Angus Mackay Diaries Volume II (1952-1966)
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Angus Mackay Diaries Volume II (1952-1966) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 19 Angus Mackay. Being the fifteenth. v. From June 15 1952. To November 21 1952. PAGES MISSING ...conversationalist either his appearance or his inclination would really suggest. He is shy/retiring, and means to be a good listener; in fact he rarely succeeds in making you feel anything but his wish to be rid of you, a wish he has himself frequently contradicted. The message about the bit of extra-work solved itself as these things generally do. I slept through until my usual time, got up and pretended to Gerard with more guilt than I could really feel. I had guilt about not feeling guilt. Friday June 20 1952 Depressed today by my failure of yesterday. I wondered again and again whether I should have taken the extra-work, while my common-sense said 'If you can get on without it, nothing could be better than to keep away from a fatal groove'. In the evening I was particularly down because I had had little more than a biscuit or two for lunch. I was particularly pleased when Joseph R. asked me out to dinner at Bianchi's in Frith Street. I am not at all sure that I have described Joseph at all fully, and certainly not as his position in life at Kingly Street deserves. Joseph Rykwert then, is a scruffy long-haired Jewish-Polish intellectual, with the bulging stomach of the rickety, a long haughty Jewish nose, and two slightly self-consciously naughty eyes. His clothes are grease-spotted, his shoes scuffed, his whole aspect unkempt and unattractive. His mind is at once far-ranging and narrow, humble and arrogant, well-trained and bigoted. His manner is not calculated to make a good first impression, being very contradictory and given to propounding very revolutionary opinions in the most heavily casual tone. But for all that, his mind is within its limits extremely thorough and penetrating, though neither original, nor, I should have said, particularly creative. He has not known happiness very often, I should think, and has often himself been without a dinner. We walked off to Bianchi's, Joseph asking me on the way what I thought of St. Paul's. I said I thought it was really rather fun. He said loftily that was because I had never studied the subject, and St. Paul's was really a very wrong-minded building. Sparring gently over this, we arrived in Frith St. with tempers surprisingly intact. Bianchi's, a small undistinguished brown-varnished shop, is, I am informed, very Italian in atmosphere. There seemed to be to be no atmosphere at all, except a loud smell of garlic and a loud sound of Italian voices, but no doubt that is what people mean by Italian atmosphere. We had a nice enough meal, of which I was very glad and afterwards felt guilty of all my strictures on Joseph after his kindness. We went along to the London Pavilion afterwards to use the free tickets that Gerard's little usher friend had sent him, saw the Film Garden Party on the news- reel which Joseph had attended the day before, sat through part of the silliest film I have seen for a long time, 'California Conquest', and then came back to Kingly St. for a drink to an address in Lowndes Square, where his cousin, Mrs. Orme, has a flat. I got there at about 6.15, having had tea and changed, and found on the west side of Lowdes Square a large ugly block of brick flats, looking ill at ease among the haughty yellow stucco of the rest of the square. In the hallway of the flats the name-board has a number of varnished black spaces instead of names. When I was let into the flat, over a glass of rather bad sherry, in a drawing- room furnished in the purest Curzon St. Baroque, I asked Mrs. Orme, a commonplace jolly woman, with a diseased hip and lot of money, what was the reason for this. She told me that it was because the occupants of some of the flats were so grand they didn't want anybody to live there. She says she often sees ex-Queen Marie of Yugoslavia carrying in a case of beer. Michael's brother was also there, a small shy boy, frightened to be anything but brazen. Michael and I went off for a lovely dinner at a restaurant near the Knightsbridge end of Sloane Street, followed by a drink at the Grenadier in Old Barrack Yard. We had a long long talk, naturally about Ju most of the time. He feels much the same about Ju as I do, and I am glad to find that there are one or two others who feel the same foreboding about him until and unless circumstances force him into reality. He has been too lucky really, I don't think I'm jealous. I'm sure it's not a good preparation. Monday June 23 1952 To St. Anne's this evening for the last of the literary conversations. This one, on Firbank and Saki, is between Osbert Lancaster and Harold Nicholson. The audience, larger and more distinguished than the first one, arrived early, and sat waiting in expectation of amusement. The appearance of the speakers created a much larger buzz of conversation than usual. Led by bustling plump Gerard, they threaded their way to the front, amid a polite hum of subject- changing. As they sat down, I could see that Mr. Nicolson is a well-covered smart prosperous man of middle height, with small neat features, thin white hair and very bright blue eyes. When he was a young man, I can imagine that he was a typical Edwardian, with a sleek head of absolutely smooth fair hair, and the anonymously regular features of one of Wallis Mills' Knuts. Osbert Lancaster, on the other hand, much younger, is thick-set, four- square on the ground with an odd blunt square head, covered with thick d. brown hair; his face is pugnacious, the nose defiantly pug, the eyes cold and sardonic. He wears a huge bristling handle-bar moustache, and his whole aspect is so truculent and fierce that one wonders where is the gaiety and lightness of the man who dreamed up Stockbrokers' tudor, Curzon St. Baroque, and Maudie Littlehampton. His delivery is slow, measured and interrupted by frequent hummings, er-er's and smacking of the lips, as if he were considering the merits of a bottle rather than a man. Harold Nicolson opened the discussion with an amusing though over-chatty expose of Firbank saying as clearly as he could in such company that Firbank was queer. He told of their meeting in Spain, before the Great War, when H.N. was in the Foreign Service, and F. got an introduction to him from his parents. He told of Firbank's limpness and giggling, without seeming to realize that if he met such a person now he would think nothing of it. Then he was young, conventional, and I should say, rather dull. The truth is that he can't forgive R.F. for his wicked portrait of him in I forget which of the novels. Nor what is more, that he himself was kicked out of the Foreign Service for the certain vice he accused F. of. Osbert Lancaster was not particularly amusing not enlightening though pleasant enough. Both of course were adept at the polite exchange of insults in as polysyllabic a vocabulary as possible that passes any educated people as the small change of public speaking, and on this they more or less relied for the evening. I come more and more to the conclusion that authors like Firbank can in fact not be critically examined at all, or if at all quite unproductively. Tuesday June 24 1952 I saw in 'What's On' last week that 'Domenico d'Agosto was on at the Classic in Croydon. I had heard so much about it that I determined to go down and see it. I scrambled onto the train at Charing Cross, and just got to the cinema, miles along Croydon High St., in time for the big film. Oh dear, it was so good. The young love affair in it, was enough to make you feel that you had finally caught the essence of nineteen for ever and ever. I love them both, the smooth rounded plump slightly self-conscious girl, and the casual volatile protective boy, leaping in and out of the sea together and running over the sands to drop down breathless in each others' arms. When I got back I found a message from Colin and Mary asking me to dinner. Changed in a great hurry, and got there to find I was the only guest. So nice, and enjoyed the evening in quiet and peace. Wednesday June 25 1952 John B. called me this morning, and told me to come out to lunch. I went and we had a long long lunch followed by a long long walk around Regent's Park. Thank heavens for someone who remains the same, and can pick up a friendship absolutely where he left off without the smallest trouble. He gave me a great encouragement by saying that he wouldn't regard my being out of work for two years as an indication of any lack of talent. He needed to give some encouragement after the tales of hob-nobbing with the great, and all his dramatic plans and schemes.