Nice chaps

Friday, March 5th., Cadogan Square, London.

I have had an acutish liver attack for two days but it is over now.

I didn't get into bed this morning until 1.20 and was up at 7. I dined at Diana Cooper's last night. I have never been to her Gower Street house before. It is fine, a complete house. Next door is a converted block of flats and they have knocked a hole through the wall and added one of the flats to their own home. An ingenious scheme. Amazing what can be accomplished when one has pots of money. The house does look beautiful though, and I feel quite envious. One curious thing is that Duff Cooper doesn't smoke, therefore there were no cigars, which pained me. Not because I can't do without cigars, but because I disliked the argument which ensued. Yet Duff is a most delightful man. 

I am dining with the Duke of Marlborough on Thursday and I hope, and expect, that things will be better there. I have known him for twelve years but at the Other Club last Thursday we became more intimate and he requested me to dinner. He is of course the head of the Churchill family and the grand grand grandson of the greatest soldier in English history, to whom a greatful country presented Blenheim. Also he is a very nice ignorant chap, and an ardent Roman Catholic. That is about all I know of him.

Our new servants are now installed. But when I wanted a bath last night (1.10 a.m.) the water was cold. This annoys Fred even more than it does me. His views on women (or rather girls) are gradually being soured. Wells and Shaw are coming to lunch on Friday next. The top of the house has been painted and papered as part of our preparations to move out later this year. I wish to God that we could stay! We still have no idea where we will move to and the cost of the whole operation will be fantastic. Which means that the unrelenting round of work continues. I increasingly wonder if it is all worthwhile, but feel entirely trapped.

Tomorrow I am off to the first night of "The Lady of the Camellias" with Duff Tayler. It is at the Garrick and features Tallulah Bankhead.

Geneva is full!

Monday, September 10th., Hotel Beau Rivage, Geneva.

Lunch with Duff Cooper and Diana at the Restaurant du Parc des Eaux Vives, Geneva. Apparently Geneva is 'full'. Flags of strange new designs, of new nations, hanging about on all the big hotels. At the Beaurivage the clientele seems to be rather earnest, movement-y, and narrow-minded. The other guest at the luncheon was a middle-aged Italian flaneur, named Piacci (or some such name) who knew everybody in Italy, Belgium, France, Switzerland and England (except Beaverbrook whom he tought was a brother of Rothermere). He is a type one meets in Paris; apparently kindly, broad-minded, a bit cynical, with no ambition. Friend of many authors, statesmen, princesses, etc. The Queen of Belgium has done his portrait three times. Ojetti has written his portrait in "Cosi Viste", etc., etc. A good talker but a bit too much of a solo performer. Still it was all very good.
See also, 'Alpine heat' - September 8th.,
http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/alpine-heat.html

We then drove to the hotel and Dorothy and I walked back to the Hall of the League of Nations for the afternoon session. It is a biggish hall, absolutely awful acoustics, in the ex-hotel Victoria. Atmosphere (mental) rather like the House of Commons. Physiacl atmosphere simply terrible; hot, stuffy, odorous of people in the premiere gallerie, for which Duff had got us tickets. Briand had orated in the morning, and they all said it was marvellous. But in the afternoon we saw nothing marvellous. We saw him record his vote - he is now a hunchback - on the admission of new nations to the Council. These were Persia, Venezuela - I forget the third. This business of voting on new admissions took a long time. Before that there had been statements about new rules. At the end of the declaration of the vote, the Chairman declared an interval of ten minutes. On the floor of the big Chamber, delegates and secretaries moving about and coming in and going out (especially at the back of the platform) the whole time. My general impression of the League was that something is being done there, despte the appearances of tedium and slackness.


Additionally for September 10th., see 'Beauty of Burslem' - http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/beauty-of-burslem.html

During this week, when I have been taking early morning walks with Tertia, and when I have been traversing the district after dark, the grim and original beauty of certain aspects of the Potteries, to which I have referred in the introduction to "Anna Tellwright", has fully revealed itself for the first time. Before breakfast on the heights of Sneyd Green, where the air blows as fresh and pure (seemingly) as at the seaside, one gets glimpses of Burslem and of the lands between Burslem and Norton, which have the very strangest charm.

Alpine heat

Saturday, September 8th., Annecey.

This was our hottest day so far. I began a rough preliminary sketch of my new film and I did about a third of it in the morning before a bathe. We bathed with Diana Cooper, Lady Horner, who had her two grand-daughters, Lady Helen and Lady Perdita Asquith with her, and the boy, Lord Oxford.

Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (29 August 1892 – 16 June 1986) was a prominent social figure in London and Paris, widely acknowledged as the beauty of the century. The young Diana moved in a celebrated group of intellectuals, most of them killed in World War I. She married one of the only survivors, Duff Cooper, later Ambassador to France. After his death, she wrote three volumes of memoirs which reveal much about 20th-century upper-class life.

<http://www.clivejames.com/snakecharmers/diana-cooper>


I talked to the old lady while on the raft. The Diana-Horner party went off to lunch at Talloires.

Talloires is located south of Geneva, Switzerland, on Lake Annecy and 13 km (8.1 mi) from the local "prefecture" Annecy, near the border of Italy. The town is situated in the French Alps, along a bay on the east side of the lake.

Duff Cooper had arrived in the early afternoon from Geneva.

Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG, DSO, PC (22 February 1890 – 1 January 1954), known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. He wrote six books, including an autobiography, Old Men Forget, and a biography of Talleyrand. He wrote one novel, Operation Heartbreak (1950).

He and Diana were returning from a rowing excursion (and reading Wells's new novel aloud to one another on the lake) just as Dorothy and I were finishing tea on the terrace.

H. G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering "brilliant pacific speeches" which "echo throughout Europe" but fail to end the war (the other would-be peacemakers, in Wells' vision, included Hore Belisha, Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill).