by Diana Cooper
Brendan is the life and soul of all decks. He and I insisted on going to Lübeck for its beauty’s sake. Liz and he are great German-baiters. At a restaurant they asked the band to play “Wien, Wien,” a tune that they had heard was forbidden on account of Jewish composership, but it was willingly struck up. Nettled by this, they asked for “The Red Flag” disguised as “O Tannenbaum.” Again the band was nothing loath, played it with verve and condescendingly laughed at us poor mutts.
It was high jinks last night and no heelers, and tziganes and bonnets high over the windmills of Gdynia. We trooped out to dine with Colonel Beck [Foreign Minister of Poland] at a Government House suite of rooms. Scrumptious fare of bortsch and crayfish and vodka. I sat next Beck. There must be more to the Colonel than I can see, for I saw nothing but an Ancient Pistol and a weak tipsy Pistol at that. He repeated himself with the persistence of a cuckoo and waved his tail with peacock vanity. Still he is a colourful freak and enjoys everything in life, I should think. He has told me so often that he is “the only Colonel Beck” that I’m beginning to think that he protests too much. The ribbons he wears, he says, are equivalent to V.C.s. He has fought fifteen wars, and he says that Hitler has power and charm and flair, but he is not “a Colonel Beck,” that the man in the street is his friend, “parce que je ne suis pas méchant,” and that if the man in the street smiles at you it shows the splendid kind of man you are.
Duff went back after dinner to write all these things home, but we went on to be stifled and delighted in a little night-club. The Poles dance like reeds in the breeze, and the Colonel pinched all our thighs and tangled our toes and became less articulate in his sketchy French, and repetitions followed more quickly as the champagne slopped over. One lady not practised in English said to our Captain that she had seen Enchantress and that it had looked “awful”—no, she meant “funny.” The Captain hardly spoke again until we got to the quay at 3 a.m. where we taught him and Flags and Tommy Troubridge to dance the Lambeth Walk and the Palais Glide, all laughter and voices suppressed so that Duff shouldn’t wake and look out of his porthole and have a stroke. The curtain fell on the three girls carrying Flags like Hamlet onto the ship. He’s not so big as Nelson. The sailors on the gangway never smiled.
9 August
We’ve had an all-Beck day. The fellow is so intense and concentrated a bore that we took him on in shifts. The demon alcohol must be the trouble. I don’t believe that he was once sober. In the morning he took us round all the interstices of this gigantic new port (Gdynia). It was very hot, and feigning interest for two hours non-stop exhausts.
Then it was lunch on board for Beck and all his polliwogs, and off again afterwards en masse to a peninsula called Hell, where there is a fashionable bathing resort called Jorata. We went there by battleship, improbably enough (a small destroyer, it looked). Rather archaic boats circled round us, packed with Poles, looking like something from the Bayeux Tapestry. They wave and shout “We lofe you!” in a most engaging way.
After a perfunctory bathe and the whole picnic generally missing fire, we sat down in a “Dancing” with a band to make one scream, and a lot of cakes and whisky. This meal was my lowest hour of the trip. Beck had become completely unintelligible. The brag record was still on. I would hear the same old phrase occasionally: “Il n’y a qu’un Colonel Beck.” Duff, to my horror, was dancing (with dignity, thank God). It seemed likely to last until bedtime.
The wars of Troy came to an end one day, and so did this Chinese torture, and 8 o’clock saw us shot of the lot. Dinner en famille and en ville. Three delicious courses we ate, which by some confusion of language or thought turned out all three to be crayfish, but none the worse for that.
To these letters Conrad replied:
Let me speak only of your second instalment descriptive of Colonel Beck—a literary gem, an intellectual treat. You are a great letter-writer, Diana. You scribble in forty words—punctuation, spelling, syntax, grammar and construction all faulty, I strongly suspect—but the result is: Colonel Beck in his habit as he lived is before me. I might read his life in three volumes but it would only be stuffing and padding and would not tell me anything more essential about him.
