The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (37 page)

In early spring 1949, Gerald wrote a letter addressed to Robert, the envelope announcing: ‘To be opened and attended to immediately upon my death’, and expressing the not-uncommon concern that pronouncement of death and even burial might take place before the person was fully deceased.

March 19 1949

I wish Mr Robert Heber-Percy to superintend all matters and formalities involved by my death.

I wish to be cremated.

If however there is any difficulty about this and I have to be buried in the ordinary way I wish it to be made certain – by any doctor – that I am truly dead by the severance of the jugular vein or by any other means.

GERALD LOOKING UNWELL AND MISERABLE ON THE DAY-BED IN HIS STUDY WHICH HE NOW USED AS A BEDROOM

By early 1950, Gerald was clearly in the final stages of his illness. Robert rang Clarissa in London suggesting that she come. The two had never got along, but he knew how much she and Gerald meant to each other. The patient was lying on the Venetian day-bed in his downstairs bedroom and ‘was clearly going’. ‘He was completely unlike himself,’ Clarissa remembered. ‘He didn’t want to be seen … he was past being interested.’419 She stayed for five or ten minutes and then left; she never saw him again.

Gerald knew he was dying. According to Robert, he never complained. During his last days, Sir Thomas Beecham wrote an article saying that Lord Berners was ‘the greatest English composer’ and that he would make new recordings of his compositions. Despite Gerald’s withdrawal from the world, this made him very happy.420 On 19 April, ‘Two hours before he died a new doctor came from London and Gerald said: “Thank you for coming, but I’m afraid I’ve rather wasted your time.” Those were the last words he spoke as he slipped peacefully into unconsciousness.’421

Gerald’s body was placed in a plain white coffin covered with purple velvet, which remained on trestles in the hall at Faringdon for several days. The funeral was arranged according to his wishes; he eschewed the churchyard at the end of the lawns in favour of the more modern method of cremation that was gaining popularity in post-war England. The coffin was carried out of the house to the hearse by estate workers Freddie Law and young Jack Fox. William Crack, Gerald’s beloved chauffeur from before the war, joined them, looking pale and upset. Cars were provided by Mr Webb and Robert travelled with Diana Mosley and the estate’s accountant. The few other people attending included Hughie, John Betjeman and some Oxford friends.

The service took place at Oxford’s crematorium at Headington, a plain brick 1930s building. Quantities of white flowers were sent by Gerald’s cousin Vera, who also put in an appearance with her mother. The forty-eight-year-old Mrs Williams was now 15th Baroness Berners, but she evidently was not acquainted with Gerald’s friends, producing what Diana Mosley called ‘a note of pure comedy Gerald would have enjoyed’. When the two women asked someone whether they should go to Faringdon after the funeral, the answer was ‘Better ask Mr Percy’, to which they replied, ‘Who is Mr Percy?’422 Later, there were rumours that the Berners relations were surprised and disappointed to learn that Gerald’s will left his house and all his possessions to Robert.

Robert was thirty-nine when Gerald died. Although he was still known as the Mad Boy, he was now a man, and looking back over what were almost two decades of life together, he realised that Gerald had been family, mentor and protector. Gerald had educated him, indulged him, loved him and – importantly – let him be. He had given him stability and freedom, and now in death had given him almost everything he owned (bar some legacies to servants). For the youngest Heber-Percy son, who had had to leave his childhood paradise in Shropshire, it was an extraordinary gift and one that gave his life the shape, substance and purpose it would not otherwise have had. Robert had known that Gerald was dying and must have prepared himself, but after his death he felt bereft. In reply to a condolence letter from Osbert Sitwell, he wrote:

I do miss him dreadfully as you say ‘All the particular things of which only he would see the point have become pointless’, and also what you would realise but that most people never understood was his fund of wisdom. I never made any decision without either mentally or actually considering his reaction, and though I fell into many pits he always rescued me with such effective ease, that it left me grateful but bewildered and now I feel quite lost and haven’t an idea what to do with the rest of my life.

