In Tearing Haste
Page 33
[2] ‘In 1958, I went with Paddy and others to see the Whitsun parade in El Rocio, Andalusia. There was no room at the inn, so we slept head to toe on the stone floor of a shed already occupied by some Spanish gardeners. Quite an odd night.’ (DD)
[3] Prince Charles arranged a private visit for his party to Holkham Hall, seat of the Earl of Leicester.
1? February 1992
Mani
Darling Debo,
Your letter about Sandringham. You write IF you come: can a duck swim? I suspected your kind guiding hand in all this a few days earlier. A terribly nice secretary rang and said would wife and I come for the weekend? I said, after a quick ‘aside’ confabulation, that alas, it would mean only me, as wife couldn’t, and she said, ‘Well, we’ve got one of you, anyway.’ So there we are. You know what a hermit Joan is – longs to be a fly on the wall, to hear what’s said and, above all, to learn what was eaten, which I never can remember. Thank heavens I did remember to trouser the menus on the only former occasion.
It’s very decent of you to let me doss down in your dressing room, and reminds me, in a way, of that Spanish pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Dew, 1000 years ago.
Lots of love from
Paddy
9 February 1992
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I’ve just got back from several days in the Soft Under Belly of SW Wilts, in other words staying with Sophy. [1]
Do you know that country? Driving to Crichel [2] for lunch we passed four cars in 16 miles, the narrowest lanes you ever saw, no humans & steep ups & downs of downs & then wet valleys, so beautiful, secret & real country. I believe it all belongs to two people therefore isn’t covered with this & that foul buildings. I’d never seen that part of England before. If I was rootless & deciding where to live I’d have no doubt.
Sophy’s bit has far the best woods I’ve ever seen. One is enormous, 1500 acres. There was a lawn meet of the S & W Wilts at Fonthill House, where the ancient grandad Margadale lives.
Diana [Mosley] & I were early, as per, so the old boy asked us in & showed us his pictures & all of that, then said I’ll go out of the kitchen & let you out of the other door. He went out, forgot we existed & there we were, fatally locked in, while horses & hounds loomed. In the end a henchman saw us at a window & let us out. V comical.
On the way home I spent a morning at a rare breed chicken & ducks place, looking for amazing ones for the Prince, who fancies some. The owner is one of those specialists I love, blinkered interest in old poultry.
Let’s go together to our famous wk-end.
Much love
Debo
[1] DD’s daughter Sophy was married to Alastair Morrison, later 3rd Baron Margadale; they were living at Fonthill, near Tisbury in Wiltshire.
[2] DD was on her way to lunch with Toby and Mary Anna Marten in Dorset.
11 March 1992
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Sandringham looms. I expect you’ve had a letter telling you to look sharp for 7 p.m. on Fri 10th & to wear a hat at church (no, that’s me now I come to think of it). Shall we somehow go together? Will you come here the night before – election night I hear now – and we’ll tool along by car? DO.
Everyone frantic here, getting ready for the house to open.
Do you know Elisabeth Frink? She’s a wonder & has become rather a friend. I went to see her new work, a life-size heavy horse, sort of Percheron type, Géricault-like bottom, & tail wound round with rope. Bronze. I have a great longing for it for the garden here . . . It’s not the sort of thing you rush out & buy after breakfast but I hope Stoker will try & persuade the dear old trustees to dig deep. I HATE her Easter-Island type heads but oh the animals are wonderful. And she is wonderful. Army bred. Her ma is the dau of a Skinner’s Horse officer. She’s 82 and very beautiful. Never saw her parents between the age of 5 & 16 except once & was shunted from boarding schools to aunts all those years. How did people survive all that & WHAT FOR in the end. I wish she was coming to Sandringham.
63 eggs yesterday.
Much love.
LONGING to see you
Debo
*
(DD)
Lis Frink’s bronze War Horse, 1991–2, was bought by the Chatsworth House Trust, and she and her husband Alex stayed at Chatsworth in April 1992 to oversee the installation. She liked the place I chose – at the end of the canal – where we positioned him with his back to the house looking across the Old Park. He travelled from the foundry in a horsebox, and was decanted into the bucket of our JCB and driven across the garden with supreme care and precision by Brian Gilbert. The horse’s ears are back, he is about to strike and bite at the same time. You are in danger if you stand in front of him. We watched in the rain. A group of prep-school boys watched with us. I begged them to remember meeting the famous sculptress and that they had seen an historic moment for Chatsworth, the War Horse being the first important sculpture bought for the garden for 150 years.
Lis Frink was once seen, never forgotten: gardener, poultry keeper, home-giver to her mother and mother-in-law, and, to my mind, the unrivalled sculptor of horses and dogs.
26 March 1992
[Postcard]
Mani
Debo
‘Sing a song of Saxons
in the wapentake of Rye,
Four and twenty eoldermen,
Too eold to die.’
Just seen this in The Times ‘word watching’. A wapentake is a Saxon land measurement. I thought the rhyme rather up your street.
