It is a swizz everyone vanishing like this. I spend lots of time writing obituaries. The most recent is one of the Cretan captors of that general. Out of the original party of eleven, only two nigger-boys now remain.
Thank you many many times, darling Debo, and tons of love to all, from
Paddy
[1] The Christmas carol was written by the Rev. John Henry Hopkins Jr, in 1857.
16 January 2001
Dumbleton
Darling Debo,
Yesterday – the Ban on hunting – was a day of mourning, unbelievably depressing. The present government obviously plan to quietly strangle English history in all its aspects.
V many thanks for the glorious fake-library paper – I wish there’d been room for the Bulge-Slim vol. [1] I look on it as the summit of my literary achievement. Talking of which I’ve been sent a long article in an American literary paper of such gloriously unmitigated praise, I nearly swooned away. [2] I’ll force it on you when I can get it photo’d. Can’t resist.
Tons of love,
Paddy
What are the police going to do at Meets when the Ban becomes law. They’ll need thousands of mounted police, and miles of stabling for captured horses, let alone for raging – or icily polite – people in scarlet or black. And kennelling? It’s somehow unimaginable.
[1] One of PLF’s suggested book titles for the false library door was ‘Battle of the Bulge’ by Lord Slim. See PLF’s letter of February 1964.
[2] In ‘Philhellene’s Progress’, Ben Downing deplored the fact that most Americans had not heard of ‘the sublime, the peerless Patrick Leigh Fermor’, and set about correcting this oversight. New Criterion, January 2001.
2 May 2001
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Foot & mouth continues to wreak havoc not just for the farmers – I’m told there is no livestock between Dumfries & Blackpool – but the ripples are waves, the pathos of people who have set up teashops, bed & breakfasts etc etc even MILES from any outbreak and are going bust all over the place. It is truly ghoul. Blair pretends it’s all over, well it isn’t. [1] The contiguous cull (ladylike word for kill) is outrageous & even the govt vets are beginning to have a re-think. Too late for the millions of healthy stock which are dead & lying in rotting heaps, stinking and bursting often next to the farmhouse. IMAGINE. No figures are available (i.e. allowed to be published by the govt) of numbers of healthy animals killed.
Emma & Toby say the dishonesty & cruelty to man & beast round them is unbelievable. [2]
Andrew is havering over whether to have a new knee. A big decision, but it is v painful.
Our diamond wedding was last month & the party for the ancients in Derbyshire who have managed 60 years has had to be postponed because of f & m. So, of course, they are dying like flies & I keep getting letters saying My Dear Wife Has Passed Away. Even so 248 pairs are still on the list.
I expect the screams will be heard in Bakewell. Much love to Joan & you
Debo
[1] The foot-and-mouth crisis that broke out earlier that year was not halted until October. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair was anxious, however, to show that it was under control before the June general election.
[2] DD’s daughter and son-in-law farm on the Scottish Borders.
1 November 2001
Mani
Darling Debo,
Many thanks for Counting My Chickens! I read it clean through after dinner to midnight the day it arrived and loved it. Joan too. Your seemingly effortless breezy and unhesitating dash and funny asides at their best. Needless to say, a surprising cheer went up when I got to p. 155. [1] You are clever!
Artemis Cooper has been given the task of collecting all the detached oddments of the past years – on the same principle as yours, really – and putting them into a single vol. [2] So I’ll jolly well respond to your birthday wishes, with mine. I’ve just had a letter from somebody who is writing the official biography of Somerset Maugham, [3] and very much wants a full description of my brief sojourn, so I’ll dig out the two copies of my letters to you (tucked away somewhere) and do my best. It will be a relief to make it clear that I wasn’t horrible, which it might sound like, only tight.
It’s wonderful autumn weather here, air clear as crystal so one can see for miles and miles, even picking out the belfries on the Messenian peninsula, 20 miles away across the gulf, and the sea is very slightly cooler than it was, but I still swim in it for about half an hour every day, which apparently is the very thing for pacemakers, rather unexpectedly.
Lots of love from
Paddy
[1] The appreciation that DD wrote for PLF’s eighty-fifth birthday (see p. xv) was reproduced in her bestselling collection of articles and reviews, Counting My Chickens, with an introduction by Tom Stoppard.
[2] Words of Mercury.
[3] Jeffrey Meyers, Somerset Maugham: A Life (2004).
11 November 2001
Mani
Darling Debo,
Artemis is being a wonder. Joan hobbles with a stick, rather slowly, and I danced so violently on my name day on the 8th – Feast of SS Michael, Gabriel, Rafael and All Angels, who preside in the small chapel along the lane – that I’ve done something frightful to my right heel, and now hobble along too (temporarily) with Andrew’s smart cane. The feast day was a great success: all the crones and grey beards of the village came, and lots of young. After the mass, the feasting and drinking starts at 8 a.m. and ends with a wild mixture of Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses and Oranges and Lemons, out on to the terrace, then round the fountain. At midday they all vanish, so one can dive straight into the sea to counteract all the reckless swigging that has been going on. We’ve got a nice stand-in for the faithless Ritsa, whose son’s departure for Mount Athos has made her a bit off her nut, but Artemis has been our saviour.
