The Pursuit of Laughter (64 page)

I should not have written to ask Evelyn what he remembered about the events of 1930 if I had remembered the letters quoted above, or seen the entries in the diary which he began again just then. They answer my question as clearly as possible, but I only discovered them fifteen years after our exchange of letters in 1966, and his diaries were not yet published. I should have reminded him of his own legion of new acquaintances, and of the fact that he had fallen in love, but my memory of all this was vague, and I cast around for something to say in reply.

During the war he had published an unfinished novel,
Work Suspended
. The heroine was a very dull girl, Lucy Simmonds, who was pregnant, and a young man who was fond of her took her to the Zoo in order to divert her in an appropriately unexciting way. This episode, rather similar to the sort of things Evelyn and I did in the winter of 1929-30, put me in mind of that time, so different from the circumstances I was in when I received his book. I was in Holloway Prison, and to this abominable dwelling he had addressed his gift. Twenty five years later I remembered Lucy and the scene at the Zoo and, with the idea of attack being a good means of defence, I answered with some reference to
Work Suspended
. I hope I shall not sound too conceited if I say that except for the pregnancy, and the Zoo (I disliked the Zoo almost as much as Bramber), I never for one moment thought Lucy was meant to be a cruel portrait of me. If I had been like her Evelyn would not have wished to spend his leisure hours with me. Had I realized how ill and depressed he was, I should not have
written
the letter. He replied by return of post, dated 30 March 1966 from Combe Florey House in Somerset:

This sad letter appears to have been the last Evelyn ever wrote. He died of a heart attack on Easter Day, 10 April 1966, after hearing Mass said in Latin according to the ancient rite he regretted so bitterly. When I heard the news I went over to see Nancy, who lived not far away in Versailles. We were both very sad. We came to the conclusion that he had had enough. He hated what the world had become; even his Church, which he had always regarded as the last bastion of civilization, had failed him. The Greeks said, ‘All death is good provided it is sudden’; this is not a Christian idea, but Evelyn died, from a Christian point of view, at a
perfect
moment, immediately after Mass. One of his aphorisms, printed at the end of his
Diaries
, is ‘All fates are “worse than death”.’ He dreaded the thought that he might have to live for twenty more years.

Although I hardly knew her I wrote to Laura Waugh, just to say how fond I had always been of Evelyn, and she replied: ‘Thank you very much for your letter. Evelyn had been talking so much about you the [last] few weeks. And I know how fond he was of you even tho you had met so rarely of late years. He was most distressed that you should have in any way connected yourself with Lucy Simmonds and said there had never been any connection between you at all.’

It was now my turn to be distressed. If he had been quite well he would have laughed at my letter, and it never occurred to me that he would give it another thought.

Among his supposed defects, listed at the beginning, I put rudeness and drunkenness. The two are linked; drunkards are habitually rude. It so happens that, during our year
together
, he drank very little. Perhaps the Evelyn I knew was not typical. Be that as it may, he was a perfect friend.

Mrs Hammersley was a great friend and near contemporary of my mother, and for this
reason
we never called her Violet. To us as children she was Mrs Hammersley, and remained so, although when I grew up I had friends older than she whom I called by their first names. My brother-in-law, Andrew Devonshire, so much younger than I am, who like the whole of our family found her irresistible, firmly called her Violet.

Mrs Hammersley’s mother, Mrs Williams-Freeman, was the wife of a diplomat, and Violet was born in Paris in 1877 at a flat in the Avenue d’Iéna. Later the family moved to the Avenue de l’Alma (now George V) where they lived until Violet was grown up.

She often spoke of her Parisian childhood. She and her brother played in the Tuileries gardens, still a children’s playground a hundred years later, with sweet stalls and donkeys to ride and a pond for sailing toy boats. One of her companions was Somerset Maugham, ‘Willie’, who was to be a lifelong friend.

Even as a little girl she had a love of self-dramatization. She managed to impress her
governess
with her dramatics, and one day when she was playing the piano and her mother came into the schoolroom she heard the governess say in a low voice: ‘
Vous savez, Madame, cette enfant m’inquiète. Elle a des idées de suicide!
’ [Madame, this child troubles me, she thinks of
suicide
.] Violet heard, and she played very softly, hoping for an interesting reaction from Mrs Williams-Freeman. At the very least she expected to be folded in her mother’s arms and comforted. But all she got was a box on the ears. Although she told us this story as a joke, it is nevertheless true that in after life she was quite often the victim of irrational fears and nervous depression. Perhaps her
‘idées de suicide
’ as a little girl were the forerunners of
nervous
breakdowns still in the distant future, one of which I was myself to witness.

Violet’s mother had a very rich and fascinating French friend: M Aubry-Vitet. When he was coming to dinner there were important preparations in the kitchen, and the butler
polished
the silver for hours. ‘
Monsieur A.V. vient diner ce soir
,’ he told Violet mysteriously when she visited him in the pantry. Until she was much older she imagined her mother’s friend’s name was Harvey, or Ave as in Ave Maria. M Aubry-Vitet had a little daughter Jeanne, who looked much more like Violet than did her own sister Agnes.

When Violet was eight there was a children’s party at the Embassy. She and her brother Ralph were sitting side by side for the sumptuous tea. The huge table, covered with a white damask linen cloth, was decorated with bright crackers and in the warm dining room there was the scent of angelica and crystallized cherries and little iced cakes. There were twenty beautifully dressed children, the little girls in frills and lace, the boys in dark velvet with silk
stockings and buckled shoes. The door opened and the butler announced: ‘Mrs Gladstone’.

‘Under the table, quick!’ said Violet’s brother seizing her hand, and they slid down and hid beneath the long tablecloth.

After a minute or two their absence was noticed. ‘Where are the Freeman children?’ asked the ambassadress, and out they had to come. ‘Why did you hide?’

‘Well,’ said Violet’s brother, ‘we know
Mr
Gladstone is a murderer, and I thought Mrs Gladstone might be one too!’

‘Home politics!’ said the unfortunate hostess. It was 1885, and every Conservative,
including
Queen Victoria, firmly believed that the death of General Gordon at Khartoum had been entirely Gladstone’s fault for not sending the relief expedition up the Nile much sooner, in time to save him.

A few years after Mr Williams-Freeman died, the family left Paris and went to live in London. Mrs Williams-Freeman was remembered by my mother as a friend of her own Frenchified father, Gibson Bowles, at the turn of the century.

Doubtless influenced by M Aubry-Vitet, she had become a Roman Catholic, and so had Violet and Agnes; this, added to the fact that they had always lived in Paris, made them seem quite foreign. Violet was one of my mother’s greatest friends before either was married, and she sometimes stayed on board Mr Bowles’s little yacht at some French port, usually Trouville. ‘We shan’t want any tea,’ my mother called down to the galley, but Violet hurried to call firmly, ‘
I
shall.’ She was always a demanding guest, but so clever and amusing that my grandfather was pleased by her company.

When she was 24 she married a rich widower, twice her age; he had grown-up children. Mr Hammersley loved hunting and shooting, and for him the best moment of the year was August in Scotland. He was also a great gardener. Although I never knew him, for he died in 1913, I can well imagine him from a portrait by Henry Tonks, a well-built blond man with a cheerful, rubicund face under a straw hat; the picture was like an Impressionist’s version of a seedsman’s catalogue, so sunny and bright, with so many flowers. Nothing, neither the man nor the scene, could have been more unlike Mrs Hammersley. Theirs must indeed have been the attraction of opposites.

She was rather small and very dark, with black hair and huge dark eyes, and she had an expression of deep gloom. She had a rather low, hollow voice, and although she often laughed it was as if unwillingly. Her garden, at least the only garden of hers I ever saw, was a discreet green. When I first knew her she was already a widow, and widow’s weeds became her. To the end of her life she was swathed in black scarves and shawls and veils; in later years not exactly in mourning, because many of her clothes were dark brown, but the whole effect had something more Spanish than French about it. Once when she was slightly
annoying
my sister Nancy, who used the powder and lipstick universal among our generation, by saying: ‘
Painters
don’t admire make-up
at all
,’ Nancy retorted: ‘Oh well, Mrs Ham, you know it’s all very well for you, but we can’t all look like El Greco’s mistress.’ Mrs Hammersley gave her hollow, unwilling laugh.

