Diary
Aneighbour of mine, a polite man of charming manners, has a horror of beards. If possible, he refuses Beavers entry into his house. He even went so far as to Post an invitation to a family newly arrived in the district (whom he had not met), but to cancel the party when the unfortunate Dad arrived on the scene sprouting facial hair. It is an odd obsession. My own father used to have a touch of it, and described h, ow as a child during the reign of the bearded Edward VII he would be tempted to shout 'Beaver!' at bearded passers by. Now he has an elegant beard himself, rather like that of Cardinal Mazarin. The most surprising people do dislike beards. I would always have assumed, for instance, that Iris Murdoch had moved in a very Bohemian World where, even during the 1950s and 1960s, beards were common, but she once told me that she disliked beards very much because they spoil the beauty of a man's face. I suppose the argument in favour of bear, cis gains strength when the man's face isn't all that beautiful. I wonder if I shall ever become beard-obsessed? I felt a flicker of the sensation the other day on a Number 7 bus going up Oxford Street. I was the only Person on the top floor, including the con- ductor, who was not draped with cheek- fungus. I am illogical on the subject. I like the sight of a long flowing beard, such as T1118ht be seen on a Greek Orthodox ar- chltuandrite, or a rabbi, but I dislike the very short stubbly beards which some peo- ple have nowadays. This is to ignore the tact that great oaks from little acorns grow. The other day I drove over to Wall- ingford, where Mary Ingrams, wife of the Spectator's former television critic, has a bookshop just opposite the church. It is a good old town, with narrow winding streets 50 that, although it is very small, you are I 11 able to get lost. If you are in of the Ingrains emporium, the trick is tosearch head for the car park at the bottom of Goldsmith's Labe. Whether or not this thoroughfare was named after the great Sir James Goldsmith, my guide book was unable to inform me. Undoubtedly its proximity adds to the attraction for la famille Ingrams who devote much more time than I would care to do running this shop. It is open all day °II a Saturday. I asked how many copies of 1,111' forthcoming biography of Hilaire ,110e had been ordered and was told two. 'IOW anyone ever hopes to make a living writing books, _, I shall never know. To sell t.wo copies of such a book in such a OOokshop is apparently very good going. The best-selling titles for the Ingramses are
Torvill and Dean book and the David Attenborough book. This suggests that the people of Wallingford
prefer telly to reading, even though Richard Ingrams has done more than anyone else of his genera- tion to discourage an interest in le septieme art.
Perhaps I need not write another book, however, since Peter Hillmore of the Observer seems determined to help me make a fortune by saying that I am the author of 'an account in verse of the early life of the Queen', shortly to be published by Lord Weidenfeld. From the lines he quotes, it promises to be rather a good read:
Delay and disappointment could not flatten The ardour of Lieutenant P. Mount- batten.
You could go on in this vein for line after line, I should have thought. I don't know who the verse would please or thrill more: Lord Weidenfeld or Mr Peter Hillmore etc. As it happens, I have written a sort of poem for Royal consumption later this year at some beano of the Royal Institute of British Architects who are having a centenary din- ner at Hampton Court in the presence of the Prince of Wales. My verses (much feebler, I am afraid, even than those quoted above) have luckily been set to music by Mr Stephen Oliver, so no one will hear them. I wonder if this is what Hillmore was think- ing of? Here is another literary mystery. A few years ago, just before the demise of Blackwood's magazine, I was introduced to Toby Fitton, one of their most distinguish- ed contributors, by the famous club-man Mr Alan Bell. I remember Fitton well: rather jowly, like a red mullet, and with, as I recall, an eye-glass or even a pince-nez suspended from his neck by a golden chain. He seemed to have known everyone: Gosse, G. K. Chesterton, A. C. Benson. After the collapse of Blackwood's, I heard the sad news that he had met his end, by his own hand, in a room at the Traveller's Club. This story was perfectly well substantiated. But now another person of the same name is writing in the Times Literary Supplement. There can't possibly be two Toby Fittons in the world. Is this second using the name as a pseudonym? If so, it seems distressing to those of us who knew or admired the first.
Speaking of Gosse, I have just finished reading an enormously long life of him by Ann Thwaite. He is a good example of what Evelyn Waugh meant by saying that only bores know everybody. For a very welcome relief, my bedside reading is the diary of Major Warren Lewis, brother of C.S. `Warnie' as the Major was called, knew almost no one, except his father (nicknamed the Pudaitabird, presumably because he was Irish and fond of potatoes), his brother (`Jack'), Jack's extraordinary companion Mrs Moore (`Minto') and her daughter Maureen. J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson have occasional, and memorable, walk-on parts, but for the most part the diary is simply a record of domestic quarrels erupting or suppressed, of books read, of pubs and walks enjoyed. Even for those who do not, like the women mention- ed in last week's Spectator by Humphrey Carpenter, think that C. S. Lewis was God, the book is fascinating. In fact, it would be interesting even if one had no interest in C. S. Lewis at all, because the Major obviously had the true diarist's knack of being able to record the ordinary incidents of each day without very much comment. Several pas- sages are more hilarious than anything in a novel. Then, occasionally, he does com- ment, with delightful freedom. I enjoyed his highly Ulster Protestant reaction to Jack's reading 'the life of one Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ who acquired some reputation as a poet; from the quotations given I should have thought him an il- literate: the book has his photograph as a frontispiece — a mean dishonest looking man'. This wonderful book, entitled Brothers and Friends is only published in America by Harper and Row, though I managed to find a copy in the Church House bookshop in Westminster. Surely an English publisher ought to take it on.
A. N. Wilson
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