In Tearing Haste Read online

  He is one of those rare birds who is exactly the same with whoever he is talking to. Children recognise him as a kindred spirit. With his formidable scholarship and prodigious memory, he is just as able to spout Edward Lear or ‘There was an Old Woman as I’ve heard tell, who went to market her eggs for to sell’ for them, as Marvell or Shakespeare, via Noël Coward, for grown-ups.

  Try to get him to sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ in Hindustani with his Italian translations of ‘John Peel’ and ‘Widdecombe Fair’. John Peel’s hounds – Ruby, Ranter, Ringwood, Bellman and True – turn into Rubino, Vantardo, Rondo Bosco, Campanelli and Fedele.

  Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse

  Lend me your grey mare,

  All along, down along, out along lee,

  becomes:

  Tommaso prestami tua grigia giumenta

  Tutti lungo, fuori lungo, giù lungo prato.

  And Cobley’s gang are:

  Guglielmo Brewer, Jacopo Stewer, Pietro Gurney,

  Pietro Davey, Daniele Whiddon ed Enrico ’awke.

  Ed il vecchio zio Tommaso Cobley e tutti quanti etc.

  Or get him to recite the longest palindrome, ‘Live dirt up a side track carted is a putrid evil’, delivered, for some unknown reason, in the broadest Gloucestershire accent. Just the entertainment for a winter’s night.

  Handsome, funny, energetic and original, Paddy is a brilliant, shining star – how lucky my family and I are to have had such a friend for so long.

  Adapted from an article written for PLF’s eighty-fifth birthday, Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2000.

  Deborah Devonshire

  by Patrick Leigh Fermor

  In autumn 1940, Smedley’s Hydro at Matlock in Derbyshire – a bleak, castellated and blacked-out Victorian pile, perched high above the rushing Derwent (whose mineral springs, it was said, could turn a bowler hat into a crystalline fossil overnight) – was crammed with polyglot officers of all ages and origins. It was the Intelligence Training Centre, which sounds more important than it was. The war wasn’t going well and it was thought that a ball would cheer us all up, so we did our best with balloons, chrysanthemums and streamers. Many of the officers were musical, so we had a band and it went with great brio.

  Henry Howard, one of the instructors, brought over a spectacular couple from nearby: a tall, slim ensign in blues and an incredibly beautiful girl; nobody could look at anyone else. They were both twenty. There was nothing showy about their dancing – rather the reverse. We all wished we knew them, but it was out of the question: they seemed to be sleep-dancing, utterly rapt, eyes shut as though in a trance. He was called Andrew Cavendish and she was Deborah, the youngest Mitford sister.

  ‘Funny, Howard bringing that Mitford girl over,’ a crusty old student said when they had gone. ‘After all, this is meant to be the Intelligence Training Centre, and there is a war on.’

  The war had been over for a few years when we met again at a fancy-dress drinks, and then at a party with two fast boats sailing up the Thames laden with eccentrically dressed passengers. Andrew had been through the war with the Coldstream Guards and won an MC in northern Italy. Deborah had been busy with a score of tasks, and both were at grips with bringing Chatsworth back to life. I was very pleased to be asked to stay, having already visited Lismore. ‘Our dump looms when you turn left after the church. You can’t miss it. It sticks out like a sore thumb.’

  There is no need to describe that amazing house; everyone knows Chatsworth. It was an unexpected heirloom: Andrew’s older brother had been killed in action in 1944, and his father had died in 1950. This brought a stack of new duties, and new things to enjoy (and see that everyone else enjoyed). He dealt with all tasks with seriousness, speed and decision. When he served as Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations in the Macmillan Government (‘pure nepotism of Uncle Harold’s’), he did it with impressive ability.

  In the country, Andrew had a genius for marking historical and family events with enormous gatherings. The house and all hotels for miles around filled up with guests, staff and tenants; vast tents went up all over the grounds, and there were fountains, music, feasting, tumblers, sword-swallowers and players of obsolete instruments. There were pageants, ballets, cantatas. It was a sort of Field of the Cloth of Gold – all to be blown away, except from memory, with the smoke of the last firework: scenes so magical that departing cars had to go several miles before they could safely turn back into pumpkins. I can see Andrew, like a tired youthful Prospero, in his study – a vast cave full of books – planning new splendours, ticking off a list of new engagements, perhaps brooding on almshouses for grey-beards yet unborn.

