The Pursuit of Laughter Read online

  * A royal order without appeal.

  The Marquis de Sade, Thomas, D. Evening Standard (1992)

  Elcho and Her Bunny Men

  Balfour* was by way of being the cleverest and wittiest of the Souls; his public life was at the summit of affairs as Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister and elder statesman, until the Treaty of Versailles when he was over 70. These letters ought to show him at his best in private life—nobody could have been more adored than he was by the charming Mary Wyndham, Lady Elcho, who loved and flattered him for so many years.

  Yet his best is not up to very much. There seems to be something flabby and bloodless about the man, and Lady Elcho was infinitely more than he deserved. He was like a cat which has ‘been to the vet’.

  The reader becomes so fond of Lady Elcho—rather stranded between a faithless husband and impossibly lukewarm lover—that it is a great relief when, in 1894 at the age of 32, accompanied by her three eldest children, she goes to stay with Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt in the Egyptian desert.

  Blunt did not care for the Souls, he said their coat of arms should be ‘two flat fish osculant all proper’. Within a week he had seduced Lady Elcho; he called her his Bedouin wife. By the time the party went back to England, she was expecting his child. Lord Elcho accepted the situation, perhaps more easily than did Arthur Balfour. However, the amitié amoureuse went on as before, Wilfred Blunt fading right out of the picture. From then on, Lady Elcho seems self-assured; there is no doubt the adventure was exactly what she needed.

  Balfour’s letters are a mixture of social and political gossip, a good deal of emphasis on his philosophical writing, concerned with a synthesis between science and religion, and descriptions of endless games of golf.

  His philosophy is as forgotten today as his golf, but it was considered rather wonderful for a politician to aspire to such heights, and it gave him additional cachet in the eyes of intelligent women friends like Lady Desborough and Lady Elcho.

  He loved music, and a visit to Bayreuth was looked upon as amiable eccentricity. His letters are not witty, and they breathe the boredom he affected to suffer from. Everything except golf was a dreadful bore: country house parties, cabinet meetings, the chore of Balmoral or Windsor, all evoke yawns.

  Lady Elcho was exactly the opposite, she enjoyed life. She loved her children and beautiful Stanway, simple and grand parties, her friends, art, nature, travel and home. As the years go by and her children grow up and marry, 1914 approaches.

  Two of her sons were killed in the war, losses she never recovered from. There is an unforgettable description of these tragedies in the diary of her daughter, Lady Cynthia Asquith, most poignant being the death in action of Yvo, just finished school and dying before he had lived.

  Whether Lady Elcho and Balfour were lovers is anybody’s guess. Even if they were, it must have been less than satisfactory and not of the first importance to either of them.

  Hints of his masochism cause no surprise. Why she loved him is a mystery unsolved by this amusing and cleverly edited book, which is illustrated by wonderfully funny photographs.

  * Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister 1902-1905.

  The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Mary Wyndham 1885-1917, Balfour, A. and Lady Elcho Evening Standard (1992)

  The Profumo Affair

  A short time ago a friend who was for many years a Conservative MP told me that he had just been reading—or re-reading—the Denning Report on the Profumo case. He said it was almost impossible to believe that only fifteen years had passed since the whole country was seized with wild hysteria about something so essentially trivial and unimportant, and he added that such a fuss would be inconceivable now. Myself, I was in France at the time it was all going on, and found it extremely difficult to make the French understand why everyone had become so excited.

  There is a saying in America: ‘Nobody died at Watergate.’ This is not true of the Profumo case. Dr Ward had been arrested and charged with living on the immoral earnings of prostitutes; he was out on bail. The judge’s summing-up made him think (rightly) that he was going to be convicted, therefore he committed suicide. And when Lord Astor died less than three years later aged 58 his wife said his death had been hastened by evil gossip. His crime: he had lent a cottage near Cliveden to Dr Ward, who was his osteopath.

  Maurice Collis was also a near neighbour at Cliveden. In his diary he describes Dr Ward as ‘a most friendly and charming man.’ He sheds light on the whole wretched business from the Astor point of view, and undoubtedly Lord Astor was very badly treated. The whole pack was in full cry. He should not have minded, but apparently he did.

