Autobiography

by Diana Cooper

  And to Duff:

  10 September

  Men still grow up from the ground as though dragons’ teeth had been sown. Roger Makins (F.O.) today, and the bigwig Halifax on Sunday. Our little boy has a “snivelly cold” but not a “nasty snivelly cold,” and he’s very gay and good and very like you in many ways, preferring the bar of the Carlton with billiards and drinks and other chaps to exploratory wanderings through old streets and dappled woods.

  I’m dreadfully unchic. My equipment was for beach-baking twenty miles away. My car is a disgrace, full of crumbs and silver paper and little pools of old rain. I cut no figure at all, but there are no other women!

  11 September

  We all thirteen of us went into France for lunch outside Divonne (Restaurant Marquis), the party romping-gay on a snow-panorama-ed terrace, Mademoiselle and John Julius at a separate table. On the way back I insisted on us all stopping at Coppet, assuring them that it was a museum. Far from it! The house is privately owned by three gratin French sisters, who were today giving a party de circonstance, into which the whole motley crowd of us, hatless, in old slacks, open collars, golf-jackets and rather flushed faces, found ourselves hurled before we could collect ourselves into a retreat. A bearded young man said: “We last met in Cairo” and introduced me to the hostesses. I then had to present my crew to fifty people, all over sixty, dressed for a reception or a goûter. Agonising it was. The sisters three took us round the entrancing house themselves, and as they are great-granddaughters of Madame de Staël they knew a lot.

  Two new dragon’s teeth were incarnated in Bob Bernays and Buck De La Warr (now head of the Mission in Halifax’s place), who joined our dinner throng. Carl told the story of your shoot at Danzig and they all rocked and appreciated him very much. I bridled. I must ask Holsti to a meal and anyone else who entertained us on the Baltic cruise. I half-think of giving a fork-supper in Byron’s house, the Villa Diodati, above the Eaux Vives. Carl showed it me. I could have the lovely salle lit with candles and get a local restaurant to provide food. It’s a scheme that needs courage. What do you think? I must repay. They’ve all carried me and handled and dandled me like their precious “Luck” and I might, but for doom ahead, have been unusually happy. I’ve just read Saturday’s Times from cover to cover and think it looks ink-black, and instead of the fête it’s more likely to be the aeroplane or troop-train.

  13 September

  The rumour and panic in the Carlton are not quite what you would expect. Only Charles Peake acts with melodramatic activity. He tears in with typewritten bits and pieces that seem to say nothing new (but always equally bad).

  Tomorrow I am to be hostess to the British Empire banquet. I wanted to go on a Swiss treat, but Chips is very firm with me.

  Just come from visiting Maurice de Rothschild, who used to swim with me in Venice covered with blubber. He still had some on his nose and chin today to cure a fast-generating cold. He was quite unselfconscious about it and snatched kisses as he showed me his monstrous château stacked with Boldini pictures of fine ladies with feet like submarines. I have to lunch with him and his blood-brother Litvinov tomorrow, in exchange for which supplice he will give all my boys dinner and Château Yquem.

  On Friday I am throwing my Byronic fête in the empty Villa. The room was decorated by Jean Jaquet in boiserie and busts. The chairs are covered with chintz that Byron himself chose. John Julius and I have collected sixty candelabra from various antiquaires. I’ve ordered the collation—consommé chaud, langoustes, pâté de canard de Périgord, entremets, friandises et fruits.

  On the lakeside

  14 September

  I must leave this pleasant lea and go and dress for Litvinov, red in tooth and claw. John Julius refuses to lunch up at the Villa. He prefers it down in the Town, so I’ve had to lie for him. Maurice wanted us three to move into his forbidding mansion for the rest of our days here. I had to explain as best I could that I’d rather die, though I’m really devoted to Maurice—always was and always will be.

