Dearest Jane... Read online

  Ian Cameron was the stockbroker father of David Cameron, Prime Minister.

  Moles Paradise

  Burghclere

  16 September [1970s]

  I went out to dinner last night and sat next to a tedious Australian lady who nudged, pinched and pummelled me all through the meal. There was also an Australian doctor present who reminded me of another Australian doctor of whom one of his patients observed to me: ‘I reckon the doc’s got fuck-all grip on medicine.’ An old friend of mine who is 79 is getting married in Newbury next week. His previous wife went clean off her onion. The last time I saw her she clasped Cynthia to her ample bosom and started singing fortissimo ‘Oh you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll’!

  The Sunday Times

  23 October 1972

  We went to a Sunday Times Beano on Sunday. It was hot and boring and I knew few people there. However, your mother established meaningful relationships with a left-wing writer on football and a cartoonist called Scarfe whose pictures are usually quite incomprehensible to me. However, he was one of the few present, male or female, who had bothered to shave. In fact he looked like a promising merchant banker.

  Chez Nidnod

  [Mid 1970s]

  Old Lord Carnarvon came to dinner and was reasonably affable and totally untruthful. He tells me he has been asked to lecture to the boys at Eton. On what? One might well ask. He has frequently told me how pretty he was as a boy and how he was constantly having to repel the advances of other boys. Obviously the first part of his statement is untrue; as for the second, I can’t see him repelling any advance had he been fortunate enough, a fairly improbable supposition, to have one made to him. Yesterday evening we had drinks with ex-Chief Constable of Berkshire, who treated his guests as if they had been brought there ‘to help the police with their enquiries’. Also present, a very big horsey lady and a very small shiny Colonel who rescues stray dogs. Also a man from the Daily Telegraph who looked rather like a black slug in a string vest but it was quite a jolly old party.

  Lord Carnarvon had been keen to acquaint me better with one of his grandsons (not encouraged by me) and his generous, strategic gesture of hosting a nineteenth-birthday dinner for me at Highclere Castle was somewhat overwhelming.

  Budds Farm

  [1980s]

  The lunch party (Parkinsons, Elmes, Hislops) went off very well on the whole; the browsing and sluicing left nothing to be desired. Jean Hislop had two whacks of everything and approved of the claret. Attired in a tweed plus four suit, she was on her very best behaviour and most agreeable company.

  I may change my name by deed poll to Kissinger-Mortimer as I now have a full-time job trying to reconcile Major and Mrs Surtees. Luckily I am partially deaf as both sides believe in very lengthy explanations in which all facts unhelpful to their own case are rigorously omitted. Of course it is rather flattering to be asked for one’s advice which is invariably given regardless of the fact that it is ignored, even resented, if not in accordance with the listener’s cast-iron prejudices.

  Guy and Brita Elmes were long-standing friends and good news.

  Budds Farm

  [Late 1970s, on pig paper]

  There is a local row on here as someone managed to insert an advertisement in the Newbury News: ‘Strong experienced man required to trim large bush. Apply Mrs Jean Hislop, East Woodhay House.’ Umbrage has been taken. I know the perpetrator. Poor old Jean, she does go out of her way to make enemies. After all, one makes quite enough of them in the normal course of events without deliberately trying to augment the number.

  HM Office for the Deciphering of Ancient Documents

  19 Sludge Street

  November 1975

  Last night we dined with the Budgetts: excellent lamb and plenty of uninhibited conversation covering such topics as Harold Wilson’s sexual habits, the nudes at Newbury Art School and the problems inherent in trying to organise laundry arrangements for stable lads.

  Arthur Budgett was a top racing trainer with the distinction of two Derby winners to his credit.