  The diaries have been edited by Collis’s daughter; they were probably far too long for publication and she therefore picked out the days when Maurice Collis mentioned something to do with one or other of several themes: the Astors, or Cookham and Stanley Spencer, or Burma, where he had worked in the Civil Service as a young man, are among the themes. Perhaps this method of selection was inevitable, but it detracts from the essential diary quality when you skip weeks and even months between entries.

  If a great deal is left out, things are left in which should not have been. Private conversations about intimate subjects recorded in a diary should not appear in print a very few years later, or at least if they do the person quoted is bound to be hurt and annoyed. The diarist sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick, as for example when he says that Sir Osbert Sitwell, opening an exhibition, was so nervous during his speech that his hands trembled. In fact, they trembled because he had Parkinson’s disease.

  A rather curious man emerges from these diaries, not at all attractive but with some of the talents which make a good diarist. He was observant, and clever. He was a prolific writer, and many of his books are excellent. Cortes and Montezuma,* the fascinating life of Stanley Spencer, and above all Somerville and Ross, come to mind. In each case he probed to the heart of the matter, whether Mexico at the time of the conquest or the wild west of nineteenth-century Ireland among hunting Protestants.

  A serious and odd omission in the volume under review is that no list of Maurice Collis’s books is to be found there. But it is beautifully produced, both paper and print beyond praise.

  * Reviewed below (p. 409).

  Diaries: 1949-1969, Collis, M., ed. Collis, L. Books and Bookmen (1978)

  Hypocrisy On High

  Reading once again the sad and sordid story of Profumo, Secretary of State for War, and Dr Ward, the osteopath, it is impossible not to be struck by the foolishness of Profumo in constantly denying his brief, frivolous little affair with Christine Keeler. Perhaps he thought it didn’t matter; it had all been over for more than a year, and everyone lies about sex. Maybe he preferred that his wife should not know.

  It ended in disaster for all concerned; Christine Keeler was involved with a jealous West Indian who tried to shoot her, and she told her whole story to the police. They informed Military Intelligence.

  At the same time as Profumo she had (only once, it appears) been to bed with Ward’s friend, the Russian naval attaché, suspected of spying. He had left the country, but the mills of ‘security’ ground slowly until Profumo was crushed.

  Wild rumours abounded. In a personal statement to the House of Commons he lied for the last time.

  The House of Commons is well-accustomed to lies; a few years before Profumo’s, about something unimportant, it had swallowed a capful by the Eden government about Suez, a vital matter. But the story of ‘fun’ in high places shocked thousands of people.

  Dr Stephen Ward, fashionable osteopath and portraitist, liked to surround himself with pretty call-girls. His patients and sitters liked what they found in his mews flat. Lord Astor, a patient, lent him a cottage at Cliveden, where Dr Ward and the girls used the swimming pool. At the pool, Profumo, a guest of Lord Astor, met lovely Christine and dated her. A few weeks later the relationship ended.

  According to David Thurlow, Dr Ward was the object of the intense hat
red of John Lewis, a socialist ex-MP who suspected Ward had seduced Mrs Lewis, described as a ‘Jewish princess’, and had sworn vengeance.

  Lewis fed the police with scandalous stories about Ward and, discovering the Russian connexion, also told George Wigg MP and other former Labour colleagues. Wigg raised the matter in the House. Profumo resigned, but Dr Ward was arrested.

  The shocked establishment was determined on a scapegoat. Details of Dr Ward’s activities made the trial a wonderful nine-day scandal and filled the newspapers with their favourite topic. None of his influential friends came forward to help him. The judge summed up in such a way that Dr Ward, realising he faced a prison sentence, took an overdose and died.

  Ken Tynan and John Osborne sent roses to the funeral with a card: To Stephen Ward, victim of English hypocrisy.

  Thirty years on, David Thurlow tells the tale well. His theory is plausible. This is one of those affairs from which nobody emerges with much credit.

