Aphrodisiacs
Sir: What can Beverley Nichols mean 'poor ad Norman Douglas'? (Notebook, December 8.) Poor old Beverley Nichols, I'd say.
Norman Douglas didn't in "his last disreputable days" or at any other time "lend his name to a regrettable volume called Cupid in the Kitchen."
Let's get it straight.
First: the book was called Venus in the Kitchen.
Second: Norman didn't "lend" his name to it. He wrote it. That is, he collected the recipes and added his own characteristic comments. Deflating comments, most of them, Third: as anybody, and that must I suppose include Beverley Nichols, could see if he took the trouble to look further than the mawkish dust wrapper provided by the publishers. the book was a declared spoof, a send-up of credulous people who put their faith in so-called aphrodisiac foods.
Beverley Nichols has talked himself right into the trap. He says he doesn't believe in aphrodisiacs. Maybe he doesn't. He just believes in people who he thinks do believe in them, and that's just as rash.
As to Mr Graham Greene's reason, questioned by Mr Nichols, for contributing an Introduction (not a preface. See below) to this "sad little pot-boiler," that would be for Mr Greene to say, although it's hard to Imagine that he should feel called upon to do so.
I do not know Mr Greene, and I hope he will not consider it out of turn if I suggest to Mr Nichols that it just could have been out of affection, friendship and even admiration for Norman's work that that Introduction was written. Whatever the reason, Mr Gree'ne's tribute is beautiful, brief and moving, a remarkable evocation of Norman Douglas in his old age on Capri, and a summing up in a few enviably lucid Phrases of his personality and • character. It is in no way, as Mr Nichols implies it is, a puff for the book.
It really is not seemly that your gossip writer should use the columns of The Spectator to instruct Graham Greene or any other author as to what he should or should not write.
Perhaps I should add, for many readers who won't know what all this is about, that Norman Douglas died,
aged twenty _ two,' in February 1952, Venus in the Kitchen was published, by Heinemann, in the autumn of that year. The Preface, by the way, although written by Norman, was signed Pilaff Bey. The spoofing started right in the prefatory pages. Is that how poor Mr Nichols got taken in?
Elizabeth David 24 Halsey Street,
London SW3
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