AND ANOTHER THING
Keeping one's friendship in constant repair requires work but is worth it
PAUL JOHNSON
When I look over my diary at the end of each year, I always bear in mind Dr Johnson's wise exhortation: 'One's friend- ship should be kept in constant repair.' He used the word friendship in a collective sense, meaning your personal collegiate cir- cle, whose ranks are inevitably thinned by death and therefore have to be replenished by periodic elections. He remarked: 'I count every day lost in which I do not make a fresh acquaintance', hoping that some, at least, of these new people in his life would mature into friends. He recognised, as I do, that along with God and family, friends are the most important element in life.
Looking back on 1997, I note heavy loss- es, but some splendid gains too. Nora Beloff I first met in 1952, when I was a young journalist in Paris, and she queened it there as the Observer's con-respondent, a member of that gifted team of eccentrics and neurotic geniuses which David Astor built up. They enabled him to make his paper the world's best in foreign coverage — such a contrast with the wretched gossip sheet it has become under Britain's Porkie- in-Chief. Nora was a battleaxe, but then she had to be in those days, when a woman in journalism needed to fight every inch to escape from the ghetto of fashion or the ladies' page. She was a doughty little thing and I salute her feisty soul.
Jimmy Goldsmith I knew even longer because he crashed into my life in 1948, when he ran away from school and turned up at Magdalen. After three days' acquain- tance with the enormous, amazing 16-year- old, I said to him, 'I have a horrible feeling you will end up a multi-millionaire or in jail, possibly both.' Well, he escaped jail and acquired wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, which he always spent generously, usually justly and increasingly wisely. Like Nora he was brave and a fighter, but on a global scale. I would like to say he was the kind of man I would share a slit-trench with (my highest accolade), but he would not have left one much room and the noise he habitually made would be sure to attract unwelcome attention. I liked his views except on free trade — his women, his chil- dren, his style and his houses, though I declined to go to his Mexican Versailles, not relishing alligators, scorpions and ele- phantine mosquitoes. When F.E. Smith died, Churchill said of him that he left no money, 'but banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends'. Jimmy left two billion but he still banked his real treasure in his friends' hearts, and `they will cherish his memory until their own time is come'.
Princess Diana I knew only for two or three years, but I counted her a friend from the first minute we met — she had the pre- cious gift of making you feel cherished right away. She asked my advice and I gave it (I still have copies of my memoranda), and she said she agreed with it and then ignored it. But that is how the old and the young should, or at any rate do, proceed. She brought out all my most chivalrous (and childish) instincts, and I would have died for her, as would, I think, countless other people. Instead she died on us, killed by her appallingly bad taste in men. I wrote a prayer for her to say, which she told me she kept in her handbag. And now I pray to her, as I do to others I believe to be among the blessed, such as Dr Johnson and Jane Austen.
Two noble men I miss profoundly, though both died full of years. Unsurpris- ingly, A.L. Rowse and Isaiah Berlin did not get on, and Isaiah, who for many years con- trolled all high academic honours, denied Leslie Rowse anything. But that is par for the academic course. Rowse was the great- est British historian of his time by far. He infected his innumerable readers with the love of history because his books conveyed his own passionate excitement and his con- viction that studying and writing history (and poetry) was the most important thing in life. He was at it almost to the end, acquiring and conveying historical knowl- edge with matchless energy. He was also generous and I shall never forget the unselfish way in which he helped me with my life of Queen Elizabeth I. Isaiah Berlin was also, even in old age, a humble seeker after knowledge, even in the most unlikely quarters. One of the proudest moments of my life occurred when I was giving a lecture on Jewish history and suddenly saw Isaiah in the front row, listening intently. He gave more people more pleasure than any other academic of his time, and to hear him talk was a delight and a privilege. But he was also important because no one since Keynes was so skilful at persuading the British ruling class to take learned dis- course seriously, and profit from it.
These were only some of my losses, and there were one or two others too painful to write about. But I have made some splen- did new friends too. First there is the Rus- sian painter, Ilona Medvedeva. She has the peculiarly Russian gift of bridging East and West and enabling you to see things in a completely new way. And, though young and beautiful, her upbringing by a quasi- Victorian grandmother among maiden aunts and ladies' companions in Checho- vian country houses makes her culturally a creature from a vanished and delectable age. I could listen to her stories, recounted with the wit of a Pushkin, for ever.
Then there is my new military friend, Sir Charles Guthrie, chief of the defence staff. He is the embodiment of what Wordsworth called `the happy warrior, whom every man would wish to be', for he is brave and ener- getic, a tremendous hill-walker who has spent much of his career in the SAS, a man who exercises authority with confidence and grace and yet who loves to have a good laugh. He is a shrewd geostrategist, some- one who understands soldiers and likes them, yet who is thoroughly at home in Whitehall — without taking it too seriously. So the country is lucky to have him in so difficult a job, and I am fortunate in his friendship.
Finally, there is Newt Gingrich, whom I first met briefly in 1980, when he was a freshman in Congress and I was giving a lecture at the AEI in Washington. But our acquaintance ripened into friendship over a tete-a-tete dinner last month, when we did some plotting together. He is a fellow spir- it. Like me he believes that the Channel is wider than the Atlantic, that the Special Relationship matters, that Anglo-Saxon political culture needs cherishing, that the future of the Right lies in tax reform, and that the object of politics is to make the state smaller and the individual bigger. He is a real fighter, who loves to make friends but who doesn't mind making a few ene- mies — or a lot of enemies — as well. If ever he runs for president, I will go over to lend a hand, if he will have me. I have made other new friends too, mainly among the young, of both. sexes, and all in all it has not been a bad year, thanks be to God.
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