e FONTANA MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE THE INFERNAL GROVE 'The wit sparkles on almost every page' BERNARD LEVIN Chronicles of Wasted Time Part 2 The Infernal Grove 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, Moz.ambique, Italy and France, being seconded to MI6, 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 Hon0ur (Chevalier), the Croix de Guerre with Palm and the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Fran9aise. 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 Rector 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. Volume I of Chronicles of Wasted Time, The Green Stick, is abo available from Fontana, MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE Chronicles of Wasted Time Part 2 The Infernal Grove Till I tum from Female Love, And root up the Infernal Grove, I shall never worthy be To step into Eternity Blake FONTA NA/Collins First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 197i First issued in Fontana Books 1975 Second impression March 1981 Copyright© Malcolm Muggeridge 1973 Made and printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow FOR MY EVER-DEAR CHILDREN: LEONARD, JOHN AND VALENTINE, AND THE OTHER THREE THAT HAVE COME TO US THROUGH THEM: SYLVIA. ANNE AND GERRIT-JAN CONDITIONS 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 published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents 1 The Iron Gates 1 2 Grinning Honour 75 3 On Secret Service 130 4 The Victor's Camp 206 Index 305 1 The Iron Gates Let us roll all our strength and all Our Sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron �ates of life Andrew Marvell 0 ! dreadful is the check - intense the agony - When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;' When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;! The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. Emily Brontc . A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age that is at the same time reflective and passionless leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of siillificance, Kierkegaard In the autumn of 1933 I came to Geneva from Rosiniere, where I had been staying after my Moscow adventure, to take a temporary job at the International Labour Office, then part of the now defunct League of Nations. Kitty and the two children and I had a small apartment in the Rue de Lausanne overlooking the Lake and the Jardin des Anglais. _ The stern, forbidding Kremlin seemed far away, with its Red Flag endlessly flying; by night arc-lit to make a pool of blood in the surrounding darkness. As were also the brown­ shirted bully-boys and braided embonpoint maidens roaming the streets of Berlin in search of cowering Jewish shopkeepers. It was a snug little retreat, tucked away among mountains; nore like a stage-set or a willow-pattern than an actual place, with steamers puffing to and fro across the Lake, and pretty Renaissance-style houses, their gardens reaching down to the 2 Chronicle� of Wasted Time Lake shore, recalling Mme de StaeI. with her tall red-headed Benjruilln Constant in attendance, and their interminable rhythm of meals and talk and talk and meals. Then, as now, a iireat storm raged beyond the snow-capped mountains, stand­ ing guard like majestic sentries; their heads rosy at dawn, shining white by day, and in the evening scarlet. I comforted myself by recalling the many honourable precedents for thus taking refuge in this particular sanctuary. For instance, Rous­ seau wearing Armenian dres& and seated at his crochet work; or Voltaire, an earlier version of Bernard Shaw, growing rich and famous by shocking and ·thrilling those for whom the tumbrils were already waiting. As today there are the million� aire colonists of Gstad, and· the lords of show business scat· tered about the cantons where the Inland Revenue men cease from troubling and the wealthy are at rest It was through David Blelloch that I came to hear of the ILO job, and thanks to his kind offices that I got it; he being the son-in-law of Robert Dell, Guardian Paris correspondent during my time in Manchester, who had now been transfer• red to Geneva to report the doings of the League of Nations. I used to run into Dell there from time to time; still gloved, cane in hand, �oes of patent leather, soft hat rakishly tilted, reminiscing about Anatole France and the vi'llainies of the Quai d'Orsay, Employment of some kind I urgently needed, as once again I had practically no money. So I was greatly beholden to Blelloch and his wife Sylvia, who were uniformly kind and generous to Kitty and me while we were in Geneva. The ILO, brain-child of Albert Thomas its first Director­ General, was set up at the same time as the League of Nations in the mood of ebullience which followed the 1914-18 war; the intention being to reinforce the League's machinery for safeguarding international peace by equivalent machinery for promoting social justice, on a basis of fair wages and humane · working conditions. Alas, despite Albert Thomas's valiant efforts and ardent oratory, as little progress seemed to have been made towards the realisation of social justice as of peace. By the time I arrived on the scene, Thomas was dead, and his place had been taken by an English don and sometime civil servant named Harold Butler, who accorded me a brief interview when I took up my temporary post He had to a marked degree the curious, disconcerting way don11 had in The Iron Gates 3 those days, when one was suppose(! to be conversing with them, of seeming to have dozed off and to be muttering in their sleep. The section of the ILO to which I was posted had over­ flowed from the newly constructed main building into a tem­ porary structure in the grounds, and was engaged in preparing a survey of co-operative movements throughout the world.. It was to assist in this work that I had been appointed. The head of the section was a tiny, pedantic Frenchman, M .. Prosper, with a large moustache that seemed quite out of proportion with the rest of him; like the luxuriant bushes you sometimes find sprouting out of a minute crack in a rock face. I never discovered that he had any particular interest in co-operative movements; any more, for that matter, than I had myself, This, despite lingering memories of going shop­ ping for my mother at the Croydon Co-op, and of the con­ fidence of my father and his friends that a retail trader whose profits were distributed as divi to the customers must ulti• mately put out of business competitors who kept for · them themselves. When asked to pronounce upon some point of policy or principle in connection with the work of his section, M. Prosper invariably retreated behind his moustache, and ex­ claimed in a voice that was quite remarkably deep and reson• ant for so tiny a frame: 'J'ai mes regles; j'ai mes reglesr What these rulell were, who had drafted them, and to what end, no one was ever able to find out. Contrasting with his laodicean attitude to co-operative movements, even in his native France, let alone in China or Peru, was the relentless concern with which he followed anything to do with the ILO's internal organisation; more particularly promotions, salary scales and superannuation arrangements. When these were under consi�eration, he would become enormously vehement and excited, waving his arms about, and injecting into his voice a note of passionate concern, which, as things turned out, met with its just reward I like to think of M, Prosper living out his days comfortably in some agreeable spot in frovence, noting with quiet satisfaction that his monthly cheqQe, drawn on the Banque de Geneve, maintains its value in a shifting world. I only once encount�red him outside the office, and that was in the Ruo de Lausanne, just when I was 4 Chronicles of Wasted Time turning into the apartment block wliere we lived. 'Ali!; lie said to me, with, as I thought, a note of accusation in that deep voice of his, 'vous avez plante votre tente'. It made me feel quite uneasy, as though he had caught roe out in some nefarious enterprise, and I tried to reassure him by muttering confusedly: 'Mais non, Monsieur, nous sorrzmes seulement des locataires'. He gave me a distant, condescending nod, and passed on, presumably to some tent of his own, where Madame Prosper awaited him, maybe some children, shout­ ing, as he hove in sight, 'Viola Papa!; a dog barking, a grand' - mere serenely smiling, a servant laying the table - just like the Bontemps family from whose doings I learnt my first · French words and grammar.