A Year to Remember

by Alec Waugh

  I took very good care to make the dinner a success. I was also on my guard. I knew how carefully Maugham would note each detail. At my dinner parties I invariably served champagne, both because I like it and because it ‘makes a party go.’ Spirits rise at the sight of a steaming bucket. But I suspected that Maugham knowing that I was very far from being affluent would think I was showing off. I decided therefore after consultation with my wine merchant to serve a heavy hock, fragrant, rich without being sweet. I cannot remember what my wine merchant suggested. I am puzzled by the nomenclature of German wines. I could pass an examination on paper, but I can never be really sure how the wine will taste. All I can remember about that wine, apart from its superb taste and bouquet, is that it cost fifty per cent more than the best current vintage champagne. There could be nothing ostentatious in serving a wine like that. If Mr Maugham did not know how good it was, then it was a sign of inadequacy in him. He made no comment on the wine; he was not the kind of guest who would, but Patrick, when I met him next, complimented me on its excellence. I recount this incident as an example of the self consciousness that Maugham induced in others – even in someone as unselfconscious as myself.

  It was a pleasant party. Maugham was a better guest than he was a host. For him with his stammer parties were a strain. If he had produced a meal, he felt that he had made a sufficient contribution to the evening’s gaiety. But when he accepted an invitation, he accepted an obligation to make the party go. I remember him asking me if I had ever read Carl Van Vechten’s The Tattooed Countess. I said I hadn’t. ‘It’s the best light comic novel I’ve read,’ he said. He was to ask me the same question fourteen years later, when I was lunching with him and Carl Van Vechten in New York. Again I was to answer ‘No.’ Later I got the book and read it. It did not seem to me remarkable. I must try it again one day. If one does not like a book, it is as likely to be one’s own fault as the author’s.

  Van Vechten had a strange career. He was highly successful as a novelist in the 1920s. Peter Whiffle, The Blind Bow Boy, Nigger Heaven, were good novels, and he was acclaimed critically. His sales were reasonably large, for the English market; he was, one of Grant Richards’ discoveries. Then suddenly in 1932, he gave up writing and took up photography. He was a rich man. His name is engraved as a patron on one of the pillars in the hall of the New York Public Library. He could afford to indulge a hobby. He had said all he had to say. It showed a considerable amount of character to be able to quit the arena when his powers were still undrained. He appeared to be completely satisfied with his decision.

  I recall many cosy parties during that November. Perhaps we Londoners felt that we had to concentrate a lot into that month, that it was a month of miracle that would not return, that for the moment we were all here together and that we must make the most of it. I remember, especially, a lunch at my flat when I introduced Newman Flower, the head of Cassell’s, to my father. Just the three of us. It was a great success. Newman had never before met my father. He was in charge of a much larger firm. He was also quite a number of years younger than my father; I was midway between them. Newman was a West countryman, from Dorsetshire; with an accent that defied analysis, but that was real and rich. He was a great raconteur. He loved publishing and he loved authors. He was the only publisher I ever knew who did not, in estimating an author’s value, work out whether or not that author had earned the advance that had been paid to him on account of royalties. He remembered the days when authors had sold their books to publishers for an outright sum. He would not think, ‘I have paid Alec Waugh an advance of six hundred pounds on account of a twenty per cent royalty (in those days one got that kind of royalty). If he had sold 7,500 copies, he would have earned that advance, and I should have made £840. He has sold only 5,300 copies. He has not earned his advance, but even so I have made £535.1 am well content with that.’ On my first three novels, I did not earn my advance, but he did not lose money on me. Peters told me that he had a small black book, in which he had worked out the ratio of royalties to advances. He would consult this little book when the occasion for a new contract came up. ‘Yes,’ he would say, ‘I can go on paying Alec the same advance.’

