DIANA MITFORD AND Bryan Guinness were married on 30 January 1929. At first the Redesdales had raised objections to a church wedding on the grounds that Diana had largely lost her faith. Bryan found this attitude extraordinary, and vehemently opposed it.
Of all the amazing things I have heard or seen in this very strange world this objection of theirs is the most astonishing. Just as painters embody ideas of spring, summer, autumn or winter allegorically in human shape, so we realise that the idea of beauty, which includes Christian kindness (which is beauty of deed) has been embodied in a personal deity. My worship of this ideal beauty is directed towards its most perfect manifestation, which is yourself. I would therefore like to be married to you in a building dedicated to beauty, which is goodness, which is truth. Beyond this I know that psychologically I am only as good as I am because I was brought up to believe strenuously in God . . . anyway, I insist on being married in a church because to do otherwise might be the death of my whole family.
In the event, one of the most fashionable churches in London, St Margaret’s, Westminster, was chosen. Diana changed into her parchment satin wedding dress at the house of family friends in Wilton Crescent (the Redesdales’ house in Rutland Gate was let). She was an exquisite bride, her silver-gold beauty emphasised by the pearl and diamanté embroidery on the tight-fitting bodice of her dress and the crystal and silver flower wreath which held in place the Brussels lace veil given to her by Lady Evelyn.
Her bridesmaids wore dresses of gold tissue with overskirts of parchment tulle, with the long pearl and crystal necklaces that were Bryan’s presents to them. True to Sydney’s principles, Diana’s going-away suit had been made at Swinbrook, though Lady Evelyn had wisely given her new daughter-in-law collar and cuffs of mink to trim it with. It was the last time Diana wore anything homemade. The only disappointment was that neither her best friend Celia Keppel (always known as Cela), whose mother had recently died, nor her sisters Decca and Debo, who had contracted whooping cough a few days before the wedding, could be bridesmaids.
The young Guinnesses spent the first part of their honeymoon in Paris, staying in the Guinness flat at 12 rue de Poitiers. On these two floors overlooking the Seine all was luxury, with no trace of Lady Evelyn’s obsession with the medieval. Instead of smoke-blackened beams and pewter, her bedroom had grey satin curtains, a grey satin bed canopy wreathed with pink roses, a wood fire that burned brightly and efficiently and a comfortable daybed heaped with lace cushions.
Diana, encouraged by Bryan, spent days shopping, jettisoning the Swinbrook homemades and buying clothes for her new life. Her favourite, in which she invariably caused a sensation, was a short, tight, white faille dress with an enormous pale blue bow at the back which hung down to the ground, from the grand dressmaker Louise Boulanger. When they were visited by Bryan’s grandfather Lord Buchan (the Pocket Adonis), who had given them three exquisite Battersea enamel boxes as a wedding present, the statuesque Diana, in her new Paris finery, made a great impression. As he was leaving, the diminutive Lord Buchan drew his grandson to one side. ‘Pretty little woman you’ve married, Bryan,’ he said.
After Paris, the Guinnesses went to Sicily, then still primitive and unspoilt. Here, for the first time, Diana saw the Mediterranean. As she later recalled, few more magical introductions can be imagined than to glimpse the sea through a foam of pink almond blossom from the open porch of an ancient Greek temple.
When they returned, it was to their new house in Buckingham Street and, for Bryan, his Bar exam. He was a pupil in the chambers of Stephen Henn-Collins, an expert on copyright (who eventually became a High Court judge). Anything less suitable for the gentle, shy, artistic Bryan would be hard to imagine, but it was the career suggested by his father when Bryan baulked at Colonel Guinness’s first choice – following his father into politics and, at a suitable moment, taking over his seat as Conservative Member for Bury St Edmunds.
Bryan had bought 10 Buckingham Street (now Buckingham Place) from Muriel, Countess de la Warr. It had been designed by Lutyens and even then was expensive: its rates bill was £910, which was considerably more than the annual income of most of their friends. They furnished the house together; it was the only time in her life that Diana – still very conscious that her new affluence was due entirely to her new husband, and still only eighteen – failed to put her stamp on a house. Bryan’s decorating taste had been greatly influenced by his parents’ reaction against Edwardian ostentation and elaboration and the dining room, with its long refectory table lit by tall candles, flowers in a simple pewter jug and Jacobean glasses, was an echo of Lady Evelyn’s medieval fantasies. Diana’s bedroom had pink walls and a blue brocade bed standing on a dark blue velvet daïs.