  Profumo: The Hate Factor, Thurlow, D. Evening Standard (1992)

  Fate in the Shape of an Egyptian Rake

  Marguerite Alibert, born in Paris of poor parents in 1890, had an illegitimate daughter when she was just 16. The child was adopted by her grandmother, and Marguerite became a prostitute. One client fell in love with her, donating a flat near the Bois de Boulogne. When she was 22, she attracted the attention of Mme Dénart, the madame of an expensive brothel. Mme Dénart taught her many accomplishments: she learnt to dress well, to ride, to play the piano, and she was provided with an assortment of rich lovers.

  She was taken to smart restaurants and fashionable resorts like Deauville. She acquired a collection of valuable jewels. After a rather ‘dubious’ marriage she called herself Mme Laurent. Now having a surname, her daughter Raymonde was sent to school in England.

  One of Marguerite’s rich gentlemen friends took her and Raymonde for a trip to Cairo. Here she met her fate, an Egyptian playboy millionaire called Ali Fahmy. Ali pestered her to marry him. He was 22, she ten years older. From the beginning they quarrelled ferociously. He was jealous and possessive, she at times liked to go back to the old game.

  They fought in Ali’s palace, they fought on his yacht, they fought in restaurants and hotels; she often had a black eye and he had scratches on his face. It was a violent, unhappy marriage.

  At the end of June 1923 they went to London and stayed at the Savoy. Marguerite slept with a loaded pistol under her pillow, as she always did, to defend her jewellery. The jewels meant a great deal to her. They were the visible sign of her success with men, which attracted other men. She was determined on divorce and busied herself collecting evidence of the physical cruelty she claimed to have endured at Ali’s hands.

  The hotel doctor was consulted about her painful haemorrhoids, which she told him had been caused by Ali Fahmy’s unnatural vice. A specialist advised an operation. On July 9, a stifling hot night when there was an apocalyptic thunderstorm over London, the Fahmys went to the theatre and saw The Merry Widow.

  Back in their rooms they began to bicker and emerged fighting into the corridor. The night porter, who was taking luggage to another room, asked them to go back, but their little dog had escaped and Ali was seen crouching by the porter and whistling to catch it. The porter turned a corner with his load, and it was then that Marguerite ran out and shot her husband three times.

  The porter contacted the manager and the police were called. Marguerite was taken to Bow Street police station. Ali Fahmy died on his way to the hospital. On July 11 there were headlines: ‘A Prince Shot in London.’ Fahmy was in fact a bey, not a prince. But for the newspapers the couple were a prince and princess; she a beautiful and elegant French woman, covered in jewels, he a fabulously rich Egyptian. Marguerite spent two months in the hospital at Holloway prison. Her solicitor secured the services of the most famous advocate to the Criminal Bar, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and together they polished up her defence. As there was no question but that she had killed Ali Fahmy, Marshall Hall concentrated on extenuating circumstances. If found guilty, Mme Fahmy would be hanged.

  The trial began on September 10 at the Old Bailey. It had a ghastly fascination for the public and the Press. The court was besieged. Long queues waited to get in.

  Percival Clarke opened for the Crown. There was a rather perfunctory cross-examination of the prisoner. Then Marshall Hall, after cross-examining the prosecution witnesses, turned his attention to Mme Fahmy. He made his client seem an innocent white woman, seduced into marriage by a rich, wily, vicious Oriental, who was surrounded by black Sudanese servants eager and willing to do whatever he wished.

  He alleged the operation she had to undergo was a result of Fahmy’s perverted tastes, and that on the night he was killed he was crouched ready to spring on her when, maddened by fear and distrust, she shot him in self-defence. Nobody seems to have pointed out that Fahmy was shot from behind.

  So emotional and so cleverly argued was Marshall Hall’s defence that not only the jury but the judge, Mr Justice Rigby Swift, were won over. The judge summed up on the fourth day of the trial and the jury took only one hour to reach their verdict: not guilty. There was pandemonium in the crowded court.

