In Tearing Haste Read online

  Do, please, let me know about Ireland. It really would be lovely.

  Best love from

  Paddy

  [1] PLF and Joan had been lent the Normandy house of Sir Walter Smart (1883– 1962), Oriental Secretary in Cairo before the war, and his Lebanese painter wife, Amy, daughter of the Cairo newspaper mogul Fares Nimr.

  [2] Evelyn Waugh’s caddish anti-hero Basil Seal, described in Put Out More Flags as ‘an obstreperous minority of one’, was largely based on Nancy Mitford’s husband, Peter Rodd.

  [3] PLF had been staying at the Château de St Firmin with Lady Diana Cooper. She and her husband Duff, 1st Viscount Norwich (1890–1954), had settled there after his retirement as ambassador in Paris.

  [4] Ann Charteris (1913–81). Social and political hostess who became friends with PLF and DD in the 1950s. Married Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, as her third husband, in 1952. Intelligent, beautiful and witty, she had ‘a flair for tossing in the right word to start people capping each other or throwing down gauntlets’. PLF, unpublished letter to Mark Amory, 3 April 1983.

  [5] Judy Montagu (1923–72). The daughter of Venetia Stanley, confidante of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, married art historian Milton Gendel in 1962. ‘She wasn’t remotely like anyone else . . . Some lives must be assessed by the warmth with which friendship is lavished and returned, and, in these rare terms, Judy’s was an entire success.’ PLF in H. H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, edited by Michael and Eleanor Brock (OUP, 1982), p. 611.

  [6] Henry Gage, 6th Viscount Gage (1895–1982). Lord-in-Waiting to King George V 1925–39, who possessed, according to his Times obituary, ‘strong Christian beliefs, fortified by a considerable knowledge and erudition in the Scriptures’.

  [7] Peter Quennell (1905–93). Biographer and critic, editor of the Cornhill Magazine 1944–51 and History Today 1951–79.

  [8] PLF was alluding to a letter he had received from his great friend, the novelist Rose Macaulay, ‘my one aim on landing in France with my car, is to hurry through Normandy AUSSI VITE que possible . . . How awful it must have been for us (the Saxons and Britons) when the Normans arrived; so boring, heavy-handed and dreary.’ Rose Macaulay, unpublished letter to PLF, 23 January 1952.

  6 March [1956]

  Edensor House [1]

  Edensor, Bakewell

  Derbyshire

  Dear Paddy,

  I am so pleased you will come to Lismore, any time would be terribly nice.

  It is unfair you having Daph & Xan, they won’t come to us. I’m booking for the Kasbah though, I can see one has to book a long way ahead or some horrid counter-hon [2] would get there first.

  Sorry about it being so cold, anyway there are crocuses now. Also calves.

  Don’t forget to come to Lismore. Explain to the Fieldings how one worships them, as a matter of fact I suppose they know.

  Love,

  Debo

  [1] A rambling village house within Chatsworth Park where DD and her family lived 1946–59.

  [2] The Society of Hons was invented by DD and her sister Jessica when they were children. They met in a linen cupboard, a haven of warmth in their Oxford-shire home, Swinbrook House – later immortalised as the ‘Hons’ Cupboard’ in Nancy Mitford’s novels. Anyone not an Hon was a ‘horrible Counter-Hon’.

  Saturday [May 1956]

  Gadencourt

  Pacy-sur-Eure

  Darling Debo,

  I’m not going to attempt to say thank you in this letter for that lovely Paradise stay in Lismore – only that I still exist in a glorious afterglow of it, and find myself smiling with the inane felicity of a turnip lantern whenever I think of it, which is almost the whole time: it must astonish passers-by . . .

  Millions of hugs & love to Xan and Daph. I’m writing to them this afternoon. [1]

  And Glorious love & devotion to you, from

  Paddy

  [1] The letter follows.

