In Tearing Haste
Page 39
There’s a marvellous slip of H.H.’s on p. 24, about Mrs Ham – ‘There seemed to be more and thicker black net than ever hangin’ all round. Why does she not carry a triton?’ (Note. Triton, a minor sea-god, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, with a dolphin’s tail, sometimes a horse’s forelegs, and blowing a conch.) He obviously meant to write trident, with vague memories of the kind of gladiator called retiarius (‘netman’) who fought in the arena naked and only armed with net and trident (like Mrs H) against a fully armed and helmeted secutor (‘pursuer’). The netman often won.
Talking of Poseidon, I’m going to dash down those rough steps and dive in.
Tons of love,
Paddy
P.S. Now I come to think of it, I came to that lovely Chelsea-to-Richmond boating party, many summers ago, with a trident and intertwined net (an awful nuisance it was). It must have been the first (or second?) time we met, because I remember Andrew on the gangplank saying, ‘I know! You’re Xan Fielding’s Wife!’ But hadn’t we met at Royal Coll. of Arts with only heads disguised? Your head in a velvet hunting cap.
P.P.S. Old news of Bay Middleton in my next.
[1] Derek Hill (1916–2000). Landscape artist and portraitist to the Establishment.
[2] Gaston Palewski.
2 October 2004
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
There is such a lot going on here I don’t know which pile of paper to attack first. My fault, for starting things.
Dr Oblivion comes to see me a bit too often. I wish he would just pay attention to you, plenty on his plate I should have thought.
He plagues Robert [Kee], drives him mad.
A letter to me from Diana [Mosley] says about Robert doing Mitterrand, [1] what a good idea etc, & it’s dated 1996. So eight years have rolled & still he struggles.
I’ve been in the Highlands. Have you ever seen that country? It is too big & threatening for me & the endless evergreen trees are melancholy.
I stayed with the P of Wales in Cake’s old house, Birkhall. * That is truly fascinating, all passages lined with Spy cartoons stuck cheek by jowl, all my Granddad’s work – he started Vanity Fair & engaged Spy. [2] Curtains in tatters & the Prince won’t touch them. Cake’s hat & mac hanging in the hall. He reveres her & so won’t change anything, so right.
My bathroom was a punishment cell, freezing cold LINO ON FLOOR & I didn’t take bedroom slippers. Elec towel rail bust. Everything else supreme luxury & I loved the bathroom, back to childhood.
That will have to do for now, must get back to the piles of paper. Much love
Debo
[1] Robert Kee was researching a biography of the French President.
[2] Thomas Gibson Bowles (1841–1922). DD’s maternal grandfather, a politician and journalist, started the popular weekly satirical magazine Vanity Fair (un -related to its modern namesake) in 1868. In 1873 he recruited the artist Leslie Ward, ‘Spy’, who contributed to the magazine for over forty years. He also founded The Lady, still famous today for its classified columns advertising for domestic help.
* Called Birkhell by my old friend her chef.
3 October 2004
Mani
Darling Debo,
I long to hear more about Bay Middleton! I’ll tell you why. When I was trudging through Hungary, Transylvania and Rumania ages ago, I stayed ages with a charming Hungarian squire called Elemér von Klobusiçky, living in an old house above the River Maros. We became great pals. He was just old enough to have been a cornet in a hussar regiment in the Great War.
He asked me if I knew anything about Bay Middleton, viz. that he had been a great friend of the beautiful Empress Elizabeth, and always accompanied her out hunting, going over all the worst fences first etc. In fact, a cavaliere servente, as they say; but always with the rider ‘en tout bien et en tout honneur’ viz. nothing out of order.
