Spanish Rhapsody
WHY I'M NOT A MILLIONAIRE. By Nancy Spain. (Hutchinson, 16s.) MISS NANCY SPAIN'S memoirs are something of a mystery to me. They are written, as we all know, by a successful author and critic, equipped with a tough personality, a broad sense of humour and a professional absence of scruple. They have the official benison of Messrs. N. Coward and G. Harding, swarm with references to well-known characters and contain a number of amusing anecdotes. They ought, in fact, to be all their faithful publisher says they are—'crackling with wit, bursting with vitality,' yet I must admit I found them something less than fascinating.
Where were 'the taxi-drivers, bus conductors, booksellers, little boys of three and a half . . . lovely people all of them, who have taught me so many things' in whom the author expresses such pious interest? They are liquidated, smothered in rose leaves—Godfrey Winn, Marlene Dietrich, Hermione Gingold, Angus Wilson and all the other 'marvellous people' who fall from the pages in suffocating swarms. Even rose leaves can get crumpled, and the addition of artificial scent will not call them back to life.
But I know a lot of people like personalities at any price and will flock out in hundreds to buy these for sixteen shillings. There are, in fact, some other cards up Miss Spain's sleeve. She has learned from a stay with the Empire News to catch the cosy moment ('This was the day my sister married Sir Westrow Hulse and Lord Beaverbrook took me to the dentist. I am drinking cham- pagne with Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Lascelles'); from the BBC a nice easy way with famous Christian names ('Yes, Cyril and Bess I Lord] are darlings and it is lovely to stay with them'); and from the Daily Express a certain guarded admiration for her employer ('Five minutes with the Lord and adrenalin courses through the veins. Fifteen and I can move mountains. Four hours, the length of a happy dining party, and I long somehow to mark the hours with a white stone or a little crock of gold').
So what with one thing and another she may yet make a million, and in a way, perhaps, she deserves to.
DAVID WATT
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