The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (8 page)

Robert Vernon Heber-Percy was born on Guy Fawkes Day 1911. It is not recorded whether his mother was disappointed to have a fourth son, but she was a practical, no-nonsense sort of person who would not have made a fuss. By the time of his birth, Robert’s older brothers were already of an age to be off by themselves, playing in the vast gardens of Hodnet Hall, but they were surely brought in by ‘dear old Nannie Jones’ and Dorothy Dodd the nursemaid to visit the new baby. The oldest brother, Algernon, was nine and the presumed heir to the estate. He was known as Algy, like so many of his forebears. (The family’s ancestry could be traced all the way back to William de Percy, who came over with William the Conqueror and who had such fine moustaches that he was known as aux or als gernons, ‘with the whiskers’.) The next was Cyril, who at seven was already a fanatical animal-lover, and, two years younger, Alan, who like Robert would turn out wild, unpredictable and dashingly attractive.

Their mother Gladys was by all accounts a dauntingly tough character, though early photographs indicate a classic Edwardian beauty with milky-skinned, sloping shoulders and lazy-lidded eyes. A strong nose and chin add a hint of the determination for which she was famed. Gladys was an elegant and gracious hostess in her evening dress and diamond tiara for the yearly hunt ball, but she was much happier on a horse. A brilliant rider who could break in the most troublesome young animals and who led the hunts that often met at Hodnet Hall, she rode an elegant side-saddle even in her old age. In pictures, she sits serious and poker-backed in her meticulous riding habit: glistening black boots and top hat and bright white gloves and stock. Gladys claimed happily to have survived numerous injuries from falls, and her reaction was no less carefree when her sons fell from their ponies. Once, a nanny took three of the young boys out for a ride, placing them in basket panniers, but the girths broke and the screaming children tumbled into a ditch. While the nanny was very distressed by the accident, Gladys showed no anxiety about the state of her offspring and merely laughed.77

The boys’ father, another Algernon, was a semi-invalid, weakened by asthma and plagued by eczema to such a degree that he often had to be wrapped up in linen cloths to protect his flaking skin. Yet even he was more interested in his horses and dogs than in his children. A remote figure who criticised and scolded more than he encouraged, his greatest legacy to his sons was fostering a deep love and knowledge of estate life. His own parents had a large steam yacht, travelled extensively and were just as at home in London as at Hodnet, whereas Gladys’s family, the Hulton-Harrops, were solid Shropshire gentry who tended not to stray too far from their estate. Nevertheless, Gladys proved to be the ideal partner in managing Hodnet. According to Us Four, the memoir by Robert’s brother Cyril, ‘Mummy ran the house, gardens, stables, and all of us,’ giving instructions to each of the heads of departments: menus for the cook; lists of stores from Harrods that needed replenishing; orders for a sheep to be slaughtered or bacon cured; the stud-groom told which horses were required for riding or for breaking in; the head housemaid informed which rooms to prepare for guests; and the head gardener given requests for flowers, fruits and vegetables. Daddy, on the other hand, ‘ran the estate through his agent, but what the agent told the men was often countermanded later in the day as Daddy rode round’.78

Hodnet Hall was a great rambling place of red sandstone and brick, with seventy-two rooms, enormous kitchens, a brewery, a dairy, a bakery and a laundry, not to mention extensive stables, kennels, a walled kitchen garden and a Home Farm. An Elizabethan-style great hall ran almost the whole length of the house and was filled with a terrifying array of stuffed animals. This included not just the normal range of heads severed from deer, foxes and other British fauna, but bounty from the big-game hunters among the Heber-Percys, who returned from their travels with lions, tigers, zebras, bison and even a baboon, which were duly dealt with and put on display. (Gerald would visit Hodnet only once; according to Heber-Percy lore, when he saw this phantasmagoria of taxidermy he had to be given smelling salts.)

Although the house was a Victorian pastiche designed by Salvin and finished in 1871, it was the third manor house built on one of the very few estates in England that have never been bought or sold. Related to the dukes of Northumberland, the family had lived there since 1200; the original half-timbered building was constructed in 1264. By occasionally allowing females to inherit, they claimed descent from the Norman lords of Vernon, and Odo of Hodnet, one of the Shropshire Knights. The motto on the coat of arms, with its Percy lion and Heber maiden, is Esperance en Dieu (‘Hope in God’), but the old butler used to say that such was the family’s sense of place and history, it should have been ‘What I Have I Hold’.

