The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter Issue 45, Winter 2011 ISSN 1743-0976 Season’s Greetings and a Prosperous New Year to all our members & friends Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 From a View to a Death … 3-6 REVIEW: AP-Vanderbilt Letters … 7 International Relationships … 8-9 TV REVIEW: Edward Burra … 10-13 How AP Got It Wrong! … 14-15 New Publications … 16 Dates for Your Diary … 17 Society Notices … 18 Volunteers Required … 19 Conference Report … 20-21 Follow the Eton Wick Road II … 22-24 Spurling’s Biography Lecture … 25 Cuttings … 26-29 Merchandise & Membership … 30-32 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #45 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society It’s been a busy few months, and it isn’t Registered Charity No. 1096873 over yet. First there was the Conference The Anthony Powell Society is a in early September. No more of that charitable literary society devoted to the here as there’s a short report elsewhere life and works of the English author in this Newsletter. Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. Then: the AGM. What a great – record- Officers & Trustees breaking – turnout we had with over 30 members gathered at St James’s Church Patron: John MA Powell on London’s Piccadilly. Paul Nutley President: The Earl of Gowrie PC, FRSL chaired the meeting and ably guided us through the complexities of the new Hon. Vice-Presidents: Constitution, ratifying Lord Gowrie as Julian Allason President and Jeremy Warren and Patric Dickinson LVO Michael Meredith as Vice-Presidents – Michael Meredith all unanimously approved. The nine Dr Jeremy Warren Trustees proposed were duly elected Society Trustees: unopposed and they now have to meet to Dr Christine Berberich agree amongst themselves who takes on Stephen Holden the roles of Chairman, Hon. Secretary Jeffrey Manley (USA) and Hon. Treasurer. This should be Dr Keith C Marshall (Hon. Secretary) settled before you read this Newsletter. Dr Derek WJ Miles (Hon. Treasurer) The formal minutes of the AGM will be Paul Nutley printed in the next Newsletter. Tony Robinson Following the formal business of the Prof. John Roe AGM, Colin Donald gave us a Elwin Taylor (Switzerland) fascinating talk about his first interview Membership & Merchandise Officers: with Anthony Powell in 1992. It was the Dorothy & Graham Davie more interesting as Colin was able to Newsletter & Journal Editor: play us extracts of the interview. Colin Stephen Holden has heroically transcribed the interview tape and we hope to publish this in a Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall future issue of Secret Harmonies. We All correspondence should be sent to: may also put some audio extracts on the Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society website for those who wish to download 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford them. Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK By the time you read this we will have Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 had the Annual Lecture from Prof. Fax: +44 (0) 20 8020 1483 Vernon Bogdanor, and the annual AP Email: [email protected] Birthday Lunches in London and New York will be heralding the arrival of the Cover photograph © John S Monagan 1984 and reproduced Christmas festivities. by kind permission. © The Anthony Powell Society, 2011. All rights reserved. So here’s wishing everyone a peaceful Published by The Anthony Powell Society. Printed and distributed by Lonsdale Print Solutions, Christmas and a prosperous 2012. ■ Wellingborough, UK. 2 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #45 Anthony Powell’s From a View to a Death by Nick Birns My old 1970s paperback finally having there is no ready moralist, and no simple worn out, I purchased from Joe Trenn’s recouping of an established given. Bookshed, in Benson, Vermont, a 1960s The ambiguity here is striking; my concern Heinemann hardcover of Anthony in UAP (somewhat expedited by issues Powell’s From a View to a Death, and present in the culture in the early 2000s, have just completed rereading it. Having happily less present in the early 2010s) done so, I see that I missed a lot in my was to point out that Powell did not want a account of the novel in Understanding simple restoration of the Old Regime. He Anthony Powell. (I think I generally did not want to refight the old battles of missed a lot about the pre-war books the past (seventeenth century England now there.) I stand by my primary point that exists as a pageant where the roles of king, Powell delights in the fall (literal and rebel, and courtesan are virtually figurative) of the opportunist Zouch, but interchangeable). But, on the other hand does not simply endorse the resiliency of modishness comes in for a good deal of the old order in the form of a triumphant rebuke in the book. Characters are roasted Vernon Passenger. But what I somehow for reading John Maynard Keynes and JB did not see, although it is clearly stated at Priestley, both writers of the