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Lady Diana Cooper's Autobiography #2
The Light of Common Day (2)
Lady Diana Cooper had been famous from her earliest youth, the subject of gossip and adoration as the queen of the "Coterie," an exclusive high society set. Her marriage to Duff Cooper, a rising political star, and her career on the stage and in early silent films only increased her notoriety. Her second volume of autobiography chronicles these years in the run-up to World War II, and her adventures as an unconventional hostess, actress, wife and mother are told in typically fast-paced, witty and brilliant style.
- GenresNonfiction
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 8, 2010
This book is such a strange, unworldly gem of a thing. Diana Manners is living proof that the English upper class might have been odd, chinless and wretched but they were also clever, generous, observant and brave. Manners was one of the bright young things (in fact, a close friend of Waugh, whom she called Mr Stitch, I think) for whom The Great War stuffed up the party forever more. Also gorgeous and and as highly strung as a Red Setter, natch.
It was speculated that she married Duff Cooper because he was the only suitable man left in her circle, but it seems a real love match in this book. Dog-eared, irascible love, with love affairs, long separations and devotions. A child born late and unexpectedly. A successful political career for Duff that takes them in this second volume of autobiography to the brink of war, with him as big brass for the Admiralty, bitching on the telephone with Winston. Chamberlain fires him.
And Diana has her own path which veers from silliness, clinging to admiration and compacts from Cartier for validation, to a horror of sudden death, to working the suburban hustings in elections, throwing parties in Geneva simmering with the tension of war, and entertaining jaunts with the POW and Wallis cruising the Adriatic. There's also dinner with King George, and everything in between.
She was also a genuine stage star in a play that seems so silly and ponderous that surely we're ready for a revival of it - The Miracle. She played the Virgin Mary some nights, others the Nun. She looked really hot in a wimple. It must have had something - all the luminaries of silent film from UFA and Germany were in on it's staging - so it must have been gesturally interesting at least. The Americans adored it. I sniff ham. A lot of ham.
Such an extraordinary biography was enough to make me pick up this dirty old paperback with eye-bleed tiny print, but I wasn't expecting much. Diana Cooper is an amazing writer - her skills are those of an inveterate letter writer, witty, sotto voce and full of private jokes, asides and codes. Abrupt changes in register only add to the book's charm. Here are two extracts pages apart. This letter is to Duff, about the party she is planning to give for chums in Geneva during an assembly of the League of Nations - at where? Oh, Byron's Villa Diodati. A surprise party, catered.
"Just come from visiting Maurice de Rothschild, who used swim with me in Venice covered in blubber. He still had some on his nose and chin today to cure a fast-generating cold. He was quite unselfconscious about it and snatched kisses as he showed me his monstrous chateau stacked with Boldini pictures of fine ladies with feet like submarines. I have to lunch with him and his blood-brother Litvinov tomorrow, in exchange for which supplice he will give all my boys dinner and Chateau Yquem.
On Friday I am throwing my Byronic fete in the empty Villa. The room was decorated by Jean Jaquet in boiserie and busts. The chairs are covered with chintz that Byron himself chose. John Julius and I have collected sixty candelabra from various antiquaires. I've ordered the collation - consomme chaud, langoustes, pate de canard de Perigord, entremets, friandises et fruits."
At home in London the following week, preparing for war:
"I had found daytime occupation at the W.V.S., a body some years old, of voluntary women who give their services to a wide number of causes. Lay Reading, its begetter, had organised her helpers to assemble gas-masks for civilians, so Venetia Montagu and I sat in the Tothill Street workrooms clamping snouts and schnozzles on to rubber masks, parcelling them and distributing them to queues of men and women. Mothers would ask me for small ones for children. There were none as yet. I felt sick all the time, like many others, no doubt. It was a grisly job for a neurotic but better than inaction."
Oh, to be a celebrity like this. Famous only to other people important to history or talent or breeding. And the rest of the world leaving you alone except for that lovely charge account at Fortnum and Mason and a wonderful tailor. Also a tromphe d'oeil painter for your library. No shit.
The letters between Cooper and her dear friend and "gothic farmer" Conrad Russell are the best thing in the book. Pleasure beyond comprehension. Literally, sometimes. Cooper makes glancing references to so many things that are simply gone from culture, the referents vanished. Made me sad that seventy years could do that - only an English person would be able to explain the things I had missed properly, an Englishwoman of a certain class, old enough to be dead.
I will be reading the other two volumes, and the published letters between her and Mr Stitch. She has bewitched me.
It was speculated that she married Duff Cooper because he was the only suitable man left in her circle, but it seems a real love match in this book. Dog-eared, irascible love, with love affairs, long separations and devotions. A child born late and unexpectedly. A successful political career for Duff that takes them in this second volume of autobiography to the brink of war, with him as big brass for the Admiralty, bitching on the telephone with Winston. Chamberlain fires him.
