In Tearing Haste Read online

  Sincerely (practising for America)

  D Devonshire

  [1] DD had known the Kennedys since Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador in London 1938–40, brought his family to live at Princes Gate where they were neighbours of the Mitfords. Andrew’s older brother, William (Billy), married Kathleen Kennedy in 1944. The presidential inauguration, which took place on 20 January 1961, was described by Andrew Devonshire as ‘all rather engagingly schoolboyish, but infectious’. Accidents of Fortune (Michael Russell, 2004), p. 87.

  [2] William Stirling.

  [3] Intellectuals.

  25 January 1961

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Pad,

  Two new bodies to add to the list of worshipped – a sweet ambassador called Sir Harold Caccia, [1] and Jack Kennedy.

  I lay beside Mr Gaitskell [2] for six happy hours in the plane to London & scraped his bottom (strange expression from a French friend who is not too good at English describing confidences received on a journey) & we became vague friends.

  He was a Friend in Tweed is a Friend Indeed in Washington when our Austin Princess (1950) broke coming away from the Inaugural Ball at a place called The Armoury which is a vast hall about twice as big as Olympia & was the venue for many a Presidential festivity last week.

  The last day of our fantastic outing we were taken to the Senate & Andrew was led into the Chamber (as they have a reciprocal agreement about govt people from foreign parts) & before you could say Robert Kee, two Senators were making speeches of welcome to him. I was sweating with fright in case he would make one back but thank goodness he only bowed. Good old Andrew. [3]

  Jack Kennedy was marvellous, chiefly because he was so marvellous to us & summoned me from the back of his stand to sit with him during the Parade & it fuddled the commentators on the telly as they only know politicians & film stars & when strange English ladies loom they are stumped.

  I can’t even tell you what an odd feeling it was sitting there with him like a Consort while majorettes from Texas & crinolined ladies on silver-paper floats went by by the thousand in the bitter cold. An Air Force contingent marched by & one broke ranks, whipped out a camera, took a snap of the President & rejoined the others. I wish I could see a Coldstream Guardsman do that one day.

  Jack asked me what I do all day. Stumped. I asked him if he was going to see Uncle Harold – he’d never heard of him. He is lovely – face & hair look as if it had been dipped in the same sand, eyes only different.

  We went in a bus labelled ‘Kennedy Family’ to The White Ho & they all cheered as we went through the gates.

  White Ho is very pretty, proper rooms covered in proper silk, green, red, yellow & ghastly blue put by Mamie [4] (I think).

  The Gala (seats 1000 dollars, for party funds!) was a literal galaxy of stars, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Durante, Nat King Cole, the kind of music was SO NICE compared with the usual ghouls, viz. Willie Walton. I appreciated.

  At the ball Jack Kennedy climbed over seven rows of cinema seats to say goodbye, to the astonishment of the people next to us & who were nicer from then on.

  He is surrounded like a queen bee by photographers, detectives, nexts of kin & fans so if he breaks out of the phalanx of people to come & talk to ONE, one nearly faints with pleasure & surprise.

  It was so hot in & so cold out it’s a wonder people survive.

  V odd to be back here, shooting cock pheasants out of the car like today.

  I went to a shop with the secretary to the Ambassadress & saw some lovely gloomy shirts, khaki & black stripes, & said out loud oh those are perfect for Robert & Lucian & the sec said Are they your sons? Oh how I wish they were.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] Harold Caccia (1905–90). British ambassador in Washington 1956–61. Created Baron Caccia of Abernant 1965.

  [2] Hugh Gaitskell (1906–63). Leader of the Labour Party from 1955 until his death.

  [3] ‘The Cavendishes were well known to be silent and spoke only when there was something worth saying. The Cecils were the opposite, talk, talk, talk from earliest childhood. My mother-in-law was a Cecil, born and brought up at Hatfield House where everyone had their say on every subject. Andrew took after her and started the Cavendishes talking – something Chatsworth had not known before.’ (DD)

  [4] Mamie Eisenhower’s favourite colour was, in fact, pink. During her husband’s presidency, the White House was often referred to by the press as the ‘Pink Palace’.

