Showing posts with label royalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label royalty. Show all posts

Monday, February 5, 2024

All sorts of colours

Countess Cowper, Lady of the Bedchamber to Caroline Princess of Wales, the highest ranking lady in Britain at the time, died three centuries ago today. Her much older husband, Earl Cowper, who had served as the first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, had died a few months earlier. While at Court, the Countess kept a detailed diary - not published for more than a century - full of gossip, intrigue and colour about life in the early years of the newly-established Royal House of Hanover. It also includes a detailed description of the astonishing night when a display of Northern Lights caused all of London to come out onto the streets.

Mary Clavering was born in 1685, the daughter of John Clavering, of Chopwell, County Durham. She married William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper, who had recently been made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1706, though the marriage was kept secret to begin with (for no reason discernible today). She is said to have been a beautiful and accomplished woman. This was Earl Cowper’s second marriage, although he had also had a mistress before marrying Mary who bore him two illegitimate children.

Earl Cowper took part in negotiating the union of England with Scotland, and was appointed the first Lord Chancellor of the newly-formed Great Britain in 1707. On the death of Queen Anne (in 1714), her successor George I appointed Cowper one of the Lords Justices for governing the country during the king’s absence, and a few weeks later he again became Lord Chancellor.

When Hanover-born George took the throne, his son, George Augustus (who would go on to become King George II) also came to England with his wife Caroline. The two were titled as Prince and Princess of Wales, and, as King George I was estranged from his imprisoned wife, Caroline was thus the highest ranked woman in the land. The same year, 1714, Countess Cowper, who had been corresponding with Caroline in Hanover for some years, was appointed as her Lady to the Bedchamber. The Countess’s language skills are said to have been of great benefit in helping her husband liaise with the new court; and, initially, both the Earl and Countess helped ease the ongoing tensions between King and heir.

Earl Cowper, though, resigned office in 1718, ostensibly on grounds of ill-health, but most likely for being thought to have sided with the Prince of Wales, and having lost the confidence of the King. He retired to his home at Cole Green, Hertford. Mary, however, remained at court for some years. Earl Cowper died in 1723, and Mary died several months later. A little further information is available from Wikipedia or The Peerage.

Mary Cowper is largely remembered today for the lively and informative diary she kept all the time she was at court, although later she destroyed many entries (for 1717-1719), apparently to protect her husband who was suspected of plotting with Jacobites. What remained of the diary was first published by John Murray in 1864 as Diary of Mary Countess Cowper, Lady of the Bedchamber to The Princess of Wales 1714-1720, and is freely available online at Internet Archive. The work is notable for its intimate pictures of court, all the scheming and gossiping, at the beginning of the British monarchy’s House of Hanover (which ended with Queen Victoria).

(Mary Cowper was also responsible for preserving the diary of her friend David Hamilton, physician to Queen Anne, see The Diary Review - The spirit of millipedes.) Here are a few extracts from Countess Cowper’s diary, including one about a spectacular show of the Northern Lights in London.

19 October 1714
‘We went to my Lord Mayor’s Show, four of us in the Duchess of Shrewsbury’s Coach, and two with the Prince’s Lords in one of the King’s Coaches. We stood at a Quaker’s, over against Bow Church. I thought I should have lost the Use of my Ears with the continual Noise of Huzzas, Music, and Drums; and when we got to the Hall the Crowd was inconceivably great. My poor Lady Humphreys made a sad Figure in her black Velvet, and did make a most violent Bawling to her Page to hold up her Train before the Princess being loath to lose the Privilege of her Mayoralty. But the greatest Jest was that the King and the Princess both had been told that my Lord Mayor had borrowed her for that Day only; so I had much ado to convince them of the Contrary, though he by Marriage is a Sort of Relation of my Lord’s first Wife. At last they did agree that if he had borrowed a Wife, it would have been another Sort of One than she was.

This Day was the Prince’s Birthday. I never saw the Court so splendidly fine. The Evening concluded with a Ball, which the Prince and Princess began. She danced in Slippers [i.e. low-heeled shoes which were not the fashion at the time] very well, and the Prince better than Anybody.’

2 November 1714
‘I brought the Princess a Book that Madame Kielmanfegge had sent me to give her, and after presenting it I understood by Mrs. Howard that there was a mortal Hatred between them, and that the Princess thought her a wicked Woman. She also told me that her sending it to me was a Design to persuade the Princess that she was very well with me, in order to ruin my Credit with her; ‘For,’ added she, ‘if it had not been so, she would have sent it either by the Duchess of Bolton or Shrewsbury, that are so well with her; but she never stuck a Pin into her Gown without a Design.’ Piloti told me that she was the Daughter of the old Countess of Platen, who was Mistress to the King’s Father, and had caused the Separation.’

15 November 1714
‘I came into Waiting. I was ill when I came in, and continued so the whole Week. The Princess told me she had seen the Treatise on the State of Parties, already mentioned, and complimented me mightily upon it. In the Evening I played at Basset as low as I could, which they rallied me for; but I told my Mistress I played out of Duty, not Inclination, and having four Children, Nobody would think ill of me if for their Sakes I desired to save my Money, when I did not do Anything that was mean, dishonest, or dishonourable; for which she commended me, and said she thought the principal Duty of a Woman was to take care of her Children.’

17 November 1714
‘Dr. Clarke came in this Morning and presented the Princess with his Books. This Day she expressed a Dislike to my Lady Bristol’s Project of attacking the Duchess of Shrewsbury in the House of Commons about her being a Foreigner, and consequently incapable of having any Place about the Princess.

The Duchess of Bolton asked me to go to her House to meet the Prince and play at Cards with all the Ladies of the Bedchamber. But I was in Waiting: the Duchess of St. Albans supped out also that Night where the King was. She had been made Groom of the Stole the Week before, and so the Duchess of Shrewsbury had come into her Place; and now Lady Bristol laboured to get in, in the same Manner that the Duchess of Shrewsbury had been before. But she has since had a direct Denial.’

21 November 1714
‘I went to Chapel, which concluded the Service of my Week. I received a thousand Marks of my Mistress’s Favour, as embracing me, kissing me, saying the kindest Things, and telling me that she was truly sorry for my Week of Waiting was so near out. I am so charmed with her good Nature and good Qualities, that I shall never think I can do enough to please her. I am sure, if being sincerely true and just to her will be any Means to merit Favour, I shall have it, for I am come into the Court with Resolution never to tell a Lie; and I hope I find the good Effects of it, for she reposes more Confidence in what I say than in any others, upon that very Account.’

25 February 1716
‘Sir D. Hamilton cannot get into the Tower to Lord Carnwath. They are more strictly kept since the Escape. I was with the Princess, who had just received a Letter from Madame d’Orléans stuffed with Lies of the Jacobites, which they wrote from England just before the Pretender got to Lorraine. The Princess says the King and Prince are much displeased with Lord Nottingham. She thinks Monsieur Robetbon a Knave, and Baron Bothmar another. Company came in and stopped our Conversation.’

6 March 1716
‘At Court. An extraordinary Light in the Sky, described to me since by Dr. Clarke, who saw it from the Beginning. First appeared a black Cloud, from whence Smoke and Light issued forth at once on every Side, and then the Cloud opened, and there was a great Body of pale Fire, that rolled up and down, and sent forth all Sorts of Colours like the Rainbow on every Side; but this did not last above two or three Minutes. After that it was like pale elementary Fire issuing out on all sides of the Horizon, but most especially at the North and North-west, where it fixed last. The Motion of it was extremely swift and rapid, like Clouds in their swiftest Rack. Sometimes it discontinued for a While, at other Times it was but as Streaks of Light in the Sky, but moving always with Swiftness. About one o’Clock this Phenomenon was so strong, that the whole Face of the Heavens was entirely covered with it, moving as swiftly as before, but extremely low. It lasted till past Four, but decreased till it was quite gone. At One the Light was so great that I could, out of my Window, see People walk across Lincoln’s Inn Fields, though there was no Moon. Both Parties turned it on their Enemies. The Whigs said it was God’s Judgement on the horrid Rebellion, and the Tories said that it came for the Whigs taking off the two Lords [see below] that were executed. I could hardly make my Chairmen come Home with me, they were so frightened, and I was forced to let my Glass down, and to preach to them as I went along, to comfort them. I’m sure Anybody that had overheard the Dialogue would have laughed heartily. All the People were drawn out into the Streets, which were so full of people One could hardly pass, and all frighted to Death.’ [This was a display of the Northern Lights, once dubbed Lord Derwentwater’s Lights because the coffin of Lord Derwentwater, a young Jacobite executed for treason, had been brought to London that night.]
 

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 5 February 2014.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Edward VI, the Boy King

‘The lordes of the counsel sat at Gildhaul in London, where in the presence of a thousand peple they declared to the maire and bretherne their slouthfulnes in suffering unreasonable prices of thinges, and to craftesmen their wilfulnes etc, telling them that if apon this admonition they did not amende, I was holly determined to call in their liberties as confiscat, and to appoint officers that shold loke to them.’ This entry about a cost-of-living crisis comes from the remarkable diary of Edward VI, dubbed the Boy King, who died 470 years ago today aged only 15.

Edward, born in October 1537, was the only legitimate son of Henry VIII. His mother Jane Seymour died 12 days after his birth. On the death of his father nine years later, Edward became king. The realm, however, was governed by a Regency Council, which, initially, was led by Edward’s uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. Towards the end of 1549, Somerset was arrested for mismanaging the government - the year had seen widespread social unrest across England - and eventually beheaded in January 1552.

Thereafter, the Regency Council was led by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, and, from 1551, by Duke of Northumberland. But, as Edward fell ill in early 1553, so a succession crisis loomed. Edward himself named Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VIII and a Protestant married to one of Northumberland’s sons, as his heir presumptive. A few days after Edward’s death on 6 July, Jane was indeed proclaimed queen, though there is academic debate over whether she was ever a legitimate monarch. A further nine days on, the Privy Council changed its mind and named Edward VI’s Catholic half-sister Mary as queen. Jane was executed the following year, aged 16.

