Budds Farm
21 May 1976
As Vice-President of the Burghclere and Newtown Population Explosion Prevention Association, I deeply deplore your current position. However as your father I must conceal my true sentiments and send you good wishes and the hope that you experience the Best of British luck. I trust the produce will turn out to be a girl; on the whole girls tend to be less tiresome than boys. What are you going to call her? How about Matilda or Martha? In Basingstoke three out of five girls are named Samantha; the boys are usually Kevin, Garth or Wayne.
Best love,
xx D
My second baby was on the way.
The Lazar House
Burghclere
4 December 1976
I hope you are not feeling too awful waiting for this infant to arrive. I really am sorry for you. If men had to produce children, the birth-rate would rapidly fall to zero. Life here is fairly dull and I am thinking of joining a punk rock group to cheer myself up. I wish you did not live so far away as we can so seldom have a laugh together. Anyway, my sincere good wishes for a happy outcome to your present condition. I am betting on a boy. Why not call him Percy after my great-uncle whose sole claim to distinction, in his nineties, was to be the oldest living Old Etonian?
Best love,
xx D
The Old Damp Barn
Burghclere
1 May [late 1970s]
I wonder what sort of life my grandsons are in for. Things can change a bit in three generations. My grandfather could have watched public executions – possibly did – lived at a time when appendicitis was usually fatal, took part in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, attended the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and wore black for a year after a relation died. Though never a rich man, he seldom had fewer than six servants indoors. He went to church at least once every Sunday. I think one of the biggest changes in my own life has been the decline in the power and influence of the middle and upper middle classes since the last war, and the lowering of their standard of living. The previous war destroyed the aristocracy which has now virtually ceased to exist. I expect your children are destined to live in an egalitarian society.
Love to all,
RM
Budds Farm
[Late 1970s]
Please tell Piers that Nigel Spoon Basset invariably spoons his porridge through a straw and that his favourite drink is iced goat’s milk. His mother is compelled to keep a lady goat called Vanessa Redgrave.
Budds Farm
7 December [late 1970s]
I much admired the pluck of your younger son in disagreeable circumstances, while his elder brother clearly does not miss much and comes out with some telling observations.
The Crumblings
4 August [early 1980s]
How is the saucy Piers? What worries me about him is that he already possesses a sense of the ridiculous, a fearful barrier to success in life. He has wit and intelligence and his phraseology is most original for a boy of his age. I can’t see him ever joining the National Front or playing football for Newcastle United.
As for Nicholas, I think he will have a very happy life, being good at games and with a sense of fun. I can see from the way he swings a golf club or kicks a ball that he will enjoy school.
Budds Farm
[Early 1980s]
Piers has a lot of charm and his success with older women is an interesting clue to the form his life will take once he has crossed the murky stream of puberty. Nicholas possesses vivacity and determination: I shall be surprised if he fails to make a success of his life. He might make an excellent soldier.
‘Eventide’ Home for Distressed or Mentally Afflicted Members of the Middle Classes
[1980s]
Thank you for your informative and entirely legible letter. I am glad to hear the Torday family is prospering. You will find the characteristics of your children are continually changing: Piers will probably end up as prop forward for Gosforth and Nicholas running a successful ladies’ hair-dressing establishment in SW1.
14b Via Dolorosa
Burghclere
8 December 1983
Don’t worry too much about my elder grandson. I expect he’s a lot tougher than you think. Of course school isn’t as much pleasure as a week at the Ritz in Paris. However, most boys learn the useful lesson that life is usually uncomfortable, mostly unfair and that what you are taught is 95 per cent useless.
Budds Farm
11 January [early 1980s]
I suppose Piers is back at school. I don’t think any boy likes going back to school: I’m sure I didn’t although my home life was anything but a happy one. I always blubbed a bit when I said goodbye to Mabel who I suppose gave me more happiness than any other woman I have ever met. I don’t suppose Piers relished going back but I am sure he is not one of those boys to whom the break with home life is almost unbearable. In his quiet way I think he has plenty of pluck. I read the following in bed this morning at 3 a.m. when in the throes of what my old friend Dermot Daly called ‘that horrible insomnia’:
Going to school, the cab’s at the door,
Mother is waiting to kiss me once more,
Father looks sad and gives me a tip,
Poor little Mary is pouting her lip.
I can recollect Pop giving me a tip, but if my mother ever kissed me even once, the incident has eluded my memory. However ‘old men forget, etc., etc.’
The Miller’s House
4 July [mid 1980s]
I shall accept your invitation to stay. I shall bring boughs of freshly cut holly to flog my grandsons if they fail to grovel sufficiently.
The Miller’s House
18 November [mid 1980s]
How is life up in the frozen north? I had a nice letter from Piers complaining about the cold. All schools are cold; hence chilblains. Boys from day school do much better in exams as they can swot away in the evening in nice warm houses instead of fumbling in Greek dictionaries with frozen fingers in some hideous school room, the temperature of which is about 47 degrees F. I sent Piers quite a nice diary. A fairly useless present as most boys use a diary for 3 days then never open it again.