ATER, PEOPLE WOULD COMMENT that after Gerald’s death, Robert’s life was founded on preserving and cherishing Faringdon House. It was as though the Mad Boy transformed himself into a dutiful caretaker, a guardian of the flame of Lord Berners’s memory. Their shared home would become almost like a shrine. There may be some truth in this, but the process was not a straightforward one. In the beginning, Gerald’s friends commiserated with Robert and with each other over their loss. John Betjeman wrote to Diana Mosley, ‘I had so taken him for granted that I forgot how good a friend he was, and how scornful of all pretension and how loyal in trouble, effortlessly loyal it seemed. It’s hell without him, isn’t it?’423 He then penned an obituary for the Listener that tried to put into words the magical atmosphere Gerald had created around himself: ‘Envious dry blankets who did not know him, and those who read of his luxury and the world of beauty with which he could afford to protect himself, may regard him as a relic of a civilized age. They can think what they like, the dreary form-fillers … They cannot be expected to understand the pleasure and thankfulness those people feel who had the privilege of his friendship.’424

Evelyn Waugh wrote more cattily to Diana, ‘The Mad Boy has installed a Mad Boy of his own. Has there ever been a property in history that has devolved from catamite to catamite for any length of time?’425 In fact, Hughie (now thirty-two) does not appear to have been anyone’s idea of a mad boy or a catamite; nor did he provide a solution for Robert who was thrown into turmoil by Gerald’s death. The crisis was serious enough for him to debate whether he should stay at Faringdon. He once told Jennifer that there had been a point when he climbed to the top of a hill and pondered on his future, coming to the decision to stay with Gerald and make Faringdon his life. It would involve giving up some independence, and the possibility of another sort of life (as a married farmer?), but it was a conscious choice. Faringdon was surely Robert’s dream, the place he had known for the last fifteen years was destined to be his. Suddenly, however, with Gerald gone, it didn’t make sense. As he had confessed to Osbert Sitwell, he felt ‘quite lost’ and didn’t know what to do with his life.

DESPITE THE TURMOIL AFTER GERALD’S DEATH, ROBERT MANAGED BY THE NEXT MONTH TO ARRANGE THE CONTINUED PAYMENT OF AN ALLOWANCE TO THE AGEING MARCHESA CASATI. BOTH MEN WERE DISCREET ABOUT THEIR GENEROSITY TO FRIENDS

Not long after his bereavement, Robert vacated the main part of the house and moved downstairs onto the lower ground floor, into a panelled room that Gerald had used for many years as his library. It looked out from beneath the terrace, towards the fountain on the back lawn and the parkland beyond. In order to bring more daylight into the room, Gerald had designed a system of holes cut in the terrace, with glass prisms refracting the light inwards. It was fine as a workroom, but after the airy brightness of the house it must have felt gloomy and subterranean. In November 1950, seven months after Gerald’s death, Robert gave an interview to the Daily Express. Described as a ‘neighbour of Berners’, Robert was said to have inherited most of the £214,000 that Lord Berners had left in his will, but changes were evidently afoot. The heir was described as living ‘in the basement’. The drawing room would stay open for Christmas, Robert said, but ‘then it is to go under dust sheets for good’.426 The article claimed that the upper rooms of Faringdon House – ‘the meeting place of famous people’ including George Bernard Shaw, Constant Lambert and Margot Fonteyn – had now been turned into three flats, though this was somewhat misleading as they were actually on the attic floor that had been occupied by servants in the 1930s and US Army officers during the war.

Some insight into Robert’s emotional state comes across in his words to the journalist: ‘Lord Berners and I were friends for 20 years. I am his literary and musical executor. But we did not share a single interest. I am a farmer and I like horses.’ It seems as though Robert had not only suddenly realised how different he was to Gerald, but that he might be unable to keep the show running. Partly, this was financial – there were daunting death duties to be paid – but it was also psychological. Over those two decades, Robert had got to know great men and women of letters, music, the theatre and politics. He had learned about culture, manners and food by merely being there and was excused any shortcomings on account of being Gerald’s ‘Mad Boy’, who provided youth, beauty and a picturesque degree of crazy behaviour. Now, in his fortieth year, Robert seems to have had a loss of faith: ‘We did not share a single interest.’ Had he ever really been a part of all this? And how could he continue without the force of Gerald’s personality?

Although some of the old friends continued to visit Faringdon in the ensuing months, among them Coote Lygon and Billa Harrod with her family, the visitors’ book stops abruptly in September and is not continued again for four years. During this time, Robert changed his plans and made the place his own. Jack Fox (now returned from the Navy) was among various estate employees who renovated bedrooms, put up partitions and added bathrooms. Jack remembers constructing a tiny bathroom for the Crystal Room, suspended over the back staircase – you could tap the bottom of the pink enamel bath when you went downstairs. It was painted throughout with a fantastical landscape of jungle and desert by the artist Roy Hobdell, who had produced murals for Robert and Gerald’s old friend Lord Faringdon at Buscot Park. Other decorations were added by Hobdell: a trompe l’œil of Lord Berners’s books and a portrait of a scantily clad young man (the Mad Boy?) went on some cupboard doors in the drawing room; the wooden canopy of Victoria’s four-poster received a wreath of pink roses encircling the gilded words ‘Victoria, Her Bed’; and at a later date, a blocked-up window at the lodge house that Jack Fox moved into was painted with a fox reading the Faringdon Standard between lace curtains.