Edward, himself, probably died of tuberculosis, though some have claimed he was poisoned. He was a precocious child, and his short reign is considered to have made a lasting contribution to the English Reformation, and to have seen radical changes in how the church operated. The pace of change stalled then with Edward’s successor, Mary, until Elizabeth took the crown in 1558. Further biographical information is readily available from Wikipedia or English History for example.

Remarkably, while king, Edward kept a diary - its 68 leaves are held by the British Library. He may have been prompted to do so by one of his tutors. In order to make a complete chronicle of his reign, he started with a description of his childhood until 1547, followed it with a list of past events (mostly referring to himself in the third person), and then from March 1550 he kept daily entries until November 1552. It was first published in Gilbert Burnet’s The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (volume 4), and later, in 1857, as part of the Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth by John Gough Nichols (from which the following extracts are taken). Nichols says the diary’s value does not lie in its completeness, nor in its minute accuracy, but rather in ‘its incidental disclosures of state policy, and in its continual reflection of the character and pursuits of the young monarch himself’. So dense are the historically important references, that Nichols’s footnotes often take up far more of the page than Edward’s diary itself.

In his 1966 study, England’s Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, Wilbur Kitchener Jordan sums up the diary’s importance: ‘Surely in English history, and very possibly in European history, there is no historical source quite of the nature of the Chronicle of Edward VI. It is in part private diary, in part an educational exercise, and in part considered notes on policy and administration. The document stands as one of the major sources for our knowledge of the entire reign and not infrequently constitutes our only source of information for events of considerable significance.’ The full text of the diary - in the Literary Remains and in The History of the Reformation - is available online at Internet Archive and Googlebooks respectively.

24 May 1550
‘The embassadours came to me, presenting the ligier, and also delivering lettres of credaunce from the French king.’

25 May 1550
‘The embassadours came to the court, where thei saw me take the oth for th’acceptation of the treaty, and afterward dined with me; and after diner saw a pastime of tenne against tenne at the ring, wherof on th’on(e) sid(e) were the duke of Sowthfolk, the vice-dam, the lord Lisle, and seven other gentlemen, appareled in yelow; on the other, the lord Stra(nge), mons. Henadoy, and yeight other, in blew.’

26 May 1550
‘The embassadours saw the baiting of the bearis and bullis.’

27 May 1550
‘The embassadours, after thei had hunted, sat with me at souper.’

28 May 1550
‘The same went to see Hampton court, where thei did hunt, and the same night retourne to Durasme place.’

29 May 1550
‘The embassadours had a fair souper made them by the duke of Somerset, and afterward went into the tems (on the Thames) and saw both the beare hunted in the river, and also wilfier cast out of botis, and many prety conceites.’

30 May 1550
‘The embassadours toke ther leve, and the next day departid.’

15 April 1551
‘A conspiracy opened of the Essex men, who within three dayes after minded to declare the comming of straungers, and so to bring peple together to Chemsford, and then to spoile the riche men’s houses if they could.’

16 April 1551
‘Also of Londoners, who thought to rise on May day against the straungers of the cité; and both the parties committed to warde.’

24 May 1551
‘An earthquake was at Croidon and Blechingliee, and in the most part of Surrey, but no harme was donne.’

10 July 1551
‘At this time cam the sweat into London, wich was more vehement then the old sweat. Por if one toke cold he died mthin 3 houres, and if he skaped it held him but 9 houres, or 10 at the most. Also if he slept the first 6 houres, as he should be very desirous to doe, then he raved, and should die raving.’

11 July 1551
‘It grue so much, for in London the 10 day ther died 70 in the liberties, and this day 120, and also one of my gentlemen, another of my gromes, fell sike and died, that I removed to Ampton court with very few with me. [The epidemic called the sweating sickness, which remains a mystery today, had visited England before but this was the last major outbreak to occur, and thereafter vanished.]’

1 December 1551
‘The duke of Somerset cam to his triall at Westmyster halle. [The record mentions three indictments: 1) that he had designed to have seized the King’s person, and to have governed all affairs; 2) that he, with one hundred others, intended to have imprisoned the earl of Warwick, afterwards duke of Northumberland; and 3) that he had designed to have raised an insurrection in the city of London.]

He answerid he did not entend to raise London, [. . .] His assembling of men was but for his owne defence. He did not determin to kill the duke of Northumberland, the marquis, etc., but spake of it and determined after the contrary; and yet seamid to confess he went about there death. The lordis went togither. The duke of Northumberland wold not agree that any searching of his death shuld bee treason. So the lordis acquited him of high treason, and condemned him of treason feloniouse, and so he was adjuged to be hangid. He gave thankis to the lordis for there open trial, and cried mercy of the duke of Northumberland, the marquis of Northampton, and th’erle of Penbroke for his ill meaning against them, and made suet for his life, wife and children, servauntes and dettes, and so departed without the ax of the Toure. The peple, knowing not the matter, shouted hauf a douzen times, so loud that frome the halle dore it was hard at Chairing crosse plainly, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.’

22 January 1552
‘The duke of Somerset had his head cat of apon Towre hill betwene eight and nine a cloke in the morning.’

8 June 1552
‘The lordes of the counsel sat at Gildhaul in London, where in the presence of a thousand peple they declared to the maire and bretherne their slouthfulnes in suffering unreasonable prices of thinges, and to craftesmen their wilfulnes etc, telling them that if apon this admonition they did not amende, I was holly determined to call in their liberties as confiscat, and to appoint officers that shold loke to them.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 July 2013.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

A glittering occasion

Noël Coward, one of the greatest international show business personalities of the 20th century, died half a century ago today. His published diaries give a marvellously glittering sense of the London, Paris and New York theatre worlds, such as when he is describing a night at the Palladium, or hobnobbing with royalty; but they also provide a gossipy self-portrait of his own celebrity status.

Coward was born in Teddington, near London, in December 1899. He began performing on the stage at an early age, thanks to his mother answering an advert for child actors, and appeared in several productions with Sir Charles Hawtrey, a successful actor, comedian and director since the 1880s.

By the early 1920s, Coward was writing as well as performing, and had some success with his own play The Young Idea. It was The Vortex - with veiled references to drugs and homosexuality - performed in 1924 at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead which brought him into the public eye. Several very successful plays - including Hay Fever and Cavalcade - followed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In Private Lives, Coward starred with his famous stage partner Gertrude Lawrence.

Coward was also a prolific song writer and a talented singer. During the war, he entertained allied troops; and, clandestinely, he worked for the intelligence services. His play Blithe Spirit (1941) broke box-office records for a West End comedy. After the war, his work remained commercial, but did not achieve the heights of popularity he had experienced in the 1930s. In 1945, one of his short stories was turned into the very successful film Brief Encounter. He continued writing and producing plays, also for television, and found new popularity as a cabaret entertainer - both in the US and UK. From the 1950s, he became a tax exile, residing in Bermuda, Switzerland and finally Jamaica, returning regularly to London (as well as New York and Paris) to perform or oversee the production of a new show.

From 1956 to the end of the 1960s when ill health began to affect his work, Coward also became a film celebrity, starring in films such as Around the World in 80 DaysOur Man in Havana, and The Italian Job. And from the mid-1960s, revivals of his pre-war plays, as well as revues of his work became highly popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Towards the end of his life, he was dubbed the greatest living English dramatist, and Time magazine said of his best work it ‘seemed to exert not only a period charm but charm, period.’ He was knighted in 1969, and died on 26 March 1973. His estate was then administered by Graham Payn, Coward’s companion since the 1940s and 20 years his junior. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Musicals101 or the Noel Coward Society.

Part of Coward’s estate included 30 years worth of diaries. These were edited by Payn and Sheridan Morley for publication by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1982 as The Noël Coward Diaries. In their introduction, the editors summed up the author as ‘playboy of the West End world, jack of all its entertainment trades and master of most’ and ‘the most ineffably elegant and ubiquitous of entertainers’. In a second edition, brought out in 2000, the American theatre critic John Lahr observed that all of Coward’s diaries were written with a view to posterity, and as part of his ‘charm offensive’. A few pages can be read at Amazon.

7 November 1954
‘On Monday I appeared at the Royal Command Performance at the Palladium. It was a glittering occasion, crammed with stars, all shaking aspens. The moment I arrived in the dressing-room and found Bob Hope tight-lipped, Jack Buchanan quivering and Norman Wisdom sweating, I realized that the audience was vile, as it usually is on such regal nights. In the entr’acte Cole and Charles came round from the front and said it was the worst they had ever encountered and that I was to be prepared for a fate worse than death. This was exactly what I needed and so I bounded on to the stage like a bullet from a gun, sang ‘Uncle Harry’, ‘Mad Dogs” and ‘Bad Times’ very, very fast indeed and got the whole house cheering! I was on and off in nine and a half minutes. The next day the papers announced, with unexpected generosity, that I was the hit of the show. This was actually true but it wouldn’t have been if I had stayed on two minutes longer. Bob Hope had them where he wanted them, and then went on and on and lost them entirely. [. . .] After the show we lined up and were presented to the Queen, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret. The Queen looked luminously lovely and was wearing the largest sapphires I have ever seen. She was very charming, everyone was very charming, and that was that.’

5 June 1957
‘London has changed, even in eighteen months; the traffic is appalling and all elegance has fled from the West End. Coventry Street, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Shaftesbury Avenue have acquired a curious ‘welfare state’ squalor which reminds me of Moscow.’