In the 1960s, Hodnet Hall had its second floor, a wing, and the tower bearing the family’s standard pulled down to make it more economically viable. The great hall was removed, the rooms reduced to about thirty-five, and the extensive old kitchens turned into garages. However, the essence of the place remains much the same, now cared for by another Algy – eldest son of Robert’s eldest brother. You can tell by looking at the photograph albums that they nearly all retain the same lean, almost boyish frame throughout their lives, as Robert did too. And it is apparent that the latest Algy’s dedication to Hodnet is just as strong as it was for his predecessors over so many centuries. He even has the same varieties of much-loved dogs that scamper in blurs across the Edwardian and Victorian photographs – Labradors and terriers. The gardens are still tended to the remarkable standards that the current Algy’s grandfather and father kept them, and though thousands of visitors now walk around them each year, they continue to reflect the traditions and taste of the family. Tree-shaded driveways lead past perfectly clipped lawns and rose gardens, and paths lined by rhododendrons and camellias meander alongside a chain of ambitious cascading water gardens that were created by Robert’s brother in the 1920s. The stuffed animals from the old hall, including a moth-eaten lion, were moved to the stables, now converted into a visitors’ restaurant.

‘By the time Robert came along, the parents had rather given up,’ said Algy, remembering stories about his Mad Boy uncle. ‘Nursery life had gone on so long and they’d said “No” so often. Nannie was retiring soon … so they probably said, “Come down for dinner” much sooner than they had with their other sons. Gladys was quite a harsh mother, but she spoilt Robert, and dressed him up as a girl. He was allowed to get away with things.’ To what extent Gladys cross-dressed her youngest son is not known, and though there is a studio photograph of the four brothers where the oldest three are in short-trousered suits and ties and a two-year-old Robert wears a white pinafore, this sort of outfit was not unusual at the time.

There were tutors and governesses to give lessons up in the nursery and schoolrooms on the top floor. Footmen trudged up the seventy-odd steps from the kitchens to bring trays with the children’s meals. None of the boys was particularly interested in their formal education and the focus at home was clearly on country pursuits, for which they were given a good deal of freedom. Cyril remembered Robert learning very quickly to stand up for himself. ‘He was full of fun, up to every prank, could hoodwink most people, and developed a gift for repartee.’ He was soon following his older brothers around in the grounds, tree-climbing, bird-nesting, or running down to the stables to ride. A favourite route was through the woods to the gamekeeper’s hut, with its cages of stinking white ferrets and polecats. The gamekeeper, Holding, a tall ex-Coldstream sergeant, kept a macabre exhibition of dead animals he considered vermin. ‘Strung on wire between two trees hung magpies, jays, crows, hawks, and a long row of stoats. Some had fallen to the ground rotten; others were skeletons except for their black-tipped tails. They were all maggoty; bluebottles buzzed around them.’79

ALGY, CYRIL, ROBERT AND ALAN

Although the estate at Hodnet was a boys’ heaven, the Heber-Percy parents were both severe in their dedication to tradition and regimentation. The morning began for all members of the household (including the servants and any guests) with prayers in the dining room. They were announced by Whitaker, the butler, who was a dab hand with the gong and made it resound in a crescendo around the house. Daddy read from the Bible and led the service. As they grew older, the boys found it an ideal opportunity to get a good look at any new or pretty housemaids, but once, after they succeeded in making a new maid giggle with their stares, Algy was flogged by his father and the younger boys were sent to their rooms without breakfast. According to Robert, his father would come into the bathroom when the boys were in the bath and lash out at them with a hunting crop. What this was for is not recorded, but certainly they were naughty, and cooked up mischievous schemes like hiding in the housemaids’ cupboard to spy on their fat, whiskery governess as she bathed.

Despite his temper, Robert’s father was also distant and uninterested – something that was exacerbated by his physical frailty. Cyril recalled that each evening the young boys were dolled up ‘like Little Lord Fauntleroys’ in frilled white shirts, dark velvet shorts, white socks and shiny buckled shoes and led by Nannie Jones into the library for an audience with their parents and any guests staying in the house. However, ‘Daddy took little part in our amusements as he suffered from asthma. But occasionally he would recite Hiawatha, or continue a never-ending story about a Mr Snodgrass. He was a good story-teller. Usually he tired of the noise all too quickly, and would pull the bell-rope beside the fireplace several times to summon a footman, who would enter immediately, dressed in blue tailcoat with silver-crested buttons, and a blue-and-yellow striped waistcoat. ‘“Fetch Nannie,” Daddy would say. “Sir.” The door closed quietly. There would be a kiss for Daddy and Mummy, perhaps a reluctant peck at an aunt and a handshake for anyone else.’80

