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Important to Me

Page 21

by Pamela Hansford Johnson


  32. Detective Stories

  Unlike Edmund Wilson, I really do care who killed Roger Ackroyd. So does Professor Jacques Barzun, a scholarly expert on the subject of the detective story.

  This form of literature has really meant an enormous amount to me.

  ‘La chaire est triste, helas, et j’ai lu tous les livres.’ These moments come upon one. Glutted with literary glories, and tired with writing, I often want the kind of book not in Mallarmé’s mind: a book with an absorbing mystery, and absorbing characters. (I must write off the puzzle pure and simple, basing itself on railway time-tables or the ebb and flow of the tides.) In hospital, for instance, what better books are there to kill time?

  Admittedly, for the hundred one reads, only one may seat itself in the memory. But this means that of the remaining ninety-nine, a good few can be re-read with pleasure.

  It is an absurd mistake to think that the ‘classical’ detective story was ever read for morbid reasons. The murder was brief (in the Sherlock Holmes stories we have, indeed, very few murders at all) and usually pretty bloodless. The charm of the ‘classical’ was the atmosphere: and the hunt among credible and well-differentiated characters for the villain. I am afraid that Raymond Chandler, for all his gifts, began the great change. Our own English expert, Julian Symons, himself a most distinguished practitioner of the crime story, does not regret this. But I do. I detest the squalor of the ‘private eye’, the kick in the teeth or belly, the unmitigated violence. I don’t want it.

  But can that Body in the Library lie there for ever?

  Dr A. L. Rowse invited me one day to lunch at All Souls where I was to meet Agatha Christie. I said, ‘If I do, I shall genuflect.’

  I did meet Dame Agatha. ‘You said you would genuflect,’ said Rowse. Certainly I had said so. And I did.

  In our own day, she has been the most eminent of detective story writers. In her early and middle periods, especially, she had a unique gift of psychological subtlety, which more ‘serious’ writers might well have envied. She almost always tricked one, of course, into hitting on the wrong suspect: but when the right one was found, there could have been no conceivable doubt that he – or she – was the only person psychologically capable of having ‘done it’. This is her great secret. Nobody else has come within touching distance of it.

  She has given much joy. She is well-on in years now, and I hope – she seemed in fine fettle when I met her – that she has many more years ahead of her. But when her time does come, I think she deserves a turn-out similar to that of Anatole France.

  There was a very curious figure indeed in the field of the detective story, the late H. C. Bailey, who seems to have been forgotten by all but myself and Jacques Barzun. His detective, Reggie Fortune, was a forensic surgeon, uxorious, given to the stuffing of carbohydrates (especially crumpets and cream cakes). His mind and his method were both obscure: Bailey needs reading with care as no other detective writer does at all. His long-short tales are difficult, in one way that Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels are difficult: miss a single word, and you have lost the whole point. I have had to read certain stories of his two and three times before I have really got the point myself.

  Two women remain as practitioners of the classic genre: the pair calling themselves Emma Lathen. Their interests lie in Wall Street: their detective is the urbane banker, John Putham Thatcher. Their stories are practically bloodless, and full of wit: they know all about financial matters, and on this side, I admit, they are sometimes too much for me. But they are infinitely superior to many straight fiction writers whom I could name, but won’t.

  Now the whole thing is splitting up: into ‘thick ear’ novels, with a maximum of violence: and pure suspense stories, by many English and American women – Celia Fremlin comes first to my mind – which are written with the minimum detective interest. The best of these, I love. But as violence grows more and more in society, so the ‘detective’ novel of violence grows in popularity. I do not think I shrink excessively from violence as such, though I will avoid it if I can. But much of this crime-story violence is so very, very cheap: it has become so formulated as to become, at the same time, garbage. I would guarantee to write, if required, a description of violence to match any of the devoted practitioners: but I would do so with my tongue in my cheek.

