Dearest Jane... (18 page)

The Miller’s House

[Mid 1980s]

Have a good time while you’re still young and the cares and worries of this rather awful world have not blunted your sense of enjoyment. Never hesitate to choose the most expensive item on the menu. Sadly, Nidnod never knew me when I was young. I was middle-aged and already getting stodgy when the organist at St Pauls, Knightsbridge, struck up ‘Lead Me to the Altar, Walter.’

Best love

xx D

The Miller’s House

[1990]

Your mother is in good form; I don’t drive her round the twist more than once a week and if it was not for her, I would not last a fortnight.

Love to you all,

xx RFM

My father was the sole breadwinner for my mother and their three children. He was highly successful in his chosen career as a racing writer. As a major dimension of his story we join him on the racecourse, next
.

No one chronicled the events and people of the racing world more lucidly and accurately than Roger Mortimer. He was one of the most refreshingly candid journalists of his day and the author of outstanding books on Turf history . . . his technique was often a writer’s equivalent to the late Max Wall on stage: first winning the confidence of the audience, then delivering a payoff – with a point as sharp as a stiletto.

The Times
, 2 December 1991

My father’s legacy has recently become the cache of his extraordinary letters to his children, but while his comic voice as a parent of a bygone age has readers falling off sofas with laughter, that achievement has been posthumously awarded to him. Roger’s comic wit and acuity as a letter writer was inevitably polished by his professional writing work. During his lifetime, the success he enjoyed was with a specialized readership, gaining the laurels of acclaim rather than fame.

‘Stop playing marbles with father’s glass eye, he needs it to look for some work’, was an old music hall song my father was wont to sing as he climbed the stairs to his study. He often had many concurrent writing jobs as a list in a letter to me reveals.

‘The Droolings

October 1972

My Dear Child,

Thank you for your letter which you did your best to render illegible by typing on red paper; not, I trust, a reflection of your political opinions. I look forward to seeing your house in the not far distant future but at the moment I am hard pressed. 1. Trying to complete a tome of world-shattering dreariness for Cassell & Co. 2. Bringing
The History of the Derby
up to date for Cassell & Co. 3. Launching a book that M. Joseph & Co are publishing, arranging for reviews, distribution etc. 4. Writing an article on Women’s Races for the Tote Annual. 5. Writing an article on obscure Names in Famous Pedigrees for ‘Stud and Stable’. 6. Advising on a racing film being made with the maximum inefficiency at Bray. 7. Hackwork for
The Sunday Times
. 8. Hackwork for the Racecourse. 9. Hackwork for Argus South African Newspapers Ltd. 10. Advising Tattersalls on how to avoid annoying their clients too much. 11. Tidying up the garden.

xx D’

Roger’s output was prodigious and when pressed for time, he would pay me as a teenager – the princely sum of £1 – to dictate his copy over the telephone to the
Sunday Times
.

His innate ability to turn any incident into a good story was enhanced by working in the racing world, where unusual tales abounded. Even in his most serious work Roger was always able to tap into a seam of irreverence, expressing an unassailable pleasure in the follies, foibles and absurdities of life. This may not seem to be the key quality required of one commissioned to unfold long and definitive histories of the Turf, with titles like
The Jockey Club, The History of the Derby Stakes
or
The Flat
. None are suggestive of laughter.

Roger’s genius lay in his ability to lighten these scholarly histories with wit and anecdotes that run like golden threads through his prose. A reader uninspired by the thought of racing histories stiff with equine biographies might discover that Roger brought the Turf alive through the human stories of the men who bred, owned, trained, rode, betted, vetted, exercised and mucked out the stables.

From its wild, uncouth beginnings in the 1600s when racing was devoid of rules or codes of conduct, the scope for deeds either daring or dastardly was boundless – compelling material for a writer who rejoiced in tales of irregular individuals and strange and scurrilous crimes.

‘The Shiverings

Burghclere

[Late 1970s]

Racing has always contained some odd characters not invariably on the side of the law. One such was John Stewart who, when times were bad, used to do a bit of house-breaking in the Kensington area. One afternoon the flat-owner caught Stewart at it (there was no racing that day because of a hard frost) and Stewart lost his head and killed him. He was caught, tried and sentenced to death. To his horror he found he was going to be hanged on Derby day. He applied to the Home Secretary to have the execution put off till after the race but the stony-hearted individual declined to intervene. As the awful little procession left the condemned cell for the scaffold Stewart interrupted the parson’s droning prayers to advise all present to have a really good bet on Felstead. They were his last words. Felstead won the Derby at 33/1.’

Writing in the
Raceform Handicap Book
in January 1987, this is a taste of the tone of Roger the Historian – not so different from the timbre of his letters:

It is probably true that villainy in racing increased substantially when owners ceased to bet with each other and bookmakers came on the scene. Some of the early bookmakers would have skinned their own grandmothers had there been profit to be derived from that operation . . . Until the last quarter of the 19th century racing was crudely organised, rough and corrupt, with the number of absolutely reliable jockeys countable on the horns of a goat.

In his racing histories, my father’s style was erudite and eclectic. Richard Onslow, in a 1973 review of his magnum opus,
The History of the Derby Stakes
, called him ‘the most important racing historian of the present day’, adding, ‘the most fascinating part of this book will be the thumbnail sketches, always skilfully and often wittily written’. In the
Sunday Times
of 23 December 1973, Alan Ross described Roger’s writing as having, ‘The narrative incisiveness and irony of a good short story. Mr Mortimer’s opening sentences are often masterpieces of compression.’ To prove the point, he quoted:

In 1824 Jem Robinson brought off a remarkable wager, having betted that in one week he would ride the winner of the Derby, the winner of the Oaks, and get married. He won the Derby on Sir John Shelley’s Cedric: the Oak’s on Lord Jersey’s Cobweb and on the Saturday he completed the treble by leading a certain Miss Powell to the altar.

Meanwhile, Michael Thompson Noel in the
Financial Times on 29 November 1973 also placed my father at the top of his field, praising him for gathering in ‘a sparkling catch of heroes and villains . . . [He] describes the subsequent careers of the principals – both horses and men. Some were to triumph. Some were disgraced. All are fascinating.’

To fail to share some quotes from his output as a racing writer would be a disgraceful waste of opportunity. No interest in horses or racing is needed to enjoy my father’s writing, but for those who love racing, extracts may inspire a renaissance of interest in his official work.

Roger was not a country child. His family home was in London so it was probably mainly holidays with his favourite aunt, Star Mitchell, and her Irish husband Chris at Ballynure, Co. Wicklow, that offered an opportunity to ride. Point to pointing, the springtime diversion for hunting folk, became one of Roger’s recreations as a young man but recollections of fox-hunting did not feature in any of his letters to me. When he did turn his pen to descriptions of the hunt, it was focused entirely upon the powerful effects it had upon my mother.

It was while at Ballynure that Roger went to his first race-meeting, at Naas, Co. Roger already had a grasp of racing events – he had been subscribing to
Sporting Life
since he was a schoolboy at Eton. ‘I always read it at breakfast, thereby annoying my housemaster. I can think of six foreign countries to which I used to have the
Sporting Life
sent to relieve the awful tedium of military exile.’

Because my father later became such a fount of knowledge about racehorses, it might be assumed that was fond of every breed of horse. My mother’s small, Thelwell-like ponies were in an entirely different category. He was not hostile to these lowlier equines, but neither did he display the slightest warmth towards them. His lack of interest may well be attributed to the amount of time my mother dedicated to her ponies.

Whatever his feelings, Roger would have been the first to confirm that horsemanship was not his outstanding skill. By his late thirties, riding had become an activity of the past – he had not ridden in a point to point since he was posted to Egypt and Palestine in 1937.

From his years as an impecunious Army cadet at Sandhurst, Roger became an increasingly keen follower of the Turf, more frequently as a punter on the course than as a guest at the posh end, in the members’ enclosure. One of his happiest memories was at Royal Ascot in 1928, when ‘my only expense was a shilling for an orange box to stand on’ to get a good view.

