The Pursuit of Laughter Read online

  Friends Apart, Toynbee, P. (1954)

  Such Desiccated Old Chestnuts

  The Macmillan family of publishers came from a croft on Arran Island, as Harold Macmillan, prime minister, allowed nobody to forget. Humble origins are quite common, but there is something special about an island in the Hebrides. Life was so very primitive and uncomfortable, to exist at all such a tough business, the surroundings so dramatically beautiful, that it is quite in order to boast about it for one hundred and eighty years.

  In 1816, when their son Daniel was three, the Hebridean ancestors moved. He and his brother Alexander, through apprenticeships and hard work, were the founders of the firm. Their favourite motto: ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’ Religion, work, love of books and all the Scotch puritan virtues made their success. Daniel died of TB aged 44, his brother and partner lived until 1896 and became rich. Daniel was grandfather of Harold Macmillan.

  The account of this persevering though delicate family’s rise is well done, but the half of the book devoted to Harold Macmillan is very disappointing. It is a twice-told tale and the addition of vulgarities cannot disguise the fact that we know it too well. Huge biographies and autobiographies have left no gaps. Davenport-Hines says in his preface that private papers were denied him. He therefore resorts here and there to guesswork. He guesses that Harold Macmillan disliked his bossy American mother, though Macmillan says he owed everything to her.

  When Macmillan marries Lady Dorothy Cavendish the book takes off and becomes an extended gossip column. Again, no surprises. Stories about the eighth Duke of Devonshire can hardly be said to have much to do with Macmillan, or even with Lady Dorothy, who was only his great-niece. Yet here they are, the most desiccated of chestnuts.

  As we all know, Lady Dorothy fell in love with Macmillan’s contemporary and fellow MP Bob Boothby. Her youngest child, who died long ago aged 40, was by him. This well-documented affair may have fuelled Macmillan’s ambition, and he got to the top of the greasy pole. ‘Suez’ in 1956 was misconceived; once a vital British interest as gateway to India, it had not been so since Indian independence in 1947. For our secret ally Israel, Egypt was highly important. Macmillan was belligerent, then backed down. He and Selwyn Lloyd lied blue to the House of Commons about something supremely unimportant, Macmillan almost choked with indignation. He was a great actor.

  He lived to an immense age, for twenty years a widower. His hobby was talking; he talked and talked. Anne Fleming wrote he was ‘a crashing bore’. But he did not bare his teeth aggressively, as Davenport-Hines says he did. When he bared his teeth he was trying to smile. It was just that they stuck out too far.

  The Macmillans, Davenport-Hines, R. Evening Standard (1992)

  Seizing the Passing Day

  Why do people keep diaries? Because they enjoy doing it, most likely; the theory that they hope thereby to achieve immortality is a bit far-fetched. No need to ask why people read them, for they are irresistible; and this applies just as much to diaries obviously written with publication in view as to those like Samuel Pepys’s, written in code, which give at any rate the illusion of being strictly private. A person must be a quite exceptional bore if having faithfully recorded his life day by day he nevertheless cannot amuse his descendant who chances upon the neglected manuscript gathering dust in an old trunk, even though a stranger might put it on the fire for being too dull.

  For family peace it is as well that diaries, like wine, should be allowed to mature. The Tolstoys were inveterate diarists, and Countess Tolstoy, whenever she could find it, always read her husband’s diary and never liked his references to her or his descriptions of their quarrels, so that bitter resentments developed. In order to preserve it from her prying Tolstoy took to hiding it in his boot. One day he had a heart attack and she lovingly put him to bed and pulled off his boots. Out fell the diary. She pounced upon it and one of their worst rows followed. Tolstoy should, like Pepys, have invented a secret code.

  Most modern French writers keep diaries and publish them from time to time, and very entertaining (and doubtless profitable) they are. Gide’s Journal wears better than his novels; Julien Green confesses himself to his diary and his readers never tire of his spiritual odyssey; Montherlant’s Carnets display his pessimistic view of human baseness and also the random thoughts of a remarkable mind; the Mauriacs, father and son, are also among the many who have given their diaries to the world in their own lifetime; both are readable, François Mauriac extremely so. As to Eckermann, it is hardly fair to include him among favourite diarists. On every page of his Conversations with Goethe there are marvels of imagination and perception which make his book one of the great books of the world, but that is because Goethe is a genius of the first water.