Religion didn’t end with morning prayers; on Sundays the boys were trussed up in their best blue suits and caps before they trooped down the drive to the village church. The graveyard was filled with Heber-Percy tombs, and inside, the front two pews belonged to the Lords of the Manor of Hodnet. From the padded seats that were the squire’s privilege, they could look across at the Victorian stained-glass window donated by their predecessors and the Heber-Percy chapel to the side. Hymns were sung, some of which were written by their illustrious ancestor Bishop Heber of Calcutta. A famous missionary who worked and died in India in the 1820s, Bishop Heber had been a brilliant young fellow of All Souls, Oxford. As vicar of Hodnet, he composed as he strolled around the grounds, leaving behind him many popular hymns, such as ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ and the missionaries’ favourite, ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’.

During Robert’s childhood, the house was almost teetotal. Even in the era of cocktails (‘gut-rotting, a pernicious concoction’), Daddy only allowed a bit of sherry and port for guests and the whisky was kept locked up. Food was not adventurous but plentiful – especially breakfast, as Cyril’s descriptions indicate.

There were several hot dishes, always one of fish, eggs of one kind or another, thin crisp bacon – it had to break with the touch of a knife – and kidneys on toast with parsley butter, or home-made sausages, all in separate silver dishes. A ham on the sideboard … There would also be a large dish of cold partridge or pheasant when in season, a tongue, hot scones, toast, butter in small round pats and a flat glass dish of thick scalded cream, home-made marmalade, honey in the comb, and two sorts of jam.81

The boys had to eat this bounty in silence unless spoken to and, vocally critical of his sons’ table manners, Daddy liked to sneak up if they had their elbows on the table and knock them off.

HE FIRST WORLD WAR broke out when Robert was three. His brothers were all away at preparatory schools by then, and Gladys opened up the house as a convalescent hospital with eighty beds. As ‘commandant’, she ‘ruled with a rod of iron’ and terrorised the patients and staff. Her husband was the recruiting officer for the district and travelled around in his Renault, a temperamental automobile that needed endless cranking to start and stalled on hills. Algernon took to treating it like the horses he knew much better, reining back on the steering wheel and murmuring ‘Whoa’ when he wanted to stop.82

Although his three brothers returned during holidays (the soldiers would give them surreptitious puffs on Woodbines if they were lucky), Robert was inevitably alone much more than before. With many of the male staff gone to fight and his parents extremely busy, the war gave Robert much more freedom and possibly neglect than before. It was easy for him to wander around the house, past the rows of taxidermists’ glass eyes staring out from the walls and the distant gazes in the endless family portraits: Vernons, Hebers, Percys, a sixteenth-century countess, a bishop in his robes. One charming, full-length likeness depicted a flowing-haired young man holding a cricket bat – Richard Heber, the celebrated book collector who amassed over 150,000 volumes. He was, as the current Algy put it, ‘more inclined to the males’, though this would surely not have been spoken of by Robert’s parents. Despite being the brother of the Calcutta bishop, Richard’s good looks, intellect and charm could not save him when, at the age of fifty-two, he became involved with a twenty-three-year-old man. He was forced abroad and, when he returned to England, was ostracised by society, dying alone in 1835.

Despite his tricks and mischief, Robert showed a degree of sensitivity compared to his siblings. He didn’t enjoy shooting or fishing like them, and Cyril recalled that he read and painted – apparently unusual pastimes in the family, despite their illustrious bibliophile ancestor and the library that was packed from floor to ceiling with books. Robert liked to pick bunches of flowers for his mother and visited her in her huge study on the first floor that looked out over the gardens and the lake to the undulating fields, where cows grazed by the sixteenth-century dovecot. Although Cyril claimed that his mother never showed that Robert was ‘Mummy’s darling’, Robert himself recalled little secrets between them. When his mother returned to Hodnet from London and her youngest boy was asleep in bed, she would place a small bottle of scent under his pillow.83 It is unclear whether this was a sign or a present, a phial of her own scent or some cologne for him, but it was clearly a small intimacy – unusual and delicate in the tough, physical environment where horse tackle and terriers, ferrets and pheasant shoots usually counted for more.