Dearest Jane...

by Roger Mortimer

  Various Blackwells surfaced intermittently in our family life. My father’s first cousin Tom, a true friend and ally to Roger, was generous and a shrewd financial adviser. They both worked in the racing world – Tom, a member of the Jockey Club, owned a stud near Newmarket. Although he had two children, Charles and Caroline, from his marriage to the glamorous Bunny, before she took off for pastures new, Tom was very definitely a man’s man and one of the old school. There are more question marks over his jovial bachelor brother, John, assistant head at my brother’s prep school, a great golfer and well loaded. My father enjoyed them both. My mother enjoyed neither of them. Tom and John’s mother, Aunt Shirley, all kindness and fluff, bobs up like a cork in my father’s letters along with Aunt Margery Blackwell, a sedate spinster who lived in Gerrards Cross. A former beauty with a lovely voice, she had cancelled each of her three weddings at the last minute in terror of the impending honeymoon. My grandfather was usually delegated to inform the unfortunate husbands to be.

  Aunt Joan grew up as a brisk Blackwell in manner and habit, occasionally glowing with a jolly show of interest in her nieces and nephew. One Boxing Day, teenage Lupin and I found ourselves sitting in the drawing room alone with Aunt Joan. Thoughts on our social life suddenly struck her and turning to my brother she asked brightly, ‘Any balls, Charles?’ The phrase entered family history. Aunt Joan had been released from the obligations of her mother’s drawing room by the Second World War, flourishing as a WRN and later as swimming teacher at the Francis Holland School. She was a competent and keen photographer. Her friends were called ‘chums’ and had names like Bunty and Pixie. She married the charming, urbane Reggie Cockburn, barrister. She was his second wife in what was well known as a marriage of companionship rather than consummation. It was not until after her death that I learned that she had several step-daughters – and received the impression that it was nearly news to them as well. She had an unerring ability to promote the excellence of almost every child she knew to my parents, apart from their own. Nonetheless, she was kind enough to me.

  If passion and warmth did not beat powerfully in the Blackwell breast, my father’s Aunt Star Blackwell was a compensation. Abandoning her first marriage to elope with an attractive Irishman, Chris Mitchell, to live in a beautiful Georgian house in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, she was beloved by both my parents. Aunt Star had a huge sense of fun. I leave her profile to my father later in this chapter.

  Neni (Enid) and Pips (Phyllis) were my mother’s aunts. Aunt Pips was something of a surrogate grandmother in the absence of her sister Doris, my granny, whom I lovingly remember from all the occasions I stayed with her. She died when I was only three.

  Aunt Pips had style and verve. Slender with perfect posture and well dressed, she was a talented horsewoman who hunted side-saddle. A black-and-white cine film of Aunt Pips tells the story – in her formal riding habit, smiling behind the black net veil attached to her top hat, merrily puffing a cigarette through the net. She loved the young but tragically had lost her only son to appendicitis aged twelve, followed later by the death of her beloved husband, Norman Loder – a great friend of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, whose signature appears on every other page of their visitors’ book. Aunt Pips’s second husband, Lindsay Shedden, was a cool dude – tall and slim. I remember him in his eighties, stylish in jeans and a large sombrero in their garden at Rose Cottage, Somerby, in Leicestershire. Uncle Lindsay was married four times – one of his wives was the Duchess of Rutland.

  Never judgemental, Aunt Pips was popular with all of us. Her sister, Aunt Neni had been very pretty and so was her little house and garden at Manton in Rutland. There was nothing to suggest that her life had been dominated by tragedy. Her wild and handsome only child, Michael, like a brother to his first cousin, my mother, had been killed by an accident on a motorbike, aged eighteen. Her husband, Uncle Ted Kemble, a former county Chief Constable, later committed suicide.

