The Cardboard Crown (20 page)

Then everything seemed to go to pieces. Alice went off to stay with a friend near Bruges, where she had to sit through gargantuan meals. She describes one: ‘Soup, cauliflower with melted butter and shrimps, roast beef and potatoes, fowl and french beans, a cake, pears, apples and grapes, claret, burgundy, beer, coffee, liqueurs.’ It was probably this diet that brought on a violent attack of rheumatism which began in Paris, where George met her, not to take her to Waterpark, but back to Brittany, and to Roscoff of all places, in the middle of December, to where the family had moved. Again we have the madness of history. It may have been because they were Australians and they liked to see European things at their most characteristic, the rugged Brittany coast battered by winter storms.

Alice had a dreadful journey. On the day she left Paris she wrote: ‘Could hardly get dressed, my arms and hands were so painful. Went for a good long walk with George past the Opéra. After dinner we drove to Montparnasse and left at about eight. My knees began to pain very much. The carriage warm and comfortable but I had to keep waking George to help me to move.’

The next day, 12 December: ‘At Morlaix a gentleman helped George lift me down from the train. Arrived at Roscoff at about ten and met by Wolfie, who helped George lift me down. He was so gentle and kind that I was quite surprised. He said: “It is not good to suffer pain.” The children very well. They made me up a sort of sofa, and I stayed there all day, my knees and hands paining a good deal. The view of beach, rocks and islands very open and fresh, but grey and sombre.’

Instead of returning to warmth and Waterpark for Christmas, they stayed a month on that grey and sombre coast, perhaps because Alice could not move, perhaps because of money. They had a letter from Arthur saying that Lady Langton was not well. Maclean still had not paid the rent and Austin decided to go out to see his mother and to look into their financial affairs on the spot.

I know a family of whom one, if he has to go on an errand, will say to a brother or sister: ‘Will you chum me to the post office?’ or wherever he may have to go. The whole clan decided to ‘chum’ Austin and Mildy, who elected to go with him, to Marseille to see him off at the ship. The journey was like a retreat from Moscow. The first stage from Roscoff was made under a sense of defeat, accentuated by the fact that Dolly Potts was leaving them at Rennes. She was going to stay with a school friend near Nantes, George accompanying her for a few days. Austin and Bobby tried to amuse the party by talking like Waterpark yokels. Bobby looked out of the window and said:

‘This be martel bad weather for they wurzels, my sonnies.’

‘Ay, that it be,’ said Austin. ‘Turrible bad.’

‘Oh don’t, papa,’ said Mildy. ‘You’ll give him an accent.’ Everybody laughed. Mildred looked as if she were going to cry and they were more dismal than before.

Wolfie told the children the fairy story of the mermaid who wanted to walk among humans. She was given feet but every step on land was as painful as the cut of a knife. Bobby said: ‘She was like our trout Charlie,’ but Alice thought this tale applied to themselves. They should have stayed in Australia, their natural element. When they came to Europe, every time their walking was painful. From Rennes they went to Tours, where her rheumatism again became bad. My mother put turpentine and a warm iron on her knees, but ‘she had to use the fire shovel as Mildred had left the iron at Rennes, and her pretty Spanish shawl at Roscoff.’ In spite of her pains Alice could not abandon her ruling passion, and the next morning
,
though the ice was floating down the river, she went to see the museum and the tomb of St. Martin. In the train to Mont Luçon, they had a meal of figs and cakes, to save money, except the children and nurses, who had a hot déjeuner before they left. Wolfie said: ‘It is not good for me to be hungry.’

They arrived late and half-frozen at Mont Luçon, and went to an hotel with damp beds. They all sat about waiting for fires to be lighted and the beds aired with warming-pans, ‘Austin swearing horribly.’ Alice was afraid of the beds and lay down with rugs on a sofa. Diana’s little girl was unwell and cried all night.

The next morning they left early. Austin on the railway station while they were waiting for the train, ‘sat apart and
laughed at his own thoughts.’ He had an odd sense of humour. Diana was worried about her little girl. My mother was expecting another child—myself—and was feeling sick. Mildy was full of wailing prophecies of disaster, and said they would all be stranded penniless in the South of France. When they arrived at Lyons they thought it too cold to stay there as they had intended. They bought fowls, bread, fruit and milk, and ate it in their crowded carriage. Wolfie said: ‘Hot food is better.’ They arrived late at Marseille, and too tired to look for any other, went to a dirty hotel near the station. My father found that he had lost his notebook with the receipt for the luggage, so no one had any night clothes. They spent the next day in Marseille, one would have thought in bed, but no—Alice went to a picture gallery and to see the new, unfinished cathedral.

The following day they saw Austin and Mildy off on their ship. The next morning the depleted party left for Nice in an omnibus train, as the lines were blocked with snow and they did not know when the express would arrive. There were still twelve of them, eight adults and four children sitting up in their second class carriage. The express passed them at Toulon, and they took eleven hours for the journey, instead of five as they had expected. They had no proper meal all day. George, having come from Nantes and passed them in the express, met them at the railway station. He announced, barely restraining his tears, that his engagement to Dolly Potts was broken off. She could not stay for ever with her friend in Nantes. She could not indefinitely accompany the Langtons on their uncertain trek. She could only go home.

