Mon semblable, mon pere
Alan Watkins
MUGGERID GE: THE BIOGRAPHY by Richard Ingrams HarperCollins, £18, pp. 266 If you assume, as the dating agencies do, that people of similar interests will have an instant sexual rapport with each other — a questionable assumption, in my experience — it is reasonable for a biographer not only to be sympathetic to his subject but to share some of his characteristics as well. This is certainly so of Richard Ingrams and Malcolm Muggeridge. Not only did Mr Ingrams and Muggeridge like each other for the concluding 20 years of the latter's life, they also had in common numerous vices, virtues, tastes and distastes.
Thus Mr Ingrams is a resolute hetero- sexual, with a publicly expressed dislike of homosexuality, who nevertheless views at any rate, viewed — sexual activity of any description as at best ridiculous, at worst disgusting. Though his habits differed markedly from Mr Ingrams's, Muggeridge held virtually identical views throughout his life, not merely in his last phase of alleged asceticism. Mr Ingrams convincingly demonstrates his lifelong consistency, in this and other areas. Anyone who had read In a Valley of this Restless Mind or the infe- licitously entitled selection from his diaries Like It Was or both would need no demon- stration. But inasmuch as anyone still dis- cusses Muggeridge at all (and to those under 50 he is now a figure as remote as, say, Clifford Sharp) he is remembered as a television personality who, having lived a life of drunkenness and lechery, not only relinquished those activities in late middle age but tried to compel others of any age at all to give them up as well.
Muggeridge was always a spiritual figure. His aunt Beatrice Webb — with whom he got on well, despite his later impression to the contrary — noted this quality approv- ingly when she first met him and, indeed, predicted correctly that he would end up in the Roman Catholic Church. Just as Mug- geridge's life was always of the spirit, so his later years at Robertsbridge with Kitty (who emerges from Mr Ingrams's book as even more saintly than we had imagined) were hardly ones of self-imposed austerity. That is why I referred earlier to his `alleged' asceticism. As Muggeridge himself once wrote, though Mr Ingrams does not quote it: 'I live like a retired schoolmaster.'
So he did. He and Kitty lived much as my own parents, who has been born a decade earlier. They ate meat, though not in large quantities. My father continued to smoke cigarettes. Those were the only substantial differences. Asceticism did not come into it. Anyone visiting the Muggeridges would witness tea, smoked haddock, home-baked bread and cakes, eggs, butter, yoghurt and dried fruit (to which Muggeridge was great- ly attached) being dispatched in heroic quantities. Nor were their guests neglected, or required to conform to their hosts' tastes. Mr Ingrams correctly states that Kitty would procure a few slices of cooked ham or something of that nature. What he does not mention (maybe because, as a non-drinker himself, he did not notice) is that strong or, at any rate, strongish drink was available as well. Before lunch there was perfectly nice sherry, while during the meal there would be, if you were unlucky, Harp lager or, if you were luckier, Sains- bury's ates-du-Rheme.
On these occasions Muggeridge liked to talk about Fleet Street, past and present; chiefly past, as was understandable enough. He once conjured up a memorable picture of Sir William Haley, editor and (as 'Oliver Edwards') literary columnist of the Times, climbing up and down his library steps 'like a little monkey', opening and discarding books, searching for wisdom: `Ah, Aristo- tle. Any wisdom there? No good. Try Plato instead.' Mr Ingrams will appear — cer- tainly ought to appear — in any history of British journalism in the 20th century. But he has never, I think, been able to find much affection for Old Fleet Street and its inhabitants. Muggeridge did have this feel- ing. After all, he was one of them himself. True, he found much of the work tedious, most of his colleagues second-rate. He always claimed he never stayed more than five years in the same job. In fact he spent the seven immediate post-war years on the Daily Telegraph, with a brief spell as Wash- ington correspondent, ending up as deputy editor.
It has been asserted with too much con- fidence that Muggeridge would never have been made editor because Michael Berry (now Lord Hartwell) had a suspicion of what used to be called `viewy' men, a cate- gory exemplified also by Sir Peregrine Worsthorne and Mr Colin Welch. But in the decade after the war Muggeridge was one of the most highly regarded journalists in Fleet Street. He was talked about as edi- tor of The Spectator and the Daily Mail. Shortly after accepting the editorship of Punch in 1953 he learnt through Ian Fleming that he had been about to be offered the Sunday Times. Hartwell was to come to power later on. His editors includ- ed Maurice Green and Lord Deedes, who could hardly be described as apolitical cyphers. In Muggeridge's day the propri- etor was Hartwell's father, Lord Camrose. For some reason — never properly explained by Muggeridge, perhaps inexpli- cable — this modest Welsh businessman greatly took to the angry, middle-aged, appallingly fluent, extreme right-wing Conservative.
For that is what Muggeridge was in the 15 or so years after the war — until he became a television personality, gave up regular journalism and started to write in his occasional articles (mostly in the New Statesman) about 'the monstrous buf- fooneries of power. . . some future Gibbon . . . ' and much else besides along the same lines, all contriving to suggest that he was uninterested in politics and had certainly never adhered to any party. Admittedly he was, like Mr Ingrains, impatient with the machinery: party conferences, big speech- es, opinion polls, Second Readings, what's Nye Bevan up to? and all the rest of it.