Following the war, having spent many of his hours as a prisoner immersed in books on racing, Roger’s growing expertise on the subject started to win the respect of fellow racing enthusiasts. One such admirer was Major Roger de Wesselow – a Coldstream comrade who had served in the Special Operations Executive in wartime. As good fortune had it, Major de Wesselow was in a position to offer my father his first racing post, updating records for Raceform and writing for a publication called the
Racehorse
.

So it was, on one sunny Saturday in June 1947, as a part of King George VI’s Birthday Parade, that my father performed his last duty as a Coldstream Guard. It may have been the very last time that he was on horseback – he rode a chestnut gelding called Virile ‘which peed during the National Anthem’.

On the following Monday morning he reported for his first day’s work at the Raceform offices in Battersea. He discarded the status of Major Mortimer, the honourable soldier, to Mr Mortimer, a recorder of racing statistics. It was not a step down, but the first foot up on the ladder of a successful career that was to last for the next forty years.

My father was not driven by ambition. Back in 1947, his most pressing desire was to leave the Army. All his experiences had been within the confines and constraints of institutions – school, the Army and prison camp – and he was now in search of independence. From his earliest years he had always derived great pleasure from the power of words and the satisfaction of seeing them used well. To have been given this opportunity to apply his brain profitably in the racing world was a very promising way forward.

A long time later on 10 November 1974, in a
Sunday Times
article reviewing his racing experiences, he wrote:

I came into racing during the post-war boom. There was plenty of money after the war but because of shortages, rationing and restrictions, not much to spend it on. If you wanted a new suit, it was not easy to get one. Today there are plenty of suits but not much money.

Racing may have been booming but my father’s new profession was not an extravagantly paid one, as he commented in the late 1970s.

‘The Merry Igloo

Burghclere on the Ice

The
Racehorse
used to come out three times a week and I wrote about 2/3rds of it. I always had to go to the office in London (unpaid) every Sunday, including when I had moved to the country. There was no travel allowance.’

In that same year of 1947, my father was swept off his feet by another emboldening event: becoming engaged to Cynthia. To be married to ‘a writer’ was an immediate cachet to my mother – she was abidingly proud of my father’s intelligence and was thrilled at the idea of seeing it manifested in print. My mother always had absolute faith in my father’s future success.

Roger found the racing world compelling and convivial, enjoying the thrill of the race, the spectacle of top-class horses and jockeys, and the flow of high and low life cheek-by-jowl on the racecourse. It was a vibrant, energising environment in which to work – with a constant edge of risk to it.

Race meetings bustle with movement between paddock, course, stands, tote and bookmakers – and the bar. Every one of the races, breeders, owners, trainers, jockeys and indeed the horses needed evaluation and consideration before being reported upon. A fast wit and a memorable parting shot are ideal attributes for anyone in my father’s profession hurrying through the throng. Roger already enjoyed a reputation as a raconteur who sparked up social gatherings in peacetime or cheered a gloomy hut full of prisoners in wartime. Now, he could fire off his bon mots on course – and in print.

Roger’s big break – not necessarily how he would have described it – occurred almost immediately when the owner and editor of the
Sunday Times
, Lord Kemsley, contacted him personally and offered him the job of racing correspondent. Roger accepted and remained in that post from 1947 for nearly thirty years.

In the 1970s, he reflected on his first employer there:

‘Old Kemsley was like a more genial version of Mr Bultitude’s Headmaster, while Lady Kemsley was a kindly snob with a penchant for putting her foot in it. I wonder if my career (I was getting £400 p.a. at the time) would have been different if I had not twice refused invitations to stay chez Kemsley for Ascot (Bring your wife to play canasta with Lady Kemsley). It was probably very stupid of me but ambition has never been one of my major vices.’

Roger was on his way. His writing, combining accurate information with sharp comment, anecdote and humour, soon became more widely known and enjoyed. A scrupulous researcher, he had the ability to process dense quantities of information, always remaining alert to a quirky or telling detail to enliven his material. Roger referred to himself as a writer, a racing correspondent or just a hack, not a journalist. Journalism was a profession of which he was extremely suspicious. He said that he found it awkward and invasive to ask people a lot of personal questions. His views on journalism were echoed by Balzac, whom he quoted, writing to me from ‘Rabbits Larder, Burghclere’: