In suggesting that the international fame of several foreign writers liable to attend the Conference was not to be entirely disregarded in assessing its attractions, Members was speaking reasonably enough. To meet some of these, merely to set eyes on them, would be to connect together a few additional pieces in the complex jigsaw making up the world’s literary scene; a game never completed, though sometimes garishly illuminated, when two or three unexpected fragments were all at once coherently aligned in place. To addicts of this pastime, the physical appearance of a given writer can add to his work an incisive postscript, physical traits being only inadequately assessable from photographs. Ferrand-Sénéschal, one of the minor celebrities invoked by Members, was a case in point. His thick lips, closely set eyes, ruminatively brutal expression, were familiar enough from newspaper pictures or publishers’ catalogues, the man himself never quite defined by them. I had no great desire to meet Ferrand-Sénéschal—on balance would almost prefer to be absolved from the effort of having to talk with him—but I was none the less curious to see what he looked like in person, know how he carried himself among his fellow nomads of the intellect, Bedouin of the cultural waste, for ever folding and unfolding their tents in its oases.
There was another reason, when Members picked Ferrand-Sénéschal’s name out of the hat as a potential prize for attending the Conference, why a different, a stronger reaction was summoned up than by such names as Santos, Pritak, Kotecke. During the war, staff-officers, whose work required rough-and-ready familiarity with conditions of morale relating to certain bodies of troops or operational areas—the whole world being, in one sense, at that moment an operational area—were from time to time given opportunity to glance through excerpts, collected together from a wide range of correspondence, inspected by the Censorship Department. This symposium, of no very high security grading, was put together for practical purposes, of course, though not with complete disregard for light relief. The anonymous anthologist would sometimes show appreciation of a letter’s comic or ironic bearing. Ferrand-Sénéschal was a case in point. Scrutinizing the file, my eye twice caught his name, familiar to anyone whose dealings with contemporary literature took them even a short way beyond the Channel. Ferrand-Sénéschal’s letters were dispatched from the United States, where, lecturing at the outbreak of war, he had remained throughout hostilities. Always a Man of the Left (much in evidence as such at the time of the Spanish Civil War, when his name had sometimes appeared in company with St John Clarke’s), he had shown rather exceptional agility in sitting on the fence that divided conflicting attitudes of the Vichy Administration from French elements, in France and elsewhere, engaged in active opposition to Germany.
Cited merely to illustrate the current view of a relatively well-known French author domiciled abroad through the exigencies of war, Ferrand-Sénéschal’s couple of contributions to the Censor’s digest deftly indicated the deviousness of their writer’s allegiance. No doubt, in one sense, the phrases were intended precisely to achieve that, naturally implying nothing to be construed as even covertly antagonistic to the Allied cause. Whatever else he might be, Ferrand-Sénéschal was no fool. Indeed, it was his own appreciation of the fact that his letters might be of interest to the Censor—any censor—which provoked a smile at the skill shown in excerpting so neatly the carefully chosen sentences. In addition, personal letters, even when deliberately composed with an eye to examination, official or unofficial, by someone other than their final recipient, give a unique sense of the writer’s personality, often lacking in books by the same hand. They are possibly the most revealing of all, like physical touchings-up of personal appearance to make some exceptional effect. In the case of Ferrand-Sénéschal, as with his portraits in the press, the personality conveyed, not to be underrated as a force, was equally not a specially attractive one.
Avoidance, during this expatriate period, of all outward participation, even parti pris, in relation to the issues about which people were fighting so fiercely, turned out no handicap to Ferrand-Sénéschal’s subsequent career. Not only did he physically survive those years, something he might easily have failed to do had he remained in Europe, but he returned to France unembarrassed by any of the inevitable typifications attached to active combatants of one sort or another. Some of these had, of course, acquired distinction, military or otherwise, which Ferrand-Sénéschal could not claim, but, in this process, few had escaped comparatively damaging sectarian labels. In fact, Ferrand-Sénéschal, who had worked hard during his exile in literary and academic spheres in both American continents, fonund himself in an improved position, with a wider public, in a greatly changed world. He now abandoned a policy of non-intervention, publicly announcing his adherence to the more extreme end of his former political standpoint, one from which he never subsequently deviated. From this vantage point he played a fairly prominent rôle in the immediately post-war period of re-adjustment in France; then, when a few years later cultural congresses settled down into their swing, became—as emphasized by Members—a conspicuous figure in their lively polemics.