  Saturday [May 1956]

  Gadencourt

  Pacy-sur-Eure

  Darling Daphne & Xan,

  Lismore was beyond all expectations, absolute bliss throughout. Thank heavens no one else there most of the time except Debo, Emma & Stoker, [1] Andrew [2] & Eliz [3] half the time, then Ran, [4] Debo’s Wife [5] for a night, and three heavenly days with nobody but Debo and those sweet & comic children, for whom I fell like anything, also for Andrew, but most of all, as you might guess, for your best friend, Debo, who is funny, touching, ravishing and enslaving, an exquisite and strange deviation. With all this, there was another quality that I like more than anything, a wonderful and disarming unguardedness in conversation, and an intuitive knack – which you’d both mentioned – for people’s moods and feelings. Well, as you see, it’s as I feared! These graces and charms must really be enormous, because they even compensate for an engagingly unashamed Philistinism.

  Anyway, all that flair and instinct, coupled with so many pretty ways, nearly makes up for the gaps left by Shakespeare etc. As you can imagine, we talked lots about you both, an orgy of body-worship [6] all round. I long to hear how it all went, the descent on Tangiers. I thought for one wild moment of inflicting myself on you – or the neighbourhood – but had, ruefully, to come back here.

  There was hardly a drop of rain all the time and the whole castle and the primeval forest round it were spellbound in a late spring or early summer trance; heavy rhododendron blossom everywhere and, under the Rapunzel tower I inhabited, a still leafless magnolia tree shedding petals like giant snowflakes over the parallel stripes of an embattled new-mown lawn: silver fish flickered in the river, wood pigeons cooed and herons slowly wheeled through trees so overgrown with lichen they looked like green coral, drooping with ferns and lianas, almost like an equatorial jungle. One would hardly have been surprised to see a pterodactyl or an archaeopteryx sail through the twilight, or the neck of a dinosaur craning through the ferns and lapping up a few bushels out of the Blackwater, which curls away like the Limpopo, all set about with fever-trees . . . Anyway, you know it all so well, and Debo must have told you all our adventures and peregrinations: lovely gorse burning; visits to cows, drinking Guinness as one went; watching salmon hauled in below Dromana, finding bones in a graveyard overgrown with giant broccoli, while ravens croaked in a ruined tower; two swans nesting on the mudflats in front of Ballinatray, the falling house where the housemaid is a keen huntswoman; the little Gaelic-speaking lobster harbour of Helvik – a Norse name – then my search for a shrimp tea (what was shrimp in Irish we wondered? – sráoimph? At last we found an old boy in Ardmore, who scratched his head and said, as if he was imparting a treasonable secret: ‘Birawny is what they call ut’). Then, on the last day, a wonderful picnic three miles from Bridget’s [7] house, outside a witch’s hut in a magical wood containing a fairy tree, and a queen’s tree, so the witch said. She had a small boy there, a grandchild: ‘my dartur doid in the bearin of him, and left us in poor circumstances . . .’ Then Aer Lingus, London, and the 400 [8] in the space of 3 or 4 hours.

  Darling Daph & Xan, must stop now. Do sit down (unlike me!) and write at once with lots of details and news. I’m feeling un poco adagio & lonely as you might say at the moment. Thank heavens Joan [9] gets back in a few days.

  Fondest love

  Paddy

  [1] DD’s elder daughter, Emma Cavendish (1943–), and son, Peregrine Hartington (1944–), always known as ‘Stoker’.

  [2] Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire (1920–2004). Politician, racehorse owner, keen collector of contemporary British art and passionate book collector. Married DD in 1941. Having lost his older brother, Billy, in 1944, he succeeded to the title and Devonshire estates after his father’s death in 1950. PLF described him as ‘infectiously spontaneous, stylish and funny’, with a ‘baseless feeling of unworthiness for the wholly unexpected succession to his great heritage’. Spectator, 12 June 2004.

  [3] Lady Elizabeth (Deacon) Cavendish (1926–). DD’s unmarried sister-in-law. Long-time companion t
o the Poet Laureate John Betjeman.

  [4] Randal McDonnell, 8th Earl of Antrim (1911–77). Chairman of the National Trust 1965–77. A great friend of the Devonshires who nevertheless always addressed him, for reasons forgotten, as ‘Lord Antrim’.

  [5] Lady Katherine (Kitty) Petty-Fitzmaurice, Baroness Nairne (1912–95). DD’s closest friend’s nickname, ‘Wife’, originated from an involved family joke which began when a man repeatedly referred to his wife as ‘Kitty my wife’ in one breath. It was adopted by DD to describe any great friend of either sex. Married 3rd Viscount Mersey in 1933.