  How different from the winds and snow of the Huantay mountain range in Peru! Andrew and I had been included, as minor amateurs, in a mountaineering expedition in the Andes. It was so congenial that the same party clambered all over the Pindus. We then tackled the Pyrenees with Xan Fielding, and were about to try the not very arduous Elburz range in Iran, when the Ayatollah came to power.

  Lismore Castle, the Devonshires’ home in Ireland – built by King John, lived in by Sir Walter Raleigh and plumbed by Andrew’s aunt by marriage, Adele Astaire – looks like a castle out of Le Morte d’Arthur. I was allowed to stay (‘in order to write’) in the tallest tower, where there was no sound but the admonitory gurgle of bathwater climbing up its pipe before dinner, the flutter of a flag overhead and thousands of birds. It looked down on treetops and a bridge over the Blackwater River with a strange echo. Files of salmon shimmer upstream towards the Knockmealdown Mountains and herons glide by almost in touching distance.

  In the village lived Dervla Murphy, the great travel author, and a few fields away grazed the beautiful Grand National winner Royal Tan, a present to Debo from Aly Khan. He had run four times in the great race, and had come in first, second and third, and fell only at the last fence in the fourth, which he would otherwise have won. This fine horse had fallen platonically head-over-heels in love with a very small donkey and they were inseparable. However, I made a good impression by wheedling the horse away by hours of stroking and soft talk, then furtively slipping a bridle over his head. I felt sorry for the little donkey as we went down the lane to the blacksmith’s, who welcomed Royal Tan like a prince. ‘Arrh! He’s seen a lot of crowds in his day!’ he said, and then, as an afterthought, ‘I’ll just put a light slipper on him.’

  Later, there was a lot of riding through the spring woods with Debo, my wife Joan, and Robert Kee. There was a picnic under the fairy oak at Abbeyleix, and an afternoon when we were bent on having a shrimp tea. A sort of spell hung over the whole region. Nobody was at home when we went to nearby Dromana House. It was oddly silent. No Villiers, no Stuarts. There was an open window, so we clambered in like Bruin Boys of riper years. A few old letters were scattered about and a dismembered double-barrel gun and some moulting foxes’ brushes. Dusk was falling, so we tiptoed away.

  Equally vain to try and reproduce the comedy of Debo’s and her sister Nancy’s exchanges, much of it schoolroom reproach. When the fire at Lismore had gone out, Nancy said, ‘I note no bellows’, and, imploring Debo to stop whatever she was doing, ‘Borah, I beg!’

  Thanks to Nancy’s books we know a lot about the Mitfords. ‘Our lives were absolutely secure and regular as clockwork’ (this is Debo writing, not Nancy). ‘We had parents who were always there. An adored Nanny who came when Diana was three months old and stayed for forty years. Mabel in the pantry and Annie the housekeeper. Animals were as important as humans – mice, guinea pigs, a piebald rat belonging to Unity, poultry and goats, and the animals of farm and stable.’

  Debo’s fondness for animals has never left her. Chickens seem to have been her first love, and they are still high on the list. Sheep are particular favourites; she knows all about them, every variety and breed, and she haunts sheep sales. Rare breeds abound at Chatsworth. For a time there was a whole troop of tiny horses. She is shadowed everywhere by two whippets.

  Shops have always he
ld particular glamour for her – her favourite book is Beatrix Potter’s Ginger and Pickles – and this has given rise to shops full of country food, butchers’ shops, carpenters’, shops selling rustic tackle and pretty well everything an estate can produce.

  Although she hates books and has never read any of mine, or those of any other writer friends, she has written several books about Chatsworth and its surroundings. She writes with ease and speed, and wonders what all the fuss is about.

  Adapted from an article written for DD’s eightieth birthday, Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2000.

