I am now nudging 70, and like it or not, the end of the road cannot be far off and one has to accept it. One merely hopes that the last furlong will not be unutterably sordid. Of course, I have many regrets, but none over my major sins (except that I did not commit more of them). I do, however, deeply regret glaring cases of unkindness, ingratitude, insensitivity, ill-manners, moral cowardice and snobbishness; particularly ingratitude to those who have loved me, or at least learnt to tolerate me. I expect I shall be asked some awkward questions on Judgement Day but I must say that I have got one or two little points I intend to put to God. Did you hear of the trendy schoolmaster who died suddenly and went to Heaven? On arrival the first person he saw was the Devil. He expressed mild surprise to St Peter who replied, ‘Didn’t they tell you we had gone Comprehensive?’ I expect that with your lively mind you must at times feel stifled by Northumberland. Even in Berkshire life is pretty turgid. If we go out to dinner the conversation seldom rises above the price of restaurants in London, the shortage of domestic help and the eccentricities of Mr Wedgwood Benn. The fact is that unless you go to London a fair amount you become a turnip. I am a complete bumpkin: as James Forsyte used to complain, ‘no one ever tells me anything’. Marriage often results in having to live in areas one would hardly have chosen oneself. Look at all those gallant women who, in the days when we had an Empire and were not ashamed of it, ‘followed the drum’ into some really ghastly holes. Osbert Sitwell as a young man was stationed at Aldershot. A ballet fan, he had to cut short parties after the ballet, explaining he had to get back to Aldershot. ‘Qu’est que c’est cet Aldershot?’ asked Diaghilev, ‘C’est une femme?’
Best love,
xx D
My dear father was pretty dismissive about ‘The North’ – but then that was his take on the provinces in general. Feudal though it felt then, conservative though it may still be, there are plenty of livewires in the beautiful county of Northumberland!
The Drippings
Dampwalls
15 January [early 1980s]
I expect you are too busy to work seriously on a book. The trouble with writing a book is that it absorbs too much time and energy: it becomes the centre of your existence and is likely to make you a very great bore indeed to one and all, particularly to one’s ever-loving family. I think you are fully capable of writing a readable book, but it will be terribly hard work while you are looking after children. However, persevere, and like the late Miss Barbara Pym you will very likely win through in the end. Only women can really write about women and very often their books appeal particularly to other women (and I’m not just thinking of that awful old ratbag Barbara Cartland).
My father unfailingly encouraged me in any writing project. Ideas sometimes crystallized into published features, articles or small books for niche markets. On my study shelf sits a card from my father in 1981:
Congratulations! I’m glad we appeared in the Sunday Times together, a fairly rare journalistic combination I imagine.
xx D
Budds Farm
19 February [early 1980s]
Thank you for your letter which I enjoyed although it appeared to have been written with the sharp end of a shooting stick dipped into soot. The photographs were interesting rather than flattering: don’t let any sociologist get hold of them or else we’ll all be on TV as a typical problem family. It is cold enough here to make an Eskimo turn up the central heating; unfortunately I am unable to do so due to the prohibitive cost of oil. Moreover, damp logs do little but disprove the theory that there can be no smoke without fire. I have been bullied into buying something called a ‘duvet’ and I must admit I like it: so does my dog whose breath at present would drive a tractor.
Budds Farm
[Mid 1980s]
Probably in many ways you would be happier in NW1 but . . . Have you thought of writing a serious book? Some episode in history, something requiring not just slapdash pen-and-ink diarrhoea, but patient research. How about the Bywaters-Thompson murder case. Mrs Thompson was a remarkable woman who was really hanged for adultery rather than murder, her case being ‘worse’ as she was so much older than Bywaters. How much did the attitude of the judge help to condemn her? Were the appalling rumours about her execution really true? I don’t want to give you advice which is always unwelcome unless it accords with the notions of the recipient. I do though suggest that you do not dabble in too many things but decide on a target and stick to it. You have imagination and ability but somehow you have not directed them to a truly suitable target. I personally think you have a good book lurking in you somewhere provided you can add patience to your other talents and virtues.
