6.4: Parents: a fresh start

This was in fact a very good period for my relationship with each of my parents. While the divorce had been still pending, they had both been under considerable strain concerning how things might finally be resolved. More than ever before, they needed the moral support of their children as they separately rediscovered their positions in life. They needed our acceptance of their new marital partners, and they needed our silent confirmation that there were bonds of continuity in a surviving family spirit on both sides of the divide. And we all gave them this.

There was also the idea that Henry had now initiated what might be regarded as the start to the gradual transfer of the Longleat estate into the hands of his heir. Seen from his point of view, he felt confident that I would soon outgrow this arty phase through which I was passing. It would be like all that butterfly-collecting when I was sixteen. I would grow to see how there were more important concerns for me in life. Oxford would do that for me; so he was now beginning to feel pleased that I would be going there. And the fact that I’d be reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics might well turn out to have been a good choice; or not the philosophy perhaps, for that was too abstruse a subject for the Thynnes. But the economics might infuse me with the beginnings of a business sense. And the politics too might come in handy, so long as it didn’t turn me into a socialist - which was an outcome that his friends from Whites’ Club always deemed possible, within the risk of permitting a son the experience of an Oxbridge education. But he didn’t really see that kind of deviation in me. And if I did ever take it into my head to go into politics, then he knew from the past how I had leadership qualities. He was really quite proud of his son and heir.

Christopher and Valentine were all right, but neither of them had really made their mark upon school in the way that I had. Valentine might be doing better at Eton than Christopher had done; but there was a stubborn streak in him that was appreciated neither by Henry, nor by his schoolmasters. In some ways there might be greater bonds of identity between Christopher and himself - in the way that they had both had difficulty in coping with their educational curriculum. And they were closer in personality too, with their capacity to shrug off any rebukes or set-backs that they might receive in life. Christopher was doing all right now, having just passed out from Mons O.C.S. with a low grading, but one that was just a little better than the one which I myself had been given - after answering back to that officer, of course! Despite his affection for Christopher, he never really set him quite in the same category as myself - or not in terms of being an appropriate heir to Longleat. He always felt that I had the makings of an excellent Marquess.

Henry had been curiously reserved about arranging for us to meet Virginia. Or the reserve had probably been more on her side than his. She probably wanted to feel that the marital status was firmly established before having to contend with us. Prior to that, in her naturally timid disposition, she might have felt at a disadvantage within the existing family relationships.

With Daphne it had always been different, in that she had never concealed Xan from our acquaintance. And he had been with her in Paris when I first arrived back there, after the Coronation. Before they returned to London, we all had dinner together one evening, in the company of Louise de Vilmorin, the French novelist, who was a long-standing friend of Daphne’s. The part I remember most about the evening was the sense of irritation that Xan later declared himself to be feeling at the way Louise "made a spectacle of herself" in condescending to my level - almost patronizing me, in effect - explaining to me how I should learn to tutoyer my elders once they had given me such permission. And she was crooking her arm round mine so that we could toast each other simultaneously with champagne. I sensed Xan’s irritation - possibly with both of us. But it remained obscure to me precisely what kind of offence we were committing. Was it that I was treading on his preserves from previous sexual relationship? Was she deliberately seeking to anger him? Or was the coyness in such pseudo-intimacy an abomination in his Anglo-Saxon eyes? I was aware how Daphne’s relationship with Xan now exposed me to a new set of values to which my behaviour would need to address itself.

There was another snippet too from the dinner conversation which comes to mind. Louise was saying how she really didn’t understand why Daphne and Xan should trouble themselves with the formalization of their relationship in a marriage contract. Why not quite simply enjoy each other’s company for what it was worth, without assuming all the legal responsibilities which followed on from the official ceremony? I noted how Xan was looking to his front, without commenting. But it was Daphne who appeared thrown by the suggestion, and she was trying to justify their intention by saying how it would make things difficult for Valentine, who was still at school, and might find the fact of his mother remaining unmarried to be embarrassing for him. But she was beginning to fluster in her argument and suddenly turned to me for support. "Oh do tell her Alexander. Surely you see that we’ve got to get married?" The truth of the matter is that I was easy either way, whichever decision they might take. But I did see how Daphne’s own sense of security depended upon people not being able to single her out as the divorced - and now unmarried - party. So I hastened to endorse her persuasion, saying: "Yes, definitely." And I noted out of the corner of my eye how Louise was smiling with a sense of irony concerning the hypocritical prudery of her British friends.

