The Pursuit of Laughter (12 page)

Between the wars Lord Beaverbrook’s ambition soared. His invariably successful opponent in the Tory party was Mr Baldwin, who was neither so rich, nor so clever, nor so energetic as he, and who owned no newspapers. What had Baldwin got that Beaverbrook lacked? He was an educated man; but Lord Beaverbrook’s enemy of later years, Ernest Bevin, had probably less education than the press lord himself. Presumably the answer is that Baldwin’s character and principles were acceptable to the public, and that Lord Beaverbrook’s (even had he not hobbled himself with a peerage) were not.

Many people, reading this book, will be amazed to learn that he ever for one moment set his hopes so high. Nevertheless, looking back over the years, it is no wonder if he feels surprised at the extent to which political influence eluded him. Possibly he even now imagines that his newspapers guide their readers’ thoughts and actions. Yet the fact remains that however good the racing tips, however witty the Osbert Lancaster drawing, however exciting the strips, however unconsciously funny Mr John Gordon may be, the readers of these delightful features pay no attention when they are ordered to vote for X, Y and Z, and are very apt instead to vote for A, B and C. As to the proprietor’s
vendettas
, his likes and dislikes and policies, they are so kaleidoscopic and unpredictable that the public, though much entertained by his newspapers, does not take them seriously.

Mr Driberg’s book would probably have been more successful had it been less
thoroughly
bowdlerised. As it is, though cattiness pervades it, the scratches are slight. If (as is possible) he had the power and the desire to wound, he has been frustrated; thus the title of his book has a double meaning.

Beaverbrook: A Study in Power and Frustration
, Driberg, T. (1953)

Evidently Mr Tom Driberg finds poor fat grubby chain-smoking communist Guy Burgess a more sympathetic subject for biography than he found rich energetic transatlantic bossy buccaneering Lord Beaverbrook. Nothing could exceed his tender regard for the former unless it be his spiteful resentment of the latter. Guy Burgess, of course, is not a man
calculated
to arouse either envy or malice; he is too far down the ladder.

Mr Driberg relates of him that he so much dislikes violence and cruelty that he
ostentatiously
turned his back when a boy was beaten at school. It may seem strange that
someone
so sensitive about the barbarous practices of his own countrymen should be so
insensitive
to the vast organised cruelties of Soviet Russia; but perhaps he simply turns his back again. The child father to the man?

Burgess appears to have disclosed little or nothing that we did not know already from Cyril Connolly’s book, from Petrov, and from the reluctant Foreign Office White Paper,
about the case of the ‘missing diplomats’. It is curious that the
Daily Mail
should consider extracts from Mr Driberg’s book the scoop of the decade, or of the century, I cannot remember which it was supposed to be. Surely not on account of Burgess’s sentimental and amateurish little sketch of a night view of Eton College chapel from Luxmoore’s garden—likely, no doubt, to evoke tender memories in some of the
Daily Mail’
s Etonian readers, but of small interest to those educated at other schools?

As to his visit to Sir Winston Churchill at Chartwell during the Munich crisis, we do not require to be told by Mr Guy Burgess what Sir Winston thought about war with Germany. It will come as a surprise to nobody. ‘I hope to be employed again,’ he is quoted as saying, and Mr Driberg comments: ‘it has been forgotten how completely down and out politically, Churchill at that time seemed.’

‘You know, Tom, living in a socialist country
does
have a therapeutic effect on one,’ says Mr Burgess, and he goes on: ‘In London I was lonely for the important things—I was lonely for Socialism.’

I hope Mr Driberg’s bad luck in having his little whitewashing effort published just now (he could not have been expected to guess what his Russian socialist friends would be about)* will not put him off trying to get another scoop next time he spends his summer holidays in Moscow. Maclean’s story might be interesting, if he would tell it. But perhaps he is not seedy enough, or silly enough, to arouse Mr Driberg’s
sympathetic
interest.

* Burgess and Maclean emerged in Moscow in 1956 after vanishing 5 years earlier.
Burgess: A Portrait with Background,
Driberg, T. (1956
)

In the 20s it was fashionable to attack modern youth (the grandparents of today). Whenever news was scarce, journalists filled up their paper with articles about short hair, long hair, short skirts, outsize trousers—all, according to them, symbols of
decadence
and immorality. Undergraduates outraged the older generation by having their trousers made several inches wider than had hitherto been thought modish for men, and this was supposed to be the outward and visible sign of their unmanliness,
irresponsibility
and laziness. What a contrast, said the journalists, with their elder brothers and uncles who had fought in the war a few years before.

