Dearest Jane... (14 page)

[Early 1970s]

No news of Charles; I feel his next job will probably be an auxiliary fireman in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds or salesman in the cake department at Harrods.

The Sunday Times

23 October 1972

No news of late of your brother: I shall not be surprised to hear he has a new job being shot out of a cannon at Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus. By the way, Charles’s new alias is ‘Melville Miniwad’.

Schloss Blubberstein

Montag [early 1970s]

I have just received a complicated apparatus for inducing moles to expire by gassing them; sometimes I am tempted to have a tiny little experiment with my near-and-dear. I think your brother is coming to see you tomorrow. Oblige me by not showing him any letters from me in the sacred cause of family harmony. He is a dear lad, but he does seem totally disorganised. Year after year he goes on a holiday that brings nothing but hardship, privation, diarrhoea and a slight rash.

Best love

xx D

Budds Farm

17 February 1974

Charles’s face is very sore and he cannot shave after his little disaster with the infrared sun-bathing lamp. Now, Louise has gone and done exactly the same thing. Have my children got a particularly low IQ?

Budds Farm

15 June 1974

I had dinner with Louise in London last week and she was a most agreeable companion, chatting away merrily and knocking back John Haig, Moselle, smoked salmon and strawberries with impartial zest. Your poor mother worries about her incessantly, at one moment thinking she is pregnant and at another that she exists on a diet of ‘pot’.

The Old Crumblings

Burghclere

[1974]

Your brother is now in Scotland working as a labourer on an oil rig. I enjoyed having him here as he is so good tempered though in some ways barely house trained. After he has had a bath – admittedly a fairly infrequent occurrence – the bathroom looks as if he had been scrubbing down a hippopotamus. However, he possesses charm and a sense of fun, and he improves his many entertaining stories by judicious exaggeration.

My father often grumbled about the scruffy and dirty appearance of the young. The Swinging Sixties had revolutionized fashion – far too casual for my father’s generation. The fast route to cleanliness – power showers, automatic washing machines and tumble dryers – were still rare luxuries
.

Budds Farm

6 February [mid 1970s]

Your sister is now doing shorthand at the South Berkshire College of Education and good luck to her. Your mother thinks Louise smokes pot in her bedroom. Your brother rang me this morning: had I seen a picture of Major Surtees in a
Private Eye
article on Vassall? No, I had not. I checked up and found the individual to be Sir A. Douglas Home!

John Vassall was a spy blackmailed by the Soviets. Lupin had confused Major Surtees with the former Prime Minister, Alec Douglas Home
.

Great Hangover

Much Sloshing

[Late 1970s]

I never see Louise. She has gone out of my life altogether. I really miss her very much and Budds Farm is a morgue with all you children gone. What it would be like if you were all here I hesitate to think.

Intensive Care Unit

Park Prewitt Hospital

Basingstoke

25 May 1977

Thank you for your kind and sympathetic letter. I am not unduly disturbed by what Louise has done as I am no longer surprised by the vagaries of human nature, least of all where my own blood relations are concerned. Of course I regret to some extent that Louise chose to get married, an occasion of some significance in her life, in the manner she chose. However, she has always been a determined character in a quiet way with a certain genius for attaining her objectives.

Best love

xx D

Henry had at least announced his intention of marrying my sister two years earlier. My father wrote: ‘I received his statement in somewhat frigid manner, intimating total disapproval. Of course I cannot do anything to stop it.’ We all rooted for them when, much later, their union was blessed in Burghclere church. My father pushed the boat out for their reception
.

11b Via Dolorosa

Burghclere

9 January [mid 1970s]

Your brother is here. Someone who plays a banjo was meant to be coming down with him but happily failed to materialise.

Chez Nidnod

24 March [late 1970s]

Charlie is here. He is an expensive guest as he has an electric fire going full blast in his bedroom all day, never turns a light off and makes interminable telephone calls to far distant places. He turns on an electric fire downstairs rather than put a log on the fire. He is very good-tempered and bears up pretty well under his manifold misfortunes. There is talk of him emigrating to Zambia.

