Dearest Jane... (39 page)

Budds Farm

[Early 1980s]

Piers writes amusing letters and seems keen on gardening. An embryo Beverley Nicholls? You can’t tell: boys change so quickly and he’ll probably finish by being the Judo champion for N. Yorkshire. Nicholas seems the merry extrovert and with luck he may stay that way. I can’t visualise him yet as an avant-garde poet winning a J. P. Sartre scholarship at Sussex University.

Beverley Nicholls was a prolific writer in many genres, including books on gardening
.

The Miller’s House

[Mid 1980s]

Very few children, for obvious reasons, are at their best in the presence of their parents. I think Nicholas comes into that category. He is very good fun when you are out for a walk with the dogs, less amusing when you are exuding maternal care and affection in his near vicinity. I think he is always likely to be happy and successful at school. I get the impression that au fond he is quick witted and decidedly intelligent. As long as you’re not
too
nice to him, I am confident that he will turn out to be an exceptionally agreeable boy.

Chez Nidnod

3 September [late 1980s]

I hope Piers will not change too quickly at Eton. It is always a shock for a loving mother when the previously apple-cheeked loved one returns for the holidays 6ft tall, stubble on the chin and rich crop of acne rosacea on the forehead. Most boys tend to be bloody from 14 to 17, some up to 67 or even later.

The Miller’s House

29 December 1987

P. F. T. continues to impress me most favourably and he has a very charming nature. Most boys of his age are beginning to develop spots and bloody-mindedness but he seems happily clear of both. N. L. T. has much to be said in his favour and is obviously very bright.

The Miller’s House

26 January [late 1980s]

Thought for the week: ‘Stubborn and ignorant, should make an excellent parent’, from a report on a Wellington schoolboy.

With love to you all,

D xx

Happy days! Now, sadly, we move on to the last lap, but my father’s wit was as healthy as ever
.

‘“Eventide” Home for Distressed or Mentally Afflicted Members of the Middle Classes

[1980s]

Dearest Jane

What have I in common with Kubla Kahn, Talleyrand, William Pitt, Bacon (F.), Wesley, Darwin, Fielding, Milton, Newton and Ben Johnson? The answer, my dear child, is gout. Dr H. Ellis wrote: “Gout occurs so often, in such extreme forms, and in men of such pre-eminent intellectual ability, that it is impossible not to regard it as having a real association with such ability.” Ellis added that typical gout sufferers are ‘eccentric and irascible’.

Love,
RFM’

Black’s Medical Dictionary
was the best thumbed book at the various addresses at which my parents apparently lived: The Old Crumblings, Chateau Geriatrica. The Old Lazar House, 17b Via Dolorosa, The Eventide Home, Les Deux Gagas, Bonkersville and, most frequently, Chez Nidnod are just a handful.

Not only my father but my mother and brother dipped deep into the sinister pages of this medical bible, combing them urgently for symptoms. My mother was keen on self diagnosis; my brother Lupin, with very challenging health problems of his own, became a fount of extraordinary medical information, maintaining a personal drug pharmacy from which he prescribed for others in extreme circumstances; my father, ever fearful that he was well within reach of the grim reaper, anticipated any new pain or discomfort to be the signal towards the departure gate.

The prospect of Christmas could bring on a whole new inventory of near fatal maladies.

Pronouncements on his death peppered my father’s conversation for as far back as I can remember. The effect could be lowering but his robust presence happily prevented me from taking them too seriously. My mother did – of course. To these ruminations my father would add further caustic comment: ‘No one is indispensable’, to which my mother would retort, ‘Your trouble is you are just a cynic.’ Cynicism was an armour my father wore well – appreciated the most by those who were least near to him.

From my father’s letters I learnt of the lives – and deaths – of many people of whom I had never heard, let alone known. At the time, in the natural self absorption of youth and the consuming preoccupations of the present, these vignettes and obituaries were rather wasted on me. Nowadays, I understand full well the gentle solace it brings to commit these reflections to paper – I do it myself.