  Relating to relations was often tricky – not necessarily eased by the absence of children on all sides of the family. We had only one first cousin, a good egg called Alex Fellowes, who became a headmaster and happily married father of four. Alex was the only son of my mother’s middle sister: the notorious Barbara, Aunt Boo, famed for her political protests and variety of lovers. My mother did not appreciate Aunt Boo’s shenanigans but, when he grew up, Lupin did. He carried out small services on a large scale for this aunt, responding to persistent telephone appeals round the clock. He enjoyed Aunt Boo! The contrasting sensibleness of her elder sister Pamela could be depended upon. Pam and her soldier husband Ken were a great team, if a strict one, as aunt and uncle, aka Ham and Honkel. This did not in any way restrain my father from poking fun at their foibles, not least my aunt’s deplorable dress sense and her stringent application of domestic economies. He was not to know how generous she and my uncle would later be to my brother and sister and myself. Ham’s one indulgence was the Du Maurier cigarettes which she smoked in quantity. Both polo players in their youth and dedicated riders to hounds into their old age, Ham and Honkel had a great passion for horses. I can remember trembling as their two enormous grey beasts – appropriately named Slam and Jeep – thundered around us in a field. Their chosen dog was always a whippet. My uncle rose through the Army to the ultimate rank of General Sir Kenneth Darling, straight as they come.

  At the head of the family was our widowed maternal grandfather, seemingly the incarnation of Father Christmas all the year round, forever distributing gifts. Grandpa, Harry Denison-Pender, was the grandson of a charismatic and remarkable man, Sir John Pender, responsible for the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable across the Atlantic, investing his own money in the undertaking. By his death in 1896 he had founded thirty-two telegraph companies which amalgamated into Cable and Wireless.

  Grandpa lived in a comfortable Victorian mansion at Hook in Hampshire, attended by a cook and uniformed parlour maid, and our Christmas Days were spent, magnificently and memorably, with him. Crippled with arthritis, his daily pastime was to study racing form and place quantities of small bets on meetings around the country. His hospitality, enjoyment of children and pleasure in practical jokes were the traits he had in common with my father.

  The roll call of relations continued with other players who every now and again took centre stage.

  My Dearest Jane . . .

  Budds Farm

  [1970s]

  I cannot recollect a single really enjoyable expedition with my mother as she was always finding fault with my manners and appearance, possibly with good reason. When she came into the nursery, fortunately not often, I felt like an awkward recruit at the commanding officer’s inspection of barrack rooms.

  The Sunday Times

  4 March [mid 1960s]

  I had a letter from my mother yesterday complaining of her life and hard times on £4,000 a year tax free, more than I have for all of us. I refrain from further comment.

  Gar, my grandmother, once gave me a £5 cheque when I first lived in London and paid her a visit. I wrote to thank her and abjectly apologise for having promptly lost it. She replied: ‘No more cheques for you. That will teach you not to be so stupid.’ Grandpop had died when I was 8 years old. He used to perform magic tricks with half crown coins and bring us sweeties in the form of Melbury’s Newberry Fruits.

  The Miller’s House

  [Late 1980s]

  The school holidays seem to start earlier and earlier. My summer holidays never began till after Goodwood, the first week in August. My ever-loving family were very quickly bored with me and I can hardly blame them. My mother strongly disapproved of a boy my age reading books. I should have been practising my service at lawn tennis or caddying for my father on the golf course.

  Budds Farm

  [Mid 1970s]

  The stockbroking firm of ‘Roger Mortimer & Co’ has been ‘taken over’ and the name vanishes. Would you like a painting of the Mortimer founder? It would do for a little used lavatory or to cover a soup s
tain on the wall. I enclose a photograph of my parents’ wedding in 1906. The best man, John Grisewood, was my godfather, who swindled my father out of a large sum of money then retired to the United States to enjoy it. Father looks browned off already – I don’t blame him.

  Budds Farm

  Cowpat Lane

  [1972]

  The Midland Bank, trustees for my parents’ estate, forwarded to me a rather pert letter they had recently received from an individual called Sir Tresham Lever now posing as a lowland laird and living in the house once occupied by the Scott side of my father’s family. Lever has recently acquired two fairly indifferent paintings of Sir Walter Scott’s parents that used to be in my father’s house and which I flogged to the St James’s Club after my father’s death. In a rather lordly way Lever asks, ‘Who is this man Mortimer and how did it come about that he possessed such pictures?’ Rather saucily, he described the Scott family as ‘having gone to seed’: his criterion for seediness being lack of money and any form of ostentation. I have sent a note to Lever, adding that his first wife (originally a Miss ‘Poodle’ Parker, if you please) was a friend of my father and my mother and came often to our house.