The papers announcing the list of dinner parties and balls make it sound like the Congress of Vienna wherever you go. I have wondered many times whether I should enjoy being with you. That your company is dear to me I mention formally. I should not mind ordinary roughness at sea as I could lie quietly in my bunk. “Catting” has no terrors for me. But the awful ceremonial, the Admirals and worse still their wives, dinners, picnics, speeches and healths! It all sounds to me a nightmare. Then the night-club life, champagne and lurching home round 5 a.m. Imagine what a wet blanket I’d be! The kill-joy and no mistake.
My letters continued:
Danzig
10 August
This morning it was like waking up in the middle of the Battle of Aboukir—a bombardment of guns from Germans, Poles, Free Citizens and our own muzzles. We were in the mouth of the Vistula. Duff had a morning of calls and suchlike duties, so Liz and I and Mogs and George and Troubridge paid our first visit to the old town. Have you been to Danzig? It’s too beautiful, I think—a baroque Amsterdam, with trees and public buildings like Hatfield and Blickling. Streets and trees and sun and gables and cobbles and inns and steps are what I like best to see—better than a picture or a museum or a waterfall. A street in Venice or Peking, a group of yurts in the Gobi or igloos with squalling Lapps give me more fun than seeing Dante’s angel, had he painted it, or reading the volume that Guido Reni treasured.
Lunch on board, while the ship, that had lain all morning in the river mouth, steamed into the middle of the town. A dull afternoon at Zoppot, the ville d’eau eight miles out.
Liz receives orchids at every stop from London.
In the evening work began again. Dinner in the Rathaus. Wonderfully rich and beautiful and candle-lit. I sat next Herr President Greiser (unilingual Freeman) and Herr Something-Else (also without French or English). Delicious food and an atmosphere of rich merchants (Venetians, Holbein, velvet coats, orders and Hanseatic League) which maybe I only imagined. Another magnificent candle-lit room for a whoopee with Goltwasser and Kurfürstens. Carl Burckhardt, who is the League-of-Nations-elected Commissioner of Danzig, and whom I have met through Raimund, was not present, but tomorrow will be his day. Herr Blume, a little Dickens character with a bigger English vocabulary than ours and far more jokes and energy, is to be our guide tomorrow.
11 August
I made Duff walk round the old town at 9 this morning. He didn’t like doing it much, but was kind. The Frauengasse and Langegasse and the Heiligegeistgasse are so great a delight to me. At 11 Herr Blume and Frau Huth and a nameless Fräulein marched us off for some serious sightseeing—the Marienkirche with an erste Klasse Memling in the sacristy representing the Day of Judgment. Herr Blume is one who is not content that the subject of a picture is Jacob and Esau. He likes to tell you the story of Jacob and his father as well, so of course it takes longer. We were fairly whacked by 1 o’clock, but without a breather off we toiled to lunch with Swiss Carl Burckhardt, the League of Nations Commissioner. This was our first civilised meal. He was a great friend of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and talked like him, and his voice and French were so unlike what we have been hearing, and his wife was attractive in a dress painted with all the birds and their names. He was a trifle highbrow for me (you and I once said how often in conversation we felt ourselves to be well out of our depth). I was treading water a bit, he very serious and unsmiling.
George and Duff had a chasse with him and the Président du Sénat afterwards, while foolishly we others went to a ghastly castle, four times the size of Windsor, built by the Ritter of the Empire after the Crusades. It was eighty kilometres away, all restored roughly in 1860 and looking exactly like St Pancras. We had Herr Blume with us to lengthen out the tedium, whereas the chasse was a splendid turn. A great deal of whisky and gâteaux between the flig
hts of duck, a chorus of horns mit Dirigent, a speech from the President to beaters and foresters, more corning and horning, while the shooters stood to attention over the bodies of eight melancholy duck.
In the evening we returned hospitality to twenty-four Freemen and women. I had the Commissioner (still unsmiling, intense and interesting) and the President (utterly German-speaking and square). It was as these Enchantress dinners always are (dreadful!), but “I think that they enjoyed themselves.”
To my surprise when all the guests had gone the glorious Swiss and his wife lingered with the idée fixe that the night should not end, and that we must find fun at Zoppot where there was a soirée de gala, so off we went minus Duff and spent a few hideous hours in a boiling scrum of monstrous Germans, unpowdered, unbanted and unhaired (it is their own gross tastelessness that makes them so disgustingly ugly and one can with justice blame them more than nature), with a band blaring into one’s ears. Burckhardt carried on undaunted with his smileless highbrowism, while I trod water and sipped warm champagne. Liz was there and Mrs Burckhardt and her girl-friend, a Pole called Potowski, and George Gage.
