Dearest Jane...

by Roger Mortimer

  [Early 1970s]

  I went to Lord’s for the Test Match on Thursday. The members in the Pavilion are very democratic these days and take food and drink to their seats. In the old days you would have been flung out for such a flagrant breach of etiquette! I sat just behind a very old man who alternately snored, farted and picked his nose. Hardly the ideal mate on a hot afternoon. Fifteen years ago I would have met 100 people I knew at a Lord’s Test Match; last week I met no friends.

  Have you been reading about the Buckleberry man who drowned his ever-loving wife in the bath? What a villain! And yet though he was a clumsy murderer he nearly got away with it because of the combined idleness and ineptitude of the doctor who did the post-mortem. If the murderer had not suddenly lost his nerve, the corpse would have been cremated for a few more hours and he would have been safe. Well I must stop. I hear the sound of wheels on the gravel. Can it be the tumbrils already?

  Best love,

  xx D

  Budds Farm

  [1970s]

  Lovely big cow on the edge of the wood

  I’ll give you an apple if you are good.

  I want to be kind before the chance goes;

  For Aunt Sarah told me and she always knows –

  That somebody told her (I hope he was wrong)

  You’d be put in a bottle before very long.

  So lovely big cow, whose hide is all mottled,

  Eat up your apple before you get bottled.

  W. Wordsworth

  Le Petit Nid des Deux Alcoholiques

  [1980s]

  Two odious characters in a van called here yesterday and said they heard I ran a caravan site (I can hardly imagine a less plausible story). When they left I made a few enquiries and discovered they were a couple of local tea-leaves just out of Winchester gaol.

  Two very good jokes.

  What did the male owl say to the female owl in a thunderstorm?

  Too wet to woo.

  What did Big Ben say to the Tower of Pisa?

  I have the time, you have the inclination.

  Budds Farm

  [1974]

  I had lunch in my club last week with a howling lunatic whose company I found most enjoyable. His dissertation on the effect sago pudding had on his father’s sexual appetite was most enlightening.

  Budds Farm

  29 August 1974

  There was a hideous accident the other night at the top of the road and three youths and a girl, all locals and all on motor-bicycles, collided head-on with two cars and all were killed. They were going at a great speed, racing from a pub at Whitchurch. The funeral was macabre. All the local Hells Angels, etc. mounted their bikes, donned their best leather and 25 of them formed a cortege of honour, if that is the right word. Unfortunately a tractor came out of a side turning near the church and took them in the flank, causing four of them to be removed senseless to Battle Hospital.

  Chez Nidnod

  14 Rue Prinker

  12 September 1973

  I asked of Heaven only a poet’s boon.

  ‘Fade night,’ I murmured ‘And of Dawn, come soon.’

  And at that moment tumbled down a hole

  Almost exclusively reserved for coal.

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s]

  In my day Eton manners were inclined to be arrogant. E.g. 1: Three boys went to see their tutor at midday and found a glass of milk and a slice of seed cake waiting for the tutor on a plate. The first boy consumed the milk, the second the cake and the third broke the plate. E.g. 2: My tutor arrived home early from a dinner party and found the captain of the house using his study and drinking his port. The miscreant’s first comment was ‘Sir, your port is very indifferent.’ E.g. 3: My friend Ian Akers Douglas was playing cricket at Winchester and dined with a Winchester master afterwards. Offered a glass of claret, Ian accepted, took one sip and the asked the parlour maid to bring him a whisky and soda.

  Love,

  xx D

  The Miller’s House

  Kintbury

  2 September [early 1980s]

  Thought for the week from Canon R. F. Mortimer of St Vitus’s, Kintbury: P. G. Wodehouse’s description of a cocktail ‘that would make a week-old corpse leap lightly from the bier and enter a three day bicycle race’.