No more now, except fond love,
P.
6 March 2002
Mani
Darling Debo,
ITUPMPCISAA. [1] Nearly all my letters ought to start like this nowadays.
I did love being at Chatsworth. What a shame that Pss Margaret’s death broke it up, temporarily. I do hope it re-cohered all right. She had always been v decent to me, and I admired her spirit, which I saw put to the test in Italy. She had come to Rome for a week, and I was somehow involved in a series of outings and parties. The thing was, how to dodge reporters. Judy Montagu had arranged a marvellous ride through wild Etruscan hills, backed up by Natalie Perrone, high-jump champion and MFH of the Rome hunt. We were cantering along quietly and were just about to splash through a brook, when all of a sudden on the other side of it, 100 press photographers, who must have been crouching, suddenly shot up and flashed all together in a rather terrifying way, like a series of broadsides. Horses started rearing etc. A cry of ‘Come on!’ went up and Pss M simply charged on galloping and waving her stick and they scattered like chaff, and we all pelted after her for a mile or two among the trees and the Tuscan tombs, and picnicked quietly in a ruin.
We stayed a couple of nights in Athens on the way out, where we were joined by kind Olivia Stewart, Michael, the Athens Ambassador’s daughter, who is a brilliant film-producer in Rome, an angel of kindness who was a great help in our domestic plight.
It was windy, rainy and wild at first, but all of a sudden, today, not a cloud in the sky and masses of blackbirds as if someone had rashly opened a pie.
Lots of love,
Paddy
[1] I Take Up My Pen Clad In Sackcloth And Ashes.
11 April 2002
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
We’ve been in London for Cake’s funeral. [1] What a poke in the eye for the MEDIA that all those people queued night & day in the freezing wind to see the lying in state. They had to admit . . .
The funeral itself was one of those incredible performances which can only happen in this country – palace, army, church
all at their tiptop best. My poor friend’s [2] steely face made us all realise how much he loved her and relied on her.
We were taken up front, as it were, in the Abbey. I think it must have been a mistake, anyway we had a wonderful view of everything. Bang opposite that wretched little Prime Minister & the frightful Cherie. Prescott [3] looks like a bare-knuckle fighter of Sackville Glove fame from the East End. Perhaps he is. I don’t know. The King of Spain was the pick of the foreign royal people, followed by a funny little chap I couldn’t place who turned out to be the Sultan of Brunei.
Four soldiers carried velvet cushions with her orders, sparkling diamonds galore. Perfectly beautiful and all in slow motion.
So that was that. We were lucky to be there.
Much love to Joan and you from
Debo
[1] The Queen Mother died on 30 March, aged 101.
[2] Prince Charles.
[3] John Prescott (1938–). The Labour politician became Deputy Prime Minister in 1997.
8 May 2002
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
I’ve been looking at old (very old) papers re when I was in Washington during the Cuban crisis in the days of Pres Kennedy. You had sent a telegram to me at the Embassy there – ‘Blimey we’re in trouble, ’arf a ton of rubble. Love Fermor.’ That must have cheered me up.
I had lunch with Lu Freud the other day. What an extraordinary man, he is exactly the same as he was when 25 & now he’s 80, bounding upstairs, darting down the street. Painting away like billy-o & a huge exhib going all over the place to mark his 80th birthday. He’s got a grand house in Kensington Church St with a garden planted in 0 but bamboo so you think you’re in an endless forest.
Much love
Debo
Lady Cranbrook [1] (THE most wonderful woman, dau of Ralph & Coney Jarvis) sent me some amazing beans to plant. All colours of the rainbow, sort of piebald, skewbald, spotted etc. She got them off a market stall in Greece. Her son works at something with Mt Athos monks, who grow ditto, so she asked him to get her some for the Prince of Wales. MT ATHOS GET THEIRS FROM SUTTONS.
[1] Caroline Jarvis (1935–). Suffolk farmer and campaigner on rural issues, awarded an OBE in 2007 for Services to Red Meat in East Anglia. Champion of British farmers and scourge of the supermarkets. Married 5th Earl of Cranbrook in 1968.
30 November 2002
Mani
Darling Debo,
Senile decay must have fired a sighting shot across my bows, or I wouldn’t be writing this! Did you ask me to Dingley Dell this year or next? Or neither? You see what a muddle I’m in! Please send a calming P.C.
I went for what must be the last swim of the year last week, 20 days after Guy Fawkes! Wonderful calm autumn days till then – half-an-hour’s side-stroke towards the island and back, then a lazy hour a-sprawl on the pebbles, finishing Twelfth Night and starting The Two Gentlemen of Verona (first time) by W Shakespeare: and then suddenly it all came to an end in deluge, thunder and lightning, and cats and dogs coming down daily from dawn to dusk. And there are plenty of the former, viz. cats, indoors as well. A honey-coloured kitten strolled into the house two years ago, grew up, fell in love with a village tom, gave birth to six kittens then vanished into thin air. They are black, gold, orange and lemon skewbalds of the utmost beauty. Joan and I sit by the fire – plenty of logs from the olive harvest – while I read aloud from Carry on Jeeves. Meanwhile, the kittens – downholsterers and interior desecrators to a kitten – demolish all.
