Mad World (41 page)

Sometimes I think it would be lovely to lead the sort of life with you that I have led alone for the last ten years – no possessions, no home, sometimes extravagant and luxurious, sometimes lying low and working hard. At other times I picture a settled patriarchal life with a large household, rather ceremonious and rather frugal, and sometimes a minute house, and few friends, and little work and leisure and love. But what I do know is that I can’t picture any sort of life without you … And I don’t at all regret the haphazard, unhappy life I’ve led up till now because I don’t think that without it I could love you so much. Goodnight my blessed child. I love you more than I can find words to tell you. E.

The ‘large household, rather ceremonious and rather frugal’ would have been like Mad as he imagined it must have been during the childhood of the Lygon sisters.

His journal records that he saw Maimie in October, ‘fat, and sweet, and inconsequent’. What had happened to the beautiful, lithe girl he had known for the past five years? She gave him the details of Hugh’s death,
which he did not record in his diary. He spent time with her the following day. She was still grieving for Hugh. Later, she sent a photograph of him. He wrote back to thank her, saying he was house-hunting and that he was touched by the gesture, though he didn’t like the picture much. He was always frank.

In December he wrote to ask her if Grainger the dog was upset about the abdication of the King. He was busy writing his happiest novel,
Scoop
, and wondered whether it would be possible to renew the old regime of working at Mad: ‘Would you like me to visit you for a week and work in your beautiful schoolroom with the camphor wood chest or would that disgust you?’ It somehow wouldn’t be the same after all that had happened.

Some time in 1936, Evelyn wrote a beautiful letter to Maimie, who was depressed and unhappy. Her love affair with Hubert Duggan was over and she was lonely. It seems that she had asked him to visit and he hadn’t:

My Darling Blondy,

I am afraid I was like Bloggs and Teresa and worse about coming down this weekend. I didn’t know what would have been most helpful for you so ended as usual by doing nothing. And I don’t know what I can say that would not be impertinent.

But listen. I know from experience that being very unhappy is necessarily lonely and that friends can’t help and that sympathy means very little – but please remember always that if there is ever anything I can do to help you have only to tell me, and I will chuck anything or do anything. The sort of dislocation you have had is a pain which can’t be shared – but being unhappy is not
all
loss and I know you have the sort of nature that won’t be spoilt.

I only dare to say this because I was unhappy some years ago in rather the same way as you are now.

All my love – don’t answer. Bo.

Evelyn was planning his wedding. When asked what they wanted for a wedding present, he suggested a bed. He was very keen for his Lygon friends to meet Laura, but was conscious of her diffidence: ‘It would be nice to bring Miss H to see you for a night or two at yr Highclere. She is
a shy lady and would be scared if a lot of grown up people were there. Is there ever a time, either week end or mid week when we could find you alone?’

With regard to Laura, he showed his usual sharpness and unfailing honesty, writing to Alec: ‘She is thin and silent, long nose, no literary ambitions, temperate but not very industrious. I think she will suit me ok and I am very keen on her.’ But to Diana Cooper he wrote: ‘I find new depths of beauty and sweetness in L. Herbert daily.’ Nancy Mitford described her as an exquisite piece of Dresden china, so fragile that one felt she must snap in two.

The wedding day was set. Evelyn was looking forward to being settled after so many years in the wilderness. But he continued to write and think about the theme he identified in one of his later essays: ‘Man, as an exile from Eden’.

In March 1937 he spent Holy Week at Ampleforth, visiting Castle Howard on the way. One time on retreat at Ampleforth he took Hubert Duggan with him, sober, and in a state of ‘exalted gratitude’ for his rescue from the horrors of alcohol. It all went well, as with Duggan’s brother on the Adriatic cruise, until Hubert suddenly vanished and was discovered drunk in Scarborough.

In April, Evelyn wrote to Maimie to tell her that Captain Hance had said yes to his wedding invitation but that all his other chums were abroad. ‘Do please all of you come without fail to the wedding and to the party the day before because I shall be very lonely among all Laura’s high born and [illegible] aunts. Mr Herbert sent the invitations with ½d stamps so all my friends thought they were bills and tore them up. G how s [God how sad]. So Laura is very pretty and well and it will be decent to be married to her and she sends her love.’ His best presents, he said, were silver from the Asquiths and a beautiful glass chandelier from the Coopers that arrived broken.

The ceremony took place at the Church of the Assumption in Warwick Street, London, on 17 April 1937. Captain Hance and his family did not make it to the wedding. Maimie and Coote were there, to Evelyn’s delight. The bride was given away by her brother, Auberon (her father was dead). Henry Yorke was Evelyn’s best man. The guest list, which duly appeared in
The Times
, reveals that Evelyn had drifted away from the Bright Young Things into a new, more respectable milieu. John Sutro attended in
addition to Henry Yorke, but otherwise there was not much of a showing from the old Oxford set.

After arriving at their honeymoon destination of Portofino, where he had first seen ‘the white mouse’, he wrote in his diary: ‘Lovely day, lovely house, lovely wife, great happiness.’ He told Coote how moved he was that she had attended the wedding despite being ill at the time. ‘So it is very decent to be married, very decent indeed,’ he wrote, before adding: ‘
A bas milady Sibell and ses jockeys
’ – down with Lady Sibell, who was the only one of the three sisters who had not gone to the wedding.

He asked ‘Darling Poll’ to come and stay after their return in June. Coote knew Laura’s elder sister from hunting circles, but did not know Laura, who did not ride. Coote’s recollection was that Mrs Herbert disapproved of Evelyn, the previously married man, and thought him most unsuitable for Laura: ‘They were a very enclosed circle, and it is another aspect of Evelyn’s courage that he took it on and won. It was a long, long fight.’ Coote liked Laura immensely, remembering that she was very quiet in company, that she was very loyal and that, although she never contradicted Evelyn over small things and gave him his way over nearly everything, if she felt strongly about something, she would put her foot down and he would accept it.

In August the Waughs moved into their marital home, Piers Court, an elegant Georgian house that Evelyn found at Stinchcombe in the Cotswolds. Costing £4,000 – the money having been given by Laura’s grandmother as a wedding present – it immediately became known as Stinkers. From there they paid a visit to Mad, where it would seem they had an unexpected encounter.

Lord Beauchamp heard that the warrant for his arrest had finally been revoked. On 19 July 1937, the
Normandie
docked at Southampton. This time the earl (accompanied by David Smyth) was able to step onto his native soil with no fear of there being a policeman waiting to welcome him. He was at last returning to his beloved home. The summer was spent at Mad. Though there is no mention of the fact in letters or reminiscences (and there are no Waugh diary entries for these months), it is probable that on his August visit Evelyn met Boom for a second time. If this is the case, it may be assumed that they would have reminisced about their previous encounter in the cramped surroundings of Lord
Berners’s flat overlooking the Forum in Rome (Berners himself visited Boom at Mad in September).

For Boom, Mad was haunted by ghosts and painful memories. He could not settle. Accustomed to a wandering life, in October he returned to Venice with David. He wrote to Coote from the Grand Hotel: ‘Energetically I have already been to the Accademia and now David is at High Mass at St Mark.’ That David was a practising Catholic makes one wonder whether, late in life, Boom ever contemplated conversion – Lord Marchmain’s road. Once again writing of Smyth as if he were a member of the family rather than a paid employee, he also observed that David had enjoyed riding on the autostrada, though they had a puncture and needed to purchase a new tyre.

In December he was back at Madresfield and writing to Coote about her debts: ‘Is it gradual or did something big and bad happen suddenly?’ He didn’t want her to run into the kind of money trouble that had been so damaging to his lost Hugh. That same month, he and his daughters hosted a coming-of-age dinner-dance at Halkers for young Dickie. The surviving members of the family were together again – in company with David – and entertaining lavishly. Lord Beauchamp wore black, white and pink studs in his shirt front and spent the night at the Ritz to save his household staff any fuss and bother.

But he was in no position to re-enter London society. In January 1938 he and David were aboard the
Europa
, heading across the Atlantic. He wrote to Coote from Cuba: ‘We are both much better since we got here.’ They lunched out at Sloppy Joe’s bar and drank mint juleps made with Spanish brandy. A month later, they were to be found half way across the Pacific. The
Stella Polaris
landed in the Fiji Islands and the earl, with David as his fellow guest, dined with the Governor of Suva.

Lord Beauchamp had now taken up knitting as well as embroidery. He wrote to Coote of his shipboard routine: ‘Shave at 8. Embroider and orange juice with a visit from David till 10.30. Then deck. Cocktails at 12.45. Luncheon and coffee.’ A month later another letter followed, this time from the Hotel Suisse in Kandy in the hills of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Beauchamp had by this time received a letter from his daughter with the news that she had been travelling on the continent: ‘I imagine you escaped before Hitler arrived,’ he wrote. ‘What a surprise it was!’ (‘it’ being the Anschluss).

Another round-the-world voyage completed, Beauchamp returned to Mad. During the summer of 1938 a cinefilm was made of the family. The reel is in colour and shows the earl in the gardens of Madresfield. The film begins with a panning shot of the house, and then Lord Beauchamp’s Packard drives through a clump of golden yews. Lord Beauchamp features in white trousers, smoking a cigarette. He is surrounded by his adoring girls, Sibell in a blue dress and holding a black chow. The handsome butler Bradford appears. Then the camera shows His Lordship sitting in the moat garden pouring tea. Other shots show people swimming in the outdoor pool and walking in the maze. Looking at the film, one would never imagine the tragedies that had befallen the family – nor that Lord Beauchamp had already been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him just a few months later.

The family planned a trip to New York together. Beauchamp insisted on going, against the advice of his doctors. For the second time, he had agreed to host a reunion dinner for an association of Americans with the surname Lygon. Travelling with him were Coote, Maimie and Richard – though fully grown now, Dickie was shorter than his brothers at five feet eight inches with blond hair and green eyes. They checked into the Waldorf Astoria. Boom stayed on after the children set sail back to England. A few days later, he was taken ill. A telegram summoned Elmley and his wife, who took the first available ship and arrived a couple of days before he died. They then brought his body home.

The seventh Earl Beauchamp was buried at Madresfield on Friday 25 November 1938. Cars were laid on to meet the Paddington train when it arrived at Malvern Link. All the family attended. Evelyn was not present, but some of his Oxford friends were there to support the girls – Sutro, de Trafford and Duggan. Boom was laid to rest in a grave beside Hugh’s. According to Sibell, he was buried in a cardinal’s robe, a purple garment made of watered silk. If this is so, it suggests that he had, indeed, been having Romish thoughts. But he died in the High Anglican faith in which he had lived. There was a memorial service at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, on the same day, attended by an eclectic mix of Liberal Party grandees and Bright Young Things from the circle of the Lygon daughters, including Robert Byron, Patrick Balfour, Jessel’s boy, Christopher Sykes and Henry Yorke.

Aware that his cancer would probably prove fatal, Lord Beauchamp had
signed a will at Mad in the summer. Elmley and Maimie were named as executors. Each of the three unmarried girls – Sibell, Maimie and Coote – was given an income sufficient to yield £1,000 a year. The residue of the estate – and thus Madresfield itself – was bequeathed to Elmley. There was really no choice about this, unlikely as Mona was to produce an heir. Neither Lettice – who ever since her marriage had kept away from family affairs – nor Dickie, were mentioned in the will. David Smyth was tasked with going through ‘all my letters and personal effects’. He also received a legacy: ‘I GIVE and BEQUEATH all my Australian property of whatsoever nature to the said David Smyth for his own use and benefit absolutely.’

Evelyn, ensconced in his new home, Piers Court, heard the news when he read the morning newspaper. He wrote immediately to Maimie about the ‘very sad news’ and how he had feared the worst when reading press reports of Boom’s illness. ‘My thoughts have been with you during this anxious time,’ he wrote; ‘I know how much your father has meant to you, and how much you meant to him, and I send you all my love and sympathy. Will you please tell Coote and Sib and El and Dicky? … I am having a Mass said for your father. I am afraid he would not have approved in his life time, but I think you will.’ His affection for Maimie was as strong as ever: ‘Please remember that I still love you all just as much as in the old days when I saw you more often, and that it would always be a delight to see you here if you could face the discomfort.’