At 2 a.m. the host asked us to go shooting with him. “Now?” “Yes, we often shoot at night.” “All right.” This disconcerted him a little, and finally it was settled to return to his house and discuss possibilities etc. The chasse scheme was dismissed, as I had feared it would be. Instead the gramophone was turned on and a little desultory dancing was performed, while his wife and her friend disappeared, I hoped to cook eggs. The wintry talk flowered while dancing from room to room, and I feel that Carl is to be a friend at least. Now it’s Friday and we’re at sea, thank God, for twenty-eight hours. We need a rest.
Helsingfors
13 August
Everything progresses well. It’s a life of extremes—ghastly moments and enchanting ones. The one-and-three-quarter days at sea came under “enchanting”—rest after effort, smoothest waters, purest sky, the full moon rising over the starboard side and the sun sinking on the port side. We walked round the rather nice watery town with Russian traces left, and then there was the usual scramble to dress for dinner with the British Minister, Mr Snow. Mrs Snow is everything that is best in British womanhood, long-legged, good, unaffected and serene. He told me that they sit down with Finns at 6 p.m. to a crayfish feast and stay until 2 or 3 a.m. with scarcely a word spoken.
The Air Attaché West, V.C., with a wife and wooden leg, chucked a luncheon party to picnic with us. They told their host that as they could not be back until 4 and as lunch was for 1.30, they’d be too late. “Not a bit,” said he. We saw them off at 3.45. They told me later that they’d really got down to it at 5 and I saw them come home at 10.30.
Tonight at the Snows’ well-run house I sat between the host and the Finnish Foreign Minister, named Holsti, a darling English-speaking douce-viveur. The great Field-Marshal Mannerheim was there. He made Finland and is treated half-royal, half-Godhead. He looks fifty and is said to dye his hair (and Brendan swore that he had rouged lips) and he is only seventy-two. He’s old Russian Imperialist (that I find irresistible) and says in French “Pardon.” I had never heard of him, had you? Field-Marshal Mannerheim.
14 August
We (Snows, Wests and Holsti, our party, the Sub and the Doc) all went on a picnic. Four motorcars. It took place on a high flat rock. The day, as always, was perfect and a large lovely lake shimmered at our feet. Some of us scrambled down a long rocky steep to get a bathe, not so successful as it was quite a shallow lake and grounded with very yielding black slime. I said to my sweet old Holsti: “Do you like picnics?” “Better than anything else in the world,” he said, with the sincerity of a saint professing his faith. Everything practical is done by the Cabinet in this country. George wanted a canoe for the sake of exercise. The Minister for Defence was consulted and the Minister of Agriculture for worms and rods. The Foreign Minister is always opening the car-door, and is ready for any odd jobs.
Finns are like beavers. They work in a violent unceasing way for themselves, cutting and building and quarrying silently, and are delighted with the results. They’ve done a good job in their Parliament House. It’s a modern Versailles with a dash of Solon about it. The Members do their lobby-strolling in a really fairy-like galerie des glaces of marble and crystal. I suppose that, with all their achievements and pride of independence, they can be chewed up by one of several countries in a jiffy.
The Prime Minister took us over his Senate and his stadium and then it was aboard again to dress for Mannerheim’s blow-out. Wonderful house, marvellous food and wines, all of which he arranges, the right flowers, china objects and the right lighting, and after dinner a first-class budding she-pianist. She played everything I liked best and so beautifully that I gave her a handsome jewel off my person. A man said to me at dinner: “In England you have very good cow and pig races.” I wish we had!
15 August
Do you know about a Finn-bath? It’s world-famous. They steam you up Russian-fashion and then flog you within an inch of your life with birch-rods, and so hurl you into cold water. George and I started the day by walking to the town in quest of this sensation, but when we arrived it was not yet open, so we had to content ourselves with a bit of shopping without words. Trying to get a dish of yoghourt was very funny. I acted milking the cow and cutting a lemon, licking it and putting on a wry face. It worked.