  The Miller’s House

  Thursday 7p.m. [early 1980s]

  One does read weird things in the paper. I was reading about a rape case in the ‘Daily Telegraph’. The victim said she did not recognise the accused by his features but by the curious pigmentation of his penis. The judge asked for an expert on penis pigmentation to give evidence and as one was not available he acquitted the accused. Nothing exciting at Newbury bar a few cases of indecent exposure behind the old bandstand. There has also been a shindy between two clergymen in Kingsclere.

  The Miller’s House

  14 February [early 1980s]

  There was once a Mr Deeming who married a series of women, murdered them after the honeymoon and buried them under cement in the kitchen. Sentencing him to death, the Judge said, ‘Mr Deeming’s motto seems to have been “Marry in haste and cement at leisure.”’

  Chez Nidnod

  Kintbury

  3 September [mid 1980s]

  The great French Actress Sarah Bernhardt was once playing at Manchester and one afternoon went for a carriage drive in the country. In one village she saw some mud-plastered yokels playing football on the green. She stopped the carriage, and clad in her white furs climbed on to the seat, and observed in her delight, ‘J’adore ce cricket; c’est tellement Anglais.’

  The Steady Dripping

  Burghclere

  18 February [early 1980s]

  I could bore you to the brink of extinction by telling you how good the post was when I was a dear little innocent boy: I particularly looked forward at school to the postal delivery on Sundays when I received a weekly edition of the ‘Daily Sketch’, in other words six numbers of the ‘Daily Sketch’ under a single cover. Good reading. They gave the names of the executioners at hangings.

  This must be a short letter as I am due to churn out a dreary article on a boring subject for a semi bankrupt magazine. J. B. Morton – Beachcomber – was an unusual type of Harrovian, a dedicated R.C., lived till he was 94. Do you remember how he addressed his friend and fellow-scribe Bevan Wyndham-Lewis?

  Bevan, hired scribblers every day

  Must cast their choicest pearls away.

  But what a fate is yours and mine

  Who cannot even choose our swine?

  Talking of swine, someone once described a Harrow master’s job as ‘casting sham pearls before real swine’. Cosmo Lang, a somewhat unpopular Archbishop of Canterbury, was known by his fellow bishops as ‘Auld Lang Swine’.

  Love to all,

  xx D

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s, typed on the back of old racing forms]

  I suppose that living as you do up in the frozen north, you find it difficult to entertain your friends in the winter. I have just been reading about Tibet where the climate is similar. They have an annual beano during the cold spell. It starts off with a speech by the Public Oracle then leads on to an exhibition of sculpture in butter. The big event, though, is a competition to see who can exude the greatest amount of body heat. Competitors take off all their clothes and spend the night naked in the snow. The individual found by dawn to have melted the greatest amount of snow by the heat of their body is judged to be the winner.

  There used to be a very agreeable member of Boodle’s, when I was a member there, called Mr Justice Stable, more commonly known as ‘Owly’ on account of his features. He was a witty and humane judge and much liked. Before one case came up before him, a juror asked for leave of absence since ‘My wife is going to conceive this morning.’ Owly politely replied, ‘It may be what you are seeking to tell me is that your wife is going to be confined this morning. Whether you are right or I am right, it would seem to be an occ
asion when you, personally, should be present.’

  Love,

  x RM

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s]

  Look forward to meeting you on May 22 for the Trooping of the Colour and I enclose two tickets. Let’s hope there are no unfortunate incidents. Forty-eight years ago I was on a similar parade held in Hyde Park. A booze sodden bog-Irishman took a pot at the King. The Irishman was so pissed he missed. I knew nothing about it until I read the story in the ‘Evening Standard’. Some years earlier I was on Piquet duty at the Bank of England. As usual very boring but redeemed by the Bank’s free bottle of excellent port. Next day I rendered a report declaring that ‘nothing unusual had happened during my tour of duty’, whereupon the Adjutant produced the midday edition of the ‘Evening Standard’ which carried the headline ‘Midnight Robbery at the Bank of England’.

  Love

  xx D

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s]

  What does more damage than a bull in a china shop?

