It was over lunch at Le Poule au Pot towards the end of July that I suggested that Lady Antonia Fraser might give the Catholic Herald an interview to commemorate her 90th birthday at the end of August.
“Yes, of course!” she exclaimed, with characteristic enthusiasm. “But not until it’s come and gone – you know, just in case.” Although a distinctive floral walking-stick has now been added to her ever-glamorous couture, she remains as sharp as a knife.
And so we find ourselves, a season later, in front of the fire in what one of the glossier coffee-table magazines would no doubt call “her gracious drawing room in Notting Hill”. We are not alone, for Antonia is attended constantly by Ferdinand and Isabella, two large cats of pleasant disposition named – of course – after the Catholic monarchs of Aragon and Castile, and the first rulers of a united Spain.
The date having been safely passed, I ask her how 90 feels. “It’s wonderful,” she replies. “You’ve made it, just by having lived. When people find out you’re 90, they all say exactly the same word, immediately. They don’t look at you, or anything; they just say ‘amazing’.” She adds, mischievously: “If there’s a slightly too-long pause, I say it myself: ‘amazing!’ It isn’t to do with looking well, it’s just the fact of 90 – it’s amazing.”
Antonia bids me remember that the Pakenham genes may have played their part, but at the same time knows that she might just have been “very lucky”. Her much-loved parents, Lord and Lady Longford, both made it well into their 90s; her brother Thomas will turn 90 in 2023. Not quite a year her junior, Antonia is tickled by the thought that they’ll be the same age for a full 13 days – “that must be quite rare in siblings”.
Coffee arrives in a handsome silver pot; with it come the usual tantalising biscuits, dipped in chocolate, which Antonia declines. I have less resolve, and help myself with pleasure. “Good,” she observes, “they’re there for you.” Isabella, all black and white, has come to sit between us with her rump firmly in my direction, but shows a momentary interest in my latest acquisition. “Not for the cat!”
“Being 90 is lovely,” Antonia reassures me. She is enjoying the present moment and not looking too far into the future. “When someone asked ‘are you looking forward to being 100?’ I told them to shut up.” The birthday cards are all still on display – I suddenly regret having sent an email instead – and will come down when the first Christmas card arrives. For now they cover almost every available surface.
I posit that in the course of a long life Ant-onia must have seen many, many changes. “There have been wonderful social developments,” she muses. “The National Health Service, for one. Whatever Labour does or doesn’t do, it should be remembered for that. It was my father’s world, and I canvassed for him around south Oxford. It was always the same thing: ‘Oh, aren’t you a lovely little girl? Would you like a bun? No, we vote Tory.’ Still, at least I got a bun.”
As for the Church, the greatest personal change was her conversion to Catholicism after her father crossed the Tiber in 1940; Lady Longford followed him a few years later. “I wanted to be a Catholic,” Antonia recalls, “not in any profound way at that age, but I thought it was mysterious and lovely. The day my mother said ‘We’re taking you away from that Protestant school’, I was thrilled. I went to St Mary’s, Ascot, where I was extremely happy. I love nuns.”
Did her early attendance St Aloysius’s in Oxford, which was then in the hands of the Jesuits, play its part in bringing Antonia to be part of the congregation at St Mary’s, Farm Street, in the heart of London? “I’m quite sure it did. But the history of the Jesuits has always fascinated me. My father was received by Fr Martin D’Arcy. I like the Jesuits’ sermons, and the fact that they work so hard with the homeless – they’re not just busy being clever.”
I have just promised to go with Antonia to Mass at Farm Street one Sunday when Isabella is replaced by Ferdinand. The tabby tortoiseshell is less reticent than his sister, and sprawls across my lap. What about more general ecclesiastical developments, I wonder, as he presents his belly for me to rub. “I would guess that being able to worship in one’s own language has been the most profound change, but I choose to go to a Latin Mass because I learned Latin early on.”
“It’s meant for everybody, after all, so I hope that the Church will continue to ‘change in order to remain unchanged’,” she continues. “I’m a tremendous admirer of Pope Francis – not just because he’s a Jesuit, but for his spirit of tolerance and understanding. I always feel he wants to include everybody, and is sad when people aren’t included.” I recall that he is the eighth pope of Antonia’s lifetime, the first having been Pius XI.
It’s no secret that the present Pope’s approach to certain issues may have encouraged some Catholics to wonder if any of the Church’s teachings may be up for debate. I tentatively introduce euthanasia, which is not necessarily easy to broach with someone who has just entered her 10th decade. “I’m very happy to discuss that subject,” Antonia insists.
She channels Arthur Clough: “Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive officiously to keep alive.” She treads the line carefully, and falls in with the nuances of the Church. “If someone is suffering terribly, you don’t have to force them to live. I wrote a poem about Archie [Battersbee] in the Tablet. I felt so sorry for his parents, and in a way for the doctors, too.”
It is a sobering pause for thought, before we return to the topic in hand: being 90. When I venture the hope that Antonia has many more years ahead of her, she smiles wryly. “Don’t bother with all that. Ninety is fine.” My next observation is that unlike many 90-year-olds she retains a full social life and enjoys relatively good health; Ferdinand, still on my knees, begins to purr loudly.
“I suppose I lead the sort of life I’ve always led. Let’s face it: being a writer’s not a physical activity, so I can still do it. I’ve got a book coming out in May. I’m always told that my memory is irritatingly good, but I think that’s because I’ve used it all my life. In History you have to have a good memory. If I had to choose again between being utterly mobile and springing about the lawn, and having no memory – I’d still choose memory.”
Memory plays a part, too, in a story that is yet to come. “If there is a heaven” – I don’t for a moment believe that Antonia thinks there isn’t – “I want to be back here with Harold, chatting away. He can watch cricket on television. To have lost your adored one – the price of great happiness for so long is that you can’t then have true happiness without them. But one mustn’t grumble. I am very lucky to have so many wonderful friends and relations.”
Antonia reaches over to the ottoman for a volume of verse – “only poets write poetry” – which she has published to mark her milestone, and kindly inscribes it before presenting it to me. By now a bottle of cold white wine has arrived, for the lunch-hour approaches. We toast her 90th birthday as the noonday sun streams in through the tall windows, falling in lines across the floor. The cats find the warmest spot, and thereafter ignore us entirely.
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