In Tearing Haste

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  I’m so glad the dedication has given pleasure. [3] I often think it means more to the writer than the dedicatee. You come first on the page as Andrew is up front all through, and you very slowly glitter for a second in the wings. I wish the vol. was a bit less slim, but I’m such a slow coach with the longer ones, and may get run over before the current one is ready to be dedicated to anyone.

  All greetings to Andrew, and lots of love from

  Paddy

  [1] Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd (1946–2007). Obituaries editor of the Daily Telegraph 1986–94, who introduced a new, less reverential style to the paper’s necro-logical column.

  [2] Daphne and Henry Bath faced parental opposition when they announced that they wanted to marry and the ceremony took place privately in 1926. They then had a public wedding in 1927. Their divorce in 1953 covered only their second marriage and in 1955, when they were both remarried, they sought an appeal to the High Court to get the annulment extended to their first.

  [3] The dedication to DD and Andrew in Three Letters from the Andes, which had just been published.

  18 September 1991

  Bolton Abbey

  Skipton

  Darling Paddy,

  I loved you being Xan’s loader in the war – page more likely, like Good King Wenceslas.

  HASTE, back to the grouse, MILLIONS of them. Much love

  Debo

  10 November 1991

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  The last weekend before leaving, Joan and I went to stay with Myles Hildyard at his strange and rather marvellous house called Flintham in Notts. It’s got a tall Paxtonian greenhouse, with tree-ferns etc, two stories high, jutting straight out of an equally tall library, full of splendid vols. But the point is the total niceness of Myles – do you remember he came over to lunch? The only other guest was Ken Davison, [1] whom I hadn’t seen for years. The atmosphere in the house is like Leach illustrations to Surtees, marvellous rambling stables where we went to see two pensioned donkeys of great charm. Endless walled gardens with crumbling statues. Fascinating to me was lunch 20 miles away at a house called Aubourne, of which the point was that the inhabitant, Henry Nevile, [2] was staying at Baleni – my Rumanian hangout – when war broke out, and we came back in Sept 1939 together, seen off by my pals and Lady Hoare (Bill Bentinck’s sister and the Bucharest ambassadress), [3] who equipped us with sweets and toys, and a tied-on label for Henry, as she was not quite clear about our ages: 24 for me, 18 for Henry, who had just left Ampleforth. We went over all our adventures on the way – 5 days – halting at Venice, before both heading for the Guards’ Depot in Caterham, he later than me. I hadn’t seen him for 52 years. Lots of snaps and albums. He’s now Ld Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, hard to link with the pink-cheeked blue-eyed nipper of yore, but v. nice.

  After that we saw Lincoln Cathedral, on tiptoe because of Evensong; then Ld Byron’s abode, Newstead, but too late, it was closed, as shadows had fallen. Myles said, ‘Slip in, and have a look at his dog Bo’sun’s monument, we’ll keep cave (KV)’, so I slithered through a hedge, and zig-zagged through the rhodies rather furtively, but thought this is no way to trespass: the only thing is to walk slowly, pausing for the view, if possible finishing a cigar, as tho’ taking a pre-bath breath of fresh-air. The monument is very moving. I gazed unapprehended.

  Lots of love

  Paddy

  [1] Kensington Davison, 3rd Baron Broughshane (1914–2006). Opera administrator and critic.

  [2] Henry Nevile (1920–96). Served in the Scots Guards. Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire 1975–95.

  [3] Lucy Cavendish-Bentinck (d. 1971). Married in 1922 Sir Reginald Hoare, British minister-plenipotentiary in Bucharest 1935–41.

  27 November 1991

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Can’t think of any news. Births, marriages or deaths are the headings for my other abroad-dwelling correspondent viz. Decca but all seems quiet in those departments just now.

  Smithfield [1] looms, Cake to lunch there, much raising of glasses & toasts to Tom Dick & Harry, any excuse really. I love going in her wake through the crowds, she has an extraordinary effect on the populace, the faces when she’s passed unexpectedly are v revealing, giggles, amazement, cameras too late, only getting backs of people like me. Worth seeing.

