Darling Monster

by Diana Cooper

  We carried on to Toulon rocking her, and she even managed some lunch, but the next day she was so completely exhausted and in pain that the vet was consulted. He thinks she’s cracked her shoulder bone. That’s the only place that hurts her badly, so she can’t walk and won’t try on three legs and really she is still too exhausted. Today she’s what Nanny calls brighter in herself, but still she won’t move nor will she drink, nor will she go placey, big or small. O what a miracle! She had endeared herself to us quite disproportionately during these two weeks, and we’d trained her into such obedient deportment and habits. She’ll be as good as new I think, and much better by the time we get to Chantilly.

  The great Carnival opened on Sunday. Really the Cour Mirabeau was so beautiful in the glistening sun – stalls of vivid colours, hats and masks and confetti and sweets made a chain each side under the huge skeleton trees hung with lanterns. Cold and brisk it was – not Mediterranée at all. We had seats in the tribune and I really think I enjoyed the procession as much as anyone. The Ohs and the Ahs all around us amused, so little was necessary to please them. ‘Ah, regarde les jolis bouquets! Oh, le vieux soûl, comme il est drôle! Ah, les bébés – bravo les bébés!’32 There were the huge chariots with mammoth figures – one’s eye, quickly learning the huge proportions, saw the real living people as pinhead Lilliputians. Confetti thrown by all and if possible stuffed into laughing mouths. I got a throat full. Nicely dressed in green tartan and a red tartan scarf and red tricorne which carried a black velvet and lace mask in case, and new gloves, I was in gay spirits and keen to join Maria de Grammont who had invited us to meet the toute toute petite noblesse de Provence.

  Le Baron St. Marc lives au premier in the Cour Mirabeau and there at four we found them and the Aix gratin,33 sitting in a circle drinking badly made tea and eating delicious brioches. The Baron, whose moustaches of a white and orange mixture grew almost the width of his narrow shoulders, was soured by them not being half as big as his father’s. He was deeply shocked at my having the confetti thrown at me, and that I should have got a mouthful outraged him to the point of trying, in vain, to make the promise to hie to the Préfecture and lodge a complaint supported by the name of Baron St. Marc. A coy English widow resident of Aix said to Papa ‘There’s a book I’ve read three times and I shall read it another three. Do you know what it is? It’s called (pause) David.’

  Today we went to Marseilles again to fill up with petrol against the big trek north after tomorrow. We had a spiffing lunch at a restaurant we’re very attached to now, Canupa Vieux Port. I had a glass of hot wine because my fingers had unfortunately died, which warranted the indulgence. The best liver ever, garlicked and fines-herbed in a sizzle of butter, followed by a compote of orange in kirsch. Papa wolfed half a dozen oysters and a tasty piece of duck and orange too, and coffee for one.

  * * *

  1 Prince Nicholas of Yugoslavia, son of Prince Paul, had just gone up to Christ Church. With English as his first language and a superb sense of humour, he was one of my closest friends. He was killed in a motoring accident at the age of twenty-six.

  2 Sir John Russell, our ambassador at various times to Ethiopia, Brazil and Spain, whose wife Aliki had been Miss Greece (never Europe) and was formerly married to Paul-Louis Weiller.

  3 Of their divorce.

  4 Ethel Russell, an old American friend of my mother’s.

  5 The Astonished Heart.

  6 Romanov, nephew of Tsar Nicholas II, then secretary of the Travellers Club in Paris.

  7 He was actually sixty-two.

  8 He did, though more as a novella, under the title Operation Heartbreak.

  9 Lost his temper with.

  10 Beefy, strapping.

  11 The Sleep (Psalm 127).

  12 ‘I must sacrifice myself, I know.’

  13 His mistress, Mrs Walston.

  14 Could she have meant Bobby Henry from The Fallen Idol? He would have been a natural for The Blessing.

  15 ‘Terribly sorry, too much going on.’

  16 Dodgy.

  17 One of her periodical fasts – no food at all, effectively a hunger strike.

  18 Heart a bit sluggish.

  19 The main street of Aix-en-Provence.

  20 Don’t ask.

  21 Fairground people.

  22 Flea fair.

  23 A general election had been called for 23 February. It was won by Labour, under Clement Attlee.

  24 I never spoke at all. Politics still left me cold.

  25 Peter de Polnay, Anglo-Hungarian writer.

  26 Bucolic-festive.

  27 The Duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire respectively.

  28 She had had a baby by Roberto Rosselini.

  29 That Monsieur is at the point of death.

  30 ‘We want lunch.’

