5.3: Parents & siblings: the divorce

While I was conveniently out of touch with everyone in Paris, my parents had to face up to the media coverage of their divorce. Whatever may have got written just washed over my head, so to speak, in that I read none of it. I had already accepted the inevitability of the event itself. There was nothing that I could either do or say that was going to alter any of that. But there were still some things that I could do to effect the planning on how our subsequent lives should be organized. I had already done my share of brooding upon this whole subject of going to live at Job’s Mill, and there seemed little prospect of me being furnished with a room of my own - which was something in life which had become most important to me. But I realized how such privacy would be lost to me, if I didn’t hasten to speak up on the subject. My best bet was to angle for a different solution, which I broached for the first time in a letter to Henry, dated 23rd February 1953.

It has just occurred to me that it might be an easy solution to the accommodation problem, if I were to have a room at Longleat. I wouldn’t want to live there precisely. In fact it would be much nicer for me if I could spend the day, and have all meals - except possibly breakfast - at Job’s Mill. But it would probably be a great help in this accommodation problem - since Job’s Mill is much smaller than Sturford - if I were to have my bedroom at Longleat, and a room where I could chuck all my painting refuse, writing-books, gramophone records etc.

It would save you all from a lot of untidiness at Job’s Mill, and would enable some of the others to have rooms of their own, instead of having to share. And the advantage from my own point of view would be that - as I will obviously have to set up a house of my own sometime within the near future - this seems to be the obvious time to make a small beginning. To move all my belongings into a new house, just to move them out again a year or two later, does seem an awful waste of effort. I could get accustomed to the atmosphere of Longleat, ready for when it is to be my home. It will really need a number of years to do this satisfactorily, since there will not be that many weeks during the year when I am at home - what with Oxford and travel.

Please write and let me know what you think about the idea. The last thing that I would want is to make Virginia think that I didn’t want to live in Job’s Mill because she was there. If that were the case, there would be the more obvious solution of going to live down in Cornwall with Mum. This would just be a case of having my own bedroom and study at Longleat. But if you strongly disapprove of the idea, then I will of course forget about it.

Henry replied to this letter on 2nd March 1953.

With regard to your suggestion about living at Longleat, I am afraid that I cannot agree to this in the manner that you suggest. I am all for you having a room at Longleat where you can go and paint, or do what you wish, but under the present staff arrangements there, it would be quite impossible for you to have a bedroom and breakfast, since I know Mr Chapman [the retired policeman who was the resident caretaker at Longleat] would not relish the idea of having to take your breakfast up every morning. I think that by far the best thing would be for you to sleep and live at Job’s Mill, and take sandwiches - if you wish - over to Longleat and stay the day there. I quite appreciate your remarks about your reasons for wanting to do so, and I know they are true. Believe me, if you ever live at Longleat, it won’t take you long to get accustomed to the atmosphere.

But Henry went on to have second thoughts about the matter. My guess is that he wrote the first letter without actually consulting Virginia on the matter - perhaps specifically so as to shield her from all responsibility in taking such a decision. But it looks as if, on being shown a copy of the letter he had posted to me, she perceived how it might be wisest to accommodate my wishes. The following extract comes from Henry’s letter dated 9th March 1953.

About the matter of having a room at Longleat, I have since been talking it over, and I think you may probably have gathered some wrong impressions regarding the new house from Donald. Therefore I feel that my former decision of stamping on your idea from the start may be a little hasty, and I think when you come back we could discuss the matter to our mutual satisfaction.

The whole question was then shelved until my return to England in May - by which time I was to discover that the idea of me living at Longleat was more or less accepted by everyone concerned. It was only a matter of having to make the final arrangements, ready for the day when the shift in residences was finally to be put into effect - which was not until the summer, after both Daphne’s and Henry’s nuptial knots separately had been retied.

The real concern over this period was as to how the divorce was going to get treated in the media, once it all came out in court. Not that my parents intended to be seen wrangling in public concerning the division of wealth, nor in maligning each other’s reputation when it came to the question of apportioning blame. It was all to be conducted in gentlemanly fashion, with Daphne’s petition for divorce undefended on Henry’s side - in that their respective lawyers had come to an agreement on their behalf, before it ever came to court.

In the meantime I was informed of some of their domestic problems through the letters that they each wrote to me. Daphne wrote to tell me that Miss Prokinar had walked out on her, down in Cornwall, giving as her excuse that her doctor had said she was too ill to work due to her "fatty degeneration of the heart." But the excuse didn’t look quite so plausible in that Daphne soon discovered that she was working for someone else. The parting was in fact full of bitterness, for Miss Prokinar walked off with various items of electrical equipment from Cowrie, claiming that Henry had given them to her. So nothing could persuade her to return the property, even though legal proceedings were threatened.

Then she developed a paranoid obsession that Daphne and Xan were going out of their way to persecute her. And she retaliated by heaping curses and insults upon them, and spreading scandalous stories round the neighbourhood about the goings-on during the divorce. Fortunately she had never acquired the reputation of being a reliable source of information, so her evidence was largely discounted. But it meant that Daphne was unsettled for a while in finding it difficult to find someone appropriate to replace her - although this problem was eventually resolved in the appointment of a charmingly unprofessional couple from Lancashire, who went by the names of Danny and Beryl Owens.

I also heard from Daphne how Valentine had won his weight in the Eton boxing competitions. And I think it was this year that he made a courageous stand in the Quadrangular Tournament against Ashdown of Bedford College - subsequently to be identified as Paddy Ashdown MP. I was to be told later (by Paddy himself) how there was much blood all over the ring, but that my brother survived until the final bell. The point in particular that was being recollected was that his opponent, whom I think must have been a couple of years junior to himself, had initials which were V.C.

Valentine’s victory was a triumph for me in other ways too. Before leaving for Paris, I had been disputing this question of his qualities with Henry, who had been running him down. His line of argument was that Valentine had no backbone: that he would go from bad to worse. But I was sticking up for him, saying that he was really quite gutsy. This had developed into a dispute as to whether he would ever box for Eton and, as usually happened with Henry, a bet was offered. It was all laid out on a little piece of paper that "Dad bets Alexander £5 that Valentine will never box for Eton." Winning that bet was important for me in that I wanted to bring home to him that he continually underestimated the natural prowess of his sons.

There was no special news relating to Caroline or Christopher. The former was establishing her own position within the London social scene, while Christopher was still suffering the rigour of training as an officer-cadet at Mons - mild as it might seem after the experience of the Guards’ Depôt at Caterham.

As the divorce ordeal drew closer, it seems for a while that Henry was still planning to treat the occasion of my 21st birthday as something that should be celebrated upon the Longleat estate. There was after all a whole tradition of such celebration within the family. It had been described to me when I was working in the woods how, at Henry’s own 21st birthday, a special wooden bridge had been constructed over the Half Mile lake for him to walk over from the garden, and be fêted by his tenants on arriving at the park end. It created the idea of two segregated parties, as I imagine it to have been. Well I knew that my own party wasn’t going to be anything like that, but there were still plans for one afoot - as indicated in Henry’s letter of 17th April 1953.

I have arranged for a very small and non-elaborate Coming-of-Age party for you on Saturday June 6th. It will start at 3.30 when we will receive the guests in the garden, which will be closed to the public for that day. We will then have tea in a marquee at about 4.30; and at 5.30 I believe the tenants and employees will be making a small presentation to you. I shall have to make a short speech, the presenters of the gift will also make a short speech. And by short I mean that it won’t have to take more than ten minutes; in fact better not so.

After that the Beer Tent will be open, and I am not quite sure what will take place from then onwards. I hope to get the Wiltshire Yeomanry band for the whole afternoon. I am sorry that I cannot do more, but this will be quite expensive, and I think it is essential for you to be seen by everybody - since 90% of the Estate hardly know what you look like.

In all truth, I didn’t welcome the prospect of such a party in any way at all. I had always detested having to stand up and make speeches in public. Therefore it came as a considerable relief to me when I heard that there had been a change of plan. This was in a letter dated 27th April 1953.

I am awfully sorry Alexander, but I have changed my mind about your Coming-of-Age party. On thinking things over from every point of view, and all that is going on at the present moment, I think it would be far best after all not to have a celebration. It is hard to go into money matters at the present moment, but things are not too easy, nor will be in the near future - as you will gather when you come back here at the end of May. It would only mean that the whole affair might go off at half-cock, and people might say, or think, it was rather a poor "Do". I am sorry, as I should like to have done something for you, as my father did for me, but times and situations have changed. Maybe at a later date, which I hope won’t be for many years - that is when you marry - we can conjointly get together and introduce your future bride and yourself at the same time. I do hope you will understand.

In this same letter, Henry announced that he was currently in bed, suffering from chicken-pox.....

.....which I always thought to be a childish and simple disease, but have now discovered to be a most virulent and hideous complaint. The whole of my body and face is covered in spots, and I cannot shave in case they leave a scar behind. Heaven knows when I shall look respectable again, and be able to go out in the world once more. In fact I really feel rather depressed.

In replying to this letter on 3rd May 1953, I tell how the news was received.

When I was reading that part of your letter about you being inflicted with your childish and simple disease, I began to roar with laughter. The whole of the [A] family were present, and enquired what it was that I found so funny. When I told them that you had chicken-pox, they were shocked, and said that if this was an example of the English sense of humour, then they didn’t think much of it.

Despite my acceptance that there was to be no great festivity to mark my 21st birthday, I was still anticipating that my Coming-of-Age would receive some manner of recognition from home. But May 6th came round without me receiving a single letter or telegram from any member of my family. It may be that the [A] family took note of the neglect. But it was my fellow lodger, Eughien, who actually came up with an invitation - supposedly from his uncle, (or godfather?) who was described as being the Director of the Casino de Paris - for him to bring a friend to see the show that night. So he took me along to it. And that’s the way in which I celebrated my Coming-of-Age - savouring the privilege of being permitted to watch the spectacle from the wings. We saw ladies in crinolines, rushing to strip off their gowns as soon as some act had ended, and then prancing back on to the stage without any clothes at all, to pose as statues in the next act. Or some of them stood necking with the stage hands during the off-set periods. The presence of two strange youths in the shadows didn’t seem to deter anyone. And the experience was memorable in that a situation of this kind is unlikely to be on offer to me a second time.

I think it was Nanny who was the first person to recollect that I’d had my birthday. She had always been a constant, if unappreciated letter-writer in that - if the truth be told - her epistles were seldom of much excitement to read. Henry must have sent me a belated telegram, because there is no reference to my birthday in any of the letters he sent me. Daphne went so far as to apologize for forgetting about it in a letter dated May 18th - saying that she and Caroline would be combining to give me a joint present. Christopher and Valentine never got round to acknowledging it in any way at all.

It wasn’t really surprising that everyone forgot, because there were more important matters to occupy their minds - in that the divorce suit was then being heard. It got reported, as I was later to be told, without any attempt to sensationalize it. The official citations were, I believe, against Henry and Virginia, with Daphne asking for the judge’s discretion concerning her own misconduct with Xan. It was in her letter of 18th May that Daphne informed me that she had been granted a decree nisi, with costs against Henry, and the custody of Valentine nominally in her favour. And that was the end of the matter - for the time being in any case.

With regard to Henry’s attitude towards my stance as an art student, he was careful to ignore the vaunted tones in which I had been describing my work to him. But he did make the gesture of letting me know that there were at any rate some people, back at home, who were appreciative of my paintings. This passage is taken from a letter dated 4th May.

Mr Chapman has tidied up the chapel at Longleat in order to entertain booked parties, and he has hung canvas on the wall, complete with flags and - believe it or not! - about a dozen or so of the paintings you did while you were at Eton, and in the Life Guards. Even Christopher said they looked quite nice.