The Pursuit of Laughter (68 page)

School at the end of the nineteenth century was extraordinarily disagreeable for boys who disliked games. They were severely discouraged from indulging in any artistic activity, looked upon as pure waste of time. Gerald wrote rather sadly of the hopelessly bad
education
he received; the accent was on the Classics, yet years of struggling with Latin and Greek grammar never enabled him to read Latin or Greek. He says the educational system at Eton had something leisurely about it, which was appropriate since it was a school for the leisured classes. Fortunately he was able to escape from hated cricket, because there was the
alternative
of rowing; ‘It was pleasant to think I should be able to boat on the river and “cleave with pliant arm the glassy wave”.’

The Dame of his House was an ally when it came to his hobbies; not only did she allow him to play on a tinny old piano which stood in the dining room of his House, but she
herself
liked sketching and encouraged him to show her his efforts. ‘Her criticisms were always very much to the point. “A little more blue,” she would advise. “I always think a picture’s nicer if there’s just a touch of blue somewhere.”’

While he was at Eton Gerald made two friends, whom he called Marston and Deniston in his autobiography; one, Marston, was dirty and untidy but clever and funny, the other, Deniston, handsome and beautifully dressed; he satisfied a taste for fashion which Gerald
never lost. To him, dowdiness mattered infinitely less than boringness, nevertheless he always loved elegance—it was art of beauty, and not a negligible part. These very different friends represented in embryo what he called ‘the two worlds that have continued to fascinate me throughout my life, the world of scholarship and the world of fashion’.

One day Gerald suggested to Deniston that he ought to
do
something in life, that being well-dressed and good-looking was not enough. Even as he said it he realized he was wrong. To be decorative and agreeable is an art in itself, giving pleasure to others and contentment to the fortunate possessor of such charms. In any case Deniston rejected his proposition with scorn.

He had two pieces of great good fortune when he was at Eton. The first was a severe illness, an attack of rheumatic fever. He had to be taken away on a stretcher in view of all the boys, and when he came back among them, snatched from the jaws of death, they were much nicer to him. Fortunately for him, he could not now play football; he had a weak heart, games and character-building were no longer possible, and he was allowed to sketch and play the piano.

The second lucky chance was his purchase of a synopsis of Wagner’s
Ring
in an Eton bookshop. He was immediately captivated, imagining the music for this magic world of gods and heroes, giants and wicked dwarfs. Not long afterwards he saw the score of
Rheingold
in the window of a music shop. He asked the price; it was more than he could afford—twelve shillings. He turned over the pages; the thrilling music, chords, arpeggios, made him long to possess it. He bought the libretto, in the absurd English translation, for a shilling, and lived henceforward in Wagner’s world. Even the clatter of knives and forks at boys’ dinner
transported
him to Nibelheim and the dwarfs banging away with their hammers.

Then his father unexpectedly came down to visit him. Gerald seldom saw him; he was a naval officer who, when he was not at sea, was busy being equerry to one of the princes. Bored by his wife, he actively disliked Lady Berners, and when somebody asked him, ‘Isn’t your mother a peeress in her own right?’ replied, ‘Yes, and she’s everything else in her own wrong.’ Gerald’s visitor asked him if there was anything he would like to buy. He dared not admit what he craved and just said a book, but that it was very expensive: twelve shillings. His father laughed and gave him two sovereigns. After seeing him off, Gerald flew to the music shop and to his relief the score was still in the window and he was able to buy it.

There is something intensely moving about this boy, who had received no musical instruction, who had been actively discouraged, but who was so enamoured of music and possessed of such talent that he could read the score of
Rheingold
and play enough of it on the piano to be able to imagine what it must sound like.

There is a parallel, also extremely moving, in the memoirs of Lord Clark, who at the age of seven was taken by his governess to a fair at the White City. By chance, they walked down a passage lined with Japanese screens—pictures of flowers which generated hitherto unknown excitement in the child. Many years later, now a renowned art historian, he saw the screens again at Kyoto and recognized them at once. But he was assured by his Japanese
guide that he could never have seen them before, because they had never left Kyoto. However, back in Tokyo he asked a learned Japanese friend about them, who told him the screens had indeed been to London in 1910. They were supposed to be shown at the National Gallery but by mistake had been exhibited at a fair. The Japanese were rather offended by this, because as a result nobody saw them. ‘One person did,’ said K. Clark.

