FESTIVAL FOLLIES

Wine, women and cheese

PATRICK SKENE CATLING

Is the cultural festival dying? Let me end the suspense right away : the answer is clearly no. Cultural festivals transcend the cultures they celebrate. The tantalisingly ephemeral, wisp- ily diffuse nature of the festival seems to call for perennial repetition in order that one may try to concentrate, distil and preserve its essence—an obviously impossible task, for each repetition, though almost the same, is subtly different. To be more specific, hav- ing spent a few days attending the Chelten- ham Festival of Literature, I am convinced that it may prove to be our most durable literary form.

I arrived early at Cheltenham (Salubritas et Eruditio), the Gloucestershire spa that Lord Horder called 'a centre for purveying the combination of health, rest, beauty and elegant entertainment—those inestimable things which people need more and more' On the advice of Mr John Bullock, the Fest- ival administrator, I registered at the Plough Hotel. It was an inn early in the seventeenth century, when the High Street was the only road in the village. The Plough's guests have included the Duke of Wellington, Samuel Johnson, Byron, Tennyson, Michael Foot, Stan Barstow, Margaret Drabble, John Fowles, Frederic Raphael, and John Wain. The Duke of Wellington, if he had an oppor- tunity to revisit the hotel today, would prob- ably be surprised, so extensively has it been 'improved,' and so noisily do lorry drivers exceed the speed limit along the High Street in the early hours of the morning. King George in first came here in 1788 to take the waters. I asked about the Pittville Pump Room last week and was told the waters were off. As the Festival guests gathered, we were invited to the Ploughman's Bar to take the gin.

Parts of Cheltenham are still pleasant, even elegant. Regency facades are being re- painted and there are many municipal trees, lawns and flowers. I walked up the straight, broad avenue of The Promenade, where the festival of the birth of Christ is already in progress, and noticed that a local cinema, with the ABC circuit's infallible sense of occasion, was exhibiting a quasi-documentary film about the evils of The Wife Swappers. Outside the Town Hall, the Festival of Lit- erature headquarters, a poster promised 'Giants Clash'. In the centre of the audit- orium inside the hall, the management had set up a wrestling ring. For a giddy moment, 1 looked forward to colossal literary con- troversy, with that cunning old pro, John Wain, wearing deceptive corduroy and suede, in one corner, confronting those classy, crowd-pleasing contenders, Barstow, Drab- ble, Fowles and Raphael, some of them in beards, with no novelistic theories barred. Alas, at the box office they said that the wrestling ring was going to be only for wrestling. Even when visiting intellectuals were in town, or perhaps especially then, the municipality were maintaining a certain balance by offering the public 'Old Time Music Hall,' Keep Fit Demonstrations' and a 'Famous Jug Band in Concert'. Meanwhile, the Cheltenham Little Theatre was presenting 'a lively farce' entitled I'll Get My Man.

On the first evening of the Festival, The Worshipful The Mayor of Cheltenham, Councillor Lieutnant Colonel E. J. M. Eld- ridge, OBE, To, opened an exhibition of children's books in The Old Bakery, behind the Public Library. It was a most attractive exhibition of excellent books, enabling one to hope for a new generation of enthusiastic and appreciative readers. Kay Webb, of Puffin Books, spoke there, but her talk co- incided with the arrival of Michael Foot, who was to talk on Hazlitt at the Everyman Theatre and discuss him informally later before a smaller audience at The Plough. Mr Douglas Cleverdon, a BBC producer of long experience, the chairman of the Fes- tival late night discussions, had invited me and others to take part in the discussions, and I, in the vainglorious confidence of Oct- ober. had agreed to do so.