There were familiar faces around them: Bryan’s favourite parlourmaid from Grosvenor Place, May, came to look after them and their chauffeur was Turner from Swinbrook. Meanwhile, Lord Redesdale sent them one of his dogs, a labrador called Rubbish which he knew Diana loved. Rubbish was gun-shy, which nearly proved his undoing: a few weeks later, when Diana and Bryan returned from Berlin, where they had gone in search of the exotic night clubs recommended by Bryan’s friend Brian Howard, they were met by Turner at Harwich – but no Rubbish. Hearing a car backfire, he had bolted. Two days later, the police brought him back, cut and terrified. It was only a respite; a few weeks later Rubbish started to have fits and had to be put down. To console Diana for the loss of this last link with her childhood, Bryan bought her an Irish wolfhound called Pilgrim, which grew enormous, eating pounds of raw meat – which he would usually take only from Diana’s hands – and needing constant exercise.
Almost at once, the difference in the bride’s and groom’s social styles became apparent. Bryan, naturally uxorious and still barely able to believe his luck in capturing his golden goddess, asked for nothing more than evenings alone with Diana after his day’s work studying, a shared companionship which he hoped would be broken only by a steadily increasing brood of children. His love for the arts found its outlet in constant theatre-going. Night after weekday night he would take Diana to each new production, from the latest thriller to Shaw, Strindberg, Shakespeare, Ibsen. On Sundays they went to theatre clubs. But he basically disliked urban life, preferring the beauty and solitude of the country and, though he loved his friends, he liked them in carefully regulated doses. At one point he expressed his view of cocktail parties – becoming increasingly fashionable – in one of the poems he was now writing constantly:
Here Friendship founders in a sea of friends
And harsh-lipped Bubbly cannot make amends;
Nor all the poisons shaken in a flask
That hands the insistent host with smiling mask.
Diana’s tastes were the opposite. Now she was catapulted suddenly into the life she had always wanted, in which she could entertain clever and amusing people who were prepared to chat endlessly. The Buckingham Street house and its excellent cook quickly became a mecca both for the Oxford coterie, who only had to pick up the telephone to be invited round by Diana, and for new friends such as Lotte Lenya, Peter Quennell and the Sitwells.
I too could be arty, I too could get on
With Sickert, the Guinnesses, Gertler and John
began one of the poems of another habitué, John Betjeman. Much younger than any of them, Diana listened to their sophisticated gossip, shared their reverence for Harold Acton – she and Bryan were constant visitors to the Acton family’s large house in Lancaster Gate – read the books and saw the paintings her new friends recommended. She went to concerts with her brother Tom, who was also constantly in and out of the house (like Bryan, with whom he got on extremely well, Tom had chosen the Bar as a profession). In many ways, the taste, aesthetic sensibility and culture of these friends was the nearest thing to the university education she never had.
She flung herself with zest into her new life. There were luncheon parties, dinner parties, tea parties, there were visits to Italy and France – Bryan’s suggestion of a bicycling holiday fell on deaf ears – expeditions to museums, concerts and theatres. Always Diana was the central star, the flame round which they all gathered and, increasingly, the shrine at which they worshipped. Impeccably dressed, beautiful, funny, warm and flatteringly attentive, she fascinated them all.
For weekends, Colonel Guinness lent his son and daughter-in-law a small house called Pool Place in the Bailiffscourt ‘compound’ at Climping. It was very ugly but almost on the beach, with the lovely Sussex countryside behind. Here too friends came constantly, to swim, to sunbathe, to picnic, but above all to chat. At night Bryan would walk Pilgrim, enjoying the summer evenings or, in wind and rain, thinking of Goethe’s enjoyment of tempestuous weather.
In May 1929, just before the general election, the young Guinnesses went to stay with Bryan’s parents at yet another of the Guinness homes: Colonel Guinness’s house in his constituency, Bury St Edmunds. For each of them it was an ordeal, though in different ways: Bryan, because the prospect of canvassing for his father, with its public speaking, its bearding of strangers in their homes, made him physically ill; Diana, because her strong though as yet unformulated political sympathies were in direct opposition to the politics of her father-in-law’s party. In addition, she had taken an instant dislike to Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, when she had met him at one of the eve-of-session parties given by the political hostess, Lady Londonderry. It was an aversion shared by her parents, though both remained thoroughgoing Tories.