  The Russians are very short of light literature: that is why they devour the works of Agatha Christie (‘Agta’, they call her) whenever they can get hold of them. To serialise ‘Agta’ may save a magazine from collapse. For what they like is the background of an English country house, with the vicar, the doctor and, of course, the butler, on hand: and the body, if possible, in the library. Dame Agatha’s royalties must be stacked up for her there to a degree I can hardly imagine: but they are, of course, frozen, and if she wants them she may go – as we do – and collect.

  I should mention at this point, that a volume consisting of three crime stories, by C. P. Snow, John le Carré and Dick Francis (a superb practitioner), sold out an edition of 150,000 copies in three days.

  Other women I have admired are Ngaio Marsh (though her hero, Roderick Alleyn, is a figure as personally and privately adored by his creator as Lord Peter Wimsey), and the late Dorothy Sayers, in particular her books Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon: these not for their detection, but for their over-heated romantic and sexual imagination, which, I confess, I relish: thought there was an awful moment when Harriet, Lord Peter’s bride, leaned out of the window on the morning after the wedding-night, tying her tie. What the devil was she doing with a tie? She might as well have been waxing her moustache.

  I must not forget the late Margery Allingham, an excellent writer of the detective story, of whom I have a strange tale to tell. Meeting her at a cocktail party and finding her surpassingly amiable, I dared to ask her why her stock detective, Mr Albert Campion, seemed so ineffably grand, and what happened to him.

  She answered, simply, ‘Oh, he came to the Throne.’

  Stupefied, I asked her, ‘But who was he?’ To get the staggering reply: ‘George VI,’

  It is wonderful how the idealising imagination works.

  Of the men, I usually enjoy John Dickson Carr, for his atmosphere as thick as black treacle: but as for his locked-room mysteries, I confess that I haven’t been able to work out a single one of them, even when the solution was painstakingly explained to me.

  Time-wasting, all this? No more than going to the cinema, and this doesn’t involve moving from one place to another. I once met a young man who told me that he never read anything that was not first-rate. How, I wondered, did he know it was, having no standards of comparison? I am in favour of eclectic reading. Certainly, much of the fourth and fifth rate is intolerable, and never gets more than a glance. But it is equally silly to say that, in literature, you can’t sort the pornographic chaff from the erotic wheat, so you can make no value-judgments at all. I am always suspicious of those whose certainties are absolute. A young friend of mine, then a student, proposed to write her thesis on Trollope. This her tutor shrugged off in derision, and no more was heard of it. What an ass the man must have been!

  I remember well when even Dickens had to be put back on the map as an academic subject. Humphry House began it, and Edmund Wilson made the final breakthrough; just as Kipling was put back there by, of all people – and all honour to him – T. S. Eliot.

  In the twenties, I might have been as much derided for rejoicing in Dickens and Kipling (in fact, I was refused a volume of the latter’s poetry for the only prize I ever won at school, but was, blessedly, compensated by Browning) as I sometimes am for rejoicing in detective stories now.

  Of course, very few of these can be classed as ‘literature’, in the sense that literature is something which outlasts, or overbears, fashion. Conan Doyle can. Chesterton can. The vast majority of detective writers would never survive the rigour of a ‘thesis’ – nor do they aim to offer themselves for such an attention. They are entertainers, and that is no mean thing
to be. I have read many a contemporary straight novel that made no attempt to entertain at all – whether by intellect, insight, wit, or the simple skill of carrying the reader’s interest onwards from one page to the next. (Purely aesthetic ‘entertainment’, perhaps? But this is very much in the eye of the beholder.) I say these novels are no good.

  We all need our rest-periods. We may play bridge, or chess: we may be games-players, cinema-goers, or television watchers. Or we may need detective stories: in at one side of the head and out the other, most of these. But what pleasure they give us during their passing through!