Chez Nidnod

[1974]

I hear that Charles went to the Grand National and contemplates visiting Poland. No one can say he is still at the bottom of the ladder: at the age of 30 he has still not got a foot on the ladder at all. A combination of sheer ill-fortune and egregious folly.

Lupin had a Heavy Goods Vehicle Licence and was appointed lorry driver on a relief supply mission to Poland. His passengers were the Marchioness of Salisbury and Mrs Ginny Beaumont, dedicated supporters of the revolutionary ‘Solidarity’ movement. In gratitude, Lupin was awarded an immense carved wooden plate – with a circular photograph of the Pope at its centre
.

The Maudlings

Heathcote Amory

Berks

[Late 1970s]

Tich has been in better form and has bought a Rolls-Royce – his money is going as fast as an iced lolly on a hot Bank Holiday afternoon.

The Merry Igloo

Burghclere-on-the-Ice

[Late 1970s]

It is such a pity that so many of Charlie’s friends have been to prison. It says little for their collective intelligence.

The Old Draughthouse

Much Shiverings

Berks

[Late 1970s]

Your brother has been staying here on and off, but mostly off, and we have seen very little of him. He is essentially a loner these days and I wish there was someone he was really fond of. His lorry-driving phase is over – I never expected it to last more time than it takes me to consume a hot lunch – he is going on a carpet course at the Victoria and Albert Museum! After which, he joins a rather peculiar export firm on an unspecified basis. Louise and HHH are here. They regard Budds Farm merely as a sort of hotel for their own operations. Louise is wonderful at achieving her own way.

Love,

xx D

Budds Farm

Friday [late 1970s]

The Carews arrived, plus dog, an hour ago and already some sort of crisis has arisen, HHH having elected to pluck two ducks he shot, on Nidnod’s kitchen table.

Budds Farm

9 August [late 1970s]

I have made a resolution, which I pray I shall be able to keep, to be much matier with HHH. Sulking simply does not help matters. I will ask him to come on a short bicycling tour of the Lake District.

Chez Nidnod

11 December [late 1970s]

Louise and HHH came for the weekend accompanied by baby and dog. HHH tends to take over the house and reduce your aged parents to the status of lodgers! He is never out of the kitchen drumming things up for his family. Also he thinks he has the body beautiful and at meals favours one and all with a view of his naval which rather puts me off the cod au gratin.

Insolvency House

Burghclere

[Late 1970s]

The tumult and the shouting, i.e. HHH, Louise, their child and their dog have departed; likewise a platoon of Tollers and Hanburys that came over to lunch. Your mother is peacefully asleep on the drawing-room sofa. Like most mothers of adult children, she tends to get on better with them when they are not within fifty miles of her.

Budds Farm

Boxing Day 1980

I feared the worst and the worst occurred although, like the first Christmas Day of World War I, there was a brief armistice between front line troops. Louise and HHH arrived the day before Christmas Eve. That night there was a fearful and ludicrous row between your mother and HHH about how the Stilton should be cut. It was in fact HHH’s Stilton, a present from myself. I tried to cool things and my reward was a Stilton whistling past my left eardrum!

The Miller’s House

20 February [mid 1980s]

Twitch arrived for the night and looked reasonably healthy. He arrived in the sort of Mercedes which usually conveys six Jewish bookmakers driven by a Cypriot chauffeur in dark glasses. I think by 1987 Twitch will either be a millionaire or in Peru on the run from the police. Louise was in good form when she came down here, she and HHH are on TV next week. I don’t trust TV interviewers who are out to make people like Henry look idiotic or dislikeable.