  A porcupine in a condom factory.

  The Miller’s House

  April 1988

  ‘Where every prospect pleases but only man is vile’, as Bishop Heber wrote after discovering on a missionary journey that his trunks had been stolen in Ceylon.

  The Miller’s House

  7 January 1980s

  This week’s quotation: ‘The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority . . . the child of an unbroken home.’

  ‘The Rachel Papers’, Martin Amis

  Budds Farm

  7 April [mid 1970s]

  SPRING in BURGHCLERE

  Spring has come to bosky Burghclere; merry sunbeams pierce the air,

  Kevin Potts is bright with pimples, Mrs Turge has died her hair.

  Smoothly, Jackson overcharges pensioners for potted meat,

  Major Wagstaff, pubwards hobbling, bravely bears with old man’s feet.

  In the churchyard crisp-bags, fag ends line the path to the Norman door,

  Parson Craig trips in for matins, spots a Durex on the floor.

  Sadly clucking disapproval, parson minces down the aisle,

  At the organ gaunt Miss Simpson stabs him with her spinster’s smile.

  In his garden Mr Muncer views a crop of sturdy weeds

  Basking in the April sunshine where last month he planted seeds.

  Mrs Muncer, hand on Hoover, casts a love look at her Spouse

  Through the window. Five more minutes, then it’s time for Maxwell House!

  In the schoolyard acned Eric threatens Nigel with his knife,

  Tracey who’ll be eight next birthday, ponders on the facts of life.

  Mr Cocksedge, music teacher, casts a somewhat randy eye

  At his pupil, Mavis Wimpole, and her pink and gleaming thigh.

  Mrs M. proceeds to Council, plans a team in tiny head,

  (sad she’s left the whole agenda on the table by her bed).

  Tap of typing from the Major as he writes to daughter Jane:

  Luckes’s tractor spreads manure, rich brown blobs, along the lane . . . to Budds Farm.

  Hypothermia House

  22 February [mid 1980s]

  The people of this country are great survivors and I daresay in ten years time they will still be arguing about the abolition of public schools and the inadequacy of the railway system.

  Best love,

  D xx

  Now for a new role which lightened my father’s later years – becoming a grandfather. He relished the joys of connection and affection unburdened by responsibility.

  13

  Grandfather Roger

  ‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

  ‘And your hair has become very white;

  And yet you incessantly stand on your head –

  Do you think at your age it is right?’

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  By the time his first grandchild arrived, my son Piers, in April 1974, my father had accumulated plenty of parental wisdom to share. My mother immediately became a doting grandmother. My younger son Nick was born in 1976. My father absolutely understood that advice to a mother must be given sparingly and with care, whilst criticism was to be avoided in the name of self-protection. He sufficiently respected the father of his grandsons to know that he could depend on the intelligence and sense of at least one of their parents. I loved having two little boys and if my father might have on occasion questioned my maternal protectiveness, he expressed himself to me on the subject of his grandsons with interest, tenderness and as funnily as ever. My niece and nephew enjoyed equal appreciation.

  Babies amused him in very small doses. He would have been amazed to witness the close involvement of modern fathers, and to see his grandson Nick, the little tearaway he knew, now a dynamic managing director of a digital marketing agency, married and a fully hands-on father of three – Ruby, Star and Laszlo. What a huge bonus and joy it is to be their grandmother.

  Roger the grandfather came into his own when the babies grew into bright and merry little boys with whom he could engage in chat, games and jokes. One day he announced to his small grandsons that he and their grandmother were going to a fancy-dress party. ‘Oo, what are you goings as, Grandpa?’ ‘I am going as a cowpat,’ he replied, beaming. ‘And Granny is going as a blue-bottle.’

  He enjoyed each grandchild on their own terms – he was not inclined to see their future as a series of moulds into which they must fit. Highly individual himself, he responded to that quality in others, particularly enjoying it in his youngest descendants. My father’s interest in sport was a well-rounded one – but by no means obsessive. He saw team games as an obvious route of pleasure for his younger grandson and a more literary future for his elder brother. His perceptions were spot on.