Left whom the beginning of the book, was that Powell seems to view with scorn. In Passenger, like Zouch, is also seen as an addition, Powell seems to be sarcastic Ubermensch. (Interestingly, Nietzsche is towards any sort of reconciliation with never credited with the term, never Germany; as witnessed by Mrs Fosdick mentioned in the book – it is just seen as a wanting to take in a German boy as an au generally German concept, of which more pair. This of course was often considered later.) When Passenger catches Major the less “Conservative” position in the Fosdick in his cross-dressing routine, he 1930s. As pointed out in UAP, there is does not exact undue revenge on him and some ambiguity about attitudes towards feels some disappointment that he had not Chamberlain and Munich in The Kindly lived up to his Ubermensch potential. Ones, so it is interesting to see this hint of Does his aristocratic reserve and noblesse not being satisfied with a “don’t let’s be oblige prevent him from moving into the beastly to the Germans” attitude. kill? Is his grousing to his wife at the end merely a deflective gesture, a refined way Zouch is a fairly conventional portrait of underplaying his success, as a painter but he does not show in the Royal gentleman should? Or is Zouch the true Academy because, for his generation, that Ubermensch, whose fall we rejoice in as a is not the pathway to power. Zouch is no foiled aspirant to power, whereas rebel per se. When Passenger suspects Passenger keeps his love of dominance him of being a Communist, the narrative and mastery in more civilized channels? comments that Zouch urgently depended Powell, always fascinated by power and on the capitalist system to sell his those avid in its pursuit yet keeping a paintings. Indeed, his desire is to play the reserved distance from it, lets us judge: but role of proud scourge to capitalism who 3 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #45 nonetheless profits from it; by seeing Powell). In Zouch, Powell is writing about vaguely rebellious, he can play the system just what he is not. But in a writer of while seeming to thumb his nose at it. genius, writing about what he is not This kind of inverse attraction also seems becomes an inevitably rich and to operate with Joanna Brandon and Mary complicated gesture. Passenger; as it is stated that Zouch has Gender and ethnicity are also complicated generally not seen himself as attractive to categories in the book. In UAP, I was at women, having only one rather dowdy pains not to overtly mention modern long-term girlfriend who is no great catch, critical theories or concerns, because that it must be this juxtaposition – of the fusty often seems preposterous with a writer privilege of Passenger Court with the go- who has not yet been properly read in getting Zouch – that makes him so introductory terms across the whole of his effective in this regard in this particular oeuvre (considering the earlier critical tactical situation. (I always pronounced books had not had the chance to look at the Zouch to rhyme with Pouch, but at the memoirs and Journals). With this now 2003 Powell conference in Oxford, Patric done – not just in UAP but also in Barber’s Dickinson pronounced it to rhyme with biography, Christine Berberich’s book on louche, something that brings out the the English gentleman, and in the many seamy appeal of his character all the fine articles in both the Anthony Powell more.) Society Newsletter and the Society’s But things get more complicated than this journal, Secret Harmonies, by such hands Zouch, like all the protagonists of the pre- as Colin Donald, Jeff Manley and Peter war novels, is in some way a Powell Kislinger – one can look at issues that manqué. He is a young, aspiring artist, would have been thought disproportionate going to country houses where his entrée is and incongruous before. The cross- because of his art – much like, mutatis dressing of Major Fosdick is obviously mutandis, the young Powell himself in his meant to be funny, but Powell also saw it associations with the landed gentry and above. Powell himself said that Zouch’s misadventures on Creditor were based on his own on a horse during a rural chase – of course happily without the fatal results. Powell, of course, was actually a great artist, and his aspirations were ultimately artistic rather than social. But there is a kinship, even if by inversion. It has often been said that the I-narrator of What’s Become of Waring foreshadows the I- narrator of Dance. But, turned backward, the I-narrator also shows how Atwater, Lushington, Zouch, and Blore-Smith are all potential Is, or would be if turned around, having, as Zouch eventually does, their beards taken off (a feature obviously indicated to assure the reader Zouch is not 4 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #45 as a very key part of the book, being Jew, Verelst, in Afternoon Men, Powell is delighted when, in the 1990s, Susan deliberately foiling stereotypes of Macartney-Snape’s design for the Jewishness.