  The detective story does fulfil one need that should be filled by all prose literature: the need to arouse, and to satisfy curiosity. Oh, what will happen next? For this purpose, it is ideally fitted. A quick-roused curiosity, a quick satisfaction. There are people who insist that A la Recherche du temps perdu is without narrative. This is nonsense. The book has a strong narrative line, though taking its time about it: and Proust had an excellent narrative gift. James Joyce’s gift is more slender but it is there: otherwise Ulysses might be intolerable, and for me, Finnegans Wake simply is intolerable.

  33. ‘The Way We Live Now’

  ‘Uglification’: the word, coined by Lewis Carroll, ought now to be in common usage. It is all about us, actually and metaphorically.

  London is being destroyed. It was, in its very essence, a low, and not a tall, town. Now the property-developers are at work, and hideous high blocks are arising everywhere. The rot set in with the Park Lane Hilton. After that, great useless towers sprang up everywhere, defacing the skylines, insulting the graces that are left, out of scale with the rest of the town. High-rise flats, in their inanity and inhumanity, continue to proliferate. I say they were conceived and erected by soulless men. What people want when they are resettled are homes – no more than four storeys high at most, and damn the cost of the ground – grouped around community centres: by which I mean, to each one a decent pub, a good general shop or supermarket, a youth centre. I do not want any longer to see already rich men making pots of money out of erecting hellholes for people to live in. I don’t care if they do lose money. I don’t care if we all do. I don’t care who does. We must stop the uglification, fling to the depths of ridicule these empty office blocks: derisive objects for people desperate even for a roof over their head.

  Not suitable for homes? I suppose anything will do for a home, when you have no home at all, even an appalling tower block. I am a rotten economist – in fact, I do not understand the subject at all. But I know that something will have to be done about land values, unless we are going to make a disgrace of our city.

  Who cares? Which Party cares? Does any Party care?

  London is a mild city compared with New York, which has become pretty well detestable. Nevertheless, crimes of violence in our metropolis are increasing at a ferocious rate. Don’t tell me there has been no encouragement from the mass media, because I don’t believe it. I don’t want to dwell on this further, since I have discussed it before. But let us try not to be totally permissive cretins, and remember our social responsibilities, not to intellectuals genuinely incapable of going out with knife, cosh or gun themselves, but to those people in a vast society whose excitements are likely – in a few cases, but some – to be stimulated to action. We are most of us such horrible snobs: we feel that anything which can be resisted by ourselves, can be resisted by the violent, the potential criminal, the dropout, the man hard-up for a few pence. Uglification? It is all around us.

  When I wrote my book, On Iniquity, based on the Moors murders, which was an attempt to explore the social forces which may have lain behind them, I was sometimes accused of ‘hysteria’. (This is a recognised cliché of abuse). If I had been accused of anger, I should have admitted it. It makes me angry to see the squalid contents of so many newspaper-shop-windows, and I am angry when I read reports of vapid persons exposing themselves before classes of children. What on earth do they think they are teaching? What on earth good are they doing? To teach the distinction between the sexes? I think the children are less silly than they.

  March 1973 saw a series of strikes, threatened and real. I am familiar with the history of the Trade Union movement, and appreciative of all the sacrifices it has made in the past for fair wages for fair work. Last year (1972), when the miners and power-workers struck, public opinion on the whole was behind them: because theirs was a rotten job, and they had had a rotten deal. So that the public had to put up with the miseries and did so with good grace.

  But this March (1973) we had a go-slow from the gas-workers, which closed down schools, hospitals and industrial plant. We were all afraid that if it attacked the domestic consumer seriously, it might be dangerous to human life. For old people, it would mean the fear of hypothermia: for the merely incompetent, the dread of having to close down, in a panic, complicated (or rusted) appliances.

  The hospital ancillary workers, many of them, struck. This meant a heavy burden on the remainder, such as nurses, whose job is regarded as vocational. On them, and on such outside help as they could get, fell the burden of getting meals, sufficient clean linen, and general sterilisation. They, in the name of common humanity, could not strike, no more than the doctor or the priest.

  It is over now. But if strikes spread again this autumn, brought about by the appalling rise in prices, there is a danger that the whole country may be brought to a standstill. (This may be an exaggeration, but it is in the minds of a good many people.)

  Yet, unless I misinterpret them, this is what some of the militants actively appear to want. To whose good would this be? To the satisfaction, perhaps, of a good many, who believe in the tabula rasa, but to the good of no one. Just a wholesale destruction of the good, as well as the bad. Out of anarchy, nothing has ever arisen except tyranny, which finds itself in perfect conditions for the spring.

  Osbert Lancaster had a splendid cartoon quite recently. It depicted an entry of choirboys singing, to the stupefaction of the Vicar:

  Fair waved the golden corn

  In England’s pleasant land,

  When full of joy, one shining morn

  Walked out the reapers’ band.

  The English are not happy. Too many things are going wrong. The news is consistently disagreeable. In 1940, when the news was worse, we at least had the comfort of having an active part to play. Now – and I revert to the pursuit of happiness – where is happiness to be found?

  For the young it may still be within reach. For those of us who have only a limited number of years to go, the prospect is bleak. An uglification of our towns. A moratorium on our moral structure – if any exists, a kind of mindless hedonism, politically destitute. A kind of ghastly introspection, which ignores those parts of the world, which greatly need our help. We are becoming solipsistic.

  The glory of the Welfare State has lost some – but let’s not exaggerate, not all – of its brightness. The National Health Service is still functioning, much to the fury of the American Medical Association. The poor do not seem to resent conspicuous over-consumption, provided this is confined to pop-singers, film-stars and soccer-players: it would be dull to find glitter nowhere. The golden ceremonial of the Queen – on State occasions – appears to be very little resented. We don’t, on the whole, want to see a monarchy on bicycles. As a nation, we are superbly good at putting on a show – and for God’s sake, we need something to brighten us up. We need a fairy on top of our wilting Christmas tree.

  American guests continue to assure us that they admire the still-existent politeness of our public servants. Well – compared with some of theirs – it remains roughly true. This springs partly from the fact that the English are a patient people, and have to be very hard tried before they lose their tempers. Hence the threat of ever-increasing strike-action, because it is difficult to force them into a state of panic.

  Many civilians did panic, during the worst of the wartime bombing: but most of them, sustained by the general atmosph
ere of public stoicism (one of the most effective of our doctrines) managed to drive panic down. People have their attachments to public symbols, such as John Bull – whom I always regard as looking ripe for coronary thrombosis; Uncle Sam, a not particularly healthy-looking figure; Marianne – well, I don’t think the French have ever paid much attention to her. (She is so very bulky.) But as our public symbols are, on these we do tend to model ourselves, in a vestigial, certainly an unconscious, degree.

  No one has a monopoly of bravery: the Russians and the Germans had at least as much power of endurance as we had; no one could have had greater than theirs. That is what makes modern bombing policies designed to ‘bring people to their knees’, look so ridiculous – and so contemptible. Not because the assaulted peoples are, by nature, heroic. They have got to be. There is all too frequently nowhere they can run to. Then we can see how the whole of their care and ingenuity is directed to the safety of their families, chiefly to their children. They must simply do their best. This is called courage.

  The war in South East Asia – so we are told – has ‘ended’, if it can be ended. The conflict in Northern Ireland – how Hotspur would have rebuked my Finsbury terms – is beyond solution, so far as I can see. Anyway, I am not going to wade in. How do we show our courage now? In saying Boo to militant strikers who may appear to run riot? There is no courage in this. It is simply a huddling together in acute discomfort. But there is nothing else we can do, is there? So we huddle.

  But do not forget that it is in our temperament – as the war showed – to huddle indefinitely. And so long as some of us suspect that many of these wage claims, in their haste, are not industrially but politically based, we can go right on huddling.

  On the whole, this country seems to be behind the most responsible strikers. But the strikers who reduce to the lowest danger level the hospital and gas services, services for the old and for the schoolchildren, have forfeited a great deal of public sympathy.

 

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