The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter

Issue 62, Spring 2016, ISSN 1743-0976, £3

York Conference, 8-10 April – there’s still time to book

Conference venue: King’s Manor, York

Contents Editorials ...... 2 Brideshead & Castle Howard ...... 3-5 Conference Update ...... 6 Marxists: Erridge ...... 7-9 Stringham & Robert Byron ...... 10-13 Literature & Life, a Riposte ...... 14-15 Polly Duport Diary Award ...... 16-17 My First Time ...... 18-19 Dates for Your Diary ...... 20-21 Society News & Notices ...... 22-23 Local Group News ...... 24-27 Reviews: The Prose Factory ...... 28-31 Uncle Giles’ Corner ...... 32 Letters to the Editor ...... 33-34 Cuttings etc...... 35-37 Christmas Quiz Answers ...... 38 Merchandise & Membership ...... 39-40 Pay your subscription annually? Now’s the time! Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

A Letter from the Editor From the Secretary’s Desk The first Big News is the This is a year of York Conference in April celebrations. It has crept 2016. John Roe who is up on us and caught us masterminding it unawares. The provides an up-do-date conference, of course, summary. Part of the pays homage not just to programme is a visit to AP and also William Castle Howard. Jeff Shakespeare who died Manley provides a 400 years ago on 23 fascinating consideration April. There are other of the use that Waugh and AP anniversaries too: at AP made of stately homes and other the New Year Brunch we buildings in their novels. celebrated the 65th anniversary of A The second Big News is that your Secretary Question of Upbringing, and thus the start of can now add an O to his AP designation. Dance, with glasses of champagne thanks to See the write up of the New Year Brunch. an anonymous sponsor. We should also note that The Soldier’s Art is 50 in September – Amidst the champagne and laughter a new which coincides nicely with our planned day member made a valuable point. He out in Oxford – and AP’s first novel, submitted that abbreviations for the titles of Afternoon Men, is 85 in June ... and more. AP’s works such as VB or HSH are Casting the literary net wider, it is 50 years confusing. From now, in all pieces, the full since the death of Powell’s friend Evelyn title will be set out the first time that a Waugh in April 1966 – making the volume is mentioned. After that the conference visit to Castle Howard all the customary abbreviations will be used. more appropriate. As for the Society, our th New members continue to join and Patron, John Powell, celebrated his 70 gratifyingly also contribute to this birthday, coincidentally on the same day (as Newsletter. We have contributions from Stephen alludes) I became a state-registered Steve Hoare and Geoff Eagland. Thanks! geriatric. I feel a certain privilege to be in such august company. We are experimenting by providing two reviews, from different contributors, of the Talking of the conference, there has been same book. This is DJ Taylor’s The Prose some discussion recently about whether we Factory about the literary life. He refers to should continue to vary the conference AP and his writings. Jeff Manley provides a venue, or whether a permanent, static home useful commentary on Taylor’s use of AP’s should be sought. Although a static venue works. Michael Barber, AP’s biographer, would likely be in/near London, it is unlikely draws attention to Taylor’s omission of Ian to be either Eton or the Wallace Collection. Fleming. Of course, there are pros and cons on both sides. But what do you think? Should we This raises the fascinating “spectre” of what try to take the conference to different places a James Bond book by AP would have been or should we look for a settled home? like. After all several well-regarded English Please let me know what you would prefer. novelists such as William Boyd, Sebastian Faulks and Kingsley Amis have all written a Meanwhile I look forward to seeing many of Bond book. Suggestions for titles and you in York. characters please. Keith Marshall Stephen Walker, [email protected] [email protected]

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Brideshead and Castle Howard Revisited By Jeffrey Manley

In the public mind Castle Howard is Waugh builds up a picture of Brideshead. Brideshead Castle. This is due more to its The house is described as “baroque” by choice as a setting in two popular film Charles Ryder who later seems to assume adaptations [Granada TV, 1981; Miramax, Inigo Jones designed it. Sebastian says it 2008] than to what Waugh wrote. This was built in the time of Inigo Jones. article compares Waugh’s descriptions of Several features of the house are repeated: Brideshead Castle to Castle Howard, the dome, the columns and colonnades, the reviews the filmmakers’ process in prominent fountain and the terraced lakes. selecting it as the setting for the story, and Beyond the fountain and lakes, there is a examines how they influenced each other. temple and an obelisk. It is called a AP expressed his opinion in his Journals “castle” because the original house on the on Brideshead Revisited and its 1981 TV estate was a castle that was torn down and adaptation but he did not consider how far the materials used to construct the newer Waugh intended Castle Howard to be the house. Finally it has a chapel built as a model for Brideshead Castle. AP also wedding present from Lord Marchmain to engaged in similar fictional country house his wife. Sebastian describes it as in the “constructions” in Dance. For example, in style of “art nouveau” and rather dated. It the cases of Castlemallock, Dogdene, is set in a valley and approached by a long Thrubworth Park and Stourhead Castle, AP road, appearing in the distance at a turning. gives details of the houses similar to those Many of these features can be attributed to offered by Waugh for Brideshead Castle Castle Howard, but they are not unique to that offer hints as to their sources or it. So how strong is the case for Castle inspirations. Howard being the model for Brideshead? Critics have noted the similarities between 1. Castle Howard was built in 1699, after Castle Howard and Brideshead Castle. the time of Inigo Jones (1572-1653), This goes back before the Granada and designed by Vanbrugh and broadcast to Christopher Sykes’ 1975 Hawksmoor. biography of Waugh: 2. The most obvious and noticeable The original of Brideshead can exterior features of Castle Howard are doubtfully be traced to many great its baroque style and dome. houses which Evelyn knew, but I Waugh dwells on the dome, situating fancy that a strong contribution was Nanny Hawkins’ room within it. In made by Castle Howard. later editions he described the dome as Harold Acton wrote in 1982, without false, designed to be seen from giving any source, below like the cupolas of Chambord. It was a pleasure to learn that Castle Its drum was merely an additional Howard, in Yorkshire, has been story full of segmental rooms. chosen to be Brideshead on This additional information seems television. It was the author’s inapplicable to the drum, or lantern as it prototype. is called at Castle Howard, which is

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below the cupola and empty except for The Madresfield chapel was an Arts and windows to light the space below. Crafts design but less Victorian and more 3. There are no prominent colonnades and Renaissance revival. This is especially flanking pavilions. The only exterior true of the frescoes that brighten and colonnade at Castle Howard is in one colour the walls. They may not qualify as corner of the central courtyard in the “art nouveau” but are closer to that style north facade. It is not one of the first than the darkly Victorian Castle Howard things that you notice. chapel. The chapel at Madresfield was also constructed as a wedding present (but 4. Castle Howard’s fountain is large and from wife to husband). prominently situated opposite the south façade above the lakes, as in the book, Brideshead Castle’s location is another but is not the sort Waugh had imagined. problem. In the novel, it is a few hours In the novel, it was brought over from west of Oxford, in Wiltshire. Charles and Italy piece-by-piece and reassembled at Sebastian could drive there and back from Brideshead. It is therefore Italian, rather Oxford in one day with ample time for a than Italianate or Victorian. The Atlas visit. Castle Howard is in the North Fountain at Castle Howard was Riding of Yorkshire, probably a similar constructed in the 19th century and first distance from York as Brideshead was assembled in London for the 1851 Great from Oxford. Again, Brideshead seems Exhibition. Afterwards it was moved, more Madresfield than Castle Howard. piece-by-piece, to Castle Howard where Waugh took care in the novel not to create it was reassembled. It is large and too many allusions to Madresfield as he prominent but lacks the charm of the wished to preserve deniability about the novel’s Italian baroque reconstruction. identification of the Flytes and the Lygons, As with the chapel, it is more Victorian who lived at Madresfield and with whom than baroque. There is also a temple he was still on friendly terms – at least and an obelisk at Castle Howard. with Mary and Dorothy. So, Castle Howard’s outward appearance He succeeded, as Dorothy Lygon having is similar to Waugh’s description of considered the physical description of Brideshead Castle, but not a dead ringer. Brideshead Castle concluded: The real problem is the chapel. This is There is no resemblance between the similar to that in the book being built at a landscape and architecture of later period within the house, rather than Brideshead – set in a stone-wall as a separate structure. Pevsner says that country – and Madresfield, except for Castle Howard chapel’s decor is “High one detail – the art-nouveau Victorian”, not art nouveau, as Sebastian decoration of the chapel. claimed. There are Burne-Jones windows Madresfield is a moated house of red and wall paintings of Pre-Raphaelite brick, of mainly Victorian design but with classical surrounds to fit in architecture superimposed on an with the “giant Corinthian columns”. earlier base, while Brideshead is an Waugh’s description of the chapel is epitome in stone of the Palladian obviously Madresfield House in style he loved so much. Worcestershire, not Castle Howard. When Waugh wrote Brideshead he had little personal association with Castle

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Howard or the Howard family. In his The decision to use Castle Howard as the Diaries he records his visit in 1937. But setting for Brideshead Castle in the this seems to have been made as a tourist, Granada film was made by producer Derek not as a guest, as he was at Madresfield or Granger and director Michael Lindsay- Renishaw, home of the Sitwells. There is Hogg. They describe an extensive tour of no record of Waugh signing the Castle baroque style country houses. Castle Howard guest book before writing Howard was their last stop. Both agreed Brideshead. The Hon. Simon Howard without hesitation that it was the best recalls: “My father never met him but at choice. Granger says that he consulted some stage he came over to look at the James Lees-Milne in connection with the house”. Waugh was personally familiar selection of Castle Howard who, with the outward appearance of Castle confirmed, that they “couldn’t do better Howard but lacked the intimate knowledge than that”. he would have had as a guest. The Miramax filmmakers went through a As so often when trying to find the source similar process when choosing a setting. of a novel’s character or setting, the The director, Julian Jarrold, started out answer is that the writer made it up and opposed to filming at Castle Howard, may have, in doing so, borrowed from preferring a new identity for their several sources as well as his own production at another site. But he imagination. But Waugh may have concluded after looking at other houses realized that the importance he accorded that there were so many correct things the baroque style of Brideshead Castle as about Castle Howard. well as the significant features of its Neither film crew felt that Waugh’s prominent dome and fountain tend to descriptions of Brideshead Castle dictated remind one more of Castle Howard than their choice of Castle Howard or that he other possibilities. None of the houses specifically intended it as a model. illustrated in James Lees-Milne’s English Waugh’s descriptions in the novel were Country Houses: Baroque 1685-1715 just one of the selection criteria. (1970) has a dome on the main house. Whether Waugh had these features of In conclusion, one cannot say, Castle Howard in mind when he described conclusively, that Waugh used Castle the structure is hard to say. Nothing in Howard as the model for Brideshead Waugh’s writings suggests that he had that Castle. He constructed his house in the particular building in mind. novel from various elements, just as he, like AP, frequently constructed his Whatever Waugh intended when characters from acquaintances. Anyone describing Brideshead Castle, the choice comparing Castle Howard to other of Castle Howard as the setting in both baroque residences in England would film versions has left an unshakeable agree that it comes closest to Waugh’s public perception of it as the model for description in the novel. But it would be a Brideshead. Given that this decision was mistake to refer to it as the model (or even not dictated by Waugh’s writings, how did a model) that Waugh intended to follow in the filmmakers reach it? Much material is writing his description. available including commentaries on video and DVD versions and several TV and It is intended to include a longer, referenced, version of this paper in the proceedings of the radio interviews with actors and crew. York Conference 2016. ■ 5 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