  I had a very happy time with Cassell’s for forty years. I was more than sad when they declined on moral grounds to publish my A Spy in the Family, I wished they could have stayed with me to the end. But in fact their adverse decision was a great piece of luck for me. Within a year the control of Cassell’s had passed into other hands and Desmond Flower along with all the old directors left the board. I do not think I should have been happy with the new regime, though loyalty to the past would have prevented my leaving them. As it is, I have had extremely cordial relations with W. H. Allen who have issued a hard back edition of some of my early novels which I do not think Cassell’s would have done.

  John Farrar was also over. It was his first visit to England since the war, when he had passed through in uniform. The main object of his trip was to inveigle Remarque onto his list. Farrar and Rinehart had acquired Cosmopolitan, and Remarque had been a Cosmopolitan author. But Farrar also wanted to see his English authors, of whom he had a number, one of them being my brother Evelyn. I gave a small cocktail party for him. John Farrar still tells of that meeting with my brother. Farrar was seated on a sofa. I brought Evelyn up. ‘This is your American publisher,’ I said. ‘Indeed,’ he said, and bowed. He sat down and fixed on Farrar the stare that was to discountenance so many in the years ahead. It was intense. It was riveting. You were acutely conscious of the whites of his eyes. It completely deprived John Farrar of the power of speech. He stared back, hypnotised. They remained there, staring for what seemed an eternal Sargasso Sea of Silence; then Evelyn stood up, gave a little bow and walked away.

  George Doran, who was John Farrar’s literary godfather, was over in London too that autumn. It makes me feel very old to reflect that to hardly anyone under the age of fifty the name of George Doran can mean anything today. In the 1920s he was the Maecenas of the literary world as far as young English writers anxious to break into the American market were concerned. He was a Canadian, he loved England, and he specialised in English writers.

  Before and during the war he built up Arnold Bennett, Somerset Maugham, and Frank Swinnerton. After the war he enlisted younger writers like Michael Arlen. His general view was if you acquired twenty promising English writers, even though you lost money on seventeen of them, it would not be very much and ‘think what you could make out of the other three.’ He believed in paying his authors rather more than they could expect to get anywhere else. He believed in giving a writer a sense of security and stability, of confidence in himself.

  He always occupied the same suite at the Savoy high up looking out over the river – one of London’s loveliest views. Its unostentatious luxury gave an author an encouraging feeling of being in good hands. Ethel Mannin in her Impressions and Opinions – an autobiography that was in my opinion undeservedly attacked when it first appeared – gave an amusing account of a typical Doran party for his authors. I never had the good fortune to be in on one of those, but I was happy and proud to join his stable in the summer of 1926.

  John Farrar had been trained in that Doran tradition. I remember well an occasion late in 1927, when I was passing through New York on my way back to London. I was at a low ebb emotionally and professionally. I was in the throes of a desperate romance for which I could see no hope; indeed there was none. And my last novel had done poorly in the U.S.A. It had not deserved to do much else, but it was my first novel with Doran, and I had hoped that the Doran salesmanship would lift it to respectable sales. It had actually done less well than had its predecessor with a smaller publisher. Would Doran want to go on with me? Was my American market in dissolution? I needed encouragement; and that was precisely what John Farrar gave me.

  It took a little time, he said, for an English author to get known to an American audience. Moreover too many English writers were too English. ‘But I have to use E
nglish subjects,’ I remonstrated, ‘I must write either about England or about Englishmen abroad. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Of course and that’s what you should go on writing. There’s nothing more phoney than the Englishman who writes about America as though he were American. But there’s all the difference between that and the Englishman who spends a certain time in America, who has a number of American friends and who in consequence when he writes a story, automatically, without knowing that he’s doing it, tells his stories in such a way that it will be comprehensible to Americans. If he absorbs the American point of view, he will find himself writing the kind of story that Americans want to read. I think you should come over and live here for a little.’ Which was advice that I was to follow as soon as it became financially possible. ‘Then you’ll want to take my next book?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course, and the one after it.’ I have never ceased to be grateful to John for saying that.

