My brother Widmerpool
A. N. Wilson
Stranger and Brother: A Portrait of C. P. Snow Philip Snow (Macmillan £8.95)
Twenty years have passed since F. R. Leavis published his notoriously vituperative reflections on C. P. Snow in the pages of the Spectator. `The judgment I have to come out with is that not only is he not a genius; he is intellectually as un- distinguished as It is possible to be .... Snow is, of course, a no, I can't say that, he isn't: Snow thinks of himself as a novelist ... As a novelist he doesn't exist; he doesn't begin to exist. The nonentity is apparent on every page of his fictions'. To our mild generation, the stuttering prose of the crazed sage of Bulstrode Gardens has some of the belligerent attrac- tion of Milton's pamphlets, ranting in a long-forgotten controversy with some 17th- century ecclesiastical buffoon. But, as a piece of literarY judgment it is surely im- possible to fault. To wade through Snow's Strangers and Brothers sequence today is to have the eery experience of reading A Dance to the Music of Time narrated by Widmerpool. Snow's brother has now writ- ten a memoir of the novelist, confirming on every page that this impression is the right one. The biographer writes of Snow's 'con- suming ambition to get ahead'. At the age of 20, shortly after completing a BSc as an external student of London University, Snow (Percy Snow in those days) was pacing the streets of Leicester with a school friend and exclaimed — like to be known as Snow of Leicester ... then Snow of England ... finally just Snow'.
In this scheme of self-advancement, academic promotion and the simultaneous practice of letters provided very serviceable ladders. He went to Cambridge, did a Ph.D in molecular physics, got made a fellow of
Christ's and started to write novels in his distinctively wooden idiom. (It often puzzl- ed him in later life that he was not more popular in France. 'His style: . . . when translated faithfully into French he believ- ed, as did others, that it resembled a Civil Service minute'. He, not Leavis, said it). The war provided a further leg-up in the world as a Civil Servant. 'They have co- opted me on to the Physics panel of the Royal Society which is the body that advises the Ministry of Labour, and, through the Ministry of Labour, ultimately the Service scientific departments'.
When the war ended, he found that the `corridors of power' Ca cliche. But I con- sole myself with the reflection that if a man hasn't the right to his own cliché, who has?') suited him better than being a don, and he remained in London, pursuing a number of sordid love affairs, writing books, and ultimately marrying a very good novelist, Pamela Hansford Johnson. Thereafter, he was known as Charles. Like many grotesquely ugly men, he was reassur- ingly attractive to women, retaining a cons- tant mistress and having a number of casual affairs throughout his married life. His assiduous cultivation of 'important' friends, his vacuous atheism, and his ability to claim 'humble' origins all served him well, for in 1964 Harold Wilson elevated him to the peerage and made him a Minister of Technology. He was the sort that men ennoble. When choosing his heraldic device, he selected the appropriately Widmerpudlian motto Aut Inveniam Viam aut faciam: I will either find a way or make one.
At this date I was still a child and hap- pened to inhabit, for part of the year, the same Midland suburb as Snow's brother, who was a school bursar. One would often glimpse the famous novelist waddling along the pavement, his gross features crowned with a Homburg, seeming like an embodi- ment of the world, the flesh and the devil rolled into one flabby form. Since putting away childish things, I am inclined to a much kinder view. Snow as a writer had no ear for dialogue; no narrative gifts at all; and sadly little of that gossipy curiosity about human distinctiveness which all natural novelists possess. But, writing fee- ble yarns, whatever Savonarola Leavis preached, is not a sin, and if people enjoy Snow's books, why shouldn't they? As a public man, Snow was scarcely decorative or interesting, but once again, the mad Doctor surely painted him blacker than he really was.
As a private man, unless you were unlucky enough to be involved with him sexually, Snow's callous self-absorption seems to have done nobody much harm. As a brother, he could obviously be kind and companionable. There is something touching about the appendix to Snow Minor's book, which lists what Lord Widmerpool had to show for all that com- mittee work, all that dining out, all that self-advertisement, all that huffing and puf- fing: 31 honorary doctorates (D.Humane Letters Akron University, Ohio); the odd lecturership; presidency of the British Migraine Association. He had hoped for the O.M. and' the Nobel Prize for Literature. His biographer adds loyally, 'I myself always hoped that the Royal Society would elect' him a Fellow for his coor- dinating interpretative work for science, and it always seemed odd that he was never offered the Chancellorship of any of the new universities'.
C. P. Snow died, predictably, of a per- forated gastric ulcer. The best anecdote in this engagingly-written memoir shows the famous novelist at the table. When he had completed his long sequence, the most his publisher, Harold Macmillan, could find to say about it was, 'You have done fine work as others have done before you', a remark worthy of the Squid in A. J. Wentworth BA. Nevertheless, Supermac took Snow out for a celebratory luncheon. 'They went to the Ritz, Macmillan's favourite place. "Charles, what will you have? You can have anything you like, on or off the menu". Charles cheered up. "I'll have a poached egg on toast". Macmillan looked bemused. "No," said Charles, "I'll change my mind if I may". Macmillan looked en- couraged. "I'll have two poached eggs on toast, please." And that was that. Mac- millan had caviare, roast beef, a pudding, and cheese'.
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