  An ancestral connection on the Mortimer side with a cousin of Sir Walter Scott endowed us with some historical treasures. Notably, a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott after the original by Henry Raeburn, and enough crested blue and white Spode china to equip a banqueting hall; my parents’ dogs ate off the plates. My mother was a more enthusiastic reader of Sir Walter’s novels and poetry than his distant relative, my father.

  Cage 3

  Sybil Thorndike Geriatric Ward

  Basingstoke Infirmary

  Tuesday [early 1970s]

  Do you think your Aunt Barbara is now madly in love with Harold Wilson and Ian Mikardo because of their opposition to the Common Market? Mikardo is a man of truly hideous aspect. ‘Be careful of that fellow Mikardo,’ Winston Churchill once said. ‘He’s not nearly as nice as he looks.’

  Aunt Boo was such a dedicated anti-Common Market campaigner that she brought a fistful of leaflets to distribute round the guests at my 1971 wedding reception, along with a little toy elephant mascot and her current partner. She said to my father on this occasion, ‘Have you seen my little mascot?’ which he assumed was an introduction to her lover.

  Hypothermia House

  Burghclere

  October [late 1970s]

  I hope you are all well and continuing to temper your customary hilarity with a modicum of reserve. It has been all systems go with your aged parents. Two days of Aunt Boo left us both licked to a splinter. She never stops talking, complete balls at that, and her fantasy world is even more boring than the real thing. She has no teeth and her politics combine neo-fascism with CND and Zionism, a very rum mixture indeed.

  Old Cousin Camilla came down to lunch one day and though shaky was in rather good form. She was accompanied by her daughter, the one who fainted when Nidnod explained the ‘facts of life’ to her on the veranda at Barclay House.

  My mother’s Cousin Camilla or ‘The Peeress from Pont Street’, as my father dubbed her, was quite steely and every inch the lady, rather beautiful with creamy skin, always impeccably turned out. Camilla’s husband Joss was on the smooth side, something of a club man and a gambler, who spoke with a drawl steeped in port and cigars. They had three children, John – now Lord Pender – Robin and Ann.

  Budds Farm

  [Late 1970s, on pig paper]

  Will you please inform your highly esteemed husband that he will shortly be called to the colours? In other words he will be required to canvass for your Aunt Barbara who is the social democratic, anti-Common Market and vegetarian candidate for (I think) Chelsea. When she last stood she got 471 votes, which is itself a damning indictment of the democratic system of government.

  Budds Farm

  24 March 1972

  I went to Mrs Webster’s funeral service at Hook. Your Aunt Barbara, who hardly knew Mrs Webster, insisted on turning up looking, as she invariably does, no matter what the occasion, like a tragic widow of World War I. Plus ça change, plus c’est le même pose. In this instance the black costume was alleviated by a large white plaque denoting opposition to the Common Market, while carried by hand was a huge white plastic sack with the inscription ‘Common Market – No’ printed on it in letters of considerable size. Aunt Pam unkindly insisted on the removal of the plaque for the service while she seized the sack and locked it in the boot of her car.

  Mrs Webster was formerly my grandfather’s cook – an excellent one.

  Budds Farm

  Whit Monday [mid 1970s]

  I have heard nothing of your Aunt Barbara recently, her energies being entirely and happily devoted to assisting Messrs Wedgwood Benn and Foot. I think it is possibly a help in the struggle for satisfaction in life to be partially insane.

  Barclay House

  Sunday [1965]

  Cousin John Blackwell was up at the House but failed to obtain a degree, a lapse in industry or intelligence that has not prevented him from becoming a successful schoolmaster. ‘I suppose you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir’, as the college porter observed to Paul Pennyfeather. ‘That’s what happens to most gentlemen that are sent down for indecent behaviour.’

  Budds Farm

  27 October 1969

  Aunt Joan came to luncheon yesterday accompanied by a sprightly old trout of 81 who was lame, deaf and blind but in sparkling form and did not miss a trick. I filled her up with Orange Curacao and by the time she left she was thinking of tackling the Matterhorn on the difficult side. You can see we are really living it up in trendy Burghclere.

