In Tearing Haste

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  Decca went to Philip’s service. It is v v sad for her because he was really the only friend left in England. She went to The Mitford Girls. I went to the 1st night and a preview. It’s dotty of course, spindly actresses being us, & getting everything just wrong. How could they be expected to get anything right.

  It seems to be an extraordinary success & got a standing ovation on the royal 1st night charity perf. They talk of it going to London. Too odd for words. I looked first at the floor & then at my watch, so did P Jebb. The good thing to be said for it is that there is nothing unpleasant, just STOOPID.

  Richard Garnett (editor) has taken my book, a v odd feeling which you must know all too well (or all too little as we know how your books hang about when it comes to finishing). I suppose he’ll come back saying he wants it all different. Never mind, it’s like the theatre, we never need go again.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] Laura Charteris (1915–90). Ann Fleming’s younger sister. Married to Viscount Long 1933–42, to 3rd Earl of Dudley 1943–54, to Michael Canfield 1960–9 and to 10th Duke of Marlborough in 1972. ‘She seemed to me to be hard and a bit too smart, but with hindsight this may have been unfair.’ (DD)

  [2] Raymond Carr (1919–). Historian and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. ‘When my daughter Emma was up at Oxford in the early 1960s, she nicknamed her popular tutor after the absent-minded character Professor Theophilus Branestawm in Norman Hunter’s novels.

  [3] Arnold Goodman (1913–95). After Ian Fleming’s death, the large and powerful solicitor helped his widow sort out her husband’s financial affairs and had become a close friend.

  [4] ‘Thankfully I did not lose Jacob Rothschild. Instead, he and Serena have become great friends of mine. When Chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, he often came to Chatsworth to oversee the regeneration of Buxton, which was a grateful beneficiary of the fund. His own achievements at Spencer House and Waddesdon are a lesson to anyone in charge of a family legacy – but to me the garden of The Pavilion, where they live, is the all-time treat.’ (DD)

  3 August 1981

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Here are the last pages of my BOOK, finished & gone. I KNOW you want to see how it worked. Well, anyway, here it is. Too late to say it’s all wrong.

  I must say I’d rather write a book than read one any day. Not so sure about the victims who are supposed to read mine. Can’t help that, I never would have done it if it hadn’t been ordered by Uncle Harold.

  You would have loved the Buckingham Palace party [1] on Mon night. All trad to begin with, a huge crowd of people, got two OMs at once viz. Freddie Ashton [2] & Solly Zuckerman, [3] all kinds of freaks like Harold Wilson [4] with his garter stitched on to a sort of blazer like house colours for a cricket match, Sybil Cholmondeley queen of all she surveyed, the Queen ditto, the Bride v fascinating-looking & so on & forth. Come 1.30 & Andrew insisted on leaving so I didn’t see the scrum of dowagers fighting for blue & silver balloons with Prince of Wales feathers painted on them. Emma said it was like a Brixton riot only the rioters were white-haired ancients fighting for grandchildren & gt grand children at home. Lovely.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] To celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

  [2] Frederick Ashton (1904–88). The dancer and choreographer was awarded the Order of Merit in 1977. ‘He was the best company imaginable and a brilliant mimic – he practically turned into the Queen Mother when acting her arrival at Covent Garden, as he did Queen Victoria, seated in Andrew’s grandfather’s Bath chair in the garden at Edensor House.’ (DD)

  [3] Solly Zuckerman (1904–93). Scientist and public servant, President of the London Zoo 1977–84, awarded the OM in 1968.

  [4] The former Prime Minister was made a Knight of the Garter after his retirement in 1976. He was suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease although his condition was not yet publicly known.

  15 April 1982

  Lismore Castle

  Co. Waterford

  Darling Paddy,

  I’ve got a new friend. Met him at Ann Fleming’s once. He used to be keeper of drawings & manuscripts at the BM, retired of course like everyone (who isn’t dead as well) called John Gere. [1] He really is a good egg, came to Chatsworth to look for some Raphaels or something or other & we ended up going on mystery trips to the Tram Museum (shut) & such places. He found some dire mistakes in my book. One in a Latin inscription which you can imagine yours truly had somehow overlooked, just in time to get the damned things put right. He’s got a wife, never invited by Ann, but she & Lady Abdy [2] got up an exhibition re the Souls which might have been jolly had one been in London & able to tear oneself away from Peter Jones.