When my parents ventured up the motorway to ‘the frozen north’, they were the most delightful and appreciative guests. Christmases – often a battleground back in Berkshire – abounded in peace and goodwill. When my mother’s stocking from my father consisted of two bargain bars of Lifebuoy soap and a pair of gardening gloves, she received them with exemplary graciousness. Treasured grandparents, their visits to us are amongst the happiest of my family memories.
The Ruins
Burghclere
27 October [early 1980s]
Piers is gentle and charming and possesses a lively wit for a boy of his age. I don’t think you need worry too much about Nicholas being happy at school, now or in the future. I think he is a natural games player and will be able to look after himself pretty well.
Sport – football and Newcastle United in particular – remains a top pleasure for Nick.
The Miller’s House
10 August [mid 1980s]
I enjoyed seeing my grandsons. I will avoid criticising them as even the limpest criticism of someone else’s children can secure you a lifelong enemy. I can remember painful instances in my own family, the cause of the ill-feeling invariably being comments by my mother made with the deliberate intention of causing pain.
Piers has great charm and no lack of humour. It must be a relief to you that he is in no apparent danger of contracting athlete’s heart! Nicholas is a born games-player but he is very far removed from being stupid; quite the reverse in fact. He is at any rate shrewd enough to appreciate that he has got his loving mother pretty well taped! I think he will enjoy 95 per cent of his school life and will never be short of friends.
Love to you all,
xx D
Hypothermia House
22 February [mid 1980s]
I had a letter from Piers which I mu
ch appreciated. For the young, writing a letter is a fearful fatigue. There used to be an old saying in my regiment: ‘It is infinitely preferable to incur a slight reprimand than to undergo an irksome fatigue.’
The Olde Igloo
Burghclere
17 January [mid 1980s]
How are the scholar and the athlete? I expect the scholar will end up a champion wrestler, while the athlete will win a Balliol scholarship and attend intellectual parties where he will:
‘recite in a falsetto voice
the earlier works of Mr Joyce’.
Those lines were written by a poet, long dead, whose description of a Landseer painting at Balmoral included the lines:
‘And dachshunds, of the thin and wan sort,
Retrieving grouse for the Prince Consort’.
The Olde House with No Loo Paper
29 December [mid 1980s]
Problem for Jane and Piers: punctuate the following so that it makes sense: That that is that that is not is not is not that so.
Easy quotation to remember to impress educated friends when your sons are raising hell: ‘Sunt pueri pueri: pueri puerilia tractant’ (children are children: (therefore) children do childish things).
Budds Farm
[Early 1980s]
Piers writes amusing letters and seems keen on gardening. An embryo Beverley Nicholls? You can’t tell: boys change so quickly and he’ll probably finish by being the Judo champion for N. Yorkshire. Nicholas seems the merry extrovert and with luck he may stay that way. I can’t visualise him yet as an avant-garde poet winning a J. P. Sartre scholarship at Sussex University.
Beverley Nicholls was a prolific writer in many genres, including books on gardening.
The Miller’s House
[Mid 1980s]
Very few children, for obvious reasons, are at their best in the presence of their parents. I think Nicholas comes into that category. He is very good fun when you are out for a walk with the dogs, less amusing when you are exuding maternal care and affection in his near vicinity. I think he is always likely to be happy and successful at school. I get the impression that au fond he is quick witted and decidedly intelligent. As long as you’re not too nice to him, I am confident that he will turn out to be an exceptionally agreeable boy.
Chez Nidnod
3 September [late 1980s]
I hope Piers will not change too quickly at Eton. It is always a shock for a loving mother when the previously apple-cheeked loved one returns for the holidays 6ft tall, stubble on the chin and rich crop of acne rosacea on the forehead. Most boys tend to be bloody from 14 to 17, some up to 67 or even later.
The Miller’s House
29 December 1987
P. F. T. continues to impress me most favourably and he has a very charming nature. Most boys of his age are beginning to develop spots and bloody-mindedness but he seems happily clear of both. N. L. T. has much to be said in his favour and is obviously very bright.
The Miller’s House
26 January [late 1980s]
Thought for the week: ‘Stubborn and ignorant, should make an excellent parent’, from a report on a Wellington schoolboy.
With love to you all,
D xx
Happy days! Now, sadly, we move on to the last lap, but my father’s wit was as healthy as ever.
14
El Geriatrica
‘“Eventide” Home for Distressed or Mentally Afflicted Members of the Middle Classes
[1980s]
Dearest Jane
What have I in common with Kubla Kahn, Talleyrand, William Pitt, Bacon (F.), Wesley, Darwin, Fielding, Milton, Newton and Ben Johnson? The answer, my dear child, is gout. Dr H. Ellis wrote: “Gout occurs so often, in such extreme forms, and in men of such pre-eminent intellectual ability, that it is impossible not to regard it as having a real association with such ability.” Ellis added that typical gout sufferers are ‘eccentric and irascible’.
Love,
RFM’
Black’s Medical Dictionary was the best thumbed book at the various addresses at which my parents apparently lived: The Old Crumblings, Chateau Geriatrica. The Old Lazar House, 17b Via Dolorosa, The Eventide Home, Les Deux Gagas, Bonkersville and, most frequently, Chez Nidnod are just a handful.
