1932, THE YEAR that shaped Diana’s life, opened in unexceptional fashion, with nothing much changed from the previous autumn. Sydney gave a dance for another Redesdale daughter, Unity. John Betjeman’s siege of Pam continued (‘My thoughts are still with Miss Pam,’ he wrote to Diana in February. ‘I have been seeing whether a little absence makes the heart grow fonder and my God, it does . . .’). Bryan’s longing to keep Diana to himself and her own fierce determination to lead as active a social life as possible still conflicted sharply; she often went to London on her own for parties, concerts and exhibitions. They went on arguing about the size of their family: Bryan wanted a lot of children, whereas Diana told him that two were enough. There was another of the trips abroad that with marriage had become a regular part of Diana’s life. This one was at the instigation of her brother Tom, who had written to Bryan suggesting they visit him in Berlin where he was studying law. Tom was full of German politics; talking to him, Diana heard the word ‘Nazi’ for the first time. ‘If I were a German I suppose I would be a Nazi,’ said Tom. In the first years of the Thirties, with National Socialism still a minority movement and Hitler a long way from the power he seized in January 1933, few could foresee the horrific future which the adherents of Nazism were to build in Europe; to many of the young, the new movement seemed to hold out hope to a country still starving and economically depressed fourteen years after the First World War had ended.
Almost immediately after the Guinnesses returned from Berlin came the bitter news that Lytton Strachey, whose health had been steadily deteriorating all winter, had died on 21 January. For Diana it was a misery; for Carrington it was the end of the world, and she determined to carry out her declared intention of taking her own life.
Naturally Diana and Bryan knew nothing of this. They were not privy to the inmost secrets of the Ham Spray circle; they were of a younger generation and, though they knew how deeply Carrington had loved Lytton, neither of them had suffered any loss remotely akin to hers. They knew she needed as much help and comfort as possible; the idea that she might kill herself never crossed their minds.
Carrington, once her mind was made up, managed to put on a brave face to most of the outside world. She dreamed of Lytton in his ‘old blue dressing gown’ and wrote in her commonplace book, ‘Every day your white face haunts me. Every hour some habit we did together comes back and I miss you. You were more dear to me every year. What is the use of “adventures” now without you to tell them to? There is no sense in a life without you.’ But she was still able to conceal her consuming despair. Even her writing paper – palest pink, with an orange sunburst and an orange lining to the envelope – seemed to exude a kind of brave cheerfulness when she wrote to Diana, while staying with Augustus and Dorelia John.
Monday February 8
Darling Diana,
It was lovely seeing you on Saturday. I can’t get over your kindness in coming all the way over here but if you knew how much difference it meant to me and how much everyone loved you and Bryan and the praises for your beauty and charm, you would have felt compensated. Augustus was very impressed and said in confidence to me he hoped to paint you for his own pleasure, and Dorelia saw everything I wanted her to see. Vivian I regret to say talked more of Bryan but I suppose that must be forgiven. I am going back to Ham Spray tomorrow. Ralph is coming to fetch me . . . We went for a long walk yesterday afternoon in the woods. I have finished Miss John’s masterpiece today.
Diana, I wanted so much to give you something of Lytton’s. He bought an eighteenth century waistcoat years ago and never could think of anyone worthy of it because it was so beautiful. Now it will be yours. Perhaps you could alter it. I’d like to think of you wearing it. For Lytton loved your beauty, and your rare character, and we talked of you so often. I’ll send it to you tomorrow, when I get back. My love to dear Bryan and to you
Your very loving
C
When she returned to Ham Spray, Carrington continued to come over to Biddesden. Once, with Ralph Partridge and David (‘Bunny’) Garnett, she came for one of the picnics she had so enjoyed while Lytton was alive – Bryan drove them to the chosen spot in a ponycart. More often she arrived on her own to ride with Bryan or Pam.
These rides were always rather an adventure. Bryan, who had acquired the Biddesden horses for the benefit of guests, had bought them from a riding school in Littlehampton, thinking they would be well schooled. At the riding establishment, where they were taken out every day, this was so, but at Biddesden, where they were full of oats and often not taken out for several days on end, they were apt to take hold and bolt once they reached open country. Carrington, who had not learned to ride until her late thirties, took a number of falls. Always brave, after Lytton’s death she had the recklessness of one who no longer wished to live.