1 February 1959
‘I have a charming suite here [at the Ritz hotel] and I much prefer it to the Dorchester. It is Edwardian in feeling and quiet and I have a brass ‘pineapple’ bed which makes me feel rather like the late Mrs George Keppel. I have definitely decided to do the Graham Greene film with Alex Guinness and Ralph Richardson. I have had two lunches with Carol [Reed, director of Our Man in Havana], who is treating me en prince. In fact in London this time I am definitely ‘hot’. Every time I go out I am beset with by reporters and photographers.’

16 December 1965
‘Sixty-six years ago today I was propelled from the womb. There were no electric trains, and motor cars were exciting curiosities. There was not even the thought of an aeroplane in the winter skies, and horse-buses clopped through the London streets. There were no buses in Teddington.’

31 December 1969
[This is the first entry since 7 September, and in fact his very last. His 70th birthday had occurred two weeks earlier and was the occasion of many social and artistic celebrations which he dubbed ‘Holy Week’.] ‘I opened the National Film Theatre season of my films with In Which We Serve, which I am the first to admit is a rattling good movie. I wept steadily throughout, right from the very beginning when they were building the ship in the shipyard. The BBC gave a terrific birthday party for me in the Lancaster Room at the Savoy which was a terrific success. My birthday lunch was given by the darling Queen Mother at Clarence House, where I received a crown-encrusted cigarette-box from her, an equally crown-encrusted cigarette-case from the Queen herself, and some exquisite cuff-links from Princess Margaret and Tony. During lunch the Queen asked me whether I would accept Mr Wilson’s offer of a knighthood. I kissed her hand and said, in a rather strangulated voice, “Yes, Ma’am.” Apart from all this my seventieth birthday was uneventful.’ [Nearly 30 years earlier, George VI had wished to award Coward a knighthood, but had been dissuaded by Winston Churchill.]

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 March 2013.

Monday, December 12, 2022

I went with the Queen

The undistinguished British diplomat and courtier, Henry Greville, died 150 years ago today. Like his more famous brother, Charles, he kept a diary for most of his life, and this was published a few years after his death. However, unlike Charles’s diary, Henry’s is considered relatively dull in style and content. Nevertheless, Henry records many of the political and cultural events going on around him with a smooth style, showing a particular affection for the theatre.

Henry William Greville, the youngest son of Charles and Lady Charlotte Greville, was born in 1801. He was educated at Westminster School and Oxford, though much of his childhood was spent on the Continent, chiefly in Brussels. As an adult he worked as private secretary for Lord Francis Egerton, afterwards earl of Ellesmere, when he was chief secretary for Ireland.

In 1835, Greville entered the diplomatic service, as attaché to the British embassy in Paris, and retired from it in 1844. For many years, he held a minor post at Court, that of a gentleman usher, which gave him a small addition to his income. Never having married, he died, after a somewhat lingering illness, on 12 December 1872. Wikipedia has a short biography, but there is far more information about Henry’s brother, Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville, who is remembered as a major diarist of the 19th century.

Henry Greville, though, also kept a diary for much of his life. This was edited by his niece, Viscountess Enfield (afterwards countess of Strafford), and published in four volumes from 1883 by Smith, Elder & Co. under the title Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville. All of these volumes are freely available at Internet Archive.

Henry’s diary is said to derive some importance from Greville’s position in Paris, but otherwise to lack the wit and malice found in his brother’s diary. Enfield says this in a preface to one of the volumes: ‘This work cannot aspire to the depth of thought, the carefulness of style, the pungency of satire which characterised the journals of my uncle Charles Greville. As a literary composition they are doubtless inferior to these, but still I venture to think and hope that in this volume there will be found something to amuse and to interest, with little or nothing to wound the most sensitive feelings.’

12 January 1840
‘On Tuesday there was a great ball at the Embassy. The Infants of Spain, Don Francisco and Dona Carlotta and their children, were present. The Infanta, a huge, fat, frightful woman, danced the whole evening like a girl of sixteen. Don Francisco is an ignoble stunted-looking man with a Bourbon face.

An interesting discussion is going on in the Chambers on the Eastern question. The feeling against Russia is very strong, but, on the other hand, the English alliance is not so popular as it has been.’

5 April 1840
‘I have been confined for a fortnight by a most excruciating rheumatism, and have been too ill to write. [. . .]

In England we have a war with China, and a motion of Graham censuring the Government with reference to this question stands for the 7th of this month. Government was beaten by sixteen on Stanley’s motion for revising and reforming the fictitious voting in Ireland, which was a great blow; they are consequently making a great whip for the debate on China. . .’

15 May 1840
‘The translation of Napoleon’s remains makes a great stir. Many people laugh at it, and think it a great piece of humbug - which no doubt it is - but it is a sort of humbug which goes down here exceedingly well. I am still confined to my couch, but people are very kind to me, [. . .]

The murder of Lord William Russell is still enveloped in mystery; and although there is evidence to connect the Swiss valet with the robbery, there is none to prove him guilty of the murder. Charles writes me word he had seen the prisoner in Tothill Fields prison; that he has a bad countenance, but was calm and even dejected, civil and respectful in his manner. Everything would tend to condemn him morally, but much doubt is entertained whether, legally, there be sufficient evidence to convict him.

The Duke of Wellington made an admirable speech the other night on a motion of Lord Stanhope on the Chinese question. It was well delivered, and, evincing an entire knowledge of the subject, and a total absence of all party feeling, he entered into a warm defence of Captain Elliott, showing that when an officer was, as he considered, unjustly attacked in the discharge of his duty, he never could allow any consideration of party warfare to prevent his upholding him against all detractors.

The Tories are very angry with the Duke, as their only object is to embarrass the Government, no matter at what hazard or cost.’

19 January 1841
‘Parliament was opened today by the Queen in person. The Speech, which is a good one, touches upon the state of Ireland principally, and upon the measures which are to be proposed for the amelioration of its social and physical condition; upon Cracow; and upon the Spanish marriages, but slightly, and merely saying that they had given rise to a correspondence between the two Governments. It is said in the town that Palmerston is much annoyed that stronger mention has not been made of this matter; that there had been a dispute in the Cabinet thereupon.

The debates were interesting.

I went to see Covent Garden Theatre, which is being newly constructed for an Italian Opera House. It was a very curious spectacle. M. Albano, the architect, showed it to me. It took them fourteen days to pull down the parts they wished to remove, so strongly was it built. Charles Kemble told me tonight the theatre had cost 300,000l.; that 100,000l. of this, his money and that of his family, had been sunk in the concern, and he should be very glad to sell his share of it for 10,000l.’

10 February 1841
‘One of the heaviest falls of snow I ever saw. It began yesterday, and continued all day and night, and the railroads are all but impassable. The snow is deep in the streets, and the Queen has just passed my window with her suite in three sledges.’

15 May 1841
‘Here is a large gap in my journal. My time has been entirely occupied by rehearsals and arrangements for the two plays we have acted at the St. James’s Theatre, for the benefit of the starving Irish and Scotch. They went off very well. ‘The Hunchback’ on the first evening and ‘Hernani’ and a farce on the second. The Queen and Royal Family and the elite of London were present, and the receipt was a very large one. Lady Dufierin wrote a beautiful epilogue, which was spoken to perfection by Mrs. Butler.

Jenny Lind has at last made her appearance at the Queen’s Theatre. She is decidedly a first-rate artist, a great musician, and a great executant. Her voice is of a peculiar quality, strong in the upper notes, but a good deal veiled in others. She is a good actress up to a certain point, and her style of singing is essentially German. Her success is prodigious, and perhaps greater than that of any other singer of our time; but she owes some of this to the skilful manner in which ‘the puff precedent’ has been brought into play, and by which public curiosity has been raised and kept up by artificial means. However, she is decidedly an artist of the first class, though not, as is asserted, the greatest that ever appeared.’

5 November 1850
‘The streets are more than usually filled with Guy Fawkes and images of Roman bishops. The ‘Times’ is entirely full of the sermons preached in the various churches, and of anti-Popery meetings in the provinces.’

5 February 1851
‘Yesterday I went with the Queen to the House of Lords. The day was magnificent, and the crowds of people far greater than I ever saw on any other similar occasion. The carriage in which I sat (the first) was too far from the Queen to judge of her reception, but the Duchess of Sutherland, who was in the State coach, told me the cheering was great, but the cries of ‘No Popery!’ were continuous. The House of Lords looked beautiful, filled as it was to overflowing by women in every sort of colour and sparkling with jewels.’

2 May 1851
‘Contrary to expectation, the Exhibition was opened yesterday with great solemnity and eclat. The day, though cold, was bright. The crowds were immense, and those who were to be present began going to the palace as early as six o’clock.

As I did not buy a season ticket I was not present, but all those who were unanimously pronounced it as one of the grandest sights they ever witnessed. I walked about the park, and never saw a more good-humoured multitude, and there was nowhere the slightest disorder or confusion.’

5 May 1851
‘The Queen has written a letter to John Russell, expressing her great satisfaction at the manner in which she was received, and in which everything was conducted on the 1st of May. There had been all sorts of rumours of probable disturbances and riots which were to be got up by foreign emissaries, &c., but for which there does not seem to have been any foundation.

The foreigners now in London were immensely struck by the order of the vast crowds which perambulated the streets, and which was maintained solely by the police.

Prince Albert dined at the Royal Academy for the first time, and made an excellent speech.

I never remember a colder spring. It constantly hails and rains, and the sun rarely shines!’

11 May 1851
‘I went yesterday for the first time to the Exhibition. It is really a marvellous place, beautiful and singular, but although filled with everything curious from all parts of the world, its immense size gives one a feeling of hopeless bewilderment. I did little more than walk through a part of it, glancing at the wondrous things it contains, and at the general effect of the building, and of the crowds of people who perambulated it without confusion or inconvenience, but I returned home jaded, with aching head and eyes from the glare, and with the sensation of being glad I had seen it, and (no doubt stupidly) with no desire to return there. Its success is great and universal, and when one recollects that seven months ago the building was not begun, and that now this stupendous edifice is finished, filled with everything most wonderful, and gathered from all corners of the world, it is nothing short of marvellous. The receipts are immense and daily increasing.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 12 December 2012.