  We have MUTTON & caper sauce for lunch. It’s trad now, used to be lamb, she asked for mutton, almost unobtainable unless you keep a sheep specially, for more months than usual, till Mother Nature turns it from lamb to mutton.

  Tonight wonderful Dame Elis Frink & husband [2] (surprisingly to do with racing, an ex-starter I think) come for the night & a look round tomorrow, then to Manchester where she is to give a lecture & I’M GOING. Wonders will never . . . but it’s only because she’s so fascinating. Then the Prince of Wales comes, in the middle of the night from a dinner in London. I must put a trail of breadcrumbs to his room. Can’t wait up, too sleepy.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] The Royal Smithfield Show.

  [2] Elisabeth Frink (1930–93). The sculptor and printmaker married in 1974, as her third husband, Count Alex Csáky.

  6 December 1991

  Mani

  Darling Debo

  I loved your Cake-walk description. I adore your letters, but wish they hadn’t got such RARITY value, as all my other correspondents have conked out.

  Florence Nightingale had a passion for really good mutton, as distinct from lamb. It was the mainstay of her luncheon parties near you in Curzon St in the evening of her life.

  Lots of love

  Paddy

  4 January 1992

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  Christmas was a full house, 16. Very jolly. Followed by a week of pure luxury, viz. no one, so I could moon about the garden and do exactly what I fancied. Those dead days between Xmas & New Year are really good, post-less, no one where they’re meant to be & totally calm.

  One evening White Mischief [1] was on the telly. Did you see it when it was a film? I didn’t, but MY WORD I was fascinated by it & can still think of 0 else. My poor old eyes have suffered from a close study of the Red Book, trying to work out who was who, from Lady Idina [2] on. What an incredible affair – the only one I ever saw – can’t say knew – was Ly Delamere [3] who used to come to Frank More O’Ferrall’s [4] Derby night dinners, & I was struck by her beauty even when pretty old, extraordinary eyes & smothered in square 1930s jewels. I wish I’d studied her properly.

  Diana [Mosley] is coming soon. I do hope she’ll remember some of them. Erroll was too lovely in the film. [5] I suppose he really was. Bother not knowing him. The sort of hopeless cad I love.

  We went to the dinner for the deification of the Sainsbury bros at Downing St to note the new bit of the Nat Gallery. [6]

  I fell, hook line & sinker, for Mr Major. [7] Norma was somewhere else so he was alone saying How do you do. He said that, & then said How very nice to see you again, which was very nice because I’d never seen him before. He exudes GOODNESS, unheard of in a politician, eh.

  I sat between old Lord Sainsbury [8] & Tim, MP. Old Ld S has always been a socialist & he said You know I’m very radical. So I said Oh yes & he went on about how when he bought a house in Suffolk in the early 30s the gardener had never had a holiday. Well I suppose ours never had, nor our groom whom I adored & spent my childhood with. If he’d had a holiday I would have had a nervous breakdown.

  Anyway he was a dear old soul, 90 this year, & I gladly cut up the tough pheasant for him. He doesn’t seem to mind being very rich.

  The speeches, John Sainsbury & the PM, were short & perfect. John had a slight go at Venturi the architect (who wasn’t there). I believe there had been monumental rows but all he said was that, after a slight disagreement, Venturi was heard to say Lord Sainsbury doesn’t seem to realise I’m a genius.

  So that was the highlight of the
autumn.

  I’m back to 2nd childhood in the chicken line. I look after them myself & the intense pleasure of watching them at work & play is something I have missed, I suppose since the war.

  I’m SWAMPED in eggs, so asked the farm manager for the regulations re selling them in the Farm Shop. [9] You simply can’t imagine how wild they are. It seems you have to have doctors & vets in white coats who do unspeakable indignities to the poor hens. Then you have to post away, to some laboratory, their messes – sorry, faeces. But before you consign them to the post you must check with the PO the regs re posting chicken’s messes.

  When this pantomime is completed you have to grade the eggs, mustn’t be a millimetre out in guaranteed size. Then you get a Packing Station number but they don’t tell you how to do that. Then, MOST IMPORTANT, you must wash your hands before and after collecting the eggs. In my case it’s quite a trek to the chicken house, so what happens if it is cold & I put on gloves? Mightn’t there be an infection in one of the fingers?

  Oh Whack what madness when ½ the world is starving & would be quite pleased to see my beautiful eggs.

  I’ll keep you informed of the progress towards selling them, even if you aren’t in the least interested.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] The film about the infamous murder of 22nd Earl of Erroll in Kenya in 1941, based on a book by James Fox (1982), was released in 1987.

  [2] Lady Idina Sackville (1893–1955). An inspiration for Nancy Mitford’s character, The Bolter. Lady Idina’s third (of five) husbands was the murdered Lord Erroll, to whom she was married 1923–30. Her first husband was Captain Euan Wallace, with whom she had two sons.

  [3] Diana Caldwell (1913–87). Married, in 1955, 4th Baron Delamere as his third wife and her fourth husband. Her second husband was Sir John ( Jock) Delves Broughton who was tried, and acquitted, for the murder of Lord Erroll, with whom she had been having an affair.

  [4] Frank More O’Ferrall (1904–76). One of three Irish brothers who ran the successful Anglo-Irish Bloodstock Agency. He and his wife, Angela, were great friends of the Devonshires.

  [5] Lord Erroll was played by the British actor Charles Dance.

  [6] The three Sainsbury brothers, John, Simon and Timothy, funded an extension to the National Gallery, designed by the post-modernist architect Robert Venturi at a cost of some £50 million.

  [7] John Major (1943–). The Conservative Prime Minister had been in office for just over a year. Married Norma Johnson in 1970.

  [8] Alan John Sainsbury (1902–98). The father of the three brothers, Life President of the supermarket chain, was created a life peer in 1962.

  [9] In 1977, DD opened a shop in Pilsley, a village on the Chatsworth estate, to sell high-quality British produce.

  31 January 1992

  Mani

  Darling Debo,

  Marvellous letter about the PM and the banquet for the Sainsburys and their table talk. Cyril Connolly, during a reception for Gen. de Gaulle at the Fr. Embassy, and as his turn came in the queue, Gen de Gaulle, shaking hands, said Très heureux de vous revoir, [1] and C.C. was delighted (never met before). So it must be a Head of State secret device. C.C. had been given a modest form of the Légion d’honneur a month or two earlier, was wearing it for the first time on his lapel, ‘When what should I see but John Lehmann, with something the size of a pineapple round his neck on a ribbon! Evening ruined, of course.’ [2] I expect he was loved because of Mme Massigli’s [3] fondness for Lehmann. I couldn’t bear him.

  There’s a storm on, howling winds outside, and no light here or in the village, so this is being scribbled by candlelight.

  How fascinating about White Mischief. I didn’t care for the book, or the film, because in both Idina – Dina to me – seemed such a travesty. We must go back a bit.

  When, in summer 1937, Balasha Cantacuzène (whom I adored as you know, twelve years older) and I were living in the top bit of a watermill in a steep forest of orange groves opposite the island of Poros, in the top of the Peloponnese, we saw three figures approaching under the vine leaves, one well-known, and a frequent visitor, an amusing queer Greek diplomat called Aleko Matsas (perhaps you knew him), a slim, long-legged woman in a green top, green shorts, sandals and dark glasses, and a tall rather willowy chap of my age (viz. 20) in rust-coloured sailcloth trousers. B said to me, ‘Who can Aleko have brought? She reminds me of Dina Wallace.’ Of course it was. She and her bro Buck D. L. [4] had been v kind to B (being brought out in London soon after the end of WWI by her worldly mother). Great embracements ensued. The tall young man was her son David Wallace, [5] whom she had met – for the first time since he was a baby – shortly before. He must just have come of age. All contact with Dina had been forbidden after she had buzzed off with (?) Gordon (?) Erroll? (She was called Haldeman then.) They had all three met in Athens. They stayed with us ten days including a three-day peasant feast at the mill. There was something absolutely charming about her, very pretty, light-boned, slight recession of chin, v funny and appealing too, totally unlike the bitch in the film, much better and lighter style. She was leaving in a week for Prague to meet ‘somebody I’m a bit potty about, I’m afraid, a sea-dog called Ponsonby’. I wonder why Prague, so far from the briny. She had a passion for taking snaps. I wondered what happened to them, there must have been 100, but her daughter, married to Ilk, [6] couldn’t find them when I asked her years ago.