Not only my father but my mother and brother dipped deep into the sinister pages of this medical bible, combing them urgently for symptoms. My mother was keen on self diagnosis; my brother Lupin, with very challenging health problems of his own, became a fount of extraordinary medical information, maintaining a personal drug pharmacy from which he prescribed for others in extreme circumstances; my father, ever fearful that he was well within reach of the grim reaper, anticipated any new pain or discomfort to be the signal towards the departure gate.
The prospect of Christmas could bring on a whole new inventory of near fatal maladies.
Pronouncements on his death peppered my father’s conversation for as far back as I can remember. The effect could be lowering but his robust presence happily prevented me from taking them too seriously. My mother did – of course. To these ruminations my father would add further caustic comment: ‘No one is indispensable’, to which my mother would retort, ‘Your trouble is you are just a cynic.’ Cynicism was an armour my father wore well – appreciated the most by those who were least near to him.
From my father’s letters I learnt of the lives – and deaths – of many people of whom I had never heard, let alone known. At the time, in the natural self absorption of youth and the consuming preoccupations of the present, these vignettes and obituaries were rather wasted on me. Nowadays, I understand full well the gentle solace it brings to commit these reflections to paper – I do it myself.
Memories of childhood and youth become sharper in old age; what happened yesterday morning is forgotten but the distant past can be recalled in effortless detail. My father’s nearly photographic memory enabled him to paint vivid period pictures of his childhood and youth in his letters.
I never asked my father where his epistolary obsession with skin conditions had erupted from – all those little rashes, spots, warts and growths which he liked to attribute to many an innocent individual who crossed his path. It was an immediate way of debunking just about anyone from a millionaire racehorse owner to a café waitress. There was a large ration of carbuncles amongst the bill of blemishes described in his letters. The fact that my father was scarcely squeamish on paper was not equalled by an ability, in the flesh, to cope with even the smallest wound, ache or pain in any practical manner – that he left to my mother.
Roger had a few problems with God. In his book, the Almighty was sorely lacking in a sense of humour. My father had spent too many hours on his knees in school chapels without any noticeably helpful answers to his prayers manifesting themselves. As for the mercy of the Almighty in the trials of war, God, in his omnipotence, had not seemed prepared to intervene in any discernible manner.
If he did not turn to God in his later years, my father could still be moved by a good hymn, or carol – particularly if it was his own version:
Hark the herald angels sing,
Beecham’s pills are just the thing.
Peace on Earth and mercy mild,
Two for a man and one for a child.
The hymn with the line ‘Let me to thy bosom fly’ convinced him as a child that there was a weird little insect – the bosom fly – buzzing about somewhere.
As old age gripped him and his health declined, he was increasingly wont to quote: ‘Oh death where is thy sting – Grave where is thy victory?’
Shortly after his eighty-second birthday in late November 1991, this plea was answered.
‘I don’t want a memorial service, just a quick fry-up’, my father had written as a postscript in one of his letters to me.
As she carefully organized his memorial service, my mother said to me, classically: ‘If your father was here he would never let me do this.’
In contradiction to hi
s oft-expressed edict, my father was not in any respect ‘dispensable’. He was of a quality that was irreplaceable.
For all his intelligence and talent, my father was a deeply modest man who never applauded himself for his achievements. If he did not believe in the possibility of resurrection, he has been reincarnated through his inimitable letters, bringing laughter and pleasure to many.
My Dearest Jane . . .
Budds Farm
10 February [late 1960s]
I did a lot of gardening today and nearly had a little stroke; it is always dangerous when your ears start popping and you think you hear the Luton Girl’s Choir singing ‘Jesus Wants You for a Sunbeam’. I knew an elderly woman who had a minor stroke when packing her suitcase to go and stay near Ipswich for the weekend. The stroke was down her right side but she pluckily went on packing with her left.
Budds Farm
October [late 1960s]
A very old friend of mine died last week; he had a coronary and fell off a bar stool clutching his glass to the end. Not an ignoble finish for a man whose failing was too much charm and too many friends.
Budds Farm
9 March [early 1970s]
I am now off to order a new suit . . . something that will proclaim my inherently reactionary nature and reluctance to compromise with this piddling era in which my declining years have to be spent. I’m thinking of leaving all my money, which isn’t much, to the newly formed Ashford Hill Community Centre run by drop-outs from the meteorological department of Bracknell University.
Budds Farm
28 August 1974
I have bought two new pairs of spectacles at reckless expense. One pair I can’t see through at all. The other was made for an individual with a head like a giant pumpkin and falls off at the slightest movement.
Les Deux Gagas
Bonkersville
Berks
[1974]
I am now a retired man, almost at the end of the road. One more river and that old river is Jordan, one more river, just one more river to cross. I hope you saw me in a longish TV interview last Friday. I think it was quite good. Needless to say no one at Budds Farm could bother to watch! Perhaps morbid self-interest to the exclusion of everything else is a family failing. I become an OAP this week. As Anthony Powell wrote, ‘Getting old is like being increasingly punished for a crime you have never committed.’
Dearest Jane... Page 30