The frozen, hungry, unhappy, exhausted party descended on an hotel. That night Alice wrote in her diary this little song which du Maurier quotes, but rather badly translated, at the end of ‘Trilby.’

La vie est brève:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis—Bonjour!

La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de peine
Et puis—Bonsoir!

She did not know what was yet in store for her.

From the Sixteenth of January when they arrived in Nice, until the twenty-fourth of February there is no entry in Alice’s diary, then this:

‘Went to Monte Carlo this afternoon with Steven, George and Diana. A very beautiful drive along the Corniche Road. I won 36 louis on zero. George won quite a lot playing on pair and impair. Wolfie spent the afternoon practising on a piano I have hired for him. In the evening we all except Laura went to
Faust
at the theatre in the Casino. Jean de Reszke and Melba, de Reszke magnificent. Melba looked very nice. Wolfie shut his eyes and quivered a great deal during the final duet. George and Diana went to Lady
Learmouth’s ball afterwards. Diana wore a flame-coloured dress and all her pearls and diamonds. She had pearls twisted in her hair and looked very striking. The masseuse has done me a great deal of good.’

Certainly something had done them a great deal of good. For months there is day after day of this kind of thing. It does not sound a probable life for people who have just been ruined and who only a few weeks earlier had to travel second class and go without proper food in mid-winter. If they could afford this life why did they not go back to Waterpark, at least in the spring, seeing that they had all these children with them, and that I was about to be born? It is where history again becomes irrational. Of course I may have stopped them. Perhaps my mother was not well enough for the journey. More likely they were amusing themselves, and no Langton could resist amusement. Being doubly uprooted people, they had not the same sense of responsibility as the average landowner, though when they were at Waterpark they were more generous than most squires to their villagers. In a hard winter they let tenants off their rent, and gave the sick and poor presents of food and wine, which their Australian money enabled them to do, and which the estate alone could not have afforded. Waterpark as a family seat would naturally have expired with Cousin Thomas. It no longer had within itself the means of survival. This Australian money was a kind of monkey-gland infusion, which kept it going for another two or three generations. It may be just as true to say that they were doubly rooted, and being equally drawn to two countries, were glad to escape the tension for a while in a third.

They stayed in Nice until the very end of the season. A few weeks before they left Wolfie achieved one of his main objects in coming to Europe. His symphony, conducted by himself, was played at a concert in the Casino. There was an appreciative notice of it next morning in the Nice newspaper, and that was the debut and climax of his European musical career. It has since been played occasionally in Melbourne and I have heard it. I believe that it is as good as Wolfie thought, but he was the victim of his own success. There is a story by Morley Roberts about a young writer who, inspired by the happiness of his first months of marriage, wrote a brilliant and moving tale. The editors were delighted with it, but they refused everything he wrote afterwards as it was not up to the same standard. He had ruined himself. Wolfie had written his symphony under the same inspiration. As he rose from the bed of his beautiful young wife and walked out under the scented gum trees, and heard the sounds of the morning, the magpies in the field, the clanking of milk pails and the shouts of the boys down at the farm, all liquid notes in the crystal air, his bursting heart sent harmonies up into his brain. The result was this symphony which, although it was not derivative had the same feeling as Wagner at his most lyrical, as the
Preislied
, the
Walkure
love music, and the
Journey to the Rhine.
Also the critics were reluctant to believe that an unheard of young man, who had produced nothing else, had composed a work of the first quality.

After this achievement the main body of the family moved slowly eastwards, while Alice, with a Mrs Blair-Gordon with whom she had become friendly in Nice, scouted round them, going off for a week or two to some
capital city. Finally the time of my birth drew near and they all moved up into Switzerland, the only place where I could be born a British subject, and settled at Lucerne. Alice had bought her 1893 diary in France, and on ‘Samedi, 10 Juin. S. Landry’ she wrote:

‘Laura not very well. I went for a walk and bought a bottle of eau-de-cologne, a chess-board, and three rakes for the children. Laura came down to déjeuner and had some fish that the Russian officer caught. Her baby born at twenty-five minutes past four in the afternoon. She has a
sage-femme
who speaks English, and a nurse who speaks German and French, and likes them very well. Everyone asked very kindly after her. Mrs Blair-Gordon came back from Brunnen today. Played bezique with her in the evening.’

At last I am born. All these people of whom I have been writing on this day became my relatives, ready-made, unchosen. If Alice had known while she was playing bezique with Mrs Blair-Gordon, that the not over-welcome pink baby upstairs (it would have been nicer for everyone, except perhaps myself, if I had been a girl) would one day not merely own all her private possessions, but reveal to the public the secrets of her heart, would she have thrown me into the lake to feed the kin of those fish which the Russian officer caught for my mother’s luncheon?

