Mortimer Roger - My dearest Jane--: a fathers letters to a daughter

DEAREST JANE...

DEAREST JANE...

Jane Torday and Roger Mortimer

Constable London

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2014

Copyright Roger Mortimer and Jane Torday 2014

The right of Roger Mortimer and Jane Torday to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-47210-591-2 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-47210-593-6 (ebook)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Printed and bound in the UK

Cover by Leo Nickolls

For Tommy, with my love

So many thanks are due not least for the interest, support and encouragement of wonderful friends. Thanks go to those loyal members of my family and step-family for their demonstrations of kindness and understanding. Foremost among them is my son Piers who, as a writer himself, has given me editorial guidance, encouragement, creative suggestions and crucial criticism, always delivered with tact, humour, patience and kindness. Alongside him, the further uplifting cheer of Pierss partner, Will. Warm hospitality and recreation has been provided by my kind son and daughter-in-law, Nick and Clare, on my regular visits to them in Somerset. The love, fun and frolics of my three small grandchildren are the best of tonics.

I must applaud my brother Lupin for launching what has turned out to be a roller coaster of amusement our fathers letters. My thanks to Andreas Campomar at Constable & Robinson for appreciating the potential of the Roger Mortimer letters and publishing them. Perceptive and helpful editing measures have been provided by Charlotte Macdonald and Howard Watson. From the beginning, my agent and long-time friend, Andrew Hewson of Johnson and Alcock, has steered me along and kept me steady with his wisdom, experience and abiding good humour. That Andrews predecessor, John Johnson, was my fathers literary agent has added further meaning and pleasure to our connection.

My husband, Tommy Bates whose familys involvement in racing dates back for nearly a century was a dedicated fan of my fathers racing writing long before we met. For his love and his tolerance of my long hours incarcerated in my study, and for his faith in this book, I dedicate it to him.

Jane Torday

My Dear Child,

Please temper your hilarity with a modicum of decorum.

Roger Mortimer

My father, Roger Mortimer, was a compulsive correspondent. He wrote to me often 450 letters plus postcards and notes, yet I was only one of the many recipients of letters from a journalist and writer fully occupied in making a living. In 2008, I advanced on the job of archiving this great store of letters secreted away for years in drawers, boxes and bags, they surfaced in no particular order. As I reread them for the first time since I had received them back in the last century, I speculated on how I could compile them into an entertaining book for others. I crept gently along with my project, in fits and starts, never losing sight of it but not having it in full view, either.

As readers, our responses to any story will change in the way that we ourselves do, as the years roll by. My reactions to my fathers letters as they arrived when I was a girl, young woman and then approaching middle age, were entirely different to the overview I have now, from rereading them through the filter of being a parent and grandmother and step-parent /grandmother. To this must be added the powerful impact of digesting the letters in such a concentrated form, en masse. I found myself forming a new relationship, a different understanding, with my late father on paper.

In the background was my brother Lupin, champing at the bit to tell his own story of my father. We had already agreed to disagree on how we would present our letters from this great comic figure who happened to be our father. We were, however, unanimous in our belief that our fathers extraordinary letters to his children deserved to be shared with a wider readership. I did not plan to reproduce my personal letters hook, line and stinker. In common with my father, biography and history fascinate me so it was a more rounded memoir that I had in mind, based on some sterling extracts from his letters.

Time was not on my side. Although I have been writing, one small way or another, all my life, I needed help to get me going in this case. I found it on a weeks Creative Non Fiction course with the Arvon Foundation in Devon.

I was happily knuckling down to my task when, suddenly, a streak of greased lightening whizzed past it was my brother Lupin. His book, entitled Dear Lupin... Letters to a Wayward Son, was already on the stocks with this noble publisher. Holding on to the pillion behind him was sister Lumpy with her folio of letters, Dear Lumpy... Letters to a Disobedient Daughter. It was definitely time to oil my own skates.

The result is a book which by its very nature led me back into the past, compelling me to consider the best and the worst of my family life. While I have been working away in my little study at home, I have frequently laughed out loud at my fathers irresistible humour. At other times, I have felt anger and sadness and sympathy. Rogers letters glide seamlessly through an astonishing diversity of topics, reflecting his many moods from brightest to gloomiest, always with his characteristic sense of comedy and wisdom. Honesty, courage, loyalty and a strong work ethic were qualities which informed all my fathers actions. In print, his sagacity was embedded in the originality and wicked wit of his observations on members of his cast from our cat to the prime minister tempered by his affection for recipients of his vintage epistles.

My fathers written material is sufficiently rich and varied for me to be able to identify and serve up, with confidence, some of the most tempting dishes from his long menu. If you have already enjoyed my fathers comic voice through his letters, and become curious to know more about him, his wife Nidnod and their children, Lupin, Lumpy and their bossy elder sister, this book is for you. Should it be your first meeting with the Mortimer family, I wish you a most merry ride.

Jane Torday

There is something v. nice about pigs. As snug as a pig in pease-straw, pigs in clover, lucky little sucking pig, on the pigs back, a regular porky boy, Little Pigs sleep in the sweetest of straw etc., etc. I think Ill buy one of those mobile homes called Porkys cabin.

RM

The old roll-top desk at which my father worked was never shut. Its wooden slatted top was firmly wedged back in its casing. It was a mans desk and beware the woman with the temerity to polish it. On this account my father had few worries as far as my mother was concerned; I cant recall seeing her with a duster in her hand. For our daily helps, the desk was forbidden territory.

But my father had reckoned without his elder daughter. Full of insatiable curiosity, like Rudyard Kiplings Elephants Child, time sometimes hung heavy on my hands as a little girl. Use your initiative! was a frequent suggestion. So I did tidying, cleaning, polishing and rearranging rooms, sheds, stables, lofts and outbuildings where these activities were apparently neglected. Part of the pleasure was unearthing treasures and secrets. These were not the diversions my elders and betters had in mind. Like the Elephants Child I was sometimes spanked for my pains.