Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  I was at Queen’s Hall when Mr Baldwin made his memorable speech. I saw the blasé reporters, scribbling semi-consciously, jump out of their skins to a man when he unfalteringly said that the Press Lords “were aiming at power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

  On the telephone Max had given me no encouragement. As all fighters should be, he was confident of his victory. On the evening of polling day, the voting ended, we talked by telephone and he said that we had won. He told me roughly the situation in every ward, and it proved a very accurate summing-up. Then came the count, and Duff had won by over five thousand votes. I see little that night in the blur of fatigue except a weirdly lit mob-scene composed entirely of familiar faces distorted by yells of enthusiasm, waving enormous flags dragged from house-tops. I see a Delacroix picture on a cyclorama—no less. So we had a last tired triumphant supper with Mr Baldwin, who, to honour his champion, walked on Duff’s right as his sponsor when, a week later, he took his seat in the House.

  * “William and Mary,” included in And Even Now (1920).

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Politics and Parties

  WAS it in 1931, annus terribilis, that the pound fell? Whenever it was, Duff and I were in Dorset staying with the Cranbornes. Lord and Lady Salisbury were of the party, and so were Mr Baldwin and others. The news then, as now, was always bad. Times, we all thought, had never been worse or England closer to the abyss. On that Sunday morning at Cranborne an atmosphere of great unrest pervaded the house. Some secret crime seemed to be clamouring for exposure. Strange motor-borne messengers had come and gone. Mr Baldwin, once churched and luncheoned, was to return to London. The Salisbury faces wore looks of “We could a tale unfold … to harrow up your souls.” The rest of us knew by whispers that we must assemble in the front court after lunch for some pronouncement to be made by Mr Baldwin.

  “The pound has fallen. We are off the gold standard. I think it right to tell you immediately.” The sentence, delivered with hesitation of voice and nervous stick-writing in the gravel, came as an anticlimax, but Mr Baldwin’s gravity reduced his audience to two minutes’ silence, broken by Lady Stanley’s saying: “What exactly will it mean?”—a question that we were all burning to ask. The explanation was unsatisfactory to most of us, but it set them all talking of short rations and sacrifice and resolve to stiffen upper lips, tighten belts and pull in horns. In a few weeks the pound’s insufficiency turned to golden hopes of prosperity. Were the dejected or the buoyant right? I have never asked, nor have I thought of it again.

  We went to the Lake of Annecy that August while Mr and Mrs Baldwin were taking their yearly cure at Aix. Duff, who never lived down his schoolboy’s bashfulness before masters, was strongly against asking them to luncheon beneath the chestnut-trees at Talloires on the lake. I was determined to leave no precious stone unturned that might lead to preferment for merit recognised and rewarded, so they were invited and they accepted, but Duff said that I really could not wear trousers. I said that I must, and he said that he would lift his ban if I promised to say nothing embarrassing at luncheon. I promised.

  It was a prayed-for day. The swans floated past the green banks, and luncheon was the best that a fortune could buy. I had my trousers and a fisherman’s shirt, and the usual vast straw hat to give me confidence. Mr Baldwin had just been back to London at a moment’s notice for a crucial interview with Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister. We had hardly sat down before I said, with a total lack of inhibition: “Come on now, tell us every word Ramsay said, for Duff tells me nothing.” There was a smiling grunt as answer. Duff’s face blazed into a sunset of shame and embarrassment, and Mrs Baldwin, astonished and horrified, said: “My husband tells me nothing either, but then I would never ask him.” I felt more remorseful at having betrayed my promise to Duff than worried by Mrs Baldwin’s snub, but I did not feel, as Duff did, that I had murdered his political future. For the rest of the sun-flecked meal of unique dishes and wine we talked of the uncontroversial news-less swans.

