The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter
Issue 22, Spring 2006 ISSN 1743-0976
Society President Contents We are proud and delighted to Society President … 1 announce that Simon Russell Beale has From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 agreed to be the Society’s President* in The Writer’s on the Wall … 3 succession to Hugh Massingberd. 2005 Conference – A Personal View … 5 CUL Exhibition … 7 Simon is one the most accomplished Some Poets, Artists Review … 9 actors of his generation and members of Life Follows Art? … 12 the Society will need no reminding of his Dance for Readers … 13 brilliant characterisation of Widmerpool in Dates for Your Diary … 14 the television adaptation of Dance. It was Christmas Quiz Answers … 15 for this reason that the Wallace Collection Competition – Name the Journal … 15 had the bright idea of inviting him to open Society Notices … 16 the Powell centenary exhibition in Strategy Review Update … 17 October. In the course of his speech on Puck of Pook’s Hill … 18 that occasion it became clear that he was Borage & Hellebore … 19 himself a considerable fan of Powell’s AP + AT = Serendipity … 20 work, and this in turn prompted Keith Cuttings … 21 Marshall to suggest that he would make an From the APLIST ...22 eminently suitable President. Letters to the Editor … 24 Simon is currently appearing on Broadway in Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where he took over the part of King Arthur from Tim Curry. His opening night was on 20 December, the eve of Powell’s 100th birthday (which seemed a good augury), and he was rewarded with glowing reviews – for his singing as well as his acting. Spamalot comes to London’s Palace Theatre in October prompting Chairman Patric Dickinson to suggest that it would make an interesting Society outing.
* The appointment of the President has to be ratified by members at the AGM. Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Registered Charity No. 1096873 What a stunner! No, not a sexist comment but the response to the Powell centenary The Anthony Powell Society is a events and in particular the conference and charitable literary society devoted to the the Wallace Collection’s superb exhibition. life and works of the English author The conference was attended by a total of Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. 145 delegates over two days; almost 50% more than we had planned for. Everyone Officers & Executive Committee hugely enjoyed the weekend’s events from Patron: John MA Powell the buffet reception through to the Sunday morning walks and lunch. President Elect: Simon Russell Beale The Wallace Collection’s exhibition – Hon. Vice-Presidents: Dancing to the Music of Time: the Life and Julian Allason Work of Anthony Powell – was an equal Hugh Massingberd success: it attracted tremendous critical *Chairman: Patric Dickinson acclaim from the media and in its three *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall month run was attended by over 15,000 *Hon. Treasurer: Kevin Jewell visitors, many making special journeys just to see it. This has brought the Wallace to a *Committee Members: whole new audience, something museums Dr Christine Berberich and galleries constantly need. Dr Nicholas Birns (USA) Leatrice Fountain (USA) With all the other smaller events – from Stephen Holden Cambridge University Library’s exhibition Tony Robinson to the BBC’s broadcast of From a View to a Prof. Ian Young (N Ireland) Death in their “Book at Bedtime” series – Powell has received a great boost, and the Newsletter Editor: Stephen Holden Society has seen a 20% increase in Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall membership. We now need to ensure these PR/Media Adviser: Julian Allason new members find the Society enjoyable and worthwhile and they stay with us. All correspondence should be sent to: I would personally like to thank everyone Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society who was involved for the part they played in 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford the centenary celebrations. The Society Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK would especially like to thank the Wallace Phone: +44 (0)20 8864 4095 Collection for their generosity in hosting the Fax: +44 (0)20 8864 6109 conference and their foresight and hard work Email: [email protected] in putting on the exhibition.
The fourth biennial conference is * Members of the Executive Committee who are provisionally scheduled for the weekend of the Society’s trustees. All officers are resident 8-9 September 2007 at University of Bath. in England or Wales unless stated. However without a volunteer coming © The Anthony Powell Society, 2006 and the forward in the very near future to lead the individual authors named. All rights reserved. organising team the conference will not Published by The Anthony Powell Society. happen. The conference needs YOU! Printed and distributed by Express Printing, Peterborough, UK
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The Writer’s on the Wall by Simon Barnes An exhibition at an art gallery dedicated to a writer? This would be perverse, were the writer not Anthony Powell. Powell paints. Not views and people and places: actual pictures. He is a novelist who puts a frame round things, and creates an unmoving tableau of immense significance from the most humdrum material. The eighth of his great twelve-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time, dances – clockwise – away from you, with called The Soldier’s Art, opens in a the dancers still to turn your way looking gentleman’s outfitters, as the narrator buys progressively less alluring. a military overcoat. He observes two dummies, and at once creates a still life. The exhibition marks the centenary of Powell’s birth. The Dance, said AS Byatt, One of these effigies wore in her uncompromising fashion, is “one of Harlequin’s diagonally spangled the two or three greatest works of fiction tights, the other scarlet full-dress every written”. But Powell’s work has yet uniform of some infantry regiment, to settle onto its spot in public esteem: allegorical figures, so it seemed, something that puts enthusiasts for Powell symbolising dualisms of the in something of a missionary position. antithetical stock-in-trade surrounding them. Civil and Military. Literature is full of painters, most of them Work and Play. Detachment and the writer himself disguised in overalls and Involvement. Tragedy and Comedy. paint-stains, word-drunk and without War and Peace. Life and Death. visual imagination. In Powell’s novels, painters credibly paint. Thus, by an adroit painterly They are full of vivid recession, Powell takes us Powell paints … fictional paintings, too: the from ironical observation, homoerotic scenes of right to the very heart of He is a novelist Edgar Deacon, the awful the matter. who puts a frame but compelling portraits of The Wallace Collection round things, and Horace Isbister, Barnby’s houses the Poussin painting nudes of the waitress from from which Powell took creates an Casanova’s Chinese the title for his novel unmoving tableau Restaurant. sequence: and it inevitably Osbert Lancaster and Mark forms the centrepiece of Boxer both provided covers for Powell’s the exhibition. It is more sinister than you work. Lancaster gives us the doomed recollect, behind its chocolate-box-of- Maclintick, lurching across the road from genius colours: one minx of a dancer his awful dwelling, bound jug-in-hand for looking you boldly in the eye and she the Nag’s Head: the lights gleaming from
