Autobiography
Page 20
B.E.F.
September 18
The Tale of Chloe|||||| is even more beautiful than I remembered. Perhaps I get its beauty intensified by seeing you as the Duchess all the time and Katharine as Chloe. I put it first of his works and of all short stories. The artistry of it is so admirable. The atmosphere begins with the lightest of light comedy, the sinister note is first struck when Chloe plays with her silken cord and gives answers full of what the Greeks called tragic irony (or perhaps what we call it when the Greeks use it, which they always do). After the most beautiful bedroom scene in the sixth chapter you begin to know it won’t end happily. The light fades and finally goes out with the sun on Camwell kissing Chloe. The stage is set for tragedy and the audience ready. Perhaps the realism of the Duchess fingering the corpse which falls on her is a little too horrid—perhaps it isn’t. You must read it again and tell me, and one day we will read it together. Goodbye, little Duchess of Dewlap.
B.E.F.
September 21
Your letters have taken to coming in pairs again, bless them. There were two today. I have written to thank Venetia for that melon. Aren’t I good? I write continually to Katharine but she doesn’t answer. She must have taken a dislike to me.
More officers are coming out to us, which is good. I really ought to get to Paris soon. If you were married to me you could meet me there. Why aren’t you, pray? Oh, I am weary of the war—weary of the society of soldiers, the colour of khaki, the jargon of militarism, the dullness of safety, the discomfort of danger, the barren wasted country and the autumn weather.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.****
Belvoir Castle
September 15
I haven’t thrown off my dejection yet and am so unpopular in consequence except with Father, bless him. He has a Schwärm for me at the present and still regards me, as he has since I went to Guy’s in 1914, and through all the successive debaucheries, lethargies and “ambuscades” of the last four years, as a patriotic self-obliterating martyr, overworked and unfortunate. (Incidentally he is quite right.) We all are, thanks to this vile age.
Belvoir Castle
September 17
It’s lucky this bit of life is nearly over. The monotony is very wearing. The only truly agreeable time is from tea to dinner (that space you abhor so much) when I settle in John’s room in the tower. There with a nice book and a fire it is as quiet as the grave, although John and Charlie are both working like shellfish building their shells—laboriously, noiselessly and apparently movelessly. Kakoo sometimes disturbs them but not more than a little draught. I broke the stillness tonight by asking them what their work was. Their voices answered fresh and proud: “Transcribing some letters of George IV,” and “Cataloguing my incunabula.” If you know what that is—I do.
Arlington Street
September 25
I naturally hoped the Grenadiers were battered out of all fight. How can they again be bled? My cruellest fear is that you may be thoughtless and flushed with past glory and risk all my life’s hopes to gild gold.
Arlington Street
September 27
I’ve just got a lovely letter from you before the battle. I am praying almost aloud that you are out again unscathed. It’s a lovely lovely morning, every tree still clothed and green, and the street will be clear and brightly coloured when I go out. I have walked with you on such mornings and once driven to Golders Green, and often bought brioches for Fido’s dainty breakfast in St James’s Street.
I spoke too soon. Max has just rung me up to say the big English attack is developing this morning, and incidentally that the Bulgarians have asked for peace. I have a silly Steffie-like belief that if I should control my fear (which I couldn’t do) and think all well till wrong is proved or strive to think of something else, as I do when I think of Mother, that then I should lose my grasp of you that tethers you to safety.
Arlington Street
September 28
Ivo, who I dined with last night, said a man called Menzies of the Grenadiers said they all thought you should have a V.C. Claud Russell had seen Jerry Villiers and spoken to him of you, and Jerry had said he could quite believe it—from the indifference you had always shown to your work, he thought it probable you would show the same to death.
Arlington Street
September 30
I have got a great new money scheme. It dawned on me alone. I believe it’s a flair. Capital must be scraped and planked on to the aviation passenger branch for after the war. It’s Diana of the Crossway’s husband and his railways over again, and steamships too. Beaverbrook shall do it for me. Scruples must fade—we must be happy. O my darling, are you safe? I only think of that, though I rattle on. See how my ideas bubble and squeak to-night. It’s the stimulus they receive by greater hopes of your safety.
B.E.F.
September 25
Tomorrow before dawn I fight a battle. I only fear death when I think of you, because you are all that I cannot bear to leave in life. Apart from you, I could be absolute. You must be brave and must remember that battles terribly disorganise the post…. Read no forebodings in the first pages. I have none.
B.E.F.
September 25
A beautiful letter came from you in the dead of night. I think yours are the loveliest letters ever written and I hate to think of yours to me being lost by any misadventure. Light they could not see for many years, but after many years they might give light for ever. Should they ever fall again into your hands, you must give them to Alan, together with all your other ones at 88, and he should make a book of them. How I envy him the fun of annotations.
B.E.F.
September 27
I have fought another battle and am none the worse. I haven’t done anything to be puffed up about this time, you will be glad to hear, but we did what we had to do promptly and effectively and laid one of the cornerstones of a great battle. It was rather fun. We started in darkness after a wet night and there was a good deal of death about at first. Then the sun rose beautifully and the enemy fled in all directions, including ours, with their hands up, and one had a glorious victorious Ironside feeling of Let God Arise and let His Enemies be Scattered. And then they came back again over the hill and one was terrified and had a ghastly feeling of God is sunk and his enemies doing nicely. But we shot at them and back they went and God arose again. This happened three times. And now the battle has rolled away and I am tired, tired and wondering where I shall be tonight. I am so dirty. It was a shame to keep us three days in the line before fighting. The Germans hate the war even more than we do, thereby proving once more their superiority.
B.E.F.
September 28
We had a pleasant afternoon yesterday watching from high ground the battle rolling away in the distance and German prisoners marching towards us in battalions. Then in the evening we were relieved and came right back and had supper of sausages and spaghetti with plenty of wine. We were able to undress and sleep in comparative comfort, and this morning we washed and shaved which we hadn’t done for four days. And with my buttered eggs I had three letters from my darling—one from the train and two from Wales. So you may imagine I am happy today, so happy that even Sidney [Herbert]’s dozen bottles of Madeira just arrived can hardly make me happier. Perhaps I should rather say content than happy, or hardly content but at ease—tired and safe and full of hope.
Exaggerated stories seem to be in circulation about me. I had a quite sickening one from Audrey congratulating me on being recommended for the V.C. You can imagine how she would handle such a theme. Of course you contradict such rumours.
Arlington Street
October 1
I’m on the cry again and Her Grace found me with crystallised cheeks. It’s quite unreasonable but you must be lenient to great disappointment. I came in late and saw your letter on the hall table, brighter than the Bethlehem star. I thrust it into m
y breast and feeling it crackle was able to talk amicably about Eric and all sorts to Mother for forty minutes. I flew to my room and found it was a pre-battle letter—a dead pearl—and as I finished it disconsolate I saw Edward’s darling eyes in a picture on my dressing-table and they frightened me with their tender pitying look.
Arlington Street
October 2
I am intoxicatedly happy to think of you safe, and your letters, all the day, are the cause. “Let God Arise,” how good!
Venetia told me today she would open Breccles for your leave.
Arlington Street
October 8
You have made me feel so well and cured; as I walk down the streets high-headed and jubilant, people accost me with congratulation on your gain. Cardie and Bouch and Ralph for example. I felt last night that I had been a little damping over the whole flame and flare. It is ridiculous to act jealousy for the dead, yet I wrote in a tone of “Why should you have all the life and the fame and all the love, while they desiring more of these are dust?” It was out of a strange duty and faith, but what I really believe is that you must have everything and that you deserve the most.
May I put D.S.O. on the envelope? I do so like it.
B.E.F.
October 1
I am obsessed with the thought of Paris, tortured with fear lest anything should happen between now and the 9th to stop me going, tormented with impossible dreams of your meeting me there, constructing a thousand schemes to make your presence possible, harrowed with dread lest I should lose a letter addressed by you to the Ritz as I instructed.
Is Paris impossible? Cannot you rack your fertile brain, so cunning to contrive, so sure to execute? It would be the Austerlitz of your diplomacy.
B.E.F.
October 3
I wish it didn’t make me so cross to be beaten at chess. A better loser at cards I’ve never met, but I can hardly be civil to whomever beats me at chess. When you beat me I pretend I’m not trying, and indeed how could I be expected to keep my eyes on the board?
B.E.F.
October 5
I have just been sending home your letters—145 of them. I hated to part with them but it had to be done. They couldn’t stand the war, bless their hearts. You see they were nearly always in damp places which is very bad for them. When I re-read them I often find that they have shut up again as though they had never been opened, like flowers that shut in darkness and only open to the sun. And then they cling to one another so that they can hardly be separated and grow limp and sad, and the marks of your little pencil grow fainter and fainter.
Life is strangely like a Shakespeare historical play these days with all its improbabilities.
Scene: A tent in Picardy. Soldiers playing cards. Enter a Messenger: “Bulgaria asks for peace.”
Enter 2nd Messenger: “Bulgaria surrenders unconditionally.”
Enter 3rd Messenger: “We have taken 10,000 prisoners.”
Enter 4th Messenger: “The French have taken 20,000 prisoners.”
Enter 5th Messenger: “An American Army is surrounded.”
Enter 6th Messenger: “Turkey has made peace.”
I suppose these are the spacious days which some people have sometimes wished for. Well enough in their way but I could have done without the space and should prefer a few of the people back who went to make the crowds.
Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, Paris
October 7
Carroll Carstairs and I left the war at daybreak yesterday and arrived at Amiens in time for lunch. It was delightful there—such a spirit of joy and victory abroad as made the eyes water. The streets full of parties of inhabitants returning, staggering under their household goods and carrying the canary in their right hand, all so happy to find their own house standing and that of their neighbour blown to hell. We had a gargantuan lunch and visited the cathedral which has been hardly in the least damaged. I met Sidney Herbert in the street, but he was with his Colonel and could only speak for five minutes. We arrived here at about half-past nine to find the Ritz and every other hotel crowded, so we came here which is really very nice and I can watch the Rue de la Paix from my first-floor windows. We had a little supper and a bottle of champagne in our sitting-room, played a game of cards and went peacefully to bed expecting to sleep for ages. But either the unaccustomed comfort of soft bed and linen sheets intervened or else the keen bright air of this beloved city woke me. At all events I could not sleep after seven but lay and read and breakfasted and was happier than any king that I have ever read of. My book was Histoire Comique of Anatole France. I had never heard of it and it’s hardly worthy of him but quite worthy of me. When I at last got up and went out I was almost intoxicated with delight.
Perhaps my greatest pleasure has been my bath this morning. You have never been really dirty, so imagine what the joy must be when in that state to get into a bath of water which looks cleaner than what one is accustomed to drink.
We will come here when we are married and walk slowly about the sunny streets and linger for hours before the shop-windows, and you will enjoy everything that I enjoy, and I will enjoy you.
Hotel Ritz, Place Vendôme, Paris
October 13
As I was lying in my bath Carroll came in and said “The war is over.” And really it would appear to be so and now we can be married and live happy ever after. Orpen spent the evening with us yesterday. O you silly baby to have believed his story of the Belgian spy. The lady in question is living in Paris and is Orpen’s mistress. He says she was feeling a little tired the day he painted her. He deliberately invented the story in order to advertise the picture and got into some trouble with the War Office for doing so. I am so glad it isn’t true. I had often thought of it since you told me.
Arlington Street
October 11
Such excitements since I wrote this morning. William (our dear ally) coming up met my eyes with a look of panic and appeal for several seconds, so unusual in a menial that I asked him if he was well. At ten he called Sister White down to His Grace’s room and there raved at her madly—mad. Trembling and incoherently he tried to explain what he could not. He had dreamt of me, he said, and it had upset him terribly. He asked if he was a criminal? And if so what was his crime? He wanted to die before he did worse. It was due to the pictures he had seen as a little boy. He wanted to explain it to me and couldn’t. Sister sent him to bed, quieted him a little and sent for the cook’s husband to come and keep an eye on him. The whole story is like a lodging-house shocker. By one our beloved William, neglected for a few minutes by the cook’s husband, had found a penknife in a drawer and forced its flimsy rust into his throat, narrowly missing the carotid, and after this he was borne away to a mental institution, and I feel really sad at the loss of him. He loved us both so much. Till now it has been a pointless story for you, but the interest begins and ends when I tell you that he went on after his throat was pierced murmuring “Duff Cooper, Duff Cooper, that little moustache. Has he really got the D.S.O., Sister? It’s very fine, isn’t it?” So that is why it has made such an impression on me. Poor man, it’s real horror. The theories are many as to the cause of this defect. Is it sexual restraint? Or v. disease? He often raved “Women come to me but they don’t want me.” Is it fear of abnormality preying? I have nursed a similar case. I must go and see him tomorrow. Such a day for the servants. They are mad and totally disorganised with the stimulus of crime and tragedy, and the gold was gilded when news came that Marjorie’s housemaid was on the Irish boat.††††
Do you still love me, Duff? I dreamt last night that you returned, but your teeth were black and pointed like a dog’s, and slightly blood-stained. I felt it to be the stain of the brutality of war (silly) and loved you less. A cruel dream.
Arlington Street
October 12
I don’t know how to think of Peace and I am so certain we can hear the beating of its wings—the beating of your wings pluming for home. O dear, thank God for you—with
out your participation I could dread the war’s end—the roll call and the cold blood’s realisation of loss.
I send you a decoration of my own, found in old readings. Don’t let me for ever hear you brag brag bragging, or if it is to be my fate I must arm with some new eyes for my tail.
I had enclosed the following letter:
The fact is that Diana’s dazzling Georgianism has licked up the fabric of the Pre-Messianic world, as flame licks up the stubble, so that the rate of obsolescence among all previous types can hardly be paralleled even in the province of naval architecture. She has telescoped time and shut up like an accordeon the inconsiderable ages which intervene between Olympus and Arlington Street. Because of her the daughters of many noble houses must bewail their virginity, bitterly regretting that they did not make hay before the sun shone. Theirs is the portion of weeds and outworn faces, and no man shall knock at their door till the Dustman calls to cart them away to the rubbish heap. Or do you think that, as there arose a Pre-Raphaelite school of painting, so there may some day arise a Pre-Artemid school of passion? I doubt it. ANON.