When literary types and politicians enjoyed a rousing singsong
PAUL JOHNSON
g E'eryone suddenly burst out singing.' But they don't, do they? What is wrong with the world (among many other things) is that people do not sing any more. I mean ordinary people, not those paid to do so. I was reminded of this fact by the exception that proves the rule. This month, at a party to launch a little book about his youth, Hugh Massingberd, the Great Obituarist, ended his speech with a song. He sang 'Look For the Silver Lining' in a tuneful tenor — the first time I had heard song at a literary party.
Is not this amazing? The lyric is a fundamental part of literature, perhaps its earliest. All the poets of antiquity sang, and accompanied themselves; as Kipling put it, 'When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre.' When Thomas Moore was the most popular versifier in Britain. Byron alone excepted, he always sang his poems at parties, seated at the pianoforte, to such effect that ladies were known to swoon. Strong men wept, even Byron; and, for that matter, Byron himself sang on occasion — old Scotch airs, and a sentimental Italian ballad taught him by the Contessa Guiccioli, his last attachment'. Dickens could sing. So, of course, could Rossetti and `Topsy'; even Oscar Wilde. Literary singsongs at the turn of the century must have been splendid affairs. Hilaire Bellc had a wide repertoire of French marching songs and could give a fearsome rendering of that sinister revolutionary anthem 'ca ira!'. There are people still living who remember him singing 'Do you remember an inn, Miranda?' with 'the fleas that tease in the high Pyrenees', including the lady, not then born, for whom he wrote the enchanting mountain poem 'Tarantella'.
I should have liked to have heard H.G. Wells sing 'A Bicycle Made for Two' in his high, cracked voice, or Joseph Conrad have a go at 'Down among the dead men'. Chesterton could sing pleasantly, especially 'All things bright and beautiful', a favourite of his. The best songs for jovial literary evenings are ones with a rousing chorus-line that is easily learnt and can be roared out over the glasses. George Bernard Shaw, a lifelong teetotaller (and vegetarian), was not a man for the customary conviviality, but he sang at Fabian summer schools. His favourite was a big drum-and-bugle song he learnt while writing Major Barbara, his play about the Salvation Army. It began:
When the roll is called up yonder I'LL BE THERE!
And it ended: 'GLORY HALLELUJAH!' I like to think of him singing this with gusto, accompanied by his massed chorus of young atheists, including the 'advanced' Rebecca West, rolling her saucy eyes at the goggling Wells. That was a bicycle made for two indeed!
The last period when the British did a lot of singing was in the Hitler war, encouraged by such BBC programmes as Let the People Sing and Music While You Work. I was in my school choir in those days and loved it: not only the noble plainchant for Holy Week, Tenebrae, and Byrd's magic masses, but — my favourite — a glorious piece of Second Empire religiosity by Gounod, the Messe du Sacre Cceur, first performed in the Madeleine in Paris. It had wonderful parts for boy trebles, like me. I can still sing a hit: notably 'A wand'ring minstrel' from The Mikado, a difficult series of ditties to sing, since they range from recitative through military and nautical airs to romance. (Are you in sentimental mood? I'll sing for you./On maiden's coldness do you brood? I'll do so too — Oh, oh, oh, oh — ooh-hoo.') I treasured singing at Stonyhurst, especially when the entire school roared out that great papist hymn (now banned as unecumenical) 'Faith of our fathers'. But one of the many things I miss Auberon Waugh for was his wickedly satirical rendering (he was a Downside boy) of the Stonyhurst College song, sometimes with a glass on his head. I wish there was a recording of him doing it, just as I long for a record of Kingsley Amis singing 'Doctor J377'.
As it happens, school songs, especially the famous ones at Harrow, the annual performance of which Churchill attended almost to the end, were probably responsible for the long-continued habit of singsongs among British politicians. Harrow produced a lot of famous prime ministers — Peel, Palmerston and Baldwin, as well as Churchill. In the old days Cabinet meetings were accompanied by jovial dinners, held in one or another of the grand houses owned by its members, and the wine circulated freely. Did Pitt the Younger provide a solo? Did Wellington sing 'The British Grenadiers'? Was Gladstone ever persuaded to sing that monstrous groundling-shaker:
We don't want to fight, but, by jingo if we do. We've got the ships. we've got the men, we've got the money too!
Once, in 1961. I shared a limousine with Earl Attlee after a television interview I did with him. He was, for him, in jovial and loquacious mood, and he sang for me, in a small but true tenor, some old songs from the Boer War. They included one I remember my mother singing too. It went (I quote from memory):
Redvers Buller and Kitchener, Baden-Powell and Gray Forty-thousand horse-and-foot sailing for Table Bay. . .
According to Attlee, politicians often sang together in those days. Ernie Bevin didn't approve (It's soppy'). but Stafford Cripps could intone 'Come into the garden, Maud'. Beaverbrook also told me about politicians singing. Churchill, he said, had a good repertoire of music-hall songs, though his voice was usually out of tune. The singing, said the Beaver, was helped by a liberal supply of champagne, the only drink for politicians in those days (Tories, anyway). Right up to his death he kept a splendid cellar of vintage 'pop of a quality I have never tasted anywhere else. Under its influence, even a dour figure like Reginald McKenna, dismissed by Lloyd George as merely 'an able accountant', would give a rendering of a song designed for a big-blouse blonde, 'I Want What I Want When I Want It!'
Community singing lingers on, especially in Wales, and notably in Cardiff Arms Park when a big match is on. Weeping songs and fighting songs, too. There are bellicose exchanges by the singing crowds in Glasgow during the Celtic–Rangers match, especially when the Protestant Rangers supporters come out with a homemade ditty such as their infamous 'Would you like a chicken curry, Bobby Sands?' This was during the Maze hunger-strike, moreover, when Sands was still alive — just. What were the words, I wonder'? No doubt Bruce Anderson knows them. Hugh Massingberd has promised to teach me all the words of 'Look for the Silver Lining', which I am anxious to learn. I also want to memorise the entire lyric of 'As Time Goes By', as I know only the first verse. I would love, too, to learn some Charles Trenet songs, especially `La Mer' and 'Quand notre cceur fait bourn-bourn!' An enterprising publisher should bring out a fat compendium of the lyrics of the most popular songs of the past 150 years. That would be a real contribution to getting us all singing again, and so raising our spirits in these grim times. Glory Hallelujah!
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