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Party at the palace

Eighty years ago today, Mary, youngest daughter of Winston Churchill, went to a party hosted by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Expressions of pleasure and nervousness fill an entry in her diary for the day: ‘I suppose I must still be very young because I was simply THRILLED by the party & felt stupidly shy & overcome & excited.’  

Mary Spencer-Churchill was born in London on 15 September 1922, the same week in fact as her father purchased Chartwell, a country house in Kent, where she was brought up, and where she attended local schools. She worked for the Red Cross and the Women’s Voluntary Service from 1939 to 1941, subsequently joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service, serving in London, Belgium and Germany in mixed anti-aircraft batteries, rising to the rank of Junior Commander. She accompanied her father as aide-de-camp on several of his overseas journeys. In 1945, she was awarded an MBE in recognition of her military service.

Mary married the Conservative politician Christopher Soames (later created Baron Soames) in 1947 and they had five children. She accompanied him on his foreign postings to France and Rhodesia. She served many public organisations at various times in various positions (Churchill Society, Church Army, Royal National Theatre Board of Trustees, National Benevolent Fund for the Aged). However, she also published several acclaimed family biographical works, including Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage and Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter. In 1980, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her public service, particularly in Rhodesia. She died in 2014. Further information is available from Wikipedia, or from obituaries in The Guardian, The New York Times, and the BBC.

Mary Churchill began keeping a diary in earnest in January 1939, and kept up the habit during the war years. With motherhood and marriage, her diary became less detailed, and by the mid-1950s her entries mainly concern gardening (with the exception of the diary for 1979-1980 when she was with her husband in Rhodesia). All her diaries are open for public inspection at the Churchill Archives Centre, and its website has a detailed description of each volume. 

Mary’s daughter, Emma, has recently edited some of the diaries for publication as Mary Churchill’s War - The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter (Two Roads, 2021). This can be previewed at Googlebooks. Here is her entry from 80 years ago today - describing a thrilling visit to Buckingham Palace!

6 November 1942
‘Thanksgiving Day and I’m thrilled at the thought of the party at Buckingham Palace. Caught 1.05 train & had picnic lunch. Found Mummie still in bed but quite well & very gay. Tidied up frantically. Car took me to No. 10 at 3. Found Papa talking to Adml Noble who is off to Washington on a mission. We set off about 3.10.

I felt so excited couldn’t have been more thrilled if I d been in white satin & feathers (tho’ of course that would have been rather gay). And I felt so proud going with Papa. When we arrived we were shown into a drawing room by Sir Alexander Hardinge. Here we waited - there was Mr Winant, the Mountbattens, Ladies in Waiting, Admiral Stark & so on. The other guests were being shown into the next door room. Then another door opened & the Queen followed by the King & the 2 Princesses came in.

Papa unnerved me by saying in a hoarse whisper as Patricia Mountb. kissed the Queen’s hand & then her cheek - ‘You don’t do that’ - I was feeling VERY nervous by this time & I do hope I curtseyed ok. The King asked me about the OCTU - which was rather nice of him I thought. Then we stood behind the R[oyal] F[amily] as they received the guests. Papa had the King’s permission to leave soon afterwards & left me under the friendly wing of Mr Winant - who was looking more like Abe Lincoln than ever. Sir Charles Portal also adopted me & introduced me to S[quadron] Leader Nettleton VC (so good-looking AND married - tant pis) & S Leader Scott Malden who’s just made a tour of the USA.

Then I suddenly got caught up in a whirl of American army - cols, gens, majors etc - Very kind & gay & charming. Also some charming marines, Admiral Stark’s ADC. Stood for about 2 1/2 hrs. King & Queen talked constantly to the Americans. They (the Americans) were very much impressed & I felt so proud that they are our King & Queen. She is so beautiful & fresh & gracious - she was wearing lavender & pearls & was quite perfect. Then they played ‘God Save the King’ & Mr Winant took me home.

I suppose I must still be very young because I was simply THRILLED by the party & felt stupidly shy & overcome & excited - & it was so full of colour - red & gold & beautifully lit & lots of uniforms & gold braid!’

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing other than the date, on the very same day, the film Casablanca (which went on to become one of the most famous and loved films of all time) was being premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.’

Friday, September 9, 2022

The Queen and I

I have never had a very close relationship with the Queen, who died yesterday, so no mourning for me. But I’m not a republican. I feel I’ve always appreciated the monarchy for what it is, a significant and colourful link to the past, one which enriches our cultural life. I often think of it as a first class tourist attraction. Absolutely, and like the rest of the country, I believe the Queen has been a fabulous force for good and for unifying of her people. She’s had a difficult and enduring job, and managed it exceptionally well. 

My mother was born in the same year as the Queen, and I was born in the year of her coronation. At the time, my soon-to-be-absent father bought all the new ‘definitive’ stamps (with the new monarch’s profile) to give me when I was older. Some he posted on the first day of issue, and I still have those First Day Covers as well as the mint definitives. 

The queen, I have to admit, has troubled my diary rather infrequently over the decades. Nevertheless, her death provides me with an opportunity to gather what few diary entries there are for a whistle stop personal memoir of her life - covering the last 50 years of her reign. If my diary entries are to be relied on, I only ever saw the Queen once in person, during my student days in Cardiff (though I don’t remember the event at all). The most recent of my diary entries mentioning the Queen was this year, when my family and I had a royal good time at a party hosted by the Symondsbury Estate in Dorset - my wife, Hattie, even posed with the Queen for a photo!

19 November 1971
‘Went in for 9 physics and pure maths skipped probability to see the Queen and Duke opening bypass.’

4 June 1977
‘Today England is celebrating everywhere the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. In London it is a magnificent festival and procession with the Queen and all her offspring. And what am I doing, sitting on the floor in the sitting room listening to Julie Felix, hoping the phone will ring. And yet, what is one of the most exciting things that can happen when one is travelling? To find a festival in process, to see the people celebrating - carnival in Brazil for instance. I enthuse exceedingly to find a festival, procession, and yet here I have my own most English celebration that can be, and I am completely disinterested.’

24 December 1985
‘The Pope wishes the world Happy Christmas in 51 languages. The Queen says everyone should add their bit, however small, to the goodness of the world. The UK PM says to the Falkland Islands people that their right is their democracy.’

6 August 1987
‘DREAM: I got the idea to interview the Queen and request her cooperation for a desert island discs programme. Much to my amazement she accepts. At first the full import of my achievement didn’t filter through but soon I realised that there were crowds of people interested (including many taxi drivers). I could see myself conducting the interview as if on TV. We were in a large room and seated quite far apart. The Queen was old and decrepit, and needed the advice and help of a small group of assistants behind her. She only came out with two or three records (one by Grieg) and when I asked her why she had chosen them she chastised me. The programme was about her discs not why she was choosing them.’

15 February 1992
‘THE QUEEN: I watch a documentary about the life of our Queen. It is well photographed and oh so very carefully judged. She comes across as a rather preposterous old woman, privileged beyond all realm of fantasy with wealth and high society - pandered too by the world’s most famous people yet with no higher intelligence than the hospital sick or dwellers in old peoples’ homes who she patronises with visits. Unlike Prince Charles who does show some spirit, some spontaneity, some depth of knowledge, Queenie appears vacuous and characterless. That documentary, I think, was an error of judgement - one kept on asking why bother, what is the point of her. She seems to sign countless documents but plays no part in their meaning; she talks to countless figures in public life (“one can call anyone in to have a chat”), but garners no intelligence. There is just ceremony without the slightest substance, formality without even the semblance of authority. The film only served to remind us of that.’

21 March 1992
‘CRISIS IN TWO INSTITUTIONS - ROYALTY AND MARRIAGE: Sarah Ferguson, dearly beloved of Prince Andrew and mother of Beatrice and Eugenie, direct descendants to the throne of Great Britain, has decided she can take no more. After a party lasting five years, after being a world star, she’s decided to quit. The Queen’s press secretary in talks with the palace correspondents quietly tried to blame Fergie but the tabloids called his bluff and ran headlines like - the Queen has the knives out for Fergie - and so on. Of course, the Queen couldn’t be seen to be saying such things, so the PR had to take it in the chin and apologise publicly to Queenie and Fergie. Of course, he only spoke what the palace believes, but the palace just couldn’t take all that stick. But there will be war now between Fergie and the Palace. She’ll demand lots and pots of lolly - after all if she’s to keep quiet and not accept $2m dollar for her story from an American publisher she’ll want reasonable compensation. Shame on her, I say, I’m with you Queenie; send her to Coventry; how dare she play around with the very history of our country as well as set such a poor example for the married folk of our society!’

21 November 1992
‘A terrible fire has consumed a third of Windsor Castle. It started in the Queen’s private chapel and raged for 10-12 hours. Hundreds of firemen worked to stop it but huge flames poured out of the building for most of yesterday. The media has reported variable facts about the castle such as that it contains the world’s most important private collection of art, that it is the most continuously lived in castle in the world, that with Westminster Abbey it is the most important building in the country.’

