Wait for Me! Read online

  Also by Deborah Devonshire

  The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth (1982)

  The Estate: A View from Chatsworth (1990)

  Farm Animals (1991)

  Treasures of Chatsworth: A Private View (1991)

  The Garden at Chatsworth (1999)

  Counting My Chickens and Other Home Thoughts (2001)

  Chatsworth: The House (2002)

  The Duchess of Devonshire’s Chatsworth Cookery Book (2003)

  Round About Chatsworth (2005)

  Memories of Andrew Devonshire (2007)

  Home to Roost and Other Peckings (2009)

  Letters from Deborah Devonshire are included in:

  The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters (2007)

  In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and

  Patrick Leigh Fermor (2008)

  Wait For Me!

  Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister

  DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE

  www.johnmurray.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by John Murray (Publishers)

  An Hachette UK Company

  © Deborah Devonshire 2010

  The right of Deborah Devonshire to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 978-1-84854-457-4

  Book ISBN 978-1-84854-190-0

  John Murray (Publishers)

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.johnmurray.co.uk

  To

  Charlotte Mosley, my editor

  Helen Marchant, my secretary

  and my old friends Richard Garnett and Tristram Holland

  who gave me the confidence to keep trying

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Note on Family Names

  1. We Are Seven

  2. Farve and Muv

  3. Sisters and Tom

  4. Swinbrook House

  5. Rutland Gate and Old Mill Cottage

  6. Back to Swinbrook

  7. Debutante

  8. War

  9. Marriage

  10. Childbirths and Deaths

  11. Inheritance

  12. Edensor House

  13. Lismore

  14. Moving to Chatsworth

  15. Bolton Hall

  16. A Minister’s Wife

  17. The Kennedys

  18. Public Life

  19. Orphan

  20. Midway

  21. Living Above the Shop

  22. Distractions

  23. Festivities and Celebrations

  24. The Others

  25. The Old Vicarage

  Appendix I: President Kennedy’s Inauguration, 1961

  Appendix II: President Kennedy’s Funeral, 1963

  Acknowledgements

  Illustrations

  Section One

  Aged three, with my eldest sister, Nancy

  My mother and father

  With Decca at Hastings

  By the River Windrush at Asthall

  Asthall Manor

  Muv and Farve with Nancy, Tom, Diana, Pamela, Unity, Decca, DD, Asthall, 1926

  Skating at the Suvretta House Hotel, St Moritz, 1930

  At Swinbrook with Nanny Blor

  Driving my donkey with Cecilia Hay, 1934

  Adrian Stokes, DD, Decca, Muv, Unity, 1936

  DD with Myra and Gina Wernher, 1937

  DD, 1938

  Debutante, 1938

  Muv’s account book

  Muv at 26 Rutland Gate, London

  Section Two

  At the races with Andrew, September 1938

  With Unity at Mill Cottage, Swinbrook, 1940

  Tom, Munich, 1935

  Greeted by Sergeant Major Brittain after our wedding, 19 April 1941

  Getting about in a show wagon during petrol rationing, 1943

  With Evelyn Devonshire and Kathleen Hartington (Kennedy), 1944

  Canvassing with Andrew during the 1945 General Election

  The family at Edensor House, 1948, with Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip

  With Sophy and Evelyn Waugh, Edensor House, 1957

  Wearing the hat bought in Paris by Evelyn Waugh

  Kitty Mersey, 1953

  DD, 1950

  Nancy and Decca at Rue Monsieur, Paris

  Pamela with her dachshunds, Zürs, 1964

  Diana and Oswald Mosley, Venice, 1955

  Aly Khan, Teresa de Sousa Campos and DD, Rio de Janeiro, 1955

  DD and Nancy on the Lido, Venice

  Section Three

  Hardwick Hall

  Sitting for Pietro Annigoni, 1954

  Lismore Castle

  With Royal Tan, winner of the 1954 Grand National

  Andrew and Violet Hammersley, Lismore, c.1950

  Lucian Freud, Andrew, Penny Cuthbertson, Careysville, 1972

  Robert Kee and Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lismore, 1960

  With Andrew in the garden at Chatsworth

  With Sophy in the yellow drawing room, Chatsworth, 1960

  Emma’s wedding to Toby Tennant, Chatsworth, 1963

  With Cecil Beaton, 1969

  DD, Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Emma at Stoker’s wedding, 1967