  Index of Names and Nicknames

  Ancient Dame of France

  Nancy Mitford, eldest sister of DD

  Andrew

  Andrew Devonshire, husband of DD

  Ann/Annie

  Ann Fleming

  Cake

  The Queen Mother

  Coote

  Dorothy Lygon

  Daph/Daphne

  Daphne Fielding

  Deacon

  Elizabeth Cavendish, sister-in-law of DD

  Decca

  Jessica Treuhaft, sister of DD

  Dingley Dell

  Chatsworth

  Emma

  Emma Tennant, elder daughter of DD

  French Lady

  Nancy Mitford

  Graham

  Graham Eyres Monsell, brother-in-law of PLF

  Jaime

  Jaime Parladé

  Janetta

  Janetta Parladé

  Joan

  Joan Leigh Fermor, wife of PLF

  Lucian

  Lucian Freud

  Magouche

  Magouche Fielding

  Mrs Basil Seal

  Nancy Mitford

  Mrs Ham

  Violet Hammersley

  Nancy

  Nancy Mitford

  Old French

  authoress/writer

  Nancy Mitford

  Sophy

  Sophia Topley, younger daughter of DD

  Stoker

  Peregrine Cavendish, son of DD

  Uncle Harold

  Harold Macmillan

  Wife

  Katherine Mersey

  Woman

  Pamela Jackson, sister of DD

  Xan

  Xan Fielding

  Letters

  1954–2007

  21 March 1954

  Fitzroy House [1]

  Fitzroy Square

  London W1

  Dear Paddy Leigh Fermor,

  I’m beginning like that chiefly because Nancy [2] says one mustn’t, but as she says I’m mental age of 9 it doesn’t signify how one begins. I’m ever so excited about you coming to Ireland. Do really come & don’t just say you are.

  Daph [3] & Xan [4] are coming to stay at Chesterfield St [5] on Monday, v exciting.

  Best love

  Debo

  [1] DD was in a nursing home, recovering from a minor operation.

  [2] Nancy Mitford (1904–73). DD’s eldest sister, the novelist, biographer and arbiter of correct usage, used to address her letters to ‘9, Duchess of Devonshire’, the basis of her teasing being the accusation that DD was illiterate. ‘Unfounded, it’s my theory, because, though never seen to read, she’s so full of surprises.’ PLF, unpublished letter to Harold Acton, 5 November 1974.

  [3] Daphne Vivian (1904–97). Tall, beautiful, libidinous author of popular books on London society, including The Duchess of Jermyn Street: the Life and Good Times of Rosa Lewis of the Cavendish Hotel (1964), Emerald and Nancy: Lady Cunard and Her Daughter (1968) and two volumes of autobiography. Married to 6th Marquess of Bath 1927–53 and to Xan Fielding 1953–78.

  [4] Alexander (Xan) Fielding (1918–91). Wartime secret agent, writer and translator who shared with PLF a natural aversion to most forms of constraint. They had been friends since the war when, as Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents, they built up guerrilla and intelligence networks in Nazi-occupied Crete. A ‘gifted, many-sided, courageous and romantic figure, at the same time civilized and bohemian.’ PLF, Foreword to A Hideous Disguise (Typographeum, 1994), p. 9. Married to Daphne Bath, née Vivian, 1953–78 and to ‘Magouche’ Phillips, née Magruder, in 1979.

  [5] The Devonshires’ London house.

  26 April 1955

  c/o Niko Ghika [1]

  Kamini, Hydra

  Greece

  Dear Debo,

  I’ve just heard from Daphne on the point of departure to stay with you. Why does everyone go to that castle [2] except me?

  My plan is this: there is a brilliant young witch on this island (aged sixteen and very pretty), sovereign at thwarting the evil eye, casting out devils and foiling spells by incantation. It shouldn’t be beyond her powers to turn me into a fish for a month and slip me into the harbour. I reckon I could get through the Mediterranean, across the Bay of Biscay, round Land’s End and over the Irish Sea in about 28 days (if the weather holds) and on into the Blackwater. I’m told there’s a stream that flows under your window, up which I propose to swim and, with a final effort, clear the sill and land on the carpet, where I insist on being treated like the frog prince for a couple of days of rest and recovery. (You could have a tank brought up – or lend me your bath if this is not inconvenient – till I’m ready to come downstairs. Also some flannel trousers, sensible walking shoes and a Donegal tweed Norfolk jacket with a belt across the small of the back and leather buttons.) But please be there. Otherwise there is all the risk of filleting, meunière etc, and, worst of all, au bleu . . .

