by Diana Cooper
The scheme for evacuating children from London had been disappointing in its results. The wives and children who had been sent to spend their phoney-war days in the country had dribbled home, and now, when the danger was truly great, they were reluctant to be sent back to what they had detested. But a scheme for a children’s exodus to Canada and the United States was shaping on both sides of the Atlantic. I was desperately anxious for John Julius to go, but I do not know if we would have sent him had not Mr Kennedy offered to take him and many other children in his neutral ship. So off the dear boy went with Nanny Ayto in charge of him and some other children. I felt tremendously relieved to think of him at a Canadian school, calm and unafraid, with Kaetchen to guard him, and Bill and Dorothy Paley to enliven his holidays in America. I expect we were scowled on by the Prime Minister for this move; he deprecated what he called “the stampede from the island.” Not for him the services of the “little ambassadors,” and not for the King and Queen, who kept their Princesses by their side, but John Julius was meant to have a year’s schooling abroad, probably in Switzerland, so had he not gone he would have stayed in London because of the bombing, which seemed grotesque. With the children went all the gold in England to be banked in Canada. We were stripped for action. I wrote to Kaetchen:
London
2 July
Here is my child and here is Nanny armed with £25, and now they belong to you for the duration. He shall go to some Canadian school. Establish him in Long Island with the hospitable Paleys until the term starts and overlay them with my gratitude. Never have I put more in your dear gesticulating hands, never have I taken your order “Use me” more literally.
If we are killed you will know best what to do for his good. If a miracle ends this war victoriously for us, then what a glorious jaunt he will have had! If a miracle subjugates and occupies this land beneath Hitler and we are in prison or Duff is fled to Ottawa with King and Council, he might, if here, become a hostage to force Duff’s hand or mine. It is for this reason, not because of bombs, that he leaves. You’ll be glad to hear that my spirit is unexpectedly high, but of course I am very unhappy. Perhaps this citadel island will have fallen before this reaches you and all will be over. If it is, you know that I am certain no one ever had a better friend than I had in you and no one loved you better.
London
10 July
Please, Kaetchen, do not let my little boy get spoiled by riches; buses not taxis, drug-stores not restaurants, and not too many cinemas. He is a very good child and will give no trouble, I am confident. If you see him in any way fresh with Americans or if he is not perfectly mannered, reprove him with all your might. Do not let him be loaded with presents; keep your own hands from your pockets. Nanny will buy him clothes cheaply—from Bloomingdale’s please, not at Saks. You must be tolerant of my idiosyncrasies and conform to them. I feel very strongly that it must never be said that English children are living on charity, so I would like my suggested money arrangements done almost legally immediately. Who would have thought you were to be a father so soon? I like Doll Iris’s influence on John Julius, so ask her to see a lot of him. Keep me in his mind a bit and teach him to admire Duff. Tutor him hard in American history and current events (war and peace). I’d like him to be braver than most and not to be taught “Safety first.”
I started a diary for John Julius. I would read my letters to Duff, who, as head of the Censorship Office, never thought that they would pass, but my words seldom got blue-pencilled, whereas Duff’s letters, models of clarity and simplicity, often came back cut into lace by the censor’s scissors.
London
5 July
I’m going to try to write to you every day even if it’s only a scrap and even though it’s about things that won’t interest you a great deal. That way there will be a record of these hideous days, and I shall feel I am in touch with you, and you with me.
Your emigration is holding up the smooth working of Parliament. I send you some cuttings about it. The blow hasn’t fallen yet. Invasion is always to be next Tuesday or next week-end. However it is calm in London Town and people go about their work and play with strong bright faces, and the inhabitants of the little houses that are blown to a fine powder drink a glass of ale on the ruins and stick up flags left over from the Coronation. I saw this on a newsreel. It’s an answer to our dear American reporters who say: “You don’t realise.” One realises all right if one’s house falls on top of one, but one smiles apparently, so why not smile before it falls? Great excitement as I write. The telephone rings and it is St George’s Hospital telling me to come and give my blood. I’m thrilled and only hope I shan’t go green in the face and sweat with cold fear when the moment arrives.
The other day a man was stopped by a sentry saying “Halt!” He stood stone-still and the sentry said: “Halt!” again. “Well, I have halted,” said the man. “Why do you say ‘Halt’ again?” “My orders,” said the sentry, “are to say ‘Halt!’ three times and then fire.”
6 July
I went to [censored, but it was Rottingdean] this morning to see poor Maurice. He is half the size he used to be. A bright blue budgerigar sits on his shoulder always chattering into his ear, pecking his cheek and making little messes. He claims that Dempsey (that’s his name) talks. I doubt it. I wasn’t allowed to drive along the front where the camouflaged six-inch guns are.
7 July
It’s rather lovely living at the Dorchester. No débris (if you don’t know what débris is, ask Kaetchen), but Chapel Street was terribly full of it—mine and Noona’s* and plaster dropping from the ceiling. Here I feel as free of possessions as a bird—just the clothes I am wearing, the book I am reading, the letter that has to be answered and a few preparations for sudden descent into the shelter. Wadey is definitely going to dress, but I shall put on a dressing-gown with a zip and have my nightcap on, and some black smeared off my eyelashes on my cheek. Wadey suggested that I should wear a particularly comic robe that I bought in America and when I said: “O no, I’d look too funny” she said: “I didn’t think you minded that.”