  This place is as beautiful and odd as ever. The town is a bit sad, more shops shut, no tourists (longed for by all) because of the fantastic prices & the fact that people think the south of Ireland is the same as the north. Inflation is 23%. You get fewer than four stamps for a £1. It’s 26p each, even for a letter to the next village. Goodness knows how people with big families feed their children. It must be as difficult now as it was when the wages were 30/– a week. And so on.

  No word of R Kee, but I was sitting in the beautiful new hairdresser’s salon (The Golden Scissors) in Main St above Crotty’s Bar Best Drinks, wireless full on as per, & a man started on about his book [3] & how we must all buy it pronto, well of course.

  Emma has been made head of all the National Trust gardens, a great compliment, eh. Ld Antrim would have been pleased. She’s got 120 head gardeners to deal with. Rather her than me.

  Much love

  Debo

  I said to the gardener here It all looks very nice. Ah he said When it’s open in the summer people of all nationalities are charmed with it.

  [1] John Gere (1921–95). Curator at the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings 1946–81. Married art historian Charlotte Douie in 1958.

  [2] Jane Noble; art dealer and co-author with Charlotte Gere of The Souls: An Elite in English Society 1885–1930 (1984). Married Sir Robert Abdy in 1962.

  [3] Robert Kee, Ireland: A History (1980).

  5 May 1982

  Mani

  ONE FOOT IN THE STIRRUP

  Darling Debo,

  There was a bit – v. nice – about you and the book in The Times the other day. I do pine for it. It read gloriously I thought.

  We went to Athens for all sorts of splendid ceremonies for the award of the Onassis Prizes [1] (I’m on the committee, heaven knows why. I seldom open my mouth), presidential luncheons etc. Then back with fellow committee member Michael Stewart & Ghikas. Now I’m off – tomorrow – to Budapest (a) to see an old Hungarian pal, and (b) go through a brief refresher course in a hired car across the Great Hungarian Plain, then over the Rumanian border into Transylvania, so to Bucharest, where I’ll see Balasha’s sister. [2] I’m very excited about this. My memories of the middle-distance were getting a bit blurred. One remembers skylines – chimneys, steeples, mountains, forests – and foregrounds – prams, elephants, trams, wheelbarrows – but the in-between past dissolves in a kind of haze.

  I’m so glad you cleave to J Gere. We became great pals chez Annie. I hope I was enthusiastically remembered by you both. You cruelly never mentioned it.

  Do please send lots more news. I’ll be back here in a fortnight. Meanwhile, tons of love,

  Paddy

  [1] Awarded for contributions to Greek ‘culture, environment and social achievement’.

  [2] Princess Elena (Pomme) Cantacuzène (1900–83). Married Constantin Donici, a Moldavian boyar, in 1924.

  28 May 1982

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  I’ve just had such an odd time. Feeling I wanted to have another look at my 1934 itinerary for Vol II of A Time of Gifts, I flew to Hungary a fortnight ago. There was no room in any hotel, so the Tourist people, in a way t
hey have in Budapest, billeted me on a private citizen, a frightfully pretty fair-haired one called Aggy – short for Agatha – who turned out to be a great pal of your wonderful Bill [Stirling], and of P Stirling. [1] We peered at her album of snaps of the Highlands and stags and kilts. Wasn’t that rum?

