An undefined jumble
John Jolliffe
STRONG POINTS by Roy Strong
Thames & Hudson, £6.95
Not the least depressing aspect of the publishing trade is the fact that every year many worthwhile and interesting books are turned down by every publisher from Abelard-Schuman to Zwemmer, while non-books of a futile and pretentious kind appear with monotonous regularity, often with joky but inept titles such as the above. It consists of 37 flimsy articles (ludicrously described as 'essays') which began to appear in the Times, to the intense irrita- tion of many readers, in August 1983, and mercifully petered out in February of this year. The subjects range from 'Packets and Labels', 'Window Dressing', and 'Bath- rooms New and Old', to 'Cats', 'Memorial Services' and 'The Demise of Domestics'; all very well if you are Max Beerbohm.
The general flavour of all this can perhaps best be described as Dim Camp, and self-importance is matched only by irrelevance. 'Just before the last war my late mother-in-law's nanny had a farm outside Henley' is a particularly fatuous opening for a tribute to John Piper on his 80th birthday. Names are dropped re- morselessly, and with Jut point of any kind: `The most memorable table I ever had to arrange was a luncheon party for the Queen Mother at Ham House.' John Fowler once taught me how to get mistle- toe to grow in the boughs of fruit-trees, but I have never managed to achieve it.' Oh dear. 'The Dowager Lady Radnor once remarked to me: "Remember, it is very vulgar to buy plants." I regret to say that although the garden is full of donations from the great houses, I cannot resist that vulgarity.' The italics are mine, but they might just as well be Strong's. Needless to say, when he gets onto the subject of cats, it's even worse. 'Cecil Beaton's was called Timothy White, after the chemist's I assume. What will the historian of the 20th century make of all this vast outpouring in worship of the cat? Not much, I would have thought.' Nor would anyone else.
In the early Sixties, the old guard in Strong's world recognised that it was old, and began to make way, somewhat opti- mistically, for a new order. The vacuum left by the severe and impressive figure of Sir John Pope-Hennessy at the Victoria & Albert Museum was filled by a preening figure who claims proudly that The Herit- age 'includes the material culture of the present'. He wants tourists to come and see an undefined jumble of 'new buildings, new works of art, new environments, new artefacts, all integrated together as a sing- le, unfolding statement'. Nothing wrong with that, you may say. But to make such a statement coherent, let alone persuasive or even interesting, a sensitive and perceptive sense of discrimination and general judg- ment is required, of which there is no sign whatever in these pages.
To be fair, the piece on St George's Day quotes some little known and worthwhile observations by the 17th-century Duke of Newcastle. 'Ceremony though it is nothing in itself yet it doth everything . . . For what is a King more than a subject but for ceremony and order? When that fails him he is ruined'; as in the case of King Edward VIII, and perhaps also King Alfonso XIII. And Strong is sound on the dreary revela- tions of the Bloomsbury circle. But altogether, it is curiously inappropriate that a man in an important public position, on a salary of £35,000 a year, plus a great many perks, should also be paid to turn out the verbal equivalents of the drawings of Sir Hugh Casson instead of getting on with his job.
These points are not made from some old Wavian urge to take against someone and heap insults on him until you reach the foot of the column. The fact is that a museum like the Victoria & Albert needs more and more financial support to save it from falling down, let alone to enable it to carry out the programme outlined for it in the statement made by Lord Carrington, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees which was formed, not before time, in April of last year. This is plainly unlikely to be forthcoming from government sources, and it is therefore an increasingly impor- tant part of a museum director's task to persuade individuals and industrial con- cerns to support what is in their care, as is done with great success all over America, and in England (and now Scotland) by Timothy Clifford. However, the important point is not so much the raising of funds for new acquisitions, but the improvement of the organisation of the museum so that, for one thing, the admission charges which will be introduced next month can be easily justified. It is perhaps not too late for Roy Strong to take a more inspired view of his duties.
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