The Pursuit of Laughter (13 page)

Why do people keep diaries? Because they enjoy doing it, most likely; the theory that they hope thereby to achieve immortality is a bit far-fetched. No need to ask why people read them, for they are irresistible; and this applies just as much to diaries obviously written with publication in view as to those like Samuel Pepys’s, written in code, which give at any rate the illusion of being strictly private. A person must be a quite exceptional bore if
having
faithfully recorded his life day by day he nevertheless cannot amuse his descendant who chances upon the neglected manuscript gathering dust in an old trunk, even though a stranger might put it on the fire for being too dull.

For family peace it is as well that diaries, like wine, should be allowed to mature. The Tolstoys were inveterate diarists, and Countess Tolstoy, whenever she could find it, always read her husband’s diary and never liked his references to her or his descriptions of their quarrels, so that bitter resentments developed. In order to preserve it from her prying Tolstoy took to hiding it in his boot. One day he had a heart attack and she lovingly put
him to bed and pulled off his boots. Out fell the diary. She pounced upon it and one of their worst rows followed. Tolstoy should, like Pepys, have invented a secret code.

Most modern French writers keep diaries and publish them from time to time, and very entertaining (and doubtless profitable) they are. Gide’s
Journal
wears better than his novels; Julien Green confesses himself to his diary and his readers never tire of his
spiritual
odyssey; Montherlant’s
Carnets
display his pessimistic view of human baseness and also the random thoughts of a remarkable mind; the Mauriacs, father and son, are also among the many who have given their diaries to the world in their own lifetime; both are readable, François Mauriac extremely so. As to Eckermann, it is hardly fair to include him among favourite diarists. On every page of his
Conversations with Goethe
there are marvels of imagination and perception which make his book one of the great books of the world, but that is because Goethe is a genius of the first water.

At the other end of the scale was a lady’s diary read out in court a few years ago at a public enquiry concerned with a damaging leak of secret information which had occurred in the financial world. Doubt was cast upon entries like ‘Went to the hairdresser’. It was suggested this must really mean something rather sinister, but in the end the judge
accepted
that it was the echo of an empty mind.

In
Dear Diary
Brian Dobbs confines himself to English diarists, describing and giving snippets from a rich variety beginning with Pepys and Evelyn down to recent times with Lady Cynthia Asquith, ‘Chips’ Channon and Harold Nicolson. His book whets the appetite and reminds one that the literary executors of both Lady Cynthia Asquith and Virginia Woolf must be persuaded to vouchsafe further thrilling instalments. So far tantalisingly little of either has been published. Mrs Woolf was extremely spiteful about her friends and enemies, but the few remaining Bloomsburies must be hardened to insults, since the two great biographers of Bloomsbury, Michael Holroyd and Quentin Bell, have neither of them troubled to pull any punches, and one more battering could not matter much.

Evelyn Waugh’s diaries are in a different category. Presumably if he had not meant them to be published he would have destroyed them; nevertheless they give a totally false picture of this brilliant writer, who in real life was so dearly loved by his friends. However much these friends may be bruised by his bludgeon, it is Evelyn himself who comes off badly.

Of Mrs Sidney Webb and her amusing diary of political gossip Brian Dobbs says: ‘there seems to be a modern tendency to sneer at her’, and for this he blames her nephew Malcolm Muggeridge. This is unfair. Mr Muggeridge in his dazzlingly brilliant autobiography described Mrs Webb sitting on Mr Webb’s lap. It must have been an unforgettable sight—she tall and handsome, he ‘at once repulsive and ridiculous. His tiny tadpole body, unhealthy skin…’ (not Malcolm Muggeridge’s description of Sidney Webb, but Mrs Sidney Webb’s own). Not only has Mrs Muggeridge published an excellent life of her aunt, but Mr Muggeridge gives the wonderful old pair high marks for worthiness. It is just no good
pretending they had not also got a comic side; it is one of their charms.

When Harold Nicolson was writing his life of George V he was given permission to read the king’s diary. He hurried to Windsor in a fever of excitement only to find that the whole subject matter concerned the weather, temperature and rainfall. When one considers the stirring times King George had lived in, it puts one in mind of Louis XVI’s entry for 14 July, 1789: ‘
Rien
.’ However it would not do for royal personages to write Tolstoyan diaries about family rows, or even to divulge their deep thoughts about their ministers, or give their true opinion of a Command Performance at the Palladium, and perhaps ‘
rien
’, or ‘scattered showers heavy at times’ are the ideal diary entries for monarchs.

Mr Dobbs’s book is very enjoyable, beautifully printed and cheap. There are one or two odd things in it. Why should Lord Ponsonby be turned into a bogus-sounding foreign nobleman by being called Baron Ponsonby? And why is the expression ‘getting to the top of the greasy pole’ in politics attributed to ‘one Conservative ex-minister’? Why not say Disraeli?

