A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mosley

by Diana Mitford

  When everybody was ready Farve took a flashlight photograph. The responsibility of this made him cross; we stood waiting, half shrieking at each other’s wonderful aspect, half trembling at Farve’s visibly mounting rage. Uncle Jack was always last. ‘Jicksy, Jicksy, the boy’s late as usual, JICKSY,’ he roared up the stairs. ‘Coming, dear boy,’ said Uncle Jack mildly, and Farve laughed in spite of himself at the strange apparition.

  After dinner we played ‘commerce’ for money prizes. Farve ruled the card table with the utmost strictness; chatter was discouraged. ‘Don’t talk—how can anybody think with you making that infernal row—take your degraded elbows off the table, child—your turn, dear boy,’ he kept up a steady barracking.

  I looked forward to Christmas for weeks, but it hardly ever passed off quite smoothly. One of the trouble makers was the decorations. At Batsford the gardeners made swags of bay and hung them all round the stone hall; at Asthall we did it ourselves, putting sprigs of holly here and there; two above each picture. Months later Farve would spy a strange bulge in the canvas; it was the holly, which had fallen down behind and was spitefully working its way through. ‘Look what you children have done to the good picture! I will not have holly in this house.’

  All of us children, except possibly Tom, were afraid of the dark and of ghosts, yet we could not resist the books that doubled our night terrors: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Dracula, The Turn of the Screw. Asthall was very old; the panelling gave mysterious cracks, and outside our bedrooms was the churchyard where owls hooted in the yews. We sometimes wondered whether Farve, like us, believed the house to be haunted; and we thought that, just possibly, it was one of the reasons he was so determined to leave.

  Inevitably, Asthall found a buyer and we had to go. It was the end of my childhood; I was now sixteen, and had lately grown about a foot and could no longer be teased, as formerly, for being small and puny. While Builder Redesdale, as Nancy called Farve, did his worst at South Lawn, we all went to Paris to economize.3

  Farve’s finances were a great mystery to us, and have remained so. He almost always thought he was ruined and the workhouse loomed large in his conversation, yet at the same time he would every now and then begin to build again. He invested in gambles, but I have no idea what sums were involved because money was a taboo subject in families like ours and our parents would as soon have spoken about sex to us as money. An invention he put money in made us all laugh so much when he described it that he went off in dudgeon to his business room, and one heard the strains of his favourite soprano singing a Puccini aria. The idea was that wirelesses were ugly (as indeed they were; just as bad as televisions now, they spoilt a corner of any room), and that they were to be made beautiful by being encased in papier mâché in lovely designs, a jewelled casket for example, or a Spanish galleon, or a Buddha which, according to Farve, could take his place ‘among the old famille rose’. Needless to say, these objects were infinitely more hideous than even the nastiest of wirelesses. Muv dreaded the jewelled casket, but she never had to put up with one because the whole venture ended in the law courts. Farve was sued for slander by the South American casket maker for allegedly saying he was not the marquis he pretended to be. We all went to hear the case, which was decided in Farve’s favour. Diana Churchill came with us and whispered to me: ‘It’s so unfair. Cousin David was bound to win, just because he looks like God the Father.’

  5.

  PARIS

  Farve liked Paris in very small doses; he was not a town lover, but at least in London he had the consolation of the Marlborough Club and the House of Lords. He worked hard in committees, and sometimes of late the strains of Puccini and Kreisler on the business room gramophone had been stilled, and one found him poring over a Blue Book.

  Nancy wrote him letters from Paris addressed ‘Builder Redesdale, The Buildings, South Lawn, Burford, Oxfordshire’. The old name of South Lawn was taboo; he wanted his house to be called Swinbrook, although it was a mile from the village, but Nancy never hesitated to tease him.

  Muv’s friends the Helleus had found us a cheap hotel to live in quite near them, in the avenue Victor Hugo. Helleu had done quantities of dry-point etchings of Muv when she was young and he admired her very much; he also admired Farve, and us children, and never stopped saying so, which was wonderfully unexpected and stimulating. Nanny’s repeated words: ‘Nobody’s going to look at you, darling’ did not correspond with reality when Helleu was about.