YORK CONFERENCE UPDATE Anthony Powell: Shakespeare and Other literary Influences By Prof. John Roe

Spring will shortly be approaching and the will look at the macabre influence of the date for the Anthony Powell conference (8 Marquis de Sade (with an eye on Sir to 10 April) draws ever nearer. The Magnus Donners?). conference, as you know, will be held this A glance at the programme will show a year in the glorious mediaeval city of host of speakers on various themes, York. Scaffolding has recently and certainly including Shakespeare. Brevity opportunely come down from the East unfortunately prevents us from mentioning Front of the Minster, revealing its beautiful papers in detail, but it is a rich and varied restored stonework. The King’s Manor, a assembly. lovely medieval building, which will house the conference, is a short step away There will be a Proust panel. We will from the Minster, as you pass through the finish on a light-hearted note and invite ancient Bootham Bar, one of the city’s four delegates to suggest passages (eg. main mediaeval gates. humorous character sketches) they may wish to read. A selection from proposals The conference itself is in its final shape will be made beforehand. Suggestions to and the provisional programme is on the the Hon. Secretary, please. website. Then on the Sunday morning delegates We have four keynote speakers: Prof. John will have the opportunity to visit Castle Bowen will look at Powell’s ambivalent Howard (pictured below). relation with his Victorian antecedents, Dr Kate Bennett will reassess his attitude And if we are lucky the daffodils will still towards John Aubrey, Dr Nick Birns will be in bloom on the City walls. show how friendship, literary and other, is Waiverers should hesitate no longer! ■ a major influence, and Prof. Didier Girard

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COMPARE THE MARXISTS 4: Powell’s Imagination: the Erridge Case By Michael Sheridan ’Tis strange but true; the rudest manservant in the universe. for truth is always strange; Powell also tells us that Stranger than fiction; • Erridge was a man of the Left who If it could be told, dabbled in various causes How much novels would • he had spent a period living as a tramp gain by the exchange’ and his appearance and mode of dress, [Byron, Don Juan] even at Thrubworth, was down-at-heel There is quite a little cottage industry of • he became the brother-in-law of books which explore ‘Who Was Who in Nicholas Jenkins Fiction’ or similar diversions. Naturally, • he died at an early age. unless the novelists are prepared to let us Powell was highly skilled at creating into their confidences, this is all mere misfits in his fiction. This probably meant speculation. The author whose work that his real-life acquaintances dreaded inspired this Society would, without doubt, being identified with such characters, even have dismissed attempts to uncover the speculatively. In the case of Erridge, two real-life identities of characters in his names constantly crop up as being models. fiction with a brusque retort of “the writer They are Frank Pakenham (Lord of fiction is imaginative not a newspaper Longford) and George Orwell. Both, not reporter” or something along those lines. surprisingly, are now deceased. Despite all this, some people are just foolhardy and will persist in looking into Francis Aungier Pakenham (below) was such topics. born in 1905. A Tory early in his life by the late 1920s he had become a Socialist. The possible real-life identity of Kenneth Pakenham was also a committed Christian Widmerpool has been exhaustively probed who in the early 1940s converted to the and one fears a serious overload of Papal Catholic Church where he remained until buns. Well known to Widmerpool was the man first introduced to readers of the Dance sequence at the Huntercombes’ Ball in the late 1920s. But it is only when Nicholas Jenkins encounters him at Thrubworth Park in the mid-1930s that his extraordinary personality is revealed in detail and Erridge (or ‘Erry’) first grips the reader’s attention. Erridge is an aristocrat (the Earl of Warminster) but a most idiosyncratic one. He seems uncomfortable in the role given to him in life and is content, apparently, to live in a tiny portion of Thrubworth waited upon by

7 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 his death. The future Lord Longford held ministerial posts in the Attlee Government of 1945-51 and the Wilson Government of 1964-1970. One cannot imagine Erridge following a similar path. Pakenham was a highly vocal advocate for penal reform who, in later years, became something of a hate figure in some sections of the media by campaigning for the release from prison of Myra Hindley, one of the Moors Murderers. A man of great contradictions, he campaigned for the decriminalisation of was socially aware but there is no evidence homosexuality whilst, later, supporting the that, until near the end of his life, he Conservative Government’s controversial dabbled in religion. Erridge died in 1946 and notorious ‘Section 28’, which forbade but Pakenham went on to lead a long life the ‘propagation’ of homosexuality by (and, in fact, he slightly out-lived Powell). teachers in schools. He was also a fierce Erridge spent some time living as ‘a opponent of pornography and worked tramp’ and he risked his life in Spain closely with Mary Whitehouse. He died in during the Civil War. Pakenham did 2001. neither of those things. It’s interesting that Eric Arthur Blair was born in 1903 in Pakenham did, it is alleged, say to Powell India. After a period as a police officer in that he thought Erridge was based on him Burma, he came to live in England. Here but, as he had previously claimed he adopted the pen name ‘George Orwell’ (improbably) that Powell had based and wrote prodigiously across a wide Widmerpool on him, Powell was probably range of genres: fiction, documentary justified in retorting “Oh, come on Frank reportage, polemic and culture. A you can’t be all the characters, you Socialist, he was fiercely opposed to the know!” Kremlin regime under Stalin which he Is Orwell (above) a better fit? He was not searingly depicted in parable form in an aristocrat, nor was he rich. But he was Animal Farm. A working journalist, his a non-Stalinist Socialist (Erridge was employers included the BBC and The never a Communist Party member). As Observer newspaper. He died from with Erridge he went to Spain during the tuberculosis in 1950 at, more or less, the Civil War where he was shot through the age Erridge must have been when he died. throat. He mixed freely with a wide range Erridge, plainly, has similarities to both of left-of-centre characters, so did Erridge. Pakenham and Orwell. So how well did Powell makes play of Erridge’s Powell know the two men? The answer is appearance and clothing ‘a tweed jacket extremely well although neither was as and corduroy trousers’. As does Powell’s close to Powell as, say, Adrian Daintry or reference to Erridge’s hair ‘long on the top Constant Lambert. Pakenham was an of his head, but given a military crop aristocrat and, like Erridge with Jenkins, around the sides’. Orwell, however, became Powell’s brother-in-law. favoured a neatly cut moustache, whereas Pakenham was a Christian Socialist with a Erridge had ‘a straggling beard’. All in all raging social conscience. Erridge certainly Erridge sounds something of a visual mess

8 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 but Orwell (whilst Powell may have other novels, is clearly set in distinct times thought he was unconventionally dressed) and places. The echoes from Powell’s usually wore a shirt and tie and a own life are unmistakeable. Dance is, in handkerchief carefully positioned and essence, a chronicle of a large part of the folded in his jacket lapel pocket. Then twentieth century seen through the eyes Powell did comment somewhat and ears of a man whose own experiences dismissively that Orwell had assumed a are remarkably similar to those of Powell. distinctly non-Etonian accent. He is a ‘realistic’ writer not a creator of The passing reference to Erridge having fantasy in the mode of Terry Pratchett or been ‘a tramp’, and wandering around the China Miéville. Everything we know countryside, has no relevance to Frank about Anthony Powell suggests that he Pakenham’s life. But, of course, Orwell was a man who listened and observed and could certainly rough it and produced two (fortunately for us) was able to memorable books to attest to this, Down communicate this in words on paper. Dip and Out in Paris and London and The into a page from any of his four volumes Road to Wigan Pier. of memoirs and immediately one is transported to another place and The Earl of Warminster was a devotee of introduced to people one didn’t know but the children’s publications Boy’s Own now feels one did. Perhaps that is why the Paper and Chums well into his adult Channel 4 adaptation of Dance was such a years. Orwell certainly devoured comics huge success and made many more Powell but not always with such rapt admiration enthusiasts. as Erridge. In a famous essay, “Boy’s Weeklies”, Orwell castigated Frank Any writer is obliged to draw on their own Richards (creator of Billy Bunter) for experiences. What else can we know with churning out formulaic prose and such intimacy? Anthony Powell was stereotypical characters. Nevertheless it is fortunate to have encountered so many telling that both men were still reading outstanding, memorable and, often, highly comics in their mature years. flawed personalities. As for the characters in his books, yes, they reflect such people. Erridge as a political animal was, Powell was well aware of this and made evidently, much swayed in his opinions by the observation that he assumed that others, whether it be Quiggin, St John George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Clarke or Lindsay Bagshaw. Orwell, in Flying was autobiographical as it depicted contrast, was something of a loose cannon an impecunious bookseller (Orwell had who fell out with a succession of fellow worked in a bookshop and was often short left-wingers whether it was the (then) of money). Pakenham and Orwell were fellow-travelling publisher, Victor both similar to Erridge. Gollancz, or later with the Labour-left weekly Tribune, for whom he had been But here is a wonderful thought. Suppose working. In religious matters, Orwell was the three of them could have met, say in virulently anti-Catholic Church but Powell the saloon bar of The Hero of Acre. Then makes no reference to Erridge having such suppose Powell had been at an adjoining views. table, with notebook and pen poised. What a magical chapter he could have What can we conclude? Firstly, Anthony made of that! ■ Powell’s fiction, whether Dance or his

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Charles Stringham : The Robert Byron Connection By Stephen Hoare

Readers looking to match actual events early member along with Yorke. Indeed, and characters with Powell’s re-imagined Powell and Byron’s artistic leanings, social world of Dance to the Music of Time will links and academic interests – both went discover a treasure trove of source material up to Oxford the same year to study and references in the works of the history – should have been the basis for celebrated travel writer and old Etonian, friendship. It was not. James Knox in his Robert Byron (pictured below). 2003 biography of Byron states: “Robert Letters Home, an anthology of Byron’s … had always found him [AP] ‘rather correspondence with his mother from his boring’”. arrival at Eton in 1919 to his premature This should come as no surprise. Powell, death in 1941, edited by his sister Lucy diffident, socially awkward, remained a Butler (John Murray, 1991) describes in detached observer. A natural extrovert, some detail the relationships Byron formed precocious talent, and a dandy, Byron was at Eton and Oxford. Byron is a prolific destined to be at the centre of a youthful letter writer, his prose is both amusing and aristocratic and intellectual network better packed with the kind of detail and known as the “Bright Young Things”. immediacy that contrasts to the restrained Moving effortlessly in top circles, assisted comedy of Dance. by his family’s connections with the Born in 1904, and a contemporary of Mitfords, Sitwells and Guinesses, Byron Powell, Byron was a boarder in AL assumed an aristocratic almost foppish Robeson’s Penn House, seemingly a manner and was more than usually magnet for misfits unable to find secure rebellious. berth in one of the more prestigious Eton Byron’s wayward associates provided houses. Powell with the colourful cast of A close associate of Harold Acton and characters surrounding the anodyne Nick Henry Yorke, Byron founded the Eton Jenkins in le Bas house. Powell Society of Arts of which Powell was an acknowledges that the character of Peter Templer is based on one of Byron’s housemates, John Spencer the handsome womanising son of a Surrey stockbroker. Spencer’s good looks and escapades with local girls and London prostitutes provided the perfect template for a fictionalised Templer. It has to be borne in mind that this post-war intake of Etonians were in their mid-teens and entered Eton on the brink of manhood. So who is the model for Charles Stringham? He is clearly a composite of many individuals Powell would have observed at school and university. A