13 December 1992
‘DIANA LETS THE SIDE DOWN: I am upset by the news this week that Prince Charles and his wife Diana are to separate. The royal family has had a bitch of a year but this news is the worst of the lot. Charles is in line to be King and Diana to be Queen, therefore anything they do and say matters. The separation (and ultimate divorce) of Prince Andrew and Fergie does not matter half as much. By refusing to accept the strictures of royal family life, Diana has betrayed the trust and responsibility invested in her. We the people, do not shout and wave and adore Diana herself, we wave, shout, love and adore her because she is a symbol of the royal family, she has accepted the role and the responsibility that goes with it. She is sorely mistaken if she thinks she can carry on as a famous and important person, and be treated as such everywhere she goes, now that she has stabbed the whole system in the back. Royal families cannot expect to live like ordinary people; they have immense privileges and there are costs that go with them. Diana appears to want her cake and to eat it. And how on earth can she go on speaking for the marriage guidance charity Relate, when she doesn’t have the stamina for her own marriage. She and Charles, like many royal families, already live separate lives; what does Diana hope to gain by proving to the world that she is not living a dream happy marriage as shown in cornflake advertisements. In five or ten years time, Diana will realise what a terrible mistake she has made. She will not find whatever is missing in her relationship with Charles anywhere else, other than for a few moments, or hours or days - like everybody else. Life is about getting on with the business and making it as bearable as you can. Whatever she chooses to do, it will be the same in the end, yet as Queen she could have had the most fascinating and interesting of lives. 

And poor old Charlie must be in the very pits of depression - he has failed to provide the leadership to the people that he so desperately wants to give, he has failed personally to hold his marriage together, and he has failed the whole historic tradition of the royalty in this country by choosing the wrong wife.

The Annus Horribilis, as Queenie has called 1992, begins to sound like an understatement, a pathetic statement of personal frustration. Yet the tragedy is of historic proportions, and the Queen herself must take a huge chunk of the blame; all three of her children who married are now separated. The fact that one of them, Anne, remarried this weekend does nothing at all to mitigate the historic fall of the House of Windsor.’

28 December 1993
‘On Christmas Day, we did make one short call, across the road to see Alice and Dan. It was their 60th wedding anniversary - they married on Christmas day in 1933 at St Peters Church, down the road. And they have lived in that house opposite almost all that time. I do find it quite amazing. Dan has not been well, but the two of them were perky and holding court to many friends in the street who were popping in to see the telegram they had received from the Queen. Oh they were so proud, but they had not yet opened it. They were waiting to open it with some of their family on Boxing Day, even though Christmas Day was the day, but they forgot to take it with them and thus missed the pleasure they had been looking forward to. On Monday Alice popped over to show us the open telegram. It wasn’t signed (of course telegrams are never signed - why doesn’t she send cards with photos of Buck Palace and a reproduced signature?) but Alice was still as pleased as punch with it. Apparently, in order to get a telegram, someone has to send the details in good time to the Palace so they can be checked out. At least you don’t have to pay for them, yet.’

5 September 1997
‘Diana-mania has continued all week, and will culminate tomorrow with her funeral and mass crowds in London. Me and mine are all utterly cynical and find the whole thing amazing. In a chorus, which must have been coordinated in some way, the newspapers came out strongly against the Queen and the Royal Family on Wednesday for not speaking to the nation and by lunchtime she and they had reacted. This evening we had a five minute live broadcast by Queenie herself. A carefully crafted speech, full of the right words but not an ounce of feeling behind them. She did, though, say the Royal Family would learn from the lessons of Princess Diana. And she extended the route of the hearse to Westminster Abbey, thus allowing more people to line the roads. Millions are expected tomorrow - god help them all - just for a glimpse of the coffin. Even the excuse of wanting to be there for such a unique moment is pretty thin when you consider how much more of a real moment it would have been to see her alive. She attracted crowds when she was alive, but nothing like the crowds who are prepared to put up with horrendous conditions tomorrow just to see the car in which her coffin is riding!’

1 June 2002
‘All around is the Queen’s Jubilee. It means nothing to me, nothing at all. I’ve no problem with people finding an excuse to celebrate, but I see no reason to do so myself. The Prom at the Palace is probably under way by now - poor old Queenie she must be wondering what she’s done to deserve having her lawn and shrubs subjected to the tramplings and pickings and litterings of 12,000 commoners. It will only get worse on Monday, when the prom turns into a party, and the tramplers, pickers and litterers, all too genteel tonight, will be youthful and wild.’

4 June 2012
‘Yesterday was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, though I don’t know why. She ascended the throne in February 1952, and her coronation was not until 1953, so how is June 1952 a proper anniversary of anything?

There has been, and continues to be, a lot of pomp and pageant. Yesterday saw a pretty amazing regatta on the Thames, with a 1,000 boats all joining an orderly procession with the Queen on ‘The Spirit of Chartwell’ and motoring/rowing from Wandsworth to Tower Bridge. Evidently, most of the TV coverage by the BBC was focused on the Queen and her entourage and any celebrities taking part, but I wanted to know a lot more about who was in all the hundreds of other boats and why they were there. Here at least is a list of the flotilla sections, which gives some idea of who took part: The Royal Jubilee Bells, Man-Powered Boats, Academy of Ancient Music, The Royal Squadron, The Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Plymouth, Dunkirk Little Ships, Shree Muktajeevan Pipe Band and Dhol Ensemble, Historic Boats, The Jubilant Commonwealth Choir, Service, Steam and Working Vessels, Leisure Vessels, The New Water Music, Narrow Boats and Barges, The Mayor’s Jubilee Band, Passenger Boats, Rhythm on the River, Downriver Passenger Boats, London Philharmonic Orchestra. 

To be honest, I would have liked to be there . . . Unlike sports, where I usually feel the best seat is in the lounge, at least to watch the action, which to me is more important than the atmosphere, this regatta was something to be seen live, in the crowds on the banks of the river. Adam was due to come visit us yesterday, but I wrote him suggesting that surely he would want to see the regatta and that he could come down another day; and he decided to do just that. But, when I rang him yesterday afternoon, to get a first hand account, he wasn’t there, he was at home watching it on TV! He claimed the rain, and problems getting a viewing spot decided him against going.

Also yesterday there were Big Lunches up and down the country, and street parties carry on today and tomorrow (an extra public holiday) as well.’

31 August 2013
‘Adam has been to the Bank of England, and seen its gold, and held it in his hands. It’s very rare for anyone to get to do this, he tells me, and the last person was the Queen a few months ago. His minister has responsibility for the gold reserves, which is why he and Adam were there. In a few days, they go to Poland for a conference; then Adam goes to Spain for a week’s holiday. And then he starts his new job.’

20 June 2016
‘I watched some of the build up to the service at St Paul’s Cathedral this morning, and the service itself. Some 53 members of the royal family were there, along with British dignitaries and representatives of many organisations with whom the queen has had dealings with over the decades. She was dressed in sherbet yellow, from top to toe (well not her shoes), and tottered down the aisle with her hubby, also tottering, both some 15 minutes late (very unusual). David Attenborough read a piece of nostalgia by Michael Bond, author of the Paddington books (both also 90).’

5 April 2020
‘The Queen is giving a live broadcast tonight on TV. I wonder if this year is already turning out to be even more of an Annus Horribilis than 1992 was for her. I mean she’s lost her grandson from the royal family to someone who not only has coloured blood but is an American, and now her citizens are dying in their hundreds every day of some godawful disease.’

22 October 2021
‘The Queen was in hospital Wednesday afternoon (at least she didn’t have to wait many hours in an A&E queue - Cornwall apparently has only one emergency A&E and it declared a ‘critical incident’ because of the queues of ambulances waiting with patients). There appears no cause for alarm as she went home the following morning. But it was not many months ago that her husband was hospitalised for a few days, and then died not long after.’

2 June 2022
‘The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee - god bless her. 70 years on the throne, the longest in British history. We’ve been to a fete/party hosted by the Symondsbury Estate this lunchtime. It was pretty crowded out with families, enjoying the sun, the food, the drink. Red, white and blue bunting everywhere, not to mention cardboard cutouts and portraits of her majesty. Long trestle tables had been put out for picnicking, and if you’d pre-ordered a lunch box it was yours for the collecting, so long as you didn’t mind standing in a long queue. We, of course, brought our lunch, and took photos at the Jubilee party tables (as well as with the Queen, and while playing some of the fete games).’

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Baffy on Edward’s abdication

‘King George VI came to the Throne. [. . .] At ten o’clock H.R.H. Prince Edward spoke on the wireless to the world. Fine and moving, ending on a firm harsh cry of ‘God Save the King.’ Nothing became him in his kingship like the leaving of it.’ This is Blanche Dugdale, niece and biographer of Arthur Balfour, writing in her diary exactly 85 years ago today.

Blanche was born in 1880 in Holland Park, London, the eldest child of Eustace Balfour, an architect and brother to the prime minister Arthur Balfour. She was educated at home, and from an early age was known as Baffy. She married Edgar Dugdale, a Lloyds of London underwriter in 1902. They had two children, and lived in South Kensington. Dugdale worked in the Naval Intelligence Department, and was associated with the League of Nations Union in various role from its founding in 1920. She was also one of the British delegates to the 1932 League Assembly. That year also saw her publish a two-volume biography on her uncle.

Dugdale was a committed Zionist and was constantly trying to influence those in power in favour of the Jewish cause in Palestine. She addressed public meetings, Zionist conferences, and even World Zionist Congresses; and she advised Chaim Weizmann in his political dealings with the British - see also How I saved the Balfour papers! She regularly published articles in the Zionist Review and authored a pamphlet The Balfour Declaration: Origins and Background. From 1940 until a few months before her death she worked daily in the political department of the Jewish Agency. She died in 1848, one day after being told that the State of Israel had come into being. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Jewish Virtual Library and Encyclopedia.com.

Dugdale’s diaries, political and gossipy, were first edited by N. A. Rose and published as Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947 (Valentine Mitchell, 1973). The publisher claimed: ‘Little of consequence escaped her discerning eye: the Abdication crisis; the Peel partition proposals; the Munich agreement; the May 1939 White Paper; the course of the war and the first news of the Holocaust; the post-war struggle for a Jewish state; and finally, and for Baffy triumphantly, the establishment of the State of Israel. These are some of the tumultuous events Baffy recorded in her detailed, pertinent, and often provocative style. Her diaries offer us a document of genuine historical interest, granting us an invaluable insider's glimpse into the controversial world of politics, domestic and international.’ The book can be virtually borrowed freely at Internet Archive.