  Madame Helleu had been asked to find a day-school for me nearby, and I was taken to the Cours Fénelon in the rue de la Pompe. Muv and I had an interview with the headmistress. She asked when I had last been vaccinated? I had never been vaccinated, even as a baby; vaccination was one of Muv’s deepest aversions, along with white bread and pork. ‘Ah!’ said the headmistress. ‘Then I regret she cannot come to the Cours Fénelon until you have it done.’ ‘I am sorry,’ said Muv. ‘She cannot be vaccinated.’ There was a long pause while my fate was in the balance. Then, ‘Oh, tant pis,’ said the headmistress, and I was accepted.

  I learned more at the Cours Fénelon in six months than I had learned at Asthall in six years. A dozen or so girls, of whom I was one, went every morning for preparation, presided over by an elderly governess, Mlle Foucauld. In the afternoons were the Cours proper, at which we were lectured to and questioned by bearded professors from the Sorbonne. Half-way through the morning’s lessons there was a break of twenty minutes and we ran down to the yard. ‘Ne dégringolez pas les escaliers!’ called Mlle Foucauld, who was always trying to make us behave like young ladies.

  When we got to the yard they picked sides and we played a ball game, throwing the ball from team to team. If you dropped the ball when it came your way your team lost a point. At first there was great competition to have me, because tallness was an advantage, and then being English, and dressed in such countrified clothes, made them confident that I must be une sportive. They soon learned their mistake; every time I was supposed to catch it the ball dropped dismally to the ground. There was a chorus of those sort of throaty groans which French children of both sexes make when they wish to mark disappointment or disapproval. The only other foreigner, a Peruvian girl, and I were relegated to the worst place. I did not mind; it was a recognized thing in our family that we were abnormally hopeless at games.

  When the break was up we climbed the stairs, more slowly than we had come down but all talking at once. ‘Taisez-vous, taisez-vous mes enfants,’ said Mlle Foucauld.

  After the fresh air in the yard our classroom smelt really terrific. It faced south on to the rue de la Pompe, and on the 15th of October Mlle Foucauld spent the whole morning with a hammer and nails, nailing sausages of red stuff round the window frames. Once the sausages were in position the windows could not be opened again until they were ripped off the following spring. The autumn of 1926 must have been particularly hot, for the sun blazed in day after day and the smell got worse and worse as we sat and sweated in the hermetically sealed room. The Peruvian girl was a garlic eater, which did not improve matters.

  In the afternoon we sat in the big lecture room grouped round Mlle Foucauld. She was so anxious for us to shine that sometimes she would ‘souffler’ the answer to some hard conundrum put by one of the bearded men. I used to scan her face out of the corner of my eye, and strain my ears; she hardly ever let one down. ‘Très bien, Mademoiselle Meetfor,’ was the reward, which pleased her just as much as it did me.

  Most of the girls did lessons in their own homes in the mornings and only came to the rue de la Pompe after luncheon. They were usually accompanied by their governesses, who sat by them during the Cours, though some of them came with a footman. Towards the end of the afternoon when one crossed the vestibule a few of these men would be sitting among the boots, umbrellas and overcoats, waiting for their charges.

  I was allowed to go back to our hotel, les Villas St. Honoré d’Eylau, by myself; it was very near. When I arrived I joined the others and Nanny for tea. The
re was almost always a drama about the desert rats. These were the only creatures we had been allowed to bring to Paris with us; one couldn’t keep pigs and chickens in an hotel, and dogs and cats would have been liable to quarantine when we got back to England. The rats were adorable; they were pale yellow with lustrous black eyes. Of course they could not be made to languish permanently in their cages, and when they were out they always behaved badly. Once they bored a hole in the carpet in the corner of our hotel sitting-room and disappeared. We took it in turns for hours, having meals on the shift system, to kneel by this hole making loving sounds to coax them to come out again. We were terrified of what the hotel servants might do if the rats re-emerged when we were not there. Annie and Nellie at home never cared for our pets, and we felt that French housemaids might show their dislike in a practical way. We were also rather afraid of Muv, who did not want us turned out of the hotel, and Nanny was getting tired of the desert rats. ‘Put them away, darling, do; hurry up; I shall tell your mother of you.’