  31 Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, a distant cousin of Sir Winston Churchill.

  32 ‘Oh, look at the lovely bouquets! Oh, that old drunk, isn’t he a scream? Oh, the babies – bravo the babies!’

  33 Aristocracy.

  14

  ‘Like the unsettled colour of newborn things’

  SEPTEMBER 1950–JUNE 1952

  New College, Oxford

  September 1950

  I’m delighted with my rooms – two splendid little second floor ones looking out on to Holywell. They are perhaps a little noisy, but that’s the only disadvantage. Do come and see them as soon as you possibly can, and make some helpful suggestions re decoration. I’ve got a piano, and I’ve bought myself with some of the £50 birthday present a wonderful portable gramophone, equally amenable to short or long playing records. I’m delighted with it and a hundred yards away is the University Record Library with five or six different interpretations of anything you want – and the score thrown in. The only pal here has been Nicky and, more recently, John Parker, who finished his trip with a hike through Austria and Germany. He spent £40 in six weeks. Now the pals are arriving thick and fast, all trying to make up for lost working time.

  All my love,

  John Julius

  THIS FINAL CHAPTER covers more than two years. Apart from the death of King George VI there are no major events. My parents’ life settled into the pattern in which it was to remain until my father died on New Year’s Day 1954 and, although we kept constantly in touch, there was frankly rather less of interest for my mother to write about.

  One subject of perennial interest, however, crops up more than once in the course of the chapter, and indeed provides the final anecdote: the Windsors. We saw them quite often during the 1950s – and every time we did so I thanked heaven yet again for his abdication. It was the best thing that could have happened. As King Edward VIII he would have been a disaster. In October 1937, less than a year after their marriage, he and the Duchess visited Germany; they called on Hitler at Berchtesgaden and they expressed fervent interest and admiration for everything they saw. Had he remained on the throne, and had England been invaded three years later – as everybody expected – there can be little doubt that he would have been reinstated as Hitler’s puppet. It was a narrow escape indeed, and – let us make no mistake – we owe it in large measure to the Duchess. Poor woman, she was always reviled in England; but had she never appeared on the scene I hate to think what might have happened to the country. She may well have saved it, and the Empire too. Could she, perhaps, be the answer to the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square?

  Whenever I met the Duke he seemed to me to be almost unbearably sad, and bored out of his mind. He never bothered to conceal the fact that he hated living in France. He would have been much happier in Germany, where he spoke the language; his French was execrable, and he made no attempt to improve it. Even in English, apart from golf and gardening he had lamentably few topics of conversation. The Duchess was a good deal more fun, with a penchant for rather good wisecracks. (She is said to have said to him, at the height of the crisis, ‘Darling, you must understand – you can’t abdicate and eat it.’) Late one night, on a nightclub ba
nquette, she told me her whole story from beginning to end. I sat there transfixed, conscious that I was actually hearing it at first hand and determined to remember every word the following morning. As it turned out I remembered precisely nothing, but I don’t suppose it mattered; I soon realised that she must have told it hundreds of times, and it was all in her memoirs anyway.

  Ajaccio, Corsica

  May 14th, 1950

  My tulips were a wonder and a staggering surprise – large purple and pink and yellow birds on the wing, hugely feathered and strong. Now there’s a lull and the syringa will be opening and Norah will be getting her seedlings going, I hope. She has no green fingers I fear, but Mireille’s are as green as spring. Maud Nelson and an artist called Battersby arrived one night at Le Bourget. We fetched them to Chantilly and supped them and slept them so that next lovely morning the artist did sketches of the house preparatory to making a picture for the writing paper and taking measurements of the panels in the drink room. I have an idea of genius, if he can carry it out – in each panel a still life trompe l’oeil or trophies signifying different phases of our lives – Admiralty (dolphins, anchors, tridents, shells, wreathed horns), War (cannons, grenades, ruins, bombs), Algiers (camels, straw hats, flowers, roofs, gazelles), Miracle (skeletons, rosaries, gothicisms, bells and books, Death’s scythe, wig paste and prompt books), Embassy (my Vendôme column,1 gold plate of Pauline’s, Légion d’Honneur, books, France–England alliance document), garden (rakes, trowels, flowers and baskets). Good idea?2

  Papa and I rolled into our free Wagon-Lits and woke up at Antibes, Mistress Gloria3 on the same train looking a picture and an obvious tart. The yacht Sea Huntress is really delightful – silent and spacious, and a steward suitably called Trim and good old Loel only wanting others to be happy. He succeeds and I am very happy. I do not think he’d succeed so well if I hadn’t thought of bringing Ed Stanley along. Ed laughed at Prod for having been a hospital nurse and a banker and everything that is mentioned but he’s no better himself. He’s always seen, heard, smelt, felt and tasted everything and if he really can’t think of an answer he says ‘I used to know.’ Still I love him. Loel is his own captain which adds charm and keeps him on the bridge in spite of the fact that there is a robot pilot that can be trusted. Ed said goodbye to his three blonde girls and off we steamed at five on the eleventh.

  A breeze freshening quickly livened up the boat rather too much, and Gloria quickly swallowed the new miracle seasick drug dramamine. I refused, but during dinner I felt none too dapper, so swallowed the pill and in ten minutes was right as a trivet. Canasta fills dull moments. The twelfth we woke in Calvi – most beautiful, sun and snow mountains, really picturesque little town and a citadel smothered in wild flowers. What early May can do to any place, Glasgow even! And what it does to the harsh high bastions and crumbling higgledy-piggledy houses soaring up in disorder is miraculous. I held my breath for the blue and yellow wealth of flowers. The beauty was surpassed next day when we sailed into a deep gulf called Porto. There at the mouth of the romantic river was a scene that must have made Captain Cook open his eyes wider – so beautiful – huge eucalyptus trees and junglish virginity – no sign of man until a little dancing dug-out boat came laughing alongside holding Tarzan and a young half-naked girl. They didn’t stay to speak and I wondered if I had really seen them.

  We walked up the river. I shall remember it always – myrtle and cistus in bloom (called interestingly enough maquis4), asphodel and flowers without a name and wild thyme underfoot. In the afternoon we took leave of lovely Porto and by evening reached Ajaccio, founded by Ajax (I wore asphodel in my black shirt for his memory). Dinner ashore – quite a lark – and this morning we have done all we can about Napoleon – maison natale and tomb of Madame Mère and and now I’m sitting, my pastis to hand, writing to my dearest son and wish, O so much, he was here. Just bought some whitebait in the market to relieve the monotony of ship’s tins. I’ll go and look for some red pepper.

  Chantilly

  May 29th, 1950

  I made a funny joke – a rarity for me – on the yacht. We were discussing the name for Loel’s new ship – Diana? Gloria? Gloria Mundi? ‘Better’, said I, ‘call it Sick Transit.’ We listened, Daphne Bath and Xan Fielding her boyfriend (a parachuting Adonis alas half her age), to the Derby on the radio. They backed eight horses both ways – twenty-four chances – and not one of their selections was mentioned by the commentator after the ‘They’re off’. Joe Alsop5 yesterday told me of larks at Breccles – you and Isaiah and the singing and the brilliant fun. Does Isaiah like you? I hope so. I think he’s like diamond Dr Dolittle, so brilliant and so tenderly good.

  Sachie and Georgia6 and Moira Shearer, accompanied by the Hamish Hamiltons, were here the other day for lunch. Moira, one of Sachie’s loves now alas for him married, is most exotically beautiful – real scarlet hair and ashen colouring and huge murky blue eyes like the unsettled colour of newborn things and of a slenderness to break and to snap like a tulip, and she a Scotch lassie. Sachie said of a most hideous bore who had been killed and when asked how ‘Well, you’d hardly believe it, but he was shot accidentally.’

  Chantilly

  September 1950

  Papa returned late from shooting. I’d been happily in bed and had just begun to imagine him shot and no one with the nerve to tell me when in he puffed having met with his usual mischance. On their way to the meet some 100 kms away a stone, invisible to man, had struck with pistolic report the camionette’s windscreen. Complete blackout for the driver, glass in crazy pavement and clouded at that. They backed down to a village using the door as windscreen and the glass was cut out to allow the hurricane of 60 m.p.h. in to bite into their flesh. Nice two days’ sport. On the return the usual. Pierino gets out to wipe the substituting mica and ‘Papa pense pipi’. Pierino leaps in again in the night darkness and buzzes off oblivious and blind to Papa’s vacuum at his side. Papa left screaming and half crying. Poor Pierino. He can’t get over it. In a kilometre he had realised and returned to the desperate ‘Excellenza!’ but O his hysterical description of it ‘Ze croyai aller fou and croyait mort’7 with gestures.

  Moura came today accompanied by Tom Cadett,8 by train too, very devoted of them. Moura twice the size and particularly nice. She’d had a good time coming home from a French holiday alone, stopping at a fair and riding a pig and shooting at the range till she won a bottle of white wine and drinking it on the spot, and shooting again till she’d won two flower vases. When I first knew Moura she came to Bognor with H.G. Wells and we went to the fair and H.G. played hoopla till he won, but instead of getting a double-lifesized pink velvet rabbit that he’d flung his hoop to win, the prize given him was a packet of a cheap cigarettes. He made a serious row in his falsetto squeak and fought and lost.9

  We are reading The Outcast of the Islands aloud. It makes the whole difference to me in this uncongenial country life to have a book that two can get back to. The walks are to be more systematic – exploratory ones lasting an hour and a half and taking winding mossy ways.10 Then there’s the ‘sticking in’11 and then the letters to get in better order and then the book. I’m writing believe it or not from a Chinese restaurant by the Sorbonne – a few Europeans struggling and giggling with chopsticks. I have ordered a Cantonese sausage. We’ll see what it gives.

  Chantilly

  September 22nd, 1950

  Will September never end? It’s a holiday month so being back at the bench I consider it over. It’s been dreadfully depressing since you left. I can’t do without your support and affection, besides there’s nothing to scold. We dropped Rai and drove home in splendid speed. The headlights are the best we’ve ever had. My room could have set ice cream. I woke up feeling ill-all-overish and melancholy and ashamed at 5 a.m. and remained so, too listless to do anything, even radio, nor garden or Norah or tidying – nothing – speechless too. The stove was lit in my bedroom and straight to bed I went in complete warmth. Papa read to me A Town Like Alice.
We found it dreadfully dull. At last I took my temp. and found it over 100 and felt much better and less ashamed. This was good old grippe caught from Norah and explained a lot. Papa was put away downstairs and Noémi produced some sedatives belonging to Mireille which I very much suspect, since they were as big as marbles, roughly made and navy blue.

  Nancy’s just rung me with a spicy story about Cyril Connolly. For a long time he’s had a mistress called, I think, Miss Skelton. She is now the ‘unidentified blonde’ to whom the Pharaoh Farouk12 has taken a shine. Figure to yourself – Cyril dashed down to the Midi to be in at the slaying and had a wonderful time on other men’s gold. The King gave her £100 a day for clothes and made her buy £100 worth extra at one go, so she bought rolls of stuff and I suppose good stuff for Connolly. The result was a kindling of Cyril’s passions and a determination to marry the breadwinner. He’s trying with registry office now and from the day he lands her she’ll bring home no more bacon.

  Chantilly

  October 4th, 1950

  Lunch on Monday with Dolly and Mogens. They are going to Uruguay to escape concentration camps.13 They call it an exploratory journey but they are taking all their servants and I suppose the Rubens. I should love to leave myself, because I like moving on and new continents and blue skies and a new life, but I couldn’t leave you and Papa, and Dolly only has Mogens who will follow. Kind friends tell her a revolution is imminent in Uruguay and that they are taking their money out of the country. I told her that I’d heard they were going to have atomic experiments in that part of the Atlantic, but she’s only afraid of the camps, I think.

  There was a dinner with the Windsors the night before. Just the eight – Dudleys, us, Vinses14 and two Yanks. Wallis dreadfully over-animated and I don’t somehow think it’s drink – benzedrine rather. She repeats herself embarrassingly. That night you were the refrain – you at Monseigneur – over and over and very nice about you. I talked to the Duke after dinner (a particular agony) about the Bahamas. ‘It was a bit difficult for me, you see, I’d been King Emperor and there was I, a third-rate Governor.’ He says things like that so simply – no boggle, no laugh, no inverted commas. My agony began before I left home. I’ve only got one smart dress (or dowdy one for that matter) so I had to be got into it willy-nilly. Pierino was called to help with getting the zip together. Hiccups started as soon as I was fastened and kept its hick up until my return. Now hiccups can be arrested, even postponed, by very severe pressure on the palms of the hands. I dug my thumbnails therefore into my lines of life and fate and came home with bloody stigmata and at last free of the hicks. Louise has come back for good with another chef-d’oeuvre written. She has a well-paid difficult job – to buy antiques for Marcus,15 a mammoth store in Texas. Everyone has heard of it but me.