Christian Scientists have a theory that to speak of illness, or of pain, brings it about by ‘making a reality’ of it; similarly, believers in magic are careful not to mention
undesirable
phenomena for fear of attracting them, of the word becoming flesh. Perhaps these ideas are not so fanciful after all. Certain it is, that modern youth in the 30s made a reality of the reputation which had been given to the post-war generation; though
strangely enough they were not much attacked for it, the newspapers were bored with the subject by the time they arrived on the scene.

Mr Toynbee, in his memoir of two friends both of whom were killed in the Second World War, makes the period 1934-40 (so near in time, so different in essence, to the 50s) live again.
Friends Apart
is a text-book for parent-baiters; but it was not only their parents and respectable acquaintances who were exasperated by the uninhibited
anti-social
behaviour of Mr Toynbee and Esmond Romilly. The highly disciplined Communist party, to which they naturally turned in their revolt from bourgeois
society
, also failed to make them conform and found them intractable material, useless for its own purposes. Perhaps they did not become Communists because of any positive ideological agreement with Communist political theory, but for the same reason that they stole dozens of top hats from Eton boys while they were in chapel.
He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases
….

Years have passed since then; the Toynbee parents’ ugly duckling has grown into a swan. He writes so well, remembers so accurately, is so Rousseau-esque in his candour that his book is, in its way, a minor work of art. The two friends are dead; Esmond Romilly was only 22 when he was killed, Jasper Ridley not much more. Who can say what would have become of them, how they would have developed? The child is father to the man, and neither can be judged by the years of
Sturm und Drang
which link them.

Friends Apart,
Toynbee, P. (1954)

The Macmillan family of publishers came from a croft on Arran Island, as Harold Macmillan, prime minister, allowed nobody to forget. Humble origins are quite
common
, but there is something special about an island in the Hebrides. Life was so very primitive and uncomfortable, to exist at all such a tough business, the surroundings so dramatically beautiful, that it is quite in order to boast about it for one hundred and eighty years.

In 1816, when their son Daniel was three, the Hebridean ancestors moved. He and his brother Alexander, through apprenticeships and hard work, were the founders of the firm. Their favourite motto: ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’ Religion, work, love of books and all the Scotch puritan virtues made their success. Daniel died of TB aged 44, his brother and partner lived until 1896 and became rich. Daniel was grandfather of Harold Macmillan.

The account of this persevering though delicate family’s rise is well done, but the half of the book devoted to Harold Macmillan is very disappointing. It is a twice-told tale and the addition of vulgarities cannot disguise the fact that we know it too well.
Huge biographies and autobiographies have left no gaps. Davenport-Hines says in his preface that private papers were denied him. He therefore resorts here and there to guesswork. He guesses that Harold Macmillan disliked his bossy American mother, though Macmillan says he owed everything to her.

When Macmillan marries Lady Dorothy Cavendish the book takes off and becomes an extended gossip column. Again, no surprises. Stories about the eighth Duke of Devonshire can hardly be said to have much to do with Macmillan, or even with Lady Dorothy, who was only his great-niece. Yet here they are, the most desiccated of
chestnuts
.

As we all know, Lady Dorothy fell in love with Macmillan’s contemporary and fellow MP Bob Boothby. Her youngest child, who died long ago aged 40, was by him. This well-documented affair may have fuelled Macmillan’s ambition, and he got to the top of the greasy pole. ‘Suez’ in 1956 was misconceived; once a vital British interest as gateway to India, it had not been so since Indian independence in 1947. For our secret ally Israel, Egypt was highly important. Macmillan was belligerent, then backed down. He and Selwyn Lloyd lied blue to the House of Commons about something supremely
unimportant
, Macmillan almost choked with indignation. He was a great actor.

He lived to an immense age, for twenty years a widower. His hobby was talking; he talked and talked. Anne Fleming wrote he was ‘a crashing bore’. But he did not bare his teeth aggressively, as Davenport-Hines says he did. When he bared his teeth he was
trying
to smile. It was just that they stuck out too far.

The Macmillans
, Davenport-Hines, R.
Evening Standard
(1992)