Gerald was twenty years older than Lord Clark; they had similar boyhoods. Both were only children whose families were devoted exclusively to sport. Both disliked their philistine schools. But there is no doubt that Winchester, to which the unlucky K. was sent, was
infinitely
more barbarous than Eton. Like Gerald, he was fortunate enough to become ill, and had to go home for a few months during which, he says, he educated himself.

During Gerald’s holidays there were no games to be dreaded, but there was plenty of sport. He quite liked riding, and even shooting, for an hour or two, but one was supposed to ride or shoot from sunrise to sunset, which bored him. This worried his mother almost as much as his dislike of football and cricket annoyed his schoolmasters. Here again, his bad heart rescued him; the endless days of sport were forbidden by the doctor.

His mother, anxious about his health, took him away from Eton just when he was
beginning
almost to like being there. He loved the beauty of the place, where some of his lasting passions had their origins. The most important were music, friendships, and the taste of ‘hot buns at Little Brown’s before early school’. The memory of these buns shows he was already the gourmet whose food gave us so much pleasure. As to education: ‘I had learned nothing, less than nothing, a minus quantity.’ He had lost whatever knowledge he had, and ‘left Eton with a distaste for the Classics, and what was more serious, a distaste for work itself’. However, he says he never regretted having been to Eton, ‘although I left it as Antony left Cleopatra, with more love than benediction’.

Gerald was a slow developer. ‘Had I been more intensively educated at that period of my life, I might have grown up, as Herbert Spencer said of early risers, “conceited in the
morning
and stupid in the afternoon”.’

As he grew older he craved something more glittering than the humdrum surroundings of his home with its rather dull country neighbours. He was fond of his mother but he could not approve of her tweeds. She now began to worry about his future career. He thought it grossly unfair that he should be expected to earn his living; all his uncles and aunts lived in idle luxury. His education had only fitted him to be leisured. It is interesting to speculate upon what would have been the result of musical instruction in harmony and counterpoint for this gifted boy. Might it have given him a distaste for music, like his distaste for the Classics? Really bad, dull teaching can have a distressing effect, but of course he should before now have been sent to Germany to learn his
métier
. Such an idea would simply not have occurred to his mother, who considered the few professions at that time thought
suitable
for a gentleman. The army and the navy were both impossible; Gerald was short-
sighted
and wore spectacles.

He himself had a passing whim for the Church. Life in a pleasant country vicarage
appealed to him; he could ride round his parish; the clergy were not supposed to hunt all day long. But there was an insurmountable obstacle; his attitude to God. Even when he was only five his mother wrote that she hardly dared tell him a Bible story, because ‘he inclines to favour the wrong side; Adam and Eve, the Egyptians, and even Cain and Jezebel, and he is always saying he thinks God must be very wicked’. Now that he was older his opinion had not changed. He thought it wrong of God to have inflicted a painful illness upon him when he had done nothing to deserve it. He failed to recognize that it had been his greatest
blessing
at Eton, and that God as usual was moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. He disapproved of the fact that Christ was put on the right hand of God in heaven. He thought Christ’s mother, a lady, should have sat there. All in all, the Church was a non-starter.

They settled in the end for diplomacy. He longed to go abroad, and this he would now have to do in order to learn foreign languages. It was thus purely fortuitous that he not only learnt French and German, and their literature was his joy all his born days, but was also able to hear music every night, and learn how to write it down.

An unpublished account of his ‘Grand Tour’, which was to have been the third volume of his memoirs, survives. The mere idea of ‘abroad’ enchanted him. Also ‘I had often heard foreigners, and particularly the French, criticized for not being sporting, for frivolity and
laxity
of morals, all of which deficiencies at that time appealed to me.’ He was sent to a château in Normandy, Résenlieu, where he was completely happy. He was freed from ‘many things that irked me at home, parental interference, and above all the tyranny of games and sport’. He loved his hostess, charming and witty, and spent his summer chatting with her, playing the piano and sketching out of doors. His watercolours of Résenlieu show how delightful it must have been.