  It is encouragement of that kind that an author needs from a publisher. He has so many moments of self-doubt. He needs to be reassured, to be told that everything is going well, and that very soon it will be going better. I never went to see my first publisher, Grant Richards, without coming away fortified. He looked so bland, so confident, so immaculately dressed. He was so unflurried. Everything seemed to be going well with him. Therefore since you were one of the things that were going with him, everything must be well with you. Later, I was to learn that affairs were very far from going well with him in the middle 20s. He was never secure financially. But he did not allow any of this uncertainty to show.

  In November 1931 Doran was out of publishing. He had prudently sold out to Doubleday, when the going was good, and was over in London as W. R. Hearst’s representative, commissioning English articles and stories for Cosmopolitan. Once again he was in a suite at the Savoy, and once again he was throwing a large party – this time a cocktail one for authors and prospective authors. It was hard to believe that English authorship was in a state of crisis when Hearst was ready to court it at such expense.

  In spite of the crisis, a great deal of money was being spent in London. Undoubtedly the most striking party of the season is described in Michael Harrison’s biography of Rosa Lewis. In talking about the bright young people whom my brother satirised in Vile Bodies, he sounds the requiem of their glory; he wrote:

  The reign was over and we can give a day – 21. Nov. 1931 – the day on which Arthur Jeffries, later a successful dealer in paintings, gave his famous Red and White party in Maud Allen’s Regent’s Park House. At this famous party at which Arthur wore white angola skin pyjamas, white elbow length kid gloves, ruby and diamond bracelets and carried a ruff of white narcissi, all the bright young things turned up, everyone in red and white. Evan Morgan was in a scarlet toga, his young gentleman friend was in a white ski suit with a white fur shako. Even the cigarettes were red as well as white, and only red and white things were there to eat. Lobster, strawberries, things like that. The late Brenda Dean-Paul, after having pulled a lady’s hair for no reason except pure malice, was carted off by the police for being in unlawful possession of drugs. The late Hugh Walpole played ‘Body and Soul’ on the organ until Maud Allen in a rage sent down word that she had let the house not the organ and would they let her get some sleep. At seven in the morning they still weren’t letting Miss Allen get some sleep.

  I was invited to the party by Elizabeth Montagu. It started at about midnight. Elaborate security precautions were taken to ensure that there were no gate crashers. The cards of invitation were carefully scrutinised at the door. When the party started I was half-in-love with Elizabeth, by the time it ended I was three-quarters in love. I was unaware of the high drama that was being enacted round me. I was in a blissful haze. We sat around and held hands and drank very little, danced a little, talked to nobody except ourselves; until about five o’clock she drove me home. But I can see in retrospect that this party did mark the end of an era. As I said in my first chapter, 1931 was a watershed; a New World was to come into existence. There were to be no more parties like the airship one in Vile Bodies.

  Early in December, so Michael Harrison reports, the Bystander delivered itself of an attack upon the party. ‘How’, it asked, ‘could people not be expected to go communist when such ill-bred extravagance was flaunted, as hungry men were marching to London to get work.’

  Many news items about Brenda Dean-Paul’s addiction to drugs were to appear in the press during the next fifteen years. They were invariably illustrated by a photograph taken at the Red and White party. I scarcely knew Brenda Dean-Paul. In the middle twenties she was delightful company, witty, pretty and vivacious. It was cruel that that particular fate should have been decreed on her.

  XIV

  In the meantime the literary fortunes of the Waughs were progressing not unfavourably. Chapman & Hall’s failing powers were a source of considerable concern to my father. At the moment when official salaries were being cut, R. E. Neale, the director who was appointed to watch the interests of the technical department – the story of his appointment in a palace revolution has been told in my Early Years – was suggesting a ten per cent cut in salaries for the staff and a fifteen per cent cut in directors’ fees. The secretary, however, A. W. Gatfield, was demanding a rise of £100 a year. Ralph Straus resigned from the Board. The managing director, J. L. Bale, was in the full throes of a nervous breakdown. Early in October Curtis Brown told my father in the course of a lunch at the Devonshire Club that the Century Company of New York wanted to buy an English publishing house. It would no doubt have been in the interests of the shareholders, who had not received a dividend for many years, to have opened negotiations with the Century, but my father naturally did not want to organise himself into unemployment. After a perturbed Board meeting, Neale lunched my father at the Adelphi – a very sound hotel-pub whose bar was frequented by journalists. A four-course lunch consisting of mock turtle soup, fillet of sole, boiled beef and gorgonzola cost half-a-crown. The entry in my father’s diary says, ‘I had written a letter to Gatfield, but Neale urged me not to send it.’ I would give a lot to know what was in that letter.

