by Diana Cooper
I’m having myself as Cleopatra50 put on my new passport and French permis de circulation – that will be unlike other identification portraits.
February 12th, 1952
Chantilly
Just in time. You left me on a Sunday, I talked to you from my bed, sadly ailing. I went to France without any improvement. I rather naughtily didn’t write out of a peevish, bronchial nastiness, wondering just how long you would let me languish. As I will probably see you before this letter reaches your poor myopic eyes it’s just as well that I can no longer reproach you with unrelieved heartlessness. Whenever you are in pain of heart or body or in despair of jams, dishonour, disillusion, nervous apprehension, drink or blackmail, you may rely on your mother trudging thro’ snow, thro’ bars, to perjure, to betray, to murder or – most difficult of all – behave courageously to help you – but in your own smooth days I must be courted and petted and needed or I can’t react. I was ever so, with lovers too, neglect never roused me; only true love and cosseting got good exchange. I could write daily to Conrad because he would have pined without his ration of loving words. I can’t expect you to pine without yours, it wouldn’t be in your nature, but there is a ‘mean’ (B.M.T).
On D day (D for dead)51 I went to lunch with Poor Louis52 and Louise and Prince Paul at Maxim’s. There Paul broke the sad news and from then to now, and still, I listen to French and English news and accounts. I read the English, French and American press cover to cover. The French papers are as densely packed as the English – much more embroidered à la française, full pages day after day. As for the B.B.C., it has surpassed itself. I don’t suppose you listened to the Tradition of Kingship – mourning and something like resurrection only not – wonderful verse, wonderful selections and music, very Third Programme. All three stations in one makes a big difference to the expatriates as the ‘light’ penetrates like a ray thro’ jamming. ‘Death came like a friend’ was, as you say, the wonder of Winston’s oration. Evelyn of course tries to spoil it all by writing ‘W. Churchill made an excruciating speech on B.B.C. about King’s death. Platitudes enlivened by gaffes – the most painful was (roughly) “During the war I made a point of keeping the King informed. He showed quite an intelligent interest. I even told him military secrets and he never once blabbed.”’ We know poor Evelyn to be possessed, but I wish he didn’t make me feel like a baby’s cake of Pears’ Soap. He goes on to say ‘We are in fact the undoing of all the work of recent historians who have exposed the wickedness of Elizabeth Tudor. “It has begun today in all weekly papers – REBUNKING.”’
We’ve just had such an onslaught of pompes funèbres on account of de Lattre. No one really cared a pin, or rather didn’t care as much as you or I did,53 but the obsèques were magnificent in size and Napoleonism. Our tradition is Chaucer in the villages. The heralds going from one to another – cutting red cords as they go ‘Oyez, Oyez’. Papa went over to the Privy Council and thought the Queen was a moving figure of pale dignity – her voice like her mother’s bell and all the horrible elders (himself included) with vice and greed stamped on their features surrounding her frailty. Bobbety said ‘Our beloved Princess Margaret’. I liked that but I do hate her no longer being la fille du Roi and having got more into the Aunt strata.
Prince Paul has been asked to the funeral. For him it’s tremendous – back to England a real royalty after his disgrace and exiled Kings. I’ve had to get him his visa, trembling I was that obstacles might persist like lumpy seas.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow about whether you want to go to War Office window for the funeral. I remember as a very little girl thinking King sounded so funny and actually Nanny saying Mr. Brown will be K.C. now, and not knowing what it meant.