  Little Crumblings

  Burghclere

  30 September [1970s]

  I attended a party given by Mrs Brunskill (formerly Mrs Parkinson No. 1) in Wapping. Her flat is part of an unattractive building but it is very pleasant inside with a big balcony overlooking the river. The guests varied from 8 to 80 and in costume from bourgeois formality to the filthy jeans and sagging braces favoured by a farouche individual of indeterminate sex. The food was good and plentiful but the drink tasted as if it had been drummed up earlier that day at Staines Gasworks. There was a band that played intermittently in a distant room and happily they could seldom be heard. I wore check trousers and shirt and a blue linen jacket coupled with an expression of extreme affability which enabled me to form a rather beautiful friendship with a lady dressed up to represent Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  Le Petit Nid des Deux Alcoholiques

  Burghclere

  [1970s]

  The Parkinsons are coming to lunch with Francis Reed, who always looks as if he is due to play left back for Naples Tramways, and Lady Gault. To loosen them up, they are getting a good, rich, Bloody Mary, the usual mixture being gingered up with orange and lemon juice, celery salt and tomato ketchup. We went to Nika the Squeaker’s birthday party in darkest Fulham. We picked up your brother, who said he had been invited. I thought it odd he was in day clothes and not a dinner jacket: on arrival I discovered that he was not actually a guest but hired to wait and wash up!

  Francis Reed was one of Roger’s good POW friend. Nika Rumbold, mother of Nick, Charlie and Cassandra Hurt, was a brave, bright and sparky friend of longstanding.

  The Old Dosshouse

  Burghclere

  [1980s]

  I had dinner with Major Surtees at his flat in Parsons Green. He asked tenderly after you. Conversation centred largely on incidents in our past which at the time seemed either hilariously funny or remarkably enjoyable. Whether anyone else would have employed similar adjectives is improbable. Terms such as ‘sordid’ and ‘irresponsible’ would more likely have been used. Once one is married one is forever driving down a road with a clearly defined 30 mph limit, a limit all too rarely exceeded and then the pleasure is diminished through the unfortunate possession of a middle-class, Protestant conscience.

  Best love,

  xx D

  Chez Nidnod

  14 Rue de Vache-Crappe

  Burghclere

  [1980s, on pig paper]

  For once we are having some dry, warm weather and aged locals are wearing pith helmets and wonder how long it will be before the monsoon starts. Your mother dragged me off to the Newbury Agricultural Show and my submissiveness was duly rewarded by a glass of warm Cyprus sherry with the President. I purchased a hamburger sandwich; it was like consuming a tepid slug. On Saturday the Cottrills had a joint birthday party at the Swan, a trendy Lambourn pub kept by an enigmatic ex-journalist from the Daily Express called ‘Jamey’. He greeted me as if I was his dearest friend which in fact I wasn’t. The dinner featuring smoked salmon and roast grouse was excellent and a good time was had by all those present. Your mother went to two weddings last week. She has a macabre taste for those bizarre and rather barbaric ceremonies. Is there anything more tedious and embarrassing than the typical wedding reception speech? Some old family friend, demi-sloshed, bangs on interminably and manages to combine utter banality with saloon-bar vulgarity.

  Humphrey Cottrill was a high profile man of the Turf, ultimately racing manager to Prince Khalid Abdullah. He and his wife Lola were racing friends held in warm regard.

  Home, Sweet Home

  [Mid 1970s]

  We went out to dinner last night with the Roper-Caldbecks. Amongst those present were a lady like a bull-mastiff; a jolly old General whose speech was filtered through a walrus moustache; and the General’s lady, a formidable dame with a glass eye of piercing blue. The browsing and sluicing were excellent.

  Best love
,

  xx D

  Slightly formal, Harry and Dorothy Roper-Caldbeck were a kind, hospitable local couple with Portuguese connections.

  Hypothermia House

  [Mid 1970s]

  An old friend of mine proposes to remarry his first wife. To marry her once was a grave mistake; to do it a second time verges on insanity. However, he may be saved by the fact that she is at present mixed up with an alcoholic Swede.

  The Merry Igloo

  Burghclere on the Ice

  [1979]

  We have been invited to the opera to see ‘Die Fledermaus’ on Jan 1st, a celebration for J. Surtees’s 60th birthday. When I first met him he was a youth of 20 with a lot of fair hair and a hole in his leg inflicted by the Germans at Calais. I myself was suffering from burns and malnutrition and the only shoes I possessed were cardboard clogs with wooden soles. Luckily bourgeois education in this country prepares one to endure physical discomforts.