But, unlike Mr Ingrains, he was fascinat- ed both by political personalities such as General de Gaulle and by the clash of great powers such as the Soviet Union and the United States. In the Cold War he enlisted enthusiastically on the latter's side, even going so far as to defend Senator Joe McCarthy. As disclosures following the opening up of Soviet records have demon- strated, McCarthy was not always or entirely wrong. This is a subject on which liberal journalists both in this country and in the United States have so far preserved a prudent silence. Here, as in other fields, Muggeridge possessed — as his biographer also possesses — a certain gift of prophetic insight. As his published diaries show, he also continued to work for MI6, where he had been in the war, until well into the 1950s. Mr Ingrams makes no mention of this. He does, however, tell us about Muggeridge's membership of the National Union of Journalists. He took this up solely to root out Fleet Street Communists and fellow- travellers, a step involving some self- sacrifice, entailing as it did lengthy atten- dance at tedious meetings. I briefly thought Mr Ingrams had a scoop when he told us that Muggeridge had also tried to become a Tory MP. But that too is in the published diaries: 24-5 August 1948: Saw chap called [J.P.L.] Thomas at the Conservative Party office about suggestion which had been made that I might oppose a fellow-traveller in the elec- tions. Not particularly keen on doing it, but would if required.
Both Muggeridge and his latest biogra- pher agree that his object was not to become an MP for its own sake but to take on and defeat one of Labour's fellow- travellers such as Konni Zilliacus or Tom Driberg, for whom he harboured a particular detestation. Mr Ingrams says the initiative came from Muggeridge, not, as the latter implies, from Central Office. The official, by the way, who was involved in these negotiations (Thomas was a politi- cian) was E. D. 'Toby' O'Brien, not `Tubby'.
It was this Muggeridge, a gifted right- wing polemicist of the type the Telegraph often produces, that I first met in 1954. By this time he had just become editor of Punch and was, with the aid of television, turning himself into a public person: invita- tions to speak accepted (as Muggeridge would have put it), speeches duly delivered to greater or lesser effect, crowds addressed, broadcasts made to even larger crowds, happily invisible. On this occasion he spoke to the Cambridge University Labour Club. Afterwards we took him to the Kohinoor Indian restaurant for coffee. He immediately produced a quantity of banknotes and asked the waiter for seven cognacs. I remember the number and that he specified cognac rather than brandy generically. This struck me as generosity on a munificent scale. I had never seen any- thing like it — certainly not from visiting Labour politicians, who expected us to buy drinks for them. And Muggeridge had such charm: such gaiety and wit and lightness of touch, all illuminated by those incandes- cent blue eyes of his. Unhappily no cognac was forthcoming. The manager apologised. It was something to do with the licensing laws. Muggeridge left, to spend the night with Victor Rothschild. 'We never had our argument about freedom,' Muggeridge affably replied, as he went out into the night and towards Lord Rothschild's hospi- tality.
Mr Ingrams mentions his charm and his generosity but provides no examples of either. Of course, charm is notoriously dif- ficult to recapture in print or even to write about at all. Why was Charles Fox loved as he was? How did Henry Fairlie manage to get away with as much as he did? In fact Fairlie or, rather, his family, was one recip- ient of Muggeridge's generosity. One Christmas Fairlie found himself in Brixton prison following some scrape involving money. Certainly Mrs Fairlie had none of the stuff, though she said, 'At least I know where Henry is,' or words to this effect. Muggeridge, a Sussex neighbour, arranged not only for food, drink and a Christmas tree to be delivered to the family but for individual presents for the children as well. And yet, with all his charm, his intelli- gence, his generosity and his kindness, Muggeridge had a psychopathic side. He was disloyal to many of his friends, treach- erous to most of his benefactors. The sole exception was Lord Cudlipp, who gave him a column after the rest of Fleet Street and the BBC had ostracised him following his attack on the royal family, and with whom he maintained cordial relations. Not only did he fail to realise that what he was doing was wrong, in the sense of causing gratu- itous hurt. More, he did not remember or claimed not to remember — anything about it afterwards, a classic characteristic of the psychopath, or so I am informed.
Mr Ingrams tells the story of his review of one of Mr Anthony Powell's Music of Time novels. He was an old friend. In the years after the war they had seen each other virtually daily, often in the now defunct Authors' Club (of which I should have liked to know more), sometimes in the company of Graham Greene, Hugh Kingsmill and George Orwell. Muggeridge had reviewed the first books in the series favourably. With the publication of The Valley of Bones he attacked the whole enterprise for its irrelevance, snobbery and decadence. Mr Powell broke off relations. When I asked him about it he gave me the same account as he has given Mr Ingrams. When I asked Muggeridge he said he and Mr Powell had simply drifted apart, as people did in this life. With Mr Ingrams, however, he professed to have forgotten the whole episode.
All good journalists, and Muggeridge was a great journalist, must have the quali- ty, shared with surgeons, of getting on with the job — in their case, trying to tell the truth — without overmuch regard for other people's feelings. Mr Ingrams certainly has it. Muggeridge had it to an extent which, alas, made his personality deformed.
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