February 18th, 1952
Chantilly
Lovely journey, calm and foggy. It passed in a flash. I spent a very happy hour marking the programmes in my Radio Times, hearing them (fortunately) in anticipation, for they turned out to be records of the past week of the King’s funeral. The little Simca was waiting on the quay. I was the only first-class passenger among a dozen other classes. I paused at the cake shop, ate a meringue and a baba au rhum and a small pyramid bar of Toblerone and set off for my wintry ordeal. No snow to start with; nothing much at Beauvais and at Creil. In our region quite a bit, not enough to make me late – so I was bitterly disappointed to find at what compares to your 5.45 an empty house shuttered up so darkly, no Papa, no nothing but cross-faced Mireille. There were a few letters, one from John Huston, a film producer who I had written to because Iris Tree had asked me to. He wrote from Vineuil to my surprise and asked me to come over for a cocktail. I did right away – very attractive man who did The African Queen and a pretty young wife – next door. He is working on Moulin Rouge, a story about Toulouse-Lautrec to be shot here and in London, so that is a flutter of excitement. There was a letter too from Paddy Leigh Fermor asking me to go and have a meal with him at Passy s/Eure, so that’s another flutter and I shall go Friday next when Papa is gallivanting in Paris and talk about Voodoo and Toussaint l’Ouverture.54 It’s dreadfully cold and this French house has no confort anglais. No open fire that is more than a little black hope, no squelchy chairs to draw up, no room that isn’t all doors and windows and passage. It means I just go to bed and stay there and get haunted by the thought of heating this huge house and then sitting in a small bedroom with a stove.
We read Villette aloud in the evening and first class it is – staggered one is by the sophistication of the vicarage-cum-moors’ girl’s style and outlook. She’s such a suspicious censorious prig to boot, but it is frightfully good. I miss the King on the radio quite dreadfully. Division of programmes, only one of which one gets and that the most frivolous. Why are my Eroicas and Donnes and Heralds, my coming up like a flower, my friend death, and my glorious Resurrection all blotted by Have a go, Over to you?
I’m bored, John Julius – sad isn’t it? This is not a life I could ever tolerate, from early childhood I was always praying for excitement. Nature provides it in summer, but in winter the Monday morning stretches out interminably, no garden, no babble or effort. I’d be better in Paris with theatres and concerts and friends, but darling Papa’s happy enough and busy with his ‘past’ delving and his book writing. I ought to put my letters and Conrad’s and my life in order too – but there’s no inclination and no room that has a table and sufficient warmth. I am going to try to keep a diary to you again. The cook’s bedroom-grown amaryllis are show worthy – four mammoth red, white or pink megaphones on one stalwart stalk.
February 20th, 1952
Chantilly
Well, darling fool – où sont les neiges d’antan?55 Gone, thank the Lord. Papa and I are to sneak off and lunch at the village of Montgrésin not ten kms away. All yesterday I pored over papers and letters, my own to you, and Papa’s and brother John’s. The latter writes me twenty kind pages about not marrying Papa. In it there is a piece that the poor boy did not realise was to be so soon disproved. John, a bit of a misogynist, wedded to his Uncle Charlie (Lindsay) – very girl-shy, fell deeply deeply in love with the girl of girls Rosemary Leveson–Gower, the best I have ever known. She was boy-shy (what ghastly expressions) and accepted his proposal of marriage and unending adoration with hesitation, almost reluctance. The engagement was announced, jewels bought, everyone over the moon, when she took ill and was operated for appendicitis. During convalescence, weakened and apprehensive, she told her mother56 to get her out of the promise.
Milly, a true Edwardian schemer and large-scale liar for the public good, sent for John and told him with tears that the doctors having peered into all parts of his beloved bride-to-be said biologically she was infantile and quite undeveloped and would never have children. John loved her so much that although to him this was the worst of handicaps he prepared to swallow it all. But Rosemary broke the engagement with determination and plunged poor Johnnie in desperate melancholy. Two or three years later they both got new spouses, Eric Dudley and A
unt Kakoo Tennant, and in this letter to me he tells me of his joy and relief at having been preserved from a fatherless fate – and advises sacrifice of true love in favour of good sense. Shortly after Rosemary bore Eric three bouncing sons, and was the most perfect of wives till she was killed at the age of thirty-six. John, deeply unhappy, took Belvoir’s whole garden to her grave at Henley.
Feb. 21st. I never slept a wink last night, got over-excited about a book by Gallico about a pussycat.57 I can’t listen for a bit to the radio – saturation point was reached in London and now it’s too frivolous and cheap. Tomorrow I’m out on the razzle dazzle with my boy Paddy Leigh Fermor, cross-country – but I’m not used to tête-à-têtes and I feel nervous.