  From Annecy we sped to Venice via Garda, where we passed Mr Leo Amery running at the double down from some Tyrolean mountain-top, London-bound to be in at the Labour Government’s fever and collapse. The dear good conscientious man got no office in the Coalition reconstruction, while Duff’s calm patience led him on to Venice and promotion. He left me at Venice for the House of Commons’ sudden reassembling. We hated being parted that August. Duff wrote from Brescia, speeding away in the train:

  26 August

  I was never so miserable at leaving you as tonight, not even that first time when I left you in New York. I had again that horrible homesick feeling which makes everything seem vanity and vexation, not because I have ever ceased to love you as much, but because we never had such an unexpected and anyhow beastly parting. We have been so very much together these last ten days, and so wonderfully happy. In all our twelve years of marriage I do not think there has been anything to equal it. You grow always not only dearer to me but more necessary, and you become all the time better, wiser and more to be adored.

  I hate writing in the train and I can’t do it as cleverly as you can, but I wanted to write to you before I went to bed. Every yard that I travel from you I become more and more determined to return on Saturday …

  P.S. I had just stuck this in the envelope when the train stopped and I popped out my huge head and saw we were at Desenzano. I looked north. The lights were twinkling all along the shores of the lake and I sighed my soul towards our San Vigilio.

  London

  28 August

  I went straight from the station to Buck’s where I found David Margesson. He gave me the gossip and implied, though he wasn’t sure, that I had not got a job. He said definitely that Oliver [Stanley] has. George came in and said how furious his cousin was at not getting the India Office.

  I went to bed feeling disappointed but at the same time happy at the prospect of return to Venice. This morning I was busy making arrangements to return to you. I found that I could get to Venice tomorrow night at 9.30. I imagined your meeting me, and our going to “Olympia” on the Piazza, and my telling you all the news. Then the telephone rang. Mr Baldwin’s secretary wanted my address. I felt sure that his letter would only be explaining why he could not give me a job, otherwise he would have telegraphed. The letter arrived just as I was leaving for the Party meeting and was giving money to our old friend, the drunken gaolbird, in the street.

  My dear Duff, I am afraid your holiday is going west too. I want you to go on as Financial Secretary to the War Office under Crewe, who will give you a warm welcome. Let me have a telegram and come home as soon as you can. Give my regards to your lady. Thank her for her letter. Ever yours, S.B.

  I received it with feelings as mixed as it is possible for feelings to be. I saw a crowd of politicians over cocktails at Quaglino’s. Oliver pretends that he hasn’t heard it yet, but I believe it’s quite settled that he goes to the Home Office under Herbert Samuel. E. is dithering with disappointment, so are many others. Another must give up all his directorships and serve under one he loathes. It shows what people will do for office and it reconciles me to mine. It will be much more amusing than it was, as I shall be alone in the House of Commons and have the Estimates.

  I’ve just rung up Haddon and spoken to John and your mother. John said that it was all a big mistake. We ought to have refused to coalesce. I said (which I believe is true) that within a few hours the pound would not have been worth twopence. “And a good thing too,” said John.

  I was looking forward this morning to coming back to you. I had got the motor-trunk ready and looked out the Baedeker of Northern Italy and everything.

  So I was alone in Venice, missing Duff cruelly, praying for his return and (incompatibly) for him to get office. A wilder season Venice had not seen since pre-war days. Laura Corrigan had that year married the Adriatic and seemed to be holding most of the palaces in fee. I scarcely knew her, and I wanted rather priggi
shly to keep out of the maelstrom of her loyal and disloyal guests. But once Duff’s fate was sealed I got lured to the festive Mocenigo Palace and never regretted it, for there Chips Channon became a diverting, lasting friend, and many younger people pleased me and frolicked me along with them. I wrote to Duff:

  Grand Hotel, Venice

  30 August

  They are pressing me to join them. I suppose I’m for it, in fact I’m there. I dined with them last night and my plate was pyramided with birthday presents, including a really noble cigarette-case from Laura. It’s all a modern fairy story, with everything that Beauty wants in her new palace—twenty backgammon-boards, rare friandises, and, since there are flesh-and-blood servants and many of them, placards on all the bedroom-tables warn you to tip them at their peril, and whatever we do we mustn’t buy stamps or cigarettes, or pay for washing or cleaning or coiffures, and above all we must remember not to pay for drinks at the Grand Hotel or Lido Bar. The brutes have kept from Laura that Harry’s Bar exists, so there they may spend their own money and feel untied.

