by Simon Raven
This time our situations were reversed. I was playing quite well, though I say it myself, while he was utterly out of form. Very soon the Court was mauve with his astonishing language. Compared with the ferocious hatred with which he now cursed the ball, the walls, his racket and himself, my performance at the cricket match had been but an innocent bleat. And yet he had seemed so impeccably mannered on that day when he doffed his cap to address the Provost. How had the change come about? Or was it simply that he, like myself, could not bear playing badly, and that when he did, then despite his breeding he lost all control of his temper?
Certainly he began to make himself agreeable again the moment our game was over. He did not resent defeat, I concluded, he merely detested, while actually playing, the incompetence he had then displayed. He had been, I told myself, mortified by the sheer ugliness of his botched strokes, by the hideous feeling which went up his arm when he scuffed the ball with the frame of the racket. His bad temper had, at root, been a matter of aesthetics.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Nigel Forbes Adam, a senior boy and a friend of Dickie, when I proposed this theory at tea. ‘It is a matter of face. He cannot full CirCle bear to look silly. If he feels that he is, he gets in a furious bate – and of course looks sillier still.’
‘At least he doesn’t keep it up,’ I said. ‘He was as civil as you like the minute we got out of the Court.’
‘He’d cooled down and worked out that the only way to make you forget what a bad figure he’d cut was to present a good one now. You know who he is, of course?’
‘I know his name.’
‘That won’t help you. His mother married again, so that when the scandal occurred she was called Q— and not, as he still is, P—.’
‘His mother was Mrs Q—?’
‘If ever such a one there was. Makes you think. Everyone thought the world of her. Thought butter wouldn’t melt in her armpits. Then the husband died, she became a brave little widow, after a suitable interval she marries again, very properly, to provide a father for her dear little son, all just what you’d expect from one of her family and background – until hey presto, she turns into a galloping Messalina and shags with queues of guardsmen in the park. So I think,’ said Nigel, ‘there is some excuse for P—’s being uneven in temper.’
‘Does he show any signs of going the same way?’ Dickie asked.
‘He don’t entertain queues of guardsmen, if that’s what you mean. In fact over all that he’s a dark horse. He hasn’t wanted for proposals, as you can well imagine, but up till now there’s not a breath against him, not in that line. But a chap who has a mother that suddenly breaks out like a pornographic Grand Opera…one does rather wonder what might happen.’
A year or so later P— was to run amok in the scent department of a famous Kensington store, causing over £3,000 worth of damage in three minutes… after which he was permanently retired from the world and confined in circumstances which gave great sadness to those that remembered the bright boy who had courted the Provost on the boundary or even the foul-mouthed ephebe in the Squash Court. But my reason for telling this gruesome tale lies less in the tale itself than in the occasion on which its chief protagonists were discussed, that of my first meeting with Nigel Forbes Adam, whom I have known ever since. Dickie stood godfather to his first son, I to his second, and to this day the three of us watch cricket at Lord’s every summer.
We also watch it up in Yorkshire, where Nigel has a house near Selby, convenient for the Test Match at Leeds. The first time I went up there to stay must have been in 1952, by which year Nigel had left Eton, done his National Service as an Hussar, and been for some months up at King’s. As I remember, it was very early autumn; and one morning Nigel’s mother, Irene, came flitting over the dewy grass, like the goddess Iris ‘as she skimmed the teeming ocean’, waving a telegram in the air, ‘My dears, it’s from Ronald Storrs. He and Lady Storrs are arriving tomorrow.’
In many cases, of which that of Sir Ronald Storrs is typical, I have been extremely unlucky in my brief encounters with great or famous men. The memories which I have brought away from such encounters are far too often trivial or even worthless. I once had luncheon with Jean Genet in Athens, and the only remark of his which I can remember is, ‘On ne peut pas manger correctement en Athénes’ – true enough, as far as it goes, but neither witty nor profound. When I saw Evelyn Waugh plain, on a summer’s afternoon in Heywood Hill’s bookshop, all he did was to repeat to the assistant, like some mechanical toy, ‘Isn’t it hot in your shop, isn’t it hot in your shop’; as indeed it was, but it needed no sage come from Somerset to tell us that. Of the occasion I had dinner with Patrick White in Sydney all I can remember is the way in which Mr White rebuked an obstreperous guest, ‘I shouldn’t have asked you. I should have known better. Queens Means Scenes.’ This is a bit above the average; it concludes in rhyme, and the circumstances in which the remark was made were mildly dramatic; but I still think I should have got rather more from a meeting with the author of Voss.