Our dinner tonight on board was rock-bottom. I had Field-Marshal Mannerheim and the Prime Minister. I worked my hardest and so did Troubridge, but it was like working stickjaw; and the food tasted to me filthy because of Mannerheim’s epicureanism.
Stockholm
18 August
Alas, alas! the weather has broken on us—thunder, lightning, torrents, and all the anticipated beauties of land and water in the Swedish approach frustrated. The heavens opened as we actually arrived and it looked very glamorous and Northern Capital, Vasa, Christina, Gustavus Adolphus, Venice of the North. There are many French, Italian and German warships in the harbour, so there was a world-war bombardment.
20 August
Sherry with the Belgian Military Attaché, who is alongside in a tonless yacht. Tom Troubridge said to a guest, pointing at it from our deck during a cocktail party: “These yachts have had a baby. Isn’t nature wonderful?” The Swede said: “Please?”
Now we’ve sailed and it’s blowing a gale, but we are in the islands most of the way.
21 August
Duff is poring over Brighton Roch. The others don’t read at all. Occasionally they pick up Denmark On £10, lay it down again and stroll on deck. Flags only looks at an old Daily Sketch.
We had the Doc to dinner. He’s an Arctic and Antarctic explorer, but hadn’t a great deal to say about the poles. Afterwards we played “the game” and I gave them “pemmican” to act and no one except the Doc had heard of it. Don’t you think that’s surprising? It’s household to me.
Copenhagen
22 August
Arrived in this darling Copenhagen today with weather much improved and aneroid rising. The usual guns and consuls and liaison men, plus the King’s yacht and the King on it. He’s called the Kong in Danish.
Those boring old Polish destroyers Thunder and Lightning (British-built) are moored on top of us and play “The Lambeth Walk” on their loudspeakers for the benefit of all hands without any “stand easy.” This makes it difficult to concentrate on reading or writing. Back to the ship to pick up Duff and go to that royal little square Amalienborg to write our names on the Kong and then gobble the freshest of shrimps laid on a dairy-bed of butter and white bread, outside the Grand Hotel. Duff likes it better than any capital. What is there that makes it so enchanting? Next came the Rosenborg Museum, where there are life-size lions in silver, and crowns for the Kongs wrought beyond Cellini’s art, that disappear into the ground at the first touch of a burglar’s thumb.
28 August
Tomorrow will be my last day at sea, and what comes after? Is it war?
Or is it Geneva for me?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Days of Dread
IT was Geneva. John Julius’s school was over and, armed with the address of a small hotel on the Lake, recommended by my delightful new friends the Burckhardts, we packed into the car, picked up Mademoiselle in Paris and headed for the city that had always attracted me. There, I knew, the war skeleton would recede and we should hear good stupefying peace-talk. I wrote to Conrad:
Geneva
September 1938
This is certainly the place for a lady who needs her confidence and her desirability bolstering up (not that these are the worst of my worries, but it’s a flattering place during an Assembly of the League of Nations). I haven’t seen one woman under sixty and the intellectual boys are just spoiling for diversion.
The whole of my first week was one of complete detachment from the world. In a half-house by the lake plage John Julius, our acrobatic Mademoiselle and I fit in a treat. Our own door and morning maid (all in the new-age streamline), our own bread, milk, cakes and Evian to buy in the morning, our own jams and jellies. Flowers smother us and everything is “Sir Hollywood.” Reading, teaching, rowing, poring over newspapers trying to keep abreast, eat up the time. After two days Men were let loose into my drowsy sex-numb life, since when I have never eaten with fewer than five delegates. Chips is here and Mr R. A. Butler, Mr Peter Locksley (F.O.) and Mr Hayter there, and another wild charmer (who looks after the press) called Charles Peake everywhere. MM. Foster and Stevenson and an Unknown are due tonight. Over and above all this lustre, who should I run into, and needless to say cut until they forced themselves on my dense eyes with “Ah! elle ne nous reconnait pas,” but my dear beautiful Carl Burckhardt from Danzig and his wife. The Captain [Euan Wallace], alias “The Plunger,” arrives tomorrow.