ROY HOBDELL’S MURAL IN THE BATHROOM BUILT BY JACK FOX

By the time Michael Duff was signing himself back into the visitors’ book as ‘Michael of Vaynol’, he had married the beautiful, bisexual Lady Caroline Paget, previously lover and inspiration to Rex Whistler. Michael’s chaotic family life rivalled or even exceeded Robert’s. When Caroline became pregnant, it was generally assumed that Michael had little to do with it. Some speculated that the father was her uncle-by-marriage, Duff Cooper, while others believed it was Anthony Eden, the future Prime Minister (who at fifty-five would soon marry the thirty-two-year-old Clarissa Churchill). When Caroline lost the child, she and Michael adopted a baby boy they named Charley, whom Michael largely rejected, to the extent of disinheriting him.

ONE OF ROY HOBDELL’S TROMPE L’ŒIL WORKS COMMISSIONED BY ROBERT. THE BOOKS ARE ALL MUSICAL AND LITERARY WORKS BY GERALD, THE HANDSOME YOUTH SURELY INSPIRED BY THE MAD BOY

According to the grown-up Charley Duff, Robert had ‘the indoor boyfriend and the outdoor boyfriend’ at Faringdon during the 1950s. Rumour had it that the latter was not allowed in and the former was not allowed out. If Hughie was the person who kept indoor life on a more even keel than it might have been, then ‘Garth’ (as he was known, after an action-adventure cartoon character) was the man on the outside. In fact, as Hughie was farm manager, he did go out; and although Garth was estate foreman, he did go in. One friend recalled that Garth came up to the house during the day, but not in the evening or for meals. Nevertheless, the newly married Barbara Connolly recorded in her diary a visit with Cyril, for Christmas 1950. ‘Met by Garth at the house who acted as hostess and said, “Pleased to meet you again.” He poured us out a delicious iced gin cocktail sugared round the edge. The house was very centrally heated, a strong smell of incense that Garth said was smouldering rosemary they’d put on the fire.’427 Clarissa was also there for this first Christmas after Gerald died – mysteriously, given her lack of rapport with the Mad Boy. They saw the Mosleys and the Betjemans among others; Robert was evidently staying close to the old friends. Barbara continued: ‘Clarissa Churchill had not changed, as I had been made to, for she had no evening dress with her. There were two other queens. A very pretty American who didn’t say much but seemed intelligent and kept pursing up his mouth; a blue-eyed airman called Ken, snobbish and self-assured who never stopped talking, anxious to be a social success. The whole weekend I found a strain. Lengthy meal sessions, messy food with little wine and a row of watchful eyes with everyone making guarded statements or listening to Pungle [Cyril] holding forth.’428

Garth’s real name was Clarence, though most people called him Bob. Ten years younger than Robert, he was born into a family of Yorkshire miners, but swore he would never go underground. He worked on the Duke of Devonshire’s estate before serving in the Medical Corps during the war, when he was injured and captured as a prisoner-of-war. In around 1947, Robert made him foreman at Faringdon – a job some thought he was not qualified for. Heavily built with thinning fair hair and blue eyes, he was a handsome rogue in the mould of Charlton Heston, a cigarette always hanging from his lips. Others noted his bad skin and uncouth ways. ‘Captain Cruddas never had a bad word for anyone, but he did for Garth,’ recalled Jack Fox. ‘Those two were at daggers drawn.’ ‘He was not a very nice man,’ said another acquaintance. To complicate the picture, Garth had married a local woman in 1947, and when their daughter Susan was born in 1949, Robert was made godfather. After Garth had a spell in prison for drink-driving, he and his family lived in a flat on the top floor of Faringdon House. Susan learned to count using Robert’s roulette chips and her parents would watch out of their attic window as guests arrived at the front door below, with Garth telling his wife their names.429 Some believed that the foreman had a strange hold over Robert, others couldn’t understand why he needed to travel abroad with him ‘to carry the money’ after the house in Rome was sold. And Garth and his wife were regularly seen driving Robert’s sports car when they went out for the evening. Michael Duff spread a story that he had asked Garth, ‘What do you do?’ and that the reply was ‘I digs.’430