  At the other end of the scale was a lady’s diary read out in court a few years ago at a public enquiry concerned with a damaging leak of secret information which had occurred in the financial world. Doubt was cast upon entries like ‘Went to the hairdresser’. It was suggested this must really mean something rather sinister, but in the end the judge accepted that it was the echo of an empty mind.

  In Dear Diary Brian Dobbs confines himself to English diarists, describing and giving snippets from a rich variety beginning with Pepys and Evelyn down to recent times with Lady Cynthia Asquith, ‘Chips’ Channon and Harold Nicolson. His book whets the appetite and reminds one that the literary executors of both Lady Cynthia Asquith and Virginia Woolf must be persuaded to vouchsafe further thrilling instalments. So far tantalisingly little of either has been published. Mrs Woolf was extremely spiteful about her friends and enemies, but the few remaining Bloomsburies must be hardened to insults, since the two great biographers of Bloomsbury, Michael Holroyd and Quentin Bell, have neither of them troubled to pull any punches, and one more battering could not matter much.

  Evelyn Waugh’s diaries are in a different category. Presumably if he had not meant them to be published he would have destroyed them; nevertheless they give a totally false picture of this brilliant writer, who in real life was so dearly loved by his friends. However much these friends may be bruised by his bludgeon, it is Evelyn himself who comes off badly.

  Of Mrs Sidney Webb and her amusing diary of political gossip Brian Dobbs says: ‘there seems to be a modern tendency to sneer at her’, and for this he blames her nephew Malcolm Muggeridge. This is unfair. Mr Muggeridge in his dazzlingly brilliant autobiography described Mrs Webb sitting on Mr Webb’s lap. It must have been an unforgettable sight—she tall and handsome, he ‘at once repulsive and ridiculous. His tiny tadpole body, unhealthy skin…’ (not Malcolm Muggeridge’s description of Sidney Webb, but Mrs Sidney Webb’s own). Not only has Mrs Muggeridge published an excellent life of her aunt, but Mr Muggeridge gives the wonderful old pair high marks for worthiness. It is just no good pretending they had not also got a comic side; it is one of their charms.

  When Harold Nicolson was writing his life of George V he was given permission to read the king’s diary. He hurried to Windsor in a fever of excitement only to find that the whole subject matter concerned the weather, temperature and rainfall. When one considers the stirring times King George had lived in, it puts one in mind of Louis XVI’s entry for 14 July, 1789: ‘Rien.’ However it would not do for royal personages to write Tolstoyan diaries about family rows, or even to divulge their deep thoughts about their ministers, or give their true opinion of a Command Performance at the Palladium, and perhaps ‘rien’, or ‘scattered showers heavy at times’ are the ideal diary entries for monarchs.

  Mr Dobbs’s book is very enjoyable, beautifully printed and cheap. There are one or two odd things in it. Why should Lord Ponsonby be turned into a bogus-sounding foreign nobleman by being called Baron Ponsonby? And why is the expression ‘getting to the top of the greasy pole’ in politics attributed to ‘one Conservative ex-minister’? Why not say Disraeli?

  Dear Diary: Some Sketches in Self-Interest, ed. Dobbs, B. Books and Bookmen (1974)

  Vita�
��s Fruity Climbing Disaster

  There are several V. Sackville-Wests. There is the galumphing land girl of the First World War who felt free because she was wearing breeches. There is the ferocious sapphist who ran away with Violet Trefusis, described in Portrait of a Marriage, the funniest book since The Diary of a Nobody, with the delightful farce of the two husbands turning up at a hotel in Amiens where the ladies were hiding, to tear their wives apart and force them back to hearth and home.

