"Owoooooo!" cried the housewives of Cerne Abbas (Dorset), "here's the milkman and me with the curlers still in my hair!" No wonder they were fluttered. The milkman was Edward Kenelm Digby, 52, eleventh Baron Digby, World War I colonel in the Coldstream Guards, World War II inspector of infantry-training establishments, co-grandfather (with Winston Churchill) of Randolph Churchill's small son. Winston Churchill II.
For the past seven months burly Baron Digby has risen at 6:30 a.m. After breakfast his Lordship, wearing his habitual thick brown tweeds and checked cap on his bald head, steps into the stone-paved yard of his rambling Tudor manor house. Standing by the dairy is a neat, navy blue, electric van, loaded with Guernsey milk from Lord Digby's 30 pedigreed cows, pastured on his 200-acre farm. Accompanied by his helper, aged Edwin White, Lord Digby hops in and sets off to deliver milk to the inhabitants of Cerne Abbas (pop. 511).
When his Lordship first arrived with milk, class-conscious housewives were somewhat embarrassed. Today the van's super service and Baron Digby's affable, businesslike manner have ended all that. Not only does he supply rich milk (at the regulation fivepence a pint), but the van is loaded with vegetables, flowers and fresh fruit, grown on Lord Digby's larger estate at Minterne, a mile away.
Says plump, bespectacled Mrs. Shuttle, wife of Cerne Abbas' stationer: "He's a real nice gentleman." She describes how Lord Digby stands behind the van bellowing cheerfully: "What do you want this morning, Mrs. Shuttle?" Mrs. Shuttle gives her order and hands over her shopping basket: "Then, like as not, he'll say, 'Now don't you worry, Mrs. Shuttle, I'll take it for you,' and he marches through the shop into the kitchen with the goods. Now there ain't many people who'd do that for you, lord or no lord. They be fine people, the Digbys, got no swank with them either, friendly as you please. And there's no doubt about it," adds Mrs. Shuttle, "he could sell that fruit at twice the price. I bought a peach from him for sixpence that would have cost me one and six in Dorchester."
Even Sergeant Bert Clist, Cerne Abbas's policeman, who has strong labor sympathies, says that the Digbys "are fine people with no side to them. . . . In fact I'll be finding myself a die-hard Tory before long."
Baron Digby turned milkman when none of his 40 employes could drive the newly purchased delivery truck. Now his Lordship likes to drive it so much that he won't give up the job.