Love
Paddy
10 June 1992
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I’m EXHAUSTED. Telly crew here doing a sort of documentary on this old dump, inside and out. I had forgotten how one always has to do everything three times. There is something wrong – light, sound, one’s own stupidity, etc etc – each time so the poor old wooden actress has to start again.
Your book-backs figure. I said, re Abel N Willing, it sounds a bit old-fashioned now as everyone is abel n willing for everything but it was all the rage once. True, you’ll agree.
I went to France for two glorious days with the Prince of Wales last week. A magic carpet, Queen’s Flight, no passports, no airport buildings, no nothing tiresome. We started at Vaux, then Courances [1] for the night & a long stare at the green alleys with the tallest oaks going, next day Chartres (where the English Nanny so rightly said it was a bad light for sewing). I can’t manage a religious feeling in that crowded dirty building, shuffling Japs by the thousand & that French trick of chairs instead of pews. Give me Swinbrook, or one of those magic Norfolk churches where Billa [Harrod] prays away like mad for the prince.
Much love
Debo
[1] The chateaux of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Courances owned, respectively, by the Vogüé and Ganay families.
14 June 199
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I forgot two things. Ludo Kennedy is writing a book on Scotland. [1] When in Edinburgh he asked the guide at the Castle what the most usual question from American tourists is. He said ‘What time do they fire the one o’clock gun?’
The other thing is a dozen and a half of what vegetables are gold?
18 carrots.
That’s it for now. Much love
Debo
Elis Frink has been made Companion of Honour. For Services to Reggie, I suppose. He is (was) a Maran cock who was poorly after a fight with a Light Sussex & she took him to the vet every day for a week till, alas, he conked. Do admit. It conjures up a good picture. Distinguished sculptress queuing in the vet’s surgery with a huge ill Maran on her lap. That’s what I love about her, she adores her chickens.
[1] Ludovic Kennedy, In Bed with an Elephant: A Journey through Scotland Past and Present (1995).
30 July 1992
> Mani
Darling Debo,
I still can’t get over that awful stuff in the Sunday Times about the marriage of our marvellous Norfolk host. [1] Apart from the impertinence and disloyalty, and almost worse than both, was the sanctimonious, mock-sorrowful tone. I feel terribly sorry for both parties, but I’ve never even seen her, and the Prince of Wales only at that lovely weekend.
A second cause of vexation was the rotten obituary of Henry Bath in the same wretched paper, underlining what a duffer he was at school and how slovenly dressed, always mistaken for a gardener or something similar. Not a hint of the splendid looks, the originality and fun and the unexpectedness of his conversation. I saw him so seldom in recent years, and nearly always in Clubland, and always with delight, where he looked like a stag among a herd of Belted Angus.
Just before leaving England, I had a message, through Margaret, Janetta’s housekeeper, saying she also did for Dirk Bogarde, who lived just round the corner in Cadogan Gardens, and that he’d love a visit, and that he had had a stroke (only physical) and had been knighted. So I did go and see him, nicer than ever, in his bachelor flat right up at the top. His great pal Tony Forward died last year and he feels v. hopeless and bereaved, and works like mad at very well-put-together novels, since retiring from stage and screen.
No more, Darling Debo, except lots of love from
Paddy
[1] Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, which revealed that the Princess of Wales had been unhappy for most of her married life, was being serialised in the Sunday Times.
10 August 1992
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I was on the points (as Wonderful John’s [1] dairy man says when a cow is about to calve) of writing to you when your lovely letter came.
I know, the papers are more than foul about the good prince. Rights & wrongs in both directions, I expect, but I know nothing, only guess a good deal. He has been so dignified, never one word from him. She is truly a wonder at work, she has a power of healing, King’s Evil type, and leaves people weak at the knees but strong in whatever was wrong. I’ve seen that & it is extraordinary. I don’t know her in everyday life but all say she is not easy. So, who knows.
Gill Coleridge [2] is keen on me doing an anthology of this old dump. Gt fun to find refs, from Bess of Hardwick to you in the Stag Parlour. I’m looking in any life, letters I can lay hands on. [3] An unexpected find is Sir Alan Lascelles, assistant sec to the P of Wales, b 1887. On 27 Aug 1912 he came over here & writes ‘there are some beautiful drawings & a lot of rather tiresome Grinling Gibbons carving. * As a house it is not so fine as Harewood & far less liveable in. The children’s schoolroom is hung with Sargent portraits, God help them.’ Good stuff eh.
Do look for any more of the same, please. Much love
Debo
[1] Lieut.-Col. Silcock; the land agent at Lismore.
[2] Gill Coleridge (1948–). DD’s literary agent, a director of Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd.
[3] This book project never materialised.
* There isn’t any, but never mind.
14 August 1992
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
FORGOT
BELTED ANGUS re Henry Bath being a stag among . . .
Well, Whack, this breed is a figment of your fertile . . .
Belted GALLOWAY please. On the Rare Breeds list but still afloat, just. ABERDEEN Angus. Oh when will you ever learn. (D Devonshire, Vice President, Rare Breeds Survival Trust.)
A young American came to interview me re Decca for an IN DEPTH article in New Yorker. [1] Have you ever heard of an article being SHALLOW END but that’s how they usually end up.
