by Diana Cooper
Everybody in consequence felt weak this morning, except those who never opened up until lunchtime. Duff and I, a bit irritable, plodded off at 9 to another temple and a museum where the Mycenæ dug-ups are kept. Most finely-chased cups that maybe Agamemnon drank from, and gilded masks for the faces of the dead, and much gold, jewellery and many swords. Actually the things that Homer wrote about. We bought handwoven stuff from an English weaving-lady that I knew about before, had an ice at the café and came back to the yacht less irritable to a lunch of first-class cold grouse. Good news of Jessel. It appears that it was quite dark when he bathed. No one’s fault but his own. His legs are dreadfully lacerated and broken too, but only below the knee. Dr Keating operated at once, without anaesthetic as he was too weak to take one. He was conscious and “chaffing.” This morning a message told us that he was a bit better, but they won’t think that his life is spared until after five days. All are determined for his legs to go septic, but I don’t see why they need. Sea is saline.
The King, dressed for his hike with the Minister, said: “I say, he’s got the most awfully long legs. Do you think he’ll walk me off mine?” At 2.30 the Minister arrived, a sight for sore eyes—six foot four, with white mustachios trained upwards Kaiser-ways and very short shorts with alpine boots and a stick with a spike. You felt that he had probably got an axe on his back. Our poor boy looked inadequate and went and changed into something harder, and off they went with the athletic detective behind. Time for a siesta and at 5.30 we were off again to the Parthenon. Better still tonight—all hills violet as we have been told they are for the last two or three thousand years. I would like very much to see it with you. I think it cannot disappoint.
Dinner at the Waterlows’ a great success. I sat next Sir Sydney and was delighted with him and his wonderful Lucullan food and rare wines. Home and bed betimes. The King’s walk had been a huge success. Conversation never stopping. Tonight is the last night.
27 June
Our last day and I planned an expedition. It was a complete success but it gave me anxious moments. The yacht was to sail at 7 a.m. and take us to the island of Ægina. So the pampered ones, if possible, were to be up at 10 and find themselves already there. I never thought they’d make it but they did, with the exception of Helen who didn’t try. Tommy Lascelles arrived on board at 7 a.m. from Grafton and I had a little talk to him, self-conscious because I hadn’t been down to my cabin, having just rolled out of bed.
The island when we got there looked quite insubstantial—Tempest-like and crowned with a solemn temple, improved by ruin. We landed and then a bad moment came to torment me. Twenty donkeys were waiting to take us up. The crowd fell on us, all of them natives who did not know about him being a King but thought that by grabbing physically they would be certain of a client for their donkey. So they shouted: “Aristo, Aristo!” and grabbed and pulled us about. They were old clean crones and young shepherd boys, and it was funny to see Duff being led off by two crabbed Fates. He looked under arrest and went quietly. But others didn’t like being manhandled and panicked a bit. There was no means of getting onto a donkey for being pulled towards another. As we walked the gay pack jostled around us. I had had exactly the same experience six months ago in Morocco and enjoyed it no end, but this company is different. However it ended as bad moments do, and the donkeys got picked and the rest didn’t follow and we rode (Wallis, Mrs Rogers, Duff and I), the others walking, to the temple, up a steep difficult path through pine-trees and views of sea and mountain. Everyone was delighted, not only with the temple and the brave old world but with the exertion and novelty. We took common snapshots and meandered down again. A romantic bay with translucent water and cavefuls of sirens called to us, and there we bathed. I got over-keen and fell on the rock, covering myself with blood, but I behaved splendidly. So, when it ended, as good things must, it was proclaimed the best thing we had done, and as scheduled we were back on board for lunch and steaming home to Phaleron Bay.
When I returned to London later in the year I was rudely awakened to the reality of what was soon to happen—the King’s abdication. This has been written about so many times that my silence will be golden. It brought me a world of tears and sighs, and it brought King George VI and his spell-binding Queen to the throne.
* Reproduced in the first section of illustrations.
CHAPTER NINE
The Price of Admiralty
THE new Sovereigns made a habit of inviting their Ministers for a night to Windsor. I had never been there before, and recovered youth’s anticipation of pleasure. Duff, who had for many years idolised Queen Elizabeth, was equally excited. So off we went one early spring day, and I wrote to Conrad:
Windsor Castle
16 April 1937
We motored down in an Army car in grey rain. I slept most of the way, which I felt was unworthy of the occasion, but I was suffering from a headache, caused, I think, by the excellent Johannis-berger 1900 which was given me by the Goldsmiths last night.
We were warned by the Comptroller’s minion to present ourselves at the Castle at 6 or thereabouts, and that knee-breeches would be worn. We arrived about 6.30 at what looked to me the servants’ entrance and Wade came in by the same door. I heard an impatient telephone-voice bawling “Trousers, trousers, I’ve said trousers four times” as we passed down a many-doored musty passage which led us to our suite. This consists of a sitting-room with piano and good fire, evening papers, two well-stocked writing-tables and thirteen oil-paintings of Royalty, the only charming one being an unfinished sketch of Queen Victoria drooping submissively on a merely “blocked in” figure of her dear Prince, the work of Sir Edwin Landseer. Besides the oils there are about a hundred plaques, miniatures, intaglios, wax profiles etc. of the family in two Empire vitrines, and two bronze statuettes of King Edward VII in yachting get-up and another Prince in Hussar uniform.
Communicating with this bower is Duff’s very frigid room with tapless long bath, enclosed and lidded in mahogany. Through this again is my throttlingly-stuffy bedroom with nine “oils” of the family and a bed for three hung with embroidered silk. Next a large bathroom and lu with eight oil-paintings of the family by Muller 1856, a bronze statuette of Princess Louise on horseback 1869, and Princess Beatrice, Prince Leopold and “Waldie” (also in bronze) on the moors.
After a few minutes Lady Nunburnholme and Sir Hill Child knocked and came in for the smallest possible talk, and a minute or two later Alec Hardinge appeared. He warned me for my good that dinner was at 8.30, leave dining-room with gentlemen at 9.30, but gentlemen don’t stop, they walk straight through us to the lu and talk and drinks. Girls gossip until 10.15 when the men reappear flushed but relieved, and at 10.30 it’s “Good night.”
A man has just come in and commanded Duff to go and see the King. O, I forgot! The first thing that Sir Hill Child said to Duff was: “Have you brought any trousers? No? Then you’ll have to wear my secretary’s.” They had informed all the inmates, but had forgotten to warn those coming from London, that the King had changed his mind. Muddles obtain identically under all reigns and all classes. Luckily Holbrook had put in some trousers, so Duff will look dandy. There is a clock in each room, all synchronising.
Duff is now with the King and I must paint my face and go on wishing that I could have a cocktail. I arrived in the Good Earth hat and the pretty moleskin jacket, and tonight it’s to be the “Queen’s own blue.” It’s high-cut and modest in design, but I’m not sure that it isn’t worse than “strip-tease” because for some reason it shows the minutest details of anatomy through its draping. Till bedtime …
11.15. It’s Fersen, it’s Tristan, it’s Königsmark, it’s Culpepper! The King and Queen said goodnight to the cringing company and the party broke up. I waited for my husband to escort me to bed, and waited in vain, and behaved as I behave only on race-courses, tearing round to one and all saying: “Where’s Duff?” “Have you seen Duff?” and asking in vain. At last I’m down to a butler who replies with an
inscrutable face: “He is with the Queen.” I had the humiliation of being taken to my rooms through the meandering mazes of the Castle by a red-liveried man. I’m pleased of course, and it’s a big story, but I cannot bear to be missing anything. Now I’m sitting among the family “oils” nursing a grievance. It’s all been fine and the Queen in gloss of satin, a lily and rose in one.
12.15. Duff’s not back yet. It will be high treason and the block. Through dinner they had what I thought was an inferior make of loud gramophone playing airs from Our Miss Gibbs and The Bing Boys, but from seeing a red-uniformed band playing after dinner I suppose it was them muffled.
I’m to be down at breakfast with the staff at 9 tomorrow, and then to take the Castle tour with Dick Molyneux. My admiration and love for the Queen did not stop me talking. The iron tongue of midnight, and still Duff is in the Queen’s bower. It’s d’Artagnan (no! Buckingham), it’s Bothwell, it’s Potemkin, it’s Lancelot, it’s boring.
He came back at 12.30. One hour so-called drinking tea with the Queen. She put her feet up on a sofa and talked of Kingship and “the intolerable honour” but not of the crisis. Shan’t write any more. Too tired. Duff so happy, me rather piqued.
Shortly after this visit to Windsor Duff had a dream—a very vivid one. He told it to me on waking. He showed more distress than any dream warrants. Mr Chamberlain had sent for him and he knew in his dream that it was for dismissal. He half-expected as much, for a London newspaper editor had made him a handsome offer for articles to be written after he had left the Government and urged him to accept, knowing (he said) more than he could admit of the future Cabinet’s make-up. In his dream Duff walked boldly to the Treasury, but his fears were for his face. He felt frightened at the thought of it puckering, the upper lip sagging and the crest falling. He opened the Chancellor’s door, marched breast forward and was woken by the contortion of his face and his tears falling. It was a curious dream for Duff to dream, he who did not know fear of fiends, but he remembered it, and so did I when very soon afterwards an ominous message came inviting him to step into Mr Chamberlain’s parlour. But there was no web, nor yet a boot, and he came out of the parlour with a smiling face, to a post that he was to like better than any other, that of First Lord of the Admiralty. He could not at the time exult wholeheartedly. He was too regretful at leaving the Army, for which he had striven with all his frustrated might for eighteen months.
Always surprised by the past yet never at the time, I do not remember any joy and delight at being given the most romantic house in Whitehall, looking on to the Horse Guards’ snowy arch, the garden of 10 Downing Street and the pelicans in the Park, and also the Enchantress, a thousand-ton sloop to sail the seas. I felt sorry for the Army, as a loving wife should, and I was a little loath to leave dear Gower Street that we had been so gay in. Its mutations, its associations, its books and its atmosphere wrapped me gratefully round. It had grown with our fortunes. I wondered if it would wait for us and shelter and indulge us again as it had done for nearly twenty years. I never loved any house as well and I trembled for its future, with good reason. But there was such a tide running, water to tread and waves to dance upon, a Coronation ahead, Generals exchanged for Admirals, my mother’s pride and enthusiasm, and Duff’s own First Lordliness. There was no time, no time. We did not move into Admiralty House for many months. A lot was to be done, and Sir Philip Sassoon as Minister of Works was to be the most generous and interested of decorators. He gave us a fine bust of Nelson, and I bought for the hall a mermaid from Copenhagen. Conrad and I had been to Elsinore to see Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh play Hamlet. Rain had defeated the actors’ hopes. The platform was too wet for ghosts, so the play was acted in the lounge of the Beach Hotel. Never was there such a performance. Disaster leads to finest hours, and Lilian Baylis, in mortar-board and gown, told the audience in epilogue that they would never see a better rendering. It was there that the beautiful pair plighted their troth, and it was on leaving for England that we bought the naked mermaid carved in wood by Thorwaldsen’s father. Her arms are raised to the skies, but her face looks repiningly into the depths. For all too short a lease she filled her Admiralty niche, surrounded by Trafalgar trophies.
The principal room in our new palace was furnished by its dolphins that sport, and support, each chair, table, screen and stool. They had been given by a generous Mrs Fish in memory of her husband. Their walls were eau de nil and their gleams needed little light. For the gaunter dining-room Philip Sassoon recovered for us all the pictures by William Hodges and John Webber of Captain Cook’s voyages, the biggest of which I snatched for my bedroom, which was much larger than the dining-room. It represented war-galleys at Tahiti and hung over an elaborate marble chimney-piece, reminiscent of Arlington Street, that faced the bed of beds, which I wonder how I ever dared to erect. The room was at least twenty feet high, and from close to the ceiling hung a wreath of gilded dolphins and crowns. Blue curtains, lined with white satin and falling to the ground, spread open to reveal a headpiece of more dolphins, tridents and shells. At the bottom corners of the bed two life-sized dolphins, arch-backed and curved, menaced intruders—fishy sentinels. It was a sensational room in my eyes. I asked Rex Whistler how the bed should be, and he drew me a design that never was or will be, with me asleep and the First Lord coming too late to bed.
