A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mosley

by Diana Mitford

  Jonathan’s godfathers were Evelyn and Randolph, who met for the first time at the font. A stormy friendship then began which ended only when death parted them.

  Grandmother came to the christening and there was a photograph in the newspapers of her and Cousin Clementine leaving the church together—the last ever taken of Grandmother. Nanny Higgs came to look after the baby; she had been Nanny to Diana and Randolph when they were very small; she idolized Diana. She was a ‘character’ and became a dear friend, but she scarcely allowed me to touch the baby, he must be admired from a distance. I enjoyed her day out when I took him in the Park; on other days I had to make do with Pilgrim.

  We went to many balls and parties that summer, which Evelyn did not approve of. He disliked such entertainments and preferred to sit and talk, but I was pleasure-loving. There were fancy dress parties given by what the papers called the Bright Young People, a description that always made us laugh. Evelyn used it of our particularly serious friends, Bright Young Roy Harrod, or Bright Young Henry Yorke. Brian Howard had a Greek party, the guests brought their own wine. There were also conventional dances. Margaret Mercer-Nairne asked me to bring a dinner party to a ball her mother was giving at their house in Carlton House Terrace. One of my guests was Robert Byron.

  Late at night Robert was apt to do an imitation of Queen Victoria. He put a napkin on his head and pulled his eyes down and he looked like a very jaundiced edition of the Queen in her old age. No sooner had we arrived at the ball than Robert became Victoria, and remained so until persuaded into a taxi some hours later. I felt responsible for him and was embarrassed every time I looked into the sitting-room where he had installed himself with a bottle of champagne. Napkin on head, he was surrounded by surprised debutantes and their young men. Older persons turned away in disgust. This was not the only time I tried to mix two worlds, but it was one of the least successful.

  I missed Evelyn badly and could not think what to do to get him back. It was through him that we had made friends with the Lambs, who were to come and stay with us in Ireland; Lamb was to paint our portraits. I begged Evelyn to come too but he said no, certainly not. From then on he bestowed his incomparable companionship on others. I had to be content with the dedication of two books: Vile Bodies and Labels.

  Henry and Dig Yorke came to Ireland, and the Lambs, and Lytton Strachey. Lytton was not quite easy as a guest and I think he rather wished he had stayed at home. One evening we were going, as usual, to the theatre. Knockmaroon is near Dublin and we went regularly twice a week to the Abbey Theatre, every time the programme changed; after a couple of visits one had a strong feeling of having seen the play before, partly because all the Abbey plays had a distinct family likeness and partly because one got to know the actors so well. Since he had already endured a few evenings with Irish actors pretending to be Irish people Lytton refused to come to any more Abbey Theatre plays. ‘Oh do,’ I said. Generally he gave in at once if I wanted something, but he was adamant. Admittedly one play we had seen was so abysmally dull that we left in the middle; many years later I read Lytton’s letter describing this scene, to Carrington, in Michael Holroyd’s biography of him. He had a way of retreating behind spectacles and beard which was rather alarming; in this mood he could not be reached.

  I knew from Pansy that where he lived in the country there was a couple, the Ralph Partridges, who shared the house with him. Mrs. Partridge had been called Carrington, her maiden name, since her Slade School days. ‘Should I like her?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t even imagine you with Carrington,’ said Henry Lamb.

  ‘Why not? Would she hate me?’

  ‘Yes, she might. You never know with Carrington,’ said Pansy. ‘She’s always enthusiastic about something or other.’

  I thought a good deal about Carrington, and when Lytton invited us to stay at Ham Spray I almost dreaded her. Ham Spray was an old house in pretty country near Inkpen. Its centre was upstairs where Lytton had his library; here he worked and thought in peace. Carrington did most of the cooking; one had typical Bloomsbury fare—that is, a distant cousin of French bistro food, with a drop of wine and a few herbs added to every dish.