She had the most beautiful, delicately made hands, and she was a talented pianist. Her long drawing room had a grand piano at each end and she loved to play duets with musical friends. On one slender, ivory finger she wore a diamond and emerald ring shaped like a
fleur de lys
. We all craved it, and I am sorry to say we never hesitated, as children, to exclaim, ‘Oh Mrs Ham! Your ring! You are
so
lucky,’ or even, ‘Mrs Ham, when you die will you leave me your ring?
Please
do.’ At a very early age we discovered the potency of the word ‘lucky’ when applied to Mrs Hammersley. She considered herself the unluckiest person alive, and reacted accordingly to our reiterated cries.

She had perfect taste, and no doubt the London house with the two pianos must have been delightful. I never saw it, but she told me that when it was finished she took her butler all over it. Clean and shining, with whatever labour-saving devices existed in those days, it was convenient, bright and beautiful. The butler said nothing; she had hoped for a word of praise. When every corner had been visited, he spoke: ‘No boot hole,’ was his only comment.

The Hammersleys had three children, Christopher, David and Monica. Mr Hammersley (like Mr Williams-Freeman) was a Protestant, but he said his wife could bring the children up as Catholics provided the boys went to Eton, and this is what happened. The sons were aged ten and eight when their father died of Bright’s disease. They were all the world to Mrs Hammersley, handsome and intelligent.

She paid much less attention to Monica. The nanny reported that Monica had no appetite, she would hardly eat, and seemed unable to swallow. The nanny coaxed her; but everything appeared to be too much—even a teaspoon was too enormous to go into her
little
mouth, the smallest ever seen. Finally a mustard spoon was used, but hardly an ounce of Benger’s Food a day could Monica eat. When Mrs Hammersley told us this, years later, she was able to laugh about it because the story ended in such an unexpected way. The whole family went for their annual visit to Fontaine-les-Nonnes, the farm near Meaux where Jeanne Aubry-Vitet, now Comtesse Carl Costa de Beauregard, lived with her son and daughter. Monica was brought into the dining room and sat at the end of the table with the other
children
and without her nanny. When her mother glanced down the table to see how she was getting on, Monica was polishing off a plate of
rognons au vin blanc
, after which she had some cheese and then
oeuf à la neige.
The whole mustard spoon episode was supposed to have been the fault of the nanny, who had in some way made Monica believe that to eat was beyond her powers, but although Mrs Hammersley herself obviously never thought of it, I have sometimes wondered whether the little girl might have been in the early stages of anorexia nervosa, and that the welcome company of other children combined with the delicious Fontaine food brought to an end a potentially dangerous situation. Monica was a friend of my sisters and myself and often stayed with us at Asthall, but by then the mustard spoon was a tale of long ago.

My parents had many friends and relations to stay; Mrs Hammersley was our favourite. I remember her first when I was seven and my sister Unity three. Unity had a familiar called
‘Madam’ whom she blamed for all her sins, such as scribbling with coloured chalks on the wall near her bed. My son Alexander, also at the age of three, had exactly the same excuse; his familiar was called the Dackerman. Once he got hold of some scissors and snipped his cot sheets to ribbons. When I reproached him he said: ‘But the Dackerman did it. I
saw
him do it.’ Unity also
saw
Madam at work.

Mrs Hammersley was fascinated by Madam. ‘Tell me, Unity,’ she said, ‘what is Madam
like
?’

‘She’s got black hair, and a black dress, and a white shawl,’ said Unity very slowly, gazing at her interlocutor.

‘
Oh
! Am I Madam?’ cried Mrs Hammersley. There was no reply.

The fact that she listened to us and seemed to be interested in us was very unusual and flattering, for in those days children were seen and not heard. Sometimes she was almost too interested. A cousin of ours who was having an unsatisfactory love affair told us that Mrs Hammersley padded along to her room late one night, and opened the conversation by saying: ‘
Tell
me Phyllis, Are you
happy
?’

