In Tearing Haste Read online

  [2] Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–79). Hollywood producer of The Roots of Heaven.

  [3] One of DD’s many nicknames for her sister Nancy, sometimes varied to ‘the Old French writer’.

  [4] Mark Ogilvie-Grant (1905–69). A friend of PLF and all the Mitfords, who was posted to Greece with SOE and taken prisoner in the Mani soon after landing. Settled in Athens after the war, where he worked for BP and was ‘a great friend of everyone interesting. He loved music and had a passion for the singing of Dame Nellie Melba and, late at night, would burst into imitations of her, half worship, half skit.’ (PLF)

  17 August 1957

  Château de St Firmin

  Vineuil

  Oise

  Darling Debo,

  I say what an adventure with Evelyn Waugh! [1] I can see those pale eyes burning. He has the most peculiar expression of mouth, eye-socket and nostril, as though they were all recoiling from his own aroma, which would be a blend of tweed, claret, cigar smoke and incense. Freud [2] too, eh? I suppose it’s alright. H’m.

  I’m writing this in bed, and was woken up an hour ago by hunting horns playing lovely melancholy tunes, soon followed by hounds giving tongue, as they say, and, sitting up in bed with one ear cocked, lo and behold, three men in scarlet coats were moving across the park in the middle distance, with those horns that go round the body like lifebelts. Ever since, there has been a distant rumour of muted baying & fanfares. Is it stag hunting already, I wonder, or just a sort of exercise? I wouldn’t half mind doing it in France sometime, just for the oddity. They hunt for truffles in the oak forests of Périgord, in the south west, with specially trained truffle hounds. It would be rather smart to be an MTH, [3] even a joint one.

  A Basque woman called Jacqueline looks after Joan and me here. All her front teeth are missing, otherwise she’s rather handsome in a dark wild way – she’s having a new set made by a dentist round the corner. One has to look her hard in the eye when giving orders, and none of one’s usual diffidence; as, I imagine, with some animals like lions or jaguars; otherwise she might turn and rend one, with her back (perforce) teeth joining in one’s jugular. Perhaps she’s only waiting for the dentist’s work to be done before leaping and rolling one over and over.

  I’m rather enjoying this work, and am writing apace. It’s all about French Equatorial Africa, elephants, tom-toms and jet-black witch doctors with spectacles painted on to their faces very eerily with white clay.

  I must go and borrow the gardener’s bike, and spin through the rain to the post.

  So lots of love, darling Debo, and polar bear hugs from

  Paddy

  [1] Evelyn Waugh (1903–66). The novelist, a difficult and demanding guest, announced that he had found an unemptied chamber pot in his bedside table when staying at Edensor with DD.

  [2] Lucian Freud (1922–). The artist painted six members of the Devonshire family. ‘Very attractive, an original. As well as his prodigious talent, he is delightful company, can be very funny, always unexpected. He was a will o’ the wisp, appearing and disappearing in a disconcerting way, day and night were the same to him. Scathingly critical of those he does not like, he is a real friend to his loved ones. Admittedly he does discard them sometimes, but Andrew and I were lucky in that we remained friends for more than fifty years.’ (DD)

  [3] Master of Truffle Hounds.

  Wednesday [1957]

  BOO HOO

  Hôtels St James & d’Albany

  202 & 212 rue de Rivoli

  Paris 1er

  My darling Debo,

  I do feel glum and downcast at your not coming to Paris! I somehow felt sure you would, and could already see us toddling about the streets arm-in-arm, two jolly bachelors, rolling from one lovely meal to another and dancing till daybreak and then stoking up on soupe à l’oignon in the Halles and then, after a suitable pause, beginning all over again. It’s lunatic to be so sad about it. I wish you didn’t love everyone else more than me – it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t rather love you, as I suppose I do, otherwise I wouldn’t feel so selfish and possessive. The thing is, no one else will quite do, it’s too idiotic. But I do adore you. I mustn’t go on grumbling and groaning like this.

  It’s lovely here – we play boules under the moulting trees below, with long-legged girls pelting after them squealing with flying plaits followed by small teams of barking dogs. There are also quite a lot of small children who stagger about the grass opposite as though they were the worse for drink; suddenly falling flat on their faces. When this happens, I count three slowly, and then the first perfunctory wail sails through the Tuileries.

  I’m having lunch today with Françoise Sagan, [1] the rather pretty mop-headed near-teenage prodigy who wrote Bonjour Tristesse. I wonder what that will be like. Pretty awful, probably.

