Dearest Jane... (35 page)

I’m sorry for the poor old boy in the Foreign Office who is accused of being a paedophile (?), a word almost unknown to me: I thought it was a form of chiropodist. Of course he’s a dirty old man (aren’t we all?). In a perfect world all sexual desires would fade peacefully away at 45; the trouble is that people are beset by powerful sexual desires long, long after they themselves have ceased to be sexually desirable.

Budds Farm

[Early 1970s]

Thought for the week: ‘Naturally a doll who is willing to listen instead of wanting to gab herself is bound to be popular because if there is anything most citizens hate and despise it is a gabby doll.’ D. Runyon.

The Bracket

Much Slumbering

Beds

[Early 1970s]

I read the Labour Party Manifesto today. I rather resent the obvious contempt the compilers feel for the intelligence of potential supporters; but no doubt they have good reason for that particular sentiment.

The Maudlings

Heathcote Amory

Berks

[1970]

The election is really very comic. The new Minister of Transport is John Peyton, once engaged to your dear mother! At the Board of Trade is my old POW friend Fred Corfield, known to all as ‘Dungy Fred’. Your mother and I motored unwilling residents of Burghclere to the polling station and made them vote Tory, rather against their desires and convictions. Conservative majority in our constituency up from 3,000 to 10,000.

Edward Heath became Conservative Prime Minister
.

Budds Farm

[1973]

I know you like riddles. Yes, you do and please don’t argue.

Q. What is the technical term for two rows of cabbages?

A. A duel cabbage-way

Good, isn’t it?

Budds Farm

28 March [1970s]

This week’s thought: ‘Love is blind but sight is restored by marriage.’

‘Bangla Desh’

Burghclere

4 December 1971

A Colonel Walker I used to know in the Army was barbarously murdered last night by IRA savages. I was at the ‘Sunday Times’ office today and spoke rather sharply about their soft, arse-crawling attitude to the IRA. When I said the paper was becoming known as ‘The Quislings’ Gazette’ there was rather a nasty silence. No doubt within twelve seconds of my leaving the office, one of my lovely little liberal colleagues was off to report me to H. Evans, Middlesbrough pygmy. However, I doubt if they can sack me for my political views. I hope not, anyway.

The Geriatric Ward

Budds Farm Eventide Home for Indigent Members of the Middle Class

[Early 1970s]

I went up to London on Monday and had a superb lunch with Lanson Frères in Manchester Square. The white wine was unforgettable. When the repast drew to a close at 4 p.m. I decided to walk to my club and found myself in Carnaby St where I was sold an obscene magazine and an improbable necktie. Just for a nice sit-down I entered a cinema showing a Swedish ‘love’ film. It was rather less erotic than a pair of bicycling clips and I sank into a deep sleep. On emerging I met Twitch who was in good form and we had some refreshing drinks. I then went to dinner at the ‘Sportsman’s Club’, Tottenham Court Road, this joint being owned by a character called Eric Morley and looking like a combination of a Roman Catholic Church in a backward area and one of the more expensive Neapolitan brothels. The browsing and sluicing were quite good and I had agreeable types on either side. The speeches, though, were interminable and in lamentable taste, combining the maximum obscenity with the minimum of wit.

Love,

xx D

Budds Farm

[1973]

We forgot to sing the following at dinner the other night:

Oh that gorgonzola cheese,

Never over-healthy I suppose,

The old tom cat fell dead upon the mat

When the sniff went up his nose-ose-ose-ose.

Talking about the flavour of the crackling of the pork,

Nothing could have been so strong

As the terrible effluvia that filled our house

When the gorgonzola cheese went wrong.

(Traditional)

c/o Bishop of York

Ebor Castle

York

[1970s]

Here I am in this ancient city at present rendered vile by coach loads of elderly Americans, all with expensive cameras slung round the neck and not a sex kitten among them. The food here is typical of ‘Hotel Anglais’. I hate this part of the world; all the men look like Michael Parkinson. I always have pyrophobia in places like this and can find no fire escape. I am all for cremation but not when alive, if you please.

Castle Gloom

Burghclere

7 February 1974

I hate elections and all the lies and bullshit. I don’t think it matters which party gets in as this country is just about done for, rotten from top to bottom. For years we have thought the world owes us a living and now we are tottering on the edge of revolution and bankruptcy. If any tough, well-organised and determined minority group tried to seize power now it would probably succeed. The mass of British people would be too wet to leave their television sets and resist. The situation is very like 1939 – 95 per cent of the country were appeasers then and chose to take the view that if Hitler was given Danzig or Austria or Czechoslovakia, he would be quite happy and show himself to be a terribly decent chap afterwards. The attitude now is ‘give way to the miners and they’ll be ever so pleased. If we stand up to them it will annoy them and we might well be the subject of certain discomforts.’ The plain fact is that if a constitutional government yields to a militant minority to secure short term peace, then the democratic system has had it and we are on the way to a dictatorship of the extreme left or the extreme right. I really think I would emigrate if I could think of anywhere to emigrate to! In the meantime I shall be interested to see the line taken by windy little fence-sitters like the editor of the Sunday Times. He’d rather like to go Labour but is nervous about the advertisers. If the Conservatives get in, I think we shall have general strikes and bloodshed. If Wislon gets in, we shall see a mass surrender to militancy, penal taxation for the bourgeois, and the end of this country as I’ve known it. Wislon’s backers are far more left-wing than they were and Wedgehead Benn fancies his chances as Trotsky while Michael Foot would make a merry Robespierre.

Best love,

xx D

Here we go again! Wislon was
Private Eye’s
soubriquet for Labour leader Harold Wilson. Michael Foot – intellectual on the left wing of the Labour party – later became its leader (1980–83). He was famous for his informal dress – a donkey jacket
.

c/o The Official Receiver

29/31 Carey Street

London EC2

16 October 1974

I have just been writing to my local MP, upbraiding the Tories for cowardice and panic in turning on Heath immediately after an election in which the party, all things considered, did reasonably well. I agree that on TV Heath is slightly less attractive than cold boiled mutton; that women refuse to forgive his reputation for total sexual inactivity; yet in sheer ability he is far above most members of the party. He is honourable, tough and reasonably shrewd. However, in this era of hideous crisis, there are people who would apparently prefer a genial TV personality to a man of nearly first-rate ability.

Goodbye to the Conservatives and hello again to Harold Wilson. Heath’s defeat paved the way for Margaret Thatcher
.

Les Deux Gagas

Bonkersville

Berks

[1974]

If Barbara Castle has her way, and she will, members of the middle class will not be allowed to spend their savings (if any) on expiring in privacy, a privilege that most animals demand. There is, alas, no bolt hole left for elderly rats like myself. I think I have got out of racing just in time; in a couple of years there may not be any, at the rate things are going. The newspaper world is in a state of acute nervousness. The Daily Express may not last much longer and the Observer is just kept afloat by subsidies from the Astors. The Manchester Evening News stops the Guardian from going under. Worst of all, the stinking corrupt National Union of Journalists is trying to destroy what liberty the newspapers now possess. It will be typical of Michael Foot, who always proclaims his deep love of liberty, if he becomes the instrument that ultimately destroys a fundamental liberty. There is no place in the modern world for the reasonable man. It is the age of bloodthirsty fanatics imposing their will on an inert majority.

As the late Mr Gibbon observed, ‘What is history but a catalogue of the crimes, follies and miseries of mankind.’

xx RFM

Fiery, long-serving Labour MP and minister, Barbara Castle, was just the woman to ruin my father’s repose as he read the papers at the breakfast table
.

14b Via Dolorosa

Burghclere

[Mid 1970s]

I wonder if we are going to have a revolution in January. I could rather fancy death at the head of a platoon of bourgeois reactionaries charging the inmates of the London School of Economics with fixed bayonets. What a mess this country is in. Of course Hitler had to be crushed, but apart from that, most of my friends who were killed in the war would reckon they had died in vain. One of the few leading statesmen I know observed the other day that we are a nation of lemmings rushing blindly towards our own destruction. He said it was quite impossible to have a conversation with union leaders like Scanlon and Gormley. They just wanted to bring the government down and did not care if the country was ruined in the process. They don’t give a damn about miners’ pay. The total breakdown of the established order is their true objective. I had dinner last week with Mr Ray Gunter, a former Welsh miner and ex-Minister of Labour. He is under no illusion about the aims of the more militant members of his own party.

The Gadarene swine were a thoughtful and reasonable set of individuals compared to most of our delightful fellow-countrymen. Such is the political climate that even H. Wislon seems quite nice.

The Olde Lazar House

Burghclere

12 January [1980s]

It was evening at the factory,

Old Gasper’s work was done,

And W. D. and H. O. Wills sat smoking in the sun.

Before them scampered on the green,

Their little grandchild Nicotine.

Insolvency Lodge

Burghclere

29 August 1976

As I was waiting at Newbury Station yesterday, an ambulance came roaring up and a man was removed from a 1st class non-smoker who had just cut his throat from ear to ear. I have sometimes thought of doing the same thing myself on this particular line.

Budds Farm

10 May 1977

I am writing to you less from paternal affection than a desire to try out a new typewriter ribbon. It is a perfect May evening and I am taking your mother out to supper. The blossom here is superb and it is going to be a great month for lilac. Poor old Jeremy Thorpe! I do feel sorry for him but I would not fancy him as leader of this country. I must say, if I was going to have a love affair with a male lunatic in Devonshire, I don’t think I’d pick N. Scott who looks about as physically attractive as Himmler.

The Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was accused and acquitted of plotting the murder of one N. Scott, an individual who claimed to have had an affair with him in the early 1960s
.

The Turf Club

24 November [1970s]

Many thanks for your well-chosen and totally acceptable birthday present of H. M. Bateman’s cartoons now located in the downstairs loo!

The bourgeois humour

Of H. M. Bateman

Brings the hint of a leer

From an old Constipateman.

(W. Wordsworth)

Little Shiverings

Burghclere

[1979]

I have seldom seen a more villainous-looking man than the individual called Haughey who is to be Ireland’s Prime Minister.

I believe in fact he is far worse than he looks.

Budds Farm

2 February [late 1970s]

Did you know that Karl Marx hunted with the Cheshire while engaged in writing ‘Das Kapital’? That Lady Zia Werner who won the Derby with Charlottown is descended from Pushkin who had black blood in him?

The Drippings

Burghclere

[Late 1970s]

I think it was the crowning humiliation for H. Wislon was to appear with Morecombe and Wise on TV. Can you picture Mr Gladstone participating with Dan Leno’s balloon act or Mr Asquith butting in on Harry Tate’s famous motoring sketch? I think Wislon has been ruined by La Forkbender: it was infinitely preferable when old Lloyd George stuffed a wide variety of secretaries on the table in the Cabinet Room during the lunch interval. He always kept his hair long as he thought it was a mark of his virility. Looking at his photograph, you would hardly pick him as about the randiest Welshman of his age. But then the murderer, H. H. Crippen of Hilldrop Crescent NW13 hardly looked likely to be a passionate lover, whilst another, ‘Brides in the Bath’ Smith, was illiterate, coarse, dirty and repellent in every respect. Yet respectable middle-class women fell for him as if he were a combination of Rudolph Valentino and Mr Onassis.

It took little for my father to find comparisons in character with legendary murderers –not least in his own family! La Forkbender was Wislon’s private secretary and personal advisor, Marcia Williams, latterly elevated to the peerage as Baroness Falkender
.

Budds Farm

12 October [mid 1970s]

This week’s quotation comes from the late Bishop of Bath and Wells: ‘I like to get my golf over in the morning as then I am free for Bridge in the afternoon.’ He also observed: ‘Personally I must admit that the spiritual side of this job doesn’t particularly appeal to me.’

The Old Damp Ruin