  16 February 1961

  (Feast of SS Pamphilius

  and Seleucus, Martyrs)

  Metsovo

  Epirus

  NW Greece

  Darling Debo,

  I was impressed by your coronation trip (did you get a mug?), and so were others I imparted the proud news to. It was a wonderful description of J. Kennedy. He seems to have done jolly well so far. I wish he weren’t so much younger than one. You do write good letters, you know, you really do, in that whizz-bang planchette style, hitting the nail on the head again and again without even looking. Please persevere through the coming decades, only another forty years or so, if all goes well.

  You’ll never guess where I am. Last year in Rome, I got a fanletter from Mr Avéroff [1] (the Gk Foreign Minister, now in your midst) saying he thought Mani [2] was glorious (he’s better read than some), and would I and my party go and stay in his house in Metsovo any time, as long as I liked, to write. So here I am, and Joan too. It’s what they call an ancestral Epirot house, in the Turkish style, huge rooms surrounded by divans, with carved wooden ceilings giving one the feeling of being inside a cigar box, jutting out in storey after storey, overlooking the snow-covered roofs of the highest village in Greece, bang on the top of the Pindus Mountains in fact, almost the wildest and remotest bit of the wildest and remotest range in Greece. These cigar-box rooms, thank heavens, each have enormous porcelain stoves, so it’s piping hot within, and just as well as snow falls and swirls without and icicles dangle a foot thick. The lanes outside have that marvellous winter smell of snow, cattle, straw, pee, dung, pines, hay, ice, and cigars, appropriately being smoked by me. The inhabitants are Koutzovlachs * who speak a v. queer Latin dialect akin both to Rumanian and Italian. Some say they are Rumanian nomad shepherds who wandered here centuries ago with their flocks and never found their way home again. Others, more plausibly, say that they are the descendants of Roman legionaries, speaking a corrupt camp Latin, stationed here to guard the high passes of the Pindus, miles from anywhere; and that when the Emperor Honorius ** recalled the legions to Rome in 410 A.D., they never got the order; and here they have been stuck ever since, rather bewildered little rock pools of Romans, wondering wistfully if their absent centurions know as much as they should about Care of Men. They wear ribbed velvet pill-boxes, black goat’s-hair boleros, black ditto kilts, black leggings of the same, and pom-pommed shoes, with hooded full-length capes so stiff that they can step out and leave them standing like sentry-boxes. They are semi-nomads, and now half of them are down in the plains with thousands of black sheep and goats, the last two devouring the delicious grass there, while their masters moon the winter through in numberless snug wigwams made of plaited willow and brushwood. The rest of my party (Coote and, I hope, Mark [Ogilvie-Grant]) roll up tomorrow: by plane to Yanina, the capital of Epirus, and then up here by bus, bringing newspapers and whisky, & perhaps letters from you and other dear ones. It’s quicker by bus than by car, because a bulldozer-cum-snow plough goes before the bus. We were blocked in a howling blizzard on the way here, in spite of heavy chains, in the highest and windiest part of the pass. It was awful watching the snow blowing higher and higher as we cowered gazing through the fan-shaped bits the wipers made on the caked windscreen, till a snow plough came along, and let us through – creatures of the snow – finally delivered at this warm casket of a house, with books and carpets and whisky and shaded lamps and roaring stoves. It seemed a true miracle.

  Did you come acros
s Mr Avéroff – I thought you might because of Andrew’s uncle, perhaps. He’s an odd kind. (PRIVATE ) I scarcely knew him; but I took my courage in both hands (knowing he had just wangled an old friend of mine out of Rumania – more of this anon) and asked if he could do anything about my old love, Balasha Cantacuzène: [3] and he has promised to, if he can! I can’t believe it, though it may take a year or two. She was over ten years older than me when I was twenty – so still must be! – which means over fifty-five (-six since last week). There was a faint chance of her getting out two years ago, but she didn’t want to, because, after prison for two years (for trying to escape) and living in utter hardship as a pauper for 15 years in forced residence & little to eat in a remote village, she said she dreaded seeing anyone again – painfully thin, teeth and hair dropping out fast. It’s too awful. Poor Balasha! But I’m sure something could be done about all this, and thank heavens, there are several old friends who will cough up something to begin with. And indeed go on. She’s a painter. She always adored Greece, and would probably want to settle here. How wonderful it would be if she did make it! We haven’t met for 22 years. She used to be so beautiful. The one who did get out through Mr A – he’s called Nicky Cryssovelóni, a very old friend of mine – says that in spite of all these calamities, she’s quite unchanged in character, just as funny and intelligent and charming as ever.