But my dear Grandmama, which I am now entitled to call you, I have done you no wrong. You are fifty years before us on our journey, far advanced in Paradise, remote from us in spirit and in mind. So we must pray, or you would not be happy, seeing the condition of your descendants. Should we hope that you linger near Westhill with its broken
trees, or hear the train rattle behind Waterpark and smell in the garden stream the seepage from the tanneries, which has killed Charlie the trout and all his descendants? Then, as you are so far from us, let us remember you, not by the banalities on a churchyard slab, not with hypocrisy, but as you really were, living and human and complete. Also, if you did not want your diaries to be read, why did you preserve them so carefully and leave them behind you?

A week after I was born Alice went off to Paris to buy clothes. I shall still call her Alice, behind her back as it were. She returned to see Laura and myself, then went to Munich and Nuremberg, taking Wolfie and Diana to hear music. She came back to Lucerne for my christening, and on her return notes: ‘The baby smiles a great deal when spoken to.’ On the day of the christening Alice ‘went out in the morning and bought some striped silk Neapolitan fishing caps for the children. In the afternoon the baby was christened Guy de Teba. Diana was godmother and chose the names. Steven did not like ‘de Teba’ as it seems that the duque de Teba from whom Laura is descended (also A.T.) was not a very reputable man. Diana gave him a silver mug. He behaved very well and looked nice in his robe and the little Venetian lace cap I bought in the Piazza San Marco. Madame Miradoux de la Primaube gave him a bouquet. In the evening Diana, Wolfie, George and I went to the Casino. The inevitable rich young Russian woman gambling. Leave tomorrow with Mrs Blair-Gordon for Wiesbaden. Had a sad letter from Dolly Potts.’

The financial crisis was at its height, but there was still champagne for dinner ‘to drink the Emperor of Austria’s health.’ One cannot account for the hideous economies of
the trek from Roscoff. They may have been suffering from shock at the prospect of ruin, and then found that Alice’s income, even when halved, left plenty to play with. Or it may simply have been that they failed to collect money sent to Roscoff or Rennes, which ran them short only for the journey. Throughout the whole summer Alice was writing business letters to Uncle Bert, and conducting negotiations with her banks. ‘Paid £900 into the Commercial Bank,’ she writes, and then, a few days later: ‘Commercial Bank has ceased payment. Have £700 in the bank at Frome. Draft of £500 yesterday from Melbourne.’ One must remember that the purchasing power of the pound was then four or five times what it is today. I was always told that I was born in the midst of ruin.

My parents, truants from both their houses, remained until the autumn in placid insecurity on the shores of Lucerne. The children bathed and fished in the lake, and they all rowed about in boats. My father painted in water colours, Uncle Wolfie played the piano, and every day there was an excursion to see some thing old or beautiful or curious.

The circumstances of my birth were under ancient and traditional auspices. Only the day before I was born my mother went to see the lion carved in the rock
fidei ac virtute Helvetiorum
, to the valour of the Swiss Guard, who died defending Louis XVI at Versailles, and a few days earlier she went with Alice to Mass, and to see the procession going into the Cathedral. ‘It looked very nice. Hundreds of girls with white wreaths and veils, priests with banners, church properties of all kinds, images, hatless boys, acolytes, incense etc.’ At home Alice was an ordinary Low Church Anglican, but
abroad she and my mother frequently attended Mass. In Milan she writes: ‘Heard a beautiful Mass at the Duomo.’ In Florence: ‘Laura, Bobby, Dominic and I went to Mass at Santa Croce.’ In Brittany, Nice, Munich, Venice and Naples are similar entries. She does not give any reason, but I think it was because she had a strong sense of civilisation, and where the ancient liturgy of the Church was being celebrated in splendid and historic buildings, she felt that it would be ignoble, too much like Mildy and Sarah and Percy Dell, to go ferreting out a Protestant Chapel. This is an example of the double standard which she observed all her life, one for Europe, one for Australia. In Melbourne she would not have dreamed of attending a Roman Catholic church. Dominic was five when he last entered a Catholic church abroad, but it may have been some image then printed on his waxen mind that is responsible for the terrible painting on the wall at Westhill. And if prenatal influences count for anything, these acts of worship abroad by my mother may explain why I like to have a Catholic chapel in my house, even if it is seldom used, and why from the cradle I have been instinctively on the extreme right of the
pale
.

In the middle of September Alice was again in Munich with Mrs Blair-Gordon who left her there to return to England. On the day of her departure they ‘went to see the statue of Bavaria. We went up into the head, three of us, and four other people came. Seven in the head. Herr W. dined with us and we went to the station to see Mrs B. G. off via Cologne and Bruxelles. At the station Herr W. introduced us to the artist Lembach and his wife, and the son of Bismark and his wife whom he met there.’

She came back alone to Lucerne. The autumn mists were gathering on the lake and the leaves were turning gold, but in her own mind were echoes of spring, and the coast was clear when on ‘24 Septembre, Dimanche, S. Izarn’ she made this entry:

‘Wrote to Honble. A. Tunstall telling him I would be in Rome on Thursday evening.’