Remembrance of these censored letters had revived when I was ‘doing the books’ on Fission. A work by Ferrand-Sénéschal turned up for review. Quiggin & Craggs had undertaken a translation of one of his philosophico-economic studies. Although the magazine was, in theory, a separate venture from the publishing house producing it, the firm—Quiggin especially—was apt to take amiss too frequent disregard of their own imprint in the critical pages of Fission. I should in any case have consulted Bagshaw, as editor, as to whether or not a Quiggin & Craggs book might be safely ignored. Bagshaw’s preoccupations with all forms of Marxism, orthodox or the reverse, being what they were, he was likely to hold views on this one. He did. He was at once animated by Ferrand-Sénéschal’s name.
‘An interesting sub-species of fellow-traveller. I’d like to have a look myself. Ferrand-Sénéschal’s been exceedingly useful to the Party at one time or another, in spite of his heresies. There’s always a little bit of Communist propaganda in whatever he writes, however trivial. He also has odd sexual tastes. Political adversaries like to dwell on that. In America, they allege some sort of scandal was hushed up.’
Bagshaw turned the pages of Ferrand-Sénéschal’s book. He had accepted it as something for the expert, sitting down to make a closer examination.
‘You won’t find anything about his sexual tastes there. I’ve glanced through it.’
‘I’ll take it home, and consider the question of a reviewer. I might have a good idea.’
By the following week Bagshaw had a good idea. It was a very good one.
‘We’ll give Ferrand-Sénéschal to Kenneth Widmerpool for his routine piece in the mag. It’s not unlike his own sort of stuff.’
That was Bagshaw at his best. His editor’s instinct, eccentric, unguarded, often obscure of intent, was rarely to be set aside as thoughtless or absurd. He reported Widmerpool as being at first unwilling to wrestle with the Ferrand-Sénéschal translation (having scarcely heard of its author), but, on reading some of the book, changing his mind. The article appeared in the next issue of Fission. Widmerpool himself was delighted with it.
‘One of my most successful efforts, I think I can safely aver. Ferrand-Sénéschal is a man to watch. He and I have something in common, both of us intellectuals in the world of action. In drawing analogy between our shared processes of thought, I refer to a common denominator of resolution to break ruthlessly with old social methods and outlooks. In short, we are both realists. I should like to meet this Frenchman. I shall arrange to do so.’
The consequences of the Ferrand-Sénéschal article were, in their way, far reaching. Ferrand-Sénéschal, who visited London fairly often in the course of business—cultural business—was without difficulty brought into touch with Widmerpool on one of these trips. Some sort of a fellow-feeling seems to have sprung up immediately between the two of them, possibly a certain facial resemblance contributing to that, people who look like one
another sometimes finding additional affinities. In the army, for example, tall cadaverous generals would choose tall cadaverous soldier-servants or drivers; short choleric generals prefer short choleric officers on their staff. Whatever it was, Widmerpool and Ferrand-Sénéschal took to each other on sight. As a member of some caucus within the Labour Party, Widmerpool invited Ferrand-Sénéschal to meet his associates at a House of Commons luncheon. This must have gone well, because in due course Ferrand-Sénéschal returned the compliment by entertaining Widmerpool, when passing through Paris on his way back from Eastern Europe, touring there under the banner of a society to encourage friendship with one of the People’s Republics.
