20 JUNE 1952, Page 13

MARGINAL COMMENT

By HAROLD NICOLSON

THIS morning, in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, takes place a memorial service for Desmond MacCarthy. He was a man of such quality that his company enriched even the most casual acquaintance; his friends, both old and young, have lost in him a constant standard of comparison. Although the least sententious or didactic of men, he taught us that the pursuit of letters was both a gay adventure and a solemn responsibility. In that he never falsified his own scale of values, he taught us to be scrupulous about our own. He was a man in whom there was no guile or rancour; a man who every day added meaning to Matthew Arnold's ideal of " sweet- ness and light." Sweetness, since he knew no jealous thoughts and would accord an amused tenderness even to the most obnoxious of his fellow men. Light, since he possessed unusual gifts of interpretation and strove always to enhance the merits of a work of art rather than to display his cleverness by analys- ing its defects. The sorrow occasioned by his death is not sullied by any acrid sense of wastage, futility or disappointment; the desideriunt that we feel is lightened by the knowledge that his was a life of completeness, that here was a man who experi- enced much happiness and imparted much happiness to others. There can be no lasting tragedy in the death of one who was, and will remain, so widely loved and honoured. In the felicity of his family life, in the protective and amused devotion lavished upon him by his remarkable wife, he found an abiding fortress of security and assurance; it enabled him to expand in ever-widening circles the area of his stimulation. His probity was a reproof to the cynical; it was not merely that he was him- self free from affectation; he shamed the affectations of others. In a world of quickly-changing fads and fashions he represented the continuity of English letters.

His charm, his unforgettable charm, cannot, alas, be com- municated to those who never knew him. It derived from the urbanity of his discourse, from the delight that he took, not only in his own excellent jokes, hut also in the poorer jokes of his friends. He was that rare benefactor—an English con- versationalist. He never snubbed or frightened his interlocu- tors; the worst that he could do was to indicate by a polite pause that pragmatic or pretentious statements were not the sort Of statements by which he was amused. Yet the essence of his charm was to be sought in the contrast between the precision of his intellect and his utterly haphazard treatment of material things. Smiling with benignity and expectation, he would turn up on Thursday for the dinner at which he had been long awaited on Tuesday. He would excuse himself on the ground that, whereas his memory for irksome engagements was impeccable, it was the delightful invitations that were apt to become confused. The instantaneous response—" Yes, that would be most agreeable "—left him with the impression that he had in fact responded, and even entered the date in his book. Thus, although he rarely missed committee meetings, he often appeared for luncheon on the wrong day or with the wrong hostess. There was a prolonged period in his life when he was accompanied always with an attache case, which was called " My book on Donne." Hours were spent in retrieving this receptacle from cabs, undergrounds, private houses, restaurants and continental trains. The book was never completed.

* • •

•

His enthusiasm and curiosity remained untarnished; in his presence life and letters became more exciting than they had ever been before. His benevolence would often assume impul- sive forms. If on a journey he was really pleased by a book he was reading for review, he would jump out of the train and send a telegram to the author. The latter would be startled to receive from Crewe or Empoli a telegram bearing the delight- ful words : " It is a good book, very good indeed. Desmond MacCarthy." On one occasion he was so amused by a pamphlet which a friend had written that he burst into his flat carrying several handsomely bound volumes in his arms. " I have brought you a prize," he said. " Come down and help me up with the rest of it." At the door below a taxi waited con- taining twenty-five volumes of the works of Voltaire. It was as a contrast to his careless gaiety, to his unexpectedness in mundane affairs, that one came to appreciate the integrity, the scholarship and the insight of his critical work. Although he delighted in his own charm and in the charm of others, he did not attribute undue importance to this gift, either in its social or its literary aspect. " Renown," he once wrote, " which rests on charm is never secure. Charm in literature is rather like a' kiss in life; potent, even wonderful, at times; at others a trifle, or even a nuisance." For him literature was a stem and exact- ing business, to be approached with seriousness, charity and wisdom. I have seen it stated in some of the obituaries written about him that his positive achievement was less than his influence. I agree that his influence was most salutary and pervasive; but I am convinced that his volumes of collected essays will remain as examples of English biography and criticism at their very best.

What were the qualities that rendered him so fine a critic ? I should give first place to width. Desmond MacCarthy was a natural humanist, and his knowledge of European, and especially of French, literature was large and deep; he had acquired a range of comparison which assisted his talent for discrimination. His second great quality was an exquisite sense of values. His historical approach to letters, his amicable detachment from the fashions of the moment, the actual balance of his judgement, preserved him from a too common failing which he himself described as " that of intentionally losing one's sense of proportion in order to further a cause.' • He had 'a deep respect for intellectual probity and a sharp eye for fraudu- lence; but he never underestimated a writer on account of some superficial fault, such as snobbishness or a deficient sense of humour. His balance was no mere aloofness or a facile rejection of contemporary affections or prejudices; it was animated and coloured by the third of his great qualities, by the gift of sym,bathy. He was an admirable psychologist and hid acquired the habit, essential to all serious critics, of " enact- ing in himself other people's inward experience or dwelling on his own." He possessed an unusual capacity for identifying himself with the temperament and environment of those whom he examined. To him the vulgarity of Leigh Hunt, the vaunting of Meredith, the attitudes of Disraeli, the sententiousness of Henry James, were but incidental facets of characters interest- ing or important in themselves. It was something more than tolerance, something more than understanding; it was an active sympathy of mind. It was this faculty that gave him the fourth of his main qualities, the gift of penetration. With what insight was he able to note the difference betskeen Ibsen's and Strind- berg's use of the sub-conscious, or to describe Gough as " a man who could believe reason to be divine, but not the wilt," To. this potent equipment he added imagery, wit, humour and a lovely English style.

* * * * As a teacher, he would remind younger critics that in every language epithets of abuse are more varied than those of eulogy and that it is a far easier thing to write a " brilliant " review (he always attached to the word " brilliant " the derogation of inverted commas) if one emphasised the faults of an author than if one strove to expound his merits. Invariably he urged them to strive after the more difficult of the two modes. I do not believe that his exacting standards will be forgotten; or that his fastidious charity will fade from English letters.