3.5: Parents and siblings: rumours of pending divorce

At the time when I first went out to Wolfenbüttel, I had been hoping there might be a chance to get released three months early from the Life Guards, which would have enabled me to go up to Oxford in October of that year. My demobilisation at the beginning of January wasn’t going to suit my plans very well, in that it would leave me with nine months on my hands without any specific ideas on how best to fill them. I had in fact explained all this to my father before leaving home, and he had promised to enquire from his friends in Whites Club if there was any way of pulling strings so that I could be excused those final months of my National Service. And he did make some enquiries in this direction through his friend Anthony Head, who was a Tory Minister. But it turned out that things were no longer quite as they once had been, and the reasons had to be better than I could offer for such strings to be pulled. So it became evident that I’d have to give some deeper thought to the problem of how to spend the period between my demobilisation and my going up to Oxford. I raised the question in a letter home, dated April 12th.

About the army, I have really given up by now the hope of getting out early. It is probably all for the best. If I am going to try for the diplomatic service, I shall need to speak French pretty well. And the best way to do this would be for me to live in Paris for a while. And as an occupation during this time, I’d like to go to an art school - so that if I fail for the Foreign Office, I’ll have something for which I’ve trained for me to fall back on.....

It should be noted how the idea was still there in my head that I was going to try to get into the Foreign Office. To become an artist was merely a second string to my ambitions at that time. On the other hand Henry was beginning to feel that he should discourage me from the whole idea. He wrote:

If you are really adamant in wishing to get into the Diplomatic Service - which I don’t personally agree with - then you really must work now you are in Germany, and learn to speak German, because you will find it will take much longer than three months even to learn a smattering of that language.

It is curious that I made no effort whatsoever to learn to speak German while I was out there. There was time on my hands for such an effort. On the other hand, no one else in the officers’ mess took such a task upon themselves. The rôles which required such an ability fell to those who could speak German before they arrived. Henry’s own idea as to what I should do with my life, after leaving the army, was far more concerned that I should get quickly into a real business concern - so that I could start accumulating money for Longleat. He wrote:

I want to have a long talk with you about your future plans - including the whole question of you going up to Oxford..... We must have a lengthy discussion about your future life as a whole.

This looked a bit ominous. But I confined myself in my reply to the issue of going to Paris.

I still think that Paris would be the right place for me to learn French. And I’ll want something to keep me occupied while I’m out there. So that something might just as well be an art school.

These issues were shelved for the time being. But it is noticeable how my relationship with Henry appeared to be warming up nicely, now that we were not actually required to see one another. The subject of health perhaps, is discussed rather too frequently in our exchange of letter. There had always been this tendency towards hypochondria in his attitude to life, and it could be that I was beginning to follow dutifully in his footsteps. I wrote:

Please ask Donald to send me out a large size container of Carter’s little liver pills. And I recommend them to you Dad, provided you don’t keep up the prescribed dose for too long, as that would give you dia-rear - however you spell it!

Henry in his reply of March 18th, was full of his own complaints.

I have just come back from a fortnight in the South of France, seeing the doctor who was supposed to be able to cure my sciatica. Unfortunately he has not done me much good, although I am a little easier. I am beginning to get desperate, as I feel that I am going to be perpetually lame for the rest of my life. I am still trying however to see other doctors, and hope by the next time I write to you, things will have improved.

The note of hypochondria even infringes upon what are intended as humorous uttering in my letters back home - as can be noted in the one I posted as an Easter greeting. There is an element of facetiousness which strikes a very wrong note when I come to read it today.

I hope that all the Easter blessings will cause the ills of the flesh - and of the spirit - to depart from you for this life henceforward, and for ever more!

But I might point out that this merely reciprocated the element of facetiousness in the sense of humour which Henry himself displayed - although in his case it was generally delivered with a more discernible charm.

What troubled me somewhat was that all of my mail over this period came from Henry, and none at all from Daphne. My letters home display repeated enquiries as to what had happened to her. I knew in fact that she was away in Crete with Xan Fielding, and I rather suspected that this was something that Henry didn’t wish to talk about. So I left it at that. But it was most unlike her to communicate so seldom with me. It was just the occasional post card that I received - almost as if she was using the relative silence as some kind of a smoke screen, behind which I might not discern what was truly happening in her life.

It was in a letter from Caroline that I gleaned the only real news, and even then it was only hinted. She wrote something to the following effect.

Won’t it be horrible if the divorce really takes place? Mum and Dad have been married for such ages that it’s impossible to think of them otherwise. Anyway I doubt if all the rumours are true.

This put the possibility clearly in my mind, although I continued to discount it - notwithstanding a comment or two, from the likes of Nick Beaumont on their return from leave in London, that my parents weren’t supposed to be getting on very well together. I was too far removed from the scene to worry about these matters in any detail.