  Lord Crewe was the English ambassador, and his grand daughter Middy O’Neill was one of Nancy’s greatest friends. Nancy and Pam were often invited to the embassy, and they also had a number of new French acquaintances who invited them to parties. Sometimes I was allowed to go too. I had a friend, Mary Clive, whose father was Military Attaché. I went to luncheon with them at their old house on the other side of the river. I was just beginning to notice what houses were like; General Clive was pleased when I admired it. ‘You see the plan,’ he said. ‘Like all old Paris houses it is built between courtyard and garden.’

  Although they lived in a rather ordinary block of flats, the Helleus’ drawing-room was perfect. It was white, the Louis XVI chairs and sofa were covered in white or pale grey silk, the curtains were white and on the walls were carved gilt wood eighteenth-century frames, empty. Helleu said if you were not rich enough to possess the pictures you wished for it was best to have frames and use your imagination. The drawing-room was his studio.

  At Christmas we all went back to our new London house, 26 Rutland Gate. The economical Paris visit was over, but I was to return to the Cours Fénelon after the holidays. Muv had put all her favourite furniture from Asthall into Rutland Gate and it looked charming. Pam and I had a bedroom overlooking the Ennismore Gardens churchyard, and Farve had a dark business room on the ground floor; he had been allowed to choose the stuff for his curtains. It was a frightful sort of sham tapestry covered in dingy leaves and berries. ‘Oh, Farve, how ugly,’ we said; but he imagined he saw birds and squirrels peeping out of the foliage, and this made him feel nearer the coverts at home.

  The drawing-room was as bright as Farve’s room was gloomy. The curtains were pale blue taffeta, the sofas covered in flowery pink chintz, and the French furniture had been put there. On the wall hung my favourite among our pictures, a handsome young man with powdered hair in a blue velvet coat by Perronneau, in a splendid carved gilt frame.

  Muv was pleased with her new house and never went to see how the Buildings were getting on. Farve spent a good deal of his time at Swinbrook; his dream was taking shape there. Not only a house, but garages, cottages and greenhouses were going up, and he had added a squash court to be built a little distance away in the garden. We were each to have a bedroom to ourselves. ‘The best of everything for everybody,’ said Uncle Tommy when he came up to see us in London. Uncle Tommy was now married; he had left the Mill Cottage and gone away to live at Westwell.

  I went for a visit to Chartwell. ‘Papa, guess who is older, our Diana or Diana M.?’ said Randolph one evening. They had all agreed that I looked almost grown up, which it was my dearest wish to be. Cousin Winston looked from one to the other. ‘Our Diana,’ he said. ‘Oh, Papa, nobody thinks so but you!’ said Randolph. In fact, Diana C. was a year older than I was. Eddie Marsh thought having two Dianas was muddling and said I had better be called Artemis instead.

  Churchill was devoted to his children, especially to Ran dolph, but until they were almost grown up a little of their company went a long way. ‘Papa says he won’t be bunged up with brats,’ Randolph used to say. This was never resented, but was taken for granted by us all. The Churchill children did not mind being called brats, which in their family had become almost a term of endearment. When, some years later, Randolph referred in their hearing to my step-children Vivien and Nicky as ‘Tom’s brats’ he was never forgiven by them.

  We had now ceased to be brats and were treated as grown up. No longer silent at dinner as children guests would have been in those days, we took part in conversation; Cousin Winston was kindness itself to Tom and me and he was loved and admired by us. We also admired Clementine, who with her sister-in-law Lady Goonie Churchill epitomized beauty and grace in our eyes. Lady Goonie’s children, Johnny, Peregrine and Clarissa were often at Chartwell, and Johnny became a great friend.

  Christmas holidays at the Cours Fénelon were very short; I had to go back to Paris early in January. The idea that I might travel alone was never considered, and to save the expense of a chaperon it was kindly suggested that I might go with Randolph and his father. They were on their way to Rome to visit Mussolini, who was greatly admired by Winston.