All the usual questions like ‘and you were determined to marry a duke, I believe’. It really is a waste of time as they know what they’re going to put before they come.
Talk about names of things being changed, an international committee, how made up God knows, has decided that grouse are to be called Willow Ptarmigan. Beat that if you can.
Much love. DO COME back soon
Debo
[1] The journalist Arthur Lubow was assigned by Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair 1984–92, to write the article about Jessica Mitford. When Brown left to become editor of the New Yorker she took Lubow’s article with her, assuring Jessica that it would be published in her first issue of the New Yorker. In the event, Brown decided that it ‘wasn’t right’ for the magazine and the article never appeared.
30 September 1992
Mani
IN TEARING HASTE
Darling Debo,
We are setting off, this very second, to Antibes to collect a marvellous literary prize called Le Grand Prix Jacques Audiberti de la Ville d’Antibes, for A Time of Gifts in French – (beautifully translated by Guillaume Villeneuve. Nobody will read the English version any more . . .) I’d never heard of it, I confess, but it’s 50,000 francs and trails glory, they say, so we’re feeling very cock a hoop. We meet Janetta there, but not Jaime, as his mother has been taken ill in Madrid. Visions of lobster and bouillabaisse float before the mind’s eye, only corrected by remembering the Chinese saying: ‘When you see a crossbow, don’t always expect roast duck.’ Then to Paris and further feasting, followed by Prague with Coote, unseen by me since March 1934 magical and sparkling with snow.
Finally a few days in London, when I’ll be in touch almost at once. Please forgive haste.
Tons of love,
Paddy
6 November 1992
Mani
Darling Debo,
The night before we left, we had dinner with Magouche in Bruton St. Joan had to go early, so I stayed and gassed away, then decided to walk home; across Berkeley Square, into Curzon St, through Shepherd Market – my old haunt when young [1] – and into Market Mews, heading for the Sloane world. I had only gone a few paces when, on a wide black surface on the left side, I saw a strange message in huge letters in white:
‘OPRIG’, it said,
and, underneath,
‘GAGINONANUS’
What could it portend? It looked simultaneously insulting, enigmatic and vaguely improper, especially the message below. Could it be a reassuring message to the neighbours after a visit by the Soc. for the Abatement of Noise? When I got closer, all was revealed, as illustrated in the enclosed sketch fig. (1), and only when I was standing bang in front. In case you don’t get it absolutely at once, all is revealed in fig. (2), not to be unfolded until after a look at fig. (1). I noted it down on the back of an envelope, and have been struggling with the spacing of the letters ever since. [2] If on leaving your front door, passing the Curzon Cinema, and turning right into the Mews, you’ll [see it]. I hope the owner will have gone for a spin, leaving the concertina doors ajar, so that you see it as I did.
No more now, but please send news.
Lots of love,
Paddy
[1] As a young man, PLF lived at 43 Market Street, Mayfair.
[2] PLF sent copies of these drawings to several friends.
GAGINONANUS SPEAKS by John Wells [1]
Before the earliest burning light
Before the world that once was his
Hung turning day to turning night
Gaginonanus was and is
Gaginonanus, mightiest Lord,
Whom all the Seven Kings obey,
At whose high uncreated word
Preadamites were prone to pray
Great God of Gods, all nature’s grail,
The inward soul of every thing
Behind the Maya’s rainbow veil
Withdrawn, within, inhabiting
New gods and false as empires rise
Are worshipped, spires fall and climb,
All-seeing and with placid eyes
Gaginonanus bides His time
Like leaves the centuries are born
Like leaves are born to bud and die.
Gaginonanus
smiles to scorn
The drifting aeons as they fly
Ignored, unknown, forgotten still
Gaginonanus sees their play,
The awful working of His Will
Until His dreadful Judgement Day
; *
But now, O Prig! O Lax! O Loose!
That hour is come! O sunk in crime!
Your garages in constant use,
You dare not park at any time
His awful Name is manifest!
No cloud-etched letters skyward burn
The Blessed Ones who love Him best
Know their Great God will soon return
Behold, in these condemned last days,
Gaginonanus, Lord of All!
As saints and sages dumbly gaze
His Name is written on the Wall.
[1] Inspired by his drawing of the garage doors, John Wells sent PLF this poem.
28 January 1993
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
It was so lovely having a quick talk the other day. I’m so old-fashioned I’m still amazed that you can do that in two secs just pressing those knobs & there you are. A bit disconcerting when you answered in Greek but never mind.
My dear Wife is here. Oh Paddy she is suddenly 1000, diminished in every way. The rot started with an operation for cataract and glaucoma on one eye. It went wrong & she’s as good as blind in that one & the other one isn’t perfect. So she walks with little steps, very slowly, bent because she’s looking at the ground. Can’t read, at least she can for a few minutes & then it goes fuzzy. But the worst thing is she won’t try & be helped. There are all sorts of gadgets, magnifying glasses with a light attached & such like but any excuse not to give the thing a proper try, too cumbersome she says. Anyway that’s what unnerves me, the WILL has gone. V hard to make her laugh, you just can but not like of yore. Well that’s old age I suppose but it is horrid to see.