  Palazzo Mocenigo

  Later

  Today has been wonderfully typical. Luncheon on two wide fishing-boats about a hundred yards from the beach, with forty or fifty people taken out in speedboats and others on pedalos or water-bicycles or floats, and some actually swimming. Ourselves in the lifeboat with red-shirted mariners. Music on board, and spaghetti. Charlie de Beistegui the host. Baba d’Erlanger in very tight white linen trousers, a white linen glengarry and some great gems newly-dragged from the ocean. Mrs Corrigan left early to arrange for my arrival here. The arrangements consisted of taking another palace floor, along with eight more servants, another gondola and another super-charged launch-de-luxe. The arrival of the Christophers of Greece has something to do with it. Laura is in a frenzy of thrill—so sweet really. She has bought a huge new bed for Victor Cazalet, a dozen pillows or “cousens” as she calls them, and fifty “scrap-băskets.” At all hours new scrap-băskets roll in.

  I’m writing on the beach and it’s impossible, but it’s never impossible to tell you I love you, not even if I were on a grid like St Lawrence, or without a tongue like Lavinia, or in hell itself.

  Palazzo Mocenigo

  31 August

  The scrap-băskets continue to arrive, a spate of them to-day.

  Laura went to meet the Christophers yesterday and curtsied on both knees. She took a retinue of guests and footmen and gondoliers. “But, Sir,” she said, “where are your servants?” “We have none,” was the answer. It was sad, as the palaces had been turned upside-down to lodge them as befitted their serving rank. She couldn’t help but explain: “Why I, Ma’am, have two body-maids and Mr Corrigan never crossed the Atlantic without two body-men.”

  Everyone pretends to have a birthday since mine. Colin tried it on yesterday and was given a lovely shagreen pull-out watch. Laura really has the world’s happiness at heart. We all look filthily rapacious, but I don’t feel so at all, and probably no one does.

  Palazzo Mocenigo

  2 September

  A diver has gone into the Canal to find my brooch, the one that my friends gave me when John Julius was born. It dropped off me from the Volpi balcony while I was watching the Galleggianti and (because the sea’s the street here) I feared that it was irrecoverable. I’m sitting on my balcony (Byron’s). It’s 8 a.m. and a stainless sky above. At 7 nothing was doing on the Canal, but now things are moving. The gondoliers are coming out to tend and burnish their gondolas and little sea-horses. An English tourist has just passed with a shooting-stick across his knees. Very incongruous!

  I’ll motor home with Kaetchen, who will fetch me from Salzburg. That way I’ll get four or five days quiet before I come home. No one goes to bed here and the drinking is formidable. Last night Chips threw a party at Murano about twenty strong. You never saw such an orgy of dancing and pas seuls and plain shouting, plus the commotion of home-coming too, yelling “Sole mio” with a view to waking the dead as well as those sober-sides who had bedded down earlier. I feel a little bit of a drag through it all, but it’s wonderful how I keep going.

  Palazzo Mocenigo

  4 September

  Yesterday we were all marshalled into a group on the beach to be photographed. Seventy-year-old Jane San Faustino, dressed as a white Marie Stuart, was made to walk half a mile through deep, blistering, powdered sand to join it. The backgammon groups were broken up, the sleeping woken. No one made much demur, recognising it as Laura’s hour.

  The poor dear complained to Chips yesterday, as she buzzed round the three cabanas in a frenzy of tidying up and counting the dice, and searching for losses in the sand: “I don’t feel I am getting the vacation I should be getting.” She surely isn’t! A note on her table of “Don’t Forget”s said: “75 couverts for Saturday. Servants fitted for white. Pot for Beck’s room” (this last to take the place of one shivered for a joke on the orgy-night).

  Palazzo Mocenigo

  6 September

  I missed writing yesterday because I was in my typical fancy-dress-frenzy from dawn to eve. I was also turned out of Byron’s bedroom and put in the dining-room, to allow eighty people to dine in it—two tables of forty, everyone in white, a Cartier-bag prize for the best lady and links for the lucky man. I went as the Ghost of Byron’s dream of the Levant, and was admired by artists (Lifar, Oliver Messel and Madame Sert). The party had no entrain and there are a lot of complaints on the beach this morning. The funniest is one going round the bars where the hang-overers are having hairs of dogs. Their headaches are attributed to too many tuberoses.

