Another voice
Found under a Stone
Auberon Waugh
'The pressure to conform—to do certain things that you don't find pleasant—certain things that you find downright insulting to your own personal integrity—is really too much, too much.'
Thus spoke Mrs Margaret Trudeau to a Daily Mail reporter called Roderick Gilchrist in New York, explaining why she had abandoned her role as First Lady in Canada to come to New York with a Rolling Stone: 4I'm just protesting in a very nice, quiet, hopefully—urn, nice way. For the time being I'm devoting myself to my photography. And to my own pursuit of my own self. I would like to do something instead of a passive role of smiling and supporting. I would like to take a more dynamic role of being myself—whatever that is. And that's not in terms of public image, that's in terms of private image. It's in terms of art.'
Many people seem to be troubled by the stirrings of an artistic impulse nowadays. don't suppose there has been a moment in the world's history when more people felt themselves to be artists, or when less art was produced. Not that I've got anything against artists, of course. As Enoch sometimes says about the blacks, it is a question of numbers, But while the world waits on tenterhooks to discover whether it is Mick Jagger or his matchstick-thin, spiky-haired guitarist Ron Woods who is playing Byron to Pierre Trudeau's Lady Caroline Lamb, I can't help wondering why I am not more stirred by Trudeau's predicament. Like most young men of my generation, I was anguished by the spectacle of the young Melbourne when the absurd, club-footed, nail-biting figure of Lord Byron appeared on the scene, as described by David Cecil:
'There limped into the room a selfconscious youth, with a handsome, sulky head, fidgety movement, showy, ill-fitting clothes, and a manner compulsively lacking in the ease and naturalness usual in a man of his rank . . . But it was not Byron she cared for : it was his reputation, and still more the idea of herself in love with him. Beautiful, brilliant, seared with the flames of exotic passion, and the most lionised man in England, he was everything she had all her life been seeking. Here at last was a hero worthy of such a heroine.'
Nobody can doubt that Mick Jagger (or possibly his wafer-thin guitarist Ron Spikes) is today's exact equivalent of Lord Byron. It is only when one begins to identify the other two characters in the drama—Mrs Trudeau with Lady Caroline Lamb and Pierre Trudeau with her husband, William—that there are difficulties. Possibly these may explain the general lack of sympathy for Trudeau—I would hate to think it was a hardening of the heart with age which makes me chuckle every time I think of his anguished French-Canadian face.
Where the women are concerned, we must remember that although their behaviour has much in common, the fiendish Lady Caroline was not only notorious for her nastiness in London's easy-going society at the beginning of the last century; her extreme egotism was considered pretty well unique. She was one of the earliest products of a permissive upbringing recorded in British social history—victim of a foolish, selfindulgent mother, Lady Bessborough, and the Devonshire House set, with whom she spent much of her childhood. From her earliest appearance in polite society, she was recognised as a freak. Known as 'the little beast' by her in-laws, her devouring egotism drove her to an extravagance by which she might draw attention to herself—the wearing of trousers, fits of ungovernable rage in which she would scream and tear her clothes and which soon came to be recognised as symptoms of lunacy.
Like Lady Caroline, Mrs Trudeau has suffered from insanity, although her visits to a lunatic asylum are nowadays described as a period of psychiatric hospital care to relieve a condition of severe emotional stress. Like Lady Caroline, she comes from a privileged, politically powerful background, being the daughter of a former Cabinet minister. Like Lady Caroline's (real or illusory) affair with the poet Byron, Mrs Trudeau's (real or illusory) entanglement with the Rolling Stones has been conducted in the brightest glare of public attention, to the maximum possible humiliation of her husband.
But the enormous, unbridgeable gap between them i's that whereas Lady Caroline was universally seen as a freak and a monster, Mrs Trudeau is seen as a typical, healthy child of her generation. If she has been inside a psychiatric hospital, so have a large proportion of women in her class and age-group. Her egotistical ravings, with which I opened this article, are the feminine small-talk of innumerable middle-class London dinner parties. I have scarcely sat next to a woman in the last ten years Who has not told me in the course of the meal that she is in pursuit of her own self, that she finds the pressure to conform, to do things she doesn't want to do, really too much, too much, that her artistic integrity requires greater freedom for its self-expression. Before the meal is over, many of these women are slightly drunk and trying to pick a quarrel, ending the occasion with a hysterical diatribe about vegetarianism or child care or the best way to educate the lower classes. Time and permissive upbringing have made Lady Caroline Lambs of them all.
Now let us compare Pierre Trudeau to the young Melbourne, or William Lamb, as he then was. The similarities are obvious. Both became prime ministers at one time or another, both were liberals and both saw their wives go mad and run away with at least one notorious philanderer within six years of their wedding. There the similarity ends. Unlike Melbourne, a simple Whig, Trudeau was a 'new wave' liberal who first drew attention to himself as Minister of Justice with proposals for abortion and homosexual law reform. Unlike Melbourne, Trudeau was already prime minister and a fully mature man of fifty-one before he married, however well preserved his ripe old carcase may have been. At the time, you may remember, we all grew misty-eyed about our own fifty-four-year-old bachelor prime minister, Teddy Heath, and wondered if at last he would pull his finger out, if that is the right expression. Whereas Melbourne, at twenty-seve°. was only six years older than his fiendish bride, Trudeau could give his 'flower child' twenty-six years. Now of course there maY be something very beautiful and romantic in the idea of this idealistic young woman with her flat tummy, firm, high breasts and wholesome expression, giving herself to a wrinkled, walnut-coloured prime minister of fifty-one. We must be careful to avoid anY temptation to sexual jealousy, must we not? So many men of that age have wives wh° leave their dentures by the side of the bed and read Doris Lessing into the small hours. Let us look a little closer at this candidate for our manly sympathy. His recreations are given as swimming, skiing, flying, scuba diving and canoeing. Scuba diving ? have looked it up and it refers to a sort of breathing apparatus he carries on his back during these solitary but obviously enjoyable excursions under water. None of these recreations really needs a partner, and in fact the list has been unchanged since his. marriage in 1971. In fifty-one years 01 bachelorhood, he acquired the resources to see him through the days and nights when his wife is away. More importantly, he chose to marry int° a younger generation which, despite its, present flat tummies, high, firm breasts arid wholesome expressions, has few inner resources and whose particular ethos Puts. no premium on duty, loyalty or sacrifice al the expense of self-fulfilment. Any of Lis could have-told him that six years and three babies later his wife would be dissatisfied, more self-obsessed than ever and Most probably mad. It was just a question of the price he was prepared to pay for cutting a little dash—one more reminder of the glorious fact that sex makes fools of us all.
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