Here are some choice extracts from Baffy’s diaries, including those written in the run-up to Edward VIII’s abdication.

7 December 1936
‘No! Not yet. Lunched at Club with Walter who explains the King’s one idea is Mrs Simpson. Nothing that stands between him and her will meet his approval. The Crown is only valuable if it would interest her. He must have marriage because then she can be with him always. Therefore he has no wish to form a ‘Party’ who would keep him on the Throne and let her be his mistress. Therefore he has no animosity against Ministers who are not opposing his abdication. On the contrary, he is very matey with Baldwin and asked his permission to see Winston, which was readily given and Winston dined with him on December 4th, though the Press has not got this. What really got him was Baldwin’s parting remark yesterday. ‘Well, Sir, I hope, whatever happens, that you will be happy.’ He is very upset by the newspapers, never having seen anything but fulsome adulation in all his forty years! Baldwin will be very careful not to press him. So the situation may remain as it is for some days, though this is bad, for unrest must grow. Nevertheless, I do not think, in light of this knowledge, that there is much danger of a King’s Party. It is impossible to be ‘plus royaliste que le roi’.’

8 December 1936
‘Rob Bernays drove me home. He says Winston was absolutely howled down yesterday, and is in a very chastened mood today, and told him (Rob) that when he put the question he really had not read Baldwin’s Statement!! I think he is done for. In three minutes his hopes of return to power and influence are shattered. But God is once more behind his servant Stanley Baldwin.’

10 December 1936
‘Went with Melchetts to House of Lords tea-room, also crowded. Speculations about where he will live and about money. Henry says Duchy of Cornwall revenues mortgaged for many years for her jewels. But above all, the difficulties about the divorce decree. He must be allowed to marry her!

As Henry said, we all make muddles of our lives, but none can make so great a muddle as that poor miserable creature!’

11 December 1936
‘King George VI came to the Throne.

Lunched at Ritz with Jack Wheeler-Bennett . . . [He] talked about Germany. He is convinced that Ribbentrop used Mrs Simpson, but proofs are hard to come by. But I think Government and Times have them. There must in that case be wailing and gnashing of teeth! Oswald told me on telephone, Beaverbrook had predicted two days of rioting all over the country. But the calm is unbroken.

Jack had heard what Mrs George Keppell said, ‘The King has shown neither decency, nor wisdom, nor regard for tradition.’! !

. . . At ten o’clock H.R.H. Prince Edward spoke on the wireless to the world. Fine and moving, ending on a firm harsh cry of ‘God Save the King.’ Nothing became him in his kingship like the leaving of it.’

13 December 1936
‘Stanley Baldwin is quite unmoved by his personal prestige. He says he was on a pinnacle before (at the time of the General Strike) and within six weeks all were abusing him. The House of Lords were such mugs that they went on with business after the King abdicated and a Special Act may have to be passed to indemnify them from treason!’

15 December 1936
‘Victor Cazalet drove me back to the House, where I had tea with Rob Hudson. Saw Winston for a second. He looked distraught. I hear he is very miserable. Hear also Sibyl Colefax wept at hearing Archbishop’s broadcast strictures on The Hostesses. Lady Cunard said ‘Ridiculous - I hardly know Mrs Simpson.’ Rat Week!’

18 September 1941
‘To Zionist Office. Lewis and Chaim both away. Had long talk with Locker and Ben-Gurion, who arrived from Palestine while I was away. Both of them deeply pessimistic about the chances of His Majesty’s Government agreeing to a Jewish Army now, after so many postponements. But they are as strong as ever that the claim to fight must not be abandoned. David Ben-Gurion feels that the pressure must come from Palestine now. There is no more political work to be done here he thinks, only publicity and propaganda. It may be that he is right. I shall believe him if the P.M.’s answer to a letter Chaim has written to him is evasive or discouraging. In that case the relations of the Agency with His Majesty’s Government would be altered, and it might be that we ought to publish all the records of the Army negotiations of the past two years . . .’

19 September 1941
‘Went to Zionist Office. Found old Lewis returned. A Yeshiva which convinced me that there is little hope of getting H.M.G.’s consent to the Jewish Division under present conditions. The P.M. has practically refused to answer Chaim’s letter on the subject. The question is - what next? I am personally in favour of asking H.M.G.’s permission to publish a documentary statement of the negotiations of the last two years. I think that the Jewish public has a right to demand it, and that for its own sake the Jewish Agency should do it. However, Chaim may not take that view, which is shared by Lewis. Ben-Gurion most tiresomely persists in harking back to his disagreements with the Yeshiva last time he was here and makes no constructive suggestions.’

Friday, October 8, 2021

The Pepys of Paris?

‘The diaries of Pierre de l’Estoile ‘do for the Paris of Henry IV what Pepys does for the London of Charles II, and a great deal more . . .’ This is the opinion of Nancy Lyman Roelker, an American history professor who first translated into English and edited l’Estoile’s diaries. L’Estoile - who died 410 years ago today - was a royal secretary and very well placed to observe the religions and political shenanigans of the age. Most recently, his diaries have been used extensively by Durham University’s Tom Hamilton for a first biography of the man in English.

Pierre de l’Estoile was born in Paris in 1546 into a middle class family. His father and grandfather had both held prestigious positions in the royal bureaucracy. His father, though, died when Pierre was only twelve, and he was placed under the care of Mathieu Béroalde, a Hebraic scholar with Protestant inclinations. In l’Estoile’s earliest foray into writing, a miscellany on the early Wars of Religion, he adopted a neutral tone, presenting the attitudes and opinions of both Catholics and Protestants, while supporting the Crown’s efforts at mediation.

L’Estoile studied law at Bourges, trained as a notary, and like his forefathers became a royal secretary, though not achieving particularly high office. He married Anne de Baillon, but she died in 1580, shortly after the birth of a daughter. Two years later he married the 18 year-old daughter of Colombe de Marteau. During the latter years of his life, he maintained a close interest in religious and papal controversies, all the while amassing a huge library. He died on 8 October 1611. There are only very sketchy biographical details available online, at Wikipedia.

L’Estoile’s main claim to historical fame stems from the diaries he left behind - these are also the main source of information about his life. A century or so after his death, one of his descendants, the abbot of  Abbey of Saint-Acheul, deposited the diaries in the abbey’s library, and when the abbey was dissolved they passed through the hands of a bookseller before being acquired by the Royal Library. Although the diaries were not intended for publication they have been used as a prime first hand source for histories of the reigns of Henry III and IV of France. 

Extracts from the diaries were first published in English by Harvard University Press in 1958 in The Paris of Henry of Navarre as seen by Pierre de l’Estoile - Selections from his Mémoires-Journaux, as translated and edited by Nancy Lyman Roelker. Here’s a paragraph from the introduction in which the editor likens l’Estoile to Samuel Pepys.

‘The Mémoires-Journaux of Pierre de l’Estoile do for the Paris of Henry IV what Pepys does for the London of Charles II, and a great deal more, because l’Estoile was a serious student of politics and morals, and combined his acute observation with keen judgment of men and events. In his diary, which covers thirty-seven years, 1574-1611, the reader finds an eyewitness account of the wars of religion, the court of the Valois, and a full account of the reign of Henry IV, complete with an enormous cast of characters who take part in these events, their idosyncrasies, their clothes, their food, their jokes, diseases, and love affairs - so that the reader knows many of them more intimately than the family across the street. In effect, that family has ceased to be across the street, for the reader is living in the quarter of St. André-des-Arts on the left bank of the Seine opposite the Palais de Justice, and the Palais, seat of the Parlement de Paris, the highest court in France, has become the hub of the universe, as it was to the diarist, who earned his living as audiencier, or lerk-in-chief of the Parliament. Seated with Pierre de l’Estoile in his cabinet the reader has a window on Paris; he sees too the events of the great world as they are seen at the Palais, where men are hotly disputing the merits of Mary Stuart’s execution, or laughing at the sign which been informally posted, “Lost! The Great Invincible Naval Army . . . [Armada] if anyone can give news of it . . . let him come to St Peter’s Palace where the Holy Father will give him wine.” ’

More recently, the diaries have been used extensively for a biographical work by Tom Hamilton (Oxford University Press, 2017): Pierre de L’Estoile and his Word in the Wars of Religion. Some pages can be freely read at Googlebooks. Hamilton says the diaries ‘provides a fascinating portrait of his private life, his social world, his role as a collector of curiosities, and his own personal experiences of living through the era of the French religious wars.’ And there is an informative review available online at H-Net (Michigan State University Department of History).

Here are several extracts of the diaries from Roelker’s 1958 work. (However, it is worth bearing in mind that Hamilton argues, in his book, that the early diaries, at least, were composed after Henry III’s death, “relying on previous drafts that are now lost.” He bases this on an analysis of l’Estoile’s handwriting style, which is identical to the style of other writings that appear after 1589.)

30 May 1574
‘Sunday, May 30,1574, the day of Pentecost, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Charles IX, King of France, worn out by a long and violent illness and loss of blood, which had caused his death to be predicted for more than three months, died in the Château of Vincennes near Paris, at the age of twenty-three years, eleven months and four or five days, after reigning about thirteen and a half years full of continual war and strife. He left one daughter, about nineteen months old, named Isabella of France, by his wife Madame Isabella of Austria, and the kingdom of France troubled by civil wars (on the pretext of religion and the public welfare) in most of its provinces, especially Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiné, Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois, and Normandy, where discontented Huguenots and the Catholics associated with them have seized various towns and strongholds which they hold with great force.’