P.S. I was not a total failure in the seedy world of journalism but did not write a word till I was 37. My first book came out at 46.
In my bottom drawer I have that book – two years research, not into a murder case but the history of boys’ prep schools. I needed to understand why British parents, including ourselves, sent our sons to boarding school at such a tender age. My father loved the book, an endorsement insufficiently echoed by publishers.
Budds Farm
[Mid 1980s]
I am delighted to hear you are making your mark with the RHS. Perhaps you will eventually go down to history as the Gertrude Jekyll of Appletree Bank. Have you got the right type of boots? A sunken garden sounds a good idea as long as it does not sink with all hands during a long spell of hostile weather. Above all, don’t try and do too much. No one of your age thinks they are mortal but there is a limit to strength and energy. If you go flat out at both writing and horticulture you may spring a leak. Try and develop the habit of intermittent indolence. Any BF can overwork: I did it myself once and paid dearly for it. When a book is going well, it is all too easy to put in too many hours a day. If you start losing your zest for steak and kidney puddings, are assailed by demon insomnia and wake up with throbbing headaches, take a week off and revise your routine. It is healthier to work before breakfast than after 6 p.m.
Very hot today. Whenever I look at The Times to see what the temperature in Newcastle is, it is always 57!
Best love,
xx D
We were now in our sixth home, Lanehead, near Allendale. Downsizing, we bought a ruined shell plus four acres of land in a beautiful, remote setting. As overseer of building works, I was not of the calibre seen on TV’s Grand Designs, sporting a safety helmet whilst anchoring roof slates in howling gale. I preferred to wield my spade to make a garden, simultaneously writing a book, An Idiot’s Introduction to Gardening, which sold at the Royal Horticultural Society bookshop. Gardening – its pleasures and pains – were another bond between my father and I.
The Miller’s House
7 June [1980s]
We are very fortunate in Kintbury in that among the inhabitants is Professor J. H. Forklifter who has done some impressive work on ancient inscriptions in little known Indian dialects found in a temple in one of the remoter parts of Bengal. I gave him your letter and he kindly got to work on it. He made sense of about 75 per cent of it but is puzzled by your reference to the cricket match on Christmas Day in Nova Scotia. Anyway, thank you very much for writing; your industry was greatly appreciated.
Woodlings Burghclere
Tuesday [early 1980s]
I don’t often complain about my offspring but I have a complaint to make against you. Namely, that I see you so seldom. If I live to be 75 (not a good bet the way things are going at present) the meetings left to us barely reach double figures. The solution is not easy: perhaps we could split the distance and have a piss up at the Majestic at Harrogate?
Best love,
xx D
Budds Farm
22 January 1980
I hope you’ll have a very happy birthday, remembering to temper your hilarity with a modicum of reserve. I expect you feel fairly ancient at 31, but the thirties are a pretty good epoch on one’s life. One is some way from being a dodderer but old enough to realise what a BF one ofte
n was in one’s twenties. You ought to have a good time with the children during the next nine years or so, after which the birds will start spreading their wings. Your brother was wonderful value up to the age of 13. Too many birthdays just at present. Mabel is 88 tomorrow and still very on the ball. John Surtees is 61 on Saturday and I am sending him a tasteful card. You are fortunate at having your 31st birthday at home in the bosom of your near and dears.
I had quite a run of birthdays away from the old homestead, as follows:
Alexandria
Jerusalem
La Guirche
Spannenberg (a small but repellent prison camp)
Warburg (a large and even more repellent ditto)
Eichstätt (slightly better)
Ditto
Ditto
Trieste
Senior Officers School
Your mother is at her art class and is threatening to take up painting in oil. We had a very successful lunch party on Sunday, Emma E. being the cook. I think a reasonably good time was had by all. I have just had a belated card from Basil Madjoucoff, who is now the Very Reverend Basil Madjoucoff, Pastor and Dean! Thinks: was it my finest hour when I beat him in the final of YMCA table tennis tournament in Jerusalem?