Even with Daphne back in Britain, there was always a sense in which her presence remained with me, far more than in the case of Henry. And this was partly because she took the trouble to put me in contact with her special friends. There was Lady Diana Cooper, as previously indicated. But I only ran into her on the rare occasion. Someone whom I saw rather more frequently was Oonagh, Lady Oranmore - one of the Guinness sisters who had been so prominent in London society, shortly after Daphne’s own emergence upon the social scene. But she currently had apartments in the Rue St Honoré, and had written to me during my earlier days in Paris, inviting me to come round and have tea with her. And once this contact had been established, the visits continued. She was a sympathetic and caring lady, whom I identified quite closely with Daphne. She enjoyed the company of younger people, and I warmed to hers. It was a friendship which was to endure over the years.

It may well be that Daphne was still uncertain of herself in her recent transition of identity. Things had yet to be worked out on the way her life might now be run. There were still doubts whether it would all come to pass as had been planned. And it was against this background that [X] had a sighting of her in London, at the dance given for Juliet Fitzwilliam. She wrote to me about it in her letter of 18th June 1953.

Daphne’s own account of the Fitzwilliams’ dance was given to me in a letter which arrived soon a week later - although there is no indication that she was aware that [X] had been observing her.

I went to a deb dance when staying with Caroline - the Fitzwilliams’. We stayed until the end and then went back with Oonagh to drink with her at her hotel before she caught a morning plane back to Dublin. We returned to Caroline’s house at 11 o’clock in the morning, in full evening dress, to meet my grandson and his nanny on the doorstep, leaving for his morning outing in the park. Nanny didn’t half raise her eyebrows at Granny!!

Daphne was the first to get her remarriage made official, and this was down in Cornwall. I was relieved that she and Xan didn’t feel it was necessary to drag me all the way back from Paris for the occasion, since it was intended to be a relatively quiet occasion. Yet there were many old friends at the reception - including Nicholas Phipps, who then obtained enough details about my current life in Paris for him to write that item upon me in the Sunday Express.

Henry and Virginia were quick to follow suit - in another very quiet ceremony. But they were passing through Paris on their honeymoon, and this was the occasion which had been chosen for us to be reintroduced to one another. I went to have lunch with them at the Hotel Brighton on the Rue du Rivoli. I had been aware of Virginia’s attractiveness from our occasional encounters while I was still at Eton, and that impression was now reaffirmed. There was a shy coyness about her which I found most attractive; and it was quite evident that she was determined that our relationship was going to be positive from the very start. We both wanted to like one another, and we found that to be easy. And Henry was being charming to me throughout.

I did make one false step however, in that I had been calculating on demonstrating to Virginia how Henry’s obsession about cleanliness was exaggerated, with little foundation in olfactory discernment. In anticipation of their visit, I had been careful to refrain from any baths during a whole week prior to their arrival. So when I went to lunch with them, I was hoping to take them by surprise, at the end of the lunch, with my proud proclamation that I had in fact gone many days unwashed - and then to rib Henry on his failure to perceive any difference from the standard which he expected of me. Well I made my boast, but it was followed by an embarrassed silence. Then Henry declared sheepishly: "I think I’d better confess that, when Virginia first came downstairs, I whispered her a warning that you were smelling a bit musty!" And it was clear from Virginia’s apologetic expression that he was telling me the truth.

They both came round to my room to have a look at my recent paintings, and here too I was disappointed. Virginia herself had been a talented art student in younger days, and I’d been hoping that her appreciation of my work would serve to persuade Henry of my potential as an artist. But it was quite evident to me from the start that she was deliberately holding herself in tactful restraint - not actually coming out with any criticism of my work, but on the other hand not expressing any appreciation of it either. I suspected that her judgement had been formed even prior to her arrival in Paris, and was more the product of what she discerned as the lines of necessary alliance within our emergent family. I could not expect her to take over Daphne’s established role in championing my right to become a painter. She had appreciated just how important it was to Henry that I should grow out of this interest in art; and my own needs in this matter must tactfully be relegated into secondary consideration.

The next occasion that I saw them both was after my return to England in September. It had been a tedious journey by train, carting all of my painting equipment and the precious roll of canvasses that I had now completed, back from Paris and down to Longleat. Henry had prepared the Dowager suite at Longleat for my use, which was really just a matter of transferring some essential furniture from the top passage where it had been stored, and supplying the room at the end with a small electric stove. It was only intended as a gadget on which I could cook myself a breakfast each morning.