The Miller’s House

17 March [mid 1980s]

There are two items that give force to the theory that this country is in a hopeless condition. (1) The popularity among the young of that repulsive thing known as ‘Boy George’. (2) That ghastly TV programme, ‘The Fishing Party’, featuring HHH and his revolting friends – one of whom can only be described as a chateau-bottled shit – has been voted the outstanding documentary of the year! Does this mean it will be shown again? Poor Louise! I am reminded increasingly of the old colonel in the days of British rule in India who used to sing under his breath: ‘There are two Bs in Jubblepaw and one of them’s my son-in-law.’ I can only add: ‘Life is most froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, Courage in another’s trouble, Guinness in your own’, etc.

xx D

Yes – the programme about four young City toffs taking a fishing holiday in Scotland and publicly airing their very bigoted right-wing views became a legend in TV documentary history. Following its first showing, it was to his credit as a hard worker that HHH did not immediately lose his job – his fellow fishermen did not all fare so well
.

The Miller’s House

1 April [mid 1980s]

Nidnod is trying to make a folk hero of HHH, a sort of cross between St Francis of Assisi and Joan of Arc. Louise seems in good form. Becky is a sweet little thing. I rather like her brother Benjamin who is in my opinion (admittedly valueless) a Mortimer rather than a Carew.

My mother expressed a degree of loyalty to HHH as a family member – possibly with a sneaking admiration for his boldness
.

The Miller’s House

Wednesday [mid 1980s]

Final notes on ‘The Fishing Party’. You say that HHH has got some genuine good points. So indeed had Crippen! I am very sorry for Louise who did not put a foot wrong. I have not criticised her at all. I did some extremely stupid things in my twenties, causing pain and grief to my near-and-dears, but at least I did not perform in front of an audience of millions. You talk about ‘those four boys’. In fact I think they are men of thirty. I imagine in the old days they would have been followers of Sir Oswald Mosley. It was your godfather Peter who told me he switched on to the programme and thought it was a party political broadcast for the Labour Party!

Love

xx RFM

My sister and HHH were not to divorce until the 1990s
.

The Miller’s House

20 February [mid-1980s]

Tea with Louise in London. Rebecca graciously accepted some sweets and then announced she was going upstairs to her room to read a book. Perhaps in certain respects she takes after me! She shows signs of being musical.

Morty’s Garden of Wonderful Weeds

Spring [mid 1980s]

I hear that HHH has been offered a new job and has acquired a country estate. How nice it is to have a rich relation.

Budds Farm

19 February [late 1970s/early 1980s]

Poor Charlie goes into hospital in Hampstead next week. I am really deeply sorry for him: his life may have been one of epic futility but he does not deserve the worry and unhappiness caused by his present state of health. I think his courage and stoicism have been of a high order and compel respect. He has such excellent qualities mixed up with his capacity for folly that it is extraordinary that he has not made more of his life.

Best love,

xx D

My brother has since had many spells in London hospitals
.

The Miller’s House

15 May [early 1980s]

I hear Charlie is off to Indonesia with a Greek to buy men’s underclothes.

Lupin’s latest venture – manufacturing boxer shorts
.

The Miller’s House

12 July [1980s]

Your brother, the well-known commercial traveller (or bagman) in gents underclothes, is due for lunch but has rung up to say he is arriving in a van (where’s his Mercedes?) and will be late. Hardly a surprise!

The Miller’s House

Thursday, 11 August, 7 p.m. [early 1980s]

The sky is the colour of the underside of a long-dead cod and rain is pouring down. Your brother came down to lunch in good form and a quasi-suede jacket. He recently lunched with the Salisburys at Hatfield. Other guests were Enoch Powell and Mrs Hislop! He seems happy in his new flat but appears to have fallen out business-wise with Robin G-S and completely with his jolly little Greek chum. He enjoyed Spain where he stayed in a 5-Star hotel in Seville which he was surprised to find was expensive. He drove from Seville to Paris in a day, over 1,000 miles. This week he flies to Majorca. He is staying on a small boat. He is off to Thailand again in the winter.

Love to all,

xx D

The Miller’s House

[Early 1980s]

Twitch is the only person I know who got nothing, bar one or two criminal friends, out of Eton. He would have been just as happy, or perhaps equally indifferent, at a Yateley comprehensive. He is, of course, virtually illiterate. I don’t think he finds that a handicap and everyone likes him.

The Miller’s House

24 February [mid 1980s]

Charlie found snow in the Sahara. He would!

With love from all of us to all of you,

xx RM

The Miller’s House