Memories of childhood and youth become sharper in old age; what happened yesterday morning is forgotten but the distant past can be recalled in effortless detail. My father’s nearly photographic memory enabled him to paint vivid period pictures of his childhood and youth in his letters.

I never asked my father where his epistolary obsession with skin conditions had erupted from – all those little rashes, spots, warts and growths which he liked to attribute to many an innocent individual who crossed his path. It was an immediate way of debunking just about anyone from a millionaire racehorse owner to a café waitress. There was a large ration of carbuncles amongst the bill of blemishes described in his letters. The fact that my father was scarcely squeamish on paper was not equalled by an ability, in the flesh, to cope with even the smallest wound, ache or pain in any practical manner – that he left to my mother.

Roger had a few problems with God. In his book, the Almighty was sorely lacking in a sense of humour. My father had spent too many hours on his knees in school chapels without any noticeably helpful answers to his prayers manifesting themselves. As for the mercy of the Almighty in the trials of war, God, in his omnipotence, had not seemed prepared to intervene in any discernible manner.

If he did not turn to God in his later years, my father could still be moved by a good hymn, or carol – particularly if it was his own version:

Hark the herald angels sing,

Beecham’s pills are just the thing.

Peace on Earth and mercy mild,

Two for a man and one for a child.

The hymn with the line ‘Let me to thy bosom fly’ convinced him as a child that there was a weird little insect – the bosom fly – buzzing about somewhere.

As old age gripped him and his health declined, he was increasingly wont to quote: ‘Oh death where is thy sting – Grave where is thy victory?’

Shortly after his eighty-second birthday in late November 1991, this plea was answered.

‘I don’t want a memorial service, just a quick fry-up’, my father had written as a postscript in one of his letters to me.

As she carefully organized his memorial service, my mother said to me, classically: ‘If your father was here he would never let me do this.’

In contradiction to his oft-expressed edict, my father was not in any respect ‘dispensable’. He was of a quality that was irreplaceable.

For all his intelligence and talent, my father was a deeply modest man who never applauded himself for his achievements. If he did not believe in the possibility of resurrection, he has been reincarnated through his inimitable letters, bringing laughter and pleasure to many.

My Dearest Jane . . .

Budds Farm

10 February [late 1960s]

I did a lot of gardening today and nearly had a little stroke; it is always dangerous when your ears start popping and you think you hear the Luton Girl’s Choir singing ‘Jesus Wants You for a Sunbeam’. I knew an elderly woman who had a minor stroke when packing her suitcase to go and stay near Ipswich for the weekend. The stroke was down her right side but she pluckily went on packing with her left.

Budds Farm

October [late 1960s]

A very old friend of mine died last week; he had a coronary and fell off a bar stool clutching his glass to the end. Not an ignoble finish for a man whose failing was too much charm and too many friends.

Budds Farm

9 March [early 1970s]

I am now off to order a new suit . . . something that will proclaim my inherently reactionary nature and reluctance to compromise with this piddling era in which my declining years have to be spent. I’m thinking of leaving all my money, which isn’t much, to the newly formed Ashford Hill Community Centre run by drop-outs from the meteorological department of Bracknell University.

Budds Farm

28 August 1974

I have bought two new pairs of spectacles at reckless expense. One pair I can’t see through at all. The other was made for an individual with a head like a giant pumpkin and falls off at the slightest movement.

Les Deux Gagas

Bonkersville

Berks

[1974]

I am now a retired man, almost at the end of the road. One more river and that old river is Jordan, one more river, just one more river to cross. I hope you saw me in a longish TV interview last Friday. I think it was quite good. Needless to say no one at Budds Farm could bother to watch! Perhaps morbid self-interest to the exclusion of everything else is a family failing. I become an OAP this week. As Anthony Powell wrote, ‘Getting old is like being increasingly punished for a crime you have never committed.’