3 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 within making this grim place an oasis of at Orwell’s funeral, for Powell helped to sanity. Boxer gives us portraits, done with organise this occasion. And there is the half a dozen inspired lines: and there is X juxtaposition of Powell’s Volunteer Air Trapnel, brilliant but equally doomed, with Raid Warden certificate, issued in 1938, his death’s-head swordstick and his tie with some carefully cut out images of yet with naked-lady motif. more naked ladies, apparently involved in some exotic and rather expensive debauch. The exhibition also includes portraits of Powell and friends, many half- Everything, even war, even the greatest of recognisable from the Dance. There are human passions, is both faintly ludicrous also manuscripts, photographs, paintings and a matter of life and death. The absurd from Powell’s own collection, a recreation and sinister, the comic and the dreadful, of Powell’s extraordinary writing-room, the ironic and the almost unbearably and photographs, poignant: all these things including those of a are to be found juxtaposed weekend romp recreating Powell was a closet in Powell’s great works of the Tranby Croft scandal. words. But they are collager … the revealed, far more The Dance is that most explicitly than usual, in deeply serious of literary juxtaposition of these purely visual works. forms, a comedy. It Powell’s Volunteer Nothing makes coherent encompasses, then, all the Air Raid Warden sense: everything is grimness of existence, as profoundly appropriate. well as everything that certificate with ... yet makes life worth living. more naked ladies And through it all runs And if that seems like a Widmerpool, one of contradiction, then it is: literature’s greatest as the headless dummies in the creations, running at school for prizes he gentleman’s outfitters told us. will never win, ugly, awkward, unlikeable, rising to ever greater heights in public life, Powell loved antithesis: the banal with the winning the hand of the most beautiful epic, the comic with the tragic, the woman in the book, and then seeking still detached irony with the most desperate more exotic worlds to conquer: a man who and painful involvement. And a great deal seldom drinks but is throughout drunk on of this love is to be found in the greatest the search and the acquisition of power. Powellian treasures of this exhibition. But all the time behind him lurks the Powell was a closet collager, and his narrator, Powell’s alter-ego, humanised by scrap-books are not only masterpieces of irony and detachment and friendship and the genre, but are as direct an insight into love and wine, a character who casts over the man’s mind as you will get: far more this immense work a vast cloud of sanity. so than the mannered obliquities of his Seek him at the exhibition: do so by means autobiography. of contradiction. We find, for example, a picture of George * Orwell, rolling a cigarette, with a facetious This article first appeared in The Times on 1 note beneath it in French. Pasted below is November 2005 and is reproduced by kind a note of which hymns were to be played permission.
4 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Anthony Powell Centenary Conference 2005 – A Personal View by Tony Robinson
As delegates arrived at the forecourt of walks in the streets of Mayfair or Hertford House in Manchester Square, Bloomsbury, my own Conference timeline London on that bright morning of 2 had seemed to have stretched over a longer December, they might have been forgiven period. As just one member of the for feeling that their destination was not Conference Organising Committee, I had the Society’s Conference, hosted by the been privileged to have been invited to the Wallace Collection, but Proust’s late 19th opening of the exhibition Dancing to the century Paris. Music of Time a month earlier, at the beginning of November. The first person I The house was built in 1776 for the met then was Queen Marie-Antoinette. Duke of Manchester but the steep This bizarre event occurred on the roof and the porte cochere with aforementioned stone staircase. I did not which the architect Thomas Ambler follow her, as bidden, to her apartment on refaced it gives it the appearance of the first floor, where she was illustrating an hôtel de ville. the Wallace’s other exhibition – Fit for a So writes Mark Fisher in his guide to Queen – but enjoyed instead the lavish, Britain’s Best Museums and Galleries. indeed glittering, champagne reception, where we Society members found While the Conference itself started that ourselves in the company of a good morning in the building’s more prosaic number of afternoon men (and women). Lecture Theatre, down a steepish stone double staircase, which also gave onto the And just as “my Conference” had so Centenary Exhibition rooms, and for many started in early November, it continued ended two days later with the two guided through December and only really ended
Dr Fram Dinshaw, Trustee of the Wallace Collection, opening the conference, with Ian Rankin and Society Chairman Patric Dick5i nson. Photo Keith Marshall Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 with the splendid Powell centenary It was difficult to have to choose between birthday party on 21 December hosted by the parallel sessions but I do not regret my our Chairman, Patric Dickinson, at the decision to opt for the session at which College of Arms. The champagne was Colin Donald led with “Awfully chic to be equally good and copious, the killed”. Any analysis of what it is that conversation, so aided, witty. We all makes people laugh or at least feel they are hoped we would be able to gather again in experiencing something uniquely comical the aura of Powell in another hundred has to be very brave: Colin succeeded years time and were eventually escorted splendidly in describing how “a deliberate out of the College precincts onto Queen dissonance in register between subject Victoria Street, lit by the lamps of which matter and language used to describe it ... Powell apparently so disapproved, by is the central source of Powell’s most Richmond Herald. distinctive and entertaining effects.” I found this talk quite riveting. In due course the published Conference proceedings will comprehensively reflect The atmosphere of the highly overcrowded all that happened during the two core days side room in which session 7A persons on 2 and 3 December. There is no way massed to hear Michael Barber talk about that I can attempt to encapsulate the Powell’s friendship with Malcolm consistently high quality and excellence of Muggeridge is also memorable. While not all the contributors (and the responses they all of this would be new, it was related elicited) other than to observe that, as an with a compelling fresh narrative drive and enthusiast rather than an academic, I was authority. (Such was the lack of seating, never less than 100% engaged and that next to me, Hilary Spurling had no disappointed only when, as always, we ran option but to crouch on the floor during out of time at the end of Saturday the whole of this session. She too afternoon. I shall highlight just three talks appeared to be listening very intently to for brief personal comment, while wishing Powell’s unofficial biographer …) I could cover all the others. On the previous day, in our opening session, Ian Rankin had reflected on the way in which certain (but not all, especially crime) authors cause their characters to age and change their outlooks as time passes, citing the process employed in Dance by Powell as a key influence on his own development of Inspector Rebus. He also observed, in passing, that school reunions are intimations of mortality. That note of pessimism is unlikely to infect our next reunion Conference if the quality, vigour and sheer enterprise displayed in 2005 are anything to go by. Perhaps the Garden God will be keeping a kindly eye on us.
Colin Donald speaking at the conference. Photo Keith Marshall 6 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Cambridge University Library’s Powell Exhibition by Patric Dickinson
The exhibition held at Cambridge from November to January (though small by comparison with the treasure house of delights at the Wallace Collection) was nicely put together and well worth a visit. The emphasis was essentially bibliographical, with a reasonable amount of space being given to Powell’s early works (including Barnard Letters and his contribution to The Old School). The principal editions of Dance were on show, rather differently arranged from those at the Wallace, being grouped by novel rather than by sequence. This meant that the Broom-Lynne, Lancaster and Boxer designs for A Question of Upbringing were displayed side by side, as were the equivalents for the next six Cambridge University Library volumes, and the Broome-Lynne and Boxer designs for the last five. · The Military Philosophers (1968) – An imaginative feature was the inclusion Anon (TLS) of contemporary reviews for each of the Dance volumes. The choice of reviews · Books Do Furnish a Room (1971) – was interesting in itself: Auberon Waugh (Spectator) · A Question of Upbringing (1951) – John · Temporary Kings (1973) – Simon Raven Betjeman (Daily Telegraph) (Observer) · A Buyer’s Market (1952) – Philip · Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975) – Toynbee (Observer) Kingsley Amis (Observer) and Malcolm Muggeridge (New Statesman) · The Acceptance World (1955) – Kingsley Amis (Spectator) Though on the whole sympathetic to the · At Lady Molly’s (1957) – Kenneth author, this assortment of critical opinion Young (Daily Telegraph) was not wholly lacking in bite, the most extreme comment coming from Auberon · Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (1960) Waugh in 1971: “Publication of the tenth – William Cooper (Daily Telegraph) of M. Powell’s series of twelve novels … · The Kindly Ones (1962) – Evelyn seems as good an occasion as any to urge Waugh (Spectator) him to give up the scheme while there is · The Valley of Bones (1964) – Malcolm still time.” One cannot help thinking that Muggeridge (Evening Standard) Waugh Junior had an axe of his own to · The Soldier’s Art (1966) – Jocelyn grind! Brooke (Scotsman) 7 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 More than one reviewer was illuminating on the subject of Powell’s stylistic development during the gestation of Dance. Jocelyn Brooke, for example, offered the following reflection when the eighth volume was published: “I have sometimes thought, when reading the earlier volumes, that his habitual poker- faced irony was in danger of becoming a Anthony Powell Resides Here trifle ponderous but lately his style has CRAWFORD DOYLE BOOKSELLERS seeks become tauter and more muscular.” and sells early editions of Anthony Simon Raven made a similar point when Powell’s works together with those of reviewing Temporary Kings: “his prose is other distinguished British authors such as Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, now far more lean and light than it has Virginia Woolf, Henry Green and sometimes been.” James Lees-Milne. In addition to rare books, we offer a complete collection of Both Brooke and Raven put their finger on new books in our store near the something I have noticed when re-reading Metropolitan Museum. Catalogs issued upon request. Dance, namely that Powell’s writing can 1082 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10028 seem a trifle stodgy in the first volumes Open seven days per week (particularly A Question of Upbringing) Telephone: 212 289 2345 [email protected] and in this respect there is a distinct Member, Antiquarian Booksellers’ improvement as the saga unfolds. Association of America, Inc. Perhaps most striking of all is Malcolm Muggeridge’s insistence that Dance contains a good deal of self-revelation on Powell’s part. When the final volume Contributions to the Newsletter appeared, he wrote: “Certainly for those are always welcome and should that have eyes to see, the life story and be sent to: character of Powell is unfolded with extraordinary clarity and vividness in Newsletter Editor, Stephen Holden, Nicholas’s narration.” Anthony Powell Society 76 Ennismore Avenue Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK Fax: +44 (0)20 8864 6109 Email: [email protected]
Correction In the Centenary Newsletter the list of 2005 literary anniversaries included that of the writer “Erskine Childers”. Childers was, in fact, born in 1870, and it was his son, the Irish politician Erskine Hamilton Childers, who was born in 1905. Thank you to Michael Goldman for pointing out Hilary Spurling in discussion with John this howler. Potter at the conference. Photo John Potter 8 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Some Poets, Artists & “A Reference for Mellors” by Anthony Powell Reviewed by Mike Jay
PAM (as I shall call it) is the third and final volume of Anthony Powell’s published critical book reviews, from The Daily Telegraph, Apollo, TLS and other UK publications from 1946-1990. PAM follows Miscellaneous Verdicts (1989) and Under Review (1991), labelled as “Writings on Writers”. As such this is surely the last volume from Powell. The book was scheduled for publication in the mid 1990s but Heinemann allegedly lost the proofs for the book. Consequently the volume has had to be reconfigured and a new publisher (Timewell Press) found. This delayed publication until November 2005, to coincide with the celebration of Powell’s birth. Each review is approximately 1,000 words and the volume is roughly devoted half to poets and half to artists. The “Mellors” vignette is a brisk seven pages and is a strange interloper. Powell never published short stories and this piece was originally included in a Granta-like literary compendium in 1946. After all, he was a professional writer for more than sixty years. Everything to do While Powell will (hopefully) remain most with writing was his “coal face”. Apart famous for the Dance sequence and retain from having an insatiable lifelong interest “novelist” as his epitaph, there are some for just about everything, he maintained among us who prefer his non-fiction. I his professional interests and with his had never been one of those, but I am now immense experience he was better able to at least open to persuasion. Powell could be critical of the poets, artists and writers. write with total confidence on all types of We must remember that Powell, like all “art” from all periods of history. This good artists, filtered his learning into his volume tackles poets from Chaucer to output. Dylan Thomas and artists from the Bayeux Tapestry to David Hockney. There is a For me, PAM works best as a bedside good balance between some of literature’s book. Dip in for two or three pages of giants – for example, Shakespeare and erudition, gossip and anecdote. Each Wordsworth – then some of the lesser article is to be savoured. Every word is a lights, Aiken, Gordon and Smart to list just delight. There is no need to hurry. Enjoy three. Yet we mustn’t go overboard in Powell’s shrewd judgments – a master thinking Powell to be so knowledgeable. class in the reviewer’s craft. PAM will
