Oh dear, oh dear
Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd
Our Selves Unknown Lionel Brett (Gollancz £12.95)
Some years BC and BD (that is to say before the resurrection of Miss Joan Collins and her soap opera's annexing of the catchword in question), when I was compiling a collection of 'Dynasties' dis- tinguished for their ability and achieve- ment rather than merely for acreage, I was asked to dig up a few specimen family trees. One of the first names that occurred to me was Brett. Although the forebears of the eminent 19th-century judge Sir William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher, were not parti- cularly notable, each of the successors to his title achieved distinction; the 2nd Vis- count as Edward VII's eminence griSe; the 3rd Viscount through working tirelessly for the arts; and the 4th and present Viscount as President of the RIBA and Rector of the RCA. The Brett connection embraces such diverse figures as Disraeli's 'Edith Mill- bank', the Rajah of Sarawak, the country house architect Sir Martyn Beckett, the publisher Julian Shuckburgh, the Old Wel- lingtonian Marxist David Caute and the actress Zena Dare, celebrated for her record-breaking stint as Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady (though, incidentally, Jeremy Brett, who played Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the film version, is not of the family, his real name being Huggins). D. H. Law- rence's eccentric near lover, Dorothy ('Doll') Brett, who painted the family armorial bearings seven feet high on the garage door of her abode in the New Mexican desert, has recently been the subject of a biography; while the life of her brother, the 3rd Viscount Esher, is cur- rently being written by James Lees-Milne. And now to add to the burgeoning Brett
industry, here is an engaging, mildly self- deprecatory autobiography by the present Lord Esher.
The author's handling of his family in an admittedly short book (barely 150 pages of text proper, plus an appendix on town planning in Caracas) is somewhat elliptical. One is often left wanting to know more — for example, 'an embarrassing episode with an opera singer' which cost his Amer- ican Grandpa Hecksher 'a certain amount of money' — and it seems strange to be told that a cousin married 'a band leader' without the information that his name was Harry Roy.
Of his children, Lord Esher observes: 'It is hard to write to them, each one as hard to pin down as the subject of this book and, like it, enfolded by history — the start in life of the eldest (Eton, Magdalen, Grenadier Guards, the City) and of the youngest (Bryanston, Goa, Katmandu, rural commune) summing it up.' I remember his third son, Guy, appearing in 'Pseuds Corner' in virtually every issue of Private Eye when he was art critic of The Times.
Born in 1913, Lord Esher's first words were 'Oh dear'. They nicely express the character of this curious book. Charm is notoriously difficult to define, but if we accept the Duchess of Devonshire's com- ment in The House (with reference to Patrick Leigh Fermor) that it is a combina- tion of being funny and sad, then Our Selves Unknown is charming indeed. Lord Esher comes across as the archetypal well- meaning liberal (you know the sort of thing: decent, civilised, gentle, compas- sionate, forward-looking, etc, etc, with, on the flip side, more than a touch of naivety and a certain snobbism) who has, alas, proved to be wrong about almost every- thing. His heroes were E. M. Forster and the 'lions' (now singularly mangy) of the 'Modern Movement'. As an accident' prone architect and town planner, he has almost literally paved the road to Hell With his good intentions. Of course, it was not actually L°I.d, Esher's fault that some of the roofs 0' Hatfield New Town blew off, or that Basildon New Town sprang a leak, or that Maidenhead, Abingdon and various other places turned out quite the way they did. He is disarmingly ready to admit that, wit,,h hindsight, some of his 1960s Oxford 'stun looked pusillanimous and dull'. In a classic, (and, for once, apparently unconscious/ case of liberal hand-wringing, Lord Esher recollects that he urged Dick Crossmall along the path of local government refornl. 'The Maude (sic) Commission in filie course proposed exactly what we wanted', he says, 'only to have its recommendations disastrously turned upside down by peter Walker.'
Abroad, Lord Esher leans to the 'we" are-all-guilty' syndrome. During a Brills!) Council tour ot, India he muses in his diarY: 'How responsible are we spoilt Aligif Saxons, with our incredibly high stand"fP for the poverty of the rest of the world; Reflecting on his stay in 1954 with', Andrew Andrew Cohen, the 'liberal intellectual' Governor of Uganda who expelled the unfortunate Kabaka of Buganda, Lel Esher says sorrowfully that the future ° Africa lay with arbitrary rulers like "Iging Freddie" '. What about Amin, fel. heaven's sake? The funniest and saddest passage in this quite exceptionally well-written book is tha account of the 'sit-in' at the Royal College of Art in 1977 during Lord Esher's tuleasY rectorship. As the well-heeled Bohemia° liberals (of the type immortalised in Stiq; don's photographs for Private View, 19°".‘i come face to face with the mindless yabou: of 'agit prop', there are some moments ric" in absurdity and pathos. On one occasifte.' the gallant Lord Esher spoke of love to' its, students (It may embarrass you, or rernilip you of the Beatles. . . '); while the pef°!e,, tion of his plea to the odious occupYlna forces contained an extract from Laurens van der Post's version of an Arthtifie legend about brotherhood. 'It reads 9411,9' recalls Lord Esher, in the best one-liner,' the book, 'but it went badly.' Among tities left-wing personalities to pay courtesy Oh on the squatters was Lord Esher's Mar'ian son, Guy. The whole saga is an unrivalled period piece. 'Looking back from the tough eight- ies to the guilt-ridden, angst-ridden seven' ties, from Mrs Thatcher's Britain to Heath's, it looks easy,' says Lord ESilef before proceeding to outline the sort oati solution that, one presumes, might apPe to the present rector, Jocelyn Stevens: `" chat, a quick Injunction, frogmarch th", rebels out and send them down.' But, 1-011' Esher adds in his most endearing mantief', 'it is not easy to act out of period, or out fit character.'
Previous page