  With Sophy and grandchildren Isabel and Eddie Tennant, Chatsworth, 1968

  My bedroom at Chatsworth

  My sitting room at Chatsworth

  With the ‘guns’ at Bolton Abbey, DD and Harold Macmillan mounted, early 1960s

  Shooting at Chatsworth, 1960

  With Stoker at the Game Fair, Chatsworth, 1966

  Section Four

  Lagos, 1962

  With Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Elizabeth Cavendish, Chatsworth, 1961

  Visit of the Shah of Persia to Chatsworth

  Invitation to the Inauguration of President John F. Kennedy

  Greeting Robert Kennedy on his visit to Chatsworth, 1964

  Pushing over a pile of pennies at a charity event in Whitwell, Derbyshire

  Serving behind the counter at the Orangery Shop, Chatsworth

  With Sophy at the Countryside March, 1997

  Celebrating our Golden Wedding at Chatsworth

  Tercentenary of the dukedom, Chatsworth, 1994

  With the Prince of Wales, 2000

  With Sybil Cholmondeley at Houghton

  Diana, Pamela and DD at Chatsworth

  With my granddaughter Stella Tennant

  With Jean-Pierre Béraud at his fortieth birthday party, 10 August 1996

  At Andrew’s and my eightieth birthday party, Chatsworth, 2000

  Feeding the hens

  With my great-grandchildren, 2009

  Aged ninety at the Old Vicarage, 2010

  Note on Family Names

  My family used nicknames usually as terms of affection, but sometimes the opposite. To spare the reader the irritation of ever-changing names, I have generally used those we were given at our christening. This seems strange to me because I never did so in real life but I hope it will make things plainer for my readers.

  For the record, my parents were Muv and Farve – obvious enough. Muv had a string of other names including Aunt Sydney, because that is what our cousins called her, and Lady Redesdale, which strangers called her. Farve was Morgan to Jessica and Unity, for no particular reason. Nanny was Blor or m’Hinket; she did not like either but did not try to stop us. Because of her black hair, Muv and Farve
called Nancy Koko after the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado. Pam and Diana called her Naunce and to me she was the Ancient Dame of France, the French Lady Writer or just Lady. Pam was Woman to us all, with variations thereof. Tom was Tuddemy to Unity and Jessica (‘Tom’ in Boudledidge, their private language) and this was taken up by the rest of us. Diana was Dayna to Muv and Farve, Deerling to Nancy, and Honks to me. I still have to think who I am talking about when she is ‘Diana’. Unity was Bobo, but Birdie or Bird to me. Jessica called her Boud (‘Bobo’ in Boudledidge). Jessica was Little D to Muv, Stea-ake to Pam and Hen or Henderson to me, but she was Decca universally – and remains so in this book. I have always been Debo to most, but Hen to Jessica, Swiny to Unity, and Nine, Miss and lots more to Nancy. I was Stubby to Muv and Farve, after my short fat legs which could not keep up (hence the title of this book). Our names changed with the wind but the ones none of us ever spoke were Nancy, Pamela, Thomas, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah.

  I always had nicknames for my husband, Andrew, which changed over time. For many years it was Claud, because when he was Lord Hartington he got letters addressed to ‘Claud Hartington’. My mother-in-law was Moucher to one and all (after the character in David Copperfield) – I never heard anyone call her Mary. My elder daughter, Emma, is Marlborough or Marl because of her Girl Guide uniform, which was smothered in badges like the much-decorated Mary, Duchess of Marlborough. My younger daughter, Sophy, is Moffa – goodness knows why. The only one of my children’s nicknames I have used throughout the book is Stoker, which for some reason he has never managed to throw off. He now signs himself ‘Stoker Devonshire’. I call him Sto.

  1

  We Are Seven

  B

  LANK. THERE IS no entry in my mother’s engagement book for 31 March 1920, the day I was born. The next few days are also blank. The first entry in April, in large letters, is ‘KITCHEN CHIMNEY SWEPT’. My parents’ dearest wish was for a big family of boys; a sixth girl was not worth recording. ‘Nancy, Pam, Tom, Diana, Bobo, Decca, me’, intoned in a peculiar voice, was my answer to anyone who asked where I came in the family. The sisters were at home and Tom was at boarding school for this deeply disappointing event, more like a funeral than a birth. Years later Mabel, our parlourmaid, told me, ‘I knew what it was by your father’s face.’ When the telegram arrived Nancy announced to the others, ‘We Are Seven’, and wrote to Muv at our London house, 49 Victoria Road, Kensington, where she was lying-in, ‘How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl.’ Life went on as though nothing had happened and all agreed that no one, except Nanny, looked at me till I was three months old and then were not especially pleased by what they saw.

  Grandfather Redesdale’s huge house and estate in Gloucestershire, Batsford Park near Moreton-in-Marsh, was inherited by my father in 1916. It was too expensive to keep up and was sold in 1919. My father looked for somewhere more modest near Swinbrook, a small village where he owned land, fifteen miles from Batsford. There was no house there suitable for a family of six children and a seventh on the way, so he bought Asthall Manor in the neighbouring village. I was born soon after the move and my earliest recollections are of the ancient house and its immediate surroundings. Asthall is a typical Cotswold manor, hard by the church, with a garden that descends to the River Windrush. It was loved by my sisters and Tom, and the seven years spent there were probably the happiest for parents and children, the proceeds of the sale of Batsford giving the family a feeling of security that was never repeated.

  There was, and is, something profoundly satisfying in the scale of Asthall village. It was a perfect entity where every element was in proportion to the rest: the manor, the vicarage, the school and pub; the farmhouses with their conveniently placed cowsheds and barns; the cottages, whose occupants supplied the labour for the centuries-old jobs that still existed when we were children; and the pigsties, chicken runs and gardens that belonged to the cottages. Before cars and commuters, you lived close to where you worked and the shops came to you in horse-drawn vans. This was the calm background of a self-contained agricultural parish, regulated by the seasons, in an exceptionally beautiful part of England.

  My father planted woods to hold game, as well as a short beech avenue leading up to the house, and his dark purple lilacs outside the garden wall are still growing there after nearly a hundred years. The house itself needed much restoration. My mother’s flair for decoration and her talent for home-making ensured that the French furniture and pictures from Batsford were shown at their best. My father installed water-powered electric light – just the sort of contraption he adored; drawing heavily on his umpteenth cigarette, he would lean over the engineer, itching to do the job better himself. He made sure he had a child-proof door to his study by putting the handle high up out of reach. Sometimes we heard the voice of Galli-Curci singing Farve’s favourite aria, coming loudly from the outsize horn of his gramophone – a twin of the one in advertisements for His Master’s Voice. In another mood he might put on ‘The Diver’ (‘He is now on the surface, he’s gasping for breath, so pale that he wants but the stillness of death’), sung by Signor Foli in a terrifying and unnaturally low bass voice.

  With foresight, or perhaps by luck, Farve converted the barn a few yards from the house into one large room with four bedrooms above and added a covered passage, ‘the cloisters’, to connect the two buildings. Tom and the older sisters lived in the barn, untroubled by grown-ups or babies, and made the most of their freedom. My father, who was famous for having read only one book, White Fang, which he enjoyed so much he vowed never to read another, entrusted Tom, aged ten, with the task of choosing which books to keep from the Batsford library. Nancy and Diana later said that if they had any education, it was due to the unrestricted access they had had to Grandfather’s books at Asthall. Later, a grand piano arrived for Tom who showed great musical promise. Music and reading were his passions.