  When they went away to school, they too became the recipients of a gentle stream of amusing and encouraging letters. I continued to receive letters of thoughtful information on their education and well-being. He lived far away, but was alive long enough for my sons to have formed a warm connection with their extraordinary grandfather. If he had lived only a further six weeks, he would have enjoyed the pride of knowing his elder grandson had been offered an unconditional place at Oxford, a thrilling moment in a family not noted for academic achievement. He would have been proud again now at the publication of Piers’s first bestselling novel for young people, The Last Wild. Above all, he would have been delighted that both grandsons had found great personal happiness, Piers with his partner, Will, and Nick with his wife, Clare.

  I’ve heard some say that they don’t want to be called ‘Grandfather’ – it is too ageing. I have heard yet others say the real worry is sleeping with a grandmother. But the mellowness and sagacity of old age is so often underestimated in an era where youth must be clung to at all costs. My father did not enjoy being old. He did, however, derive real pleasure from what he could offer as Grandpa. And as some wiseacre had it: being a grandparent is the reward you get for not murdering your children.

  My Dearest Jane . . .

  Budds Farm

  24 April 1974

  Could you please send me a nice photograph of P. F. Torday that I can show to friends in the Carnarvon Arms without them actually wincing? I remember during the war an enormous gorilla-type man who was very keen on showing photographs to all and sundry of his son and heir who looked rather like Mussolini with mumps. While searching one’s mind for suitable comment, the gorilla used to observe in a manner that conveyed more than a hint of a threat: ‘There is nothink wrong with the kiddy.’

  ‘Of course not,’ one would reply with warm insincerity. ‘He’s a beautiful little fellow with a great look of you about him.’

  I suppose when P. F. Torday has grown up, he will be finding himself living in an egalitarian republic with a snotty old President and a one-party government of the extreme left.

  Best love to you all and not least
to saucy little P. F. T.

  P. F. T was eighteen days old and my father was already speculating on the future world in which he would find himself.

  The Old Crumblings

  Burghclere

  Election night, 5 March 1974

  Does Sir Denis anticipate any immediate rally in share prices?

  Without an eyebrow in sight, my father had dubbed my beautiful baby son Sir Denis – after bushy-browed Denis Healey, recently appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  Budds Farm

  15 August 1974

  It was very pleasant having a surprise visit from you and Sir Denis. Does the latter wish for a year’s subscription to the ‘Investor’s Chronicle’ for Christmas?

  The Crumblings

  [1974]

  I hope Sir Denis thrives in the heat; children, unable to grab a large gin and tonic for revival, are liable to find it trying.

  Budds Farm

  28 August 1974

  My respects to Sir Denis. If he cries, try whispering ‘Directors’ Fees’ to him.

  La Morgue

  Burghclere

  7 September 1974

  Best love to Sir Denis. If he’s fractious, he’s probably worrying about the wealth tax.

  The Old Sludge Heap

  Great Ullage

  Berks

  3 January 1975

  I’m glad to hear you and Sir Denis are to look in shortly. How is he reacting to the present economic crisis? I shall be pleased to hear his views.

  Budds Farm

  Whit Monday 1975

  How are you all? I trust my grandson is enjoying a life divided somewhat unequally into periods for eating and repose. How lovely it would be if only life could continue along those lines with certain minor adjustments. Perhaps one day it will. After all, thrift has become a vice. It may follow that work will come to be regarded as mere selfish indulgence.

  The Old Ice House

  Shiverings

  16 November [mid-1970s]

  I enclose a photograph of myself at that I age I did not look totally unlike Piers. What a dear little innocent boy I was! And when I think what happened to me since.

  Maisons des Demi-Morts

  6 April 1976

  I hope Piers relished his second birthday. What a ghastly world the poor child is growing up in! By the time he is fifteen this country will probably be occupied by the Chinese.