Henry who had never himself been self-sufficient when it came to basic cooking, had initially supposed that I would need Mrs Chapman’s assistance for such a task, and was surprised to hear that this wouldn’t be necessary. Since my National Service, I was of course quite capable of dealing with such matters on my own. And for the rest of the meals, I was to drive over to Job’s Mill where Henry and Virginia had now set up their home - with Sturford Mead still up for sale, on a market where there wasn’t much demand in evidence for large houses.

Press cutting from

The Viscount sets up a bridgehead

By John Ralph

The lonely young man of Longleat descends the grand staircase, kettle in one hand, teapot in the other, watched by his painted ancestors.

What is he doing there, living alone and unattended, in the house of 365 windows?

He is the Marquess of Bath’s heir and he is there, he says, "to establish a bridgehead."

Many great houses of England like this have emptied. Other old families, milched of their means in each succeeding generation, have dispersed.

Now the undergraduate Viscount Weymouth is reversing the process of time and taxation. Why? Why go back to rough it under the Gothic ceilings among the ghosts?

Not one servant

You might say, accurately, that this picture shows 400 years of inherited attachment to a home working in a young man’s blood. - It is a little more than that.

Maybe the Thynnes in their frames dating back to 1566 in the 100 rooms understand it as they watch him go to brew his tea in the pantry. Where, 50 years ago, there were 37 servants, male and female, now there is none.

His grandfather died there in 1946 and the present sixth Marquess, with death duties to pay, housed himself and his family in a cottage on the estate. "I never once slept in the house before" says Lord Weymouth. But his father - he understands and applauds this move - used to bring him often to see the "Treasure House of the West." "I always intended one day to live in it." The lovely old house "has to earn her own living these days. "She grosses around £8,000 a year from tourists’ half crowns.

"It takes all of £5,000 to maintain her, even if she is unoccupied. But I want my children to grow up here in this atmosphere, to feel about it as my father and I feel."

"It’s our duty"

Why? Why not for that matter sell off some of these art or antique treasures (said to be worth millions), get himself a car to fit a nobleman? It would be natural enough to a young man.

The Viscount smiles, shakes his head. "Maybe it’s hard to understand but it seems important to me to preserve everything. It is a sort of duty we’ve been left ....."

A House doesn’t live if it doesn’t belong to someone. A family loses its own traditions and character if it loses its roots.

So the Marquess’ son with his sense of destiny and purpose is roughing it meantime with his ancestors. But soon, he hopes, the bridgehead will be widened; a small wing will be opened and serviced. Life will flow back into the great house.

Does it matter to you and me who pass by? Maybe not a great deal. But something that is uniquely British will be preserved.

Press cutting from "Wiltshire News"

Lord Weymouth Talks About His Future

Viscount Weymouth, 21-year-old heir of the Marquess of Bath, has a bachelor flat in Longleat House and on Wednesday night a "Wiltshire News" reporter saw him there.

Lord Weymouth did his National Service in the Life Guards. He is now at Oxford and was spending a few days at Longleat during a break from his studies.

"I intend to make my home for ever in Longleat", he said. In recent years Longleat has not been the home of the Thynnes. Its doors have been thrown open to thousands of people from every corner of the land. Only in this way could Lord Bath finance the mansion.

Talking to me about his future, Lord Weymouth said he had not yet made up his mind whether he would take up politics.

We spoke about his love for art and he showed me some of his paintings. "I have not yet made up my mind to be an artist," he said. "One his time to think at a university, and I shall be able to determine my career as time goes on".

Lord Weymouth is an officer in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry in which his father and grandfather served.

Quote from Lord Bath ..........."We are giving the place a good coat of paint," he said. "There are passages there that haven’t been touched for half a century. And my son, Lord Weymouth, is going back to live there. He’s made himself a small flat. Says he’s going to do some painting. Don’t know if he’s any good as a painter but it is good that the heir is going back to Longleat."

Georgia and Sabrina - or Biblet, as she preferred to be called - were the two members of Virginia’s family whom I hadn’t previously met. But I saw no threat of potential discord from that direction. They were a mere eight and six years old, so I could be very much of the big brother in their eyes. And there was always Valentine, who was now back home from Eton on holiday, to reinforce my own sense of former family identity. But Virginia’s whole influence from the very start was to make sure that we all got on amiably with one another. These were good times for everyone in that things seemed to be running so smoothly at the start.

Of course I only had a few days of this before I departed upon my visit up to Scotland to stay with [X]. But I was soon back again, after which we had a few more weeks to nurture the promising start which we had all made to our new relationship. The line Virginia took with me was to suggest that there was really far more love than discord in my relationship with Henry. And despite the fact that he might be rather more ready to criticize me than either of my brothers, she assured me that he really had the highest opinion of me.