  Chez Nidnod

  4 January [1980]

  We went to John Surtees’s 60th birthday on Monday. We saw the ‘Fledermaus’. At the interval, Nidnod thought it was all over, wrapped herself up and made for the exit! I enjoyed it except for an additional act by an elderly Swedish soprano who looked like a centurion tank on the way to the scrap yard and sang very flat. Afterwards there was supper for 12 at John’s elder daughter Anna’s house in Fulham; highly organised and very good. Many old friends. I drove your mother home and we reached our own shack at 2.30 a.m., unusually late for me.

  Kind regards to you all,

  Love,

  xx D

  Budds Farm

  7 June [early 1980s]

  Poor Mr Parkinson is lumbered with 2 mothers-in-law billeted on him. No. 1 is quite nice but totally gaga and has just been sacked from a Home at Goring for being ‘a disturbing influence’. No. 2 is penniless, a fearful bore, an alcoholic and incontinent.

  Little Shiverings

  Burghclere

  [1980s]

  About a fortnight ago I rang up John Surtees and was told by his wife he had not come home. Jokingly I said, ‘Has he done a bunk at last?’ Unfortunately he had, the first I knew of it. I’m sorry that mutual antipathy has destroyed Maison Surtees.

  Desmond Parkinson has got rid of his mother-in-law at last.

  The Old Lazar House

  Kintbury

  [Late 1980s]

  The ex-Mrs Surtees and her very agreeable new husband called in here the other day. They seemed happy.

  Both my parents loved warm and attractive Anne, ex-Mrs Surtees, now Mrs Higgins.

  The Olde Leakyng Cabin

  Burghclere

  December 1980

  I went to a bridge party on Thursday where my partner was a local lady of 87 who appeared to know no one below the ranks of Earl and Countess. She asked if I knew a certain peer and I replied that I knew him quite well but had never yet had the good fortune to catch him properly sober. This upset the old girl who was about to tell me how terribly decent he was whereas in fact he is a bombastic shit.

  The Miller’s House

  12 July [mid 1980s]

  Last Sunday I attended a drink and light refreshment party in aid of SSAFA and was, despite my stick, the sprightliest man there. Our host, a genial sailor, had no idea who I was and addressed me as ‘Colonel Miller’.

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s]

  Your godfather Peter Black writes to me most weeks; life in Jersey verges on the grim but at least he is not short of treacle. I was stung by a hostile bee while staking a plant (helenium) called Moerheim Beauty (I think). Mr Randall is just off on a coach tour of the Adriatic. I have heard nothing of the Darlings lately: I write to my sister-in-law Pam once a week, my sister Joan once a week, P. Black once a week, Raoul Lemprière-Robin once a fortnight, Freddie Burnaby-Atkins once a fortnight. I was quite proud of my output until a kind friend suggested I was a ghastly bore, sending dreary communications and expecting the unfortunate recipient to reply.

  Godfather Peter Black invited me to stay, age thirteen. I was dazzled to be met at off the train at Chester by his super-glamorous wife, Monica, her mane of auburn hair up in a chignon, sporting a mink coat and shod in crocodile stilettos. Back at their house, I tucked into a dinner of lobster Neuberg, fillet steak, then chocolate mousse, washed down with vintage wines. Queasily, I made my way up to my luxurious bedroom, knowing I had arrived in paradise.

  The Miller’s House

  22 August [1980s, in red ink]

  I have just received my annual summons to the Blue Seal dinner at the Savoy. When I was elected in 1946 the Blue Seal had so much treacle put away that the dinner and all drinks were free. Nowadays you hand over £40 to an official known as The Chaffwax as you enter the premises. Therefore I don’t go. Apart from which most of my contemporaries are dead, undergoing major surgery or are residents of private asylums on the outskirts of Worthing. The Senior Member is Lord Amherst who was elected in 1919. He was a chum of Noël Coward’s and on the fringe of the stage. The next senior is John Codrington, the well-known landscape gardener. I think he is ninety.

  The Blue Seal was an ancient military dining club.