And Diana has her own path which veers from silliness, clinging to admiration and compacts from Cartier for validation, to a horror of sudden death, to working the suburban hustings in elections, throwing parties in Geneva simmering with the tension of war, and entertaining jaunts with the POW and Wallis cruising the Adriatic. There's also dinner with King George, and everything in between.
She was also a genuine stage star in a play that seems so silly and ponderous that surely we're ready for a revival of it - The Miracle. She played the Virgin Mary some nights, others the Nun. She looked really hot in a wimple. It must have had something - all the luminaries of silent film from UFA and Germany were in on it's staging - so it must have been gesturally interesting at least. The Americans adored it. I sniff ham. A lot of ham.
Such an extraordinary biography was enough to make me pick up this dirty old paperback with eye-bleed tiny print, but I wasn't expecting much. Diana Cooper is an amazing writer - her skills are those of an inveterate letter writer, witty, sotto voce and full of private jokes, asides and codes. Abrupt changes in register only add to the book's charm. Here are two extracts pages apart. This letter is to Duff, about the party she is planning to give for chums in Geneva during an assembly of the League of Nations - at where? Oh, Byron's Villa Diodati. A surprise party, catered.
"Just come from visiting Maurice de Rothschild, who used swim with me in Venice covered in blubber. He still had some on his nose and chin today to cure a fast-generating cold. He was quite unselfconscious about it and snatched kisses as he showed me his monstrous chateau stacked with Boldini pictures of fine ladies with feet like submarines. I have to lunch with him and his blood-brother Litvinov tomorrow, in exchange for which supplice he will give all my boys dinner and Chateau Yquem.
On Friday I am throwing my Byronic fete in the empty Villa. The room was decorated by Jean Jaquet in boiserie and busts. The chairs are covered with chintz that Byron himself chose. John Julius and I have collected sixty candelabra from various antiquaires. I've ordered the collation - consomme chaud, langoustes, pate de canard de Perigord, entremets, friandises et fruits."
At home in London the following week, preparing for war:
"I had found daytime occupation at the W.V.S., a body some years old, of voluntary women who give their services to a wide number of causes. Lay Reading, its begetter, had organised her helpers to assemble gas-masks for civilians, so Venetia Montagu and I sat in the Tothill Street workrooms clamping snouts and schnozzles on to rubber masks, parcelling them and distributing them to queues of men and women. Mothers would ask me for small ones for children. There were none as yet. I felt sick all the time, like many others, no doubt. It was a grisly job for a neurotic but better than inaction."
Oh, to be a celebrity like this. Famous only to other people important to history or talent or breeding. And the rest of the world leaving you alone except for that lovely charge account at Fortnum and Mason and a wonderful tailor. Also a tromphe d'oeil painter for your library. No shit.
The letters between Cooper and her dear friend and "gothic farmer" Conrad Russell are the best thing in the book. Pleasure beyond comprehension. Literally, sometimes. Cooper makes glancing references to so many things that are simply gone from culture, the referents vanished. Made me sad that seventy years could do that - only an English person would be able to explain the things I had missed properly, an Englishwoman of a certain class, old enough to be dead.
I will be reading the other two volumes, and the published letters between her and Mr Stitch. She has bewitched me.
February 26, 2025
Birth gave her pomp and circumstance; nature gave her extraordinary beauty, sensitivity, and talent; love gave her marriage, also everything combined to give Diana Manners (later Diana Cooper) front-row seats to most of the dramatic events of our time.
The first volume of her autobiography, The Rainbow Comes and Goes, drew praise on every side. In this, the second volume of her autobiography, the early rainbow of this life merges into the light of common day. But Diana Cooper's day has never been common; its light never less than dazzling.
Here, in place of the gilded era of the early century, is the more familiar period of the mid-twenties up to World War II. Here is much of America, the plushy years, the plushy people, coast-to-coast, as seen by the sought-after star of Max Reinhardt's famous Miracle. Here is a familiar a reigning king and "the woman I love" as yachting companions; intimate dinners with the Winston Churchills; Duff Cooper's great career from M.P. to First Lord of the Admiralty to Ambassador to France. Here is yachts, houses, jewels, exotic travel. And here is the many-faced shadow of war seen from the top of the world. And here, over and above all this factual history, is the moving theme of a woman's life, lived always to the hilt, richly, and recorded in all its doubts and fears, as in all its glory, not only with beauty but with truth.
The first volume of her autobiography, The Rainbow Comes and Goes, drew praise on every side. In this, the second volume of her autobiography, the early rainbow of this life merges into the light of common day. But Diana Cooper's day has never been common; its light never less than dazzling.