9 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 also work well as a reference on this wide reluctant. I feel Powell always finds it a range of poets and artists. What Powell burden to put down another writer, appreciated most was intellectual knowing just how difficult it is to write or standards, not parentage. create. He often criticizes in the negative “… this is described … in a not very Powell makes all these reviews of interest polished style”, or “Thomas Moore’s to the general reader since he is so letters ... on the whole are not breathlessly interested in the poets’ and artists’ works, exciting”, typify Powell’s method. genealogy, lives and particularly their sex However Powell can unload when lives. On Charles Sainte-Beuve, who had necessary: “Ruskin often talks arrant an affair with the wife of Victor Hugo, rubbish”. Powell writes, “… one is driven to the Yet then banal reflection that you simply cannot tell Powell is “Shakespeare had what a woman will like.” (Sainte-Beuve quick to an extraordinary was a mere critic and disabled while Hugo balance – was a celebrated writer with “powers of a “he was the grasp of what other truly fabulous order”). But Powell is first art people were like, positively remorseless in uncovering historian and Byron of what he details of the sex life of, for example, a capable Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “The main new painter”. himself was like.” point is, of course, Rossetti’s relationship His clearest with Jane Morris (wife of William). Was blast is against “the picture forger [who] is Jane Rossetti’s mistress? If so – did a peculiarly noxious form of criminal”. Morris know? If Morris knew – did he care?” Powell decides Rossetti and Jane Powell is rarely opinionated. His skill as went the ever is for understatement and being able whole way. to describe a poet’s or artist’s achievement Powell is always Intriguingly, cogently, briefly and then using that allowing the subject Powell knowledge for his own advantage. Powell at hand to inspire regrets is always allowing the subject at hand to “Ruskin inspire him to questioning. Did Van Dyck him to questioning burning see paintings by El Greco? Turner’s Powell does have his favourites. He is ‘grossly obscene’ work. One [Powell frequently referring to Aubrey Beardsley. says] can’t help wondering what it [the Another is a personal friend, Gerald work] was like.” Reitlinger, first encountered in 1927-1928, Although these articles are listed as “whose house sported a number of oriental criticism there is relatively little actual pots”, substance for Pamela Flitton’s criticism. But here is Powell on Malcolm disgraceful behaviour at the Erridge Barnes on Augustus Hare: “Mr. Barnes is a funeral. He wrote at least seven articles on great stylist and occasionally indulges in Shakespeare covering every decade from fairly banal reflection on the CHANGES the 1940s to the 1980s. It is this reading, WROUGHT BY TIME” (my capitals). rereading over the decades, this layering of How galling for Powell of all people to knowledge, reaction and opinion, which is have to read others write on the changes so impressive. Always there are wrought by time. His criticism is almost connections, undercurrents and harmonies
10 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 with the Powellian are a much more complicated form of oeuvre. But hardly writing.” Hogarth laid the foundations for any overt references. Gainsborough and Reynolds and by One of the longest extension an interest in individuals and pieces is on the what people were really like. illustrations of Powell sees Paul Valéry as full of ideas, Dickens showing, as admirably expressed, never boring or if we didn’t already pedantic, yet at the same time never cheap know, how much or aimed at an easy popularity. This could Powell cared about easily be Powell on himself. such matters. Powell can be a wit: William Hogarth * 1697-1764 “Shakespeare had an Some Poets, Artists and “A Reference for extraordinary grasp of what other people Mellors” is published by Timewell Press at £25. were like, Byron of what he himself was like.” Powell also feels that “anthologies are … rather a vice”. I also feel Powell has a great appreciation of the inextricable link between an artist and his time. I wonder how many of the books reviewed have stood the test of time? Perhaps Penrose on Picasso is still read? Perhaps these reviews will last longer than their source? One wonders how Powell only won a Third at Oxford when he was so interested in history and seemingly particularly knowledgeable of English history. Powell appears at his happiest with the greatest writers: Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson. With Tennyson, who predates Powell almost exactly by a century, we see most clearly Powell’s template for criticism – the examination of the artist’s dates, public life, the achievement, the financial life, and the private life, the madness, depression and the sex. We are dealing with great creators with huge talents and appetites for life which usually means behaving badly. Another favourite is Hogarth who would have impressed Powell even if he hadn’t been a great artist because he began as an engraver, in silver, of coats of arms. John Potter and Ed Bock outside the Hogarth said that “drawing and painting Wallace Collection. Photo John Potter
11 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Life Follows Art? belonged to the Strict Baptists of Ammanford, believers in total by Patric Dickinson immersion at least once a day and, Last September, in his column in The indeed, whenever possible. But such Independent on Sunday, the political a subterfuge proved unnecessary. Out journalist Alan Watkins recalled an of respect for religion, I was provided occasion when he was staying in with a bath, though to get in and out Blackpool for a party conference: of it required the agility of an acrobat. I had booked into a modest Reading this made me wonder if other establishment and had asked for a Powell devotees had attempted to act out a room with a bath. As usual, there had Dance episode in real life. been a muddle about reservations ... I myself have never done so, although I On arrival, I was told that only a did once make disastrous use of a device shower was available. dreamt up by Evelyn Waugh in the pages “It’s a lovely room, love,” the woman of Brideshead Revisited. In a memorably behind the desk said optimistically. comic passage, Charles Ryder’s father mischievously pretends that an entirely “I’m afraid I have to have a bath,” I English friend of his son’s is in fact an said. “You see, it’s part of my American. He plies the bewildered young religion.” man with increasingly ludicrous questions. This was a straight lift by me from Attending a rather dull party in the early one of the wartime novels in Anthony 1980s, I decided to emulate Mr Ryder and Powell’s A Dance to the Music of on being introduced to a notably Time. It worked just as well in unprepossessing guest I proceeded to practice as in fiction. The woman subject him to the same treatment. “How consulted a younger man who was good of you to come all this way,” I evidently in a position of some insisted. “Did you travel by aeroplane or authority. I could hear her use the boat?” “You must be very puzzled by words “says it’s his religion”. If some of things we do here.” “Does the asked for further particulars, I had English climate suit you?” And so on. been prepared to swear that I The only problem was that he turned out to be a New Zealander, newly arrived from Auckland, and he therefore found me insufferably patronising instead of just plain mad. An awkward situation. I wonder if any members of the Society have followed Alan Watkins’s example and had better luck with lines from Dance?
Sue and Chris prepare for the arrival of conference delegates, watched over by Society mascot, Powell. Photo Christine Berberich
12 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Dance for Readers Radio producer and announcer) reading the quotations. By Noreen Marshall On 14 January Dr Christine Berberich led The Wallace Collection staged a number of session three on the war trilogy and events to accompany its outstandingly covered the contextual world history and successful Anthony Powell exhibition events of the period. This time much of Dancing to the Music of Time and asked the discussion turned on comparisons with the Society to collaborate in a series of other novels with a wartime setting, most free Saturday afternoon discussions: the notably Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour format was that of an impromptu reading trilogy. We also touched on why the books group. If they hosted the event, could we in this particular trilogy are among so provide a speaker for each one? many people’s favourites. Of course we could. First in the line of Finally on 21 January Dr Nicholas Birns fire, on 10 December, was Stephen Eggins, tackled the last trilogy and led an attempt talking about the first trilogy of Dance. at summing up the whole twelve books of Just before 2pm that afternoon people the sequence. Again there was much began to assemble in the Wallace discussion about particular characters with Collection’s Meeting Room, everyone Widmerpool (helped by Pamela) more or seemingly a little curious as to who would less stealing the show. Nick contrasted his be there and how the discussion would go. different reactions to reading Dance as a About thirty readers – some Society teenager and as a postgraduate student; we members but mainly new faces – made up touched on Pamela’s artistic standards; the audience, and Widmerpool was why Widmerpool and Pamela ever got definitely the character who fascinated the together in the first place; Temporary greatest number of them. Stephen gave a Kings as a spy novel (was Pamela personal overview of the trilogy with an implicated?) and the religious elements of excerpt from Simon Callow’s audio-tape Hearing Secret Harmonies. reading of A Question of Upbringing, and considered, among other things, early These sessions were really quite friendships and AP’s treatment of his something. Anyone who could have come, female characters; and Jeremy Warren but didn’t, missed four very varied talks discussed the paintings in the first trilogy. which were wide-ranging, witty and informative, and four extremely good and After Christmas Dr Peter Kislinger very enjoyable talkfests. The pace followed with the second trilogy. The first gathered as we went along from week to session having been so well attended the week, too, until the only thing bringing the event moved to the Wallace’s lecture final session to an end was the Wallace’s theatre to better accommodate the numbers need to close at the end of the afternoon. attending. Peter led us through a wide Otherwise, the participants gave every variety of ideas and references including impression of being happy to sit there the Japanese Haiku master Basho (1644- thinking and talking and arguing about 94), and AP’s critical style in comparison Powell and his work for the rest of the day. with that of many of his contemporaries in But then we’re used to that, after all. this field. Peter’s talk was enlivened by Piers Burton-Page (a long-time BBC We hope to publish the text of the four talks later in the year.
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Dates for Your Diary 2007 Conference The Fourth Biennial Anthony Powell 22 March to 24 May 2006 Conference is provisionally booked Anthony Powell Exhibition for the weekend of 8 & 9 September Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, 2007 at the University of Bath. New York, USA Further details from Bill Warren Bath is steeped in history, starting even ([email protected]). Please before the Roman Baths and has some check opening times with Grolier Club on of the UK’s best Georgian architecture. +1 212 838 6690 before travelling. There are good road and rail connections from most parts of the Friday 24 March 2006 UK, many excellent restaurants and Great Lakes USA Group Meeting hotels plus connections with Jane Venue: Red Lion Pub, Chicago, IL Austen. Bath is just 25 miles from Time: 1900 hrs Powell’s home at The Chantry. Details from Steve Pyskoty-Olle ([email protected]) However we urgently need someone to lead the organising team, Keith Sunday 26 March 2006 Marshall having had to stand down as Anthony Powell Exhibition project manager for medical reasons. Gallery Talk by Bill Warren Without a volunteer coming forward Grolier Club, New York, USA to lead the team in the next few Further details from Bill Warren weeks the conference will be ([email protected] cancelled. You do not need vast skills or +1 212 259 8000) to lead the team: a vision of how you Saturday 8 April 2006 would like the conference to be, ability East Coast USA Group Meeting to run a meeting, think through what Venue: Silvermine Tavern, Norwalk, CT has to be done, write to people and Time: 1230 hrs draft documents on a PC – most of us Details from Leatrice Fountain can do that! The documentation and ([email protected]) plans from previous conferences are available as are the previous team Saturday 22 April 2006 members, including the Hon, Secretary. St George’s Day London Group Pub If you can do this, and want a big buzz Meet from achieving the conference, please Details as for 13 May contact the Hon. Secretary urgently. Saturday 13 May 2006 London Group Pub Meet Saturday 12 August 2006 The Audley, Mount Street, London, W1 London Group Pub Meet 1230 to 1530 hrs Details as for 13 May Regular quarterly meeting. Good beer, good food, good company, good Saturday 28 October 2006 conversation in a Victorian pub AP would Anthony Powell Society AGM have known. Members & non-members 1400 hrs welcome; further details from Hon. Sec. Venue and programme to be confirmed
14 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
Christmas Quiz Answers Competition – Name the Journal
Opening Lines The Society’s Executive has agreed to 1. Decline and Fall; Evelyn Waugh launch an annual journal as well as this 2. The Glass Key; Dashiell Hammett 3. Brave New World; Aldous Huxley quarterly Newsletter (see page 17). The 4. Lost Horizon; James Hilton journal will contain articles, both 5. Tender is the Night; F Scott Fitzgerald academic and general, on Powell and 6. Gone With the Wind; Margaret Mitchell Powell-related subjects that are too long 7. The Big Sleep; Raymond Chandler or too heavy for the Newsletter. 8. Cry, the Beloved Country; Alan Paton 9. The Cruel Sea; Nicholas Monsarrat Members are invited to submit 10. Charlotte’s Web; EB White suggestions for the name of this journal. 11. The Quiet American; Graham Greene As usual the winner will receive a 12. Justine; Lawrence Durrell 13. To Kill a Mockingbird; Harper Lee year’s gold membership of the Society. 14. Travels With Charley; John Steinbeck Suggestions should reach the Hon. 15. A Moveable Feast; Ernest Hemingway Secretary by Easter Day (Sunday 16 16. Wide Sargasso Sea; Jean Rhys April) 2006. 17. Airport; Arthur Hailey 18. In A Free State; VS Naipaul 19. The Rachel Papers; Martin Amis General Knowledge: 20. The History Man; Malcolm Bradbury Britain of the 1920s & 1930s 21. Shame; Salman Rushdie 1. David Lloyd George 22. The Old Devils; Kingsley Amis 2. Launched Penguin Books 3. 1066 and All That Crossword 4. Queen Mary 5. William Walton’s Façade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A IR MA IL S A D RI AN 6. Mallard 9 L O D E F A R E 7. Barnard Letters, 1928 10 11 F IONA A LLEVIATE 8. AJ Ayer; 1936 9. Gold Standard R T L G O I T D 12 13 10. Broadcasting House E XCHEQUER D WELL 11. Sir Stanley Matthews D R I E E P E 12. Council of League of Nations 14 15 16 D OINGS S TEVE NS 13. TS Eliot, The Wasteland 17 S P T N X S 14. Abdication of King Edward VIII 18 19 20 15. Penicillin P OSTWAR C ANAPE 21 16. Christopher Isherwood; 1935 U A E O I L A 17. Wembley Stadium 22 23 24 R ID ER V ENUSBERG 18. David Hockney L R D E G T T E 19. Butlin’s first holiday camp 25 26 I NANIMATE O NION 20. Royal Christmas broadcast 21. (a) Fabric made by Courtaulds, (b) N G N L A N V T 27 28 underwear, (c) heat generating wadding, (d) G LOBER C LUELESS toothpaste, (e) constructional toy 22. Checkmate, music by Sir Arthur Bliss Conference Questionnaires 23. The Thirty-Nine Steps, starring Robert Thank you to everyone who returned their Donat & Madeleine Carroll conference questionnaire; your input will form a 24. Royal wedding dresses: (a) Princess Mary, vital part of planning future conferences. The (b) Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, (c) Wallis first respondent drawn from the Hon. Archivist’s Simpson old school straw boater was James Tucker, who 25. Field-Marshal Earl Haig wins a year’s gold membership of the Society. 26. Neville Chamberlain