  I was amazed by how little he had changed after countless imprisonments and beatings up. He was, and still is, amazingly good looking, ½ English with a great fascination, I think. Bridget [Parsons] used to be terribly in love with him, & I think would have liked to have married him. But (alas for poor B!) the only one he asked after in England was ‘Ann O’Neill’, [4] so I’ve put him on the right track. I’ve given him a letter for you – is this alright? I wish you’d organise a meal or something with Robert [Kee] and perhaps A. O’Neill, as I think his accounts of occupied Rumania and the Communist regime would fascinate him. It’s quite something; a lot of it, unexpectedly, is side splitting. Judging by what’s going on outside the window – I’ve let the curtain fall with a shudder – my party are going to have a pretty rough ascent tomorrow.

  Heaps of love

  Paddy

  [1] Evangelos Avéroff (1910–90). The Greek Foreign Minister was on a three-day official visit to Britain.

  [2] PLF’s account of his travels in the southern Peloponnese, first published in 1958.

  [3] Princess Marie-Blanche (Balasha) Cantacuzène (1899–1976). PLF met the Romanian painter in Athens in 1935. Her marriage to the polo-playing Spanish diplomat Francisco Amat y Torres had ended, and she and PLF spent several months together in Greece before returning to live at Baleni, her ancestral home in Moldavia, south-eastern Romania. PLF was at Baleni in 1939 when war was declared.

  [4] Ann Fleming was married, firstly, to 3rd Baron O’Neill 1932–44.

  * DON’T SKIP

  ** ditto

  30 June 1961

  Cliff Cottage [1]

  Fforest Farm

  Dinas, Newport

  Pembrokeshire

  Darling Debo,

  I ffeel ffrightfully guilty about being so ffearffully slow in writing to say thank you for that lovely weekend. It was glorious, and I really loved it.

  It was a bit gloomy here to begin with – the deed-box smell of long-closed rooms as Joan and I tiptoed in, and the wriggle of moths’ larvae. (But they’ve all been slain now.) Also, it poured to begin with and, whenever one went out of doors, great cotton-wool clouds weighed down on one, making one feel like a bird’s egg packed against breakage and, where flowers ought to be, nothing but tares: not at all a case of (please intone this like a psalm):

  ‘As he swore unto our forefather:

  Sutton and his seeds forever.’

  Glorious meals, as you rightly guessed, so that one longs to be at meat. A giant lobster, caught an hour before, last night, with raspberries and cream to follow; and these cliffs are one vast Nature Note, puffins, choughs, guillemots, kittiwakes, shearwaters, buzzards and the like, and deep chasms running down to the sea choked with tropical vegetation where foxes and badgers live. Also, there are low but wild mountains behind, the scene of bleak and bracing gallops, then heavenly rides homeward along winding lanes between hayfields and through farmyards where cottagers talk to each other, in Welsh no doubt, about music, wizards, rarebits and kindred themes.

  I suppose it’s too far to drive from Derbyshire, but, were it not, one might explore further down the coast.

  Lastly, work is going like a fire hydrant and about time too. Lots of love from

  Paddy

  [1] PLF had borrowed the house from Barbara Ghika (1911–89), née Hutchinson, who married the painter Nikos Ghika in 1961. She was married previously to Victor, 3rd Baron Rothschild 1933–46 and to Rex Warner, writer, painter and translator of Greek tragedies, in 1949.

  17 July 1961

  Chatsworth

  Bakewell

  Darling Pad,

  Re. Iris Tree. She came for the weekend. Well, she arrived with the Exchange & Mart under her arm so I was knocked all of a heap. I never saw such a lady, such sequin ties, such golden evening outfits (chain mail), such memory for poetry, such company. She is the fittest thing this side of Tipperary. No wonder you love her so much. The reactions, the being an American, saying ‘Well what d’you know’, the words used describing things, my goodness, & all this & the Exchange & Mart.