In my own heart however, I was fretting over my failure in one crucial test to prove to him that he had underrated my abilities. For I still hadn’t fully digested Xan’s judgement that my novel was unfit for publication, with virtually no prospect of me improving the material sufficiently to attain that end. I had in fact given Henry the manuscript to read for himself, before setting out for Scotland, hoping that he might discern some merit in it, which would have made my fate of abandoning the idea of publication to be that much easier. But on my return, he handed it back to me saying that he found it too heavy-going to read any further. There was a painful evening when I tried to argue that Xan, in his letter to me, had been trying to praise the novel. But when I showed it to him, Henry stated all too realistically that the letter was just a polite way of telling me that the novel was no good.

He certainly wasn’t going to make things easy for me. Not that I had to face the humiliation of admitting my failure just yet, since there had been a time clause of some five years on the betting slip that had been lodged in his safe. But I had best take this opportunity to inform my readers of the sequel. I waited for a couple of years until I hoped that the subject of the bet had temporarily been forgotten. Then I mentioned one evening, as casually as I could, that I owed him £1 - which I promptly paid. To his query concerning what it might represent, I was just vague, telling him that it didn’t really matter, but that I owed it to him. And that was that - for a year or two! But the day of retribution caught up with me when Henry did finally produce the betting slip from his safe, requesting payment. But he accepted my assurance that I had already paid him, and the matter was then closed.

At the time when I had left [X] at [N], there had been some tentative arrangement that she would join me down in Cornwall to come and stay with Daphne and Xan - provided that her own parents could be persuaded to agree to this. But for a while it seemed that such agreement couldn’t be obtained. So I set out for Cowrie on my own, and spent a few days coming to terms with the novelty of having Xan there in residence with my mother. Much as I was grateful to him for the chore he had taken upon himself in reading my novel, I was feeling so depressed by the outcome that I preferred not to discuss the matter any further with him. And he took note of this reluctance for what it was, and refrained from mentioning it.

Daphne too made but the briefest reference to it - which indicated to me that, in deference to Xan’s opinions, she had modified her own optimism concerning the rapidity with which I might be expected to emerge as a novelist. And there was less certainty too in her praise for the art work which I now showed her. Indeed it struck me that Xan’s influence over her might be resulting in a reduced faith in me all round. I was softly aware of that deprivation, but didn’t intend that it should be permitted to diminish the sense of inner drive that I had been at pains to generate. Yet I was becoming more hesitant now in feeling that Xan could ever be a wholesome influence upon our own very special relationship in life.

Waste no tears on the fearful pile the worrying
hurricane splintered in its wake, as you make grand
plans for new homes, sprucely tidied
with pride - in quest for neat domestic bliss.
A kiss whispered from behind a muslin yashmak
hushes restraint like a chosen posy of flowers,
her lowered lids coyly lifting to suggest
the best intentions - a bland panacea.
Sheer-edged and unsmiling, his lips
are clipped for sparse communication with eyes -
in the guise of a hawk - which no affections seek;
he speaks direct, informed, inflexible substance.
A mother’s husband and a father’s wife,
as such, must integrate within my life.

I was restless during those first few days at Cowrie. But this was also due to the uncertainty whether [X] was going to be allowed to come and stay with us. The initial soundings had evidently revealed a considerable reluctance from her parents to give her such consent. And there was another anxiety besides, in that [X]’s period had failed to appear on time. We had exchanged anxious letters on this subject - in the latest of which I had assured her that, if it really did turn out that she was pregnant, then we’d simply have to get married. But the prospect wasn’t really on the cards in that no semen had ever been permitted to enter her womb. Or that is what we believed in any case.

During the anxiety of waiting, we had agreed upon a specific code-phrase for her to tell me over the telephone, when her period did finally arrive - which was to say: "I’ve got spots!" (Something which was apt to break out on [X]’s face at such times.) But I hardly think that the intention of keeping our communication coded could really have succeeded in the event. If there were any of her family in the room when she did phone to break the good news, screaming out ecstatically that she had spots, they must surely have appreciated that some other message was being conveyed.

Now that all this was in the clear, [X] was able to negotiate a visit to Cowrie with greater determination. And she did eventually arrive to spend just a few days with us. I had been dreaming that here at last we should be enabled to develop a realistic sexual togetherness. For I knew Daphne and Xan well enough to feel confident that they could accept the idea of us sharing the same bed at nights with equanimity - if only [X] herself could have felt comfortable in her own mind upon the issue. And it was all so frustrating for me that she could not.

