Foxes
Mary Furness
High Life Low Life Taki/Jeffrey Bernard (Jay Landesman pp. 207, £6.95) Taki inhabits the world of the very rich, the world where, as he puts it, people know how to count even if they don't know anything else. He was born into it and decided to stick with it because the rich seem to stay cooler playing tennis, because like blondes, they have more fun, because 'living well is the best revenge' on thebrutal hoax' of socialism. Taki is unique among journalists who write about the rich in actually belonging to that jet-setting 'global village' which is their playpen. By writing about them, Taki puts himself in the curious position of being both defender and betrayer. He exercises a form of journalistic karate and, black belt that he is, you are never quite sure where the chops are going to come next; a vendetta against the Aga Khan or a somewhat puzzling defence of Barbara Hutton; she was not, according to Taki, an unhappy woman trapped by her wealth but an adventuress whose fortune gave her choices other people don't even dream of. Whatever one thinks of Barbara Hutton, Taki's point is really that it is a common fiction among the poor, to console themselves for being poor, that the rich are often unhappy.
Taki may live dangerously physically and psychologically, but Jeffrey Bernard, on his more parochial Soho-Lambourn beat, lives dangerously one step away from the bailiffs, a danger that Taki could never, create for himself. Although Bernard has occasional wistful dreams about winning or being given vast amounts of money, at other times he seriously wonders what a 'swap' with Taki would be like but decides against it mainly on the grounds that his life wouldn't be exciting enough, that he would miss 'that very discomfort, anxiety and penury that keeps us low-lifers on our toes', and the thrill of a win would be seriously dulled if one didn't really care about the money. He also doubts Taki's ability to cope with low life in the form of public transport or tight corners in the French Pub where three different kinds of bore that are a particular hazard of the low life (a Cosmopolitan writer, a Guardian Woman's Page journalist and an investigative Observer hack) threaten to descend on him all at once. Bernard thinks — apparently genuinely, even if out of necessity — that it is far more invigorating to run with the fox than to hunt with the hounds and, incidentally, that one meets a far better class of person that way. He is charming and funny in his vignettes of the low life, and in his flights of fancy and, perhaps because he has no particular axe to grind displays a more relaxed spirit than Taki.
But then he does not shoulder Taki's heavy weight of responsibility. Being one of the rich Taki has to 'worry about encroaching socialism, the double standard of Marxism, and the fact that most leftwingers are prone to love the high life much more than the low life.' While believing in and defending the high life, he is by no means sycophantic towards the livers of it, and this in itself is a rare phenomenon. He thinks that the true unhappiness of the rich is having to live with the other rich, and he does not like 'the rich who are known only for being rich'. This is another justification for his column; he can 'tweak their nose week in, week out'.
It is probably this that leads to the common misapprehension that Taki's column is a 'gossip' column. It is true that it is nearly always littered with the names of the rich, famous or fashionable but it would be unfair to expect him to write about the high life without mentioning the people who live it. He also delivers opinions, by no means always favourable, about specific people. What Dempster or Hickey ever had an opinion, other than of what makes a chop-smacking story? And why should Jeffrey Bernard, in whose columns one finds almost as many names although not such financially or internationally illustrious ones escape the accusation? Why should a mention of Mrs Jean Hislop, the well-known thwacke r of the racing fraternity, or praise of Frank Norman and other low-lifers, count any less as gossip as Taki's praise of John Aspinall, or his descriptions of the frequentersof Studio 54? The answer is obvious enough; the simple minded equate the mention of famous names in print with gossip and believe, according to their persuasion, either that the rich and famous are owed indiscriminate praise, or indiscriminate abuse.
Indeed, as regular readers of the Spectator will undoubtedly have noticed, these daring two have far more in common than one might expect; both are men of parts and experts in the sporting field, both are determined in their rejection of the middle-of-the-road life, both are old fashioned elitists who feel no compulsion to think that the majority is either right or best, both mourn the lack of style in modern life whether high or low, both live up to Taki's definition of style (`the opposite of pretence') in their columns, both are anti Women's Liberation and entertaining social observers, and both shun and reveal the hypocrisy and pretensions that prop up most people. Both, in their own ways, prefer to run with the fox.
My only complaint about this collection is that dates are not attached to the reprinted pieces; it would have added interest for those whose recall of recent social history is less than perfect, to know, for example, when Taki was writing about the succes _Nu of Studio 54.
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