  Please give my love to Daphne if she’s with you. You can let her in on this plan, if you think it is suitable, but nobody else for the time being. These things always leak out.

  Love

  Paddy

  P.S. Please write & say if this arrangement fits in with your plans.

  [1] Nikos Ghika (1906–94). The well-known Greek painter and sculptor, a great friend of PLF, had lent him his house on the Aegean island of Hydra. Married to Barbara Hutchinson in 1961.

  [2] Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, overlooking the Blackwater River, has been the Irish home of the Dukes of Devonshire since 1753.

  30 April 1955

  Lismore Castle

  Co. Waterford

  Eire

  Dear Paddy L F,

  I was v v excited to get your letter with the swimming plan in it. It is a frightfully good plan, but the pestilential thing is that you would find, not me, but Fred Astaire [1] installed in this pleasant residence. However if you could swim a bit further to the right and land in England and then be like an eel & get a bit across the land you can have the freedom of my bath in Derbyshire & I will have the sensible shoes etc ready.

  I would like it like anything, so have a try and I will instruct any salmon around your route to see that you aren’t filleted or meuniered or bleued.

  I heard they set on you at a ball and broke you up, oh it was a shame. [2]

  Is it jolly in Greece? I bet it is.

  Love from

  Debo

  [1] Fred Astaire (1899–1987). The dancer and choreographer’s sister and stage partner, Adele, married DD’s uncle by marriage, Lord Charles Cavendish, and lived at Lismore Castle 1932–44. When her husband died, she returned to America but continued to visit Lismore each year, during which time Fred Astaire was a frequent visitor.

  [2] PLF got into a fight at a hunt ball in Ireland and was badly cut.

  2 March [1956]

  Gadencourt [1]

  Pacy-sur-Eure

  Eure

  Dear Debo,

  Thank you very much for your letter in January, also for asking me to stay in Ireland in April. It’s frightfully rude not having answered earlier, and I can’t quite think how it’s happened. Anyway, if it is still open, I would simply love to – if I could come towards the end of this month, as Daph and Xan are coming here on their way back to the Kasbah.

  The cold here has been worse than Baffin Land. It got so bad about three weeks ago that I baled out a
nd went to Paris. I had a delicious luncheon with your sister Mrs Basil Seal [2] with lots of vodka beforehand – O for a beaker full of the cold north! – and then lots of a wine called Château Chasse-Spleen. This was very nice; then I took sanctuary at Chantilly, [3] and had a paralysing, but most luxurious attack of lumbago. Don’t be spellbound by the beauty of the name – it’s as though a mastiff had mistaken your spine for an ordinary bone, and given it the usual treatment. This was dispelled by heavenly drugs, thrust in like bayonet practice by a jovial nun resembling a Merry Wife of Windsor.

  Annie Fleming, [4] Judy Montagu, [5] Ld Gage [6] & Peter Quennell [7] came to stay, and we had lovely protracted meals by candlelight, discussing poetry, sex, heresy and kindred themes. The big castle looked like some tremendous Russian Winter Palace in a park peopled by statues posturing under loads of snow. All the lakes were frozen and covered with ducks and swans mooching about rather awkwardly, wondering what on earth had gone wrong. There were also a number of displaced herons.

  I had a rather dispiriting return to Normandy. The Normans are an awful lot really. My heart bleeds at the thought of the nice easygoing Saxons suddenly, in 1066, having to put up with an influx of these bossy and humourless louts. [8] What was rather curious was the discovery, in the house, of two tortoiseshell butterflies walking about the place with wings ajar. They were tottering in a most inexpert way as though they’d had a few. I can’t think where they have been all through the winter or what living on; furtively grazing in their stunned way, I suppose, on dark pastures of Harris Tweed and Lovat mixture . . .