Much as I loved [X], I found the situation to be ridiculous. Just to hear [X] making public comments that were designed to blinker them from what was in reality taking place, made me cringe with a different kind of shame. A remark to me on the stairs as we went up to bed - even if it was as insignificant as: "Well I’ll see you in the morning" - was enough to make Xan discern the falsity of our moral facade, which [X] always contrived to hold in place. The creaks at night in the passage, as I crept from my room to hers, and back again later, were all too painfully audible. Indeed Daphne commented on them privately, and virtually as a rebuke to me for participating in such deception. But that wasn’t the way [X] saw it. There was a morally correct code for conduct in her own mind’s eye, and if you couldn’t actually do things that way, then you should keep up the appearance of behaving thus.

In other respects, and especially in the reciprocal warmth of their humour, it seemed to me that [X] got on very well with Daphne, who commented that she seemed well able to keep me in my place. This related to an episode when [X] had teased me into a good humour, after I had started to become argumentative about something. But it seems that Xan had formed a less favourable impression and, in her reassessment of our visit, Daphne adopted the viewpoint of Xan, who was currently the dominant male for which her personality was ever in quest - since the days of her childhood. This was later to be revealed in the second volume of her autobiography - The Nearest Way Home - in which she was writing about Xan’s dislike for anyone interfering with his desk.

.... Here his typewriter sat enthroned, ancient and majestic, kept in a caul of silk when not in use.... A girl-friend of one of my sons, who thoughtlessly left a half-eaten apple on the keyboard, was not asked to Cowrie again.

I had best add my own comment to this piece, in that I do recall the episode. [X] had perched the apple-core there with some deliberation, as a tease - because he had been going on too determinedly about not wanting us to touch any of the things on his desk. She took it as a declaration of suspicion that we might have been reading what he was in the process of writing - when we had not. So the apple-core was deposited there to taunt him, after he and Daphne had gone up to bed. No comment was passed upon the incident, but he was evidently not amused.

What mattered rather more however, was that Daphne withheld the service that might otherwise have been on offer, in putting in a good word with Henry concerning [X]’s suitability as a prospective Marchioness. Not that such an issue was precisely being negotiated, but I suppose that everyone must have realized how such an event would take few people by surprise.

We were now into the final weeks before I was due to take up my place at Oxford. But there was still this question of wanting to embark upon this new phase in my life in the knowledge that Henry did approve of my girl-friend. So when I got back to Longleat, I took the step of inviting [X] to come over to lunch with us at Job’s Mill - since her own home at Lucknam was conveniently close. The encounter cannot be regarded as a success however.

There was a cool reserve on either side from the very start - which I think can be attributed to the fact that neither Henry, nor Mrs [X], had (on long-previous encounters) esteemed the other’s personality. And Henry in any case seemed determined to perceive in [X] the full list of faults that he attributed to her relations. She would be as "boring" as the father, as "simple-minded" as the mother, and as "flighty" as the grandmother. And there may now have been a few other unsatisfactory epithets which had been conveyed to him from Xan, via Daphne. Nor was [X] herself free from such bias, in that she had decided before she met him that Henry was an unprincipled philistine. All of these ill impressions of each other were ingrained in their expressions, as they maintained a civilized conversation throughout the course of luncheon. And I could see that Virginia was merely trying to preserve an aura of hospitality, within the shy reticence of her habitual attitude.

Not that I permitted any of this to trouble me too greatly. These were early days, and there was time enough for all of them to switch their opinions of one another during the three years ahead of me at Oxford. And I was quite clear in my own mind that it would be best to remain single until after these studies were completed.

It had been the pre-war custom, and was soon to become so again, to go up to Oxford straight from school. And there were some people who continued to do so even then. But during this period while there were two years of compulsory National Service to perform, it was more usual to get that intrusive period over and done with, before getting back to further education - which would supposedly be preparing us for the career of our choice.

I was by no means unhappy that I had chosen to do things this way round. Being a schoolboy had been just a prelude to what really goes on in the world. But I had now digested within my experience two samples of living which were as much in contrast to each other as I might hope to find. The careers of soldier and artist could hardly be more different and, regardless of whether I might ultimately choose either for myself, I felt that I had taken two large bites from the big apple of adult life. And it was good that I now had something under my belt before embarking upon that quest to formulate my ideas in what would amount to the Oxford experience.