BOOKS
Old jokes are the best
Colin Welch
THE OXFORD BOOK OF POLITICAL ANECDOTES edited by Paul Johnson OUP, £10.95 Abook like this ought to be hugely enjoyable, stuffed with plums, laughs and sharp insights into human and political nature, a treasure chest of old and new, borrowed and blue. And so it is. The temptation to read bits out to others, however busy, slumbrous or otherwise abstracted is continuously irresistible.
The Duke of Newcastle at the old Duke of Cumberland's funeral, in Horace Wal- pole's unforgettable description, alternate- ly crying and spying, standing on the new duke's black train 'to avoid the chill of the marble'; Sheridan drunk in the gutter, giving his name to the watch as Wilber- force; the mourner who earnestly beseeched a parting glance at his old dear dead friend Sheridan and promptly arrested the corpse for debt; Pam's gargan- tuan dinners, rivalled by those of Campbell-Bannerman, who ridiculed Hal- dane's intrigues — 'no more tact than a hippopotamus . . . Haldane always pre- fers the backstairs. But it does not matter. The clatter can be heard all over the house'; Curzon disappointed by the omni- bus, to him a novelty — 'I hailed one at the bottom of Whitehall and told the man to take me to Carlton House Terrace. But the fellow flatly refused;' Lloyd George on Curzon — 'worth his weight in brass', on Haig — 'brilliant to the top of his boots', on John Simon — 'sat on the fence so long the iron has entered his soul'. These and countless other gems, familiar or no, demand immortality.
New to me was the first of two mordant anecdotes about Tony Crosland and Dick Crossman. At a Kensington party, attired in shirt, trousers and carpet slippers, 'not particularly drunk', the former lay full length on the floor outside the ladies' cloakroom. A tall, plain and very shy girl struggled with difficulty across his pros- trate form, waking him up. Focussing, he greeted her: 'Hello, ugly face'. In tears she asked who that 'horrible' man was and was told, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Education. About Crossman a lady had a dream. She was in a dentist's chair, and Crossman in a white coat was about to attack her teeth. 'Don't be silly', she cried, 'you know you're not a dentist.' I know I'm not, you fool', he replied, tut I can work it out quite easily from first princi- ples.' She told her dream to Hugh Gaits- kell, who said it perfectly expressed the reason he would never give Crossman a government post. Touché: yet any of us who ever heard Crossman pontificating about science, will know how feeble was his grasp even of first principles, let alone of what can be worked out from them. Also new to me was A. C. Benson's typically acerbic description of Gladstone's funeral — 'There were a number of red- nosed people, like half-pay officers, who shambled in — earls, I think. Among the barons, the leanest and shiftiest person I ever saw, in threadbare clothes like a sexton.' Benson also records Loulou Har- court on the ancient Gladstone. The G.O.M., on a cruise, was in a deckchair recovering from seasickness. 'Mrs Glad- stone, very lively, came out of her cabin, came up to Mr Gladstone, who was read- ing, and stroked the three hairs which lay across his forehead. Mr G's face assumed the expression of diabolical rage, and he was just about to say something strong when he saw that Loulou was looking.' The expression of wrath was succeeded by 'a flat and dull apathy', then by 'wreathed smiles', but with rage still beaming from a corner of his eye: 'I am wonderfully long suffering, Mr Harcourt.' How much of Morley's Life would one trade for that vignette! 'Priscilla' incidentally was Campbell- Bannerman's apt nickname for Morley, as `Schopenhauer' for Haldane and 'the Nymph of Malwood' for the massive Sir William Harcourt. Mr Johnson's pages are bejewelled with nicknames, more common perhaps when politicians were more of one class and background: Pam 'Lord Cupid', Balfour 'Pretty Fanny', Lloyd George 'The Goat', Asquith `Squiff or `Perrrier Jouet', and many more, all, as Mr Johnson claims in his fine introduction, telling us some- thing about their victims, usually to their disadvantage. Lord Cupid may have tried to rape one of Queen Victoria's ladies at Windsor Castle, and he was certainly cited as a co-respondent in his 79th year, as Mr Johnson recalls, though he omits Dizzy's reported reaction when asked what elec- toral use the Tories should make of this scandal: keep it dark, was in effect his advice, or Pam'll sweep the country.
Like nicknames, anecdotes are for Mr Johnson 'a valuable source of historical truth. Inaccurate in detail they may be, but more often than not they convey an essen- tial fact about a great personage which more formal records ignore.' I believe he is right; I certainly hope so: what is history without anecdote save dust and pipe rolls?
Are anecdotes true? Mr Johnson is inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt: 'true (at least in spirit) till proved false'. In fact Mr Johnson is more sceptical than you might thus suppose. 'His smile was like the glitter of the brass plate on a coffin': this famous crack he correctly denies to Lloyd George on Simon (too late by a century; what Ll. G. actually did say about Simon, apart from the fence-sitting jibe, was that 'men shuddered when he took their arm') and attributes it to John Philpot Curran. Daniel O'Connell later absconded with it and applied it to, no, not Peel, but the 14th Earl of Derby. Attlee, moreover, is said to have described Her- bert Morrison as his own worst enemy, eliciting a growl from Bevin, 'Not while I'm alive he ain't'. But Bevin, according to Johnson, is reputed to have said this about Dalton, Cripps, Bevan and Dick Cross- man. My own money is on Shinwell. Perhaps Bevin said it about them all. He was a tremendous hater, and also lover, judging by his vigorous siege, recalled here, of Lady Diana Cooper in the Paris embassy.