  I loved her at first sight. She did wonderful pictures in silver paper, and arrangements of shells; on the door of Lytton’s library she had painted rows of books and thought of clever names for them, like ISLAM. I suppose she was enthusiastic in her way, but my idea of an enthusiastic person is a loud, undiscriminating sort of bore, while Carrington was quiet as a mouse. She lived for Lytton; nobody else really counted. He accepted her worship in a slightly distant way, I thought. The Bloomsburies—at any rate the ones I knew—although they were a mutual admiration society about their painting, writing and criticism, and despite myriad love affairs within the group, seemed in friendship to be more reserved and chilly than most people. There was something disconcerting, for example, in the way that staying in a country house they would all slip off without wishing one another goodnight. It was supposed to hurt a Bloomsbury if you said goodbye or goodnight.

  Possibly to begin with they were copying Lytton’s behaviour, just as they imitated his way of talking with its exaggerated emphasis on one or two words in a sentence and the other words hurrying along as best they could. In Lytton’s case there was exceptional fastidiousness and reserve; for some of the ebullient younger members of the sect to carry on in this way when they were neither fastidious nor reserved was rather absurd. It was the same with the voice; just because Lytton, who talked wittily and sparingly, made an impression of such brilliance upon his audience, the use of the Strachey family voice for non-stop gossip and literary chatter only served to emphasize the contrast between him and his disciples.

  On the Sunday evening Carrington made a rabbit pie. I was terribly poisoned by it and quite thought I was going to die. I asked for a doctor at 4 a.m. He came, and gave me a glass of brandy and a pill while Bryan and Carrington hovered. High fever kept me in bed a couple of days more, and that was how I made such great At Pool Place I considered the advice we had been given about planting trees, but it seemed unpromising. The house was almost on the beach, nothing would grow in the disgraceful garden except nettles. ‘What can we do about the stinging nettles?’ I asked Lady Evelyn one day.

  ‘I don’t know I’m sure,’ she said, ‘unless you get some dogs.’ ‘Dogs, Lady Evelyn?’

  ‘Yes. I believe every time a dog lifts its leg on a plant the plant dies. We must get dozens of dogs.’

  That year we went to Venice, to Greece and to Constantinople, which seemed in those days a dying city. Since Atatürk had moved the capital and Piraeus had captured most of the sea-borne trade there was an overpowering atmosphere of decay. There were crowds of beggars, intent on exhibiting their dreadful deformities, at the entrance to mosques and churches. I was quite pleased when we boarded the Orient Express for the endless journey home

  Inside St. Sophia the Turks were allowing the Byzantine mosaics to be uncovered. There was scaffolding, and the white paint and verses from the Koran were being scraped away to reveal the glorious six-winged seraphim. One day we lunched with our ambassador Sir George Clerk. I was to see him ten years later in very different circumstances. He told me that as a young man he went out riding in the Row every morning with Grandfather Bowles. ‘He was so clever,’ said Sir George Clerk. ‘He taught me all I know about politics.’

  Bryan was now a barrister. Everyone finds it a struggle to get the first briefs, and to begin with Bryan thought his idleness at the Temple quite normal. One day he invited a young man who was in the same chambers to dinner. After dinner this person became communicative. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll never get any briefs.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bryan.

  ‘Well, because when there’s a brief going for one of us the clerk always gives it to me. He says Mr. Guinness doesn’t need three guineas.’

  This was very depressing news for Bryan; how could he ever get off the ground at the Bar if he wa
s never to be allowed to plead? After a while he stopped going to the Temple and resumed his writing.

  Henry Lamb painted a large square picture of Bryan, the baby and me, with Pilgrim standing over us; in the background was the valley of Knockmaroon. We sat separately, often in his London studio. Like Sickert, Lamb was preoccupied with light; he had a yellowish net curtain which he pulled across the window on clear days to simulate the more usual atmosphere. I have sometimes wondered whether the curtain might not have been to blame for the rather gloomy colours which often mar his work and make it seem jaundiced. The picture was a success, but Eddie Marsh, though he admired Lamb, criticized it as a likeness. ‘You see, you don’t look like a peasant, so what is the point of pretending you do?’

  We were now to have a house of our own in the country, and settled on Biddesden. Three times in my life I have had the great good fortune to live in a beautiful house; the first was Biddesden. It was built of brick with stone ornaments in the early eighteenth century by General Webb, one of Marlborough’s generals. In the hall, two stories high, hangs a vast picture of General Webb on his battle charger. The picture goes with the house; if it is removed General Webb’s ghost rides up and down the stairs making the house uninhabitable until it is put back where it belongs.

  At Biddesden we were not far from Ham Spray; there was a great deal of coming and going. Carrington would telephone: ‘Lytton says, may we come over?’ They were my dearest and most welcome guests. We discovered a short cut to them across the downs and through the narrow leafy lanes. About half way there was a deserted cottage. It was old, with an overgrown garden and orchard and a well; I always stopped and looked in the windows, it had a magic atmosphere. These were the days of terrible agricultural slump, tenant farmers could not pay their rent or the wages of their labourers. Perhaps it had been a shepherd’s cottage; keeping flocks was no longer profitable. I often thought of buying it and retiring there from the world, never to return.

  In the summer of 1931 I was expecting my second child and Muv and my sisters came to stay at Biddesden. Carrington described them to Lytton: ‘I went with Julia to lunch with Diana today. There we found 3 sisters and Mama Redesdale. The little sisters were ravishingly beautiful, and another of 16 very marvellous and grecian.’ This was Unity, and Carrington wrote of Debo: ‘The little sister was a great botanist, and completely won me by her high spirits and charm.’5

  Lytton and Carrington sometimes visited Rosamond Lehmann and her husband Wogan Philipps. Once they came to see me next day. ‘How was Wogan?’ I asked.

  ‘He was ten. Now he’s eight,’ was Lytton’s reply.

  That summer while Bryan was abroad I often lay sleepless in my lovely bedroom with its five long windows, and fancied I heard footsteps on the paving stones outside. I was afraid, as in the old days at Asthall. As the months passed this feeling entirely left me. It was Lytton Strachey who cured me of night terrors; I confessed them to him. I told him I was afraid at Biddesden, and that I had been afraid at Renishaw, where we stayed with Osbert Sitwell. Lytton raised both hands in a characteristic gesture of despairing amazement. ‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that the age of reason had dawned.’

  John Betjeman was staying with us once at Biddesden when he had a terrifying dream, that he was handed a card with wide black edges, and on it his name was engraved, and a date. He knew this was the date of his death.

  Like me, John was very partial to hymns. He even knew Nanny’s hymns, ‘Shall we gather at the river?’ and ‘There were ninety and nine’. We used to sing them after dinner; we had to wait till port time because May refused to be in the dining-room during the hymns and the under parlourmaid had to manage by herself. May was usually indulgent to us, but she thought there was a time and a place for everything.

  Another person who sang after dinner at Biddesden was George Kennedy. He was an architect and a great friend of the Lambs. He was often with us because he designed a domed gazebo we were building at the edge of the garden; it was to be reflected in water, and the water was to be deep enough to swim in.

  We left Biddesden and went to Buckingham Street where my second son, Desmond, was born in September 1931. To pass the long waiting time we went to the theatre nearly every night. One evening, at a very exciting play called The Front Page, I knew during the last act that I ought to go home because of the baby but could not bear to miss the end. Early next morning he was born.

  In those days the doctors ordered one to stay in bed for three weeks without putting foot to the ground; visitors were a consolation. Lytton came to see me. ‘Take the baby to your room,’ I told the monthly nurse half an hour before he was due to arrive. ‘Mr. Strachey can’t bear new-born babies.’ I remembered his shudder of horror when he saw a photograph of me in the Tatler with Jonathan in my arms.

  While Lytton and I were talking the door opened and in came the nurse carrying the infant. She could not believe in anyone being eccentric enough not to want to see him. ‘Isn’t he lovely,’ she said to poor Lytton, uncovering the scarlet head almost under his nose.

  ‘What long hair!’ said Lytton, faithfully doing his best. ‘Oh,’ said the nurse briskly, ‘that will all come off’ Lytton gave his faint shriek: ‘Is it a wig?’