  Nothing more for the moment, darling Debo, except love and hugs and fond and loving thoughts by the bushel, from

  Paddy

  [1] Françoise Sagan (1935–2004). The novelist’s first book, Bonjour Tristesse (1954), was published to great acclaim when she was only eighteen.

  Teus [1957]

  Hôtels St James & d’Albany

  202 & 212 rue de Rivoli, 1er

  Darling Debo,

  Lunch with Françoise Sagan went OK – at least I think it did. She’s so shy that it rather infects one too. She perches like a bird on the edge of the chair with eyelids fluttering up and down timidly over nut-brown eyes, talks quickly and hesitantly, frequently breaking off, has a nice giggle, and looks about 15, with occasional hints that she might be 50, stunted by gin for a travelling circus by gypsies. All this rattled me a bit, but we talked away more or less consecutively about literature and kindred subjects. There seems little, at a first glance, to hint at the existence of volcanic passion and the torments of love. We’re going to listen to Gréco [1] singing at a music hall tomorrow. They are great pals. After that, supper with these two & Zanuck, which will be interesting. I rather love Juliette Gréco.

  Last night at about 8 in the evening I saw an enormous limousine in a traffic block in the Boulevard Haussmann, with an old-world chauffeur at the wheel, and, lolling among the upholstery in the back, like Cleopatra in the poop of her barge, Coccinelle, [2] the prettiest of the performers at the Carousel. ‘She’ was wearing a tremendously low-cut white satin dress, emerging from a vast sea of white fur falling off her shoulders; long diamond earrings, and the long white-gloved arm that hung on to the old-fashioned acorn-ended tassel at the side of the window had an elaborate pearl necklace twisted round it. I couldn’t help it, my heartbeats broke into double-time.

  No more news for the present, but lots of love from

  Paddy

  [1] Juliette Gréco (1927–). The French actress and singer appeared in Otto Preminger’s film of Bonjour Tristesse (1958), singing the title tune. She and PLF became lifelong friends.

  [2] Jacques-Charles Dufresnoy (1931–2006). Transsexual singer and entertainer who became Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy, better known as ‘Coccinelle’; a fixture at the fashionable Carousel nightclub.

  Wednesday [1957]

  Hôtels St James & d’Albany

  202 & 212 rue de Rivoli, 1er

  Darling Debo,

  You were an angel to come to Paris, and I do wish I hadn’t made such a hash of it somehow. I meant it to be a glorious time for you. Probably trying too hard! As you say, there’s plenty to chew on. [1]

  I went to a tremendous Shakespeare reading by Sir John Gielgud [2] (forgive me for making you jealous) on Monday night with Diana Cooper and Horrible Mrs Fellowes and another Frog, then to a supper in this knight’s honour at the Embassy, which was no good at all because the wine flowed like glue. [3]

  I’m spending a fascinating evening tonight with a writer called Michel Leiris, [4] who is head of the Black Africa section of the Musée de l’Homme, and a pal of his who is the world authority on drum-language in central Africa, how messages are beaten out, the range of what they can say by drum beat
s, speeds, distances, and so on, which you will freely admit [5] is exciting.

  I long to see you again, for lots of reasons. I’ve chewed like mad but there still remains a faint lump of something that won’t quite dissolve, try as one may. You know the sort of thing I mean. I’d really like to be anywhere but here at the moment, and think longingly of Flash last winter and pounding about those stony ravines in Devonshire soaked to the skin; but fear the only fox I shall see this year will be Twentieth-Century.

  I do wish you were here, as I miss you like anything, so please write fairly steadily starting with now; and lots and lots of true love, darling Debo, from

  Paddy

  [1] Neither DD nor PLF, after racking their brains, have the faintest recollection of what this was about.

  [2] John Gielgud (1904–2000). The actor was knighted in the 1953 coronation honours.

  [3] Britain’s ambassador in Paris at the time was Gladwyn Jebb, 1st Baron Gladwyn (1900–96).

  [4] Michel Leiris (1901–90). The noted French writer and ethnographer worked at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris for over fifty years.

  [5] ‘I freely admit’ and ‘Do admit’ were expressions often used by DD and adopted by her family and friends. ‘I freely admit that the best of my fun I owe it to horse and hound’, the Whyte-Melville quote, was on the cover of Horse & Hound magazine, ‘my bible when I was a child’. (DD)

  Sunday

  late November 1957

  Chantilly

  But really St James & d’Albany

  Darling Debo,

  I came here yesterday afternoon with Cecil Beaton, [1] after a lovely luncheon with the French authoress at Véfour, where we had marrow and mushrooms on bits of toast and two wonderful soles floating in pale beige. How nice Cecil is. We gassed away in the motor-car about everyone we could think of; mostly him dissecting and dismembering person after person with that astonishing needle-thin voice.

  The house is absolutely full, and I’ve been shoved miles away from anywhere in a claustrophobic attic, a terribly depressing one, where I woke up a couple of hours ago in a rage: the rage of an out-of-date bowler hat in a hat box, forgotten for several generations in a box-room; but soon got over it when I came down and found a brilliant, cloudless frosty morning with scores of swans circling over the lake and settling with the noise of an express train gathering speed. The lawns are stiff and brittle and shiny with frost, and when one walks across them, it leaves a dark track of footprints, as across sand. These swans made me think of peering down from that big window during happy hols at Lismore. I wish you were here.

  Love from

  Paddy

  P.S. Don’t think I’m not taking your horrible silence hard, because I am. I telephoned to you in London in a sudden access of depression yesterday, but they said you would be at a Newbury number after seven. I almost telephoned there too, but thought it might be rather silly, so didn’t in the end.

  [1] Cecil Beaton (1904–80). After winning a Tony Award for his costumes for the Broadway production of My Fair Lady (1956), the photographer was at work on the film Gigi (1958).

  New Year’s Day, 1958

  (Happy New Year)

  Island of Porquerolles

  VAR

  but as from Hôtels St J & d’ A

  Paris (back tomorrow, alas)

  Darling Debo,

  CHAP I.

  As you were toiling north with Cyril, [1] I was walking across the road on a fine frosty morning from Diana Cooper’s house, feeling pretty smart; dressed to kill, as I thought, to uphold our island honour among the Frogs, but not daring yet to clap on that velvet cap, because I wasn’t sure whether in France the little bow at the back should be tied or untied. I found my new horse-owning chum, a jolly, tall, very good-looking, slightly bounderish Brazilian called Jean de Souza-Lage, waiting over a wonderful breakfast of omelettes, kidneys, liver, mushrooms and a bottle of claret. He was so gloriously got up that the subdued correctness of my rig at once looked like the female version of some splendidly plumaged male bird, i.e. he had on a scarlet waistcoat with gold buttons, a long royal-blue wide-skirted coat smothered with gold and silver braid round the collar and cuffs and scalloped pockets, huge gold and silver buttons, white buckskin breeches and gleaming jack-boots coming halfway up the thigh like the Household Cavalry; his stock was fastened with a stag’s head in rubies, and when he set off, he had a murderous gold-mounted crop slipped into a belt, one of those lovely strange horns over one shoulder and under the other, a gold embroidered belt and a silver-hilted short-sword in a gleaming scabbard. (I furtively unpicked the bow at the back of my cap after a glance at his, and let the ribbons dangle.)

  Off we set on two mares of almost Trojan size – mine was called Herodiade – and soon arrived at the Abbey of Royaumont, where Alan Pryce-Jones’ rich relations in law [2] live. The courtyard was full of haughty steeds neighing under coroneted blankets and menacing black and white hounds, dribbling and barking, were leashed in and thrashed by bottle-nosed hunt servants; also numbers of gorgeously clad swells, glass in hand, were striding about with their mates in habits and gold-trimmed three-cornered hats, looking spiffing. Lots of greeting, hand-kissing, sweeping flourishes of those velvet caps and general hobnobbing. The Master is a fine old boy called the Marquis de Roualle [3] who told me ‘Most of zese ’ounds come from Badminton. Down Rrrover!’ – crack, slash. The male members, all with their horns the size of orchestral instruments, play a hundred different & stately tunes on them, all together and very well, to mark the different incidents of the chase – slightly hair-raising and drenched in romance. We moved off in a fanfare and were soon in some fields surrounded by forest. Almost at once, two stags came leaping out of the trees and crossed the field the other side of a stream with immense bounds, heads tilted back under their antlers. One was a ‘royal’, as they say, with a vast scaffolding of antlers, the other a ‘six’ (rather professional, all this?). The whole scene was just what I’d been longing for and very like something on a tapestry.