  David, who had just been sharing rooms at Oxford with Guy Branch [7] and Jeremy Hutchinson, [8] I saw a lot of later. He was dropped into Northern Greece and killed in a guerrilla skirmish with Germans, while rescuing somebody wounded. Billy W [9] was the only one to survive of them.

  I’ve got to dash to the post. Lots of love,

  Paddy

  [1] ‘So pleased to see you again.’

  [2] John Lehmann (1907–87), the poet, writer and publisher, was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1958. Connolly was awarded the lesser rank of Knight in 1947. Their meeting at the French embassy took place in 1960, when Connolly was ‘much impressed by “Bonny Johnny” Lehmann’s chestful of medals’. Jeremy Lewis, Cyril Connolly, A Life ( Jonathan Cape, 1997), p. 503.

  [3] Odette Boissier; wife of René Massigli, French ambassador in London 1944– 55. The ambassador in London during General de Gaulle’s 1960 visit was Jean Chauvel (1897–1979), a diplomat and – like Lehmann – a poet.

  [4] Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr (1900–76). Labour politician.

  [5] David Wallace (1914–44). Lady Idina’s elder son died in action on 17 August 1944. Her younger son, Gerard, was killed in action on 20 August 1943.

  [6] Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk (1919–85). Genealogist, writer and friend of PLF since they trained together at the Guards’ Depot, Caterham, in 1939. Married in 1946 Diana Hay, daughter of 22nd Earl of Erroll. ‘Iain had a delightfully romantic cast of mind: he looked at life through a Baroness Orczy–John Buchan– Dornford Yates prism.’ PLF, Afterword to Ill Met by Moonlight, Folio Society, 2001.

  [7] Guy Rawstron Branch (1913–40). Read English at Balliol College then worked for the British Council and flew with the Auxiliary Air Force, in 601 Squadron, for several years before the war. Killed in the Battle of Britain. Married Lady Prudence Pelham in 1939. ‘Guy was much admired by Maurice Bowra and Isaiah Berlin. The sort of person that everyone fell in love with.’ (PLF)

  [8] Jeremy Hutchinson (1915–). ‘A brilliant QC and one famous for his skill, balance and witty enjoyment of life.’ (PLF) Brother of Barbara Ghika. Created a life peer in 1978.

  [9] William (Billy) Wallace (1927–77). Captain Euan Wallace’s youngest son by his second marriage to Barbara Lutyens. His two older brothers, John (1922–46) and Edward (1923–44), were both killed in action.

  22 January 1992

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Paddy,

  A quick line to say the P of Wales was here (as per) earlier this week & he plans a wk-end at Sandringham (whi
ch he borrows from time to time) on 10 April. He is asking the non-shooting types, some painters I’ve never heard of, dear good Angela Conner [1] etc. He kindly includes me, can’t think why. I know he’s going to ask you (blind date? Can’t remember if you know him). Anyway the house will be choc a bloc & IF you can come (you will, won’t you) you will be in my dressing room, we must squeeze in together. I told him that’s nothing new, I have slept head to tail with you & nine Spanish gardeners before now. [2]

  I’ve done that wk-end twice. We tool round the wondrous Norfolk churches in the freezing April cold & this year he thinks he might get us into Holkham. [3] Just think how jolly.

  So, if & when the invitation comes kindly accept & take an anti snoring pill as we’ll be cheek by . . .

  Haste for post.

  Much love

  Debo

  Fancy you knowing Ly Idina & giving her such a good reference. Of course she must have had huge charm & that did not come through in book or film. It was the story which I found so gripping.

  [1] Angela Conner (1935–). The sculptress, a friend of the Devonshires since 1964, made portrait busts of several members of the family and designed a water sculpture, Revelation, for the garden at Chatsworth.