‘Yesterday at Biddesden I came face to face with death,’ she wrote in her commonplace book on 22 February:
The horse bolted down the road and I could not pull him up as my wrists were so weak with trying to hold him in. I saw the long road with the bend and the logs on the Bank, and the horse tearing along the tarmac road towards the bend. He swerved round the corner and I came off and just missed the logs and the road and fell on the Bank. I was completely unhurt only winded by the sudden fall, and I think of the irony of fate that I who long for death find it so hard to meet him.
Six days later she again visited Biddesden on her own. This time she asked Bryan if she could borrow a gun – there were about half a dozen in the gun cupboard – explaining that Ralph’s old gun had disappeared. Bryan, who knew how unhappy she was but not that she had already attempted suicide, wondered momentarily if he should lend her one. But her demeanour seemed so normal and her habit of shooting the rabbits on the Ham Spray lawn for the pot was so well known that he agreed, lending her the one he thought she would find easiest to handle, a Belgian 12-bore. It would, in any case, have been awkward to refuse someone almost old enough to be his mother (Carrington was nearly thirty-nine).
Back at Ham Spray, a doubtful Bunny Garnett asked her, ‘What’s all this about rabbits?’ Just at that moment, one ran across the lawn. ‘There!’ said Carrington, pointing triumphantly. She took the gun up to her room and hid it. Ralph Partridge, constantly on the qui vive in case she made another suicide attempt, had no idea it was there.
A few days before she killed herself Carrington came to stay at Biddesden. Diana was in London, and Bryan welcomed Carrington’s company, hoping also that this meant she was gradually beginning to recover from Lytton’s death. She arrived on 5 March, accompanied by Ralph Partridge; the following day, they were joined by Bunny Garnett and Frances Marshall. The weather was superb, with a clear blue March sky; Bryan, who had been walking in the woods with Pilgrim, took them on a picnic the following day. On her return home, Carrington wrote:
Darling Bryan,
If ‘Collins’ are to be written, it is I who should have written to you not you to me. You never realise how much I love my visits to Biddesden, and those gallops, even if they do end by falling off. I must admit I thought our picnic was an especially good one this time and our kitchen party delightful. David Garnett and Ralph and Frances enjoyed themselves enormously and loved you.
I hope you have a lovely time tonight. I can hardly bear not to see you both in your dresses . . . but I have enjoyed so many parties at the Johns’ that I couldn’t face sitting out watching or feeling gloomy.
The country is so lovely. Yesterday was a beautiful drizzling spring day. Very sympathetic. Give darling Diana all my love and a hundred kisses and all my love to you and one kiss.
Your loving
C
Apart from her reference to ‘feeling gloomy’ it was a letter that could have been written by any affectionate guest – and certainly not one to cause alarm bells to ring. But Carrington had only three days to live. ‘What a relief just to finish all the jobs that are undone and then “go to sleep”,’ she scrawled in her private notebook.
On 10 March, Virginia and Leonard Woolf came to see her. They found her alone, which would have been unthinkable if anyone at Ham Spray had felt apprehensive about her. Indeed, so reassured had her husband Ralph become that early the following morning he went up to London for the day. After he had gone, just before eight o’clock, Carrington put on Lytton’s yellow silk dressing gown, placed the butt of Bryan’s gun on the floor and its muzzle against her side and, facing a mirror so that she could see what she was doing, pressed the trigger with her toe. The first time she forgot to release the safety catch; the second time the gun fired. She did not manage to kill herself outright, but took six hours to die.
It was a dreadful time. For Bryan, who was deeply fond of Carrington, there was the added torture of the guilt of having been the one to pass her the means of her death, of wishing, as he said to Diana, that he had thought quickly enough to say to Carrington, ‘I’m sorry, but I never lend my guns.’ Diana consoled him as best she could . . . but was soon to inflict a devastating blow on him herself.
Two and a half weeks before Carrington’s death, Diana had met the man who would henceforth rule her life. On 21 February a friend with whom she had come out a few years earlier, Barbara St John Hutchinson, invited the Guinnesses to her twenty-first birthday party. ‘I’m putting you next to Tom Mosley,’ said Barbara. ‘I want to see what effect you have on each other.’