  Could a modern Marshall Hall similarly sway a jury (and to an important degree a judge)? Histrionics are no longer fashionable at the Bar, but juries, accustomed to the unlikeliest soap operas on television, have probably not changed very much.

  It must be said that Marguerite was as effective an actress as could have been wished by counsel. Pale, tearful, half fainting as she was assisted to the dock each day, she also had plenty of time to think when asked tricky questions by the prosecution, as everything had to be translated for her. She never put a foot wrong.

  Andrew Rose has written a vivid account of this drama of life and death. He has padded his book with a background of postwar decadence and extravagance, descriptions of Egypt in the 20s and the life of a Parisian poule de luxe.

  After her acquittal Mme Fahmy tried in vain to get her hands on some of Ali’s millions. Presumably she went back to high-class, well-paid prostitution. She died in 1971.

  Scandal at the Savoy: the Infamous 1920s Murder Case, Rose, A. Sunday Telegraph (1991)

  Prostitution

  When is a whore not a whore? When she is the rich, lovely, clever, cultivated and powerful Mme de Pompadour, might be the answer, because strangely enough, the Marquise figures in this history of the world’s oldest profession. From ancient Egypt to the present day, the author casts her net rather too wide, but she is on the side of the prostitutes, and does her best to present them as a persecuted class.

  They have been persecuted at various times, and fulminated against by Old Testament prophets, Christian clergy and others, but above all annoyed by the police who harass them, arrest them and even (according to this book) beat them up. It is a hard-luck story

  But is it? Some of the characters did amazingly well for themselves, living in a luxury to which they were far from accustomed. So much so that it is impossible to pretend they have anything in common with the pathetic street walker, tottering along on high heels, keeping her distance from bright lights for fear her age and ugliness would deny her a client. The kept woman, smothered in jewels by an adoring lover, lives in a different world.

  It also seems odd to waste sympathy on happily married women without a care in the world, simply because they are living on their husbands’ money. Why should they mind? In any case there are quite as many hen-pecked husbands in the world as there are battered wives, something feminists fail to notice.

  It might be imagined that the permissive society would have made brothels redundant, but presumably there are enough people with unusual tastes to make them a paying proposition.

  Rather unexpectedly, the Mothers’ Union lately announced it was in favour of the inspection of prostitutes in brothels, presumably for fear of Aids as well as VD.

  Why is kerb-crawling forbidden? It seems rather a sensible idea, both for c
rawler and crawled-after, but perhaps abduction is feared. It might be easier to push someone into a car than it was to hoist a Sabine woman onto a horse.

  Marlene Dietrich, about sixty years ago, acted the part of a prostitute in a film. She sang, in English: ‘I’m falling in love again.’ The original, in German, had very different words: ‘I am, from head to foot, adapted to love. That is my world, and absolutely nothing else at all.’ Sung in her hoarse voice, it was the prostitute’s hymn. No nonsense about falling in love.

  Whores in History might qualify as soft porn, and thus caters to the English obsession with sex. It is too long and dauntingly heavy to hold. But you can’t have too much of a good thing.

  Dr Johnson once said: ‘I always talk bawdy at the table, then everyone can understand.’ His words have been taken to heart in a big way by publishers.

  Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society, Roberts, N. Evening Standard (1992)

  Soft Porn and Scandals before the Terror

  Not so long ago we had forbidden bestsellers in England. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita, Ulysses and others poured into the country and were burned if discovered. Now censorship is relaxed and books must take their chance without the boost of being forbidden.

  Robert Darnton announces he spent twenty five years of research to discover exactly what the French read in the eighteenth century and whether their reading helped to cause the French Revolution. It is almost impossible to discover what people in fact read, as opposed to what adorned their libraries. Voltaire’s works fill a large shelf but probably, apart from Candide, they were not much read.

  There was strict censorship, not only of political books but of bawdy, and jokes and scandals about the royal family, or wicked cardinals and licentious abbés. Blasphemy was almost as popular as sex. When found, the books were burned, but they were easily hidden and became bestsellers. They came to France from Switzerland, England, the Netherlands, many of them printed by Huguenots.