There is too the famous yarn about the senior public figure arrested in Hyde Park on New Year's Day for indecent exposure. Churchill went into the matter with care, the date, the place, the time of day, nine o'clock in the evening, the temperature, two degrees of frost, the age of the accused, nigh on 71, and commented with awed respect, 'Makes yer proud to be an Englishman'. Alas, according to Mr John- son, checking details demolishes the tale. It couldn't have been Sir Basil Thomas — dates all wrong: but who apart from Sir Harold Nicolson ever thought it was? I suspect that the tale can be rebuilt with Sir Leo Chiozza Money in the hero's role; and anyway it is a story about Churchill really rather than the shadowy exposer.
It is the height of boorish bad manners to rise belching from such a feast as Mr Johnson has laid out for us and to start moaning about what has been omitted from the menu. It was far from my first intention to do so, amazed as I always am by each new proof of his prodigious and fruitful productivity. Topical articles and analytical essays pour from his pen, grace- ful pieces about beloved dogs and chimney-pots as well as thunderous block- busters and vast books of history and polemic, all distinguished for vigour, clar- ity, forceful argument and intellectual dash, all disclosing an amazingly wide range of knowledge, reading and passion- ate interests, as do these latest by-products of a happy workshop. I rub my eyes in wonder. How does he do it? How can he keep it up? 'Hats off, gentlemen', as Schumann cried on hearing Chopin, 'a master!'
Yet I can't help noting the absence of some old favourites of my own, not only with regret but with a certain unease: have I been retailing as funny, illuminating and true, (or at least as deserving the benefit of the doubt) anecdotes which have not pas- sed even Mr Johnson's not over rigorous truth test or were not perhaps thought by him good enough? Too stale, he may have thought some of them. Yet he prints many old chestnuts, and rightly too: at every performance of Beethoven's fifth, some- one is hearing it for the first time.
For instance, didn't Wilkes retort to Lord Sandwich, who had predicted that he would die either on the gallows or of pox, that that depended on whether he embraced his lordship's principles or his mistress? (I am writing away from proper reference books, which are indeed about as welcome to the raconteur as garlic to a vampire.) Didn't Gladstone assert that a fellow politician was convinced that his bottom was made of glass, and that another was the only man he'd ever met who was precisely half-witted? Did a Welsh coal-owner, who had bought a peerage from Lloyd George, prudently sign his advance cheque with the title he had chosen but not yet got — just to make sure?
Did Churchill remark of Driberg that he was a man who had brought buggery into disrepute? Did Churchill, charged by Mrs Braddock with being drunk, retort that she was ugly, and that tomorrow he'd be sober but she'd be ugly still? (I hope not: it is an unchivalrous retort, though not more wounding than his rebuke, cited here, to Mrs Daisy Fellowes who, thinking he'd passed out at lunch, deplored the fact that such a great man should end his days in the company of Onassis and Wendy Reyes. Churchill awoke: 'Daisy, Wendy Reyes is something that you'll never be. She is young, she is beautiful and she is kind.') Did Churchill refer to 'Sir Stifford Crapps' as 'governess of the Board of Trade' or sigh, when Sir Stafford left the room, that 'There, but for the grace of God, goes God?'
Did F. E. Smith, about to address a crowded post-prandial meeting in Wood- ford or thereabouts, rise unsteadily, study the clock at the back of the hall, take out his watch, compare the times, lose his thread and bearings, lay his watch, chain and keys on the table, methodically empty all his other pockets, take off his jacket and waistcoat, unfasten his braces, letting his trousers drop, and prepare himself for bed on the platform? Did Dalton, on his knees, affectionately hug the parliamentary tele- vision set on which John Freeman was appearing? (Mr Johnson, incidentally, makes less use that I would have done of books by and about Dalton and the Webbs, nearly all mines of apposite mirth and malice.) Did Attlee require the drunken Green- wood to make way for a younger man, only to replace him with Addison, decades older? Dick Stokes, reporting back to the Cabinet from Iran, related how he had impressed on Dr Mossadeq the dire con- sequences for Iran of grabbing Abadan, the jobs and prosperity forgone, swift ruin and so on. Isrimporte, n'importe' was the lachrymose statesman's only reply. Did Attlee break in, Namport, namport — a Persian term, I take it'? As the Atlee Cabinet broke up for the last time, was the final despondent silence in the end broken by the hollow tones of Stokes: 'Well, anyone for White's?' Attlee continuously grumbled about the European Commun- ity. Did Crosland reprove him, 'Really, Lord Attlee, one might suppose that you didn't like foreigners.' And did Attlee reply, Nor I do, except for the black ones and the brown ones.'
I can't go on oath, give an unqualified 'yes' to any of the questions posed above, and Mr Johnson may have had excellent reasons for these and other exclusions. Otherwise, don't they suggest the existence of vast reserves of untapped anecdote, beyond the power of any single man, no matter how unoccupied otherwise, to dis- cover, check and, if found possibly true and amusing or illuminating, to bless and print with the benefit of the doubt? I do not mean to carp. I am trying to suggest that for subsequent editions which should justly follow, Mr Johnson enlists the help of some snuffy, pedantically humorous little old men, obsessed with the coulisses of politics, with little else to do except rootle out titbits, test them and file them away with many a malicious snigger and wheezy chuckle. A fatter book might result. So what? You can't have too much of a good thing, and this is a very good thing indeed.
Previous page