Well, once he had been invited to stay at a royal hunting lodge called Gödölŏ, E of Budapest, where both the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empss Elizabeth were staying too. He went off to a dinner party in Budapest, and after it, in the small hours, wandered about in his tails and picked up a v pretty but wicked tart, who was part of a gang of robbers. She took him, instead of to some snug alcove, to their den, where he was robbed of everything, every stitch of clothing I think down to his dancing pumps, and then left in the empty street, lost and, worse still, starkers, and was either arrested, or found a police station. Something in his extreme good looks, fine bearing and humour succeeded in impressing them. There was no common language, except his repeated murmur of ‘Gödölŏ’, so, puzzled, they wrapped him in a police overcoat and got in touch with a guard there; then, with some equerry taking care of him, they smuggled him back to the bachelors’ wing, and all was well, though the tale got about a bit, probably from his telling it. My pal had heard it from an old courtier who had been on duty there. Do admit that it’s a fascinating tale. Triumph in adversity with knobs on. He doesn’t sound too bad an ancestor to spring from. Do tell anything you know about him, I long to know.
I finished Nancy’s letters to H.H. Both of them are captivating. No more now. A dash to the post . . .
Fond love,
Paddy
20 October 2004
Mani
Darling Debo,
It’s very queer. I’d just finished re-reading your letter about the hotel where you and Sto & co stayed on the same corridor but completely out of touch because the distance was the same as from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner – when a postcard of Hyde Park Corner, dating from c.1930, suddenly materialized. Do look at it carefully. The winged wreath-bearing lady in the chariot on top of the Wellington Arch was done from my old landlady in Shepherd Market, where I set off from on my travels, aged 18¾, a five-minute flight, or less. She was an ex-artist’s model called Beatrice Stewart, painted by Sargent, Sickert, Shannon, Stevens, Tonks and Augustus John. She was in her seventies, but walked with two sticks because of an accident, and metal leg. You could see she had been a great beauty. I loved her as she was always angelically kind to me, and forgave our noisy parties. In spite of the early date, I can spy only one horse and cart. The Artillery Monument in the foreground always makes me damp about the eyes, especially the recumbent gunner wrapped under his greatcoat and tin hat.
I keep on thinking of things I must remember to tell Joan at lunch, knowing they could make her laugh, rather like you with Diana. Letters addressed to her still arrive from distant parts, but they are dying out now, and it’s only subscriptions to be renewed or bright catalogues for pullovers and the like.
Tons of love to you, and to all at Dingley Dell,
Paddy
25 October 2004
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Lots of things. I’ve got ANOTHER book on the go, photos of buildings etc within two miles of this old dump. [1]
The inevitable introduction is necessary & one para has this line saying how The house is perfectly placed between the woods & the water (like Paddy Leigh Fermor’s book). Do you allow that? Sorry to be a bore, but it’s true, eh. RSVP one day.
And before Christmas, Amanda [Hartington] has got a carol service in Ripon Cathedral where various fatheads like myself read something from the pulpit all in aid of some Good Cause. She’s asked me to read a whack of A Time of Gifts. So I looked it up (being proud possessor of T of G). It’s called ‘Christmas 1933’, and I SHALL HAVE TO LEARN GERMAN to spit it out properly. HELP.
And how do you pronounce Bungen [2] whose inhabitants exchanged greetings? Bung em sounds a bit drear. Or it is BUngen like TUlip? The U I mean? Is the G soft or hard? Oh dear what prarblams.
And help, please, with the names of the carols? One looks like Nancy saying Eet eez too moch in her Czech-ish ladies accent of old. [3]
The last thing is the list of field names of a farm where there is a Stump Cross, a medieval object on a mound which turns out to
be a Bronze-Age burial place. Having a good look at that I found the other field names & very nice they are – Dungworth Bank, Sitch, Patch, Interim Furlong, Purchased From Wheeldon, & the one you’ll like, Kine Furlong.
When did people stop calling cattle kine? Purchased From Wheeldon seems a long name for a field but that’s what it is.
V much love
Debo
[1] Round About Chatsworth (2005).
[2] DD misread ‘Bungen’ for the town of ‘Bingen’.
[3] As a child, Nancy invented a game in which she played a ‘Czechish lady doctor’ for which she adopted a thick foreign accent.
27 October 2004
Mani
Darling Debo,
I love the idea of Between the W and the W sneaking its way into the introduction. Better still, you sending a chunk of A.T. of G through triforium to clerestory in Ripon. ‘BINGEN’ is the word, and uttered just like the game, viz. BINGO, with EN instead of O. STEELER NACHT, with the CH = Ah!, sounding as a Moslem would pronounce Aly Khan’s surname.