Caroline’s first baby - Harry - had been born in May. So they now had a son, who stood to inherit Badminton House and the dukedom - third in line after David and David’s father, Bobby Somerset, that is to say. But the present Duke of Beaufort, their cousin, was still very much alive.

The news on Christopher was less good. He had been in trouble previously at Eton, in that he had taken the trouble to make a copy in his own handwriting of some pornographic limericks, which were taken from one of the first editions in Henry’s personal library at Sturford. And he was careless enough to leave these lying somewhere, where they were found and passed on to his tutor. I know not what punishment he received, but he was treated with lenience. Perhaps Jaques saw it as being similar to my own past crime, of harbouring The Encyclopaedia of Sex Practices within my boot locker. But there was now a second incident, which got him into further trouble. Christopher told me about it in one of his very rare letters to me. Once again it can be viewed perhaps as an attempt on his part to recreate my own former glories.

The 4th of June was terrible. After the first procession of boats, the cox ran over my straw hat - [for he now had his Lower Boats] - and I shall have to buy a new one. The Lord Londonderry gave me about six Pyms, laced with gin. At Masters I got hold of a bottle of what I thought was cider and, having drunk it, was told it was champagne. I thought I was quite all right, but Mr Herbert insisted on helping me into the boat. I told the crew that I was going to swamp them, so Barnard, who was the captain of the boat, ordered me not to row. So I didn’t, and just sat there. But when we got to the top and turned round, they threw away my oar and told me to swim and get it. I did, and they tried to set off without me. But I managed to get back into the boat - without my oar. I did not stand up when told to by the cox, and then shouted at him saying that he had forgotten about me. I nearly pushed Barnard overboard, but after that all went well. But Herbert insisted on helping me out of the boat again.

After the Procession, we went to the Burning Bush, where Tom Brocklebank was stopping anyone from getting near to it. He told me to go away twice, and said he would give me a Georgic. Then an Old Etonian tried to take my hat, and there was rather a fight. After that I went and climbed up the statue of the founder, and then we pulled down a wall near Martineau’s After this I went to bed. I was woken up by Jaques at 1.30 saying that I had been reported, and he wanted to know what I had been drinking. I was on the Headmaster’s bill, and have had my Henley leave stopped, and have to stay here until 1.30 on the Friday of Long Leave.

Nick Vivian has had the sack for going to drinking parties, and Charlie Wilson has had the sack for getting tight at Marlowe. Isn’t our family doing well?

I know not if these events had any direct bearing on Christopher’s decision to leave Eton at the end of the half - which was in fact one half earlier than had originally been intended. But there was certainly some additional reason for taking such a course in that his godfather, Brendon Bracken, had been asked if he could find an English lord to join up with a party of university students, who had been invited to tour America as some kind of a publicity stunt for Sears Robuck, the well-known postal order firm in the States. Christopher was delighted at this chance of joining their number, and spent the next few months travelling round America with them.

The news on Valentine had been rather more enigmatic. He had been at Eton for more than a year now - having passed in at Middle Fourth - as I myself had done. But I learnt how he was now in Henry’s bad books in that he had gone on a letter-writing strike. Henry was unused to such tactics, and had tried nearly every possible device to oblige him to send letters home. Fines and bribes had both been tried. He had even been put to do extra work in the woods during the holidays. But little Valentine remained stubbornly disobedient, so that Henry was now at his wits’ end. It was at this juncture that I wrote to Henry, urging him to take a softer line.

Poor Valentine will be having dismal holidays. You should consider this. You have always argued that character is the product of treatment rather than heredity. And you complain that his behaviour at Eton is hopelessly idle. So you take repressive measures against him. In fact you have been taking increasingly repressive measures against him for several years. But the net result appears to be increasing idleness. So doesn’t this indicate to you that the treatment may be wrong? That his stubborn idleness is actually caused by the treatment? That reverse treatment might produce the reverse effect? You give Valentine no time to recover from all the discipline he encounters at school. Indeed, he experiences more punishments in his home life than he does in his school life. Consequently, you find him in a continual state of opposition.

In his reply dated 15th August 1952, Henry wrote:

I have earnestly and seriously considered the suggestions made in your letter about poor little Valentine, but I’m afraid I still have to disagree with you. He started his three weeks work in the woods last Monday. I am very glad to have to tell you that he has improved beyond all recognition lately. He has at last developed a mind of his own!

This last point was a reference to the jokes we all made about him being little more than Christopher’s side-kick. It had indeed seemed at times that he didn’t have much of an independent personality. But with Christopher now touring America, the situation had apparently been transformed. It had little to do with the imposition of additional holiday work, as it pleased Henry to suppose.