CHRONICLES OF WASTED TIME VOL.1 MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE THEGREEN STICK 'Johnson needed Boswell, but Malcolm Muggeridge needs no one else' ANTONIA FRASER Chronicles of Wasted Time Part 1 The Green Stick Malcolm Muggeridge was born in 1903 and educated . at Selhurst Grammar School and Selwyn College, Cambridge. After lecturing at the Egyptian University in Cairo, he joined the editorial staff of the Man­ chester Guardian in 1930, and was Moscow Corre­ spondent for this paper from 1932-3. In the war of 1939-45 he served as an Intelligence. officer in North Africa, Mozambique, Italy and France, being seconded to M I6, the wartime version of the Secret Service. He ended up in Paris as Liaison Officer with the French Securite Militaire, and was awarded the Legion of Honour (Chevalier), the Croix de Guerre with Palm and the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Frani;:aise. His career as a journalist included a spell as Washington Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1946-7, and Deputy Editorship from 1950-52. He was Editor of Punch from 1953-7 and Rectm of Edinburgh University from 1967-8. He has written numerous books since the early '30s, including Some­ thing Beautiful for God, Jesus Rediscovered, Tread Softly for you Tread on my Jokes, and The Thirties. He lives in Robertsbridge, Sussex. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE Chronicles of Wasted Time Part I The Green Stick I used to believe that there was a green stick, buried on the edge of a ravine in the old Zakaz forest at Yasnaya Polyana, on which words were carved that would destroy all the evil in the hearts of men and bring them everything good. Leo Tolstoy FONTANA/COLLINS First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1972 First issued in Fontana 197 5 Second impression Mai_:ch 1981 Copyright © Malcolm M uggeridge 1972 Made and printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow CONDmONS OF SALE This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is p1,1blished and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents A Part in Search of a Play page 7 2 A Socialist Upbringing 21 3 Twilight of Empire 99 4 The Pursuit of Righteousness 143 S Who Whom? 221- Index 309 Long ago I copied out from a Life of the French sculptor, Rodin. a letter he addressed to his wife, Rose, dated 24 August, 1913. It occurs to me now that in it he sa ·is to her exactly what I should wish to say to my w1 e, Kitty, and that there could be no better place for saying it tnau here. So, transposing .the names: My dear Kitty, This letter is just to tell you that my mind is full of the greatness of God's gift to me when He put you at my side. i<.eep this thought of mine in your generous heart. Your, M. 1 A Part zn Search of a Play Nous ne vivons jamais, mais nous esperons de vivre; et, nous disposant toujours a etre heureux, ii est inevitable que nous le soyons jamais. Pascal We communicators - vendors of words, to use St Augustine's expression - tend to accumulate a lot of waste matter as we go along. I mean pres�-cuttings, maybe pasted up in books, or jusf stuffed into envelopes; old letters, whether of. personal significance, recording some moment of ostensible drama in one's life, or from unknown correspondents, flattering or abusive(t elevision appearances bring in sackfuls of these), in both cases ministering to one's self-esteem. Books once con­ sidered to be of special interest, or just review copies forsome reason unsold to the knackers; for that matter, one's own books, still standing in tattered dust-jackets on one's shelves. Photographs, souveeys, present ations, certificates; even - a mania of my own - all the different passes, laissez-passers, visas and other such documents needed to make one's way about this increasingly obstructed world. The rags and tatters of a professionally exhibitionist ego. After halt;, a century in the business, I have a mountain of such junk. The fact that I have allowed these, what the French police call pieces justificatives, to accumulate at all, indicates, I suppose, that I attach a certain value to them, and have an int ention some day to sort them out and arrange them chronologically with a view to their preservation, maybe at some American university, grnteful for any pabulum to fill its air-conditioned, dust-and�damp-proof vaults. I doubt, though, whether I shall ever bring myself to undertake the task. The odds are I shall die with it still undone, and I see no reason why anyone else should bother with it. Unless my beloved Kitty, if she outlives me (as I pray she may, rather than leaving me, desolate, behind), were for love of me to cherish 8 Chronicles of Wasted Time them, staple or sew them ·together, and stow them away in boxes in her neat, methodical way. Then perhaps one of my ·children or grandchildren might subsequently have a look at them. Or flog them for what they would fetch - which would not, I fear, be much; apart from an occasional signature or· letter from someone distinguished enough to be considered worthy of 'collecting' in the saleroom sense. My years of journalism have, in any case, inculcated in me a strong and, as I consider, on the whole salutary resistance to re-reading or reconsidering anything done earlier than yesterday. With a few. special exceptions, I have had no wish to renew acquaint­ ance with my past writings, whether published or unpublished. Even when they have been re-issued, I have not cared to revise them, or, if the truth be told, read them. That mysterious saying Let the dead bury their dead applies, as far as I am concerned, with particular force to words, which exist like insects in the tropics, buzzing briefly round a hurricane lamp and then piling up in dead heaps on the ground. Nonetheless, from the very beginning of my life I never doubted that words were my metier. There was nothing else I ever wanted to do except use them; no other accomplishment or achievement I ever had the slightest regard for, or desire to emulate. I have always loved words, and still love them, for their own sake. For the power and beauty of them; fq_r the wonderful things that can be done with them. I had a memor� · able example of this once when I was in Darwin, Australia. A message came to me that a man in hospital there had expressed a wish to see me. It seemed he had heard something I said on the radio that had taken his fancy. So I went along. He turned out to be a wizened old fellow who had spent much of his life in the bush, and now was obviously soon going to die. Also, he was quite blind. At first, I just couldn't think of anything to say and felt the silent reproach of his dead eyes. Then, suddenly, there came into my mind what Gloueester says in King Lear when Edgar commiserates with him on his blindness - 'I stumbled when I saw.' Just five simple, ordinary words, but the effect was immediate and terrific. My man loved them, and kept saying them over and over. As I went out of the ward I could hear him still repeating them in a loud, joyous . ., voice: 'I stumbled when I saw.' So, as a child, a writer was in my eyes a kind of god; any A Part in Search of a Play .. 9 writer, no matter how obseure, or even bogus; he might be; To compare a writer with some famous soldier or administra­ tor or scientist or politician or actor was, in my estimation, quite ludicrous. There was no ba"sis fqr comparison; any more than between, say, Francis of Assisi and Dr Spock. Perhaps more aware of this passion than I realised, when I was still a schoolboy my father took me to a dinner at a Soho restaurant at which G. K. Chesterton was being entertained. I remember that the proprietor of the restaurant presented me with a box of crystallised fruits which turned out to be bad. As far as I ·was concerned, it was an occasion of inconceivable glory. I observed with fascination the enormous bulk of the guest of honour, his great stomach and plump hands; how his pince­ nez on a black ribbon were almost lost in the vast expanse of his_ face, and how when he delivered himself of what he considered to be a good remark he had a way of blowing into his moustache with a sound· like an expiring balloon. His speech, if he made one, was lost on me, but I vividly recall how I persuaded my father to wait outside the restaurant while we watched the great man make his way down·the street in a billowing black cloak and old-style bohemian hat with a large brim. I only saw him once again. That was years later, shortly before he died, when on a windy afternoon he was sitting outside the Ship. Hotel at Brighton, and clutching to himself a thriller in a yellow jacket.