10 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 complex, almost contradictory character, under glass domes. He was a mainstay of Stringham’s chameleon-like attitudes and the Hypocrites Club, a louche behaviours are more plot-driven than most. undergraduate drinking den based in a set He has a keen aesthetic appreciation (the of rooms above a bicycle shop in St Modigliani drawing), he is a fastidious Aldate’s. Powell, Alfred Duggan and dresser, he has a serious problem with another AL Robeson boarder David Talbot alcohol, he is possessed of an ironic sense Rice were members. of humour, and he is a practical joker who Letters Home reveals the youthful Byron at directs his barbs against pretentious Oxford University as a putative Stringham dullards like le Bas and also aspiring petty via a series of scrapes that would have bourgeois, like Widmerpool, whose lack of surely caused readers of Dance to gasp in dress sense he is continually lampooning. disbelief! Byron kept company with a One original for Stringham has to be racy set of aristocratic young bloods more Byron’s close friend and fellow Penn intent on hard drinking and reckless House boarder Cecil Clonmore the heir to dissipation and with substantial trust funds the Earl of Wicklow – a “Hon” and a at their disposal. rebel! A practical joker, Cecil printed an Since all Powell characters are composites advertisement for a maidservant under the based on observations of a range of name of Olive Messel thereby involving individuals, I believe there is a strong case his friend Oliver Messel in the prank. The to be made for Alfred Duggan with dashes advertisement was answered by the mother of Byron himself being the inspiration for of one of the pupils and the hilariously Stringham. subversive correspondence went too far, was eventually discovered and almost led Byron himself though launched on a to both pupils being expelled. Charles journalistic career via the editorship of Stringham’s escapade in tipping off to the Cherwell, having scraped a third (like AP). local constabulary who arrested house His Stringham-like exploits included master le Bas as a wanted criminal in a “stealing” the Foreign Secretary (Arthur case of mistaken identity is typical of some Ponsonby’s) car and using it to drive of Clonmore’s best hoaxes. Ponsonby’s son and a party of friends back to Balliol after a drunken rout. The police Then there is Byron himself whose gave chase and Byron took the blame as he aristocratic and dandified mannerisms are was the only one of the party with a valid pure Charles Stringham. Byron, like driving licence. The episode resulted in Stringham, died an untimely death when in the lenient punishment of being “gated” by 1941 the ship he was travelling in to Egypt his college for the remainder of the term was torpedoed and sunk by enemy action. and set the seal on Byron’s notoriety and Byron’s career at Oxford where he went up popularity. He endeared himself still less to Merton College at the same time as with his college when he invited his fellow Powell was entering Balliol is worthy of students to bring a bottle and visit him in closer examination. At Oxford, Byron his rooms. The invitation read: soon gathered a group of friends by Mr Robert Byron staging an unsuccessful Victorian Revival At Home exhibition based on his impressive Eight o’clock to midnight collection of shell-work and wax fruit For the remainder of the Term.

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On leaving university with a third class Their insouciant refusal to abide by school degree, Byron embarked on a career as a rules put them at odds with their masters at freelance journalist, art critic – he was an Eton. Visiting Soho nightclubs in the early champion of Byzantine art (together company of older brother Alfred who had with David Talbot Rice) – and a travel been expelled from Eton a couple of years writer whose books The Station and the earlier (an episode alluded to by AP in Road to Oxiana, with their colourful and Dance) Hubert adopted a similar hard culturally intuitive approach and sheer drinking lifestyle. But it was Hubert’s verve, laid the foundations for the modern delicate constitution that led his mother to genre, inspiring but far excelling authors hire a nurse to remove him from Eton and such as Patrick Leigh Fermor. Byron accompany him to a London hospital, an noted in a letter to his mother dated 24 incident which occurred on Eton’s annual January 1929, 4 June holiday, causing Hubert to miss a Evelyn Waugh [another close friend family celebration – a five course form Oxford days] referred to me in luncheon with champagne served by the Evening Standard as one of the liveried footmen at the White Hart at Eton. five writers embodying the spirit of This may have been the occasion when he my generation. was diagnosed with appendicitis. But such ambition does not sound at all Byron records the incident in his Letters like the foppish world weary Stringham. Home and AP would have recalled the Byron’s easy manners masked a highly nurse and the fuss made over Hubert talented and ambitious writer keen to make Duggan, perhaps using the incident as the his mark on the world. Searchers after inspiration for Stringham’s strict warder, Stringham must needs look elsewhere. Tuffy. However, Byron’s aristocratic friendship But Letters Home offers us a far more group once again provide abundant clues. likely candidate as the original for Charles Powellians have always accepted, not least Stringham. from AP’s memoir To Keep the Ball Alfred Duggan is a far better bet. Byron’s Rolling, that the character of Stringham sister Lucy Butler in her biographical was partly modelled on Hubert Duggan. notes in Letters Home observes: Hubert Duggan’s credentials as Charles Alfred Duggan large-nosed and Stringham are valid so far as they go. The hospitable with his scurrilous stories son of Grace, Lady Curzon by her Irish- – during a game of sardines his Argentinian first husband, and stepson to mother Lady Curzon ‘hid under the Lord Curzon, Hubert and his older brother bed for half an hour with the Aga Alfredo (Alfred) were born in Buenos Khan to make the party go’. Alfred Aires but brought to England in childhood had a drinking problem so bad that and raised by the Curzons as over- his mother was forced to hire a indulged scions of nobility. Both were keeper to accompany him sent to Eton. everywhere. As young men their preference for fox This is where Tuffy makes an appearance. hunting, dandyish clothes, fast women and A close associate of Byron’s at Oxford, jazz eclipsed any scholarly pretensions. Alfred was at Balliol at the same time as

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Powell. But rather than attend Sillery-like with his friend and when he had returned intellectual salons in dons’ rooms invited him to join him in his own furnished with tea and rock buns, Alf and journeys of discovery. As maturity Byron were out partying. From a letter dawned both men carved out careers – dated January 1923, Byron writes: Byron as a travel writer and journalist and We had a wonderful evening last Alfred as an historian – and subsequent night. Alfred Duggan, the brother of author of an impressive collection of the one at Eton gave a dinner party, scholarly titles. followed by a visit to a sort of Los Stringham’s guardian Tuffy has a real life Angelos (sic) dancehall in the Cowley equivalent. Although transformed by Road. After seven glasses of Powell into a stern woman for comic champagne, two of port and the effect Alfred’s “keeper” was in fact a man paraphernalia of cocktails and by the name of Hogg. liqueurs attendant on these orgies I More research is needed to provide a found myself dancing the Boston complete character sketch, however Hogg twostep with feeling ... looms into view when Alfred Duggan Alfred was a dandy, an expert horseman accompanies Byron on a journey to the and keen fox hunter, echoing Charles Greek islands. Here Byron is Stringham’s view that university life accompanied by a convivial crowd should be a reflection of the era of Lord including John Stuart Hay (an antiquities Byron (no relation to Robert) “I expect dealer), Bryan Guinness, Mark Ogilvie them to keep bull pups and drink brandy”. Grant, John Sutro and David Talbot Rice. Alf fully lived up to Stringham’s ideal of This is an extract from one of Byron’s the “Byronic” foppish undergraduate, letters home. offering to British Club, Athens … 6 October mount me out with the drag on a 1927 … We leave for Mistra racing mare which he can’t hold. (I tomorrow – and then go straight to refused politely). Crete – catching a Lloyd at Kalamata [Letters Home, February 1923] at the bottom of the Peloponnese. We It is Alfred who, Stringham-like, quit are an enormous party. Alfred, Hay, Oxford because he couldn’t stand the keeper (Hogg), Bryan, Mark, John, boredom of it all. The parting of the ways David and me. was no doubt a considerable weight off the [Letters Home, 6 October 1927] mind of Lord Curzon who as Chancellor of For my money, Stringham is the finest of Oxford University was constantly forced all of Anthony Powell’s comic creations. to step in and mediate when Alf had once Lovingly drawn he is at once sympathetic again failed to attend lectures. and engaging. But it is Robert Byron who After getting sent down from Oxford brings the originals to life and gives rather abruptly (an echo of Stringham’s readers an insight into an utterly own short-lived career as a scholar) Alfred believable character. Clonmore, Byron was sent by his father to join a Natural and Duggan all can lay claim to creating History Museum expedition to the the enduring and sympathetic aristocratic Galapagos Islands! Byron kept in touch rebel and romantic that so many readers admire in Charles Stringham. ■

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Literature and Life A riposte to Robin Bynoe from Clive Gwatkin Jenkins

Mr Bynoe [Newsletter 60] is too This shows AEH in Cassandra mode pessimistic: literature teems with direct urging the cauterising of mankind’s most practical advice for life. powerful emotion. Recipes, which he does mention, are An overlapping warning from/for besotted everywhere. I am particularly fond of one Youth is conveyed in the beautiful in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, a eighteenth-century ballad Bugeilio’r work fashionable in the mid-1990s. gwenith gwyn (Watching over the ripening There was roasted lamb, new wheat). This is set in my native potatoes, peas with leeks and fennel; Glamorgan, indeed near the now a rich almost maddeningly delicious obdurately unromantic sprawl of Bridgend, bottle of Chateau Latrou. and the alleged protagonists actually existed. But it is a riff on the universal Just the thing for St David’s Day, although archetype of the poor but devoted and my wine choice tends to be cheaper. requited lover whose sweetheart’s parents Moving to a plane more abstract and have arranged a loveless marriage to the general, there is Hilaire Belloc’s famous local rich bounder. And always keep a-hold of Nurse My lot’s the ripening wheat to tend For fear of finding something worse Another ’tis will reap it. the essence of true conservatism ignored You need the original Welsh for its full by the trade unionists who revolted against force: Britain’s last truly conservative prime I mi bugeilio’r gwenith gwyn minister, James Callaghan, in 1979. They Arall sydd ei fedi found Mrs Thatcher. (my emphasis). Note the concentrated It could be objected that this is just verse, bitterness in the terse as Latin second line. not ‘true’ poetry; but the latter can be (Welsh is not always as succinct; nor are equally didactic. See Housman: the Welsh.) When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.’ Characteristically – and realistically – he recognised that his depressing advice would go unheeded by Youth – at least for a year or so: But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Sheaves

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concerned accept this arrangement as only right and proper? It bespeaks an unreflecting seigneurial sense of entitlement reflecting badly on Britain then. And how much have things changed in Britain now? So outstanding humour, practical expedients, food for thought is all melded together/interdependent in the ‘lightest’ most unpreachy writer you can get. In Wodehouse any stimulus to social criticism is probably unintentional. Where it is intended, the skilled writer serves it up in a palatable blend. Searing indictments of Life or Society often lie just beneath the surface even in works which seem, like Wodehouse, pure entertainment. Some surprising books have been regarded as such. Even Animal Farm can be treated as a children’s story (alongside its fellow The metaphor labours the point. It is allegories, the Alice books and Gulliver’s hackneyed because it is drawn from an Travels) if you don’t mind giving the little economic activity equally atavistic, dears nightmares. But all these allegories universal, and ‘idyllic’: one, unlike make the mature reader think: they acutely romantic love, utterly indispensable. or bitterly criticise or ridicule Society; and Moral: never let yourself get into this Animal Farm conveys an awful warning hapless swain’s situation (in love, business on top. or anything else). Hence when literature does give ‘advice Mr Bynoe’s reference to Firbank’s for life’, it is usually in this negative aspect “filigree confections, feather-light but of warnings awful or otherwise, of rubbing tough, [written] to amuse” could also our noses in rebarbative discreditable describe the most famous practitioner of realities: big questions. this genre, Wodehouse. Yet much of his Mr Bynoe complains of not enough direct humour springs from the multitude of specific instruction: suggestions practical, practical and successful wheezes that empirical for the here and now; although I Jeeves devises to hook Bertie out of would dispute this. But this motif which scrapes (although I have never found any seems so commonsensical also has to be of them of use to me personally). But they handled carefully, to emerge ‘naturally’ provoke deeper reflections. Why on earth from the theme of the text. Trotting out was someone as clever as Jeeves content loads of cheery positive advice on how to to press/lay out the shirts/trousers/collars/ live as a free-standing item would come spats of a bird-brain like Bertie? Surely he across as fatuously and artificially cheerful could have done far better for himself, as well as boring in literature – except for even between the wars? Why do all the recipes, of course. ■

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Polly Duport Diary Award 2015 Winner Temporary King By Bernard Stacey As you will see from the report of the NE USA & New York Group AP Birthday Luncheon on page 25, Bernard Stacey won the Polly Duport Diary Award with his entry “Temporary King”. As interesting comparisons we also bring you Bernard’s diary entries for the same day from Bob Duport and Jean Duport.

Polly Duport that he’d spent the afternoon with Fiona Thursday 30th September 1971 again. Mamma can be so selfish. I’d told her that Why does everyone I know have affairs? my lead in Miss Julie is the most *** *** *** demanding part I’ve yet acted but she absolutely insisted that I come to that Bob Duport beastly new gallery all afternoon and help Thursday 30th September 1971 push poor papa around. In the end I only It’s all Widmerpool’s fault. If he hadn’t agreed because Norman was coming too. made me go to Cairo all those years ago I I’m glad papa’s selling all those sea wouldn’t have contracted gyppy tummy pictures though – I never liked them. with complications and ended up like this. I think it’s since Carlos was shot that she’s Shunted everywhere in a bath chair like a become like this. That and always having November Guy – it’s too humiliating. had her own way being a dictatrix in South Went to the gallery to see my pictures. America. Now she just bosses everyone Jean wants to sell them, don’t know why, around. Come to think of it, she may have but I suppose they’re no use to me now. made papa sell. Since his stroke he They were hanging near some giant doesn’t really know what’s what. canvasses full of nude Greek nancies – We bumped into that dreary writer that enough to put anyone off buying them. papa knows, Nick Jenkins, in the gallery. And Nick Jenkins was there too. Played He and mamma shook hands pretending the casual acquaintance role with Jean but they barely knew each other but I’m sure I know he was knocking her off for they had a fling when they were young. months before we went to South America. She’s let things slip once or twice over the He as much as told me so when I bumped years and the coincidence of her being into him in Brighton just before the war. very good at Russian billiards and that He’s alright though, old Nick, if a bit prim. game forming the backdrop to half his first Forgive and forget. I’m hardly blameless novel is just too much. in the ‘playing away’ department, after all. I dined with Gibson. His book of poems, But Polly’s so different. So serious. Not Put The Kettle On (in homage to my name at all like Jean. Not at all like me either, apparently) is due out shortly but I think come to think of it. Mind you, that’s they’re far too sad. Strikes the wrong note entirely possible. She could be Polly for this new age. I was a bit suspicious Stripling for all I know. Still, I think of

16 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 her as my own and I’m proud she’s She’s obsessed with her acting. At first making something of herself. She gave she didn’t even want to come as she “had me tickets to her first night in that play to get into character for this evening’s she’s in: have to say it bored me rigid and performance”. I’ve seen the play – Miss Jean had to keep waking me up, but Julie. She plays a sexually repressed rich everyone else said she was terrific in it. girl with no imagination who can’t even I heard Jean go out again this evening. elope at the end. I’d say she’s been in Probably thought I was asleep. I wonder character all her life. I hope she does where she’s gone. Wouldn’t be surprised marry Gibson: this nun-like existence isn’t if she had a couple of Latinos on the go healthy and he might just inject a bit of somewhere as she seems homesick for something into her. South America. To cap it all, we bumped into Nick Jenkins It’s all bloody Widmerpool’s fault. at the gallery. We pretended we hardly knew each other and I’m sure neither Bob *** *** *** nor Polly know of our past. Nick used to be quite good fun – I can’t remember if he Jean Duport was before or after Jimmy Brent – but he’s Thursday 30th September 1971 turned into an insipid creature now. God, I wish I were back in South America. Smiling and sympathising over Bob, I am surrounded by the feeble, the though I know he always disliked him. I ungrateful, and the spineless. At least suppose a lifetime of dusty books and the Carlos had some life in him – well, he did English diet does that to a man. until I arranged for him not to. It was so Well, Bob’s in bed asleep now, and Polly easy hiring ‘help’ out there. Anyway, it of course is on stage. It’s too early to was what he deserved after cheating on me retire so I think I might nip out for a pink with that secretary of his. So demeaning. gin at The Ritz. With luck that absolutely Went to the gallery with Bob today. That charming new waiter, Ricardo, will be smarmy, lily-livered fool around … ■ of an owner, Barnabas, has only sold one more painting this week and we need the money. I need the money. There wasn’t exactly time to cash up and pack after the Carlos affair. Bob is increasingly frail. He can’t walk and getting him and his bath chair in and out of a taxi is the devil’s own work so I’d asked Polly to come and help. I despair of that girl. It’s me, me, me.

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My First Time In which members tell us of their first encounters with the Powellian world

Second Helpings: Tasting Dance Forty Years On By Geoff Eagland

In the late seventies I gorged on A Dance producers’ intentions. Making Nick to the Music of Time. I scoffed the first Jenkins an insipid hero rather than the ten books already published, then disinterested narrator diminished the hungrily awaited and wolfed down importance of other characters’ volume eleven. But volume twelve I relationships, reducing them to a litany of almost had to force down, like Mr far-fetched co-incidences. Only the war- Creosote’s ‘one waffer thin mint’, happily time episodes had any sense of drama. without his explosive reaction. I sat back Neither gratuitous nudity nor a stellar cast completely full but satisfied. So satisfied could save it. So it won heaps of acting was I that my appetite for comic novel awards: how could it not with Simon series was spoiled for some time. Simon Russel-Beale as Widmerpool supported by Raven’s Alms for Oblivion series, the likes of Miranda Richardson, Adrian although spicier than Dance and with as Scarborough, Zoe Wanamaker, Oliver many courses, lacked the subtlety of AP’s Ford-Davies et al. With insight it was flavours and textures, and I’ve still not got never going to work as well as the radio round to reading The Man without adaptations. It is almost impossible to get Qualities. Only Proust’s A la Recherché the elegance of AP’s prose across on film. du Temps Perdu, discovered at around the This missing elegance is what had initially same time, matched it. This was for me so charmed me in the novels themselves: an age of discovery: Proust; Polish that and the humour, brilliantly phrased cinema; modern Shakespearean sketches of characters inhabiting a self- interpretations and the late Beethoven contained world, as fantastic as string quartets added new dimensions to Wodehouse’s but strangely real and with my life only surpassed by the then newly its own grotesque aunts – an assumed launched Tyrolia step-in binding and shared world of certainty in terms of Shimano’s indexed-sequential gears. artistic and literary taste, flattering to the These latter passions, and many new ones, reader who gets the allusions, like Tom kept me from AP until the late nineties TV Stoppard’s scientific and philosophical adaptation. This was a disappointment. I asides. And what characters! Dance is a urged friends unacquainted with Dance to fantastic bestiary, a Moreau island of tune in. They dropped out. And I knew hybrids and archetypes whose why. It was like returning to a fondly relationships are as improbable as in any remembered, favourite restaurant only to Russian novel and so tribal as to border on discover it had become a chain that had the incestuous. And how they sparkle, lost its original integrity and authenticity. especially the older characters: Ted Billing it as a mini-series signalled its Jeavons, Mrs Erdleigh, Uncle Giles and

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General Conyers, clearly have AP’s business; Sir Magnus Donners is an greatest affection. And towering over uncultured arriviste. The only ‘trade’ fit them all, the mighty Kenneth Widmerpool, for a gentleman is publishing. In the end, symbolic of a changing world that AP no-one meets with a good end and there is sensed but regarded reservedly. a distinct feeling of Schadenfreude in their Not the least of the characters’ attractions demises. are their quintessential names. Sir Magnus It would be wrong to criticise Dance (or Donners, Buster Foxe, Milly Andriadis, any work) for what it is not or for what is Chips Lovell, JG Quiggin, Billson, Scorpio not in it, but I found myself thinking that Murtlock, Max Pilgrim, X Trapnel. They Nick’s world whilst ostensibly all have names that deny them any other comprehensive lacks something important, persona or calling than that which AP gave which probably reflects AP’s own world, them, and many, to make a final pleasure, and that is modernism. AP and his world are depicted on Marc Boxer’s cover now seem to me to be solipsistic and self- illustrations with the delicacy of nouvelle regarding, but not self-aware. Darwin, cuisine. So with his geography: Foppa’s; Einstein and Bohr might as well not have Hero of Acre; Dogdene; The Ufford are existed; Joyce, Picasso and Schoenberg monikered to summon them as completely wasted their time. Neither Poincaré cousin as any Bradshaw. Also with the books and is mentioned; Weimar is a foreign country. journals: Fission; Camel Ride to the Tomb; AP’s world is a small old world of Death’s - Head Swordsman; Fields of dilettantism and amateurism that he is Amaranth; Dogs Have No Uncles, and the unwilling to admit is diminishing and rest. These show AP to have been the best whose decline he resents and for whose parodist of the twentieth century. Consider passing he compensates by condescending Dr Trelawney’s, ‘The essence of all is the to the new cultural powers, or by ignoring Godhead of the true’, or Max Pilgrim’s them altogether. To my mind now, AP and ‘Di, Di in her collar and tie’. Perfect! Dance present a somewhat gloomy Such were my memories until recently teleology. It is not a bright, timeless world when, lunching with a friend, his like Wodehouse’s, but a penumbral, observation that the louche pub that we doomed world like Melvyn Peake’s were in would not be out of place in Dance Gormenghast. Perhaps that was his led me to question why I still regularly intention. consumed Proust, Beethoven et al., but AP But it would be churlish in this publication had fallen from my cultural diet. So I to conclude on the negative. Especially dipped in again, re-read selective passages since still for me the positive continues to and found that it still charmed and amused surpass it. So let me finish by applying to me. all twelve volumes of Dance Quiggin’s And yet … I perceive in it now a certain claim for Sillery’s secret diaries, Garnered unkindness and resentment, that disquiets at Sunset, and confidently assert that, me. There is a disdain for otherness, as despite my reservations, “They’ll be read there is for industry and commerce. Nick’s as the most notable chronicle of our time”. dalliance in Bohemia is for amusement, ■ not enlightenment. Widmerpool is pilloried for his father’s liquid fertiliser

