DIARY A.N.
WILSON
When John Wain was retiring as Pro- fessor of Poetry at Oxford, he urged Philip Larkin to stand as his successor. Larkin asked why Wain should suppose that he would want to put himself through the hell of giving public lectures for almost no money. 'It's the chicks, Philip,' explained Wain. The way they cluster round you after you've finished speaking.' In spite of this inducement, Larkin never did compete for the Chair of Poetry. I often think of this exchange when I see all the terrible bilge Which gets printed nowadays by those pub- lishers prepared to lose money selling `Poetry' or by the literary editors who want to break up their review pages with verse. Most of the 'poetry' published today seems of such embarrassingly low quality that it is quite incomprehensible that anyone would wish to put their name to it, unless there was some such reward as John Wain found in his stint lecturing to the 'chicks' of Oxford. The deeper and more impenetra- ble psychological question must be addressed to the women themselves. Most of these poets are charmless to the male way of looking at things — undersized, or haletoid, or dreadful bores: often all three. But they never seem to have any difficulty in attracting female admirers. 'Why do such scores of lovely gifted girls/Marry impossi- ble men?' asked Graves years ago. He could have added, 'And so many of them poets'. It is the sort of interesting question of feminine psychology that I had hoped would be solved by Dr Greer in her new all- female TV chat programme. So far, howev- er, she and her fellow-panellists have disap- pointed us.
ublic confession is now all the rage. Lecherous politicians, `cottaging' bishops and adulterous princes have always been with us. It is their desire to come clean in public which is new, and electrifyingly embarrassing. When one hears the confes- sions of David Mellor, the Bishop of Durham, or HRH himself, one knows what it would be like to attend one of those Buchmanite meetings of the Oxford Groupers in the 1930s. (A friend of mine once attended a meeting of theirs at the Randolph Hotel and slipped out of the back having heard a burly Rhodes Scholar tearfully acknowledge that he was in the habit of blowing his nose on his bath towel.) Much as I admire the daring of all those seized with the confessional urge, I find it baffling. 'I do not recall committing a single blameworthy act,' Ivy Compton- Burnett once said. I could not quite echo this, but it is closer to my position than that of the new breast-beating school. Surely if one is a well-balanced person one simply does not do things one considers to be
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wrong? When one realises that one has erred, the indulgence of confession usually makes matters worse not better.
et another pub in my part of London has been ruined: the Engineer in Primrose Hill. It used to be the sort of place where you went for a drink. No one thought of eating hot meals there, as far as I am aware. If you are hungry in a pub you either light a cigarette, buy a bag of nuts, or go home and cook for yourself. But this pleas- ant old pub has now been turned into the sort of place where a board on the wall offers 'pan-fried' sea-bass with ginger (since when could you fry anything other than in a pan?), and the drinks on offer are probably Bulgarian cabernet sauvignon or Mexican beer. (I don't know — I have only peered in dismay through the window at all the young people and their 'designer babies' inside enjoying themselves.) The Lansdowne up the road came in for the treatment about a year ago — a takeover by the (male) pigtail brigade. Nearer my house, the Brighton used to be the best type of old North London Irish bar. A huge, faded colour photo of the Palace Pier at Brighton, stained with years of cigarette smoke, filled an entire wall. The first time I went there I was bought a drink by a builder at the bar who said he had told the woman whose house he was 'improving' that he had to slip out for an hour or so to collect 'supplies'. My wife and I sometimes went there on a Saturday night when there was a live band playing a mixture of country music and old Vera Lynn numbers. There was some rudimentary dancing — a slow `No complaint from Mother Teresa — but here's one from the Hell's Angels.' shuffle by those whose varicose veins or fuddled heads allowed such a thing. Now the place has been gutted. It is called the Bar Royale and is packed out with teenagers drinking beer out of bottles. Pop music blares out into the High Street. Where have all the regulars gone?
We are told that an economic recov- ery is in progress, but for whom? All the politicians are confident that they can con- tinue to spend more and more public money because of an increase in 'growth'. A study of the City and Personal Finance pages of the newspapers makes me think that this 'growth' might be rather slow in coming. Industry can only survive with investment. The savers have been having a hard time of it since the fall in interest rates and so they have poured their money into Peps, Investment Trusts and similar schemes. They will obviously opt for the trust with the best 'track record', and these usually turn out, upon investigation, to be the funds invested abroad — either in Europe, or more likely in the Pacific Basin. £3 billion of our money has been invested in Peps since April. A similar amount has gone in Investment or Unit Trusts. This is money which in the old days would have been tucked up in a British Building Soci- ety or supporting a British company. No more. When it comes to saving for our future, it would seem that very few of us would place much reliance on home indus- tries. Another sign, I should say, that bleak- er times lie ahead for any but the 'savers'.
0 ne of the most inspiring men I ever met was 'T.K.' — R.B. Talbot Kelly — who taught me Art at Rugby. He never, alas, taught me how to draw very well, but he taught me the gift of detachment. Having spent almost all his life in a public school there was no one less 'public schooly', and his eyrie above the Temple Reading Room was a happy refuge from the absurdities of school life. He looked like a bird, sounded like a bird and did at least one painting of a bird every day of his life. In the trenches, where he was eventually gassed, he kept copious sketch-books of birds — many, of course, birds of prey. He stuffed birds and could make paper birds which, from only a few feet away, were indistinguishable from the real thing. (He stuffed or made from paper an example of every British bird for the Festival of Britain exhibition.) Some years ago my old housemaster died and left me a painting of a wren by T.K. I received notification of the fact from the solicitor and then lost the letter. If anyone from the solicitor's office sees this diary, could he possibly write to me again?
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