(1) ES (2) IST (3) EIN ROS’ ENTSPRUNGEN is uttered (1) like an American Ezra Pound fan familiarly dropping his hero’s name with the second syllable docked; (2) IST like Hûst!, said by one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, dropping his H at the sight of a Red Indian; (3) EIN is like the last three letters of the song, Clementine; ROS’ like rows and ROWS of spectators;
ENTSPRUNGEN is the county of Kent minus its K; SPRUNG is pronounced as it would be in the heart of Ilkley Moor, followed by the tail end of a chicken.
I had a sad loss last week. When bathing I use an old stick to go out to the rock I take off from, and leave it on a ledge. This time a squall blew up, and when I got back, the stick had been whirled away. In the hurry to get down the steps, I had picked up the one Andrew gave me a few years ago, the apple of my eye, black with a silver band – ‘PADDY from Andrew, Christmas . . . ?’ and the date, back in the nineties. It had become a sort of talisman. Magouche was staying and we hunted up and down the neighbouring beaches for days. It was rather like Excalibur, thrown over the mere by Sir Bedivere and caught by a mysterious shrouded arm, as in the Henry Ford illustration in The Book of Romance, one of the Andrew Lang Fairy Tale books, worshipped by me when young.
I slog along steadily here till just before Yule chez Janetta and Jaime in Andalusia and then Morocco, and will think wistfully of you all listening to ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ on those steps.
Off to the post.
Tons of love,
Paddy
Today is OHI (‘NO!’) Day, when the Greeks refused the ultimatum of Mussolini’s army in 1940, and then drove them all back almost into the Adriatic until Hitler came to their rescue.
Lots of flags, swigging, dancing in a ring and singing. Fun but exhausting.
17 November 2004
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Your German lesson is wonderful. If I get up in the pulpit in Ripon Cathedral (which is what I’ve got to do) & spout out all that, the audience, sorry congregation, will be all of a dither wondering what’s coming next.
I’ve studied & studied it.
And will have to re-study. It’s like a difficult drawing-room game but I’ll battle it out somehow. THANKS.
Now for a suggestion. Please buy more paper, use two sheets instead of one and LEAVE MORE SPACE
BETWEEN THE LINES to put your corrections etc. Good idea?
More soon.
Much love
Debo
Do you realise you’re nearly 90? ODD.
23 November 2004
Mani
Darling Debo,
I’ve just been reading an excellent book by Harold Nicolson called Good Behaviour; then wondered why I had bought it, so turned back to the fly-leaf and read: September 1975 ‘Paddy much love from Debo. So very good to get rid of a book. I loathe the things.’ I’d obviously asked if I could borrow it from your bedside . . .
Lovely talking to you last night. Lots of bustle here, as the olive harvest is on, acres of spread tarpaulin, the whizz of pruning saws and the pitter-pat of tumbling olives, and, indoors, the shifting round of furniture, everything based on the fireplace, huge baskets of logs and laying of mats and carpets. Ready for anything.
Tons of love,
Paddy
16 January 2005
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
Your instructions for pronouncing the German words went down a treat. I started by saying what you told me to do & after Entsprungen I gave it up & craved their indulgence of my ignorance.
The Prince of Wales came with us & he knew just how to say those words (to the manor born as it were) & he laughed so much & then enjoyed the performance from the pulpit.
It was a very jolly evening made of course by you. Much love
Debo
14 April 2005
Chatsworth
Bakewell
Darling Paddy,
So glad I sent you that book with a sensible note in it.
I’ve had such a rackety time. I ended up in hosp with ‘a turn’, viz. not quite a stroke.
We did overdo things a bit, a long promised trip with Emma. First night at Bowood, incredibly beautiful in all ways, bluebells growing like a crop, dead level & no earth or anything untoward between them, not out yet but all promise. Breakfast in bed at 7.30 unheard of luxury in any stately. Ld & Ly Lansdowne [1] both v nice indeed but it is haunted for me by my Wife & her two bros, killed within 10 days of each other in Aug 1944, my two best friends. I didn’t know the Wife then.