  Randolph and I chatted the whole way over except on the boat. The sea was rough and Randolph was sick. ‘Poor little boy!’ said Cousin Winston when I told him this as he emerged from his cabin at Calais. How kind he is, I thought; nobody pitied us if we were sick on the Channel. Randolph recovered in a trice, and we all had a wonderful luncheon at Calais before we got back into the train for Paris. I was sad to say good-bye to them, and wished I could go on to Rome.

  At the Gare du Nord an old woman was on the look-out for me, and I was handed over to her while the Churchills shunted off to the Gare de Lyon.

  She was one of two old sisters who took English girls in their flat; they had been chosen because they lived on the corner of the avenue Victor Hugo and the rue de la Pompe, and once more I was to be allowed to go to the Cours by myself. And not only to the Cours. In spite of my minus quantity of talent I was still having violin lessons; piano I had given up, for the contrast between me and Tom was too painful. My violin master lived near the Lycée Janson, a hundred yards away; I was also to be allowed to go down the hill to the Helleus in the rue Emil Menier. In other words, for the first time in my life I had a certain freedom.

  In London we could not so much as go to Harrods from Rutland Gate by ourselves. This meant—since we had no footmen like the girls at the Cours Fénelon—that either one had to find a sister willing to go, or coax Nanny out, or else stay at home. It was extremely tiresome and frustrating, but we took it as a matter of course; most of the girls we knew followed the same rule. I never travelled alone on a train until I was twenty-two; even after I was married there was always somebody with me.

  At Asthall it was different; we were supposed to ride two together, but we could walk wherever we liked. I used to walk along the tarmac main road, day-dreaming that a beautiful young man would stop his car, get out, and propose that we drive together to the far ends of the earth. If some crazy individual had really suggested carrying me off in this way I am sure I should have gone with him, so possibly Farve was not so far wrong in trying to circumvent disaster.

  I now found myself in Paris knowing, through Nancy and Pam, quite a number of young people, if not with freedom then at least with endless possibilities for manoeuvre within permitted limits. I took instant advantage of this. If I was invited to go to a cinema with a young man I told the sisters that my violin master wanted me for an extra lesson, or that I must go to Helleu for a sitting. When I came out of the Cours my friend and I would fly off in a taxi and he would drop me back at the avenue Victor Hugo in time for dinner. Except for an occasional thé dansant, given by people I was allowed to visit, this was the extent of my dissipation.

  In his white drawing-room Helleu made several drawings of me. While he worked he talked. He made me feel what Americans call ‘good’, and as if he
would rather be drawing me than doing anything else in this world or the next. He took me to Rouen to see the rose window in the cathedral of which he had done a painting.4

  We lunched in a nearby restaurant where the owner was delighted to welcome him, we had sole dieppoise and Sancerre and lingered until it was time for the Paris train. He took me to the Louvre, to Versailles. He talked all the time about pictures or about people. I had hardly ever heard of the people. ‘Je vais exposer à Londres l’année prochaine,’ he told me. ‘Lady Cunard m’a propose son salon.’ But I had never heard of Lady Cunard. He did a pointe sèche of me, drawing straight on to the sheet of copper as was his wont.

  Helleu’s daughter, Paulette, was a year or so older than I; we were friends. Unlike her father, she was very critical and frank; she thought my clothes awful, which they were, particularly compared with hers, and she contradicted whatever I chose to say. Nevertheless I was very fond of her; her attitude towards me was no more unflattering than my sisters’ and I was perfectly accustomed to snubs—they were the normal thing; it was admiration that astonished.

  Helleu had another beautiful daughter called Madame Orosdi who lived in the avenue du Bois. He and I used to walk in the avenue after the Cours at midday, and sometimes we met his grand-daughters and their governess. He said the avenue du Bois was not what it had been; motor cars spoilt it. He loved women, horses and sailing boats, he said; and he really was a relic of the belle époque who disliked everything modern, including short hair and the fashions of the twenties.