Phyllis replied untruthfully: ‘Oh yes, thank you, Mrs Hammersley.
Very
happy.’

I think it was my father and uncles who called her ‘the widow’ in our hearing, and we adopted the name, which suited her wonderfully well; not only her dress, but her whole demeanour and expression were those of a widow. Her gloom acquired a new dimension when financial disaster overwhelmed her. Mr Hammersley had left her quite rich, but
nearly
all the money was in Cox’s Bank of which he had been a partner, and the bank went into liquidation in 1923, leaving Mrs Hammersley if not exactly poor, at least very much less well off than she was accustomed to be. I remember my mother opening a letter at breakfast one morning and saying, ‘Oh, poor Violet, Cox’s Bank has failed,’ and then, sorry though she was, laughing, because the letter announcing this terrible news was written on the back of a crumpled bill, as if to demonstrate that henceforward writing paper would be beyond the means of her old friend.

Many years later she did the same thing to me; someone had forged her signature on a cheque. The bank reimbursed her, but in telling me of it she wrote on a scrap of waste paper.

The big London house with the two pianos and no boot hole now had to be sold, and she moved to a charming little house in St Leonard’s Terrace in Chelsea. Christopher was at Christ Church, but David when he left Eton had to earn his living instead of going to Oxford. She minded all this quite desperately, and made no attempt whatsoever to hide her despair, let alone count her blessings.

She never seemed poor to us because her possessions were so lovely. I knew St Leonard’s Terrace well; my parents often took it for the summer when my sisters were out dancing every night. Furniture, pictures, china, all were perfect. But she certainly felt poor, and was more and more disinclined to spend money out of her purse. When she dined with us in London my father always stood on the doorstep with half a crown at the ready to pay her taxi. ‘Oh no, David,’ she used to say, rather pleased by his little joke. There was invariably a
scene before dinner, whether in London or the country.

‘Violet, what would you like to drink?’

With a hollow laugh resembling a groan, Mrs Hammersley said with great emphasis, ‘You know, David, there’s only
one
thing I
really
like.’

‘Oh, what is it? Claret? Cider?’ He never gave in until she had uttered the word
champagne
, although the bottle was waiting on the ice.

She was one of those rare persons who are equally good as hostess or guest; she was well worth the trouble she caused. Her luncheons and dinners were highly enjoyable, and
possibly
one of the reasons why she so resented the loss of her money was that she knew she had a great talent which she was now unable to use except in a modest way. Sybil Colefax was an old friend of hers, and it exasperated her to hear of endless luncheons at Argyle House, while she, so much cleverer and more fascinating in every way than Lady Colefax could ever be, was inhibited by lack of means from filling her house as she would, perhaps, have liked to do. In fact, however, she was far from having the robust health, stamina and energy required by anyone who aspires to the role of ‘hostess’, and she probably realized this, and was just complaining for the fun of it.

The Hammersleys’ country house on the river at Bourne End where they had a
gondola
and a Venetian gondolier, was also sold. I never saw it, but heard much about ‘My
friends
, the
Lehmanns
’ who were her neighbours there. John Lehmann was Mrs Hammersley’s
godson
, and she was devoted to his talented sisters, Beatrix, who became a famous actress, and Rosamond, whose first novel,
Dusty Answer
, was a bestseller in England and was also acclaimed in France. We felt very envious of the Lehmanns. Mrs Hammersley made all her friends sound thrilling in exactly the way we most admired as adolescents. We were very
conscious
of being country bumpkins, and she was a link with a glittering world of ‘clever’
people
. She also loved to travel to outlandish places, and stayed with various High Commissioners in the outposts of Empire, returning with tales of adventure among the crocodiles. Once she told us she was going to Rome. ‘Oh,’ said Unity, ‘isn’t Mrs Ham
lucky!
She’s going to
roam
. Where are you going roam
to
?’ However, it was not her roaming, it was her clever friends we longed for.