Next night Wilbury. A bit of Wiltshire perfection apparently in a poor way till bought by Lady Iveagh [2] eight years ago. She has lavished all on it, so super-luxurious, four different smelling things in every drawer in my room so it’s difficult to know what’s yours and what belongs to the house when packing.
Ld Londonderry [3] came to dinner. I hadn’t seen him for years, so funny, good looking and charming. ‘I’m a gregarious recluse,’ he said.
Amazingly my sister Woman was born there nearly 100 years ago. My grandfather Bowles took the house off & on for 20 years & I suppose my mother wanted to be out of their weeny Pimlico semi-slum. She told me she & her Dad used to ride to Stonehenge, 10 miles, without a fence or obstacle of any kind.
So it had a history for me as well as its beauty. But the trouble with newly acquired houses is the electrically locked gates and all of that which take away some of the magic.
Kindness itself from Ly Iveagh. She has got a Guinness bar in the basement and a cinema. I wonder if she could get the Lives of the Bengal Lancers, my favourite film.
Then to lunch with Edward Adeane [4] in his mill built over the Avon. The sun came out & it was like England is supposed to be, daffs & willows & rushing water.
Lord Pembroke [5] was there. About twenty-five, bachelor, handsome & charming, he got a FIRST in Industrial Design at Sheffield University, do admit how original. I wish he would invent a tap which doesn’t direct water straight on to the plug so it jumps out before you’ve got enough water to wash in.
So then the wedding, [6] a total ripping success. I sat next to Brig Andrew Parker Bowles [7] one side and a sort of Elvis choir man the other.
It must have been so odd for Andrew seeing his old wife go up the aisle like that. I can’t quite imagine it, can you? I know they’re all very friendly but even so . . .
The Prince invited Henry & Joan [Coleman] & Stella (housemaid) & Keith her hubby. [8] That’s what I love about him. Henry shook hands with Mr Blair & said good luck (‘but I didn’t mean it’), Mr Howard, [9] & of course found heaps of friends.
Then home.
Got up Sun a.m. perfectly OK & slap bang went wobbly & talked like a drunk person (I’m told, can’t remember). Next thing the dr, stretcher, ambulance, hospital. Can’t remember much about that either. Room to myself, seventh floor, fantastic view of the hideosities of Sheffield out of vast h
ermetically sealed window.
Five doctors (or learners, some of them I suppose) at bottom of bed. The chief one was Dr Khan, not exactly Aly but sweet. Eddie Tennant, a saint, stayed with me & ruined his Sunday.
Brain scan ordered the next day. People hate them, Andrew specially loathed it. All I can say is never fear if you have to have one. They put you in a long coffin & shove it up under a cover & bang bang wallop wallop it goes, just about like the train to Eastbourne, no worse. Twenty minutes then they show you the snaps of said brain.
One looked like a dog with a big black nose, one could have been a Picasso drawing of me, a bit frightening, & the rest looked like patterns on hotel carpets, some Gothic, some flowers, quite nice.
Anyway, 0 untoward was discovered so here I am home again & quite alright except the Dr says I’m to stay on this floor [10] for two WEEKS.
But I’m thankful for mercies, like it not being a real stroke, just a warning.
So there we are. The everyday story of country folk.
The kindness in the hosp. was beyond. NHS. But the lunch was yak, I think, certainly no known meat. Perhaps the patients are all from Nepal.
Much love
Debo
[1] Charles Petty-Fitzmaurice, 9th Marquess of Lansdowne (1941–). Married Fiona Merritt, as his second wife, in 1987. His two cousins, sons of the 6th Marquess, were both killed in action in 1944 within a few days of each other.
[2] Miranda Smiley (1940–). Married to Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh, 1963–84.
[3] Alexander Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 9th Marquess of Londonderry (1937–). The unconventional peer was married to Nicolette Harrison in 1968 and to the baller -ina Doreen Wells 1972–89.