  The Sunday Times

  Tuesday [1969]

  Uncle Reggie’s brother Archie Cockburn died last week. He was a charming old boy of no small distinction in the legal profession. But then most Cockburns are cultured, whereas the Mortimers, Blackwells and Penders, with a few exceptions, are middle-class philistines with the less amiable characteristics of the Forsytes. I had lunch at White’s Club last week; it is full of men with brick complexions and red carnations in their buttonholes. Ough! After five minutes there I wish to start dancing on a table waving a small red flag – and you could hardly describe me as being a member of the New Left, or the Old Left either if it comes to that.

  The Old Grinder’s Doss House

  Burghclere

  17 September [late 1970s]

  Aunt Joan’s visit here was a success. The weather for once was warm and sunny and Nidnod and Aunt Joan get on very well even though neither can really make head or tail of the other.

  The Miller’s House

  23 January [mid 1980s]

  I hope you are having a happy birthday and are not too depressed at taking another step down the dreaded road to old bagdom! Don’t worry, though, as you are still in a good state of preservation and you may not have to worry much for about another 20 years. My grandmother more or less retired from life at 50. There was a rumour that she posted a letter when she was 52, but that is not reliably confirmed. I cannot remember her ever walking as far as the immense kitchen garden. She had six full-time gardeners. The head one, Dinsmore, had a beard, a flat-topped bowler hat and was a crusty old bugger. One never got given a few grapes or peaches to take away. Equally crusty was the chauffeur, ‘Comrade Thomson’, an ex coach-man who was secretary of the Hatch End Revolutionary Labour Party. He was about a furlong to the left of Vanessa Redgrave. Inside the house my grandmother’s maid was a sinister Welsh woman called Morgan who was in love with Mrs Farrow, the cook. The kitchen maid was very old and known as ‘Dirty Louie’. In reality, my grandmother had robust health (she did annual cures at Buxton Spa) and she was 83 when she tumbled out of bed on a chilly night and could not get back.

  Best wishes and love,

  xx D

  Chez Gaga

  [Early 1970s]

  One of my few remaining relatives, Cousin Kathleen, expired last week aged 90. She always wore a c
ollar and tie and a homburg hat like an Edwardian suffragette. A lifelong dipsomaniac, she enjoyed robust health bar the time she fell off a tallboy in the old Criterion Hotel. (How did she get there?) She was a marvel at getting hold of the hard stuff and was once brought back from Holy Communion in Stanmore in a pig cart with a net over the top.

  Turf Club

  24 November [1970s]

  I have now got to meet a relation called Wylde (descended entail-female, as thoroughbred breeders say, from a full sister to the defunct Haliburton Stanley Mortimer). I hope he does not want to borrow money or want a job. ‘Blood is thicker than water, but it is also a good deal nastier.’ (Thoughts of Chairman Mao after his wife’s cousins came to stay for the Karl Marx Gala Ball at the Rosa Luxemburg People’s Palace for Compulsory Democratic Recreation.) I must go and have another drink.

  xx D

  Loose Chippings

  Soames Forsyte

  Wilts

  14 June [late 1960s]

  Your aunt and uncle stayed here for the night, your aunt looking more like a wire-haired terrier than usual.

  Budds Farm

  2 February [mid 1970s]

  We flogged over to your aunt and uncle for lunch last week. A cold house, a cold lunch and a glass of cooking sherry. Your poor Great Aunt Pips who was staying looked as if she was suffering from exposure and frostbite, although she is far more like 60 than 86. She does, however, experience difficulty in picking up the drift of your mother’s conversation.

  The Gloomings

  Sunday, February [mid 1970s]

  Your Great Aunt Pips has done a Lazarus in respect of her pneumonia and left for home in her Toyota at about 95 mph.

  Budds Farm

  8 April [1970s]

  Two people I knew and liked, both younger than me, dropped down dead on Sunday. One of them had been lunching recently with Aunt Pam, though I am not suggesting his death was accelerated by malnutrition.