10 July
A day of rage, no lunch, then débris-righting at Chapel Street. Exhausted and hungry I bought myself a strawberry ice-cream at Gunter’s, also a strawberry tart in a paper frill, and took them to the house of Jimmy Sheean so that I might eat them in company. There I found a German. Now all yesterday I had been wrestling with the police and with the Prisoners of War department under which internees come, in a great struggle to get some unfortunates liberated. My heart bled for the poor alien anti-Nazi women whose husbands have been torn from their sides, and who are as demented as I should be if Papa were torn from mine. However, after half an hour’s talk with the German so-called anti-Nazi man, I found myself wanting to imprison him and all his kind for ever. He felt so violently against us for daring to intern him or any anti-Nazi, and could not see that even though the innocent suffer temporarily we cannot risk a lot of Fifth Columnist spies and Nazi propagandists, sent as refugees to this country by Germany, being at large weaving thickets to tangle us. I left the house furious.
The internment order by which aliens were dashed willy-nilly to non-existent camps and to distant countries, segregated from their wives, posted to Ultima Thules or to watery deaths was a harsh measure and, in the fearful early days of Fifth-Column predictions, it was done so quickly and so disorganisedly that it became a scandal. In the afternoons therefore I employed myself, generally unsuccessfully, arguing with the Home Office, War Office or Scotland Yard. I used cajolery, blackmail, braggadocio or bootlicking in my efforts to have men and women traced or put in prison or taken out (or kept out), or children sent to New Zealand or found in Canada. Thank Heaven, one of my rare successes was to keep Emil Kommer, Kaetchen’s brother, out of internment. Innocent as an English child, it was still a miracle that he did not find himself ground-sheetless on a Cumberland moor.
Bognor
11 July
When I got back to D
odgems today what did I find but all the air gone from the tyres! I bawled for the policeman whom I saw walking away rather fast. He came back sheepishly and I asked him what had caused him to be such a brute, “You should lock your doors,” he said. “If you will look at my doors you will see that they have no locks. It’s a 1909 model,” I said with pardonable exaggeration. “Try and start it,” I went on, “here is the ignition key. Get in and try to start it.” I had been to all the pains of taking out the distributor, which means diving half oneself into the engine and covering one’s clean summer dress with oleaginous black muck. He apologised and looked guilty and ashamed, but that didn’t help me. I had to telephone a garage and get a man with a pump, and there was no vengeance that I could take upon the policeman.
London
12 July
Another day of rage. I woke up to find my letter to you, written a week ago, returned to me by the Censorship Office because I had denied a rumour, which is what we are told to do. The rumour and its denial are also in the newspapers. The Censorship comes under the Ministry of Information, so I am the boss’s wife and had written my name outside the envelope. I shan’t do that again because I suppose they think they will not be considered thorough if they let my letters pass. You will get my last letter with large black-outs. I hope you will guess what the words are.
I had got a berth on a ship for another little refugee boy, my sister’s butler’s son, and poor Kaetchen looked like being pressed into Pied Piperdom. I never ceased belabouring him.
13 July
As regards my own boy:
(1) I’ve just remembered kidnapping and don’t you forget it!
(2) He’s quite keen on Latin. In America and Canada it is not taught until boys are fourteen or so. Encourage him to keep it up on his own. Half an hour a day, and someone to correct his exercises.
(3) I suppose French will be forgotten and I don’t see how it can be helped unless he goes to Montreal and catches a Louis XIV accent.
(4) Another sad loss will be his piano. Do you think that a syncopating negro could be found in the village where J.J. could repair thrice weekly and have jazz or classical music lessons? That would fan his keenness.
(5) Encourage intelligent books and not futile idiocies and comics.
Poor Kaetchen, what a job it is! I am longing for a calming letter about finance, non-kidnapping, guarantees of disciplinary upbringing, economy practices and non-spoiling.
Conrad had written to me:
Battle of Mells
5 July, about 1 a.m.
I was woken up by machine-gun fire just overhead. Then out of bed and take a peep. There he was, a fiery cresset i’ the sky just above us, lamenting heard i’ the air and strange screams of death. At one moment I feared he would fall on us, but he turned, leaving a trail of fire. He descended in a parabola across the sky, and when he fell, he fell like Lucifer, never to hope again. Alan Plummer, Mells Home Guard, took a prisoner. Another came down and broke his leg and a third gave himself up. The fourth is still at large or was possibly burnt up in the Messerschmitt, for such it was, or perhaps he’s dead in a wood.
And I to John Julius:
London
21 July
Papa is having a rough passage in the Press. They got it into their hysterical heads that he wanted to put a stricter censorship upon them. He never did, but they went off the deep end and have attacked him on everything, on the Silent Column and on your going to the United States. Now that it is all settled and they know that they are not going to be muzzled and never were, they all think that their abuse and baiting have gained their point. It’s a hard life, politics, and one must have all the things that “If” tells you to have. Papa has most of them and is unaffected by bludgeonings, but your poor Mummy has none of them and is not unaffected.