Love

xx D

The Ministry of White Fish

[Mid 1970s]

I saw an orthopaedic surgeon from Oxford about my knee last week. I rather liked him (Dr Spivey) as he is young, not given to bullshit and keen on racing and gardening. He said an operation would be painful and possibly unsuccessful; the joints are worn out and cannot be replaced. I have just got to put up with an infirmity which may get progressively worse. I must not kneel in the garden or walk more than 2 miles. The danger is that the leg will get crooked and I shall end up looking like a retired jockey.

How grisly prospects were for knackered knees back then
.

Budds Farm

[1974]

After 2 glasses of Cyprus sherry these days I am apt to think I am Halfdene the Dane; and behave accordingly.

Chez Nidnod

Monday [early 1970s]

I went to the funeral of a good friend of mine last week. The vicar, who looked like a well-worn lavatory brush, started the service by appealing for money for the church. This annoyed me. The address was entrusted to a grandson, a priggish youth of 19 who chose to give a pompous sermon advising the older members of the congregation to study the Bible as they would be ‘for it’ themselves before long themselves and it would be foolish to leave things too late! I could have kicked him down the aisle! Finally a Royal Artillery trumpeter played ‘Lights Out’ but unfortunately this did not deter the organist from blasting away at Bach on his instrument. The resulting din was horrific!

Love,

RFM

Budds Farm

2 February 1975

Death came as a relief to the poor old Duke of Norfolk whose arteries had ceased to function and no petrol was reaching the carburettor.

Bernard, Duke of Norfolk, had a racing stable at Arundel. My parents used to stay with him and his wife Lavinia, sister of my father’s notorious chum, Lord Belper
.

Budds Farm

14 October 1978

We are all much saddened by John Pope’s death. I have known him since 1922 and he was a loyal and generous friend to your mother and myself. Behind all the jokes, the stories and the ragging, he was a man of high principles, immensely public spirited, and devoted to his faith and his Church. He set high standards for himself and never fell below them.

The House of a Thousand Draughts

Burghclere

17 November [mid 1970s]

Most people I know are either dying or getting married (the latter the worse misfortune) and in either case I am faced with unwanted expense. This week’s boring quotation: ‘Le bonheur consiste simplement à se fermer les yeux’ (Happiness consists simply in shutting your eyes) – Baudelaire.

The Many Leakings

Burghclere

31 October 1981

A sad week for me as Gerry Feilden, a good friend for 52 years, died very suddenly. Two days previously he had asked Nidnod and me to join him in Bali for a holiday! Last Tuesday he lunched with friends at White’s, drove home and died reading the evening paper. Not a bad way to end the long journey. He was 77 and his life had been happy and successful.

A fellow Coldstreamer, my father had been second-in-command to Gerry Feilden in the BEF in France in 1940. Ultimately he became a major-general and senior steward at the Jockey Club. An annual race at Newmarket – the Feilden Stakes – commemorates him
.

Budds Farm

19 February 1978

Don’t let your husband work too hard. After all, youth passes fairly swiftly and it is very seldom in later life that one regrets memories of self-indulgence and extravagance. After all, what on earth is the point of temptation if no one ever yields to it? I don’t regret periods of indolence etc. in my twenties; only time wasting, lack of enterprise and allowing myself to be bored when there was so much for me to do.

Best love,

xx D

The Old Slagheap

Burghclere

17 December [early 1980s]

The late H. Balzac wrote in ‘La Femme de Trente Ans’: ‘La jeune fille n’a qu’une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d’innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n’en flatte qu’une.’ I thought that might cheer you up now that you are over thirty and on the road to the dreaded kingdom of Old Bagdom from which no woman ever returns. Men over thirty head swiftly for Old Bufferdom which is rather worse. Another quotation from Balzac: ‘Il est facile de nier ce que l’on ne comprend pas.’ I feel about 97. I have just been reading about a man who is convinced he will live to 300 because he has never washed his face in hot water.

Love,

xx D

‘Cheering’ thoughts for the over thirties? More of an exercise in French comprehension
.

The Crumblings

Burghclere