  When we got back to Biddesden we found Carrington had done a surprise. On a blank window she had painted a girl peeling an apple; it looked from a little way off like a real person sitting on the window-sill just inside.

  That winter Lytton became ill and stayed in bed. Poor Carrington nursed him with loving care, but he got steadily worse, it was discovered afterwards that he had cancer. In January he died.

  Carrington was in deep despair. Next to Lytton, the person she loved most was Dorelia John. ‘Oh, Mrs. John,’ I cried, ‘what can we do about Carrington? Couldn’t she spend half her time with you and half with me?’ Mrs. John said of course Carrington would be more than welcome to go to Fryern for as long as ever she wished, but I sensed that she was doubtful and I am sure she knew that Carrington had no intention of living anywhere now that Lytton was gone.

  Friends surrounded her and did their best to comfort and distract. One day when I was away she came over to Biddesden and borrowed a gun from Bryan. She seemed much more cheerful and normal, almost her old self. ‘What do you want that gun for?’ asked somebody when they got back to Ham Spray.

  ‘To shoot rabbits.’

  ‘But there aren’t any rabbits.’

  At that moment a rabbit ran across the lawn. ‘There!’ said Carrington.

  She shot herself with the hateful gun when her guests had gone back to London. The deaths of Lytton and Carrington were a heavy blow to me. My life seemed absolutely useless and empty.

  At this time I saw a good deal of Tommy Tomlin, the sculptor, who was married to a talented Strachey, Julia. I loved them both. He was, I think, the best talker among all the clever Bloomsburies I knew. His conversation had sustained brilliance and did not rely on any trick of voice or use of paradox. Tommy often suffered from depressions, and after Lytton and Carrington died he was plunged into a deep and lasting one. We used to go for long walks in London. One day he stopped still—I can see him now, with deathly pale face and eyes almost white too—and said: ‘Everything in the whole world is terrible, but there is one good thing, and that is that Hitler has lost ground in the German elections.’

  9.

  CHEYNE WALK

  I was eighteen when I went to live at Buckingham Street, and twenty-one when we left. They were happy years. My two eldest sons were born there. We had innumerable parties and I loved the company of brilliantly amusing friends: Harold and William Acton, Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, John Sutro, Roy Harrod, the Yorkes, the Lambs, also my childhood friends Cela and Derek Keppel, Diana and Randolph Churchill. In the older generation Lytton Strachey, Emerald Cunard, Mrs. Hammersley, Osbert Sitwell and many more, and of course there were my sisters and Tom.

  It was at Buckingham Street that we arranged the Bruno Hat exhibition. Th
is was Brian Howard’s idea. He wanted to paint twenty pictures and invite all the art critics to a private view. Evelyn wrote the preface to the catalogue: Approach to Hat.

  Brian painted his pictures in John Banting’s studio; he used cork bath mats instead of canvas, and framed them in white rope, but I believe this was a measure of economy rather than an attempt to be original. They were a sort of cross between Picasso and Miro; rather decorative. Brian and Banting rushed up the stairs with several pictures under each arm, and their excitement when the whole lot were hung in the drawing-room was contagious. Rather against Brian’s wishes we disguised Tom as Bruno Hat with a black wig and moustache and he sat in a bath chair; a mad idea, because if he was a cripple, as for some reason I have forgotten he pretended to be, how was it that he had managed to paint all the large pictures which covered the walls? In any case he was installed in his invalid chair in a corner of the room, and to our joy not only all our friends but also the critics came in droves.

  Photographers elbowed their way in with immense cameras and were firmly directed by Brian away from the bewigged Tom and persuaded to photograph the art. Bruno Hat was supposed to be a German who knew no English; this was to discourage journalists from probing. But he was also supposed to have been discovered by us in Sussex, painting these glorious pictures out of his imagination without ever having visited Paris. Nobody believed any of these tales, everyone knew the whole thing was a joke. Lytton Strachey bought a picture to please me, and I stuck a red spot on it.