I’ve just come back from the hospital minus a pint of my rich blue blood. I was shown into a fine empty ward and led to a bed surrounded by screens. Now, being an old hospital bird, I know that screens are put round beds only for the gravest cases and herald death. So they gave me a bit of a gasp, but having just had a nip of brandy I was feeling in good heart and in good tongue. A young doctor came and pinched my forearm, and another one, a bit older, said: “How are her veins? Nice and big?” “No, I’m afraid they’re very small,” said the younger doctor. Now funnily enough I was glad they were small, in spite of the fact that being small they would less willingly release their blood. It sounded more charming, more graceful, more delicate—finer workmanship. Next they gave me an injection (with a hair-needle that doesn’t hurt) of novocaine that numbs the spot. Then into my frail flesh was jabbed a needle the size of a skewer which turned into a rubber tube that ran into a pint bottle. They wiggled round for a long time to introduce it into the vein. I had to open and shut my hand (gimme, gimme, gimme) to expedite the precious flow. Blood is used for people who are desperately weak, collapsing or dying. I give this adventure in full, knowing how you enjoy anything gruesome or queasy.
I found Maurice in high spirits today owing, he said, to being in acute pain. His blue budgerigar was pecking hairs out of his ears and talking to him incessantly. The visit passed in a flash. We both felt so gay, sipping sherry and nibbling chocolates and arguing about the Pope.
Last night at about 1 a.m., when Papa was asleep and I was reading, a gentlemanly voice on the telephone said: “I’m speaking from Hoxton (a sadly poor quarter of Greater London) and a great many parents in Hoxton would like to come and see you because they resent your having sent your son to America.” I said I would be delighted to see them and what day would they come? He chose a day and let me choose the hour. “Before 6.30 a.m.,” I said, “for I go out then.” I thought he would gasp a bit and sure enough he did. He wanted to think that I wasn’t called until noon.
25 July
Another voice bawls into my ear at 7 this evening that it is speaking from Deptford, and that parents in Deptford would like to come and have a look at me too. He knew about the man from Hoxton, so I said: “Do you know that I was afraid he could not have been sober, ringing me up at that hour?” “Not sober!” yelled the voice, “Mr Wingfield is a teetotaller! He thought you were at the theatre.” “Why not call me before the theatre (which I was not at) or next morning?” I said that he could bring the parents. Both men suggested bringing fifty strong. I said I didn’t see how a hundred adults were going to get into my small room but they could try, and there was always the passage to surge into. I don’t know what I shall say to them and I’m really shaking in my shoes, as I stutter and stammer, gobble and gulp if I have to speak to more than two people at once.
Papa is still attacked daily with great malice by my oldest demon-friend Lord Beaverbrook. He announced to a dinner-party of his own adherent yes-men, and to two outsiders who blabbed, that he was not going to stop until he got Papa and the Minister for Air (Archie Sinclair) out of office. Papa weathers it well but it makes me sick and ill and sleepless all night and yawny all day. We always knew that the Ministry of Information was a hideous shapeless chaotic mess and a lot of people are being sacked. One can only hope the new ones will not be worse.
Rex Whistler and Caroline came to dinner last night, Rex with a tough military moustache. He says that there are not so many hairs, but each one is as thick as a hedge, so they make a brave show. He was funny about his agonies as an inexperienced subaltern in the Guards. He was told suddenly to form his men up and march them to church. Every order he shouted produced greater chaos, soldiers scuttling in opposite directions, forming sixes and sevens instead of fours (or is it threes now?). At last he found himself isolated in the middle of the parade-ground. One day’s more experience would have taught him when in doubt to say “Carry on, Sergeant-Major.” Standing in a row to be inspected, he realised that he had forgotten his collar. The Colonel inspecting felt this so apoplectically that he was robbed of speech, which did not return to him until he came to the next officer, who got the full blast of blimp rage for having a
loose shoelace. Poor Rex, he’s not suited to the life. He can’t paint, so he has no money at all. The little pay accorded to him by a country at war has to keep the wolf from his mother’s door. This is a sad bore at the bar, and Rex likes a bar as much as you do, and drinks of a strengthening nature more than you do, and now the tired youth has to pretend to like a glass of rain. He has had to lay his pencil down for saluting. I always thought his pencil was part of his hand, a sixth finger. He wields it still when off the square and decorates the messrooms and draws for his soldiers pictures of their kit and kitbag, to pin over their beds so that they can’t idly forget.
I just turned on the radio and by ill luck got the news in Welsh. It was so funny, like this: “Llanfair dufcooper pwelliwin gegeroth dufcooper sinscreillio gogooth dufcooper.” Torture too, not knowing what they were saying about poor Papa. Poor Papa indeed. The papers get worse every day. He made a very very good speech in the House. I went to listen. He counter-attacked the Press, which is bound to have the result of more mud in Papa’s eye, but things will be better after this outburst, I am sure. Perhaps invasion will put it right.