  I drove 1000 kilometres in E Hungary, in a hired Volvo, all over the Gr. Hung. Plain, over which I’d trudged – and ridden – as a stripling, and the Hortobágy, with its troops of semi-wild horses, then to north, where I sat with chance acquaintances drinking delicious red wine in a maze of caves dug out of the mountain. Most of my halts were at places I had stayed at of old, a series of minor Bridesheads really, but with all the Grafs fled long ago, except one, called Hansi Meran [2] who I last saw when he was 12, and I 19, staying with his parents. He had been arrested when returning from the war in the East by some Russians, who sent him to Siberia for 10 years, on no charge at all. On his return he married a v nice village girl, settled in the village in a cottage outside the rambling baroque Schloss at Körösladány, and worked in the commandeered fields. He was enormously tall when I saw him now, Marie Antoinette’s biggest gt. gt. gt. gt. nephew, grizzled and weather-beaten, rather shy with v nice blue eyes. He remembers my visit in April ’34 perfectly. A Biedermeier table had been salvaged from the Schloss (also a portrait of gr, gr etc grandma Empress Maria Theresa) and he said ‘You used to sit at that all day writing away in a green book.’ (Diary. I’ve got it by my side today.) A visiting sister called Marcsi, [3] who lives in Vienna, was there – thirteen, when last glimpsed 48 years ago, now a great-grandmother. We talked about their parents – his mother was a great beauty called Ilona Almásy, and their v nice governess, a coz called Christine Esterházy.

  I lurked round two other places – now roadmenders’ storages – then slipped over the wall of a vast place called Okígyós, where I had played bike-polo of old. A school now, but with all the box-hedges neatly trimmed, vast trees, millions of doves, tulip trees and Magnolia grandiflora, lakes, reeds, old Slovak gardeners who talked fondly of the old Wenckheim incumbents, when I dared to tackle them in German.

  Then back to Budapest and my nice landlady, and took wing for Bucharest, hired another car, and drove to where Balasha’s sister Pomme lives and teaches English & French to commissars’ offspring, near the Carpathians. Stayed 24 hours, talking night and day; then on to Transylvania, which is where I had gone after the Hungarian Plain.

  This was another series of Bridesheads: they had all been the dwellings of Hungarian landowners who had stayed on when sovereignty was transferred after the First World War. (All gone now, of course.) I slunk round seven of these, one or two pretty Palladian ones, but nearly all loony bins now, with wild-eyed figures mopping and mowing among the tree trunks and up and down the balustraded steps. One of these had been the setting of a short romance and I felt very queer. The last one was a big, late medieval place with giant chestnuts, pink and white candles, whose owner, Elemér [4] (85 now) I’d seen in his Budapest tenement a few days before. It’s now an experimental nursery for bamboo and similar plants, inhabited by v nice peasants. In all those places the locals were thrilled to learn I had been a pal of the old folks. These ones said, ‘Have some baratzk made out of Mr Elemér’s plums. Please give him our respects. We feel guilty living in a stolen house, but it’s not our fault.’ Unlike Hungary, the repression in Rumania is fiendish. I gave lifts to dozens of workmen & peasants. All complained bitterly if they were alone but sickly in praise if there were more than one. I couldn’t bear the idea of returning to Baleni in Moldavia, the home of Balasha and half her family. You know all about that . . .

  Tons of love from

  Paddy

  [1] Peter Stirling (1913–94). Brother of David and William Stirling.

  [2] Count Johann (Hansi) Meran (1921–94). Married Ilona Farkas in 1960.

  [3] Countess Maria Meran (1920–92). Married Béla Rudnay de Rudnó et DivékUjfalu in 1944 and had ten children.

  [4] Elemér von Klobusiçky (1899–1986). Married Juliana Apponyi de Nagy-Apponyi in 1943.

  16 July 1982

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  A week after I got back from Hungary and Rumania, Joan and I suddenly decided to go to Crete, taking the car to the west end of the island by a ferry. I can’t tell you how moving it was. We went to countless villages that were our haunts. Hugs, whiskers, tears! Many are oldsters now, and many dead; but it really was glorious. The only trouble was having to have 15 meals a day. Every single house in a village had to be visited, bread broken, meat carved, wine poured, lest the owners pined away. Some of the people in the west I hadn’t seen for nearly half a century, in remote villages perched like eagles’ nests, said: ‘O dear, how thin you’ve got.’ Others in the east a week later said: ‘You have filled out, oh dear, oh dear . . .’ Presents galore, the boot of the car was filled with delicious cheeses the size of cartwheels, demijohns of marvellously pure and heavenly wine, red and white, wicker-covered gallons of mulberry raki, baskets of raisins, walnuts and almonds, two shepherd’s crooks. Most of us stood godfathers to Cretan friends’ children. All my goddaughters are now forty-something, with vast broods of their own. (We mostly stood godfather to little girls, as in the Orthodox Church children with the same godparent are not allowed to marry each other. The god-relationship is thought more binding than blood, and the idea of such a marriage worse than incest.) We both felt re-born by the whole trip.