15 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
Society Notices
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16 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
Strategy Review Update
As previously mentioned the Executive We have already agreed the Society’s Committee are undertaking a formal working mission should be essentially review of the Society’s strategy, what it always has been: “to increase directions etc. The work started last interest in Anthony Powell and to be a Autumn and is continuing. society of enthusiasts including academics and professional literarists.” Should we be a small niche literary society? Or should we aim to be a “big Work on the annual journal – not yet player”? Is the vision of us being “a officially named (see page 15) – is Society of enthusiasts including already underway. The intention is for academics and professional literarists” the journal to be about 100 pages and to the right one? contain articles, both academic and general, on Powell and Powell-related The purpose of the review is to answer subjects that are too long or heavy for the these questions and position us to Newsletter. Stephen Holden, Dr develop beyond Centenary year on a firm Christine Berberich and Dr Nicholas strategic and financial footing. This Birns have been appointed as the means a consolidated plan for the Editorial Board. It is hoped to launch the Society’s directions; overall strategy; journal this coming autumn. organisation; business, investment & funding plans; and a plan for The decision has been made to split the implementing all this. Hon. Secretary’s work into a number of smaller roles which can be taken on by The review involves the Society’s volunteers with just a few hours to give. Trustees (who have legal responsibility Through these roles you can make a real for the Society) and the non-Executive difference to the success of the Society. Officers. Two members, Stephen Eggins We need: Social Secretary, Membership and Elwin Taylor, have joined the Secretary, Merchandise Organiser, working group and the feedback obtained London Group Organiser, Conference in the conference feedback forms will Team Leader. These are all important also be valuable input. roles in the development of the Society We also need your views. How would which until now have been part of the you like the Society to develop? What Hon. Secretary’s excessively high do you believe the Society should be workload; however on their own most doing? Please send your thoughts and need not be arduous. ideas to the review by contacting any of Without more volunteers the Society is the officers or committee. going to stagnate and die. So if you can Three of the early results of the review do administrative things, have a few are agreement on the Society’s mission, a hours to give the Society and want to plan to launch an annual journal and make a real difference please contact the determination that the Hon. Secretary’s Chairman or Hon. Secretary. And if you workload should be split between a have views on how you would like to see greater number of people. the Society develop, please get in touch.
17 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 Puck of Pook’s Hill by Andrew Clarke In The Valley of Bones, Nick Jenkins is surprised to discover a copy of Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill among Captain Gwatkin’s personal possessions; a discovery which Nick suggests shows Gwatkin in quite a different light. In particular, Gwatkin admires the chapters “about the Roman Centurion”. I finally got around to reading these stories. The Roman Centurion, Parnesius, appears in three of the tales, “A Centurion of the Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936 Thirtieth”, “On the Great Wall” (ie. Hadrian’s Wall) and “The Winged Hats” (ie. the Vikings). Nick, rereading side of the Wall. Gwatkin is serving on the stories, feels that Kipling’s grasp of the borders of the Irish Republic among Roman military procedure is somewhat a population with hostile elements: his lacking, but to carp about this is to attempts at sororisation on the other misunderstand the nature of the literary hand, are rather less successful. imagination. 4. Parnesius and his companion are left to I’m not sure I really understand how much guard a border that is shrinking, and his light the Parnesius stories shed on Gwatkin commander – now calling himself – and what Gwatkin represents – but the Emperor – is too busy fighting abroad to following themes may provide a starting send any reinforcements. The British point: entered a European war with two divisions and grossly inadequate air 1. Parnesius is a Romanised Briton, and support. not a Roman. He finds the Roman officers rather overbearing. Gwatkin is 5. Parnesius’s most dangerous enemies, a lower middle class Welshman in the the Vikings, appear to be honourable in British Army. their dealings when it comes to the conduct of war. The Third Reich had 2. Parnesius remains committed to certain none. moral principals even when commanded to break them by higher authority. For 6. Parnesius’s loyalty to his commander is this he is given a “tough” posting on absolute and personal. Rather than Hadrian’s Wall. Gwatkin suffers from accept a change in regime, the centurion too much attention to principal (maybe) retires honourably and is given a and too little attention to practical detail. triumph in Rome. Gwatkin is summarily dismissed from his 3. Parnesius is very aware of serving on command, and packed off to the the border of Empire: in fact he Infantry Training Centre and eventually fraternises with the Picts on the other
18 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
a bank clerk’s job back home in the Borage & Hellebore Valleys and a house he must share with his mother-in-law. By Bobb Menk 7. Gwatkin later refers in particular to one The only title ever mentioned for one of of the associated poems, “A Song to Nick’s works in Dance, is Borage & Mithras” which follows “On The Great Hellebore for his work on Burton. Wall”. Mithraism, said to have been a However, if one watches closely in the popular cult among the Roman soldiery, final scene of the film version where Nick excluded women and demanded chastity is looking through Widmerpool’s things of its adherents. Nick at the time is while the voice over is reciting that great suffering agonies of sexual frustration: passage from Burton, you’ll see that the Gwatkin is about to romantically lose film has created the following oeuvre for his head over a barmaid. Nick and left it for our viewing pleasure in 8. Puck of Pook’s Hill is a children’s book Widmerpool’s rooms. that can be reread with interest by adults Judging from the styles on the book spines (cf. The Wind in the Willows or The as well as the relative condition of the Sword in the Stone). I can imagine its books we see, I’d say this list is in roughly giving comfort in time of war. a chronological order of publication. 9. The two children to whom Puck On Widmerpool’s bookshelf next to A presents his characters from a distant People’s History of Great Britain may be British past, live in what the Edwardians found: seemed to think was an idyllic period of childhood, before the rigours of public The Silent Summer school. The atmosphere is that of a Mornings in Wiltshire gentleman’s residence – the family Fellow Members: A Memoir employ a governess – in the Kentish Knowing the Right People countryside, probably very different to And then on Widmerpool’s desk at the top the more austere world of the Welsh of the pile of stuff are: Valleys. That too might have attracted the young Gwatkin, in the same sort of Paying the Rent: Collected Reviews way that (say) Swallows and Amazons Borage & Hellebore or The Big Six attracted myself. I kind of like Paying the Rent as an amusing side-comment on how Powell Haiku made a significant portion of his annual by James Tucker wage. No doubt the wittier amongst us can come up with other interpretations, Powell pronounced Pole: read other meanings into them, etc. I just an anglicisation job. found it an interesting detail to have been Rhys the Hoarse croaks “Shame!” included in the film.
