#ivo grenfell

[corallapis]

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Vol. 1), 1918-38, entry for 19th January 1923

—

Friday 19th January

A ball this evening in the great barons’ hall to which all of the county came including large parties from Petworth¹ and Albury² …. At four I went to bed and was lulled to sleep by the noise of the jazz and the dancing. We were over seventy at dinner and assembled in the dull Gothic library-gallery and processed in state into the dining room. The castle itself is quite bare of interesting furniture and tapestry and only a few mediocre pictures. I am almost the only ‘prot’³ and little bells tinkle continuously to call the faithful to Mass. I feel an outrageous heretic, even the servants disapprove of one. Our ‘Premier Duke’ is a nice lad of 14 called ‘Bernard’.⁴ He is shy but will form well. I find the mother more interesting than the daughter.

Achille Murat⁵ is engaged to be married to Mlle Chasseloup-Laubat.⁶ It sounds très noblesse de province⁷ but I may be wrong. What a gentle charmer Achille used to be. He would come to me always from the train when he arrived on permission … back in those happy 1918 days … when dirty, simple, young and unformed, he was a perfect companion for two or three days. We would go to plays and go dancing together and sometimes take his mother the Princesse Marie⁸ to dine with us. He had a deep sense of humour and yet was completely unselfconscious, almost as much as Ivo Grenfell.⁹ He was liked in his regiment and at last promoted to the dignity of maréchal du logis.¹⁰ It makes me sad this flight of time, and I realise so poignantly in flashes sometimes how much I have thrown away in abandoning my French life. Had I never known England and its rarer, richer charm of life I should have been happy there ….

—

1.  Petworth House in Sussex, seat of Lord Leconfield.

2.  Albury Park in Surrey, a property of the Duke of Northumberland.

3.  Protestant. The Howards of Arundel were, and still are, one of the leading Roman Catholic families in England.

4.  Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk (1908–75), Premier Duke in the peerage of England and Hereditary Earl Marshal; he succeeded his father when he was only 9. He arranged the 1937 and 1953 coronations, and the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill.

5.  Achille Alain Joachim Napoleon Murat (1898–1987), nephew by marriage of Princesse Eugène Murat, who had befriended Channon in Paris.

6.  Madeleine Marie Louise Chasseloup-Laubat (1901–45).

7.  ‘Very provincial nobility’, in other words not quite faubourg.

8.  Marie de Rohan-Chabot (1876–1951), wife of Lucien Murat (1870–1933).

9.  Ivo George Grenfell (1898–1926), son of the 1st Baron Desborough; killed in a car crash. His two brothers Julian (1888–1915) and Gerald (1890–1915) were killed in the Great War. In a letter of November 1920 to his father Channon describes Grenfell as ‘my best friend in Oxford … he is as big as a great Greek god and looks like a Viking’.

10.  A sergeant.

#chips channon #channon diaries #1923 #bernard norfolk #gwendoline norfolk #rachel howard #achille murat #madeleine murat #marie murat #ivo grenfell #arundel castle #petworth house #albury park #🕰️