Chantilly
Feb. 22nd, 1951
Just off for my jaunt to Passy s/Eure to spoon with P. Leigh Fermor. Shy, fluster.
Sunday. Well the gallivanting was a red letter. It took me a good two hours cross-country by Pontoise and Mantes. Strange little village house in which he lives – the loan of a Lady Smart – was warm and welcoming and I really felt myself back in the pond I was raised in. Conversation très agréable with a male man who delights in one. Paddy was superb. Cultured, funny, saga-ed, zealous. We had a charming filthy little lunch over the stove of sardines, Pernod and vin ordinaire and afterwards we walked for two hours over low wooded downs in sparkling sun, talking ten to the dozen about people, grievances and enthusiasms.
I was tired with motoring and enjoying myself but flogged myself to please Papa to La Régence for a bite of supper. There he did everything to irritate that’s possible, ordered nine oysters and ate six, allowed me to order for him (as I was past eating) some chipolata sausages and wouldn’t eat them, ordered himself an omelette, left half. We had a bottle of Traminer out of which I forced myself to drink half a glass, then another was uncorked without my noticing. Then to put the bottom on cruelty’s cap at 12.15 when I’m tantrumming a bit, that it’s his birthday and he likes a bit of celebration and he’d been alone all day while I was philandering, etc., etc. Ignoble, don’t you think. I could have philandered any other day. I’d have given him a present and not been tired and cross. ‘It is just as I feared’ – one only has to be consciously happy, sunny, to be sure of an approaching drenching thundercloud. So I went to bed furious. Simca was too and stalled to demonstrate and we had to be bumped into démarrage58 by a kind couple who sat next us and no doubt watched the row. Next morning Papa couldn’t wake up, thanks to two whole bottles of Traminer, so I continued to be ill-tempered, naturally thinking he was going to be ill and die. Then we lunched at a charming restaurant du quartier – found by Auberon, La Petite Auberge (A1) and came back here to rest and warmth and a bath and Villette.
Chantilly
March 3rd, 1952
(A blunt pencil and at the coiffeur so nothing to be done.) So much to say. Our lovely looked-forward-to weekend is a bit spoilt by Sheila Milbanke bringing as escort Rupert Belleville, semi-reformed alcoholic, instead of darling Tony Rosslyn her son. No matter. Nancy R. will be here and you’ll get Papa’s room and Tucker a bed at Norah’s if he comes. The other sensational news is that Mireille and Jean are leaving our spoiling service. It’s an ‘unhappy ship’ and the cause is Jean – no one can take him, he has no friend but his mistress, and also we can’t afford the steadily rising books on account of the system (i.e. the more you buy the more commission for the buyer). Mireille being du midi59 with dashes of Wop blood cannot resist listening at doors – always a direct method for self-inflicting wounds. I had an appalling scene with Jean, in which almost too much came out from me and not enough came back from him, then a charming one with Mireille who is far more intelligent and sensitive and admitted, half to save my pity, that she had always wanted an inn, an independent inn, in the mountains, so that’s what now they will find, fortified by some handsome economies drained from us over five years. What will the unknown devil be like? Jacqueline is perfect and Pierino would be if not so bousculé60 by Jean. (Pencil hopeless, just found another in the bag.) Then the Poles who are absolutely deaf and dumb because of language are said to be the source of all intrigue. Language on both sides was a little veiled. ‘Vous allez vous installer comme restaurateurs il paraît.’ ‘Où Milady a-t-elle entendu une telle histoire?’ ‘Mais partout, Jean – dans la ville et dans la forêt.’61
Poor things, I hate their fall – though it was they who consciously laid the last straw on my hump. Today comes my boy Paddy Leigh Fermor and his girl Joan Rayner, also Liz. We’ve had Wu alias Bo for a few days, he left yesterday for Rome and Capri. I’m pledged to meet him at Monte Carlo on 31st inst. and motor quietly home. Shall I be happy? – all is better when we’re alone together and he has learnt how impossible he is as a provoker-cum-sulker – I think he’ll try. I’m looking for a sort of Tony Pawson to drive the bat’s-bath down – as I hate Pierino as a two-day companion. He criticises my driving and spends 1200 francs on his lunch.
The houseful now (Sunday a.m.) is delightful – all amusing, all pretty. Liz in inkiest black with too black hair. David and Jamie bent double over their several petit-points. Paddy I adore. His father was an expert on snowflakes and has three named after him. Three is the operative word. Joan Rayner charming, not unlike Joan of Arc. Lunch is to be darkened a bit by Bob Thayer (in love with Liz) and wife Minka, daughter of Pips Shey who befriended Paddy for a month at the age of nineteen in Bratislava.
MY FATHER HAD just been offered a peerage – a viscountcy to be exact – and there had been endless discussions on the title he was to take. My mother characteristically wanted the romantic or the jokey: St Vigil (from their love for San Vigilio) or Lackland. Templar and Tabard were also considered.
Chantilly
June 10th, 1952
Papa’s all out for Norwich now. Man-in-the-Moon would be better. Norwich spells porridge to me.62 He thinks St. Firmin spells vermin, but it also spells ermine. I’m so tired of being congratulated on my big step down.63 Nice for Papa though, I must go on saying that. I don’t know about you, you dear little boy.
Luncheon with P.L. for Margot Fonteyn. Twenty strong, very amusing, Orson Welles all the rage and in love with Lulu – who still lies in her plaster armour in hospital looking lovely. Then beastly Polly Palffy64 comes and makes her cry and sob by reminiscing on past happiness. He does it in order to make her pay him to go away.
Conversation palpitante last night next to the Duke of Windsor. His mother he says is quite gaga; thinks the Queen is Queen Victoria, she thinks in her more lucid moments that the young Queen is abominably educated. His sister-in-law65 is called ‘Cookie’ by them, the Windsors. The sad part is, he said, that his mother and his beautiful wife, whom he loves every day more and more, and ‘it’s sixteen years now’, would get on like lovers. He described meeting his nieces for the first time after sixteen years, thought the ‘Maggot’ had something. ‘Cookie’ had been very nice, though he’d refused to take a drink with her. I think he was a bit tight or he couldn’t have said so much.
* * *
1 A wonderfully dotty model of the column in the Place Vendôme; the statue of Napoleon on the top could be dressed in three different sets of clothes. It was a present from Louise; I longed for it and was furious when my mother left it to Paul-Louis Weiller.
2 Martin Battersby’s panels were a great success, not only at Chantilly but later when my mother moved to London. Alas, after her death none of the family had room for them. They are now in storage at Belvoir Castle.
3 Gloria Rubio, former mistress of my father and now married to Loel Guinness.
4 The word maquis, literally ‘scrub’, took on a new meaning during the war when it was applied to the French Resistance.
5 American journalist. Second husband of Susan Mary Patten.
6 Sacheverell Sitwell and his wife.
7 ‘I thought I’d gone mad and he was dead’ in heavily Italian-accented French.
8 British journalist.
9 I was there, aged a
bout six, and remember the occasion well.
10 Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
11 Of bookplates and photographs.
12 King of Egypt.
13 You may well ask.
14 Try saying ‘Windsor’ in a French accent.
15 Neiman Marcus in Dallas.
16 Cupping.
17 War Office.
18 Paul-Louis Weiller’s seaside house near Le Lavandou.
19 King Umberto of Italy, now living in exile.
20 One of us.
21 Owner of the Palladian Villa Malcontenta just outside Venice.
22 That he had the flu.
23 The Comte de Paris.
24 Gerald van der Kemp, curator of Versailles.
25 The Loved and Envied, a fictional portrait of my mother.
26 Walston, his long-term mistress.
27 Louis Jouvet, leading French actor.
28 A monk in the monastery of S. Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia. His hands bore the marks of the stigmata and he was revered throughout Italy and beyond as a living saint. He was canonised in 2002.
29 It was a convertible. A month or two later I drove it back to Paris.