  [6] An expression applied by DD to anyone – or anything – that she happened to like.

  [7] Lady Bridget Parsons (1907–72). ‘Beautiful, silent and often grumpy friend of my sisters and my brother Tom.’ (DD) Her widowed mother, the Countess of Rosse, was married to 5th Viscount de Vesci of Abbeyleix. It was in their woods that the picnic took place.

  [8] A nightclub off London’s Leicester Square. Owing to the licensing laws at the time, it was not possible to buy individual drinks, only whole bottles, ‘but they would keep it for you for your next visit. I finished a bottle in 1945 that I had begun in 1940.’ (PLF)

  [9] Joan Eyres Monsell (1912–2003). PLF first met the beautiful, highbrow amateur photographer in wartime Cairo and they were eventually married in 1968. She was first married, 1939–47, to John Rayner. Naturally self-effacing, it was her ‘elegance, luminous intelligence, curiosity, understanding and unerring high standards that made her such a perfect muse to her lifelong companion and husband’. John Craxton, The Times, 10 June 2003.

  [Postmarked May 1956]

  [Postcard]

  Tangiers

  I am having a jolly time, no one goes on at me about learning to read but there is ever such a lot to hear. V. pleased with your telegram in Frogland. We are going on a Mystery Trip into the hinterland and to a grand dinner party, Daphne has made a wonderful holiday. Xan is being a terrific Hon, very gullible.

  Come back to Lismore.

  Much love

  Debo

  *

  (DD)

  Daphne Weymouth – as she was when I first knew her – was synonymous with enjoyment, laughter, fun and high jinks. She was one who lifted the spirits with her energy and overflowing good nature. She went in for almost childlike excesses of all kinds which, with her beauty, courage and imagination, made her an irresistible companion.

  Sturford Meade, Henry and Daphne’s house near Longleat, was a refuge of luxury and pre-war gaiety made more immediate by the friends ordered abroad, often never to return. For Andrew and me it was a second home while he was stationed at nearby Warminster in 1942–3.

  Many marriages failed to survive wartime separation and when Henry came back after five years in the Middle East both had changed and theirs sadly stuttered to an end.

  Daphne alone and in the prime of her life meant lovers; one or two serious, some here today and gone tomorrow. Her admirers were legion. She remained a great friend of us both, as did her second husband, Xan. She was married for twenty-five years to both her husbands. Two silver weddings must be unusual.

  Wherever Daphne and Xan settled – like migrating birds they were often on the move – they made you feel happy and at home. Their company, the chat and the fun overcame any physical discomfort or rough edges which might be found in a hired house.

  Tangiers was one of their stops and I stayed with them there. Their little, damp and badly lit house was squashed in a busy street so narrow that the continuous noise never got out, roamed by packs of dishevelled children with runny noses, and no Europeans nearby.

  We went into the hinterland in the hopes of seeing the Blue Men of the desert, crossed mountains and drank too much coffee. With Xan one always felt safe, however hazardous the road.

  We had lunch with the best-known ex-pat, David Herbert, [1] a lifter of mood, so quick and funny. I felt he must have been very homesick. One side of his life could flourish unchecked, but there were few kindred spirits to entertain his whizzing social side, which was such a feature of life at Wilton and its neighbourhood. I loved him until his disloyalty and cattiness about my sister Diana [2] ended our friendship.

  [1] David Herbert (1908–95). Immensely hospitable son of the 15th Earl of Pembroke, who grew up at Wilton House in Wiltshire. He first visited Tangiers in 1933 and settled there permanently after the war.

  [2] Diana Mitford (1910–2003). DD’s sister left her first husband, Bryan Guinness, for Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, whom she married in 1936. Her political views and her refusal to repudiate her friendship with Hitler led many people to turn their backs on her.

  Sunday [1956]

  Gadencourt

  Pacy-sur-Eure

  Dearest Debo,

  I really must try and get hold of a travelling brain-sharpener [1] (the size of one of those old bucket-shaped helmet-cases of japanned leather or tin, usually found in attics), because I was convinced you were leaving London a day later than you did. So you must picture my sorrow and dismay at the end of the telephone when I discovered that I was wrong, and that you had left an hour and a half before. It was little comfort to think that you were staying at the Continental. I hope you got a telegram from me there – also another and a stop-gap letter to Tangiers begging you to stop in Paris on the way back in order that we might spend a lovely evening guzzling and then dancing till cockcrow and finally eating onion-soup in the Halles as dawn broke.