I’m afraid it is the same with Ronald Storrs. Author of Orientations, big wheel in the Horatian Society, Statesman, Mage of the Middle East, Manipulator of T E Lawrence – surely such a one must have said or done something memorable during the thirty-six hours he passed with me at Skipwith Hall? No, he didn’t; or rather, yes, he did, as I still actually remember it, but not the sort of thing which important men should be ‘memorable’ for.
He discovered that I had been at Charterhouse, as he had, and drank down, rather quickly, several glasses of Nigel’s (absent) father’s admirable Port in celebration; he then discovered that I had been a Saunderite, as he had, and promptly drank several more to toast this extraordinary coincidence; and then, finally and fatally, he discovered that I had been reading the Classics at Cambridge, a feat which pleased him so much that he woofed a huge bumper in its honour. After this he became flamboyant, then grandiose, then petulant, then incoherent, at which stage Nigel, who was rather diffidently presiding over the table in his father’s stead, at last found the courage to put the stopper in the decanter and on Sir Ronald, and ushered the gentlemen into the drawing room…where Lady Storrs, who was a harpy at the best of times, seized shrilly and vengefully upon her knight and propelled him with beak and talons up the stairs to bed.
The next day Lord Anglesea came to luncheon. Both the Storrs positively full CirCle grovelled before this amiable young nobleman, introduction to whom worked a total cure on Sir Ronald’s crapula, which had been very evident (face like a road map and eyes like tapioca) all through the morning. Of Anglesea I remember little save an unusual combination of courtesy and candour, the latter of which, in certain situations, marched rather uneasily with the former. When, for instance, Sir Ronald bowed himself up to Anglesea in the garden after luncheon and all but curtseyed while presenting my lord marquess with an inscribed copy of Orientations, I observed a glint of satirical merriment in his lordship’s eye which was not to be quenched, despite the manifest cordiality and respect with which he, the aspirant historian, received this gift from his distinguished senior. His eyes said, ‘Although you are a man of great experience and some fascination, you are really the most appalling old toady’, and I had the impression that he was hard put to it not to rehearse the words aloud; for certainly, some ten seconds after accepting the book, he broke into a peal of laughter, quite inexplicable to me except on the surmise that he was relieving the strain of withholding his honest opinion of Sir Ronald and his sycophantic manner of presentation. Notwithstanding an element of wariness, the gusto of the laugh was quite Chaucerian, and so put me in mind of a Chaucerian image to describe the whole phenomenon: thus did a man who wished to defecate find at least temporary relief by letting a vigorous but carefully controlled fart. Something had to be done: but were it overdone, my lord, like the farter, were quite undone.
Lord Anglesea I have never seen since, but with Sir Ronald I had some correspondence, as he was kind enough to propose me for membersh
ip of the Horatian Society. This met once a year to dine and listen to encomia of Horace in the form of toasts proposed by Horatians both professional and amateur. All this happened, then as now, in the Dining Room of the House of Lords, where the food was like that served in a decaying Railway Hotel and boisterous waitresses used to make the most tremendous racket from the kitchen all through the speeches. Old friends turned up from time to time, Patrick Wilkinson as an Officer of the Society, Noël Annan and Robert Birley to address it; but my principal memory is not of any person or persons present on any particular occasion but of a kind of collective perversity displayed by the Society at large and in the following fashion.
When the food in their Lordships’ House had become all but inedible, the Honorary Secretary secured a promise from one of the Livery Companies that we might use its premises and its facilities for our dinner the following year. For once the food and drink were quite delicious; but such was the snobbery of the Horatians that after the change of venue had been announced the number of subscribers dropped to less than half the average. Those lucky few who did dine, in (I think) the Cordwainers’ Hall, were peremptorily informed, even as they sat digesting their sumptuous yet delicate repast, that the Annual Dinner would revert next year to the Lords…where the usual number assembled twelve months later to eat the usual hogs’ wallop.
To the Horatian Dinner which was addressed by Robert Birley I invited Bob Arrowsmith; and on the occasion when Noël Annan spoke I asked Francis Haskell. Two things of note occurred at the latter party: Noël made a brilliant but depressing speech, in which he deplored but declared inevitable the passing of the Classical Tradition; and later on Noël, Francis and myself reenacted, for our own pleasure but somewhat to the scandal of Horatians who overheard us, THE BUMPER BOB BOOTHBY DISASTER of 1951:
Dadie Rylands had been invited to give one of the big annual lectures in London, to the British Academy if my memory serves me; and if it doesn’t serve me in this detail, it does very clearly in everything else which occurred.
Dadie very kindly invited Francis and myself along with Noël and Mrs (Gabriele) Annan, to accompany him to London in Mears’ Rolls Royce for the occasion. We were to picnic on Royston Heath, have tea in the United Universities Club, and hear the lecture: after which Noël and Gabriele would attend some family function, while Dadie, Francis and myself would dine with Bob Boothby and Maurice Bowra, who would both be at the lecture.
All went swimmingly. The picnic was a minor triumph for Gabriele, Mears’ Rolls purred punctually into London, the United Universities Club provided commodious lavatories if not much of a tea, and the lecture was a major triumph for Dadie. Then there was a cocktail party to celebrate, at which I met both Rose Macaulay and Ivy Compton Burnett, the former of whom was very jolly with Francis and me, while the latter was quite strikingly not. Bob and Maurice duly appeared to congratulate Dadie, though Bob himself had had to cut the lecture as something of major importance to the nation had required his attention. He would now, however, make amends by inviting all of us to White’s, an institution, he reminded us, paramount among its kind, and one to which by no means anybody, in fact almost nobody, and certainly none of us except of course for him, could ever aspire to be elected. So to White’s we all five went, Dadie elated by gin and success, Francis and I elated by gin and Rose Macaulay, Warden Bowra elated by his own brilliance, and Bob Boothby by his own importance – and also by a new suit which he was wearing for the first time, he told us, and by the new car in which he drove us. He had been allowed to jump a long queue to get it, he said, because he was so important; it was (baruuuum, baruuuuum) the finest and fastest model full CirCle going, and it was taking us (honk, honk) to the finest and most exclusive gentlemen’s club in London, in England and therefore in the World.
At dinner everyone got more elated, except, perhaps, Maurice, whose personality was always pretty voluble but seldom more or less so. There was Champagne to celebrate Dadie’s lecture and to give Bob the opportunity of telling us how excellent and how expensive it was, the finest Champagne, in the finest club, in the finest capital, etc, etc. When we had had too many bottles of it, and a good many other things beside, we climbed into Bob’s new car to drive across the river and inspect the work in progress on the site of The Festival of Britain, a trip for which we just had time before we rejoined Noël, Gabriele, Mears and Mears’ Rolls at the appointed rendezvous – the Athenaeum.
At first we were denied admission to the site – but then the Gate Keeper recognised Bob Boothby and bowed us through. When we drove up near the buildings some late workers also recognised him and raised quite a satisfying ‘Hoorah for Bob Boothby’. As we departed the Gate-Keeper threw up a smart military salute – to Bob Boothby. As we drove towards the Athenaeum Bob himself took up the topic – of Bob Boothby: how he had been cheered and saluted, how he was dressed in his new and splendid suit and was driving in his new and peerless car, and how privileged we were to be driving with him, Maurice Bowra in the elegant new-style cup-seat in the front, Francis, Dadie and I on the luxurious foamy triple bench at the back…until, as Bob reached a crescendo of self-applause, there was suddenly that well known choking noise and one of us in the back (never ask me who) was sick all over Boothby’s new suit and Boothby’s new car and Boothby’s quacking head, as neat an instance of hubris and nemesis as ever I heard of.
