Books
The tale of a sofa
Auberon Waugh
Brief Lives Alan Watkins (Hamish Hamilton £8.95)
We all knew that Peregrine Worsthorne had been seduced, while at Stowe, by George Melly, at the tender age of 15. I never before knew that this memorable seduction took place on the art-room sofa. Similarly, I never knew that Mr Worsthorne was as taken away from his prep school — I t-adycross — because he had contracted im- petigo. There are those who say that these (illulgs don't matter, but they matter a great 4114 to me. The bare fact of his having been educed by George Melly at Stowe is the of thing one might find in a pice om- Ill.ter, but the detail of the art-roolomc sofa ( gorIngs it all home. Similarly, there is in about the affliction of impetigo ' a schoolboy — it might have been hair- ar‘cegives an added depth to one's 1.4teciation of his political thought in later ilk.
n Of course there may be people who are the interested in any of the 29 portrait sket- ,n,es given by Alan Watkins in this ",kelightful, gossipy book. I can only urge CM to go away and watch their curtains or as tateham. But practically nobody can be h rested as I was to learn that it was ' atrick Hutber — another journalist _... 42,sneaked on Peregrine to Lord Hartwell Ps. ws Proprietor — on the occasion when I.:regiline exchanged shirts with Vanessa soLvs°11 (wife of Nigel, then editor of the D-a„tator, now a Treasury minister) at a tv'Y Conference in Brighton, in a crowded "Ititeeler's restaurant. dr all sounds rather like the Drones Clubo, People who are not members may begin ilogow restless. Occasionally, one has the ' Pression that Watkins is communicating la .1,.., me sort of code. Thus of Norman St se'ell-Stevas, he reveals in two consecutive kleitenees: 'He had a close friend who was a hirin'ehant banker. He would often describe N.,,self as "celibate" or "chaste" .'.
her
ally W., Piece of information is expanded in fro qy. What are we supposed to learn II In their juxtaposition? Many politicians, bartac gine, have friends who are merchant bat, keys Most, if unmarried, would, pro- tie 'Y describe themselves as 'celibate and °liar, 1,Y, all, with the possible exception of de- the Scottish Law Officer co , would se dbe hmselves for publicconsumption ... chaste'. ‘\idakri. n, when writing about David Steel, tied` Ins suddenly observes: 'He was mar- than t,_° Judy, who was less self-contained Jody ' 'leThat is all we are told about
Normally he is more informative than this. It is hard to know what to make of Judy on the bald information that she is `less self-contained' than David Steel. Does this hide a tragic history of depression and mental breakdown, or does it record a single occasion when, perhaps, she bit the visiting Watkins's ankle?
Then there is the difficulty, as with all Drones Club stories, of knowing whether they are actually true or not. Was it really on the art-room sofa that Peregrine met his fate, or was that just something Peregrine once claimed when telling the story in El Vino's, Melly in the Colony Room? Was it really Hutber who sneaked, or was this just what everyone decided at the time? I ask this apparently rather offensive question because there are one or two anecdotes which I seriously question, while quite ac- cepting that the subject of the portrait is responsible for them. For instance, I do not doubt that Philip Hope-Wallace (another journalist) told him that he, Hope-Wallace, through the Hope connection, was at some time heir to the Marquess of Linlithgow 'but some accident of birth or death supervened'. I can just see Hope-Wallace telling the story. But anyone who glances at Burke's Peerage for a mo- ment can see that there is no truth in it. Throughout the whole of Hope-Wallace's life, the Lord Linlithgow of the time had a perfectly good heir of his own. Nor was Hope-Wallace even in remainder to the marquessate, although it is true that he was distantly in remainder to the earldom of Hopetown, being the son of a younger son of a grandson of the fourth earl. But he would have had to have waded through blood to get there. The marquessate, being created in 1902, would always have eluded him. It is just possible that he was once heir to the estates (but not the title) of Lord Wallace — that is to say, Featherstone Castle, Northumberland — as a result of his great-grandfather's arrangements, but only if the Hope-Wallaces applied male primogeniture with an insane pedanticism. Having disposed of that little matter, perhaps I may be allowed to question whether Peregrine Worsthome is really any good at tennis, as Watkins assures us. I do not doubt for a moment that Worsthorne said he was good, but has Watkins ever seen him play? I once exposed Worsthorne's croquet-playing pretensions in a hard-hitting television programme, but we iconoclasts cannot be everywhere, and Watkins strikes me as erring on the gullible side of bland geniality when he simply repeats that Worsthorne is good at tennis as if it were God's ovm. truth. Similarly, I have never believed Dents Healey's story, here
repeated, that he got a small scar on one of his knuckles by trying to punch a 'bigger boy' through the window of a train. One can get exactly the same sort of scar by try- ing to punch a smaller boy in that way, and Healey is an exceptionally big person.
I would also question a few — although not many — of his judgments of people. Kingsley Amis has always struck me as nastier than Watkins admits, and Anthony Powell as duller. We all like Michael Foot tremendously, but that is no excuse for presenting him as a liberal romantic with a commitment to free speech. The debate on newspaper closed shops showed that he has no such commitment, while his attitude to the unions reveals a taste for the rough trade which is the intellectual equivalent of Tom Driberg's more down-to-earth preferences. As a politician, Foot is weak and nasty in equal measure, however agreeable he can be as a dinner companion. And Tom, whichever way one shook him, was utterly disgusting.
But it is part of the enjoyment of the book to dissent from Watkins's wilder flights of charity, while relishing the occa- sional sharp remark or uncomfortable fact, meanly inserted between genial expostula- tions. It is quite true that Amis was never an angry young man, but has grown angrier with age. I was fascinated to learn that his second marriage — to Elizabeth Jane Howard — began with an affair at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. My Uncle Alec Waugh once claimed to have scored at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, but I never believed him. I laughed out loud at the portrait of Lord Beaverbrook, whose dread summons to his underlings would be transmitted by a camp, red-haired butler: 'Oh, the old bugger. He's in such a temper these days. I pity you all, I really do. Some of the things you wouldn't believe!'
In fact I enjoyed the whole book tremen- dously, and am proud to be included in it. Watkins describes himself rather import- antly as a Labour revisionist at home, a Bevanite abroad, to which those of us who
know him can only say phooey! He is a genial fellow who believes everyone should have a good time and be allowed to get away with most things. As for being a Bevanite abroad, he may well have been abroad once or twice in recent years — for a long time he disapproved of all foreign parts — but I am sure that he comported himself as soberly as he usually does.
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