| Lady Diana Cooper | |
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Lady Diana Cooper by E.O. Hoppé (1916) |
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| Born | 29 August 1892 |
| Died | 16 June 1986 (aged 93) |
Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (29 August 1892 – 16 June 1986) was an English socialite and actress.
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Born Lady Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Manners, she was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the former Violet Lindsay, but Lady Diana's real father was widely supposed to be the writer Henry Cust.[1] In her prime, she had the widespread reputation as the most beautiful young woman in England, and appeared in countless profiles, photographs and articles in newspapers and magazines.
She became active in The Coterie, an influential group of young English aristocrats and intellectuals of the 1910s whose prominence and numbers were cut short by the First World War. Lady Diana was the most famous of the group, but it included Raymond Asquith (son of H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister), Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Edward Horner, Sir Denis Anson and Duff Cooper. Following the sudden deaths of Asquith, Horner, Shaw-Stewart, and Anson—the first three in the war; Anson by drowning—Lady Diana married Cooper, one of her circle of friends' last surviving male members, in June 1919. It was not a popular choice in the Manners household, since the bride's parents had hoped for a marriage to the Prince of Wales. As for Cooper, he once impulsively wrote a letter to Lady Diana, before their marriage, declaring, "I hope everyone you like better than me will die very soon."[2] In 1929 she gave birth to her only child, John Julius (now known as John Julius Norwich), who became a writer and broadcaster.
After working as a nurse during the war and working as editor of the magazine Femina, she wrote a column in the Beaverbrook newspapers before turning to the stage, playing the Madonna in the revival of The Miracle (directed by Max Reinhardt). The play achieved outstanding international success, and she toured for two years with the cast. Lady Diana subsequently starred in several silent films, including the first British colour films.
In 1924, Duff Cooper gained election to Parliament, while his wife continued as a society celebrity. Her reputation became even more celebrated in France as the centerpoint of immediate post second world war French literary culture when her husband served from 1944 to 1948 as Britain's ambassador to France. During this period, Lady Diana's popularity as a hostess remained undimmed, even after allegations that the embassy guest list included "pederasts and collaborators".[3][4][5]
Following Duff Cooper's retirement in 1947, they continued to live in France at Chantilly, until his death in 1954. He was created Viscount Norwich in 1952, for services to the nation, but Lady Diana refused to be called Viscountess Norwich, claiming that it sounded like "porridge". She made an official announcement in The Times to this effect, stating that no matter her husband's change in rank, and therefore her own, she would continue to be known as Lady Diana Cooper.
Lady Diana sharply reduced her activities in the late 1950s but did produce three volumes of memoirs: The Rainbow Comes and Goes, The Light of Common Day, and Trumpets from the Steep. The three volumes are included in a compilation called Autobiography (ISBN 978-0571-247578). She died in 1986, aged 93.
Philip Ziegler wrote Diana Cooper: A Biography (ISBN 0-241-10659-1) in 1981; it was published by Hamish Hamilton. Several writers used her as inspiration for their novels, including Evelyn Waugh, who fictionalized her as Mrs. Stitch in the Sword of Honour trilogy and elsewhere, and Nancy Mitford, who portrayed her as the narcissistic, self-dramatizing Lady Leone in Don't Tell Alfred. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Jelly-bean",[6] the character Nancy Lamar states that she wants to be like Lady Diana Manner. Enid Bagnold published The Loved and Envied (ISBN 0-86068-978-6) in 1951. The novel, based on Lady Diana and her group of friends, dealt with the effects of aging on a beautiful woman. Oliver Anderson dedicated Random Rendezvous, published in 1955, to "Diana Cooper and Jenny Day".
These are Lady Norwich's formal titles; however, she continued to be informally styled after 1952, at her request, as Lady Diana Cooper.
Lady Diana Cooper is briefly mentioned in the last verse of the vaudeville song, Burlington Bertie from Bow:
I'm Burlington Bertie I rise at ten thirty And Buckingham Palace I view. I stand in the yard while they're changing the guard And the queen shouts across "Toodle oo"! The Prince of Wales' brother along with some other Slaps me on the back and says "Come and see Mother" I'm Bert, Bert, and royalty's hurt, When they ask me to dine I say no. I've just had a banana with Lady Diana I'm Burlington Bertie from Bow.