  The First World War was not long over and life for the survivors was limping back to normal. There was little to record in our family in the first few years of my life. Nancy went to Hatherop Castle, a finishing school near by, and was taken to Paris with a group of friends where she first saw the architecture and works of art that inspired in her a lifelong love of that city. She wrote enthusiastic letters to our mother about the shops, the food and the days spent at the Louvre. Pam busied herself with her ponies, pigs and dogs. Tom was at Lockers Park prep school in Hemel Hempstead. His orderly mind was already preparing for a career in the Law and he paid Nancy to argue with him all day during the holidays. Diana was an unwilling Girl Guide and played the organ in church, putting into practice her theory that ‘Tea for Two’, if played slowly enough, did very well as a voluntary.

  The years at Asthall passed in a haze of contentment from my point of view. I was aware of The Others but they were so old and seemed to Decca (Jessica, my daily companion) and me to be of another world. It was not until later that I got to know them. Unity, next up in age from Decca and not yet in the schoolroom, made her huge presence felt but, although always kind to me, she was not an intimate. Our life in the nursery consisted of the daily round, the common task, secure and regular as clockwork.

  At the age of five we started lessons with Muv, who followed the admirable Parents’ National Education Union (PNEU) system with its emphasis on learning through direct contact with nature and good books, and its disapproval of marks, prizes, rewards and exams. She taught us reading, writing and sums, and read us tales from the famous children’s history book, Our Island Story. She was a natural teacher and never made anything seem too difficult. At the age of eight, I moved on to the schoolroom and a governess (trained at the PNEU’s Ambleside College) and never enjoyed lessons again.

  Our nursery windows overlooked the churchyard with its graves of wool merchants long since dead, the beautiful tombs topped with fleeces carved in stone. We were fascinated by funerals, which we were not meant to watch but of course did. Decca and I once fell into a newly
dug grave, to the delight of Nancy who pronounced fearful bad luck on us for ever. At that age, I was sure Farve would be buried by the path leading to our garden and even today I expect to see his big toe sticking up through the turf, which is what he warned me would happen if I misbehaved.

  Beyond the churchyard to the left were stables, kennels and a garage. Early on at Asthall my father had a horrible accident in the stable yard: he was getting on to a young horse when it reared and fell backwards on to him, breaking his pelvis. The injury did not heal properly and, unable to throw his leg over a saddle, he never rode again. To the right of the churchyard was the vicarage. We adored the vicar’s wife and long after we had left Asthall, Pam and I used to ride over and trot briskly up the drive, shouting for ginger biscuits. Across the road was the kitchen garden with its glasshouses and glorious white peaches, reserved strictly for grown-ups. Unity and our cousin Chris Bailey committed the heinous crime of sneaking into the greenhouse and stealing some peaches. There was a stony silence throughout the house while they were reprimanded by my father, which made a big effect on the younger ones. Farve has gone down in history as a violent man, mainly because of Nancy’s portrayal of him as the irascible Uncle Matthew in her novels. While he could indeed get angry, he was never physically violent and his bark was far worse than his bite. We would tease him, goad him as far as we dared, until he turned and roared at us.

  As soon as I could walk I shadowed Farve, struggling to keep up. He used to pick me up, throw me on to his shoulder and carry me over winter ditches and summer stinging nettles; the comforting feel of his velveteen waistcoat is inseparable from my memories of him. I must have been a great nuisance, but we saw eye to eye about everything. He took me fishing in the magic moment of the year when the mayfly were hatching and let me carry his net. As time went by, he showed me how to slide it under the hooked trout – no talking, no jerking – and land it on the bank. The sound of a reel when a line is cast on a trout rod equals early summer to me and the smell of newly cut grass, cow parsley, thrushes and ‘All the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire’ (Edward Thomas’s Adlestrop is not far from Asthall) take me back to our stretch of the Windrush. No health, no safety, no handrail on the single planks that were our bridges as we crossed and recrossed over the river. It was paradise and I knew it. The river water had its own smell that rose from the easily stirred-up mud, and many years later when swimming among the weeds and mud in a pond high above Chatsworth, in the company of moorhens and mallard, nostalgia for the river at Asthall was almost too much and I was six again.