  I spoke about Ivan Moffat [1] being one of the three people left I want to meet (others are Lds Beaverbrook & Birkenhead). [2] She said one must have three goes at him. I believe he’s getting married & that sometimes makes people different for, say, three months so we must hang on. Anyway his dear old mother takes a bit of beating.

  Keep in touch.

  Much love

  Debo

  [1] Ivan Moffat (1918–2002). Screenwriter, son of Iris Tree and grandson of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. PLF had known Moffat since 1940: ‘All his life, with his high forehead, tousled hair and large eyes, he had the look of an intelligent, rebellious, finely-strung and charming boy. His quiet, urgent style was spaced out by pauses and changes of pace and pitch and interrupted by bursts of all-consuming and infectious laughter.’ PLF, Daily Telegraph, 2 August 2002.

  [2] The powerful press baron Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), and the historian Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead (1907–75). ‘Beaverbrook was such a person. Of course I wanted to meet him, so much spoken of – devil incarnate or irresistible charmer, depending on who you talked to. Freddie Birkenhead was Tom [Mitford]’s great friend. Hearing about him was enough to make me very curious.’ (DD)

  17? November 1961

  Poste Restante

  Nîmes

  Gard

  My darling Debo,

  Feeling a bit low. It’s Saturday night in this town, pouring with rain, and here I am in this café, unknown and unloved. I wish you were here, and Xan and Daph, Ran, several other people, let alone Joan. Think what lovely drinks and talks we’d have, followed by some smashing guzzle somewhere, then more drinks and a great deal more talks and jokes, and finally pretty tight to bed, and off into dreamland, knowing a glorious day was about to dawn on the morrow, rain or shine.

  I did lots of work in Brittany but it got too damp and dark and sad, so I thought, off to the glowing south and pitch camp there, with any luck somewhere near my old pal Larry Durrell. [1] (Not here of course.) But the journey, though solitary, was marvellous, all through S. Brittany, then down to Nantes, over the Loire to La Rochelle, a very pretty arcaded town where, in a bar late at night, I fell in with a delightful old boy who seemed to know everyone anybody’s ever met anywhere, and is also curator of the local Natural History Museum, which we went over next day. We sat up in his very pretty book-lined house in the port drinking whisky till 4 a.m. and next day he gave me a thumping lunch with clarets almost too fabulous to drink. He’d just read Nancy’s book, and asked me who everyone was so I was
able to score rather heavily. [2] Why I go on about him is that, when he was a very young man in La Rochelle, your uncle Jack Mitford [3] was there learning French, a tremendous dasher apparently, with a small pack of hounds for hunting cats. He used to send out cards asking all the smart world of La Rochelle to the meets, and then, hell for leather all over the town, to the wonder of the citizens.

  So, on down the west coast of France to Bordeaux, which might have been at the bottom of the sea, it was so rainy. I stopped here at an old-fashioned, quite empty hotel, all long passages, brass bedsteads and threadbare plush, overlooking the submerged cathedral. The maid who helped me up with my luggage – mostly in baskets, the advantage of motor travel – was a tall fair sad beauty, no make up, in a severe black dress and starched white apron. Peering into the rainy square I quoted two lines of Verlaine about the monotonous noise of the rain, which she promptly continued for several more lines. She turned out to be enormously well read, from Paris, lonely and gloomy in Bordeaux, not liking the burghers much. I asked her advice about where to go on one’s own in this strange town, and ended up by meeting her round the corner in a bar (it wouldn’t do in the hall of the hotel) as it was her night off: black and white now replaced by suede jacket, black jersey & skirt and flat shoes; then lots of oysters and things at another place, and lots of a rather sad life story. It turned out that the happiest time she’d had in her life, so far (she’s 24), was last summer, with her greyhound Dick, at Arcachon in the estuary of the Garonne, where the oyster beds are. She would hang about till after sunset when everyone had left the sands, and then swim out with Dick and dive into the oyster beds and pinch the oysters; then turn back to the shore, where she had a plastic bag with a knife, bread, butter and lemon in, and have a solitary feast. Dick didn’t like them, fortunately, but is a wonderful oyster-spotter, for after rough weather quite a lot are washed inshore and scattered about the sand, so off dashes clever Dick, to halt panting over some scaly trove, Annie following hot foot.