Dear Diary: Some Sketches in Self-Interest
, ed. Dobbs, B.
Books and Bookmen
(1974)

There are several V. Sackville-Wests. There is the galumphing land girl of the First World War who felt free because she was wearing breeches. There is the ferocious sapphist who ran away with Violet Trefusis, described in
Portrait of a Marriage
, the funniest book since
The Diary of a Nobody,
with the delightful farce of the two husbands turning up at a hotel in Amiens where the ladies were hiding, to tear their wives apart and force them back to hearth and home.

Then there is the breathless snob, staggered by her noble origins and the grandeur of Knole in
The Edwardians
, and the middle-aged lady, still in breeches, making a beautiful
garden
and writing garden notes for the
Observer
fifty years ago, telling how to grow lilies from seed and other useful hints. The notes are gathered into this book. Far the nicest Miss Sackville-West, but is she reliable?

Not altogether. She told
Observer
readers they should plant climbing roses to run up all fruit trees no longer bearing fruit. I had four such trees, two apples, a pear and a peach. I planted as advised and within two years all four trees had fallen leaving the roses without support. An orchard disaster.

In Your Garden
, Sackville-West, V.
Evening Standard
(1996)

The heroine goes mad in white satin and the confidante goes mad in white linen. That’s life. Ladies in waiting on the whole belong to the white linen brigade, even if they cannot always be dignified by the name of confidante. The duller the Court the plainer the attire and the more tedious the role.

For hundreds of years it was well worth while to be as near the Monarch as you could possibly get. Power and patronage resided in the person of the King or Queen; there was endless opportunity for intrigue, for lining your pocket and for contriving the
advancement
of your relations. The game was dangerous. ‘Off with her head!’ frequently brought a promising career to a premature and bloody close. This was naturally the case when the lady had royal blood and could be a rival who might attract a following in the country.

The greatest Queen, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, wished all her ladies to be virgins too. She vetoed many a marriage and was furiously angry when nature took its course and her attendants produced illegitimate offspring.

In good King Charles’s golden days the Court resembled, on a poorer scale, that of his cousin Louis XIV. Many of the court ladies were his mistresses and the mothers of
newly-created
dukes.

His niece Queen Anne accorded real political power to her adored Sarah Churchill, as well as riches. But Sarah happened to be married to a genius, quite rightly created Duke of Marlborough. Put not your trust in princes; Sarah was ousted from royal favour, the Duke was stripped of his commands and even the building of Blenheim Palace was stopped. It was only finished after Queen Anne died and George I came to the throne. There was a sort of poetic justice in the fall from grace of the Marlboroughs due to the whim of a silly queen, for John Churchill who had hitherto owed everything to James II changed sides on the eve of James’s battle with his son-in-law William III. James, in exile at St Germain, would have witnessed the altered fortunes of the Churchills owing to his daughter’s vagaries with grim satisfaction, had he lived a few years longer.

As it was considered essential for royalty to marry royalty there were always quarrels and troubles at Court between the English and the French, Spanish or Portuguese ladies brought over by the consorts of our kings. In the eighteenth century the ladies were German, because henceforward Germany furnished consorts of both kings and queens, who were obliged to marry Protestants. More and more ladies in waiting were English, which removed a source of infinite annoyance from the Court. The Duke of Windsor remembered that when he was a child the moment the English courtiers had gone out of the room the royal family comfortably relaxed and spoke German.

Queen Mary was the last queen of royal birth, and even she started life as a Serene and not a Royal Highness. Queen Victoria was as sensible about this lapse from tradition as she was about so much else.

Although they now get virtually nothing, no profitable monopolies or other perquisites, let alone any political influence, there is never a lack of ladies ready and
willing
to sit up half the night answering letters, or stand for hours during ceremonial
occasions
, or leave their husbands and children for months at a time, in order to attend the Queen and other royal ladies. Explain it how you will it is a fact, and they become
completely
devoted as time goes by.

During the Great War George V allowed no wine or spirits at Court, which did little to enliven the atmosphere. His son George VI thought of another way to mortify the flesh during World War II. I was in prison at the time; there was an exceptionally dirty,
primitive
and degraded bathroom. I was surprised when one day two men appeared with paint and brushes; badly as the bathroom needed painting it seemed somehow out of character that it should occur to anyone to embellish or clean the prison in any way. The men took out a tape measure and exactly five inches from the bottom of the bath they carefully painted a thick green line on the chipped enamel. This was called King George’s Line. The idea was that nobody should use more than five inches of water to bath in. I cannot remember why; water, with our nice English rainfall, was one of the rare commodities in plentiful supply, and it did not have to be imported. Whether courtiers respected King George’s Line we shall never know, possibly they locked the bathroom door and
disloyally
wallowed. In any case it was a gesture, so important in times of national emergency, and doubtless the cost of paint and labour was minimal.

Which would you rather be, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting beaten by her employer with such fury that a finger was broken, or her modern equivalent who walks behind the Queen loaded with flowers, sweets and cuddly toys bestowed by the adoring public?

It is by no means only the English who adore the royal family. The French never tire of reading about them, and invent thrilling stories. There is a magazine, read by every concierge in the land as well as most of the dukes, devoted exclusively to royalty, and even distant cousins of Belgian or Scandinavian royal personages are good for a mention.