“Sculpture/Relief. The Adoration of Magi. The figures, dressed in sixteenth century costume, are grouped in an architectural setting with a vault over them. In the centre of the vault is a star surrounded by five cherub’s heads, flanked by groups of a single angel and three angels reading. There are traces of blue paint in the vault. Below on the left, the Virgin sits on a cushion on a small trunk holding out the standing Christ Child on her left knee. Joseph stands behind her holding a string of beads (a rosary?). An elderly bearded and bareheaded King kneels to the right of the Virgin, holding out a covered vase to the Child. A second bearded King, stands behind him holding a covered cup, and a third, clean-shaven and more youthful stands on the extreme right holding a covered cup. In the spandrels at the top there are groups of leaves. The initials ‘A.H. are carved by the Virgin’s foot.. Alabaster, carved in high relief, with traces of dark blue paint, and gilding, height (whole) 78.5 cm, width (whole) 68.5 cm, depth (whole) 20.0 cm, circa 1540. Production Place: Malines. Flemish. Renaissance.” Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Tuesday 6 January, 1987. Saltwood.
The ground is dormant at present, with only a few snowdrops and early crocuses showing. For most of the day we were along the woodland walk, raking and pruning. The rake collects huge piles of dead grass, twigs and brambles, and we had several fires going.
Just after tea Peter M. rang with the news that poor Robin Cooke had died. Robin was two years younger than me, and on occasion could look really quite youthful. He had been in the House for an eternity, having come in on a by-election in the first year of Macmillan’s premiership. Robin overlapped with Chips – who was himself by then bright red in the face and (as he candidly admits) feeling ghastly.
What was pleasing, and admirable, about Robin was his exceedingly blasé approach. He had a safe seat, but slowly ran the majority down from neglect, and by the Eighties his Association had got sick of him. His wife, Jenny, was bright and birdlike. And with his sardonic interrogatory style he could sometimes, on returning for the weekend, reduce her to tears. Jenny was née King and her father, a nasty old buffer who in former times had been a member of the Labour Party and a headmaster (it’s always shows), had changed sides and got elected for the safe seat of Dorset South. When he retired (far too late; he was the same age as my father) it was intended that Robin should slip ‘sideways’, out of the clutches of the Bristol Conservatives, and start again.
But the plan went wrong – they always do – and Robert Cranbourne was selected. Probably better, all in all. But for Robin it was a sad blow. He had served notice on the Bristol Division, and could hardly retract. He was (ludicrous phrase, first amusingly, indeed indecently, deployed in my hearing by Archie Balfour) between two stools.
I am a great believer in the adage that deep disappointment can trigger a terminal illness. And I have no doubt that this was what happened with Robin. And worse was to come. Although he was a tremendous supporter of Mrs T. and part of her close Election team in 1983, she lost her nerve at the last moment. Robin, with all his special knowledge and feeling for the Palace of Westminster and his work for the Heritage, should have gone straight to the Lords. But he must needs console himself with a K which had, in any case, been his due for several years.
He was a great gardener, and personally used to cut the yew trees at Athelhampton every year, from tall and perilous-looking special ladders.
MP’s die in batches. Just when one thinks that foul air, bad diet, unlimited alcohol and late nights ought surely to be exacting a higher toll, the Almighty springs a surprise. David Penhaligon was killed in a car smash over Christmastide. And Number 10 have just been on the phone. Would I represent the Prime Minister at his memorial service in Truro Cathedral on Saturday (ugh) of this weekend.
What a bore. It’s a long and tedious journey, that rail stretch after Plymouth. I won’t even have time to dismount and make a splash on Plymouth Sound.
Still, always fun to represent the Prime Minister doing anything.
Sunday 6th January, 1991. Saltwood
First dinner of the year. David Davis and his wife (good strong chap, very much our sense of humour. Did the ‘black’ route without turning a hair, then retraced his footsteps, hands in pockets – first time that’s ever been done!) Richard Ryder and Caroline, the Deedes, the Michael Howards. We were eleven and the table and the food were terrific. But the meal somehow lacked Stimmung.
Tristan, a last minute addition, performed sparklingly. But Bill Deedes, though splendid, and still a minter of delicious unfinished sentences is going deaf and ‘misses’ things. Even so, he remains one of the great ingredients in any grouping. He is wise, politically shrewd, still; and has a vast, archival fund of historic experience. Bill told Jane that he used to play golf with Philip Sassoon before the war and Philip was so impatient that he employed two extra caddies who were sent ahead to see where the balls landed, so that Philip and his partner wouldn’t waste time looking for them. (I know nothing about golf, but thought ‘looking for the ball’ was one of the secondary ritualised pleasures?)
Lady Deedes, whom I called ‘Evelyn’ but Michael Howard (I don’t doubt correctly) addressed as ‘Hilary’, was a pool of tranquil, though amiable longeurs.
When the ladies exited, I started the conversation on the lines of what are we to do about Margaret?
Following my meeting with her on Thursday, and the very bitter feelings of betrayal which she so evidently holds, my feeling is that she, her behaviour, could present the Party with one of its most vexatious problems over the coming months. There was some desultory talk about ‘the book’ (I gave nothing away. Only Richard knows that she and I are talking). Agreement on the general ‘problem’ of Mark. We couldn’t really get into a good gossip, as Tristan would have done, left to himself.
Bill to some extent inhibits this – the Old School. And Richard was totally, owlishly silent. So much so that I thought he must be terribly tired, half asleep (he had been shooting in Norfolk all day). But on the few occasions that he uttered, monosyllabically, it was slicingly to correct errors of fact made by the participants. As a personality he is deeply pleasing – intelligent and ‘aimable’ in the French sense.
DD also impressed. The concept of having clever, tough, congenial people in the Whips’ Office is relatively new. In former times they were just fieldsport enthusiasts whose last and only fulfilment-period had been bullying (and in some cases buggering) Lower Boys at Eton. Now it is recognised as a nursery for junior Ministers. (I remember Nigel, when I reproached him for going there, saying that the experience was essential – how Parlt works, how ‘Business’ is arranged, if one is to do a ministerial job properly.) As for myself, although I like to boast of having been blackballed – ‘both to have been proposed, and to have been blackballed is equally complimentary’ – I am sad not to have done a stint there.
At present we are all a little constrained. I first noticed this at the End of Term dinner last July. The polls are implacable. The date of the Election approaches. I think we will win, but I can’t tell how. And behind everything lurks this tedious, unnecessary but debilitating ‘question’ of Europe. We are all (except for dear Tristan) true Tories. But we cannot give expression to our true feelings.
(Both, Alan Clark)