Here, in place of the gilded era of the early century, is the more familiar period of the mid-twenties up to World War II. Here is much of America, the plushy years, the plushy people, coast-to-coast, as seen by the sought-after star of Max Reinhardt's famous Miracle. Here is a familiar a reigning king and "the woman I love" as yachting companions; intimate dinners with the Winston Churchills; Duff Cooper's great career from M.P. to First Lord of the Admiralty to Ambassador to France. Here is yachts, houses, jewels, exotic travel. And here is the many-faced shadow of war seen from the top of the world. And here, over and above all this factual history, is the moving theme of a woman's life, lived always to the hilt, richly, and recorded in all its doubts and fears, as in all its glory, not only with beauty but with truth.
Read
November 23, 2024Having recently read a book which mentioned Lady Diana Cooper, I thought I would take a look at this. Not a good idea! The book has been described as "pacy" - certainly it moves at the pace of a sloth with a bionic toe. It's mainly a collection of letters to and from the author, and sometimes it was hard to figure out who was writing. There was very little fun to be found. The book showcases the besotted love of the author for her husband Duff Cooper, a high level politician and serial adulterer, apparently.
If anyone is going to dip into the life story of Lady DC then I suggest to start with the first volume, not this one.
DNF so no rating.
If anyone is going to dip into the life story of Lady DC then I suggest to start with the first volume, not this one.
DNF so no rating.
Read
April 2, 2024Mainly letters, but she is the best letter writer. makes me want to write them, but I think they’d be less interesting since I’m not yachting with royals or a stage star. but then, she makes the banal interesting.
August 24, 2014
Lady Diana Cooper's continuing story fascinates the reader as we follow her through the years between the two World Wars. Her escapades with aristocrats and farmers alike are fun to read. Peppered with letters from her various correspondents and hers to them, the book lets us get a true picture of Lady Diana's personality and character.
Interestingly, although she is vehemently anti-Nazi, she spends time with the king who would soon abdicate and his Nazi-sympathizing mistress. She expresses her opinions in no uncertain terms, and I'm certain that had more of her associates been dead when she wrote this book, we'd have heard much more of her views on them and their political attitudes. Sadly, all were still alive when she was writing both this and the following, final, memoir in the series.
I'd recommend that anyone interested in the period between the two World Wars or in the politics of times pick up this book; you'll gain a fairly realistic idea of what the British aristocracy and government did and why it did it.
Interestingly, although she is vehemently anti-Nazi, she spends time with the king who would soon abdicate and his Nazi-sympathizing mistress. She expresses her opinions in no uncertain terms, and I'm certain that had more of her associates been dead when she wrote this book, we'd have heard much more of her views on them and their political attitudes. Sadly, all were still alive when she was writing both this and the following, final, memoir in the series.
I'd recommend that anyone interested in the period between the two World Wars or in the politics of times pick up this book; you'll gain a fairly realistic idea of what the British aristocracy and government did and why it did it.
December 21, 2022
A lively memoir of the lives of Lady Diana Cooper and her family from the mid-1920s to the outbreak of war in September 1939.
Her relationship with her husband is genuinely touching but it is her gossiping letters to her friend Conrad Russell which are the most fun. She has a real gift for distilling entire evenings of cocktails and dinners into a few paragraphs. I particularly enjoyed her yachting experiences with King Edward VIII before he abdicated and her trips with her husband as First Lord of the Admiralty. I kept having to look up places to compare them with her descriptions and found her writing so witty but also quite kindhearted.
I am looking forward to reading the next one.
Her relationship with her husband is genuinely touching but it is her gossiping letters to her friend Conrad Russell which are the most fun. She has a real gift for distilling entire evenings of cocktails and dinners into a few paragraphs. I particularly enjoyed her yachting experiences with King Edward VIII before he abdicated and her trips with her husband as First Lord of the Admiralty. I kept having to look up places to compare them with her descriptions and found her writing so witty but also quite kindhearted.
I am looking forward to reading the next one.
July 4, 2024
There are a lot of names of people from the high society, that don't resonate with me. I got more interested in reading the book in the middle of it, when the British Royal family was introduced and the timeline has reached the beginning of the WW2.
I couldn't grasp the personality of Lady Diana though, it felt more like a narrative of errands, "went here, visited that, saw him/her".
But again, I have started reading the second book out of the trilogy, maybe there were more interesting paragraphs about Lady Diana's life before she married an ambassador.
I couldn't grasp the personality of Lady Diana though, it felt more like a narrative of errands, "went here, visited that, saw him/her".
But again, I have started reading the second book out of the trilogy, maybe there were more interesting paragraphs about Lady Diana's life before she married an ambassador.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews