weighing a ton because of quantities of soil to protect them through the time of the journey. I bought too a cumbersome butler’s tray as a table and two fluttering prints too big for the suitcase, and some rubber boots and everything that was unpackable and unhandy. We called on Lady Essex, the great breeder of Maran hens, six of which Lady Pembroke had sold me as ‘pullets just coming on the lay’. Devil an egg did they eject and Lady Essex wasn’t surprised because she said Lady P. had no pullets to sell. When I unpacked them I was surprised at their outsize and Madame Regnier said ‘Elles sont des vieilles’,12 but I explained that the English didn’t cheat. It now appears they do.
Chantilly
[Dated May 24th, 1949 but probably May 27th or 28th]
Willow’s charms have quite undone Papa – unmanned him. Acute diarrhoea mixed with blood is praised and she sleeps in a basket by his bed within touch and he gets up with eager energy twice a night to take her out though she does it on the stairs coming back. Imagine then the horror of seeing with his adoring eyes the little dog flash downward across his vision as she sprang from my bedroom window and thumped onto the gravel at his feet. She moaned and howled the howls of pain, while the Sunday guests Cora Caetani, an unidentified Russian, Hugo and Virginia Charteris grouped themselves round her like the dying Nelson picture. My throat closed with fear as I hobbled off (I can hardly walk) in search of brandy. When I came back, glass in hand, the moans had stopped and she was lying as flat as a wet autumn leaf. ‘Is she dying?’ I asked. ‘Afraid so’, they said, but she struggled forcefully as I forced the nasty stuff down her gullet, and in a minute she made a complete recovery, plastered of course and later drowsy, but really none the worse. The premier picqueur (not an injectionist but like ‘picador’) came and dieted her diarrhoea and all’s well but the carpets. Willow willow waley.
Hugo and Virginia Charteris are all that one can desire in beauty and wit. They are deeply and gladly in love. On Thursday evening Nancy arrived in a hired car with Wu and Christopher.13 I took great pains to fete Evelyn – best room, best wines, selected books and flowers. He is something left from the wreckage of my admirers. He used to tour with me in English Miracle days, read The Wind in the Willows to me, motor through Scottish glens, carouse with Nationalists (including Linklater Private Angelo14 – later) in Edinburgh bars and soothe and flatter me. His coming here was an excitement. Dinner went all right – he’s never easy – and Christopher stammers dreadfully, but we went to bed with unhurt feelings and I for one looked forward to the adumbrated morning plan of Senlis or Ermenonville or the Museum15 itself.
At 7.30 a.m. it was drizzling and leading old Melanie back to her field who should I meet but Mr. Wu beneath his umbrella. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to lunch with me in Paris’, said he, instead of ‘Where are you going to, my pretty maid?’ ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I’ve ordered a cordon bleu lunch, the rain is pouring. No, no.’ We had our individual breakfast trays in Nancy’s bedroom. The sun broke through loyally, but I could feel a desire on his part to be off and something was said about an ex
hibition at the Louvre that could only be seen on Fridays. I was able to deny this and add that it was shut anyway at twelve and we could have lunch at 12.30. A little later he said he did not know if he could keep his hired car till after lunch. At this I said that I would counter-order the meal and that he’d best be off as soon as he could, which he was. When I was out of the room he’d had the decency to ask Nancy what she would like. She’d cravenly answered that she didn’t mind, knowing it was ill-mannered and most wounding to me. Christopher the same, but he had the excuse of acting courier and taking orders, so they left.
I told Wu a bit of what I felt. I told him with all his efforts to be a grand seigneur he’s never been a man of manners etc., and when I heard their car roll away I cried; I cried with disappointment and a wounded heart, but Papa was so sympathetic and loving that it was worth it. I don’t understand why it is that I always have a row with Wu, and with no one else do I behave so spoiltly. Perhaps my exceedingly painful leg contributed to my irritableness. It’s worse than it’s ever been. True, the Russian professor said the treatment would induce suffering, but I think he said it by way of insurance. I can’t sleep my pathetic four or five hours for the outrageous slings and arrows. To be still hurts more than movement.