Under the theatre's glittering chandelier, amid red plush and gilt, Honorary Alder- man F. D. Littlewood, the chairman of the Festival Management Committee, introduced Mr Foot and urged the audience not to for- get 'our wine and cheese party after the last show on Saturday night' (tickets 10s, includ- ing wine). Mr Foot, seated between bouquets of chrysanthemums, smiled bravely. Appar- ently almost exhausted by the afternoon's Rhodesia debate in the House of Commons and his journey, he looked grey and crumpled, but visibly revived as he spoke affectionately of Hazlitt's successful efforts early in the nineteenth century to help to introduce humane radical thought and a plain, colloquial, eloquent and witty prose style to English letters. 'Hazlitt,' Mr Foot said, 'took his politics around with him like a giant mastiff, and "love me, love my dog" was his motto.' Mr Foot's own lovable giant mastiff uttered some teasing mock growls several times during the evening, and the audience, though generally presumed to be predominantly tory in this place on these occasions, responded with appreciative laughter and friendly applause. Miss Jillian Becker, the South African novelist and teacher, later put up a sprightly show of opposition to Mr Foot's assessment of Haz- litt, partly, perhaps, for the sake of enliven- ing the discussion. Michael Holroyd, the biographer, and the rest of us were happy to encourage Mr Foot to do most of the talking, so that he spoke for nearly three hours altogether, not counting the even more informal discussion during an unwind- ing session later still—an impressively schol- arly and charming performance.

Mr Bullock told me the following evening that one of the purposes of the Festival was to stimulate older writers and to encourage younger ones. In this case, the symposium that considered the familiar question 'Is the novel a dying form?' must have been re- assuring to both age groups. Mr Wain said he thought 'things have got much tougher' for novelists since he had published his first novel seventeen years ago. However, he con- tinues to write novels, not film scripts or advertising copy. Mr Fowles, whose most recent novel, The French Lieutenant's Wo- man, has been on American best-seller lists for more months than I can remember, quite naturally said: 'I'm absolutely sure the novel's not dead.' Mr Barstow said that there would continue to be a place for even second- and third-rate novels, which were useful for training second- and third-rate readers to appreciate the best. Miss Drabble passionately declared that she would con- tinue to write novels even if she were soli- tarily confined in a prison cell, without hope that they would be published. Mr Raphael, whose optimistic remarks, dramatised by a red sweater, moved the audience to cheer him more than once, made the unequivocal assertion, based on observation of his own children, that the public is 'pissed off with the box.' and would rather read good books than watch bad television. Mr Fowles said that 'the whole of Fleet Street is against creative literature,' meaning that newspapers and magazines did not provide sufficient space for reviews of novels. He had already admitted, with a smile, that 'like all other novelists, I'm a paranoiac as well as an obsessive.' He also complained about 'the simply bloody public library situation in this country'—paying an author a single royalty for a volume that may be lent as many as two hundred times.

During the discussion afterwards, Giles Gordon, editorial director of Victor Gol- lancz, said that his house had not been offered one first novel by an English novel- ist worth publishing in the past eighteen months. Christopher Hampton, the infant prodigy dramatist (he was born in the Azores in 1946), said he had once failed as a novelist before his recent West End stage successes but wanted to try another novel one day. 'Doubt and despair is what this evening is all about,' he commented without any hint of personal doubt or des- pair. Conducting a brief David Frost-style instant mini-survey, I asked members of the audience who were at present reading a novel to raise their hands. As one might have expected. they all raised their hands. I con- sidered that if all of them were honest the case was closed.

The following morning, I had coffee with Mrs Mary Wilson, the poet, in the golden splendour of the redecorated Queen's Hotel.

She was calm, soft-spoken and resolute be- fore appearing as the guest of honour at the Foyles Literary Luncheon at the hotel that afternoon. She was also the principal speaker, making her first public address since the September publication of her

phenomenally successful book of selected poems (55,000 copies sold so far). 'I don't

really like poetry readings,' she said.

'Poetry's too personal. It's better read in private. I used to accept all invitations to

speak. until I. realised it wasn't necessary. I can hardly wait to get back to the Scillies. Now I must go and read my sermon' Wearing a plain violet suit and an expres- sion of gentle inscrutability, Mrs Wilson sat beside the Mayor at the centre of the head table. The audience wore a marvellous col- lection of Cheltenham hats. suggesting, in their complicated constructions of subfusc velvet, that there would always be a Festival, no matter what. 'Literature has been distor-

ted and twisted from its original beauty and phraseology,' the Mayor said. There were murmurs of sympathy. 'But thank God the language of poetry as I knew it has not changed.' He quoted a couple of lines of Wordsworth. He paid tribute to Mrs Wd: son's 'gracious manner and homely ways in Number Ten, and even then she didn't blow her cool. She made a brief, modest

speech, including a couple of short verses her father had taught her. I liked the one that started: Time to a man is more than cash, So waste it not in .talking trash. In Cheltenham last week, Mrs Wilson wasted not a minute.