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Dates for Your Diary

London Group Pub Meets STILL TIME TO BOOK Saturday 7 May 2016 Saturday 6 August 2016 2016 Conference Saturday 5 November 2016 Anthony Powell, The Audley 41-43 Mount Street, London W1 Shakespeare and Other 1230 to 1530 hrs Literary Influences Good beer, good pub food and informal Friday 8 to Sunday 10 April conversation in a Victorian pub AP would 2016 have known. Why not bring something AP-related to interest us? Non-members King’s Manor, York always welcome. Further details from the The conference programme includes Hon. Secretary. ■ two days (Friday & Saturday) of plenary sessions, with four keynote speakers and a range of submitted papers; a Summer Saturday Stroll conference dinner on Saturday evening; Soho Nights – The Morning After and a Sunday outing to the nearby Castle Howard, backdrop for the filming Saturday 2 July 2016 of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. 1030 for 1100 hrs Buffet lunch is included on the Friday & Meeting Point & Lunch Venue tba Saturday. Friday evening has been We are unlikely to be allowed entry to deliberately left free for delegates to Foppa’s restaurant so early in the day and network, wine, dine and sightsee at Umfraville’s nightclub will be long closed. their leisure. However, Soho is exactly the sort of place King’s Manor, part of the University of one is likely to run into Maclintick, York, is a glorious medieval house in the Moreland, Gypsy Jones or Odo Stevens centre of one of the jewel cities of the whatever the time of day and there are UK and very close to York Minster. rumours that Uncle Giles might also Travel to York couldn’t be easier with occasionally be seen there. trans-continental flights to Manchester As usual, we will lunch at 1300 hrs and a direct train connection, or a (though, for reasons of geography, not regular fast train service from central at Da Corradi this year). London and Edinburgh. York has No need to book for the walk, but if you abundant accommodation to suit all wish to join the lunch party please let us pockets. know so we can book a group table. There Full conference information is in the is no charge for the walk itself (although flyer and booking form enclosed with donations in the Hon. Secretary’s top hat this Newsletter. will be welcomed) and lunch will be pay on The provisional conference schedule is the day. Non-members welcome. on the website, and also see John Roe’s Further details from, and bookings to, update on page 6. ■ Ivan Hutnik, [email protected]. ■

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Dates for Your Diary

A Day Out in Oxford AP and His Chums Saturday 3 September 2016 For this year’s day out member Clive Gwatkin Jenkins is organising a visit to the dreaming spires of Oxford in the footsteps of AP and friends. The details are not yet finalised so mark the date and watch for the announcement in the next Newsletter. ■

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream Tuesday 6 September 2016 Annual General Meeting th 1930 hrs performance The 16 Annual General Meeting of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Anthony Powell Society will be held on Saturday 22 October 2016 at 1400 hrs in Join us for an evening at the Globe the Conference Room of St James’s Theatre to see Shakespeare’s A Church, Piccadilly, London W1. Midsummer Night’s Dream – a play Powell Full details to follow. ■ clearly enjoyed – and celebrate the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. We have booked a small number of tickets London Group which will be available to members (first come first served) at their face value of AP Birthday Lunch £45. Saturday 3 December 2016 Before sending money, please contact the Hon. Secretary to ensure tickets are still 1200 for 1230 hrs available. Central London venue tbc Tickets and further information from the This is a pay on the day event, but please Hon. Secretary. ■ book with the Secretary so we can ensure we have reserved a large enough table! As always non-members are welcome. Further information when available from the Hon. Secretary. ■

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Society News & Notices

Membership Updates Local Group Contacts New Members London Group We extend a warm welcome to the Area: London & SE England following new members: Contact: Keith Marshall Geoff Eagland, London Email: [email protected] Heinz Feldmann, Laer, Germany New York & NE USA Group Gareth Goodsir-Cullen, Balmain, Area: New York & NE USA Australia Contact: Nick Birns Michael Haines, St Austell Email: [email protected] Jeff Howe, Canterbury Great Lakes Group Stephen Moss, Surbiton Area: Chicago area, USA Lana Starkey, Durack, Australia Contact: Joanne Edmonds Veronica Watts, Surrey Email: [email protected] Tom Weston, London John Wirenius, Albany, USA Nordic Group Area: Sweden & Finland Condolences Contact: Regina Rehbinder We regret that since the last Newsletter we Email: [email protected] have learnt of the death of member Mrs Bankim Thanki, London Toronto Group We send our condolences to her family and Area: Toronto, Canada friends. ■ Contact: Joan Williams Email: [email protected] Please contact the Secretary if you wish to make contact with a group and don’t Christmas Prize Competition have email. If you wish to start a local 2015 group the Hon. Secretary can advise on This year’s competition was to nominate a the number of members in your area. ■ character from Dance and their favourite novel. Contributions to the Newsletter We are delighted to have had a record and journal Secret Harmonies entry, from which the Editor has chosen are always welcome and should be two winners: sent to: AJ Tucker for his suggestion that Newsletter & Journal Editor, Pamela Flitton’s favourite novel would be Anthony Powell Society Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. 76 Ennismore Avenue Philip Ivory for suggesting Pamela’s Greenford, UB6 0JW, UK favourite novel would be Norman Mailer’s [email protected] The Naked and the Dead. We are always especially grateful for Congratulations to both winners, who reports or notices of Powell-related events receive a year’s membership of the Society. and relevant photographs. ■

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Society News & Notices

Subscriptions Subscriptions are due annually on 1 April (for rates see back page) Reminders will be sent out (by email where possible) during March to those whose membership Anthony Powell Resides Here is about to expire CRAWFORD DOYLE BOOKSELLERS seeks and sells early editions of Remember you can save time and Anthony Powell’s works together with money with our 5 years for the price those of other distinguished British of 4 membership offer authors such as Evelyn Waugh, PG To keep costs down we will be using Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Henry email wherever possible so please look Green and James Lees-Milne. out for emails from the Society In addition to rare books, we offer a Anyone whose membership is expired complete collection of new books in will be removed from the membership our store near the Metropolitan list at the end of June Museum. Catalogs upon request. Subscriptions should be sent to the 1082 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10028 Open seven days per week Hon. Secretary, at the usual address Telephone: 212 289 2345 Please help us to keep Email: [email protected] costs down by renewing Member, Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, Inc. promptly

The mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream caught mid-jig at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre a few years ago 23 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

Local Group News

AP Birthday Lunch – London By Stephen Walker

For the 2015 London Birthday Lunch we produced the delight of Labour leader returned to an old favourite, Da Corradi, in Jeremy Corbyn (below) as JG Quiggin. Shepherd Market. It was an elegiac On the pognographic front there were four occasion rather like meeting an old flame beards in attendance which no doubt that nature has not treated kindly. would have affronted AP. Da Corradi remains friendly, New members were welcomed including a accommodating, cramped and youthful female academic from Australia uncomfortable. But it has also lost its who won our hearts by mistaking a bling - youthful charms in the service and food attired Society Trustee as a rap artist. He departments. Resolutely resisting air carried off this solecism with his usual conditioning the completely full basement aplomb. soon turned into a sauna. The Rumanian Several members firmly stated that they waitress was under pressure, as clearly wish to return to the Oxford & Cambridge also was the kitchen, and food appeared at Club for next year’s lunch. That will be staggered intervals. The record for the debated but in the absence of a makeover longest wait for a main course – two hours and perhaps radical surgery – Da Corradi – was shared by two members. And DC like many other denizens of Shepherd surpassed itself by running out of tiramisu. Market has to bow to nature’s cruel What an Italian restaurant? Yes. summons. ■ Despite this the 20 members enjoyed themselves. The conversation ranged, as always, between the pedantic – what is the difference between “in spite” and “despite” – and the stylistic. Much breath was expended on whether at an occasion to honour AP male neckwear should be worn. Several female members expressed a preference for not seeing grey chest hair and gnarled Adam’s apples. The tie count was in fact up on last year with six ties being displayed out of a possible 15. Although this did include a soft collar shirt worn with a collar stud and a tie worn with an undone button – something that AP would no doubt have found “common”. Our members’ favourite sport of identifying modern figures in Dance

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Local Group News

New York & NE USA Group AP Birthday Luncheon, Grolier Club, New York By Ed Bock

An arousing blend of separate arts come, supernovas and black holes intoxicated the precisely regulated air of permitting. the Grolier Club’s exhibition hall during The luncheon began on a challengingly the closing moments of the 18 December high level of imaginative ambiguity with New York AP Birthday luncheon. the sympathetic reading of “Temporary Through the sixteen in-wall glass King”, Bernard Stacey’s winning Polly exhibition cases around the long room Duport Diary Entry (see page 16), by flowed exquisite bibliographic novelist and Bennington College professor impressions: eg. from an 8th century Annabel Davis-Goff. (Later, Annabel read Japanese Buddhist scroll; from a gorgeous Stacey’s severe conception of what Jean Doves Press Bible, opened to Genesis 1:1 might have written in her diary about the (the awesome folio page on which the afternoon meeting Jenkins.) Although he initial I of “In the Beginning” – extends has never attended a Grolier Birthday down the entire left margin); and from Luncheon, Bernard Stacey has a cult of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. American admirers. He won Noel-Poel While, in the centre of the hall, around competitive awards in 2013 (Theophrastus large circular tables, enthused guests were Prize) and 2014 (Ovid Heroines Prize for loudly applauding the finale of the Noel- “Dog Days & Dickey”). Also cherished in Poel Players’ re-enactment of the London New York and environs is his X Trapnel art gallery scene from Hearing Secret Profiles in String paperback. Harmonies – the one in which Jenkins During the luncheon Nick Birns spoke and stands alone, amid Edgar Deacon answered questions about 2016 Society paintings, after the departure of Jean, Bob activities, including the York Conference. and Polly Duport, and Norman Chandler. And while, between the cheering audience and the bowing actors, there radiated, from on top a draped votive stand, a monumental, baroquely-filigreed 110th Anthony Powell Birthday cake, its sides adorned with 12 panels, one for each Dance novel. These concurrent delights were compressed into an intense pleasure-peak moment that will likely heat the memories of the Noel-Poelites for light-years to P h o t g r ap E d B ock 25 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

After dessert, the Noel Poel Players’ the audience in the role of Barnabas presentation of Familiar Voices at a Private Henderson, the gallery owner. As the aged Showing, adapted from pages 252-257 of Jean, whose younger spirit she Hearing Secret Harmonies, featured three dramatically portrayed in an earlier Grolier delightful new actors. Playing Bob production, hostess Arete Warren Duport, manoeuvring petulantly in a presented a woman drained by a lifetime wheelchair, was writer and administrator of full-living. She deployed a gripping John Wirenius, who clenched audience acting style that combined elements of the attention with a nastiness that entirely tragic and the noctambulistic. concealed his native good nature. In her first – but all hope not her last – Entrepreneur-executive Elizabeth Howard “pants-role” portrayal of actor/dancer gave conviction, attractiveness, and grace Norman Chandler, Library of America to her characterization of Polly Duport. head Cheryl Hurley created a blend of Columbia University Writer Michael comic light-heartedness and choreographic Leahy, essaying the challenging role of timing that gave one the happy sense of Jenkins, achieved a Nick so quietly witnessing the birth of a star performer. convincing that he may have permanently influenced how some audience members A larger ‘stage area’, more care for period will imagine the Dance narrator. costuming, and valuable rehearsal coaching and direction from Eileen Also in the cast were three much-admired Kaufman helped the actors to achieve Noel-Poel veterans. In his fourth fine unusually high standards for a Noel-Poel Grolier appearance, favourite Gerald production. ■ Ruderman was entirely successful in opening the play and setting the scene for