  Then there is the breathless snob, staggered by her noble origins and the grandeur of Knole in The Edwardians, and the middle-aged lady, still in breeches, making a beautiful garden and writing garden notes for the Observer fifty years ago, telling how to grow lilies from seed and other useful hints. The notes are gathered into this book. Far the nicest Miss Sackville-West, but is she reliable?

  Not altogether. She told Observer readers they should plant climbing roses to run up all fruit trees no longer bearing fruit. I had four such trees, two apples, a pear and a peach. I planted as advised and within two years all four trees had fallen leaving the roses without support. An orchard disaster.

  In Your Garden, Sackville-West, V. Evening Standard (1996)

  The White Linen Brigade

  The heroine goes mad in white satin and the confidante goes mad in white linen. That’s life. Ladies in waiting on the whole belong to the white linen brigade, even if they cannot always be dignified by the name of confidante. The duller the Court the plainer the attire and the more tedious the role.

  For hundreds of years it was well worth while to be as near the Monarch as you could possibly get. Power and patronage resided in the person of the King or Queen; there was endless opportunity for intrigue, for lining your pocket and for contriving the advancement of your relations. The game was dangerous. ‘Off with her head!’ frequently brought a promising career to a premature and bloody close. This was naturally the case when the lady had royal blood and could be a rival who might attract a following in the country.

  The greatest Queen, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, wished all her ladies to be virgins too. She vetoed many a marriage and was furiously angry when nature took its course and her attendants produced illegitimate offspring.

  In good King Charles’s golden days the Court resembled, on a poorer scale, that of his cousin Louis XIV. Many of the court ladies were his mistresses and the mothers of newly-created dukes.

  His niece Queen Anne accorded real political power to her adored Sarah Churchill, as well as riches. But Sarah happened to be married to a genius, quite rightly created Duke of Marlborough. Put not your trust in princes; Sarah was ousted from royal favour, the Duke was stripped of his commands and even the building of Blenheim Palace was stopped. It was only finished after Queen Anne died and George I came to the throne. There was a sort of poetic justice in the fall from grace of the Marlboroughs due to the whim of a silly queen, for John Churchill who had hitherto owed everything to James II changed sides on the eve of James’s battle with his son-in-law William III. James, in exile at St Germain, would have witnessed the altered fortunes of the Churchills owing to his daughter’s vagaries with grim satisfaction, had he lived a few years longer.

  As it was considered essential for royalty to marry royalty there were always quarrels and troubles at Court between the English and the French, Spanish or Portuguese ladies brought over by the consorts of our kings. In the eighteenth century the ladies were German, because henceforward Germany furnished consorts of both kings and queens, who were obliged to marry Protestants. More and more ladies in waiting were English, which removed a source of infinite annoyance from the Court. The Duke of Windsor remembered that when he was a child the moment the English courtiers had gone out of the room the royal family comfortably relaxed and spoke German.

  Queen Mary was the last queen of royal birth, and even she started life as a Serene and not a Royal Highness. Queen Victoria was as sensible about this lapse from tradition as she was about so much else.

  Although they now get virtually nothing, no profitable monopolies or other perquisites, let alone any political influence, there is never a lack of ladies ready and willing to sit up half the night answering letters, or stand for hours during ceremonial occasions, or leave their husbands and children for months at a time, in order to attend the Queen and other royal ladies. Explain it how you will it is a fact, and they become completely devoted as time goes by.

  During the Great War George V allowed no wine or spirits at Court, which did little to enliven the atmosphere. His son George VI thought of another way to mortify the flesh during World War II. I was in prison at the time; there was an exceptionally dirty, primitive and degraded bathroom. I was surprised when one day two men appeared with paint and brushes; badly as the bathroom needed painting it seemed somehow out of character that it should occur to anyone to embellish or clean the prison in any way. The men took out a tape measure and exactly five inches from the bottom of the bath they carefully painted a thick green line on the chipped enamel. This was called King George’s Line. The idea was that nobody should use more than five inches of water to bath in. I cannot remember why; water, with our nice English rainfall, was one of the rare commodities in plentiful supply, and it did not have to be imported. Whether courtiers respected King George’s Line we shall never know, possibly they locked the bathroom door and disloyally wallowed. In any case it was a gesture, so important in times of national emergency, and doubtless the cost of paint and labour was minimal.