Dresden he rather disliked. He arrived there in dead of winter, and the district where he lived was modern and ugly. There was a large English colony, settled in Dresden for the music. He says he was disappointed by this ante-room of Parnassus. These people were just as dull as the sporting neighbours at home. His passion for Wagner waned; he was put off by the hideous, massive tenors and the enormous sopranos whose appearance destroyed his illusions, though they were idolized by the English, with whom he spent most of his time. He read Nietzsche’s
Der Fall Wagner
, and found himself agreeing with its strictures. His new hero was Richard Strauss. He also acquired a passion for Ibsen, and dragged his hostess to the plays. After being harrowed by
A Doll’s House
, or
Ghosts
, she told him she preferred ‘
ein elegantes Salonstück
’. But the importance of Dresden for Gerald’s development was that he went to a famous teacher, Professor Kretzschmer, for lessons in orchestration. From him he learned how to put his music down on paper.

He only began to love Germany as he loved France when he moved to Weimar. There was the Hoftheater for operas and plays, an excellent bookshop, a
Konditorei
with all manner of sweets, ‘delicious coffee, chocolate and ices’, and a few minutes’ walk took one into open country, which Gerald always loved. He read Goethe, and Eckermann; and he hired a piano for his sitting room.

This little unpublished book ends with a lyrical description of a German Christmas. There was ‘a marvellous Christmas tree’, and they all drank
glühwein
hot and spiced. Paper caps were produced ‘and the Professor and the two spinsters in their caps looked like a Capricho of Goya… There was a discordant chorus of “
Heilige Nacht
”. The Professor
bellowed
, Miss Macpherson screamed and festivity reached the highest pitch of noise and
gaiety
.’ In the afternoon they went to church; ‘the decorated church, the chorales that were sung’ made Gerald feel ‘like the atheistic character in Anatole France who exclaimed when he heard the
Dies Irae
being played on the organ in the Cathedral: “
Cela me foot des idées religieuses
”. That Christmas in Weimar was one of the passages of my youth that remained imprinted in glowing colours in my memory,’ he wrote.

Gerald says in
A Distant Prospect
that the entrance exam to Eton was his swansong so far as examinations were concerned—therefore presum ably he failed the diplomatic exam. In 1907 his father died, and shortly afterwards Gerald went to the British Embassy in Constantinople as honorary attaché. At the end of 1911, when he was twenty-eight, he became honorary attaché in Rome. His love of Italy and of Rome lasted for the rest of his life.

When he first heard Stravinsky’s music, when he met Stravinsky, whom he described to me once as a genius—‘I felt I was in the presence of a great genius,’ were his words—I do not know. The music was an exciting revelation to him. He knew the Paris musical world, Princesse Edmond de Polignac was his friend. She was a rather splendid-looking American lesbian with the profile of Dante. Born Winaretta Singer, she loved music and was
immensely
rich and a noted benefactress to young composers. Gerald probably met Stravinsky and Diaghilev with her, as well as his French contemporaries, Les Six, and others. His
Fragments
Psychologiques
date from 1915. His musical life was centred in Paris, but it was Italy he loved.

In 1935 Gerald once again invited me to stay in Rome: Phyllis de Janzé came too. I was obliged to put off my arrival for a few days as I had to go into a nursing home for a small operation. ‘Hurry up with your illegallers,’ wrote Gerald with his habitual disregard for
discretion
. During this visit he wrote
The Girls of Radcliff Hall
.

Radclyffe Hall was a lesbian who had written a famous book called
The Well of Loneliness
. It was rather sad and very dull, but it captured the attention of a large public and became a bestseller because a journalist had said in the
Sunday Express
that he would rather give his daughter a phial of poison than allow her to read
The Well of Loneliness
.