The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter Issue 53, Winter 2013, ISSN 1743-0976, £3 Season’s Greetings and a Prosperous New Year Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 Eton Conference Report … 3-5 AP & Patrick Leigh Fermor … 6-10 Cheltenham Festival Report … 11-12 Kaggsy’s Ramblings – KO … 13-15 Kaggsy’s Ramblings – VB … 15-17 Dates for Your Diary … 18-19 Society Notices … 19-21 REVIEW: The Windsor Faction … 22-24 REVIEW: Profiles in String … 25-26 Letters to the Editor … 27-30 Cuttings … 31-33 Merchandise & Membership … 34-36 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #53 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Registered Charity No. 1096873 Wow! So much has happened since I sat The Anthony Powell Society is a down to write my last column. charitable literary society devoted to the First of all we had a wonderful conference at life and works of the English author Eton College in late September. As you’ll Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. see in Clemence Schultze’s report [page 3] the speakers were excellent, the events a Officers & Trustees delight, the food was super: all in all, Eton Patron: John MA Powell did us proud. I don’t yet have all the bills but the conference should break even thanks President: The Earl of Gowrie PC, FRSL to a grant from the Derek Hill Foundation Hon. Vice-Presidents: (which allowed us to keep prices within bounds) and the generosity of Eton College. Julian Allason We also owe much gratitude to Michael Patric Dickinson LVO Meredith for his enthusiasm and for Michael Meredith unlocking the recesses of the Eton machine. Dr Jeremy Warren FSA The feedback I’ve received from delegates is Society Trustees: that everyone had a great weekend and that Stephen Holden this was, as several said, our best conference Jeffrey Manley (USA) yet. David Ball who is organising the 2015 Dr Keith C Marshall (Hon. Secretary) conference has a lot to live up to! Dr Derek WJ Miles (Hon. Treasurer) Hot on the heels of the conference came the Harry Mount AGM on 19 October with the usual good Paul Nutley (Chairman) turnout of members. Unfortunately several Tony Robinson of our Trustees were missing – some due to Prof. John Roe illness; others because the trains picked that Elwin Taylor (Switzerland) day to stop running. Nonetheless all the required business was done; Patric Dickinson Membership & Merchandise Officer: was confirmed as a Vice-President for Dr Keith C Marshall another 5 years; and we welcome Harry Newsletter & Journal Editor: Mount (AP’s great-nephew) as a Trustee. Stephen Holden AGM minutes in the next Newsletter. Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall After the business part of the AGM we heard a very interesting talk from the Powells’ All correspondence should be sent to: grand-daughter, Georgia Powell (aided and Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society abetted by Harry Mount), on the life and the 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford work of Lady Violet. This highlighted both UB6 0JW, UK Lady Violet’s encyclopaedic memory – so Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 important to AP in writing Dance – and her Fax: +44 (0) 20 8020 1483 stature as a writer in her own right. Email: [email protected] By the time you read this the Annual Lecture and Powell Birthday celebrations will be Cover photograph © John S Monagan 1984 and reproduced by kind permission. upon us! Following which it remains only © The Anthony Powell Society, 2013. All rights reserved. for me to wish everyone best wishes for Published by The Anthony Powell Society. Christmas and the New Year. ■ Printed and distributed by Lonsdale Direct Solutions, Wellingborough, UK. 2 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #53 Seventh Anthony Powell Society Conference Eton College, Friday 27 & Saturday 28 September By Clemence Schultze We knew we were back at school as Keith Peter Berthoud (self-described as ‘a Marshall tapped the gavel and told us London obsessive’ who was unavoidably sternly not to sit at the back. It was a absent due to serious illness) provided an science lecture auditorium – at least, so abundance of images of London in AP’s suggested the sinks and gas taps on the time which were presented by Keith podium’s bench – but the luxuriously Marshall. These reminded us how much upholstered seats befitted a comfortable the city has changed, not only through the studio theatre. Keith thanked Eton College losses of war but from redevelopment, and Michael Meredith, the Derek Hill population shifts, increasing wealth, traffic Foundation, and the Trustees of the and tourism. Most evocative were a Anthony Powell Society for supporting shabby secondhand shop in Charlotte this, the seventh conference. Street – one of a kind that simply no longer exists – and the actual coffee stall at Michael Meredith mused on AP as an Old Hyde Park