  Which would you rather be, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting beaten by her employer with such fury that a finger was broken, or her modern equivalent who walks behind the Queen loaded with flowers, sweets and cuddly toys bestowed by the adoring public?

  It is by no means only the English who adore the royal family. The French never tire of reading about them, and invent thrilling stories. There is a magazine, read by every concierge in the land as well as most of the dukes, devoted exclusively to royalty, and even distant cousins of Belgian or Scandinavian royal personages are good for a mention.

  Being a lady in waiting is not all beer and skittles. Somebody I knew was in waiting to Queen Mary in the war and nearly died of cold. Fires in bedrooms were forbidden. She asked if she might collect a few dry twigs and make one in her freezing room, but was told she could not. It speaks volumes for something or other that she did not resign. She helped Queen Mary with her war work, they collected ploughs and harrows left conveniently under hedges by the local farmers and dragged them triumphantly to a heap they made of scrap metal. The farmers rescued their tools as soon as the Queen had gone in to her tea.

  Anne Somerset’s book is well-written, well-researched and well-produced. The terrible story of Lady Flora Hastings, accused by Queen Victoria and others of bearing an illegitimate child when in reality she was mortally ill with cancer of the stomach, is excellently told.

  Tittle tattle about Court life inevitably comes from diarists: Pepys, Evelyn, Saint Simon, Lord Hervey, Fanny Burney, some near the events they describe, others relying on gossip. Perhaps we are too ready to believe everything they say. When one thinks of modern diarists, for example Harold Nicolson and the nonsense he wrote, possibly too much credence is accorded to their predecessors.

  It is a pity that ladies in waiting do not, like the confidante, wear white linen; how chic it would be! The modern ideal is to fade gracefully and unobtrusively into the bus queue.

  Cocktails and Laughter is a photograph album. For people over sixty it is like the old song ‘Thanks for the memory… How lovely it was!’ As with all snapshots a little imagination must be used if anyone is to be convinced that it really was lovely; they are almost as untrue to life as Cecil Beaton’s cellophane and balloons or modern photographs featuring broken blood vessels and dirty wrinkles. Hugo Vickers is a perfect choice for writer of the preface. He is so kind, so indulgent to OAPs that he makes us out to be positively human. Loelia Duchess of Westminster, Lady Lindsay, is the daughter and grandd
aughter of courtiers; her father wrote a book about his years at Court which is brilliantly funny.

  Proofreading of the captions is very poor. Verda for Verdura, Morosoni for Morosini, Princess Jane di San Faustino, most American of Americans, a ‘smart Italian’ and there is no such person as Lady Venetia Stanley. Not that it greatly matters. The theory that people now live almost for ever gets a bashing in Cocktails and Laughter, only a handful survive who might grumble at such trifles. Even if the young don’t think it looks as lovely as all that, I notice they are glued to this book, gazing rapt at their grannies and gaffers; it will therefore have a great success.

  Ladies in Waiting, Somerset, A. (1984)

  Cocktails and Laughter; Photograph Albums, Lindsay, L. ed. Vickers, H. (1983)

  Acres of Roses

  Since Lord Drogheda is my exact contemporary and we have a number of friends and acquaintances in common, and because he has been so closely associated with two institutions from which I have derived immense enjoyment and profit, the Financial Times and Covent Garden, it has been a pleasure to read his memoirs. He quite obviously has a perfect genius for getting on with people and encouraging them to get on with one another (what is now called public relations). He helped his newspaper and the opera house to run along as smoothly as possible despite all the difficult, spiky and quarrelsome individuals who inhabit Fleet Street and the world of music.

  If his memoirs are less than lively it is probably precisely because of this smoothing and soothing quality of his. He says one of his friends described him as waspish, but there is small evidence of waspishness; except for a little dig now and again at some rather unpopular figure there are roses all the way.