This night-out in Paris with Ferrand-Sénéschal had also been an unqualified success. That was almost an understatement of the gratification it had given Widmerpool, according to himself. Either by chance or design, his comments on the subject had come straight back to the Fission office. That was the period when Widmerpool, deserted by his wife, was keeping away from the magazine. Not unreasonably, he may have hoped, by deliberately building up a legend of high-jinks with Ferrand-Sénéschal, to avoid seeming an abandoned husband, unable to amuse himself, while Pamela lived somewhere in secret with X. Trapnel. That could have been the motive for spreading broadcast the tidings of going on the Parisian spree; otherwise, it might be thought, an incident wiser to keep private. Certainly highly coloured rumours about their carousal were in circulation months after its celebration. Apart from other considerations, such behaviour, anyway such brazenness, was in complete contrast with the tone in which Widmerpool himself used to deplore the louche reputation of Sir Magnus Donners.
This censure could, of course, have been a double-bluff. When we had met at a large party given for the Election Night of 1955—the last time I had seen him—Widmerpool deliberately dragged in a reference to the weeks spent together trying to learn French at La Grenadière, adding that it was ‘lucky for our morals Madame Leroy’s house had not been in Paris’, words that seemed to bear out, on his part, desire to confirm a reputation for being a dog. That was early in the evening, before Pamela’s incivility had greatly offended our hostess, or Widmerpool himself heard (towards morning, after Isobel and I had gone home) that he had lost his seat in the House. In Fission days, Bagshaw had been sceptical about the Paris story, without dismissing it entirely.
‘I suppose some jolly-up may have taken place. The brothels are closed nowadays officially, but that wouldn’t make any difference to someone in the know. I’m not sure what Ferrand-Sénéschal is himself supposed to like—being chained to a crucifix, while a green light’s played on him—little girls—two-way mirrors—I’ve been told, but I can’t remember. He may have given Kenneth a few ideas. I shall develop sadistic tendencies myself, if that new secretary doesn’t improve. She’s muddled those proofs of the ads again. I say, Nicholas, we’ve still too much space to spare. Just cast your eye over these, and see if you’ve any suggestions. You’ll bring a fresh mind to the advertisement problem. It’s a blow too we’re not going to get any more Trapnel pieces. Editing this mag is driving me off my rocker.’
In the light of what I knew of Widmerpool, the tale of visiting a brothel with Ferrand-Sénéschal was to be accepted with caution, although true that he had more than once in the past adopted a rather gloating tone when speaking of tarts, an attitude dating back to our earliest London days. Moreland used to say, ‘Maclintick doesn’t like women, he likes tarts—indeed he once actually fell in love with a tart, who led him an awful dance.’ That taste could be true of Widmerpool too; perhaps a habit become so engrained as to develop into a preference, handicapping less circumscribed sexual intimacies. Such routines might go some way to explain the fiasco with Mrs Haycock, even the relationship—whatever that might be—with Pamela. That Ferrand-Sénéschal, as Bagshaw suggested, had been the medium for introduction, in middle-age, to hitherto unknown satisfactions, new, unusual forms of self-release, was not out of the question. By all accounts, far more unlikely things happened in the sphere of late sexual development. Bagshaw was, of course, prejudiced. By that time he had decided that Widmerpool was not only bent on ejecting him from the editorship of Fission, but was also a fellow-traveller.
‘He probably learnt a lot from Ferrand-Sénéschal politically, the latter being a much older hand at the game.’
‘But what has Widmerpool to gain from being a crypto?’
Bagshaw laughed loudly. He thought that a very silly question. Political standpoints of the extreme Left being where his heart lay, where, so to speak, he had lost his virginity, the enquiry was like asking Umfraville why he should be interested in one horse moving faster than another, a football fan the significance of kicking an inflated bladder between two posts. At first Bagshaw was unable to find words simple enough to enlighten so uninstructed a mind. Then a lively parallel occurred to him.
‘Apart from anything else, it’s one of those secret pleasures, like drawing a moustache on the face of a pretty girl on a poster, spitting over the stairs—you know, from a great height on to the people below. You see several heads, possibly a bald one. They don’t know where the saliva comes from. It gives an enormous sense of power. Like the days when I used to throw marbles under the hooves of mounted policemen’s horses. Think of the same sort of fun when you’re an MP, or respected civil servant, giving the whole show away on the quiet, when everybody thinks you’re a pillar of society.’
‘Isn’t that a rather frivolous view? What about deep convictions, all the complicated ideologies you’re always talking about?’
‘Not really frivolous. Such spitting itself is an active form of revolt—undermining society as we know it, spreading alarm and despondency among the bourgeoisie. Besides, spitting apart, you stand quite a good chance of coming to power yourself one day. Giving them all hell. The bourgeoisie, and everyone else. Being a member of a Communist apparat would suit our friend very well politically.’
‘But Widmerpool’s the greatest bourgeois who ever lived.’
‘Of course he is. That’s what makes it such fun for him. Besides, he isn’t a bourgeois in his own eyes. He’s a man in a life-and-death grapple with the decadent society round him. Either he wins, or it does.’
‘That doesn’t sound very rational.’
‘Marxism isn’t rational, Nicholas. Get that into your head. The more intelligent sort of Marxist tells you so. He stresses the point, as one of its highest merits, that, like religion, Marxism requires faith in the last resort. Besides, my old friend Max Stirner covers Kenneth—“Because I am by nature a man I have equal rights to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am ‘by nature’ a first-born prince I have a right to a throne?” That’s just what Kenneth Widmerpool does say—not out aloud, but it’s what he thinks.’
Bagshaw had begun on his favourite political philosopher. I was not in the mood at that moment. To return instead to sorting the Fission books was not to deny there might be some truth in the exposition: that Widmerpool, conventional enough at one level of his life—conventional latterly in his own condemnation of conventionality—might at the same time nurture within himself quite another state of mind to that shown on the surface; not only desire to reshape the world according to some doctrinaire pattern, but also to be revenged on a world that had found himself insufficiently splendid in doing so. Had not General Conyers, years ago, diagnosed a ‘typical intuitive extrovert’; cold-blooded, keen on a thing for the moment, never satisfied, always wanting to get on to something else? In one sense, of course, the world, from a material assessment, had treated Widmerpool pretty well, even at the time when Bagshaw was talking. On the other hand, people rarely take the view that they have been rewarded according to their deserts, those most rewarded often the very ones keenest to be revenged. Possibly Ferrand-Sénéschal was just such another.
Whatever Ferrand-Sénéschal’s inner feelings, the meeting with him in Venice was not to be. Not even a glimpse on the platform.
His death took place in London only a few days before the Conference opened. He suffered a stroke in his Kensington hotel. The decease of a French author of international standing would in any case have rated a modest headline in the papers. The season of the year a thin one for news, more attention was given to Ferrand-Sénéschal than might have been expected. It was revealed, for example, that he had seen a doctor only a day or two before, who had warned him against excessive strain. Accordingly no inquest took place. Death had come—as Evadne Clapham remarked, ‘like the book’—in the afternoon. Later that evening, so the papers said, Ferrand-Sénéschal had been invited to ‘look in on’ Lady Donners after dinner—’not a party, just a few friends’, she had explained to the reporters—where he would have found himself, so it appeared, among an assortment of politicians and writers, including Mr and Mrs Mark Members. Social engagements of this kind, together with a stream of acquaintances and journalists passing in and out of his suite at the hotel, had evidently proved too much for a state of health already impaired.
The London obituaries put Léon-Joseph Ferrand-Sénéschal in his sixtieth year. They mentioned only two or three of his better known books, selected from an enormous miscellany of novels, plays, philosophic and economic studies, political tracts, and (according to Bernard Shernmaker) an early volume, later suppressed by the author, of verse in the manner of Verlaine. This involuntary withdrawal would make little difference to the Conference. Well known intellectuals were always an uncertain quantity when it came to turning up, even if they did not suddenly succumb. Pritak, Santos, Kotecke, might equally well find something better to do, though not necessarily meet an unlooked-for end. I made up my mind to ask Dr Brightman, when opportunity arose, whether she had ever encountered Ferrand-Sénéschal; if so, what she thought of him.
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 4 Page 25