James Lees-Milne
Ceaseless Turmoil: Diaries 1988-1992,
edited by Michael Bloch.
John Murray, 339 pages, 25 pounds

In a low-keyed and immensely subtle way, James Lees-Milne was one of the most effective Englishmen of his time. In 1988, the year in which he turned eighty, he was still talked of as “the man from the National Trust.” Though no longer strictly exact, this was both a convenient and prestigious appellation. He had turned England’s National Trust into a nationwide talking point.

It had therefore been an exciting moment for me in 1942 when a still youthful fellow lodger of mine in a great London house announced himself to me as “Jim Lees-Milne.” No. 96 Cheyne Walk had belonged to Whistler, and it was said that Oscar Wilde’s son had had his wedding reception in the big room overlooking the Thames on the second floor. During World War II, when Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears were close neighbors, I asked them to give a recital in that big room for the repair of Chelsea Old Church (lately damaged by bombing). They said “Yes” in an instant, and would not hear of taking a fee. The concert drew enthusiasts not only from London but also from Paris and was a landmark in the history of the house.

Quite apart from the festivities at which it excelled, this was a glorious house to come back to in the evening and an amusing one to have breakfast in. Breakfasts were early, for this was still wartime and we all had to leave between 8:30 and 9, but a lasting camaraderie resulted. And in the end those hurried encounters were worth many a more formal meeting. After breakfast, Jim would leave the house at once, take the train to his appointment for the day, and make the last part of the trip on a rented bicycle to save the Trust’s money.

The National Trust was as always aiming to look after one more of England’s great private palaces. But its ambition was also to look after the smaller private houses in which England is incomparably rich. To this day there are elderly householders who think that “a word from Mr. Lees-Milne” would have enabled them to live in privileged security for the rest of their lives.

Jim kept the Trust in the news, while never promoting his own activities. That he himself was so often in the news was not always acceptable to the Trust. Nor did it escape notice that Lees-Milne’s own books, though directly relevant to the achievements of the Trust, have never been on view in the Trust’s bookshops.

Jim Lees-Milne had always wanted to be a widely published author, and in 1990 a novel that he had been writing for years reached publication. It was about a German count, a prisoner of war in England during World War I, who seduced first an English schoolboy and then the boy’s mother. That the book did not find favor surprised and saddened the author.

In 1988, the year in which these diaries begin, Lees-Milne was found to have a malignant tumor in his left cheek. This was all the more unwelcome in that he had already had cancer once. Several weeks of intense and more than painful treatment followed, and these would more than justify the book’s title.

The “ceaseless turmoil” in the title is drawn from a passage in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” in which a mighty fountain is “momently forced,” “as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing.” Nothing so spectacular can be glimpsed in Jim Lees-Milne’s new book, which deals almost entirely with a regular, well-appointed, and well-acclaimed existence. In this, the worst that could happen (but never did) was that he would show up on the wrong day to call on one of the English duchesses who could never get enough of his company.

His friends came to him as if they were elasticized. This did not do him much good among hard-line art historians, who had to find their dukes and duchesses in college libraries or formal portraits, rather than in everyday life. And that was how notables liked to find him—not as a prominent figure but as an ever approachable friend.

Self-pity plays no part in the book, even when the author is clearly dying. Despite his gentle and almost hesitant manner, Lees-Milne went straight to the point. Often he signaled his approach from a distance. (“Ah, the foot-fall of J. L-M.!,” one hostess used to say.) His manners were so perfect that most people were unaware of them, and in his conversation he had the timing of a major violinist. But in all this there was nothing of the fop. He simply knew what to say and when to say it. If he never seemed intrusive, it was because he knew when to talk and when to leave it to others.

Like many another gifted member of his generation, he had long been a discreet master of the same-sex relationship. But like more than one of his contemporaries he ended by marrying one of the most fascinating women of his generation. His dexterity in such matters sometimes exasperated other men. But it was J. L-M., and not they, who kept civilization in balance.

As a fellow lodger, he was ideal, and the more welcome in London for his having been so often away and out of reach. Only once, in 1943, did I hear him say “No” to a fellow lodger’s request. A young man whom neither of us knew came to ask Jim to lend him a white shirt. He was invited to a grand house for the weekend and simply couldn’t find a clean shirt for the evenings.

Jim put on a show worthy of the Comédie Française. He saw the problem. He grieved for his young friend. He applauded his social sense. In normal times he would have been delighted to say “Yes.” But these were not normal times. Shirts were rationed. Things might get much worse. His own shirts were in a terrible state. At that moment in time, a shirt lent was rarely seen again. The young man bowed and withdrew, convinced Jim had done him a favor.

Scenes of this kind do not count as history or even as social history, but they were part of an England in which manners mattered and consideration could usually be counted upon. In that England, James Lees-Milne never put a foot wrong.