A sharp eye amid the encircling gloom
Deborah Devonshire
A MINGLED MEASURE by James Lees-Milne John Murray, £19.99, pp. 325 Everyone who enjoyed the other `Kubla Khan' diaries will fasten with joy onto this volume which covers the years 1953-71. J L-M was no longer working full time for the National Trust, so there are no more hilarious descriptions of meetings with owners of houses considered for hand- ing over. But it is a wonderful picture of the life of this observant man who describes places, artists, writers, neigh- bours, friends and relations and allows us into some of his own thoughts.
Forty years on some people seem as extinct as dodos — Eddie Marsh, for instance, who criticised so sharply a manuscript of J L-M's that it made the author miserable for days; a rag-and-bone man uttering his cries in Thurloe Square and Hilaire Belloc setting himself on fire by his candle while staying with a friend. J L-M arrived at Nice airport at 3,40 am and walked the six miles to Alvilde's (his wife since 1951) house in Roquebrune. The installation of electric light at Westwood Manor in Wiltshire is noted and deplored. These are memories of a long lost world.
The L-Ms lived at Roquebrune for ten years, she passport- and tax-bound, he going to and fro his flat in Thurloe Square. They hob-nobbed with the locals, from Prince Rainier to the cure's cousin (her mother kept a tame hen whose tail feathers trimmed the frame of her. photo — the hen's I mean, not the mother's), the Graham Sutherlands, the local goatherd and annual visitors to the coast including Winston and Clementine Churchill. There lived a witch in the village and Somerset Maugham down the road. When a mistral blew up, spreading sparks which caused a disastrous fire over their garden of little ledges up the steep hillside to the very walls of their house I didn't mind as much as I should have done.
In 1964 the L-Ms moved to Alderley Grange in Gloucestershire. 'The perfect mid-Georgian house' wrote Candida Lycett-Green. 'Inside a grand and generous staircase rose from a pale stone-flagged hall patterned with black stone diamonds'. Here Alvilde's twin accomplishments of cooking and gardening were appreciated by all who had the luck to taste or see the results of her work. In spite of frequent visits to London for the opera (where they always seemed to land in the Royal Box), plays, exhibitions and some committees of the National Trust which still bound him to that organisation, one feels that the diarist was really at home in that magic part of the country.
He walked in the woods with his whip- pets and in spite of saying he always looked at his feet he noticed everything. The more he noticed and loved what he saw the more gloomy he became over what was happen- ing to England, He often found himself among friends who bewailed the state of the country, politically and aesthetically. His favourite places were threatened by motorways or drowning in a reservoir — even a new cowshed filled him with gloom.Watching the 1972 TUC Congress on the television convinced him that 'com- munism must come to this country within 25 years'. I do hope he is comforted by the fact that there are only three years to go and it somehow doesn't seem likely. The same year Denys Sutton 'thinks an immedi- ate revolution possible and an authoritari- an government absolutely essential. George Weidenfeld said exactly the same thing a week ago'. Well, well.
Later that month 'Caroline Somerset took the Weidenfelds round Badminton and Lady W said to C did it take you a long time to find such a beautiful house?' I expect that was several Lady Weidenfelds ago.
A friend who had been to Chequers told J L-M that Mr Heath, unable to bear sleeping in the room which had been Mr Wilson's, chose another. That is the most human thing I have ever heard about Mr Heath.
Went last night to the Handley-Read collec- tion of Victoriana at the Diploma Gallery. The hideousness and stuffiness of the furni- ture and ornaments beyond belief — sheer lodging-house, and no wonder both Handley- Reads committed suicide last year.
I've never heard of the Handley-Reads or their horrid collection, but the aesthete in J L-M was not surprised by their grisly end after one glance at what the poor things had accumulated.
People who have grown up since the years of the war and immediately after can have little idea of what this country owes to L-M. He rescued, almost single-handedly, scores of delectable buildings, each one unique. It was before the word 'heritage' was chucked around to justify keeping everything from a badger sett to a banjo. No one bothered then. Pull them down, leave them to rot, these buildings will never be needed again, was the attitude of those in command. Had it not been for his dogged persistence against all the odds, including public opinion, local government opinion and up, up to the Cabinet itself, none of which had the slightest interest in things of beauty and legislated accordingly. the poor old heritage would have been a great deal poorer. J L-M is far too modest to underline any of his achievements, but he is lauded by everyone who remembers them.
In my ignorance I could have done with some guidance here and there. Who was Father Illtud Evans, whose death saddened (only momentarily, I admit) J L-M? Why did Monica Baldwin want help? I long to know more about Bertie Towers, who bought ancestors to go with a manor house and of whom 'Alec Clifton Taylor had little opinion'?
There are a number of spelling mistakes, Wrong dates and asterisks the second time a person is mentioned and some places don't appear in the index — unworthy of the house of John Murray and surely not the fault of the writer. Never mind. I read it with intense pleasure because A Mingled Measure brings J L-M into the room, and who could be a better companion on an autumn evening?
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