31 May 1574
‘Monday, the last day of May, the Court of Parlement assembled in the morning, in spite of the holiday, and deputed certain presidents and conseillers to go to the Château of Vincennes to request Madame Catherine de Medici, mother of the late King, to accept the regency and undertake the government of the kingdom until the arrival of her son King Henry, who was in Poland. To this effect, the same afternoon . . . [she] willingly accepted the task, according to the intention of the late King, her son, who had decreed it a few hours before his death.

That same afternoon the body of the late King, who had lain in his bed . . . with his face uncovered for everyone to see . . . was opened and embalmed by the physicians and surgeons and placed in a metal casket.’

2 June 1574
‘Wednesday, 2nd, the Queen Regent had all the entrances to the Château of the Louvre locked, except the main gate . . . which had a large troop of archers stationed inside and one of Swiss outside. . . Rumor has it that she did this in fear of enterprises and secret conspiracies discovered at Easter, which had already resulted in the execution of Tourtet . . .  La Mole . . . and Coconas . . . in the Place de Grève in late April, and in the imprisonment of the Marshals Montmorency and Cossé.’

4 June 1574
‘Friday, June 4, three well-known gentlemen were sent by the Queen, in her own name and that of M. le Duc d’Alençon and the King of Navarre . . . to Poland to announce to the King the death of his late brother, congratulate him on his accession to the crown of France, and to urge him to hasten his return to his kingdom, to establish himself and to obviate the great evils and inconveniences which might be brought about by any further delay. . .’

1 July 1574
‘On Sunday,  the first day of July, in the great church Notre Dame in Paris, a solemn vow was taken taken in the name of the whole city, to Notre Dame de Lorette that if the city were delivered from the siege, they would present a silver lamp, and other ornaments. . . There was such a crowd at this occasion that a poor pregnant woman was suffocated in the mob, with her child.’ 

5 July 1574
‘Thursday, July 5, La Chapelle-Marteau, Prévost des Marchands, assembled the city [officials], read to them letters which the Duke of Mayenne had written to the Parisians, in which he exhorted them to hold fast and to cheer up, promising aid at the end of the month at the latest, and if he should fail, he gave them his wife and children to do with what they would. These beautiful words served the people for bread . . . although Boucher . . . and others have assured them of deliverance in two weeks, they were content to settle for a month, so anxious are they to gain that wonderful paradise which the preachers assure them will be gained by dying of hunger.’

8 July 1574
‘Thursday, July 8, the heart of the late King Charles was carried to the Célestins in Paris by M. le Duc, his brother, and there interred with all the solemnities and ceremonies usual in such cases.’

Friday, July 23, 2021

The loveliest dance

Exactly 80 years ago today, the young Alathea Gwendoline Alys Mary, a constant companion to the young Lilibet, future queen of England, attended a dance - one that she described as ‘the loveliest dance I’ve ever been to’. Alathea’s diaries, written when she was in her late teens and early 20s, have recently been published to much acclaim - A. N. Wilson, for example, is quoted as calling the work, ’A wonderful book’. They certainly provide a wonderfully carefree contrast to diaries written in nearby London during the war.

Alathea was born in 1923 at Norfolk House, Sheffield, to Henry FitzAlan-Howard, 2nd Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent, and Joyce Elizabeth Mary Langdale. Had she been a boy, she would eventually have become Duke of Norfolk, the head of England’s leading Catholic aristocratic family, and Earl Marshal and inherited Arundel Castle. Instead, the title went sideways to her third cousin. At the beginning of the Second World War, she was sent to live with her rather old-fashioned grandfather at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Park. There, her constant companions were Princess Elizabeth, 13, and Margaret, 9, who had been sent to Windsor for safety, and were also being educated by governesses. 

In 1953, Alathea married Hon. Edward Ward, and they settled in Lausanne, Switzerland. She died in 2001. There appears to be no further biographical information about her readily available online. However, in 2020, Hodder & Stoughton published a selection of Alathea’s diaries, as edited by Celestria Noel, under the title The Windsor Diaries 1940-45. According to her friend Isabella Naylor-Leyland, who wrote a foreward for the book, Alathea kept diaries all her life. This early selection, though, has particular interest because during the war years she was in daily contact with the future Queen. The book can be previewed at Amazon or Googlebooks.

The publisher says of Alathea: ‘She captures the tight-knit, happy bonds between the Royal Family, as well as the aspirations and anxieties, sometimes extreme, of her own teenage mind.’ It adds: ‘These unique diaries give us a bird’s eye view of Royal wartime life with all of Alathea’s honest, yet affectionate judgments and observations - as well as a candid and vivid portrait of the young Princess Elizabeth, known to Alathea as ‘Lilibet’, a warm, self-contained girl, already falling for her handsome prince Philip, and facing her ultimate destiny: the Crown.’

The book was critically well received. A. N. Wilson called it ‘a wonderful book’; The Times said it was ‘Funny, astute, poignant and historically fascinating’; and Charles Moore in The Spectator said Alathea ‘captures that tiny, peaceful island in a world on fire’. However, it is worth noting that there’s quite a contrast between Alathea’s diaries - full of emotions roused mostly by social concerns, not least preparing for parties - and other diaries written during the war years in nearby London. See, for example, the diaries kept by Charles Graves or Marielle Bennett.

Here is Alathea’s report to herself on one of those parties.

23 July 1941
‘Spent most of the morning and afternoon quietly lying on rug in garden reading. After tea, I sewed indoors, as flies so bad. At six I went up to begin the great affair of dressing! Could hardly eat any dinner and all the way to the Castle in the Barley Mow taxi I was in a state of nervous excitement. Arrived and was miserable at first because everyone had long white gloves, then I saw lots hadn’t, but I should have liked to have worn them. We all filed through into the Red Drawing Room, shaking hands with the K and Q and the princesses. Then dancing began. Never, in all my life, shall I forget this evening - it was the loveliest dance I’ve ever been to. There were nearly 200 there and I knew almost all - it went on till three in the morning without a lull, although supposed to end at twelve! We walked out on to the terrace in between dances. Everyone admired my dress including the Queen and I got on wonderfully and danced with everyone I wanted - except the King although he did clutch my arm in the first Palais Glide. I loved the waltz best, though, by far. The Q was wonderful and danced all the ‘funny dances’ and Paul Jones,’ etc., and looked lovely in a full frock of white tulle, covered with silver sequins and the princesses wore dresses rather the same as the Q, also from Hartnell, in white lacy stuff, embroidered with pale blue marguerites, and they had flowers in their hair and at their waist, but they were especially pretty because they weren’t ordinary children’s party frocks and were unlike anyone else’s. Actually, there weren’t very many lovely frocks and I honestly think that mine and the princesses’ were the prettiest there. No Eton boys, for which I was glad, as we then only had the dashing young ‘cavaliers’! I was terrified I wasn’t going to dance with Hugh Euston and could have killed Libby when she had him, for ages, but then I met him at the buffet and he said, with that great charm of his, ‘Oh, Alathea, I’ve been looking for you all the evening, we must have a dance!’ It wasn’t true but still!! I danced the last dance of all with him and it went on for ages - we got on beautifully and had a drink together at the end. The rooms were insufferably hot and someone fainted. PE asked me how many times I danced with him and said she was rather hurt because he only had the first one with her because he was asked to and then not again. Hugh loved my dress. We said goodbye about three fifteen - P Margaret stayed up till the very end. She was so sweet and everyone was mad about her. Car came to fetch me and I got home and fell into bed exhausted but blissfully happy! Never, in all my life, shall I forget this night.’

Saturday, May 1, 2021

The Great Exhibition

Today marks the 170th anniversary of the opening, by Queen Victoria, of the Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park, London, in 1851. It was the first international expo of its type, and was notable, among other things, for being housed in the Crystal Palace. Prince Albert was much involved in planning the exhibition, and the Queen, in her diary entry for the opening day, applauds him highly for the exhibition’s success.

The Great Exhibition, officially called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. Prince Albert was heavily involved with the organisation, as was Henry Cole, a civil servant and inventor best known for introducing Christmas cards.

In the late 1840s, Cole, with Prince Albert’s backing, won a royal charter for the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and organised several exhibitions for celebrating modern industrial technology. Soon, though, he perceived the possibility of opening a future exhibition to international participants. Queen Victoria approved a Royal Commission, under the presidency of Prince Albert, to manage such a project for 1851.

The Crystal Palace, designed by Joseph Paxton drawing on his experience of building greenhouses for the sixth Duke of Devonshire, was constructed to house the exhibition. (It was later moved to Sydenham in south London, an area which became known as Crystal Palace. The building itself, though, was destroyed by fire in 1936.) Some six million people visited the Great Exhibition and it was deemed a huge success, not least financially with the profits being used to found the now-famous Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.

Here is an extract from Queen Victoria’s diary for the day of the opening, freely available on a website dedicated to her journals. (See also The crown hurt me.)

1 May 1851
‘This day is one of the greatest and most glorious days of our lives, with which, to my pride and joy the name of my dearly beloved Albert is forever associated! It is a day which makes my heart swell with thankfulness ... The Park presented a wonderful spectacle, crowds streaming though it - carriages and troops passing, quite like the Coronation Day, and for me, the same anxiety. The day was bright, and all bustle and excitement. At half past 11, the whole procession in 9 state carriages was set in motion. Vicky and Bertie were in our carriage. Vicky was dressed in lace over white satin, with a small wreath of pink wild roses, in her hair, and looked very nice. Bertie was in full Highland dress. The Green Park and Hyde Park were one mass of densely crowded human beings, in the highest good humour and most enthusiastic. I never saw Hyde Park look as it did, being filled with crowds as far as the eye could reach. A little rain fell, just as we started; but before we neared the Crystal Palace, the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of every nation were flying.