Corner. Etonian. The writer was interested in the differences between OEs, and presents no Next came a new-old publication: Bernard stereotypical Etonians. He was also Stacey had ventured to think himself into concerned for the continuing history of the persona of X Trapnel and to ‘distil the alumni, as recorded in the school’s essence of Maida Vale canal water into a published register. Thanks to his ‘charm book’ [review, page 25]. Bernard sketched offensive’, 500 years’ worth of what we know of the writer’s life and computerised records will soon go online, career, and pointed out the appositeness of free to all for genealogical and historical his novel’s title to Dadaism, particularly researches. Patric Dickinson then the string collages of Picabia, evoked on welcomed us to the second Society the cover. There was a rush to buy copies conference to be held at Eton. of the work – and some lucky members acquired one of the few adorned by X’s In his keynote address, DJ Taylor very own signature. considered the literary politics of the 1930s, with its ideological divide between The evening reception was a delight: the Left-inclined and the lingering 1920s pianist and radio presenter Paul Guinery aesthetes, and asked where AP had stood. took us from Ted Jeavons’ wartime tunes Taste predominated over politics in via the Huntercombes’ ball to the song forming AP’s views: he might be described Sergeant Gwilt sang to Maureen: ‘Arm in (like TS Eliot) as a right-wing modernist, Arm – Just You and Me’. Some melodies and he combined an interest in Bohemia hovered at the fringes of memory; others with living a perfectly normal life. The were completely new to us. His wonderful books well reflect contemporary attitudes, playing and voice (which, with needless ranging from Quiggin’s fellow-travelling, modesty, he compared to Max Pilgrim’s via St John Clarke’s Hugh Walpole-ish ‘tremulous quavering’) presented many keeping up, to Hugo Tolland, who wished lost gems: ‘If you’re Going to Piccadilly, he had lived in the 1920s. Billy, pick a Nice Little One for Me’. He 3 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #53 elucidated some puzzling allusions: ‘Molly which Dance is composed. AP’s style, the Marchioness’ comes from the 1902 narrative voice and perspective are all musical ‘A Country Girl’, and a revue by transformed from the manner of his André Charlot at the end of World War I prewar modernist works. Sentences provided ‘Buzz Buzz’ – thus appropriately become long and clausular; only Nick is to be heard on the ‘Braddock alias Thorne’ allowed inner musings. Gossip is at the walk. The occasion was enhanced by the heart of the work, and claims to insight setting: the Election Hall with its beamed rely only on what characters say. The ceiling and huge bird’s-eye-view painting multiple perspectives entail an historical of Venice. And among the portraits of and all-embracing view of the present. Eton notables in the corridor hung one by ‘Dance is a thoroughly modern novel, Colin Spencer of AP. albeit one with a pre-Enlightenment world view’. Saturday’s first session was entitled ‘Aspects of Dance’. Constantine Sandis The second keynote speech was given by addressed manifestations of philosophy of Patric Dickinson on Varda, a woman well action in the work. In a paper which described as ‘strife-torn and causing touched briefly on writers from Homer to strife’. It is impossible to summarise all Wesley to Nietzsche, he identified that Patric has discovered about Dorothy Chaucer’s poetics of suffering as the Farrer Stewart: we await his account of his opposing pole to Spenser’s of action. In researches. A woman of striking beauty, the novel Widmerpool represents the will, actress, dancer, mannequin (for Chanel, no with Nick as the figure of passivity and less), she had aspirations as a writer and patiency. translator, and her High Holborn bookshop was a venue for the avant garde in the late Robin Bynoe used painting to illustrate the 1920s. Her three marriages were all meaning of naturalism: Frith’s ‘Derby troubled, and she died of an overdose. Day’, teeming with detail and ostensibly a Often mentioned in memoirs of the period, representation of an actual event, is in fact and appearing too in fiction, she just as selective and suggestive as a work nevertheless remains elusive: comments of by Manet or Renoir. He proposed that, ‘peevish’ and ‘dissatisfied’ suggest the unlike Thackeray and Trollope, AP just did difficulties of her personality; her wit, not ‘get’ business, and was unable to charm and funniness are harder to convey. represent it. Instead, he drew on specific AP’s allusions to her in his memoirs are details (the very small and specialised area discreet, but surviving letters reveal that of non-ferrous metal dealing) to evoke the Varda was the keener of the two on a business activities – and the power – of Sir relationship and perhaps wished to marry Magnus Donners and his associates.