  I stuck to my pal all day, as he’s considered a great expert. I may say it was not nearly as wild as I had thought. There was no jumping except one or two little brooks, but miles of hell-for-leather galloping through thick undergrowth and under low branches till you are striped like a zebra with marks of twigs and brambles, the horses smothered with sweat. Two hours later, after heavy pounding (part of it through a built-up area like Welwyn Garden City), we found ourselves in the middle of a swampy tract full of pampas grass and reeds ten feet high, with a great shindy of hounds somewhere in the middle. Down we got, gave our horses to a peasant girl in clogs, and plunged into the middle on foot. Jean loaded me up with horn, crop, belt and scabbard, and charged ahead, brandishing his naked blade. I plodding after, 2ft deep in slime – all right for him, just like his native Amazon, but it nearly killed me. We came on the ‘six’ stag at bay surrounded by hounds, S-L advanced on it, to stab it in the breast, but it broke away and was killed a mile away by one of the huntsmen with a special gun, as it was in a village full of children, and they slash out like anything, it seems. The poor slain quarry was put in a cart, taken back to the Abbey and cut up. Joints of venison were distributed to the peasants who had helped; the rest was wrapped in a bundle with the antlers, while we swigged champagne & ate caviar & smoked-salmon sandwiches. Then it was the hounds’ turn, a grizzly banquet of innards on the grass, while, for ¾ of an hour, ceremonious laments were blown on the horns. Overpoweringly strange and medieval it all seemed. ‘Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois!’

  Lots and lots of love & fond & loving thoughts from

  Paddy

  [1] Cyril Connolly (1903–74). Shortly before Christmas, the author and critic had driven with DD to Edensor, where he spent two nights. DD had thought his manners ‘unforgivable’ on a previous visit to Lismore, but ‘he got such glowing references from his friends that I tried again. This visit was not a success either. He was a good friend of Andrew, who appreciated his c
ompany more than I did.’ (DD)

  [2] Royaumont, the Palladian Abbot’s Palace near Paris, was lived in by Baron Max Fould-Springer, whose sister Thérèse was married to Alan Pryce-Jones.

  [3] Marquis Jean de Roualle (1890–1973). Master of the Piq’avant Nivernais Hounds.

  (PLF)

  After a spell slogging away at the scenario for The Roots of Heaven, some of it with Joan at Duff and Diana’s house in Chantilly, we went to Andros, and when it was finished flew back to London. I deposited the ‘treatment’, as agreed, for Darryl Zanuck at the Savoy. Next morning I turned up at his suite, which was full of smoke. ‘Come in, Mr Feemor,’ he said, ‘sit down.’ He puffed at his cigar in silence. I asked him if he had got the treatment. After a few more silent puffs he said, ‘It’s a whole heap of crap’, then, after another pause, he said, ‘IT’S NO GOOD!’ There was a further pause, and several puffs. Oddly enough I felt rather relieved. It wasn’t my world, after all. But after more silence and several puffs, he said, ‘We’re going to the races.’ I looked a bit puzzled, so he went on, ‘We go to Paris tomorrow and I’ll get you a suite like mine in the Hôtel Prince de Galles and a bottle of whisky and a nice-looking typist, and we’ll get down to it. Is your passport OK for French Equatorial Africa?’

  30 March 1958

  Twentieth Century Fox

  Boîte Postale 83

  Maroua, Cameroon

  Africa

  My darling Debo,

  I’ve not behaved very well about writing. I’m abroad, and take up my pen feeling a bit hangdog.

  Well. I flew out to French Equatorial Africa – with Darryl Zanuck and John Huston. [1] We got there about 6 a.m., to a town called Fort Lamy, in a lovely turquoise dawn, full of priests calling the Moslems to prayer. But soon day broke and revealed a fly-blown town of mud walls inhabited by dejected looking negroes, the air a-swoop and a-flutter with vultures, the heat giving you a straight left like a boxing glove. We settled for three weeks in an immense stockade by the banks of the Shari River – about 50 huts with, in the middle, a six-roomed bungalow with a wide and shady verandah in which the six VIPs lived. I was staggered to discover – and I bet you are too – that I was one of these. The inhabitants were John Huston, Darryl Zanuck, Juliette Gréco, Trevor Howard [2] – who plays the male lead – Errol Flynn [3] and me. Rolling savannah – and on one side, the river – surrounds this stockade; the region teems with elephants, lions, jaguars, panthers, buffaloes, baboons and crocodiles, no stranger fauna than the inhabitants, however.