  I’ve just been sorting out Annie’s letters for Mark Amory, [1] only holding back ones that are terribly wicked about people, so damaging – oddly enough, there were not as many of those as I feared. I know quite a lot are missing, and will probably turn up as bookmarks. Early ones I probably threw away, worst luck, not realising then that it’s a great shame to throw some people’s away. My word, they are good and funny, aren’t they, the quickest and most direct form of communication I’ve ever seen, all of them surprising, all of them brilliant, several of them rather sad, none of them with a flicker of self-pity. I wonder if you’ve been on the same task.

  Just before the Hung. Rumanian journey, a Persian singer called Shusha [2] – very nice, known years ago – turned up here to take notes for an Observer profile of yours truly (due in Sept). I bet it’ll be a bit embarrassing. Can’t wait.

  Finally and most important. Please write.

  With tons of love from

  Paddy

  [1] The Letters of Ann Fleming, edited by Mark Amory.

  [2] Shusha Guppy (1940–2008). Iranian-born writer and folk singer.

  1 August 1982

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Thanks v much for yours. Oh, what has happened to the wretched TOME. I sent it in June.

  It was published last Thurs, 29 July. All that week I was frenzied, all of a frenzy, pushed from BBC to ITV, to British Forces Network to Radio London, Radio Reading, man from Daily Express, another from Liverpool Something, Irish Times man never turned up, Radio Yet Another, John Dunn prog, Round Midnight prog . . . RAVING, but the all-time ego trip, people taking one seriously (well, almost), Foyle’s Lunch, a Phone-In radio prog . . . I kept thinking the French Lady wouldn’t have done this but of course it was terrific fun & v bad for the character.

  The first was something called Start the Week with Richard Baker, 9 a.m. on Mon. Four interviewers for four victims. Idiotic, because the interviewers, all pros who worship the sound of their own voices or they wouldn’t be pros, took over & talked over one another. One was a psychiatrist with all the maddening patter of his trade, one read a long typed paper pretending he wasn’t reading with a lot of clever quotes & one was a sharp woman who liked scoring off the victims.

  Signed at Boots in Chesterfield on Sat & don’t laugh but there was a queue & I signed away for an hour & bang went 248 books, all their stock. Terrific fun because we’ve got heaps of friends in Chesterfield and they all turned up.

  Now to Sheffield for Radio
Sheffield, thence to Nottingham for Radio Trent. What a very strange life.

  Anyway all this boasting is for your eyes only because I know you understand & I also know you understand how terrifically unfair it is because think of the professors who are busy writing real books & just because of my daft name & address mine whizzes. Oh well, that’s life but it IS unfair.

  As for Ann Fleming’s letters, mine from her are v v good & exactly her talking but unpublishable. They wd cause offence & worse to all & sundry. Too soon?

  Diana is v well indeed thank God, when you think that last Sept she was paralysed, couldn’t feed herself or anything. [1] She is a dr’s triumph. Rare bird I know but as one only hears the rotten things done in hosps one jolly well ought to laud a success like her. She looks v beautiful & her shaved hair has come back curly, so odd, never been that in her 72 years.

  WHEN ARE YOU COMING THIS WAY? Much love

  Debo

  Have boldly put a couple of reviews. Please excuse all this boasting. It’s gone to my head.

  [1] Diana Mosley had been successfully operated on for a brain tumour.

  17 November 1982

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  I’ve just come across the following in a letter of July 28th 1931, from Carrington to L. Strachey. I expect you know it, so this is just in case.

  ‘. . . I went with Julia [Strachey] to lunch with Diana [Guinness] today. There we found 3 sisters and Mama Redesdale. The little sisters were ravishingly beautiful, and another of 16 very marvellous and grecian. I thought the mother was rather remarkable, very sensible and no upper classes graces.

  We were half an hour late . . . Mercifully lunch was late as they had only just come back from Stonehenge.