12 FEBRUARY 2000, Page 42

Remembering Peter Levi

Jeremy Lewis

Ifirst met Peter Levi in 1992, and, for some curious reason, I expected to dislike him. It was important that I should stifle such feelings, since someone had suggested that I should write the biography of Cyril Connolly, whose widow, Deirdre, had subsequently married the poet and for- mer Jesuit priest. I was to take the train to Stonehouse, in Gloucestershire; we would then have lunch, and my fate would be decided. The omens were not good: he had sounded lordly on the telephone, and I envisaged a poseur in spats and a monocle, with an affectedly languid manner of speech.

As soon as I stepped from the train, I realised I had been quite wrong. A tall, pale man with a lick of black hair, shiny, prune-coloured eyes and an expres- sion that combined the comical and the lugubrious, Peter could not have been more benign. The Levis, I soon discovered, shared my relish for gossip of the bur- nished and hyperbolical variety; talking incessantly, we clambered into Deirdre's car and shot off to the local hotel, where drinks were hastily ordered. Though dense- ly populated with elderly couples, the dining-room was silent save for the clink of cutlery on plates and the occasional dainty cough.

By the time the main course arrived, Peter was in full flow, recalling his travels in Greece, his time as the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, his encounters with Rowse and Bowra and Sparrow, his adventures in Afghanistan with Bruce Chatwin: he was an excellent talker, with an endearing eagerness to laugh at his own jokes, and I was more than happy to sit back and listen. So, too, were the fellow lunchers: after Peter had described how the widow of an eminent poet had led `a team of hand-picked lesbians' to the Himalayas, a still deeper silence fell, fol- lowed by the reinvigorated clacking of knives on plates, like chicken pecking at grain.

Soon after, Deirdre agreed that I should go ahead, and before long my wife and I were making regular visits to the Levis' tiny, immaculate cottage on the green at Frampton-on-Severn, which they shared with Deirdre's son Matthew and a friendly Sealyham. A brand-new bottle of gin was always at the ready, but sometimes we would wander across to the pub, where Peter liked to sample the perry. Before lunch he would regale us with more stories, and every now and again Deirdre would interrupt from the kitchen with a cry of 'Oh really, Peter,' or 'For goodness' sake, Peter, they don't want to hear all about that' (he was probably giving us a detailed account of his unpublished Oxford murder mystery, in which innumerable bodies were buried under the Headington round- about).

I came to love Peter for his romanticism, and for his generosity of spirit. He saw himself, perhaps, as a cross between a wan- dering bard and an Oxford don, and played both parts to perfection. Like many roman- tics, he was something of a dandy: I remember with particular pleasure the pea-green, three-piece tweed suit he wore at Stephen Spender's memorial service. Because he talked so well, investing the prosaic with unimagined excitement, I never really wanted to read his books, in case they failed to match up: but• when, in due course, I sent Deirdre the typescript of my biography, he wrote at length in his large, looping black hand, generous in his praise and unstinting in corrections and advice.

We last saw Peter in October. He had gone very blind as a result of his diabetes, but insisted on joining us on our walk about the village before cracking open a bottle of champagne. He was a mar- vellous man, and I like to think that even now, aloft in heavenly mansions, he is entertaining old friends as only he knew how.