What You Didn't Miss

by D. J. Taylor

  RUPERT HART-DAVIS: MAN OF LETTERS

  PHILIP ZIEGLER

  . . . It was at this time, with the affairs of the publishing firm that bore his name lurching from one crisis to another, that Hart-Davis began work on his justly celebrated biography of the novelist Hugh Massingberd Twinkie, author of Droop, Dahlias and In My Window Box. The work was congenial to him. As he wrote to his great friend and fellow-Etonian (they shared the distinction of being the only two Lower Boys ever to have been ‘up’ to Silas ‘Corks’ McGarrigle for extra Greek five terms running) Sir Jasper Beamish, ‘I am having the most glorious time with dear old Hugh and have really found out some fascinating stuff, I think. Did you know, for example, that the old boy collected fabric samples, and had a superstitious fear of beetles? And that the woman to whom Sad Lilacs is dedicated was not his cousin but his aunt by marriage? It will all make a wonderful book when the time comes.’

  Although Rupert Hart-Davis Limited published some works of genuine merit – one might instance Sylvester Dull’s Ezra Pound and Campanology or Myrtle Loosestrife’s sadly neglected novel Gosh What Larks – their proprietor’s disdain for commercial solvency was, alas, to prove its undoing, and in 1956 the firm was taken over by the more sober-minded concern of Tender & Mainprice.

  Something of Hart-Davis’s inner disquiet at this period may be detected in the passionate letter he wrote to his long-serving secretary, Miss Eleanor Frisky, whom he later married, while she was away from the office recovering from toothache: ‘The MCC prospects are, as you say, fairly encouraging, and if Compton can only keep his place he may inject some backbone into what has hitherto been a jolly flabby lot. These Tender & Mainprice chaps are the limit, by the way. Always moaning about money, which, as you know, I simply can’t be got to care about. And then at the board luncheon the chairman absolutely ate his asparagus with a fork!’

  As might be expected from such a versatile editor, biographer, reviewer and compiler, the extent of Hart-Davis’s literary knowledge was formidable. Notwithstanding a natural courtesy, his opinions were always vigorously expressed. He considered Ulysses, for example, to be ‘jolly rot’ and Samuel Beckett to be ‘an absolute rotter’. Pride of place in this demonology was reserved for The Wasteland. ‘Quite the worst gardening book I’ve ever come across,’ he complained to Beamish. ‘Lots of jolly good stuff at the start about watering your roots with spring rain but after that I simply couldn’t make head or tail of it.’

  Retiring to the North Yorkshire dales in the mid-1960s, he received news of the conferral of a knighthood. ‘Dear Rupert,’ his friend ‘Boffles’ Abercrombie, who had the ear of the court, enquired. ‘Do you fancy a gong? Just say the word and I’ll wangle it with HM.’ Immensely proud of this decoration, which he rightly adjudged a tribute to his years of unstinting service to the publishing industry, Hart-Davis enjoyed a long and productive retirement, editing the letters of the little-known Victorian rondelier poet Esme Dymme, and compiling an eight-volume collection of . . .

  EDWARD HEATH: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY

  PHILIP ZIEGLER

  Edward Heath was a very remarkable man. Though comparatively humbly born and blessed with a by no means outstanding intellect, he nevertheless managed to get himself elected to the House of Commons, rose to the position of Prime Minister, and remained a prominent political personality for nearly half a century. These achievements did him the greatest credit, and serve to remind us what a truly remarkable man he was.

  Yet wholly admirable as were Heath’s attributes, his sense of inner conviction, his well-nigh indomitable drive and his unsparing attention to detail, the less appetising – if not downright unsavoury – aspects of his character should not be ignored by the scrupulous biographer. He was, for example, fat, pompous, overbearing, mean, rude, snobbish, tuft-hunting, discourteous . . . [continues]. None of this, of course, has the slightest bearing on what a truly remarkable man he was and how greatly we should value his contribution to the life of our age.

  At the same time, it would foolish to deny that, during his long career in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party, Heath had his detractors. Sir Tufton Snargs, who worked with him in the Whips’ Office from March to April 1953, complained that he was ‘an absolute little counter-jumping rotter’. Snargs’ hostility may, of course, be only that of the distinguished country gentleman rightfully affronted by the less polished manners of the careerist grammar school-boy. More convincing, perhaps, is the testimony of Jolyon Rhodes-Beamish MP, who recalled Heath remarking to him, as they contemplated the solitary remaining dessert on a House of Commons canteen trolley, ‘If you take that chocolate éclair, Rhodes-Beamish, I’ll see you never sit on the 1922 Backbench Committee again.’

  To set against these criticisms, which I regret to say are by no means isolated instances of Heath’s ability to annoy, enrage and alienate his political allies . . . [continues for several pages] comes this warm and unsolicited tribute from his cleaning lady, Mrs Ethel Gherkin, who observed that ‘Mr Heath was probably quite a nice sort of person when you got to know him.’ None of this, as I have said before, in the least detracts from what a very remarkable man Heath was and what a pleasure it has been to write this book about him.

  On the other hand, only the most slavish hagio-grapher could fail to draw attention to Heath’s almost calamitous lack of political judgment, his conspicuous failure to win the General Election of February 1974, his undignified efforts to hang onto power after he lost, his altogether ludicrous attempt to retain the leadership of the Conservative Party after losing a second General Election eight months later, and the twenty-year sulk in which he took refuge after Mrs Thatcher’s succession. Neither, alas, can he ignore the fact that the books on which much of Heath’s later celebrity rested – Snaps from My Holiday Album, Gleanings from My Wastepaper Basket and other works – were merely pot-boiling trifles, or that many of the political interventions of the 1980s and 1990s were designed only to embarrass those in positions of power from which he believed he had (no doubt unfairly) been excluded.

  In conclusion, I should like to say what a truly remarkable man Heath was and how much I have enjoyed the years spent in his company. It was very kind of Lord Armstrong to allow me to write the book and even kinder of him to puff it on the jacket. From what I know of Heath’s character – which, alas, duty requires me to observe was self-obsessed to the point of monomania – I imagine he would not have approved of it, but I hope that he would have agreed that I have tried to do my very best on his behalf.

  LETTERS TO MONICA

  PHILIP LARKIN: Edited by Anthony Thwaite

  27 APRIL 1955

  11 Outlands Road, Cottingham, E. Yorks

  Darlingest of Buns,

  I hope and trust that your burrow remained sandy and dry after I had left, that Mrs Flopsy Bunny made you a sustaining mug of camomile tea and there were no depredations by Mr McGregor . . . [continues]. But oh dear, the rest of the weekend put me in a considerable fluster. You see, I had to buy my copy of the Observer – was my poem in this week? I wot not, the fuckers* – from a different shop, as the one I normally go to was closed, and oh, the mean and altogether sinister frightfulness of it, the yawning counter, the newsagent glaring at me and asking, ‘What did I want?’ Just read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four again, and of course it’s exactly like round here.

  But here’s your poem, darling, as promised: Sodding Vice-Chancellors, don’t you just hate ’em? Children on fairy cycles – why not sedate ’em? Send home the niggers, string up the reds And let us librarians sleep safe in our beds

  Five minutes later – No, I can’t do anything at all – it is really is appalling. That woman below actually whistling as she comes up the stairs! And the noise, like a kind of endlessly churning Niagara filling the whole house with its wretched disturbance. The whole family blatantly talking at meal-times when they know I’m sitting here trying to listen to ‘Hot’ Pee-Wee Cystitis and his Cisco Six. Can my life get any worse? Can it? Quarter
to eleven. The clock staring at me with its face of awful reproach. Just read John Wain’s new one. No good, of course. And to make matter worse a telephone call from those vile, awful, unspeakable, conniving fools in Loughborough** asking if I want to come for Christmas . . .

  Later still . . . But I haven’t, dearest bun – did I say that I have saved a carrot for you? A nice big orange one – we can eat it together (drawing of rabbits frolicking) – replied to your letter.*** Please don’t be miserable about all this. I shall be glad to have your sympathy, but I think we both feel that the best thing at present is that I shag my secretary and that other woman Monday to Fridays but come and see you at the weekends. Oh, how unutterably unsatisfactory life is.