  But in the meantime my father had the consolation of a very satisfactory reception of The Road. By mid-December it had sold 1,011 copies, which was a good sale for a book of that type and price; and The Times had included it in its list of the year’s successes. He had every reason to be satisfied with its reception.

  Evelyn’s Remote Peoples appeared in late November. How quickly books were published in those days. He had not finished it when he was in Villefranche. As it was published by Duckworth and not Chapman & Hall there is no record of its sales in my father’s diary. There is only one comment on it. ‘Rebecca West “sniffy” about it in the Daily Telegraph’ I remember the review. It did not strike me as ‘sniffy’. I should have been delighted to have been reviewed as warmly by Rebecca.

  There are constant references to him however; entries that picture a disjointed life, as of course his was at that time. He had no home. He exiled himself on trips abroad. Then he would go into retreat and write. In the intervals he would, as it were, scurry from one pocket of resistance to another. In late October he went to Malvern to learn to ride. He was always conscious of his lack of height. He had, I fancy, an idea that his shortness would be less apparent when he was mounted. He did not persist with the experiment. He is recorded as having made Elizabeth Packenham – now Lady Longford – the nuptial presentation of a centenary Dickens. He lunches with Nancy Mitford, dines with Eleanor Smith, visits the Lygons at Madresfield, where he spent Christmas; always on the move.

  My own novel, So Lovers Dream was published on November the 26th. I gave a small cocktail party for it. In those days, in England, it was unusual for publishers to give parties for their authors. Authors gave parties for themselves. On publication day I received from Newman Flower a letter written in his own hand, telling me how much he had enjoyed the book, congratulating me upon it. I
t did quite well. A favourable reception from the press and reasonable sales, a slight improvement on its predecessor. It did not earn its advance of six hundred pounds, but Cassell’s did not lose money. Everyone was well content.

  Two minor literary scandals stirred the world of letters in both of which John Farrar was concerned; in the one directly, the other indirectly. The indirect one was the case of Rosalind Wade’s Children Be Happy – a novel about a girl’s college life that was published by Gollancz. It was a good book and received good reviews. Rosalind Wade had been a friend of mine for several years. She had been secretary to Mrs Geoffrey Whitworth – whose husband was one of the directors of Chatto & Windus and herself was a lady of varied activities, one of which was the decoration of flats. She decorated my Chelsea one, and in the process I saw quite a little of Rosalind. I became very fond of her – a fondness that has survived. I also liked her book. I introduced her to John Farrar, throwing a small dinner which would give John the impression that she was a lady in good standing, as indeed she was. A useful author to have on the Farrar-Rinehart list. John succumbed to my persuasions and he acquired the American rights. The auguries were excellent. Unfortunately the book contained a minor character who mislaid her virginity. The character was identifiable, and the lady brought a libel action. In those days in England if a lady’s honour was impugned you had not to prove special damage, as you would in a man’s case. It might not do a military man any harm professionally to state that he had a mistress. A mistress after all was a status symbol of Ouida guardsmen, but such an imputation would damage the professional future of a cleric. To state that a woman was not a virgin, however, was to diminish her value in the marriage market. The character in Rosalind’s book had only to satisfy the court that she was identifiable to demand damages. The judge took a very grave view of the whole affair. He awarded the plaintiff substantial damages: and ordered not only that every copy in existence but even the manuscript itself should be destroyed.