The cast of Familiar Voices at a Private Showing (l to r): Michael Leahy (Nick Jenkins), Cheryl Hurley (Norman Chandler), Gerald Ruderman (Barnabas Henderson), Elizabeth Howard (Polly Duport), John Wirenius (Bob Duport) and Arete Warren (Jean Duport) P h o t g r ap E d B ock 26 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

Local Group News

Hon. Secretary’s New Year Brunch By Alison Walker On 23 January 2016, following last year’s success, we visited Patisserie Valerie in Brompton Road again. This year’s Brunch marked two important birthdays in the Powellian universe. The first is the 65th anniversary of the publication of A Question of Upbringing the previous day. The second is the equally significant arrival of one Keith Marshall on this earth. It was a very jolly, even boisterous, occasion. Partly this was the result of an anonymous benefactor donating bottles of Pat Val’s finest champagne to celebrate the Was it a prequel, a final final volume or an first of the two anniversaries. But the inter-volume? Bets were laid and recorded good food – especially the brioche French in your editor’s notebook. Reference was toast and the full English – also played its made to the previously undiscovered part. Given that it was the AP Society that manuscript of Profiles in String that was was enjoying brunch the social announced to the world at the Society’s significance of the different patterns of conference at Eton in 2013. A sub- champagne glasses offered round was committee is being formed to investigate. much discussed. Apparently the narrower More new members were welcomed the nose of the glass the more refined it, including one who also being a member of and therefore the drinker, is. AP’s old college, Balliol, brought the sad The atmosphere was heightened by news that while Graham Greene was rumours that the manuscript of a 13th discussed by current undergraduates volume of Dance had been discovered. Powell was not. This reinforced Professor John Roe’s observation that AP was much [T]he General stood in silence, as if harder to teach to today’s students than in great distress of mind, holding his Greene or Waugh. Condemnations that long staff at arm’s length from him, standards were clearly slipping from our while he ground it deep into the day mixed with proclamations that we earthy surface of the barnhouse floor. must all do our bit to spread the AP cause He appeared to be trying to increased arousal levels. Seizing his contemplate as objectively as moment your Secretary handed round his possible the concept of being so top hat saying that he was “collecting totally excluded from the human shrapnel for Trapnel”. family as to dislike porridge. All in all a cracking start to the New Year. The Valley of Bones Not to be missed. ■ 27 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

BOOK REVIEW DJ Taylor The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 Chatto & Windus; £25

We have two reviews of The Prose jargon”. To illustrate the gap between the Factory. The first is from Michael theory and practice of writing fiction he Barber. refers us to David Lodge, whose In 2013 DJ Taylor told the Guardian that entertaining novels, he suggests, were he was planning to write ‘undermined’ by critical works of his like Working with Structuralism. an enormous book about literary culture in the last century. How Happily Taylor, who is also a novelist, is books are conceived, written, more interested in personalities than published, reviewed, sold and read. prescripts. In addition to those already mentioned his cast includes Kingsley This is that book, and mighty impressive it Amis, Arnold Bennett, Malcolm Bradbury, is too. Indeed if you agree with Malcolm AS Byatt, Cyril Connolly, TS Eliot, Muggeridge that medals ought to be Graham Greene, Philip Larkin, JB awarded for certain literary chores then Priestley, Iris Murdoch, Simon Raven, CP Taylor deserves a chestful. Fancy having Snow, Angus Wilson (who once told me to wade through Lord of the Rings, that Envy was endemic to the literary Finnegans Wake and Orlando, followed by world) and Virginia Woolf. Some readers every issue of Scrutiny and The London may wonder why Alec Waugh – in his own Mercury (hands up those who’ve heard of words, “a very minor writer” – occupies Sir John Squire, let alone read his more space than brother Evelyn. I think magazine). this is partly because he wrote at great Taylor didn’t start from scratch. A prolific length about being a writer, which he was all-rounder, the author of a life of Orwell for over 60 years, and also because he was and two studies of post-war British fiction, a favourite with Boots Library subscribers, he was already familiar with the terrain, whose taste Taylor often invokes. which after a balmy interlude in the Naturally Taylor also invokes AP. I say Twenties, when Art somehow got mixed ‘Naturally’ because he’s a fan, coyly up with life, began to feel what Evelyn identified as such in a photo taken at The Waugh called a chill wind from the Fens. Chantry and included here. Above this is Ethics, preached the messianic Dr Leavis, another photo, taken aboard a cross- were more important than aesthetics: you Channel ferry, of AP and his Punch should not read a novel for enjoyment colleagues en route to a cricket match in alone. His disciples went forth and Holland, the last straw, apparently, in his multiplied, later colonising English relations with the magazine under its new departments at universities and schools in editor, Bernard Hollowood. I should like Britain and the Commonwealth. Then to have heard more about this, but it they in turn were challenged by the doesn’t feature in the text. Equally Structuralists, described by Taylor as “like puzzling, Taylor sets At Lady Molly’s, the Leavisites but with less comprehensible

28 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 when Jenkins marries Isobel, in the latter brandishing a cigar and laying down Twenties. the law about gin. A more serious complaint is the absence of What is the future for authors in the Ian Fleming. If, as the blurb says, this is a digital age? Taylor gives a cautious book about literary taste, then how can you endorsement of Fay Weldon’s argument possibly overlook the creator of James that they should Bond? “A new hero has arisen among us”, “abandon their dignity” and write said the critic Walter Allen of ‘Lucky Jim’ alternative versions of their work Dixon. How much more true is this of suitable for the e-book audience. Bond, a gigantic genie to rank with Sherlock Holmes. By 1953, when Bond In support of this he quotes Evelyn sprang fully armed from Fleming’s Waugh, who forehead, people were sick and tired of noted the existence of a link between rationing, regulations and the jobsworths the words on the page and the who enforced them. No wonder they fell instrument that transmits them. for a suave, virile tough guy who took no Take, for instance the “boiled-down, prisoners and demanded nothing but the staccato prose pioneered by Hemingway”. best. Fleming was also indirectly Surely this had something to do with his responsible for the Booker Prize. His habit of composing directly on to a decision to sell Booker-McConnell the typewriter? But so did AP, and I’ve never rights to the Bond novels, a tax dodge, heard his prose described as ‘boiled- encouraged the boss of Booker, his pal down’ or ‘staccato’. Jock Campbell, to set up an author’s division, some of the profits from which But if I don’t always agree with what went to fund the prize. Taylor says, I am full of admiration for the way he says it. Rarely have I seen so Taylor, I must stress, is properly concerned many metaphors deployed to such good with the economics of writing. He quotes effect. Pithy, erudite, evocative and the question asked of Paul Bailey by a engrossing, this should find a place on the schoolchild: “If that’s all you earn, why do shelves of all those for whom good books it?”. There is, as Eric Morecombe used to are a staple. ■ say, no answer to that. Or at any rate no answer that would satisfy people who have never felt compelled to make some sense of their experiences. Grub Street is not paved with gold, and if some writers now have a much higher profile thanks to prizes, literary festivals and the internet, very few of them live by their pen alone. Review copies, which could be flogged for cash at Gastons, the library suppliers off Chancery Lane, were – perhaps still are – one of the few perks. I once found myself in a queue there at the head of which were AJP Taylor and Anthony Burgess, the

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Our second review of The Prose Factory Examining the Modern Movement, Taylor is from Jeffrey Manley. in a memorable “middle” on the Sitwells DJ Taylor investigates the literary life ie. says that while they were the movement’s those who write and review books, those “public face” Eliot was its “high priest, a who read them, and how far it is possible figure of paralyzing celebrity”. Powell to earn a living from writing. He provides an example of his status: concentrates on people, rather than books, Fifty years after chancing upon him and manages his broad remit pretty well. in a Charlotte Street restaurant in the The book is in three periods: Interwar, late 1920s, Powell could still WWII/Post-War, and 1970+. Within each remember the feeling of excitement period, Taylor considers literary fashions, stimulated by the appearance of ‘a journals and their editors, the machinery of figure whom the Sitwells, reviewing, academic oversight, and Bloomsbury, even Wyndham Lewis incomes. He uses the works of authors treated with respect’ ... When Powell from each period to comment on or met him again, nearly 20 years after explain their books or those of their the Charlotte Street sighting, in the contemporaries. He refers to Powell North Devon village where Powell constantly. was on post-demob furlough, he noted that the off-duty Eliot, taking Taylor intersperses the pages of names, tea with friends or drinking cider in books, periodicals, movements, fashions, the local pub ‘had just a touch of the print runs, incomes with short more headmaster, laying aside his dignity focused essays which resemble the for a talk with the more intelligent “middles” that appeared in newspapers and boys’ . literary magazines. They were Aldous Huxley also influenced Powell and between 800 and 1,500 words in his contemporaries. As late as 1973, length, meditative, sometimes topical, Powell explains how he was “prostrated” nearly always humorous. by Huxley’s early novels and “thought that The opening chapter describes the young it was ‘difficult now to express the prestige writers after WWI who have to come to attached to Aldous Huxley in the 1920s’”. grips with a war in which they were too For Taylor, Firbank was the most young to participate but which cast a cloud important influence on younger writers over their adolescence. Taylor cites and he shows how they adopted his writing Powell to provide an example of this style – particularly his “talking heads” phenomenon: dialogues, stripped down prose and When … Ted Jeavons is identified … allusive plot advancing references. Taylor as ‘something left over from the war’, gives examples from Waugh but could the effect would have been to set off a equally well have cited Powell. chain of assumptions in the original Taylor also examines middlebrow reader’s mind, a suspicion that in literature. In the 1930s one of its chief however indirect a way he, or she, representatives was Hugh Walpole. He knows the kind of person Jeavons is refers to Powell’s “Walpolian” character, meant to be. St John Clark. In The Acceptance World, Nick Jenkins is pleasantly surprised to find

30 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 that Clark has written favourably of one of These “deeply recherché items” call up his novels and assumes it is merely a case one’s gratitude for his editor’s “power of of recognition of his merits. Barnby discrimination”. There are also two disabuses him and “diagnoses an photos of Powell that are not to be missed. opportunistic conversion to modernism (‘I Taylor cites, in a “middle” on the Thatcher fear it is all a part of a larger design’)”. government’s relations with the cultural The post-WWII years were not like the world, Powell’s Journals about two literary post-WWI ones. There was no literary receptions which Mrs Thatcher hosted. upheaval like the Modern Movement. The Powell was much impressed. late 1940s were, according to Taylor, The earlier sections of the book, up to the accurately depicted in Books Do Furnish a 1960s, particularly his dissection of the Room: 1950s, are better than the final part. Sadly with its chilly evocations of Taylor doesn’t give a more detailed snowbound literary London in the analysis of Dance and Powell’s winter of 1946-47 describes a autobiographical writings. Powell may be landscape of left-wing publishing the only writer to have written a sustained firms picking up where they left off, body of work, much of which was devoted still fighting the battles of the 1930s to the literary life, covering the entire … still hastening to publish foreign period of Taylor’s book. Taylor mentions propaganda novels with titles like The X Trapnel and St John Clark as examples Pistons of Our Locomotives Sing the of a type of writer from a particular period, Songs of Our Workers and having but something useful and entertaining their losses underwritten by the could have been made of others such as apparatchiks in King Street. Mark Members, JG Quiggin, Ada Literary activity picked up in the 1950s. Leintwardine and Nick Jenkins himself. The “Angry Young Men” appeared. They all depended on writing for their Powell established friendships with these livelihoods. younger writers. Taylor mentions Powell’s Finally, the book is well produced and friendship with Amis in the context of a edited. I found only one typo: Fosdick, in BBC interview upon publication of The From a View to a Death, is spelled Acceptance World. Amis was the “Forsdick”. The index is excellent. The interviewer. The leftish BBC producers generalized endnotes work well, but a expected him to savage the upper class bibliography would have been helpful. ■ Powell. Taylor cites Amis’s own recollection: Arriving at the studio Amis and Powell greeted each other by their Christian names: ‘at once the BBC faces fell in disappointment, almost disgust’. Powell and his generation do not feature much in the 1970+ section. Taylor notes Powell’s work for the Daily Telegraph.