By the time of the bumper Boothby frolic my blithe days at Cambridge were – or so it seemed – fast running out. Money had long since done so. Although I managed to keep going somehow by a series of disgraceful shifts, I was reaping a bitter and well earned harvest from my prodigality of two years before; and had it not been for the forebearance, even the charity, of those who, like Patrick Wilkinson, had warned me and been snubbed for their pains, I should long ago have been sent down. But now there was a sudden and surprising twist in my affairs. However badly I had behaved, I had always worked quite hard; and at the end of my third year the College decided that I showed promise enough as a scholar to be invited to stay on as a postgraduate Student and to submit a thesis in competition for a Fellowship.
This generous decision was made by the College Council at the beginning of the Long Vacation Term of 1951 and was communicated to me by one of the Fellows in the course of the annual cricket match against the College Servants. Pleased, proud and touched, flushed with the additional pleasure of having just taken two wickets, I vowed there and then to abandon my dissipated courses and cling wholly to learning, a vow which I kept pretty well for the remainder of the Long Vacation. But by now I was being regularly employed by Joe Ackerley and others to write reviews for the weekly journals; by October of 1951 I had begun to be infatuated with a vision of myself as an urbane and affluent man of letters; and to realise the vision I put aside my thesis and started to write a novel (which was indeed to be published but not until thirty years later). By March of 1952 my thesis had not advanced by a single paragraph, though even then perhaps, had I put my heart into it, I might have made up enough ground by July to convince the Council that my Studentship should be renewed. But finding the drudgery of research intolerable, I went instead to Italy to join Francis Haskell, who was using his own opportunities and resources to better purpose than myself and was even then assiduously laying the foundations of his fascinating first book, Patrons and Painters.
When I returned to Cambridge in the late April of 1952, every kind of writing was large upon the wall. My academic career was closed, my literary career had not yet, in any real sense, begun; money, which, through the kindness of certain Fellows of King’s, had been got right a few months back, was now, through my extravagance in Italy, a ghastly problem again. ‘What shall I do,’ I said to James Prior, whom I chanced to encounter at Fenner’s where the University was playing the Free Foresters, ‘whatever shall I do?’
James had taken his degree (a First in Estate Management) a year ago and was up on a visit.
‘Count your blessings,’ he said. ‘You weren’t cut out
for a don. You haven’t that sort of mind – or that sort of grit. To become a don, leave alone to remain one, you have to have a very high tolerance of boredom. Boring research, as you’ve found for yourself already, boring colleagues, and boring pupils. Not your kettle.’
‘Still, there would have been advantages. Lovely rooms, dainty dinners inside them, the College cellars…
‘How long do you suppose all that’s going to last?’
‘It’s seen the Labour Government out.’
‘There’ll be other Labour Governments. More thorough. Socialist Governments. Those buggers never stop, you know. They never say, “Right, that’s settled, now let everyone enjoy himself.” Oh no. They go sniffing round for something else to interfere with. And sooner or later they’re going to sniff out fruity dons who are having “dainty dinners” in their “lovely rooms”.
Count yourself lucky that they won’t be sniffing out you.’
‘All right. I’m lucky to be going. But where shall I go?’
‘You say you want to be a writer, a novelist. So go and find yourself something to write about. What do you know as yet? Where have you been?’
‘Italy. France. India.’
‘Not a bad start. But if you’re going to spend your life writing novels, you’ll need more capital, so to speak, than six months in India as a Cadet and odd weeks in France and Italy. So travel.’
‘What with?’
‘Your two feet. If you’re too soft for that, if you want to go first class, why not rejoin the Army? They’re dishing out Regular Commissions to graduates who formerly held Emergency Commissions, as we did. And they’re throwing in a few years seniority with them. If you can get some decent sort of Regiment to take you on, you’ll go scudding round the world in comfort if not in luxury.’
‘I might get shot.’
‘That’d settle all your problems.’