  In October 1931 came a General Election in which the St George’s division was as usual not contested. Duff and I went buzzing all over England and Scotland in aid of candidates in difficulties, shaky seats or the Central Office’s whim. On election night we had a party at Gower Street, where from little radios in each room we listened to the results. It was the first of as many such parties as there were General Elections until the second war, and no parties have I enjoyed so much. The Prince of Wales, I remember, was at this one, and so was Winston Churchill, who cried when he heard that Randolph had been defeated. Newly elected London Members would roll in after their successful declarations to be toasted, and those who had lost were revived with stimulating wine and kisses.

  Politics dominated our life, but they were never really predominant in mine, except vicariously for Duff’s sake. John Julius was growing up with cotton-white hair, gloriously healthy and gay, still dressed in frill-hemmed spotted muslin frocks or checked rompers. I did not apprehend disaster for him as I did for Duff, but then I had Nanny Ayto in whom I had more trust than in myself. John Julius was learning to read very young as I had done, and I saw no fault in him. “Poor old baby,” his monthly nurse had said, “he really seems to want to please.” He did.

  The Miracle was again in the air. I went as an emissary from C. B. Cochran to conclude an agreement with Reinhardt in Berlin. Iris met me there, and together we stayed with Raimund von Hofmannsthal, now released from Hollywood’s apprenticeship and fluent in English, having held his own and made a livelihood in that most difficult world. His father had died, alas! and now he was on his own, to be an enduring pride to Iris and to me, for we considered him our creation, “brought up by hand” (to quote Great Expectations). A contract was signed and The Miracle planned for the coming year. It was the first time that I had been to Berlin, and I thought very little of anything there except the paintings and the Palace of Sans Souci.

  So I went back to the stage in 1932, this time at the Lyceum Theatre, rat-ridden but romantic with the shades of Irving and Ellen Terry and all my mother’s youthful enthusiasms. These seemed undimmed when it came to The Miracle and she was in her old element again.

  My mother’s chief ardour at that time was building. With the huge nest-egg laid by Arlington Street’s sale, she had bought 34 Chapel Street and later the next-door house. This remarkable residence had a double garden with a sky-h
igh ivy-mantled wall instead of houses at the back. Doris Keane, famous for the play Romance, had owned the house and built a long room into the garden. My mother doubled its length, lit it with high orangery windows, joined the two houses and built a second orangery drawing-room on the opposite side which still left a large garden with a terrace, a lawn, flower-beds and a statue. It was all designed for me, and as I watched her building and her dreaming of my princely grandeur to come, I could not bring myself to restrain her ebullient extravagance, although I knew that her visions would never materialise. The many rooms were filling up fast with the Shannon family portraits, her drawings and the cream of the Arlington Street furniture, none too big for the spacious proportions of her building. The Hatley brocade curtains, at last bleached to her desired faded blue, were hung. The lace drawer, the feather drawer, the one for ribbons and the one for furs found their places, as did the immovable chest for stuffs and dress-lengths and patterns, a yard square, taken on trial from furnishers and never returned. Shelves were filled with Tauchnitz books bought on journeys in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, bound extravagantly enough in half-vellum and marbled paper. Tables were crowded with statuettes in bronze and clay by living sculptors, and works of art very unlike the Unknown Political Prisoner. There was nothing ordinary in her house, not even the meals, which would have been unusual had they existed. She disapproved of spending money on food, and still more upon drink, so it was abandon hope the greedy and the alcoholics. She herself nibbled Marie biscuits and sipped Ovaltine, living comfortably and healthily upon nothing. Her appearance had altered little and her clothes not at all. In fact, they were the same ones. Phyllis Boyd, a girlhood’s companion and now a beloved neighbour in Chapel Street, said, peering into a photograph dated 1894: “Tell me, Noona, what stuff is your shirt made of? Can you remember?” Noona (a name given her by her grandchildren and used by her younger friends) twiddled with finger and thumb the shirt she was wearing and said: “Voile.” When these dear relics fell from her back she would wear my less flamboyant clothes, but I never knew her buy a dress.