The general election of 1929 was the first in which women had the vote on a parity with men: the previous year, the Equal Franchise Act had lowered the voting age for women from thirty to, like men, twenty-one, thus enfranchising a further five million women. When the nation went to the polls there were 14.5 million women voters compared to 12.25 million men and many of them were swayed by the romantic looks and compelling platform personality of the Labour Leader, Ramsay MacDonald, a man patently sincere, kind and honest.
The Trades Disputes Act, 1927, which made any repetition of the General Strike of 1926 illegal, had polarised political opinion in the electorate, dramatically increasing support for the still half-fledged Labour Party. Diana, whose first real political awareness was of the long-drawn-out bitterness of the miners’ strike and of their miseries thereafter, was heart and soul on the side of these working men and, if she had been old enough to vote, would have supported the Labour candidate.
As it was, Labour emerged for the first time as the strongest party, winning 287 seats to the Conservatives’ 261. Colonel Guinness was returned, though with a reduced majority; now out of office, he was able to board his yacht earlier than usual. The Liberals, who dropped to a mere 59 seats, fell for the first time from second place. It was true that they could have combined with the Tories to keep Labour out of office, but Baldwin’s dislike and distrust of Lloyd George was far too strong to permit this. Yet it was the Liberal Party’s Election Manifesto, We Can Conquer Unemployment – based on the brilliant Liberal economist John Maynard Keynes’s belief that a planned economy accompanied by massive public investment could provide jobs for all – that was to be the future inspiration for the young Labour politician Oswald Mosley. The rising star of his party and a brilliant orator, Mosley was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the new Labour administration.
After the election, the Guinnesses resumed a social life that was becoming ever more crowded and glittering. When Diana was taken up by Emerald Cunard, it was a notable gesture from one whose parties were famous – Lady Cunard’s formula for entertaining was clever or famous men encouraged to greater flights of wit and brilliance by the presence of beautiful women. So impressed was she with Diana’s looks and personality that she insisted she was to be her successor as hostess supreme. Another bond between them was their love of music. Diana was an avid concertgoer; Emerald Cunard worked tirelessly to promote not only the interests of her lover, the conductor Thomas Beecham, but opera generally.
It was after an evening at the opera that Diana first met Lytton Strachey. She and Bryan were sitting in the stalls when they saw Lady Cunard waving to them and went up to talk to her in the interval. She invited them to come back after the opera to her house, 7 Grosvenor Square, to join the supper party she was giving there, and at the same time introduced them to Strachey, who was sitting with her in her box. Tall, pale, thin, with an extraordinary fluting voice and a reclusive disposition, he had become a social ‘lion’ after the publication of Eminent Victorians and his presence at a party was considered a triumph. As usual, Emerald Cunard knew exactly who she intended to seat next to whom at the small supper tables arranged in her first-floor drawing room.
‘Come along, Mr Strachey,’ she said, ‘I want you to sit next to Diana Cooper.’
‘I’d rather sit next to the other Diana,’ said Strachey and, striding across the room with his heron-like gait, he folded his bony frame into a chair by the side of Diana Guinness. Diana was both immensely flattered and slightly apprehensive about her ability to keep this formidably intelligent, much older man adequately entertained, but their rapport was immediate. It was the start of a friendship that was to last until Strachey’s death less than three years later.
Most diversions were less intellectual. It was a frivolous era and the society papers, always anxious for a new star, had already realised that this nineteen-year-old girl was someone to watch. When she began to grow her hair it was reported reverently by the Tatler (‘Mrs Bryan Guinness looking lovelier than ever with her new “Trilby” coiffure’); when she wore her diamond tiara upside down and flat round her throat as a necklace at a dance at which the Prince of Wales was present, the Bystander regarded this as news – along with the fact that the yo-yo was the success of the ball. ‘It is a new game which fascinates the Prince.’ All these doings were observed and noted by Diana’s new friend Evelyn Waugh, and glimpses of them can be seen in Vile Bodies, his first success.
‘At the Tropical Party given that July on board the Friendship, one would-be gatecrasher arrived in full Zulu war paint and headdress only to be turned away,’ ran one report, ‘and Mr Evelyn Waugh sported a solar topee while his wife Evelyn was daringly dressed in flannel trousers, open-necked shirt and a panama.’ The party had been given by the Guinnesses and it was the break-up of the Waughs’ marriage only a few days later that brought Evelyn Waugh to the centre of Diana’s life.
