DIARY
In my experience, journalists are far less unkind than the other two professional groups I have known well — dons and cler- gymen. Nevertheless, it is often assumed that newspaper offices are hotbeds of mal- ice and that journalists are perpetually hun- gry to pay off old scores. The reason this opinion has widespread credence is the number of articles in the papers in which some individual is held up for public ridicule or vilification. A few weeks ago, the papers were full of Jilly Cooper's mari- tal troubles. For the last week it has been poor Martin Amis's turn for the treatment. In an attempt to justify sticking his nose into Amis's private affairs, a journalist called Toby Young in the Sunday Times takes a moral line. Amis, it is claimed, has 'presented himself as bastion of moral responsibility', and has been 'making a career of attacking hypocrisy and unfaith- fulness'. I did not know that this was what Martin had been doing all these years, but even if he had, it would be hard to see why his wife deserved all this stuff being aired in public. No matter. I am not criticising Mr Young, or any of the papers who have devoted so much space to the Amis mar- riage. The truth is that journalists simply get carried away by 'a story'. They do not really have any motive for what they do, but because they themselves are sometimes puzzled by it, they try to provide a reason why the public must be told matters which would perhaps be best left unsaid. Like the rest of the human race they like gossip, only, unlike anyone else, they write it down. Our office at the Standard last week buzzed with journalists who bore Martin Amis no ill-will — and did not even know him — but who were ringing up Amis's friends, both- ering them for accounts of The Story. They are all the nicest people in the world, but as they went about their task, I was reminded of the Presbyterian minister who paused, elbow deep in Royalist gore on the field of Killiecrankie, to exclaim, 'The wark goeth merrily on.'
Leaving London behind, we motored to the north Norfolk coast. It is wonderful at this time of year. The middle-class children have all been packed off to boarding school, poor little blighters, and the salt marshes are once more the preserve of the birds and the oldies with their binoculars, hoping for that rare glimpse of the curlew or the albatross. I am more interested in the plumage of people than of birds, and I never cease to be dismayed by the 'leisure wear' in which most people disport them- selves these days. What was wrong with shoes? Why do they all wear 'trainers' on their feet? Why do they all wear pale- coloured windjammers and jaunty sports
A.N.
WILSON
shirts? After the age of about 35, human beings need to take care with their clothes if they are not to look revolting. Scrawny necks are better covered with collars, scarves or ties. Knobbly knees are better hidden beneath trousers than aired beneath shorts. Paunches look better buttoned into waistcoats than bulging out of shell-suits. Thin hair or bald heads look better with a hat on. In my boyhood all classes in Eng- land wore hats, coats, shoes. Americans never cared how they looked, but it is sad that we have followed their example and started to dress in parodies of 'sports gear'. Even old women in tea-shops — the sort who until ten or 20 years ago would have worn hats and even gloves — now wear the unflattering slacks, trainers and sweat- shirts, and even baseball caps.
Ihad not expected my casual remarks about titles, made here two weeks ago, to provoke a full-length reply by Auberon Waugh. I offer a further thought about the use of the title 'The Honourable'. I was not having a go at anyone in particular when I said I thought it was vaguely ridiculous for the children of life peers to use this title; and of course, if they want to do so, bully for them. Perhaps it is snobbish of me to distinguish between life peers and heredi- tary peers. When Harold Macmillan started to create life peerages, he decided to allow their children to dub themselves 'The Hon- ourable'. But a life peerage, by definition, is one which cannot be passed on to anyone else, and so it seems anomalous for the child of a life peer to feel that his status has been altered merely because his father has been elevated to the Upper House. If no 'Come on Nigel.' one can inherit a particular man's title, it seems odd that his change in rank should effect his children's status in any way. If your elder brother will one day become the fifth Lord Snooty because your father is the fourth Lord Snooty, it seems reasonable, particularly if you are a woman who can not inherit the title itself, to be given some dignity as a consolation prize.
With regard to Auberon Waugh's more general point, though, I confess to feeling sympathetic to his point of view. I had commended a friend who chose not to use his title on the grounds that it was 'vaguely ridiculous'. Titles, Bron argued, are all part of the comic, Gilbert and Sulli- van structure of our national life, and if no one used them, England would be a drab- ber place. The fear of seeming ridiculous (and he is right to imply that I have this fear in insufficient measure myself) has made the bishops put their gaiters in the dressing-up box, and before long it will do away with judges' wigs. I certainly don't want England to 'grow up' and turn into the uniformly dingy Euro-world where snobbery, and ritual, and class distinction are all thrown on the dust-heap. By all means let us have a full Gilbert and Sulli- van stage, with Lord Chancellors in silk leg- gings, and Garter King-of-Arms dressed like a playing card, and all the dukes and marquesses and earls in their coronets hal- looing and hollering. But if, as Bron says, there are really 1,330 baronets in England, it does not spoil the show if one or two of them slink off the stage out of sheer embar- rassment.
There are plenty of Gilbert and Sullivan characters still at large, but there are no more Gilberts or Sullivans to write about them. Or are there? At drinks on Sunday morning, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy asked me what I was working on. I said that I had just finished writing the libretto for an opera. He looked amused and said that he had, too. His was based on Frances Hodg- son Burnett's The Secret Garden. Mine is about New Age travellers. A friend who produces operas at the Coliseum told Jonny that at the English National Opera they receive three unsolicited operas fully scored librettos — every week. This means that there are at least a thousand new operas composed in England every year. In a little over a year, there would be as many unperformed operas as there were baronets. I am sure that this thought could inspire the 1,331st opera — this time from the pen of Auberon Waugh. Opening scene — a chorus of baronets, honourables and life peers.
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