AND ANOTHER THING
The English have not changed, but they are more eccentric than ever
PAUL JOHNSON
Ae we English changing character, becoming 'touchy-feely', 'letting it all hang out', weeping and wearing our hearts on our sleeves instead of in our hip-pockets? Not on your life. I see no hard evidence that we have changed a bit. But we remain, as always, eccentric and unpredictable. Very few English people now believe, as many certainly did in the 16th and 17th centuries, that we are the Elect Nation, the people chosen by God when He despaired of the Jews. But we are touched by an angel's wing; there is genius and strangeness in us.
I was struck last week by the words of one of those clever Parisiennes, half-gratin, half- femme d'affaires, who was amazed to find herself really having fun at a London dinner party. It was a private occasion, so I must not particularise, but it was the usual Bayswater collection: an art dealer, a biographer, a soci- ety hostess, a psychotherapist, a musical peer, a barrister, a diplomat, a BBC produc- er — those sort of people. The food was exquisite, the table decorations spectacular, the talk fast, libellous, occasionally witty (and crude), varied, uninhibited. The little Froggie was delighted: 'But zis cannot be typical. Zis is like Paris. What 'as 'appened to you Engjeesh? 'Ave you lost your steef upper mouth?' No,' said I, 'this is a perfectly ordi- nary London occasion. We were always like this. What has perhaps changed is that since Mrs T put the nation on the right road again, and we have recovered our prosperity, our self-confidence has returned and we have got back into our old form: we are secure in our Englishness, do not care a damn what any- one else thinks, and do as we please. A stiff upper lip is a matter of choice, but to the outside world we offer two contemptuous stiff fingers.'
The following evening I went to a party to celebrate the 92nd birthday of Lord Longford, who incarnates our eccentricity. What, you say, but His Lordship is Irish. Not at all. It is true the venue was the Irish Club in Eaton Square. It is also true that Frank sometimes calls himself Irish. Indeed, I recall an occasion, two or three years ago, when he actually boasted of being Irish, but was severely put down by his elder sister Pansy, who said, 'Stop that nonsense, Frank. Remember you are a Knight of the Garter!' In fact, he is Anglo- Irish, a gifted English tribe leavened by a potent Gaelic yeast — 'no mean people', as Yeats called them. Frank had celebrated his birthday by taking a taxi down to Wandsworth prison, arguing with the cabby over the fare, having it triumphantly reduced from £10 to £7.50, only to discover that the prisoner refused to see him: 'He is a little off-colour, my Lord, and simply can't face it today.' Such things, I suspect, do not happen in France.
From the Irish Club I went to Channel 4 to take part in the first of a new series of chat shows, Something of the Night. You may ask, since I swore not long ago never to appear on telly again, what I was doing there. The answer is that I excepted book- plugging from my self-denying ordinance and thought this would be an opportunity to tell insomniacs about my A History of the American People. But it was not that kind of show at all. It was an audiovisual, cutting- edge, where-it's-at, New Age sort of thing. It made me feel like a dowager.
First of all there was Will Self, who might be described as an outstanding young man — so outstanding I asked him his exact height: 'A good question. When I was 25, I was six foot three. Now I am 34, I am six foot five and, so far as I can see, still grow- ing. Where will it all end?' Will Self is, ceteris paribus, a Longford in the making, nourish- ing weird paradoxes and preparing to push forward the frontiers of eccentricity in the 21st century. He talks lovingly about his giant baby, grandly about his problems with drugs and drink, and at times uses English in exactly the way I like, as though it is a brand- new tongue he has just discovered.
There was a little popsy called Tracy Emin, a performance artist who has a show at the South Bank Gallery. She is a jolie laide, with a sweet, lopsided face, thin and mobile as a metronome, with big, burning eyes and an Estuary accent I found impene- trable. She talks about herself in a Joycean stream-of-consciousness torrent and told me she was very good at drawing, but I was unable to test this because she had broken one of her fingers — how, I did not inquire. She made herself famous recently by get- ting drunk on a television art show, along with some gruesome members of the Brick- ie establishment, upstaging them totally with her antics. I had trouble with this young lady on the show but succeeded in reducing the number of four-letter words she uttered. I also cut off her liquor supply as I was afraid she would cause chaos by taking off her neck-mike and wandering around, haranguing us.
Then there was Susie Orbach, Princess Diana's shrink, a sweet, pretty, faded lady in her late thirties, I would guess, worried about leaving behind in bed her young son, who had flu. She did not seem to know quite what to say in answer to the babble of the rest of us, but then that was to be expected: psy- chotherapists are there to listen, not to speak. Nick Cohen, an Observer columnist, was another participant, who went on about 'the cuts', Tony Blair's 'betrayal' and so forth. The Channel 4 handout said he had described me as 'a man who shrieks in tongues to the nation like a blimp possessed by demons'. Oh well, we all have our livings to earn. The last of the party was Martin Atnis, whom I first remember as a charming but naughty little boy of five, but who is now our answer to Tolstoy or Saul Bellow. He did not say much but he looked small and street- wise and vulnerable.
I thought we were an odd collection, very English in an illogical, incoherent way, repre- sentative of a cultural tradition we have of trying to turn little bits and pieces of dis- parate talent into a show, without any unify- ing theme or strategy or preparation or ratio- nale. I wondered what the viewers thought, if there were any. Not much, I fear. The English are resistant to people who tell them what to think, and pretend they do not exist. Indeed, they ignore their rulers, for the most part. Occasionally they pick out a favourite, like Diana, always showing good taste and sense. As I said on the show, it is our elites who are decadent; what comes up from the bottom, from the common people, is usually healthy. But, as anyone who studied the mes- sages attached to the flowers in Kensington Gardens will agree, the people are odd too, Both sides of the power divide are crammed with eccentrics. Chancellor Irvine may fancy himself Wolsey, but out there are Napoleons galore, Fausts and Walter Mittys, Franken- steins and Draculas, Michelangelos and Chaplins, Garbos and Helens of Troy — and Lady Macbeths. We will be astounding the world again, one of these days.
Previous page