  Even later . . . Really pissed now, I’m afraid. That South African cooking sherry again. Good stuff but 7/9d the bottle, would you believe it? Just been reading Yeats. No good of course. And then K’s novel.**** Funny opening scene naturally taken from that phone conversation we had in January 1947. And then the joke about the woman burning the gravy from a letter I wrote to him in August 1951. I mean, it stands to reason that K. couldn’t write something like that without my help. Dialogue on p. 94 with its repetition of ‘breakfast’ and ‘cigarette-lighter’, both words frequently used by me. I ask you!

  Just been browsing through Enright’s new collection (one of my ‘contemporaries’.) No good, of course.

  Good night, my hutch-trained, gentle-eyed, lettuce-loving bun.

  PX

  *L’s poem, ‘Staring miserably out of the window, again’ appeared in the Observer of 4 May 1955

  **L’s sister and brother-in-law

  ***In a letter of 19 April Monica had written that she was ‘desperately miserable’, feared that L would never marry her and was ‘distraught’ over his affairs with other women

  ****Kingsley Amis’s novel, Friends and Other Enemies (1955)

  ROSAMOND LEHMANN

  SELINA HASTINGS

  . . . As spring gave way to summer there were more opportunities to spend time away from Poshleigh Grange. Not only were there delicious days in Suffolk – stalking poor people through the ancestral heather, riding on gun-limbers dragged by obsequious gamekeepers – but also weekends at Lucre Terrace, idling, sleeping and counting money. Recently their friends the Runcible-Spoones had bought Scotland, a splendidly isolated fastness somewhere north of Hadrian’s Wall, for the fishing and snipe-shooting. ‘Scotland is rather a marvellous place – quite too too unreal with its picturesque inhabitants, its divine rocks and heather and its nutritious porridge,’ Rosamond wrote with her characteristic enthusiasm for unfamiliar milieux.

  In spite of these pleasant distractions, however, Rosamond was privately determined that she would not, could not, remain in Newcastle, whose smell she had come finally to distrust. She tried to persuade Leslie to buy Hampshire, but he refused to consider it. Meanwhile, her relationship with the Hon. Wogan Twytte had reached such a pitch that their great family friend, the Marchioness of Tarradiddle, was disposed to exercise her legendary wit by remarking ‘Twytte to woo?’ Wogan, passionate, excitable, dim, and the owner of several well-cut evening suits, was already noted, even in the social exalted circles in which he moved (his eyebrows had excited the admiration of Lytton Strachey), for his remarkable charisma. ‘At Oxford I was mad, wild, drunk with freedom, sent mad with success and down for good,’ he recalled . . .

  It was this time – extraordinarily considering the emotional pressures to which she was subject – that Rosamond’s first novel, Isn’t This Frightfully Good? was despatched to Chatto & Windus. ‘Crikey what a stunner,’ the firm’s chief editor, Mr Harold Snargs, is thought to have remarked. ‘Great distinction and enormous pulling power. In addition we greatly admire the book.’ Nevertheless, the summer found Rosamond . . . [continues for hundreds of pages].

  GRUB STREET IRREGULAR: SCENES FROM LITERARY LIFE

  JEREMY LEWIS

  I was a hopeless child: dim, backward, craven, retiring, self-conscious, devoid of all artistic or literary talent, incontinent, tone-deaf, speechless and inept. Not much has changed. From an early age I knew that finding paid employment would be tricky in the light of these disabilities. But if St Cake’s, where I spent my formative years, prepares you for one thing it’s finding the job for which you are suited, and so I ended up in publishing.

  Sitting one day in my office at Overprint and Remainder, while recovering from the statutory five-hour lunch – these were more expansive days before the accountants and their wretched economies prevailed – I looked up to find the figure of Lt Colonel ‘Bunty’ Deepleigh-D’Ulle advancing upon me. Dressed in a dark herringbone overcoat, heather-mixture cavalry twill trousers, a lovat tweed sports jacket with a somewhat loud orange overcheck, spats, grey Oxfords and a knotted foulard scarf in a shade somewhere between cerulean and cornflower blue whose colour contrasted oddly with the iris of his glass eye . . . [continues for several paragraphs] he was carrying a copy of his travel book The Little I Saw of Cuba, which I had always greatly admired.

  This was the beginning of a long and cordial friendship, although, nervous and tongue-tied as I was, I could never think of anything to say to him, while he, as befitted a man who had once cut off a Yugoslav partisan’s head with a tin-opener, usually preferred to communicate by carrier pigeon. For some reason his With Rod and Gun Through Roxburghshire sold only eleven copies, six of them to the author himself at discount, but I was immensely proud to have published it.

  Another friend from this time was Barbara Baugh, widow of the celebrated critic Hugh Carnapathy Hee, whose autobiography Some Chaps I Knew I remembered liking at prep school. Not that our relationship wasn’t without its ups and downs. Barbara, who had also been married to Lord Crasher and Desmond Entirely-Forgotten, whose memoirs Droop, Dahlias! and In My Window Box I had greatly admired, had a volatile temperament. ‘Jeremy,’ she would say, ‘you’re fucking useless. Why do you always bring Moët when you know I only drink Bollinger? And what’s the point of having deferential unpaid help when its fucking car won’t start?’ What a grand girl she was and how I appreciated her subtle sense of humour. The red mark on my forehead, legacy of the time she hurled an ashtray previously owned by her seventh husband the French poet Jean-Marie Ennui, author of Les Mouers Atroces, which I greatly admired, is perhaps the proudest scar I bear.

  Having said goodbye to publishing, I embarked happily on a freelance career, writing reviews for Yawn, Witter, the Weekly Somnambulist and other papers too numerous to mention. Knowing something of my tastes and inclinations, Richard Ingrams was kind enough to offer me a job on the Oldie, where I . . . [continues for hundreds of pages].

  SUPERMAC: THE LIFE OF HAROLD MACMILLAN

  D. R. THORPE

  . . . The other dispositions, in this most tantalising of reshuffles, were more straightforward. Sir Reginald Weems (of whom Macmillan remarked, ‘Nice little chap with the rather common wife, looks like one of my grouse-beaters’) continued as Under-Secretary in the Department of Tape & Sealing Wax, while the disputatious Hon. Hyacinth Frobisher, a much-underestimated figure (and incidentally Captain of Gremlins during Macmillan’s time at Eton) whose later support for Sir Cyril Hopbine at the Foreign Office in the course of the now somewhat forgotten Ugandan affair, was unhappily to call his loyalty into question, moved, not wholly amenably, to Agriculture & Fisheries . . . [continues].

  Alas, one formerly trusted subordinate whose reckless behaviour in government – in particular the memorable occasion on which he, perhaps deliberately, omitted to wear his Old Etonian tie at dinner – could no longer be tolerated was Sir Anstruther Vole, the increasingly erratic member for Loamshire Central. Their conversation at this moment of crisis is worth recording in full. ‘I say, Vole,’ Macmillan remarked, as they met on the steps of Number Ten on their way to the Eton– Harrow match at Lords, ‘I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and we really can’t have this kind of behaviour any more, you know.’ ‘I say, can we not?’ Vole is thought
to have replied. ‘Dash it, have I been a frightful twit again?’ ‘I’m afraid so, old man,’ Macmillan informed him, with the steely suavity that was his trademark, ‘but give my regards to Lady Mortitia, won’t you?’

  And yet, it cannot be too firmly stressed, politics to Macmillan were by no means the whole of life. Waiting for his constituency result to be declared at the General Election of 1959 (‘rather an oik’ he noted of his Labour opponent, Gerald Kaufperson, ‘and a bit Jewish-looking’) he could be found reading his beloved Pride and Prejudice (‘really frightfully good’) and Oliver Twist (‘quite excellent, and very Dickensian’). His interest in the publishing firm that bore his name continued to bear fruit, and his determined championing of the novelist Muriel Snargs did much to maintain the company’s reputation. ‘Dear Miss Snargs,’ he wrote in 1963, with the easy wit and perceptive geniality that distinguished his correspondence, ‘your new novel is frightfully brilliant and I enjoyed it enormously.’