19 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 AP + AT = Serendipity unconvincing psychology – indeed “downright dishonesty” – in treating by Derek Hawes individual relationships, and accuses the If the shade of Anthony Powell was author’s characters of thinking rather than looking down upon the centenary feeling. Well, really! Is this not Nick conference in December he might well Jenkins calling the kettle black? have frowned somewhat to realise that the The fact that many of those who feel audience for most plenary sessions passionately about Trollope also enter the contained a small but animated phalanx of internal world of Dance so readily members from the Trollope Society. suggests that there is in fact more than a little in common between the two authors. Making allowances for generational change do not they both create believable worlds in which, once we enter, we find it difficult ever to leave? Especially in the long series of Palliser novels where politics, finance, love and marriage are the backdrop to three generations of powerful families and are played out at length, there is more than a passing similarity to those who inhabit the Dance series. It is difficult to discern much “feeling” in Jenkins and is Lady Glencora really any more unconvincing than Jean Templar? Clearly there is an Eng. Lit. thesis to be written here and in the meantime I suggest that where AP meets AT there is pure serendipity.
Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882
Given Nick Jenkins’ rather dismissive comments on General Liddament’s enthusiasm for the 19th century author (The Soldier’s Art) – and the fact that in all Powell’s extensive reviews and commentary on English literature there is barely a mention of Trollope: one might suppose that Anthony Powell and Anthony Trollope were rather like oil and water. But why so? Jenkins complains, much to the General’s disbelief, that Trollope is not easy to read; citing “repetitive tricks of phrasing”, Anthony Powell with Trelawney
20 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
… Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings …
Widmerpool the Parrot Desert Island Discs You might be interested to know I On 16th October 1976 Anthony am by way of acquiring a baby male Powell was the guest on BBC Radio Solomon Islands Eclectus Parrot, Four’s Desert Island Discs. hatched last summer. His name is The eight recordings he chose were: Widmerpool, in honor of the greatest 1. If You were the Only Girl in the fictional character of all time. My World performed by Violet hope for him is to lead half as Loraine & George Robey eventful a life as his namesake. 2. Were I Laid on Greenland’s Coast Given that this year is Powell’s from John Gay’s The Beggar’s centennial, it seemed the best choice Opera of name for a new family member. 3. Verdi’s La donna è mobile from He’ll come home to me after hand- Rigoletto feeding is completed, sometime in 4. Strauss’s Tales from the Vienna November [2005]. Woods If you have suggestions for, as you 5. Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from put it, “Widmerpudlian” sayings I Prince Igor could (attempt to) teach the parrot, 6. Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande I’m all ears! But Widmerpool does 7. Milhaud’s La Création du Monde not seem to speak in cliches, 8. Debussy’s Iberia from Images for aphorisms or the like, does he? Orchestra No.2 Often what he says is surprising, in He chose as his luxury one bottle of fact, although always in character. red wine every day and for his book,
Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. Ben Silverman Orangevale, California Source: Desert Island Lists by Roy Plomley with Derek Drescher; Hutchinson; 1984. [With thanks to Robert Greenwood of Chatham, Kent]
Widmerpool (seen here at just 4 months old), a male Solomon Island Eclectus Parrot, is a stunning bright green with vivid blue primary feathers. (Females are flashy bright red and blue fashion victims.) Eclectus parrots make excellent pets, socialise well and are reputedly as good at talking as African Greys.
21 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
From the APLIST Recent Discussions on the Society’s Email Discussion Group
From Michael Henle Upbringing, of course, is a bit after the We know that Dance is full of references war. to works of visual art. These lie right at If we pursue this a bit more, then Stalky the surface of the work. I’ve always been corresponds to Peter Templer. Stalky dies convinced that Dance is likewise full of in the Great War as Peter dies in WWII. references to other narrative works but that these are not on the surface. The Stalky-Dance correspondence is not exact but the whole feeling created by the One such, about which Nick Birns has constellation of characters and their written extensively, is the evocation of situation creates for me a strong sense that Gatsby at the moment in The Acceptance the two works are definitely related. World when Nick and Jean fall into each other’s arms. –––––– Here is another “reference”. The first From James Doyle chapter of A Question of Upbringing I can see the echoes but I’m not sure I’m concerns the activities of three friends convinced. I think except for the very (Stringham, Peter and Nick) at boarding explicit versions (eg. the mock-Pepys, school. The climax of that chapter is the mock-Proust passages) this stops well afternoon when they are prowling around short of pastiche. the neighbourhood and have a series of Was it Sir Gavin Walpole Wilson, or M. encounters leading to the incident of Norpois who was always warning us Braddock alias Thorne. against “post hoc, propter hoc”? This whole chapter, but particularly that The Kipling/Stalky/Westward Ho! afternoon, is strongly reminiscent of Stalky experience differs in quite a few ways – & Co. by Kipling, an author that Powell the status of the school and its population, admired. Like the first chapter of A to begin with – from the Powell/Templer/ Question of Upbringing, Stalky & Co. Eton one. concerns the adventures at boarding school of three friends. Stalky is the leader; The similarity might be a case of the McTurk has a wealthy/aristocratic phenomenon that Col Powell (who background (Scottish, not English like disliked Kipling according to Powell) Stringham); Beetle is bookish (a stand-in observed. He said that Kipling did not for Kipling, as Nick is a stand-in for give a very accurate picture of the regular Powell). Quite a few of their adventures army, but that after Kipling, the army take place outdoors in the neighbourhood began to take on Kipling-esque aspects. of the school where they smoke and Perhaps the same was true of boys’ conduct other activities of which their schools? masters might disapprove. The period is just before WWI, where as A Question of
22 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
From Julian Allason From James Doyle Ingenious posting of Michael Henle’s, There’s also a school of thought that if spotting the Stalky & Co. reference. When Lawrence was a Stalky, Kim Philby was a published it attracted Maugham’s rebuke, kind of ghastly anti-Stalky. Antithetical to “a more odious picture of school life can the original, but at the same time not easy seldom have been drawn”. to conceive of Philby’s inner world if Stalky enjoyed considerable adventures on Stalky, Kim (and St J Philby) hadn’t come the North-West Frontier. As to his having first. Philby’s father could give fallen in the Great War I have my doubts. Lawrence a run for his money. Malcolm He was based on LC Dunsterville who as a Muggeridge is very interesting on Philby. major-general in 1919 was commanding a –––––– small British force in the Caucasus. He From Julian Allason lived to co-found the Kipling Society in My doubts that Kipling’s Stalky might 1927. have perished in the Great War as “too old Kipling was at United Services College, and too senior” appear to have been Westward Ho! from 1877 to 1882 and misplaced. Lady Violet’s father, a internal evidence supports the dating of the brigadier, turns out to have fallen at stories to that window. So Stalky, his Gallipoli, leading his men in a suicidal contemporary, would have been about fifty charge up Scimitar Hill. at the outbreak of WW1, a bit old and a bit –––––– senior to have got himself killed, though perhaps not impossible given his lust for From James Doyle action. (Flashman certainly seems to have I’ve been thinking about Stalky & Co. as got into military and political mischief part of Widmerpool’s back-story. He must well into middle age). However I don’t have read it; everyone read it. Was that recall any reference to his death in the text what he expected to find at Eton? Did he and the postscript does not seem to suggest hope to be a member of a Stalky-esque, it. Or have I missed something? triumvirate and end up confronting Stringham/Templar/Jenkins? In the introduction to the 1987 World Classics edition Isabel Quigly suggests that TE Lawrence was the last full scale Stalky.