  Chez Nidnod

  Kintbury

  3 September [mid 1980s]

  Last Sunday was a very hot day (87 degrees F) and I went to a barbeque lunch where with singular folly I elected to ward off heat stroke and dehydration with copious drafts of gin and vin rose. I felt so ill the next day I placed myself in intensive care, i.e. I lay on my bed reading crematorium catalogues and imbibing iced soup brought to me none too willingly by Nidnod. The following day my condition was declared to be ‘stable’.

  Chaos Castle

  Burghclere

  [Early 1980s]

  Yesterday we had a superlative lunch with old Harry Middleton. His marriage was of brief duration but he had a teenage daughter there yesterday, blonde and very saucy in a pink bikini. All the guests, except your middle-class parents, were upper class. I sat next to lovely Rachel Willoughby de Broke with whom I fell in love in the Newbury Corn Exchange in 1929. I was running well out of my class as she was taken up by Prince Ali Khan and the King of Belgium. Also at lunch was a somewhat royal individual who runs the polo at Windsor. I enjoyed it all very much and after a good deal of gin let my tongue wag somewhat indiscreetly. Drink unfortunately always tempts me to be clownish!

  A popular friend and racehorse owner, Harry Middleton, had been assistant head of BBC Outside Broadcasting, including racing coverage. In the bikini, his daughter Laura later married Peter de Wesselow, grandson of Roger de Wesselow, who gave my father his first job in racing in 1947.

  The Miller’s House

  17 March [mid 1980s]

  I’ve just had an Easter card from the Very Revd Basil Madjoucoff; if only all my friends were as faithful. I first met him in the table tennis saloon at the YMCA, Jerusalem, in 1937. This YMCA, built with American money, is a huge phallus-shape building containing every luxury. Basil is an Armenian and those of his fellow countrymen who had not been sliced up by the Turks were pretty hot at ping-pong and Russian billiards.

  If anyone is interested in the extraordinary story of the Very Revd Basil Madjoucoff, ask Lupin!

  The Miller’s House

  December [mid 1980s]

  A huge parcel from America today containing a Holy Calendar and pictures of sacred birds from the Very Revd Basil Madjoucoff. It is 50 years since I beat Basil in the final of the table tennis championship at the YMCA in Jerusalem.

  The Miller’s House

  [Mid 1980s]

  Fairly warm and occasionally sunny: we have a lunch party today and I have put chairs out in the garden although au fond I know it is not warm enough. The trouble is that I want our guests to see the garden which frankly does credit to Nidnod, now ‘une horticulturaliste enragee’, and myself. No weeds and some lovely roses and clematis. Children and dogs spell death to conversation; Thank God no children around today and I have
incarcerated the dogs. Among the guests is David McCall, the same age as myself and living precariously after a hideous operation. He was my greatest friend at Eton and oddly enough I cannot remember ever discussing sex with him, a subject that comprised about 65 per cent of adolescent conversation. I think we stuck to racing. He had no money at all and his education was paid for by an uncle. His father went off to Dublin one day for a haircut and lunch at the Kildare Street Club and was never seen or heard of again! David began work as an insurance clerk at £110 a year and I gave him his first business, i.e. insuring my mackintosh for £3. Happily he soon went into racing as a bloodstock agent and is now a millionaire. Also coming are the Van Straubenzees (I fancy Mrs Van S.) and the Gaselees (ditto Mrs G.). I have mixed a drink called a Dr Bodkin Adams, named after the Eastbourne GP who is believed to have done in 400 of his wealthier geriatric patients. He was acquitted of murder because of the inadequacy of the prosecution led by an Eton contemporary of mine who was cordially disliked by one and all. For lunch we are having haddock mousse, boeuf à la something or other, meringues followed by Blue Vinney cheese, washed down with plonk rouge supplied by a friend of Charles, and some port churned out by a descendant of Dr Warre, the famous Headmaster of Eton. I have had a haircut and am wearing a white jersey (so far only one jam stain) and some poncy white shoes bought at a disposal sale in Marlborough. Talking of stains (quite an amusing topic) there used to be a fat punter at Ascot who always let it be known when things were going well as the soup stains on his waistcoat were real turtle.

  xx D

  As the new owners of my parents’ former home, Budds Farm, the Van Straubenzees played a small but significant role in our family history.

  The Miller’s House