We drove up Rotten Row and got out of our carriages at the entrance on that side. The glimpse through the iron gates of the Transept, the moving palms and flowers, the myriads of people filling the galleries and seats around, together with the flourish of trumpets, as we entered the building, gave a sensation I shall never forget, and I felt much moved ... In a few seconds we proceeded, Albert leading me having Vicky at his hand, and Bertie holding mine. The sight as we came to the centre where the steps and chair (on which I did not sit) was placed, facing the beautiful crystal fountain was magic and impressive. The tremendous cheering, the joy expressed in every face, the vastness of the building, with all its decorations and exhibits, the sound of the organ (with 200 instruments and 600 voices, which seemed nothing), and my beloved Husband the creator of this great ‘Peace Festival’, uniting the industry and arts of all nations of the earth, all this, was indeed moving, and a day to live forever. God bless my dearest Albert, and my dear Country which has shown itself so great today ... The Nave was full of people, which had not been intended and deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs, continued the whole time of our long walk from one end of the building, to the other. Every face was bright, and smiling, and many even had tears in their eyes ... One could of course see nothing, but what was high up in the Nave, and nothing in the Courts. The organs were but little heard, but the Military Band, at one end, had a very fine effect ...

We returned to our place and Albert told Lord Breadalbane to declare the Exhibition opened, which he did in a loud voice saying “Her Majesty commands me to declare the Exhibition opened”, when there was a flourish of trumpets, followed by immense cheering. Everyone was astounded and delighted. The return was equally satisfactory - the crowd most enthusiastic and perfect order kept. We reached the Palace at 20 minutes past 1 and went out on the balcony, being loudly cheered. That we felt happy and thankful, - I need not say - proud of all that had passed and of my beloved one’s success. Dearest Albert’s name is for ever immortalised and the absurd reports of dangers of every kind and sort, set about by a set of people, - the ‘soi-disant’ fashionables and the most violent protectionists - are silenced. It is therefore doubly satisfactory that all should have gone off so well, and without the slightest accident or mishap.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 1 May 2011.

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Nerves before a sitting

It’s 40 years to the day since Cecil Beaton died. A famous photographer and costume designer, he was also a significant diarist. His self-edited diaries were first published in six volumes while he was still alive but, since his death, various ‘unexpurgated’ collections have also appeared. Whether heading to the BBC for an interview as a young man, or in his 60s preparing to photograph Picasso or the Queen, both of whom he knew from previous sittings, Beaton uses his diary - among other things - to confess nerves and insecurities.

Beaton was born in 1904, in Hampstead, London, the eldest son of a successful timber merchant. He was given a camera when still young, and used it to take photographs of his sisters. He was educated first at Heath Mount (where he was famously bullied by Evelyn Waugh), then at Harrow and St. John’s College, Cambridge. Even before finishing his studies, he had set up his own photography studio.

He soon developed a reputation as a fashion photographer, working for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. He also photographed celebrities, and members of the Royal Family for official publications. During the Second World War he worked for the British Ministry of Information as a documentary photographer. On one assignment he was sent East to photograph the Empire and its allies at war. After the war, Beaton designed sets, costumes, and lighting for the Broadway stage, and for Hollywood films. He was knighted in 1972. Two years later he suffered a stroke that left him partly paralysed. He died on 18 January 1980. See Wikipedia, Huxley-Parlour, or the V&A for more biographical information.

Beaton began keeping a diary while still a boy and kept the habit for most of his life, though he didn’t start publishing his diaries until the early 1960s. He carried on until the early 1970s, creating a set of six, each one with a similar sub-title, as follows: The Wandering Years (1922-1939); The Years Between (1939-1944); The Happy Years (1944-1948); The Strenuous Years (1948-1955); The Restless Years (1955-1963); The Parting Years (1963-1974). In London, they were published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, and in New York by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

A decade after his death, in 1991, Oxford University Press brought out two books based on Beaton’s work for the Ministry of Information during the war: Chinese Diary and Album and Indian Diary and Album. And, more recently, there have also been two books promising Beaton’s unexpurgated diaries: The Unexpurgated Beaton: The Cecil Beaton Diaries As He Wrote Them, 1970-1980 (preview some pages at Amazon), and Beaton in the Sixties: The Cecil Beaton Diaries As He Wrote Them, 1965-1969.

Hugo Vickers, who provides an introduction to both the ‘unexpurgated’ volumes of diaries and who is one of Beaton’s biographers, gave a brief summary of Beaton the diarist (in a more general article) to The Guardian: ‘As a diarist, he tried to preserve the passing moment in aspic, but there was more to it than that. Aware that he had rare access to the people he photographed, he trained himself to make pen portraits of these figures, who were closely observed and their foibles uncomfortably recorded. He was never without a marbled book with blank pages in which to scribble at free moments. His memory was good and his pen sharp. Some of his images are very funny, some unkind, but he is never dull. And nor does he spare himself in these pages. Another diarist, James Lees-Milne, thought of Beaton’s diary as a particularly spiky spike on which to be hoisted to posterity, while John Richardson thought he had ‘a homosexual’s flair for seizing on the zeitgeist’.’

See The Diary Junction for links to a few diary extracts. Here, though, is the young Beaton (taken from The Wandering Years).

June 1926
‘I’d been wondering lately if I couldn’t get a job talking on the radio. I wrote to the BBC offering my services, and received a summons to be tried. In fear and trembling, all bunged up with a bad cold, I found my way to the broadcasting place. This really was an adventure! I hadn’t told anyone except N and B. I was interviewed by a tall, rough man named Sieveking. He said, ‘Read!’ Suffering from acute embarrassment, I started to drawl a bit of a short story I’d written. But I had hardly got going before he shouted, ‘Stop!’ I couldn’t think what disaster had occurred. ‘No, I’m afraid it’s no use. Your voice just isn’t any good!’


‘Couldn’t you hear me?’ Yes, Sieveking said he could hear me very well, but mine was a voice that didn’t ‘take’. I asked, ‘Does a cold make any difference?’

‘It would.’

‘Well, I have a bad cold.’

At last Sieveking confessed, ‘It’s no good pretending. With most people I beat around the bush and make false excuses. But if you won’t be grossly insulted, I’ll tell you just what’s wrong.’

‘Yes, I’d be interested.’

‘Well, when you’re broadcasting you’re talking to the masses. These people don’t like being talked down to or patronised.’ What he was trying to say was that I had an over-cultured up-stage sort of voice! This was a bitter shock for me. I’d always thought I spoke in a less affected way than my friends. No, Sieveking stood firm. I didn’t speak English as it should be spoken. I talked with an Oxford accent.

‘Surely not! I went to Cambridge.’

Sieveking then gave me an imitation of my voice. It sounded so exaggeratedly high-class as to make me almost sick! Why, I talked just like the silly ass in musical comedy - the nut with spats, large buttonhole and eyeglass! I felt annoyed, but flattered that the man had told me the truth. I said I could easily get rid of my faults if I practised, and would come again when my cold was better. I’d better try to talk to the masses in a straightforward way.

I came home and ate worms. Hell and damn!’

24 August 1936
‘It was on one of these mornings that the breakfast tray brought with it a fatal telegram: ‘Daddy gravely ill. Come.’ In a flash, everything changed. My mood, my life, the colour of the room, the significance of everything altered.

Since I was very small, I had always wondered what would happen if one of my parents died. The mere contemplation of such an event brought tears to my eyes. Now it had materialised in absentia, and it hurt sufficiently for me to cry. In a few minutes I got through to London on the telephone. My mother was suffering greatly, and wailed hysterically for me to come. My father had died of a heart attack at dawn. . .’

And here is Beaton in his sixties (taken from Beaton in the Sixties).

28 April 1965
‘It is strange that at an age of over 60, I should be able to work myself into such a nervous condition at the idea of photographing Picasso. I was certainly extremely on edge. I remember when I first photographed him in the early thirties, at that time I could speak very little French. . .’

18 September 1968
‘. . . I felt I must try to get a new picture of the Queen . . . Martin Charteris rang from Balmoral to say the Queen was not averse to my taking some new pictures of her. Later the phrase changed to ‘would be pleased’ and it was added that I should take some pictures specially for new stamps to be issued in the Channel Islands.

I suppose I’ve forgotten that in earlier days I would get ‘nerves’ before an important sitting, but certainly this time I felt quite anxious. The difficulties are great. Our points of view, our tastes are so different. The result is a compromise between two people and the fates play a large part. One does not know if things will conspire against me, or if the sun should shine.

There have been so many pictures of the queen in tiara, orders and crinoline that I felt I must try something different. I asked Martin if a deerstalker cloak would be suitable. No, he didn’t think so, but what about an admiral’s cloak? Nave-blue serge. That sounded great and when I saw the cape in his office, felt this would be an enormous asset. . . Martin telephoned to say the Queen had agreed to wear the cloak, was rather giggly about the whole thing, and said it didn’t matter what she wore underneath it as it wouldn’t show if she had nothing on. ‘Oh, the saucy thing!’ Eileen said when I relayed this piece of information to her. . .’

‘[Later in the same (long) entry about the photos:] . . . Maybe I was tired, but no question of masterpiece. How could the camera be so cruel? There was no imperfection it glossed over! I was appalled, really dunched. Blau [head of Camera Press which distributed Beaton’s photographs] comforted me, said he thought it a remarkable collection, the Queen shown in honesty as she is today, a woman of 42, no longer a child, not a film star, not made up for photographs, not particularly interested in her appearance. This was an interesting set.

The following day I was fresher. The rapturous cries of others helped me. The slight retouching helped too . . . Martin seemed enthusiastic, liked the cloak, and I left for America (I write on the plane against time)) without knowing if the cape will be approved or not. In fact, it is still in the hands of fate what results will come out of this latest milestone in my career. Or is it a nail in the coffin?’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 18 January 2010.