To make your guests nice and talkative, I think the easiest drink is an old-fashioned Bronx: 1/3 Lemon juice 1/3 Any old brandy even something brewed up behind the Corbridge Gas works 1/3 Cointreau. Anyway, my dear child, have a good time and try and forget the country is on the brink of national bankruptcy and World War III.
Best love,
xx R
The Old Lazar House
Burghclere
27 August [early 1980s]
Dear Little Miss Voluble,
It was very nice seeing you again and your lively conversation added a new facet to breakfast.
The Miller’s House
14 January [1980s]
Thank you for your letter which I greatly enjoyed. I am not surprised you hate rugger. It is hardly your scene. Why not offer your services as a goalpost? I had a nice Christmas present yesterday – a bottle of champagne. Whenever you feel unwell, have two glasses of champagne. If that does not cure you, you are very seriously ill.
D xx
The Miller’s House
27 December 1988
We drove home in summer weather: only saw 10 lorries in the first 100 miles. Thanks for a delicious haversack ration: the consommé was up to your best standard. I don’t kid myself that a semi-moribund crumblie adds much to the traditional Christmas festivities, rather the reverse in fact, but I enjoyed myself a lot and the browsing and sluicing were beyond praise. Paul is exceptionally generous in the drinks dept. Anyway, thank you all, including those two bouncing boys, for giving me such a good time. I assure you your efforts were greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much indeed.
xx RFM
The Miller’s House
26 January 1988
I enjoyed seeing you and it is difficult to believe that you are well on the way to the wrinkled forties. You certainly don’t look it and you remain agreeably high spirited too. Why not have lunch with me in the early spring and I will take you to the Renoir Exhibition. A view of those fine fleshy women gives me the temporary illusion that I am still alive. We might also see ‘The Shooting Party’ (I enjoyed the book) at the Curzon Cinema where the seats supply adequate bum comfort. Expect a teeny Lent present from me in the not far distant future.
The Miller’s House
31 August [early 1990s]
This is the last day of summer. I cannot help wondering if I shall ever see another one. I’m lucky to have seen as many as I have. It is rather sad, at least I think that it is, that we live so far apart and exist in consequence in different worlds. However, as long as you’re happy!
Best love,
xx D
The mantra of loving parents: ‘We only want our children to be happy.’ How did that dream work out for those younger siblings of mine? Here they come.
5
Lupin and Lumpy
The Scorchings
Burghclere
12 August 1974
Dearest Jane,
I much relished having all the family here recently and in the term ‘family’ I include your much respected husband and the genial Sir Dennis [my baby son]. Families can be monstrous things but one of the few virtues of the Mortimer set up is that you, Charles and Louise have always got on so well with each other. If there is a family dust-up it is Chinese odds on your mother being in the thick of it, probably the instigator. Against this you must weigh the fact that she is a person of high physical and moral courage and would literally lay down her life for any member of the family if she thought the need had arisen. Her loyalty to us all causes her to expect fewer faults in us and more virtues than we actually possess.
Best love to you all,
xx D
Being the oldest may define your position in the family hierarchy, but the small significance of this primacy was diminished by one crucial detail – I was not a boy. Just as I was getting into my stride as top dog, aged three, along came my brother. If trumpets could have sounded and bells rung, they would have done. My parents were overjoyed – a boy was a proper person. Abounding in good humour from his earliest moments, he was an immediate success. There was little indication then of Charlie’s future as Lupin, wildcard, renegade and occasional exhibitionist. His most extravagant act of attention-seeking as an infant was to rock his cot so hard that it moved across the room and blocked the door, which had to be removed from its hinges to gain access to the dear little fellow.
