Christmas with Chips IV

Chips (Channon) records Christmas Day in his diary: 1944 – 1952.

Monday 25th December, 1944.
The Old Rectory, Elveden, Suffolk.

A day too ghastly and cold almost to chronicle! Paul and I started out in the very cold for Henlow at 11.15: thick fog overtook us as we crept the whole way – warm welcome from only Mrs Lennox-Boyd, who seemed a benevolent Lady Macbeth, grieving for her sons – a sort of mild Hecuba! Alan was nervy and ill at ease; Patsy simply impossible; and worse, the Boyd brood, boring, unattractive and plain. We had oysters, turkey, Xmas pudding and Paul gulped two glasses of champagne; then we fled to Elveden – or tried to: the journey took three hours and at various times I nearly gave it up. Que faire? Paul chattered of Charlemagne, intelligent child, half-frozen, he fell asleep. I was wretched and feared he would get pneumonia! He behaved beautifully. At long last we arrived – the Old Rectory is freezing. It is the coldest day of the year! I shiver and shake and wish I was back in Belgrave Square. Paul is miserable and didn’t want to come. The usual exchange of ridiculous presents! The Iveaghs will give me a million but not a present we could use or want! They enraged me with their presents. There is an absence of all graciousness in the Guinness family, at least in the Iveagh family, which chills and frightens. I suspect that my mother-in-law is really a man! Has a male brain and masculine characteristics . . . we all dined cosily in the little cottage where they live a picnic existence since the Big House, which we always call ‘Haemorrhoids’ is still occupied by Americans. Turkey and hock.
I am very sorry that I came: the cold, fog, risk of exposure . . .

(Part of this page is cut out of the diary, so the end of the entry is missing.)

Sunday, 25th December, 1949.

The Duchess of Kent gave me twelve cigarette-extinguishers beautifully inscribed . . . . Prince Paul sent me a Fabergé cup.
We had a Boys’ dinner party at home: John Gielgud . . . . Oliver Messel . . . . etc. Freddie Ashton was expected but got ‘lost’ and never turned up, I was furious. Great exchange of presents.
John Gielgud gave me a tortoiseshell-and-ormolu box; Arthur Macrae a (illegible) tortoiseshell box; Oliver Messel a magnificent piece of china, etc. P had a lovely surprise of a picture secretly painted by Martin Battersby of the morning room at Belgrave Square; it is a charming interior; he also gave me smaller things of charm – three Black Warrior plates. I gave him an expensive camera, handsome links and a series of little things, etc.
I also had a luncheon party at the Ritz . . . . In the afternoon we called on the Douglas Fairbankses.
I miss my son.

Monday, 25th December, Christmas Day, 1950.

We breakfasted à trois, as we always do on Christmas morning and exchanged presents.
I had a luncheon party . . . and afterwards we sat about listening to the King’s broadcast. Much the best he has ever made. All the lovelies in London lunched.

Thursday, 25th December, 1952.

Paul is at Pyrford. I lunched at home with a big boring party including Willie Maugham, the Austrian Ambassador and others . . . dined with Binkie Beaumont in High Bohemia . . . few presents, nearly a thousand Xmas cards.

****

There are no more Christmas Day diary entries. Chips died on 7th October 1958, aged sixty-one.

How many cigarette cases, lighters and bibelots does a man need? In the twenty-six years in which he chronicles his Christmases we see his rise and, relative, fall. How few books and pictures he is given. The poor rich boy is so often lonely or buying friends with his hospitality. I find these entries unedifying and often reveal Chips at his worst.