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Uncle Giles’ Corner

Q. Where do I go for a decent glass of Take it from an old hand, there are rules to gin? And how do I ensure it is correctly drinking and mixing gin. And here they mixed? are! The other day my dear nephew invited me • Steer well clear of anything remotely and Mrs E to his local “gin parlour”. In artisanal. Stick with your uncle’s Kings Cross of all places! Apparently, favourite tipple, G and T and you can’t these gin establishments are all the rage, go far wrong. popping up all over London and the Home • Uncle Giles’ recipe: fill a glass liberally Counties like the proverbial rash. with dry London gin – it must be The parlour turned out to be a pretentious London gin, mind! Then add a dash of basement with faux art-deco gizmos and Schweppes’ Indian Tonic Water, a slice soft lighting. A crowd of flashy young of lemon and a couple of ice cubes. men and women sat perched on high That’s the stuff the Empire was built chairs around the bar guzzling cocktails. on. “Here” I said to the waiter, “Give me a gin • Gin and It hits the spot. Sweet and It!” Blank stare. “Gin and what?” Vermouth gives it a very palatable taste “Italian. Vermouth! Comprendee? No?” – very popular with the ladies and Mrs E (not that she isn’t a lady!). “There’s Tanqueray, Bloom, Bombay Blue • Pink gin (mixed with angostura bitters). Sapphire, Sipsmiths … take your pick. Beloved of the Royal Navy – blue jobs Our craft gin is very popular. It has notes – I call them. Avoid! of cinnamon, cloves, and angelica” piped up the whipper-snapper behind the bar, • “Gin and Sin”. One measure of gin; pointing to a gin glass filled to one measure of Cinzano Bianco. The overflowing with what looked like a local padre swears by it – particularly cucumber salad. Mrs E looked doubtful. fortifying after a christening or a “It’s artisanal, Uncle” hissed my nephew marriage. looking embarrassed. “Craft gin, my • Gin and orange: Total muck: least said! arse” I harrumphed. • Don’t forget the lemon. Keep a lemon and a sharp penknife handy when By the end of the evening I sat glowering entering strange pubs. My “travels” in over a sarsaparilla while the merry Mrs E Kent took me to a battered caravanserai was imbibing from the cucumber cup and called the Red Lion at Snargate run by had become the centre of attention. She a formidable landlady called Doris. had got out her Tarot deck and was laying Doris poured me a G and T. The ice it out on the table before a hushed crowd. went in. Then she handed it to me. “I see you have Saturn in the twelfth “Here” I said. “Where’s the lemon?” house, and juniper is well aspected in your “We don’t serve food” retorted Doris. ■ chart” she winked.

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Letters to the Editor What’s Become of Waring, Moby Dick and Captain Ahab From Mr Jonathan Kooperstein Painter’s Progress (1938). Both these Newsletter readers with long memories books were published by Cassells, a may recall that in the Summer 2006 issue possible factor in the exchange that [Newsletter 23] I reviewed the Grolier Wyndham proposed and AP agreed to. Club exhibition of Bill Warren’s AP The prepublication date of the inscription collection. One book that stood out was a in What’s Become of Waring suggests copy of What’s Become of Waring that AP was eager to match Wyndham’s inscribed “For Moby Dick from Captain gift and discharge his unsought obligation Ahab – Jan 26 1939” and accompanied by as quickly as possible. a 1985 letter from AP to a previous owner AP was not alone in referring to Dick of the book confirming that it was he who Wyndham as “Moby Dick” – though had inscribed it, signing himself as possibly unique in identifying himself as “Captain Ahab”, and that “Moby Dick” “Captain Ahab” in that context. In Those was Dick Wyndham (1896-1948; land- Wild Wyndhams (2014), her biography of owner, artist and writer). I also noted that the Wyndham sisters (Dick’s aunts), Dick Wyndham was probably the unnamed Claudia Renton quotes a letter written in successful rival for the affections of Enid 1936 by Evan Charteris, the younger Firminger whom AP alludes to in brother of Hugh Elcho, Dick Wyndham’s Messengers of Day and Journals 1990- uncle by marriage, discussing the adverse 1992, and, hence, not altogether AP’s effects of Dick Wyndham’s inconsiderate favourite person. behaviour on the latter’s aunt, Mary Nine years on I can add one or two details Elcho, and referring to him as “Moby to this account. The previous owner of Dick”. this copy of What’s Become of Waring But was AP unique in referring to Dick was John Gere (1921-1995), Keeper of Wyndham as “Moby Dick” to his face, so Prints and Drawings at the British to speak? Here we arrive at the realms of Museum and editor, with John Sparrow, of “understatement and irony – in which all Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks (1981), a classes of this island converse” [AW] book which AP reviewed enthusiastically and, in the absence of specific evidence in the Daily Telegraph (reprinted in Under on this point I must defer to the Review). The book was offered for sale in judgement of ears more finely attuned Stone Trough Books’ catalogue eight, than mine. ■ From the Library of John Gere: Literature (1996). Newsletter Copy Deadlines According to AP’s 1985 letter, he gave What’s Become of Waring to Wyndham Newsletter #63, Summer 2016 Copy Deadline: 13 May 2016 only because the latter had proposed that Publication Date: 3 June 2016 each of them should give the other his next book. The Warren exhibition label Newsletter #64, Autumn 2016 indicates that Dick Wyndham led off the Copy Deadline: 12 August 2016 Publication Date: 2 September 2016 exchange, presumably with his novel 33 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

Letters to the Editor

Balchin, Powell, Harpur & Iles

From Mr James Tucker Robin Bynoe in his article on Nigel Balchin [Newsletter 61] wonders whether I was echoing the title of a Balchin novel, In the Absence of Mrs Petersen, in the title of my crime novel In the Absence of Iles, written under my pen name, Bill James. Afraid not. I don’t think I had ever heard of the Balchin book. I did read The Small Back Room by Balchin when it came out. I haven’t a copy but I believe the opening sentence went something like, “In 19XX my foot hurt a lot so they cut it off”. For a gout sufferer before allopurinol was generally available these were chilling words, but the story was strong and I stuck with it to the end. My book was in a series featuring the two high ranking cops, Harpur and Iles. The novel came in for some stick from critics because Iles was, in fact, very present but Harpur didn’t appear. Iles missed a crucial meeting in the story and was only absent in that sense. The drawing of Powell reading the Army I think I got the idea for my title from the List 1902, on page 38 of the same way some recipes suggest how to remedy a Newsletter is a miniature version of the shortage of an ingredient – “In the absence picture on the front of The New Review of caviar, lump fish roe is a near-perfect v2, no.19. This contains my (fallible) substitute”. guide to the characters of Dance. Powell didn`t want this published because he was I thought of Pepys, and the ‘great working with Hilary Spurling on her much black maid’; and immediately more comprehensive and accurate Widmerpool’s resemblance to the handbook. It was a tricky decision but we existing portraits of the diarist decided to go ahead with the magazine became apparent. He had the version, later incorporated into my book same obdurate, put-upon, bad- The Novels of Anthony Powell. The tempered expression. Only a full- illustration on the magazine cover has Powell reading not the Army List but bottomed wig was required to Who’s Who in “A Dance to the Music of complete the picture. Time”. The background is the dust jackets At Lady Molly’s of most of Dance. ■

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The eponymous author of the blog Writing on the TLS blog on 18 “Mrs Trefusis takes a Taxi”, wrote on January 2016 (http:// 4 January (http:// timescolumns.typepad.com/ mrstrefusis.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/ stothard/2016/01/a-straw- book-resolutions-2016.html) about powell.html), Michael Caines quotes her book resolutions for 2016. First DJ Taylor when interviewed by on the list was: Jonathan Barnes: The Box Set: A Dance to the I have to say, I suppose, that I do Music of Time, Anthony Powell think that Anthony Powell is the A Dance to the Music of Time is a greatest English novelist of the captivating, witty, caustic glimpse twentieth century by a country mile. into the upper reaches of British In so far as these things are ever society beginning sometime after quantifiable he seems to me to get the end of the First World War and closest to what life is actually like. ending in the sixties: it’s The number of times I’ve somewhere between Proust’s A La experienced what I call “an Recherche du Temps Perdu and Anthony Powell moment”. Some Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga and, twitch on the thread. You think of like both, runs into volumes, somebody in one context and then individually of varying brilliance, come across them in another. This but a masterpiece taken as a happens to me so often as to be whole. I read the First almost uncanny. I love his writing. Movement last summer – the twelve There is quite a popular view of novels of the cycle are much more Powell that he’s just a refrigerated easily digested in four parts. Don’t old snob who simply wants to write be tempted to set yourself a target about this exclusive set of toffs and of a book a month for twelve wastrels buggering about in some months: like good telly box-sets, it’s high-class nightclub. And in fact designed for bingeing on, gobbling he’s not like that at all. They’re as much of its deliciousness as one about social movement. ■ can manage in a single sitting. It’s not for eking out into smaller Simple-lifers, utopian socialists, portions, not least because one will lose track of the marvellous and spiritualists, occultists, numerous characters who wander theosophists, quietists, pacifists, in and out of the narrative, and futurists, cubists, zealots of all sorts whose rediscovery at different in their approach to life and art … points in their lives is one of the were then [1914] thought of by the many pleasures of this great unenlightened as scarcely literary treat. ■ distinguishable from one another … The Kindly Ones 35 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