United Service College, Westward Ho! on which Kipling based the Coll in Stalky & Co.
23 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
Letters to the Editor
Centenary Newsletter 5. I do not approve of the Widmerpool Award, but, constructively, to take it From Tom Miller seriously, I agree with John Gilks (page Issue 21 of the Newsletter gave a most 110) and Nick Hay (page 115) that the interesting compendium of material about late Sir Edward Heath would not have Anthony Powell, and I should like to been a worthy winner. I can add that Sir address a few minor points: Edward did appear in a fictional guise – 1. Keith Marshall reports (page 19) that as the awful Sir Roy Vandervane in the London group on 11 October Kingsley Amis’s Girl, 20, as Kingsley debated inter alia films of The Thirty- once explained to me in private. I made Nine Steps. I venture to suggest that the this point in a note published in The farcical Bob Hope picture, My Times (22 July). Julian Allason Favourite Blonde, is also based on the implicitly condemns (page 89) white John Buchan novel! (American dinner jackets, and it pains me to say Powellians may recall that President that once or twice I saw Sir Edward Kennedy’s favourite reading was wearing one! Buchan’s autobiography, Pilgrim’s –––––– Way.) Manured 2. Rick Marin situates, probably rightly (page 34), Afternoon Men somewhere From Michael Henle between Ernest Hemingway and I’m afraid I must take issue with the Kingsley Amis, but I think that the authors of the piece “Manure” that appears influence of Aldous Huxley on the novel in the otherwise admirable Centenary issue is large. of the Society’s Newsletter. Let me say first, however, that I was completely 3. I had the experience of hearing DN delighted by the Newsletter. Stephen Pritt, mentioned by Keith Marshall and Holden is to be congratulated for Julian Allison (page 41), talking to an collecting an outstanding series of articles. undergraduate group at Oxford, and identifying him as the meeting went on Now to “Manure”. If the first author had as a horrible paranoiac. only consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, he would have discovered that 4. Paul Willetts refers (page 101) to the the terms, “liquid manure” and “artificial “dodgy publisher, LS Caton, later manure”, have both been in use in the UK lampooned in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky since the mid-nineteenth century. The first Jim…” Actually the real-life is “a water extract of manure used as a publisher’s initials were RA, but Amis fertilizer” while the second is “a chemical rechristened him “Lazy Sod” and put fertilizer”. Thus the first is produced from him into several novels, finishing him animal waste, the second by a chemical off in The Anti-Death League. Amis process. In other words, these terms are explained the facts in a letter to Frank not synonymous, as the first author would Barnshaw (6 October 1968), published have us believe. in the Letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader.
24 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22 It is therefore almost certain that Jenkins When I pointed this out to Stephen Holden (perhaps even Powell himself!) has he huffily commented, “they got the confused them. It is much more likely that caption wrong, as I was engaged in ‘Hat it is Jenkins who has got it wrong than Jousting’, a completely different sport Eleanor Walpole-Wilson, who is portrayed altogether ...” in Dance as knowledgeable about country I think my head hurts. life. –––––– Which of the two fertilizers Widmerpool’s father manufactured and distributed we The Italian Connection will never know. Nick quotes Eleanor From John Powell using the term “liquid manure” but In the discussion pages of the AP Society transmutes this to “artificial manure” on monograph Writing about Anthony Powell the next page (in A Buyer’s Market). Since on page 36 in answering a question about he is inconsistent, it is as likely that whether AP was involved in intelligence in Eleanor said the one as the other. World War II Michael Barber replies that The second author stoutly maintains that as a Cabinet Secretary AP “would there is no indication in Dance that undoubtedly have been privy to top secret Widmerpool’s father “sold liquid or intelligence etc.” artificial manure or owned a firm that In the brief period that AP was at the manufactured the substance”. What part Cabinet Office, about 9 weeks from April of “Uncle George used to get his liquid 1943, the only top secret of which he was manure from Mr Widmerpool’s father” aware were plans for an invasion of Italy does he not understand? Certainly the which started in June 1943. He said many most likely interpretation of Eleanor’s years later in the 1990s that he was statement is that Widmerpool’s father did relieved when the invasion began for real, indeed sell one or another of these days (or weeks) after he had left the substances. Cabinet Office. [Liquid manure may also be produced from the foliage of some plants, especially Comfrey and Stinging Nettles, although this is generally only done by gardeners – Ed] –––––– Hat Tricks From Keith Marshall In the December edition of The Spectator there was a four-page advertising pamphlet for Hendrick’s Gin. On page 2 this curiosity had a piece on “The Chap & Hendricks Olympics 2005” which NE USA Group members with the Pye bust of Powell outside the Wallace Collection exhibition. contained a photograph of our illustrious L to R: Joan Williams, Jonathan Kooperstein, Newsletter Editor solemnly engaged in Eileen Kaufmann, Leatrice Fountain, Nick Birns, ‘Hat Wrestling’. Jeanne Reed, Ed Bock. Photo Jeanne Reed
25 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #22
Society Merchandise
Centenary Newsletter The bumper 120-page celebratory Powell Audio Tapes of Dance Centenary Newsletter (issue 21; December Copies of the following audio tapes of 2005). Simon Callow reading (abridged) volumes Price: £5 (post free to all members) of Dance: · A Question of Upbringing · The Kindly Ones SPECIAL CENTENARY OFFER · The Valley of Bones Buy both the Eton and Oxford · The Soldier’s Art Proceedings for just £15 (post free) Price: £2.50 each (postage rate C)
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