For a brief period my brother and I both attended the same private primary school. My first emotional memory of my little brother was seeing him march out of assembly with his curious gait and an untamed tuft of golden hair sticking up at the centre of his head. I was overwhelmed with a sudden rush of protective sisterly love. He was not a brother who ever beat me up, put a frog in my bed or tied me to a tree and left me to be eaten by wolves. But I was of inferior sex, and within a few years, he was reminding me daily that I was nothing but a girl, pronounced and written ‘Gurrrl’, a name which stuck, ultimately evolving into Miss G.
At eight years old it was time for my brother’s first rite of passage: leaving home for prep school as a boarder. In his first year, his return to wind-blasted Wellesley House on the Kent coast had been delayed through illness. Later that term, I accompanied my mother on the 130-mile drive to drop him back at school. It was not a heartening experience – home was the only place where my brother wanted to be. As we drove away, I turned and watched this small lone figure waving from the school steps, absurd in his bizarre uniform of tweed plus fours, and my tears started to flow. ‘It’s just l-l-l-like Oliver!’ I sobbed. I knew every song from the musical off by heart. I didn’t have the reassurance of knowing that within minutes my brother would be in his dorm, ragging with his friends. And neither did my poor mother.
The floor of my brother’s room at home was dense with Dinky cars and a Scalextric track which was always going wrong, a happy challenge to its owner’s engineering skills, his particular talent. Later, further electronic devices were wired up over every conceivable space in his room. These gadgets were activated by clapping his hands, which he did when he awoke in the morning. Loud strains of ‘You ain’t nothing but a hound dog’ from his icon, Elvis, throbbed through his door, a signal for his elder sister to fetch him ‘a cuppa tea’. You get the picture. By twelve years old, my brother had equipped himself with a black plastic ‘leather’ jacket and winkle-pickers, replacing his bright blue patterned jumper – accessorized by his pink straw pork pie hat for holidays.
With his passion for cars, Charlie spent hours helping out at the local garage. Our father saw this as a harmless aberration, certainly not as a potential career path for an essentially practical boy, one devoid of academic interest and, unknown to teachers or parents, heavily hampered by a then unrecognised condition – seri
ous dyslexia. All things being unequal, Eton was his destiny.
As for the rest, my brother has provided his own record in print. As Lupin, he became a lead player not only in my father’s now legendary letters to him, but in letters to me from both my parents. At school, he was still an innocent little chap of only minor mischiefs – with the nicknames Charlie B, Tich or Twitch. Before long Lupin would gain his reputation as something of a delinquent and exhibitionist who continues to insist, even now as a ‘senior citizen’, that he is a ‘spiv’. Always drawn to low-life scenarios dominated by every variety of unreliable nutcase, he was often highly amused by the individuals he found in the lower depths. He is fundamentally a very kind man. He has always willingly embraced those he could effectively befriend, from tragic addicts to self-deluding crooks, energetically dedicating himself to sorting stuff out for his fellow fallible human beings. In this, I include his family, to whom he demonstrated his loyalty through his consistent care of our mother in her last years and his fair and meticulous management of all her affairs on our behalf. He was a genuinely good and loving son. All these efforts have been set against a background of his personal struggle with bad health for over thirty years, undertaken with enduring courage and humour. Illness has never prevented him from tackling tasks in hand.
In 2005, he went to the Chelsea and Kensington Registry office with his partner Tim to become the first couple there to have a civil partnership ceremony. Labelled as a non-stayer, my brother as Charlie, not Lupin, has turned out to be a remarkable survivor – and that is staying power of a high order.
My first sight of my much younger sister Louise was in my mother’s arms on the morning of 13 January 1958. My mother had given birth at home the day before. I had felt cheated of being excluded from such an interesting occasion, but gained a treat, being removed unexpectedly to London by my mother’s friend, Lady de Mauley, to attend a pantomime along with two jolly little boys, her son, Tommy Collins, and Desmond Parkinson’s son, Richard.
Dearest Jane... Page 9
