I was staying with my mother in west Somerset a few weekends back, idling away
an afternoon, feeling lazy and overfed, and at a bit of a loose end, the way
one often does, as an adult, when returning to the childhood home. My own
children were outside, doing what children do when there are woods, fields,
stables, secret
gardens and ramshackle outhouses to play in and no grown-ups within earshot.
My husband was working. The baby was resting. My mother had — possibly
— fallen asleep over The Times crossword.
I was toying with the idea of making one more sentimental, almost-final
journey through the house, which I love and which is due to be sold this
spring, after belonging to the family for almost 60 years. Then, my mobile
rang. It was a friend from my London tennis club. Was I in Somerset, because
it so happened that she was, and was passing right by the house — could she
stop by so we could play a quick match?
What luck! I didn’t ask how she knew the exact whereabouts of my childhood
home. I took her knowledge for granted.
People have always been interested in Combe Florey House. It’s an
impressive-looking place: big and quite grand and pleasingly symmetrical,
set at the top of a long, winding drive, with an Elizabethan gatehouse at
the bottom and a small lake with a private island halfway up; remarkable
enough in its own right, I think.
It’s also the house where my grandfather, Evelyn, spent the last 10
years of his life; where he wrote Unconditional Surrender and A Little
Learning, among others. He is buried on the edge of the grounds beside a
churchyard. (Despite reports to the contrary, that portion of the land won’t
be included in the sale.)
My friend drew up at the house 10 minutes later. Sans racquet, I couldn’t help
but note. “My husband’s a frightful snob,” she bellowed, as she clambered
merrily from her car. “He’ll be really annoyed he isn’t here.” Then, without
even a pause: “Show me everything, Daisy. I want to see everything. And I’ve
only got 10 minutes.” It was refreshingly brazen, magnificently
unapologetic. Most people who come round for a rubberneck try to be more
subtle. I think I preferred her approach.
My grandfather died here more than 40 years ago, before I was born, but his
character and eccentric penchant for grandeur can still be felt all over the
house: in the garish and mythically expensive carpet he had made for the
Grade-1 listed staircase when he moved here in 1956, which nobody has ever
been able to replace; in the 6ft crystal chandelier on the landing that we
were never allowed to play with; in the wooden throne at the back of the
hall (with the plaque that reads: “This chair which inspired lines 11 and 12
of ‘The Church’s Restoration’ was presented to Evelyn Waugh on his 60th
birthday by John Betjeman”); in the grand stone porch he built to enhance
the importance of the front door; and in the elaborate cornicing he added in
the dining room and which the plasterer put on upside down.
When Evelyn bought the house, there was obviously a lot of money sloshing
around; the sort of money that has clearly never been sloshing to quite the
same degree since.
My mother, father (Auberon), and we four children moved here in 1971, when I
was four. My father rewired the place and added central heating, which we
could never afford to keep on. He turned my grandparents’ gloomy dining room
into a cheerful kitchen, and their gloomy kitchen into an even gloomier
nursery, which we always refused to play in. (With forbidden attics and vast
cellars chock-a-block with hidden treasures, there was never any need for a
nursery.)
What had been the servants’ wing became a house for Evelyn’s widow, Laura, my
grandmother. And then the school fees kicked in and the money ran out.
Improvements more or less ground to a halt, but the sprit of the place lived
on.
My mother is an excellent cook. My father was an excellent drinker, and took
his wine seriously. My memories are of a house, underheated (to put it
mildly), but always full of noisy cousins and glamorous, clever people,
eating well and talking quickly.
There’s barely an author worth his salt (and several others who aren’t) who
hasn’t, at some point, found themselves in the house. First, Graham Greene
and John Betjeman; then, when I was a child, Muriel Spark, VS Naipaul, Paul
Theroux, Salman Rushdie and so on.
Others came through, too, such as Peter Cook. That was exciting. So did Alec
Guinness and that famous society beauty, Lady Diana Cooper. She was
monstrously old at the time and arrived holding a chihuahua with a pearl
necklace. Her own neck,
I remember, looked like something unwrapped from an Egyptian tomb. We children
were under strict instructions to be well behaved, but I couldn’t take my
eyes off that neck. It gave me nightmares for years to come.
My dad fell briefly in unrequited love with the newscaster Anna Ford, and for
some reason that seemed to be justification for her to come for a weekend,
too. I’m not sure why my mother put up with it, but she did. In any case,
there is a red carpet along the top landing, now tattered and torn, that he
laid in honour of her arrival.
My brazen friend said she didn’t have time for tea. All she really wanted was
to see where the Great Man had lived and died. I was feeling a bit tetchy
about the lack of tennis, so I took her at her word and started the tour in
the downstairs lavatory. Which, I told her, might well be haunted by the
ghost of my grandpapa, since that was where he died: before lunch, as it
happens, on Easter Sunday, 1966. It’s not the finest room in the house, though
there are a couple of nice pictures in there by the cartoonist Charles
Addams, dedicated “in admiration” (nothing less) to Evelyn.
There is a poster of my father in there, too, looking satirical and posing
with an alsatian. “Vote Waugh” it says across the top. He was campaigning to
be member of parliament for the Dog Lovers’ Party at the time. (It’s a
complicated joke to do with Jeremy Thorpe and a case of attempted murder. It
caused quite a stir at the time.)
In any case, my brazen friend didn’t seem to want to stay in the lavatory for
long. So I took her back to our grand and beautiful hall, showed her the
Betje-man throne and the important Burges furniture (what’s left of it:
Betjeman gave Evelyn several pieces, I think. School fees being what they
are, some of it had to be sold).
I took her to the kitchen, where so many magnificent people have fed. And I
told her, not about Rushdie and Naipaul (she already knew about them), but
about how, every Sunday, as we were tucking into the lamb that had been
given to us by the farmer who rented some of our land, my father used to
say: “Isn’t it marvellous, children, to think that this delicious lunch was
once a lovely, fluffy lambkins, grazing from one of very our own fields?
Only a week ago, we were probably watching it, bleating for its mummy,
scampering this way and that . . .”
She looked faintly bewildered, but the memory made me cry with laughter.
Finally, I took her to the library, where the great men scribbled. “And if
you look up,” I said, “you will see the famous bust of my grandpapa. And if
you look pretty much
anywhere, you will see books; piles and piles of books, in hundreds of
different languages, and all of them written, if not by the great Waugh,
then, at least, by one or other of his scribbling relations.”
My friend left soon after that, thoroughly satisfied, I think. I said:
“That’ll be £6.50, please. Unless of course, you want to buy the house.”
Briefly, she looked wistful, and said she couldn’t begin to afford it.
In any case, I knew, as I waved her off, that our whirlwind tour of the mostly
glamorous bits could never communicate to her the magic of this house and
the freedom of a childhood growing up in a place with so much space, junk
and history. I shall miss it. We all will. But really, the house needs money
spending on it. My older brother, Alexander, is holding on to the gatehouse
for the moment. But it’s time for the Waughs to bow gracefully to the
inevitable. We ain’t got the cash.
It’s time to hand it over to a family that has. The children have left home.
My beloved father is long gone. And, after almost 40 years at Combe Florey
House, my mother wants to move to a place where she can afford to switch on
the heating.
- Combe Florey House is for sale for £2.25m through Knight Frank country house
department; 020 7629 8171, www.knightfrank.com