  A lovely sight-seeing evening last night with Carl in first twilight, then lunatic moonlight, then total darkness, ending up at Lausanne and all that you like in bar and restaurant—an exquisite truite flambée for Madame, a châteaubriand saignant pour Monsieur. Hanging over this fantastic evening were the spectre words état de siège and “ultimatum.” We heard them over the strains of “The Lambeth Walk.” My Byron festa tomorrow threatens to be another Brussels Ball.

  O God! tonight I’m hostess. Buck De La Warr is host. Halifax never came. “Hiding the Skeleton” shall be the name of this party. As neighbour I shall get Mr Bruce of Australia and who else?

  Later. No less than President de Valera, who sat on my right. The fussers of the party felt nervous that he might not rise to his feet for the Royal Anthem. I guaranteed to have him standing if I had to take a pin to him. It was a dramatic evening—Charles Peake shuttling in and out with paper messages and whispers, his floating hair and flashing eyes adding to our tension. I remember talking to de Valera about God, and how people pray, and getting on rather happily with him. Too much to say and too tired.

  15 September

  Talking to you on the telephone breaks the diary rhythm. As you know, Geneva is far from being the hub of the world and its crises. It’s now an utterly detached pièce de musée side-show, like a Quaker society in the Hebrides carrying on its good works alone and unknown. There are serious committees for Disarmament Now and for protection of minorities, and wet blankets for white slaves. Newspapers rarely arrive, but last night when Euan, looking exactly like a dear big schoolboy (which he is), prompted by maniacal-looking Charles Peake, stood up and said that “the Coroner has got his flying-boots on”—in other words the Prime Minister was going to have tea with the Führer—we all felt and smelt Whitehall. For good or bad, we were in touch.

  I remember my heart stopping at Euan’s pronouncement and the immediate reaction of “This can’t be right. Where is Duff to explain and guide?” followed by trying to trust in de Valera’s sincere and vehement approval. “The best thing England’s ever done,” he said. Fears of his slighting the King’s health and anthem were forgotten and he stood up with the best of us loyalists.

  16 September

  Lunch chez Maurice was gloomy. Litvinov looked as if he had just drunk blood. Maurice thinks Lord Winterton, when all is said and done, “un peu coco.” What could it mean? He couldn’t explain, no more could Litvinov, who smelt of garlic so strongly that he couldn’t have explained anything to anybody without asphyxiating them.

  My party is tonight. I quail. I spent the day transporting candelabra from Town up to Villa and winding rose-wreaths for the busts. Maurice is to supply Montrachet, red Burgundy, Château Yquem, Champagne and Cognac. It’s to be a surprise. No one knows but Carl, who is ordered to produce six Swiss Venuses for the delegates’ delectation. I remembered suddenly and sadly the need of women. I’ll write results tomorrow.

  17 September

  It was glorious! We even illuminated the big chandelier with redundant candles. Four tables, two waiters, a chef in cap, a barman and a radio for the dance (this last a near-impossibility because of no electricity). The six indigènes were breath-taking—Elisabeth Burckhardt in a red Watteau coat—all hochgeboren and dressed in Paris with flowers in their hair and a tiger lily round one of their wrists. We were thirty-two strong and I’m sorry to say that forty-two bottles of wine were drunk, excluding the cocktails and apéritifs and thirty Armagnacs. It cost a fortune and was worth it. They danced until about 1 (it began at 7.30) and then they moved on to somebody’s ball, which is all rather blurry. “I can’t remember how I went to bed.” I can really. I was deposited relatively intact by a favourite at 2 a.m. Enclosed are two Collinses. Rab’s is very winning:

  I write to thank you very much for a delightful party. I thought it was going to be the Eve of Waterloo, only the other way round, and now it’s over I’m sure it will be a prelude to preserving “notre civilisation,” as
the Radio and M. Bonnet say.

  In one of my most exalted moments I asked an apocryphal figure in white, la femme du Vice-Consul, to come with me onto the balcon to see the view. I started a verse of Lamartine’s “Le Lac” but when I looked round, the balcon was bare and my partner had ratted. So I went round the garden and down the avenue alone, and thought of the history of the house and wondered where Claire Clairmont’s slipper was found, and thought how nice it would be to live there with no Committees of the Assembly.

  Yours gratefully,

  R. A. BUTLER

  It was the most enjoyable party that members of the Delegation have had within their collective memory. It’s unlikely they will ever see its like again or feel as cheerful as they did this morning.

  Yours, R. MAKINS.

  What was my surprise, on returning to London, to find trenches being dug in parks and gardens. Memory, ever heedless, must now take over this long saga. We were clinging tensely together, so I wrote no letters. All classes of men, collared and uncollared, were excavating, delving and scooping out shelters like so many grave-diggers. The fool’s paradise, Geneva, faded with memories of carefree days and blessed sleep at night. How could I have danced and been so gay while Duff was struggling to mobilise the Fleet? In Switzerland we had had no idea of the situation’s gravity.

  Admiralty House had become a central whorl, the navel of anti-appeasement. Many were suspicious of dealings with the fiend Hitler. The outcome might well be shameful. Anti-Government subversion was knocking at the door. “The country’s honour”—was it safe? Mr Chamberlain must not betray it. He must be gingered, he must be gainsaid, he must GO! Where was Winston? Why, stamping to and fro amongst the Admiralty’s dolphin furniture, flaming his soul out with his impotence to flout the aggressor in his own way. Duff was the hard core of the bold. Members of Parliament, newspaper allies and old friends darted in and out for meals and through the night—the Oliver Stanleys, Cranbornes, Walter Elliots, Wallaces, Hore-Belisha, Buck De La Warr, Eddie Winterton, Brendan Bracken and Shakes Morrison. They all seemed to hold the same resistant views. “Sound” was the word adopted during the crisis. The unsound, I suppose, kept away from our house, and the waverers talked soundly enough until nearly the end. The King was “sound,” Duff opined, after seeing him at a Privy Council meeting. Had he not bought a revolver for practice in Buckingham Palace gardens? Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, was said to be sound, so was France (in spite of the jitters of M. Bonnet, the Foreign Minister), the Vatican, the United States, the Commonwealth and the majority of the rank and file. The press was stout-hearted enough save for the timid Times and the Daily Express’s persistent prophecies of peace. Why, then, was the situation deteriorating, Sir Eric Phipps panicking in Paris, Sir Nevile Henderson hysterical in Berlin, and appeasement gaining ground in 10 Downing Street?

  My own condition was deteriorating fast. Fear did more harm to my physique than to my morale. Sleep was murdered for ever. My heart quaked, yet I must appear valiant. My hands shook, so work must be found to steady them. Always a pessimist, I could imagine nothing worse than what must happen perhaps tomorrow—war, death, London utterly demolished, frantic crowds stampeding, famine and disease. That sadistic scientist Victor Rothschild took pleasure in watching me writhe at his calculations of blast and his reasoned prophecies of annihilation by gas and germ-warfare. (It is surprising that I still delight in him.) The Prime Minister had gone to Godesberg. The sands were running out. More trenches were appearing. An expert, naturally without experience, came to prescribe measures of safety for Admiralty House—more hoses, sandbags, emergency measures of all kinds. We knew that precautions were of no avail. Victor had said so, but we took them all the same, in the way that one touches wood or crosses fingers.

  I had found daytime occupation at the W.V.S., a body some years old, of voluntary women who gave their services to a wide number of causes. Lady Reading, its begetter, had organised her helpers to assemble gas-masks for civilians, so Venetia Montagu and I sat in the Tothill Street workrooms clamping snouts and schnozzles on to rubber masks, parcelling them and distributing them to queues of men and women. Mothers would ask me for small ones for children. There were none as yet. I felt sick all the time, like many others, no doubt. It was a grisly job for a neurotic but better than inaction.

  Duff kept a firm lid on his boiling indignation, but I could hear it singing and spitting. It gave him sleepless nights. He must have been a barbed thorn in the tangle of Cabinet meetings, obstructing and clamouring, and an exasperation to his leader, who had never liked him. The Prime Minister, still in Godesberg, had left no authority for the mobilisation of the Army or of the Fleet, which preparation for sudden war required. Without it Duff took much upon himself, recalling sailors from leave and dispatching them to man the Suez defences. On Mr Chamberlain’s return, bearing worse terms for Czechoslovakia, Duff told me that it was time he left the Government. This seed of resignation was sown after the first visit to Hitler. The political soil generated it fast. He told the Prime Minister, after a Cabinet meeting, of his intention. Mr Chamberlain was, he said, not surprised and probably relieved, but asked for no precipitate action. He struck Duff as a man bewitched and bound by Hitler’s magnetic spell.

  That same day the scene was changed. It was planned to send the Grey Eminence, Horace Wilson, on another visit to Hitler with an ultimatum. If the demands were not accepted, he must be told that France would fight for the Czechs and so would we. Duff came back from Downing Street elated and scarcely able to believe his ears. On hearing that the Prime Minister had gone to confer with the Opposition, he hastened to offer his resignation in another shape. He was, he said, should his office be required, prepared to serve Mr Chamberlain in a lesser position or as a private Member of Parliament. I was elated too, although I did not like the thought of Duff resigning from the Navy that he loved, or of leaving the beautiful house that I felt should last longer as our home. It was wonderfully fortunate for me and my peace of mind that, having absolute faith in Duff and his acts and motives, any questioning of them was unthinkable and exerting influence upon them not to be dreamt of.

  An account of these dread days is clearly and excitingly set down in Old Men Forget, so I will tell only of my own part and emotions at this time. Calm old friends came and went among the distracted politicians, or sat to hold my hand and to praise Duff. Conrad was there, and Venetia, Hutchie, George Gage and others. An unreasoned optimism lasted for a short spell. Leslie Hore-Belisha bet Duff £2 to £1 that there would be no war. Brendan Bracken bet him an even fiver. Hitler had made a speech that Winston thought was a retreat. This pronouncement was seized upon, and “He’s on the run!” was the cry, but Horace Wilson somehow muffed the strong line and the flash of hope died out.

  Duff was fighting as never before to get the Fleet mobilised, so that Germany should have proof of our intentions. The Prime Minister reluctantly promised to announce it on the radio on 27 September. We listened to the broadcast—Duff, George Gage, Venetia and I—sprawled over my dolphined bed. There was no word of mobilisation. Winston telephoned almost inarticulate with rage. The speech, he said, was a preparation to “scuttle.”

  Many talked of resignation next day, but I felt that only Duff would act. The Fleet, however, was mobilised, with our anticipated reaction from Germany—Munich. On the afternoon of 28 September Lady Reading flung open the door of the snout-and-schnozzle assembling room and announced that the agony was over. The Prime Minister was to fly next morning for his third meeting with Hitler, which could only mean settlement and peace. Many of us burst into tears, and then laughed hilariously—the laughter that follows narrow escape from death. We finished our shift, nevertheless, and I ran the short distance to the Horse Guards Parade on winged feet. At dinner that night were Winston, Walter Elliot, the Cranbornes, Barbie Wallace and Hutchie. It was the first cheerful evening since I had returned from Geneva. At dawn next day the Cabinet and their wives drove down to Heston airfield to cheer the
Prime Minister out of port. Our spirits soared in the half-light. He carried our prayers and wishful trust.

  On the 30th the Munich terms were in the papers. Duff read them and decided to resign. In the evening the thunder of cheering, that I longed to be part of, filled our ears from Whitehall. The Prime Minister called at the Palace to announce his so-called triumph to the King and Queen. They were photographed on the balcony on each side of him (a photograph that I saw next day torn and burnt in the fireplace by a man of principle). The Mall and Whitehall, I could imagine from the noise, held millions of joy-mad people, swarming up the lamp-posts and railings, singing and crying with relief and belief that it was peace and never another war. Duff and I sat on my bed holding hands and staring at the monstrous-faced radio. That evening he resigned and next morning took leave of his leader. “I think he was as glad to be rid of me,” Duff wrote afterwards, “as I was determined to go.”