Much love,
Paddy
4 December 2002
Chatsworth
Darling Paddy,
YES Christmas THIS YEAR galloping towards us at relentless speed.
I keenly suggest that you hire a car from Sunny Dumbleton because the trains have become ghoul – sometimes they just say NO TRAINS like when MEAT’S ORF in restaurants in the war.
I wish you’d got a fax. It is a life saver when wondering whether Christmas this year or next.
We all die for you – don’t not come.
Much love. HASTE.
Debo
(Me saying haste now – it’s usually you.)
Sunday [June 2003]
Dumbleton
Darling Debo,
I loved the service, [1] sunbeams streaming in and the sound of flocks baa-ing and lots of birdsong coming in and filling in all the gaps in the liturgy and wild flowers everywhere. It’s a mercy having so many letters to write, because there are so many. The worst part – one of them – in sudden separations like this one is the resemblance to an interrupted game of tennis, when all the balls served get lost in the long grass, and masses of arguments and jokes getting cut in half in mid-act, if you see what I mean.
I’m scribbling away in Joan’s old room, looking down over the lawn where we all hobnobbed afterwards with those trees spreading shadows as clearly outlined underneath them as dark maps spread over the lawn. Beyond them are a row of v old apple trees spreading their branches espalier-wise, like family trees. They must have been supported by a wall once, now gone.
Darling Debo, I’ll write later on and make more sense. Till then tons of love and to Andrew and to you all, from
Paddy
[1] Joan Leigh Fermor died on 4 June, aged ninety-one. A service was held at St Peter’s Church, Dumbleton, on 12 June.
14 August 2003
Dumbleton
Darling Debo
Many many sympathies about the sad Diana news, [1] though I know it must have been the end of anguish and anxiety as well as sorrow.
The thing that struck me in those obituaries was that the whole thing was completely beyond the writers’ grasp. They had never had to tackle such a conundrum before – the flagrant political unorthodoxy, the lack of subterfuge or hypocrisy and the v high style, guts and calm dismissiveness – all these were things the obituarists were quite unable to deal with, however much editors may have egged them on. Also, they were fascinated and, in a way, spellbound by the figure they were writing about – the beauty, the wit, the brains and the civilised bent for literature, the arts, etc. Quite often this made the condemnation ring flat and perfunctory, and, somehow, feeble. Some of the nice bits, I feel, Jim [Lees-Milne] must have had a hand in. What is Mrs de Courcy [2] like? I wish the editors had shown better photographs, the extremely beautiful and serene ones.
I thought so much of you these days, as all friends did. I wish we had managed to have dinner at Christian [Carritt]’s. I’ve just been staying two nights again while she took me under her wing at doc after doc and now see, hear and munch like a basilisk, a Red Indian and a grinding machine, or ogre.
Tons of love, darling Debo, from
Paddy
I long for Greece, but it looks as if I’ll have to hang about a bit more.
[1] Diana Mosley died after a stroke on 11 August, aged ninety-three.
[2] Anne de Courcy, author and journalist on the Daily Mail, wrote a biography of Diana Mosley published in 2003.
17 or 18 August 2003
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Your letter was extraordinary. The one which hit all nails on head. THEY can’t believe in such a person so honest, straightforward & not pushed or pulled by fashion or views or anything else, as original a product of another age with standards which remained with her till she died.
You are the friend to whom all this shone out & you saw how bamboozled the journalists must be when they are surrounded by the very opposite sort of people.
Wit – perhaps not, it always strikes me as the quick & not kind remark. Nancy YES but Diana I think not. She was very very funny but that’s slightly different eh.
It is so odd to have lost someone who was always there. The childhood cry of the seventh, straggling to keep up on stubby legs, of WAIT FOR ME, lives with me. She couldn’t.
Now for Swinbrook. The much licked pews, [1] the unbearable memories of the olde
n days, the Post Office reached by donkey cart, the two-penny bars & acid drops, the village idiot, the blacksmith’s shop, Nanny’s fabric gloves clutched in the back of the Daimler just before I was sick. Oh well.
Thank you for a wonderful letter, exactly bang on.
Much love
Debo
[1] Diana Mosley’s ashes were buried in the churchyard at Swinbrook; it was here that, as children, DD and her sisters used to lick the pews during services.
12 September 2003
Dumbleton
Darling Debo,
I’m busy packing, off tomorrow. I wish I’d managed to go up to Dingley Dell, but something always cropped up, and now I’ve got to go back home after the longest absence for years. It will seem strange. The place is being looked after by a charming Wykehamist poet called Hamish Robinson [1] who loves camping and writing in empty homes with lots of books, so it’s a godsend.
I hate packing more than anything in the world. I bet I’ll forget lots of important things.
In Tearing Haste Page 37