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Lord Weidenfeld, who died in January, was at one time married to Barbara Skelton who was in part the character model for Pamela Flitton. Writing of the tributes to Weidenfeld, DJ Taylor [no, we don’t pay him for all these mentions, honest! – Ed] in the Independent, 23 January 2016, comments on diarists: The late Lord Weidenfeld The same rule [major players of 20th century culture were incorrigible gossips] applies to a great deal of literary art. What are Reviewing High Dive by Jonathan the seven volumes of Proust’s A la Lee for The Atlantic (March 2016), recherche du temps perdu other Leo Robson has the following than an exercise in gossip? Or comment on Margaret Thatcher and Anthony Powell’s equally AP’s opinion of her. compendious A Dance to the Music Margaret Thatcher, though a of Time? A diarist is, almost by prodigious consumer of economics definition, a gossip. Pepys is never textbooks and briefing documents, so happy as when filing and a frequent spouter of Bible unsubstantiated third-party reports passages, has been widely on colleagues, and much of the considered deaf to literature. Even material that went to make up a besotted admirer like the novelist Aubrey’s Brief Lives was little more Anthony Powell found it hard to than scuttlebutt. The great crisis of take her reading seriously. After Thackeray’s later life, the “Garrick Thatcher told him that Club Affair” which estranged him Dostoyevsky’s novel The Possessed from Charles Dickens and had had helped her understand the London in uproar for weeks, grew pressing problems of the day, he out of an incautiously dropped wondered in his journal “when, remark or two to a friend across a how, she got round to this. Did she clubland hearthrug. ■ read the novel, see its contemporary relevance herself, or was that pointed out to her by someone? I fear probably the latter”. (His skepticism was well founded: The someone was apparently the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.) ■

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Late last year the BBC asked … Back in Newsletter 58 we reported on What does the rest of the world see the death of the Society’s former as the greatest British novels? In Trustee, and one of our earliest search of a collective critical members, Leatrice Fountain. What assessment, BBC Culture we had forgotten is that as well as contributor Jane Ciabattari polled being the daughter of film director 82 book critics, from Australia to John Gilbert, Leatrice was a child film Zimbabwe – but none from the UK. -actress in her own right. This list includes no non-fiction, no Nick Birns has spotted Leatrice plays, no narrative or epic poems remembered (albeit briefly) by the (no Paradise Lost or Beowulf), no Movie Channel in a short piece short story collections (no Morte commemorating movie people who D’Arthur) – novels only, by British died in 2015. authors (which means no James You can find the short at http:// Joyce). www.findadeath.com/forum/ We were pleased to see Dance appear showthread.php?39509-TCM- on the list at number 36. Remembers-2015. Leatrice appears Find the full list online at http:// just over halfway through, after a www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204 child actor called Kevin Corcoran, at -the-100-greatest-british-novels. around 1m 50s. ■ Spotted by Nick Birns. ■

Choosing her books of the year for the as the day it came out over 70 years Spectator, 21 November 2015, Hilary ago. An extraordinary book for a Spurling selects: young man in his mid-twenties to My first choice is Rachel Billington’s write about the marital problems of Glory: A Story of Gallipoli, following middle-aged people, ending with the three young survivors (and their outing of the retired major up at the families at home) through what big house, who likes to relax while became the first great British defeat of smoking his pipe behind locked doors the first world war. Grim and in a flowery Ascot hat and lady’s gripping, difficult to put down. My evening gown. second is an old favourite reissued Rachel Billington is a daughter of Frank th this year in paperback, Anthony Pakenham, 7 Earl of Longford, and thus a Powell’s uproarious From a View to a niece of Lady Violet and AP. Rachel Billington’s grandfather (Lady Violet’s father), Death, a novel about dysfunctional Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford, was marriage, still as relevant and funny killed at Gallipoli in August 1915. ■

37 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62

Christmas Quiz Answers

Numerology Real Historical Characters in Dance 1. 4 25. 48 (plus DC) 1. Button Gwinnett [TK, 49] 2. 8848 m or 26. 4 2. Samuel Pepys [LM, 10] 29029 ft 27. 2 3. Robert Burton [BDFR, 240] 3. 10 28. 11 4. Rudyard Kipling [VB, 57-9] 4. 20 29. 10 5. Field-Marshall Haig [BM, 39 ff] 5. 116 30. 7 6. Ariosto [HSH, various] 6. 666 31. 5 7. Anthony Trollope [SA, 45-7] 7. 27 32. 94 8. Nicolas Poussin [QU, 2] 8. 39 33. 12 9. Chabrier [CCR, 109-110] 9. 2 34. 13 10. Modigliani [HSH, 270] 10. 42 35. 20,000 11. Marcel Proust [MP, 146] 11. 221B 36. 1984 12. Veronese [QU, 8] 12. 1 37. 8 13. Archduke Franz Ferdinand [KO, 69-70] 13. 10 38. 100 14. William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw [VB, 52] 14. 21 39. 4 15. Tiepolo [TK, 75-7] 15. 7 40. 366 16. Carl Jung [LM, 226] 16. 4 41. 3 17. Sigmund Freud [LM, 226] 17. 2½ 42. 64 18. Boris Karloff [BDFR, 112, 114] 18. 5 43. 72 19. Karl Marx [AW, 94 ff] 19. 7 44. 21 20. Dostoyevsky [TK, 218] 20. 4 45. 16 21. Adolf Hitler [KO, 142] 21. 22 46. 11 22. Queen Victoria [KO, 157-9] 22. 5 47. 18 23. Laclos [AW, 24] 23. 12 48. 144 24. Andrew Lang [QU, 40] 24. 60 25. Descartes [VB, 107] 26. General Sikorski [MP, 16] 27. Stalin [MP, 52 passim] 28. Peter Paul Rubens [BM, 216] ■ McTigger Book Search Crossword Struggling to find AP volumes? Why not ask us to hunt for you? Tell us what you want and how much you want to pay and we’ll do our best to find it for you. It’s always worth asking as we may have it in stock! Terms: cost + p&p + small fee Private sale; independent of AP Soc. Contact Keith & Noreen Marshall [email protected]

38 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #62 Society Merchandise

SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL & NEWSLETTER 2011 Conference Proceedings Secret Harmonies: Journal of the Anthony UK: £8, Overseas: £14.50 Powell Society Back numbers of issues 1, 2 & 3 are available. Centenary (2005) Conference Proceedings UK: £11, Overseas: £17 UK: £5, Overseas: £9 each Oxford (2003) Conference Proceedings AUDIO UK: £7, Overseas: £13.50 BBC Radio Dramatisation of Dance Eton 2001 Conference Proceedings Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between UK: £6.50, Overseas: £10.50 1979-82. 26 one-hour episodes. Single CD containing 26 MP3 files. For copyright reasons Jeff Manley et al.; Dance Music available to Society members only. 150-page guide to the musical references in UK & Overseas: £10 (£5 + £5 donation) Dance; in the style of Spurling’s Handbook. UK: £7, Overseas: £10.50 POSTCARDS Writing about Anthony Powell Anthony Powell’s Ancestral Lands Postcards Talks given at the 2004 AGM by George Lilley, Set of four colour postcards from photos by John Michael Barber and Nick Birns; introduced by Blaxter of the Powell ancestral lands on the Christine Berberich. Welsh borders. UK: £2.50, Overseas: £4 UK: £4, Overseas: £6.50 Society Postcard The Master and The Congressman B&W postcard of Powell with his cat Trelawney. 40-page monograph by John Monagan describing Pack of 5. UK: £2.50, Overseas: £4 his meetings with Powell. Wallace Collection Poussin Postcard UK: £4, Overseas: £6.50 The Wallace Collection’s postcard of Poussin’s A OTHER PUBLICATIONS Dance to the Music of Time. Pack of 5. UK: £3, Overseas: £4.50 Violet Powell; A Stone in the Shade Fourth & final volume of Lady Violet’s ORDERING autobiography covering mostly the 1960s. The prices shown are the members’ prices as of Includes many of Lady Violet’s coloured travel February 2016 and are inclusive of postage and sketches. Hardback. UK: £24.50, Overseas: £29 packing. Please note the different UK and *** SALE! – LAST FEW COPIES *** overseas prices which reflect the additional The Acceptance of Absurdity: Anthony Powell cost of overseas postage. Non-members will be – Robert Vanderbilt Letters 1952-1963 charged the member’s price shown plus Edited by John Saumarez Smith & Jonathan postage & packing at cost. Kooperstein; 2011. Please send your order to: Fascinating letters between Powell and his friend Anthony Powell Society Merchandise, and first American publisher Robert Vanderbilt. 48 Cecil Road, London, E13 0LR, UK Paperback: UK £8.50, Overseas £12.50 Email: [email protected] Hardback: UK £18, Overseas £24.50 Payment may be by cheque, Visa, Mastercard or Anthony Powell, Caledonia, A Fragment PayPal. If paying by credit card please include The 2011 Greville Press reprint of this rare the card number, expiry date, 3-digit secure code, Powell spoof. UK: £8, Overseas: £10.50 and the billing name & address. John Gould; Dance Class Cheques, payable to the Anthony Powell Society, American High School student essays from must be for UK funds and drawn on a UK bank. John’s two teachings of Dance at Philips PayPal payment should be sent to Academy. UK: £12, Overseas: £17.50 [email protected]. You may also order through the Society’s online shop at www.anthonypowell.org. ■

39 Anthony Powell Society The Anthony Powell Society Registered Charity No. 1096873 Registered Charity No. 1096873 Membership Form The Anthony Powell Society is a charitable literary society devoted to the Please tick below the membership required: life and works of the English author UK Overseas Individual Members □ £22 □ £28 Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. Joint Members * □ £33 □ £39 Student Members ** □ £13 □ £19 Officers & Trustees * Any two persons at the same address. Patron: John MA Powell ** Please send a copy of your current student card. President: The Earl of Gowrie PC, FRSL [ ] Buy 5 years membership for the price of 4 (any grade) Vice-Presidents: Gift membership and standing order payment are Patric Dickinson LVO also available; please ask. Subscriptions are due on Michael Meredith 1 April annually. If joining on or after 1 January, Dr Jeremy Warren FSA membership includes following subscription year. Society Trustees: Name: ______Robin Bynoe (Vice-Chairman) Address: ______Jeffrey Manley (USA) ______Dr Keith Marshall (Hon. Secretary) ______Dr Derek Miles Harry Mount Postcode: ______Country: ______Graham Page (Hon. Treasurer) E-mail: ______AC (Tony) Robinson (Chairman) [ ] I enclose a sterling cheque drawn on a UK bank Prof. John Roe for £______and payable to Anthony Powell Elwin Taylor Society. Membership Secretary: Keith Marshall [ ] Please debit my Visa/MasterCard with £_____ Social Secretary: Stephen Walker Card No.: ______Merchandise Secretary: Robin Bynoe Expires: ______CVC: ______Newsletter & Secret Harmonies Editor: [Delete if not required.] I am a UK taxpayer and I Stephen Walker want all donations I’ve made since 6 April 2000 and all donations in the future to be Gift Aid until I Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall notify you otherwise. You must pay an amount of All correspondence should be sent to: Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April one year to 5 April the next) that is at Secretary, Anthony Powell Society least equal to the amount of tax that the Society will 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford reclaim on your donations for that tax year. UB6 0JW, UK I agree to the Society holding my contact details on Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 computer. Email: [email protected] Signed: Date: Website: www.anthonypowell.org Please send the completed form and payment to: Anthony Powell Society Memberships 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, UB6 0JW, UK © The Anthony Powell Society, 2016. All rights reserved. Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 Published by The Anthony Powell Society. Email: [email protected] Printed and distributed by Lonsdale Direct Solutions, Wellingborough, UK.