Waugh was already on the fringe of their circle. He had met Bryan at Oxford and his wife Evelyn – they were known as He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn – was a friend of Nancy, who had moved into the Waughs’ five-room flat at 17a Canonbury Square the previous month (it was here that Nancy began to write her first novel, Highland Fling). Nancy was of course invited to the Friendship party, and brought her friends the Waughs. When She-Evelyn left Waugh for another man and the Waugh marriage broke up, convention made it impossible for Nancy to go on living at Canonbury Square. Waugh gave up the flat and returned to his parents’ home; Diana offered her sister a room at Buckingham Street and, naturally, Waugh came to see Nancy.
Once in Diana’s company, Waugh was dazzled. For Nancy, this repetition of a familiar phenomenon must have been galling. Against the fact of Diana’s beauty, Nancy’s own wit, sparkle and considerable attractiveness, her years of friendship with Waugh, counted little. Without intention or coquetry – in fact, without even trying – her sister moved to the centre of Waugh’s life.
Soon Waugh was spending most of his day at Buckingham Street. In the mornings he would sit on Diana’s bed, chatting, while she read or wrote her letters and telephoned. He would accompany her on walks, drives or shopping, lunch with her and often return for dinner in the evening with both Guinnesses before going home to his parents’ house.
Diana found him an enchanting companion. His irreverent wit and sophisticated approach fascinated her; he in turn was always at his best with her, so funny and spontaneously merry that she found it difficult to believe his heart had been broken along with his marriage. What she did not realise was that she was his emotional focus, his unattainable ideal. He longed to impress her, but was psychologically shrewd enough to conceal his infatuation behind jokes, fun, entertaining conversation and a teasing affection.
In August Colonel Guinness lent Bryan and Diana the Guinness house Knockmaroon, just beyond Dublin’s Phoenix Park. It had a vista of the River Liffey – the quality of the Liffey’s water was said to account for the Guinness fortune – with Georgian houses on the opposite bank and cattle grazing in the green meadows beyond.
Diana was now two months pregnant with their first child and Bryan more in love than ever. When, overcome with the drowsiness of early pregnancy, she rested after lunch, Bryan would scatter rose petals round her sleeping head and leave a poem on the pillow. Socially, however, it was an active time. There was the inevitable house party, including Evelyn Waugh, who had come on from the races. They lunched with the MacNeills in Viceregal Lodge and were introduced to W.B. Yeats by Lennox Robinson of the Abbey Theatre, to which Bryan went at least twice a week when in Dublin.
In November, Bryan, Diana, Nancy and Evelyn went to stay in the Guinness apartment in Paris. All of them except Diana were writing books – Bryan was writing Singing Out of Tune, Nancy was completing Highland Fling and Waugh was working on his travel book Labels. Diana, five months pregnant, stayed in bed until lunchtime while the other three worked; Bryan, who could not bear to be parted from her for a moment, wrote in her bedroom, spattering his mother’s grey satin curtains with ink when he shook his recalcitrant pen. In the afternoons, the party would go to a cinema, a dress show or a museum before dining out.
Back in London Waugh, struggling with the deadline for Labels, spent as much time as he could with Diana. Though the young Guinnesses spent Christmas morning at Grosvenor Place, Waugh joined them for luncheon at Buckingham Street. They gave him a stocking, containing a gold pocket watch; his present to them was the dedication of Vile Bodies (‘To B.G. and D.G.’), followed on 4 January 1930, by the manuscript, bound in leather with its title stamped in gold, and the inscription:
Dear Bryan and Diana.
I am afraid that this will never be of the smallest value but I thought that, as it is your book, you might be amused to have it (as a very much belated Christmas present).
Best love from
Evelyn
Vile Bodies was published in January and caused an immediate sensation.
Diana and Bryan’s son, Jonathan Bryan, was born on 6 March 1930, weighing ten pounds. The birth was uncomplicated, the ecstatic Bryan gave his wife the most sumptuous present he could think of, the huge and wonderful picture ‘The Unveiling of Cookham Memorial’ by Stanley Spencer, which Diana hung in the Buckingham Street dining room. Jonathan’s birth also marked the beginning of the end of Diana’s close friendship with Evelyn Waugh.