  The truth is I simply long for you, and hate the idea of changing jokes etc. You know, the sort of mood when nobody else will quite do. I’m still basking in a felicitous hangover of Ireland, and constantly discover vast smiles bisecting my rough-hewn features at the thought of all the fun and enchantment there. You, Andrew, Emma & Stoker seem saints and angels in human form. It’s a miracle you’re allowed to live, so do beware of traffic, falling flagpoles, mushrooms, lighting rockets and undercurrents when bathing; and a billion thanks for letting me come & stay.

  I’ve just written a long letter to Xan and Daph about all this and about you, and piled it on pretty thick – but no thicker, I hasten to say, than the truth, which is glorious. I long to hear from you and from them about Tangiers, so please don’t be sparing, and write almost at once and let it rip. I wish you could fly to Paris just for fun so that my splendid scheme can come into operation. Otherwise, I doubt if I shall survive, and that would never do. I’m down with Blackwater fever as it is, and the doctors are pulling long faces.

  I say, wasn’t it marvellous discovering that wobbly echo – Fermor’s echo – under the bridge? [2] I wish I really had written down all I wanted to remember, instead of only a few, but I’ll get them all straight in time. At the moment they are all dotted about my brain like bits of Meccano to be assembled some time . . .

  I spent the weekend at Ad. Lubbock’s, [3] then dined with Judy Montagu, Peter Quennell and the girl, called Spider Monkey, [4] who he is about to marry. She’s very beautiful but etiolated and looks like Alice after finishing the bottle labelled DRINK ME. Then I came to Paris, and spent the evening, till 3 a.m., talking to Diana Cooper [5] in a café, only to discover as we left that the key of her car had been pinched . . . Luncheon with Nancy next day, when, by request and accompanied by her silver peal of laughter, she sang me ‘the bubbling of the glands’; [6] a sound for sore ears. Then I came out here, where my darling Joan arrives on Teusday.

  It might be still summer, and I’m scribbling away under an apple tree up to the ankles in long grass, daisies and dandelion clocks, those infallible timepieces. Thousands of birds whizz to and fro, an oddly English sounding cuckoo lives close and a frenzied rattle indicates that several woodpeckers are taking toll of many an elm trunk. Although it is only 6 in the evening, an untimely nightingale sets me a-swoon with forlorn thoughts. In fact, I’m going indoors to get a swig of calvados. How lovely it would be if, on coming back, I saw you mooning about under these branches in that saffron kilt and black
stockings, like an Edwardian girl who’s just finished a fencing lesson. One of the nicest bits at Lismore was walking through the wood above the river just before dinner on the last night, with a sunset streaming through the branches.

  I saw Ran at Lady Bridget [Parsons]’s and we almost wept with nostalgia. It would be lovely if you came to Paris, so please try – I’d be there hot foot! But please write hourly, or I’ll pine away, I do believe.

  With fondest love and devotion, darling Debo from

  Paddy

  [1] ‘A mythical device invented by Andrew to get a quicker response from dim friends. It was a metal headpiece from which two razor blades penetrated the skull and sharpened the wits of the wearer. Often accompanied by a mind broadener, a gentler mechanism, that stretched the mind in all directions.’ (DD)

  [2] ‘The bridge over the Blackwater at Lismore has several arches crossing fields that are regularly flooded. When the river is low you can walk under them. The highest arch echoes loudly and was called after Paddy, who used to sing there for the satisfaction of hearing his amplified voice.’ (DD)

  [3] Adelaide Stanley (1906–81). A friend of PLF and cousin of DD, who lived near Sevenoaks in Kent. Married Maurice Lubbock in 1926.

  [4] Sonia (Spider) Leon (1928–). Nicknamed for her long-limbed elegance by Peter Quennell, whom she married in 1956.

  [5] Lady Diana Manners (1892–1986). The reigning beauty of her age, greatly admired by PLF, married Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, in 1919. Flouting the convention that a retiring ambassador should not return to the country of his former post until at least a year after his departure, the Coopers settled at St Firmin immediately after his retirement in 1947 and remained there until Norwich’s death in 1954.