Duff transported his library to the Admiralty, which wounded Gower Street’s pride. He was always very happy “battering his books” in his free hours, though now he had less liberty than ever before. On the second floor John Julius had his schoolroom looking on to the Horse Guards Parade and, of course, I made it a riot of fish, nets, tackle, barnacles, anchors and crowns, with actually a tank of sea-horses bought from the Zoo and particularly difficult to keep alive. Fresh fleas seemed to be their staple diet, which meant perpetual to-and-fros to Regent’s Park, and we found them viciously pugnacious, erect like knights on a chessboard, strangling their brothers with their iron-spring tails. So many died that we gave up struggling for their lives.
Wade and Holbrook and our modest cook came to Admiralty House. Holbrook was anyway an Admirable Crichton, and absolute power had made him already intolerant and intolerable. He wearied us with his importance and long words. He could produce like a genie anything he was asked for. With a rub of his lamp would appear a pair of greyhounds on leashes for a Diana tableau, ripe mangoes or flood-lighting for the Gower Street fêtes. He could wait, valet five gentlemen, garden and drive the cars. He even made us several hundreds of pounds a year by forming the Holbrook-Cooper Company for transporting shingle from Bognor beach to waiting lorries on the road. The Company’s office was a tin hut on the beach, its stock-in-trade an old white horse and some trucks. The deeds and agreements had green tapes and red seals. His profits were double ours. We always rather hated him, and were not sorry that the Admiralty daunted him. He rightly left us when it came to an end. He took his pension and came to dust.
The Coronation! Nothing but the Coronation. Clothes, uniforms, robes, ermine, miniver, rabbit, velvet, velveteen. Where were the coronets? In the bank, at Carrington’s, or in the attic? There were fears for bad places behind stone pillars, absurd fretting over starvation and retiring-rooms, alternative routes to the Abbey via Ealing or Purley. A Coronation still, in 1937, belonged to the Peers. The Ministers did not feel so certain of ringside seats. Still we would be there, and Molyneux embroidered me a gold dress and Eleanor Abbey’s genius fashioned me a crown of golden flowers. I looked faded but not, thank God, overblown. I wrote to Kaetchen:
Dear parti-coloured Kat, The family go fifteen-strong to the Coronation. There’ll be no room for the Dominions. Brother John carries some sort of sceptre, so does Charlie Anglesey, Kakoo carries the Queen’s canopy with three other little Duchesses, Ursula [Manners] and Liz [Paget] are train-bearers. Henry Uxbridge is page to Queen Mary, Charles, Johnnie and Roger are pages too, one to his father, the others to Lord Ancaster and someone else. Mother and Marjorie will be there, and Duff
and me the “also rans.”
Our places we found to be behind the Viscounts, not all I hoped but good enough. The many hours of expectation were relieved by exquisitely funny comings and goings. Peers without pages in a crowded tribune cannot cope with their velvet robes. One hand holds the coronet, the other gathers up the heavy folds in the most impudic fashion. Retiring-rooms dotted all over the Abbey are magnets. Our Viscounts were dodging in and out like water-carriers. Hunger obsessed them. One, returning from retirement, brought from some first-aid booth an enormous box of mixed chocolate-creams. He naturally stumbled (his velvet brought him down) and the silver-papered chocolates went careering down the steeply built-up tribune. There was an ugly rush to catch them by any Viscount within reach of their rolling.
The mediaeval ceremony of consecration passes all too quickly. The crowned heads leave, the Archbishop’s voice is still, and the present jars back through the loudspeaker. Let no one move before direction, was the order. I hate orders, and I persuaded Duff to sneak up to the exit so that, once it was opened, we would head the Viscounts. This anti-civic move was, of course, followed by many commoners, so that when at last the direction for the Viscounts’ stampede was given, a hundred of us were pressing against a door that could be opened only to Peers. It was a moment after my own heart. The bewildered usher, desperately obedient, barred the narrow way. The Lords were protesting from behind, but ours was a spot of no return. We were allowed out at last by vowing to come back to our places as soon as the Viscounts were cleared. I suppose that no one kept that promise. Certainly Duff and I, the original culprits, never looked back but walked briskly to Brendan Bracken’s lordly collation laid for friends in his Lord North Street house. Duff, who (as very often at such times) almost cried with shame and embarrassment, was regenerated with relief, good food and pride in my lawlessness. Conrad wrote:
