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Postscript
MY first little outing almost every New Year is to see the previous twelve months' ac- quisitions at the National Por- trait Gallery, where this time the two jewel-like miniatures —a Hilliard of Elizabeth l's Earl of Leicester and a Samuel Cooper of the Lauderdale who put the L into cabal—are alone worth the visit, to say nothing. of the newly discovered portrait of young John Milton, pretty penseroso.
The major sketches—big and in oils—for the First World War nobs of Orpen's Versailles pic- ture at the Imperial War Museum are so dashing and dazzling as to make the three Sargents look slight indeed—even the one of a very po-faced Smuts,but with four different breastfuls of medal- ribbons in a corner of the canvas, roughs for separate portraits, about a couple of dozen rows in all, in full colour, enough for even an Ameri- can general or a Soviet marshal, and remindful of that wonderful story of C. E. Montague's about the young bucks who collected decora- tions, not by deeds of derring-do, but by diplomacy, and with an eye to their colour values, with such success, 'that people turned round to look at them in the street, marvelling that men so young should have had time for so much valour.'
There not having been three Trustees to ob- ject to his inclusion, as having been dead for less than ten years, there is a small portrait of Sir Thomas Beecham, and a curious bronze, by David Wynne, of his head, hands and baton. There is the sort of spirited Epstein bronze you would expect of the spirited Cunninghame Graham, and an Augustus John a Sir Herbert Barker, the manipulative surgeon, presented by a maharaja and other grateful patients, that makes him look like a Renaissance prince, with mouth buttoned-up, and eyes so sly that you would expect the hands to be more cruel than curative. The portrait of Amy Mollison. the flyer.. by Sir John LongstalL which might have come off a Christmas calendar for 1930, bears witness to 'the rule which the Trustees desire to lay down . . to look at the celebrity of the person represented rather than to the merit of the artist.'
The Times and the Guardian were the papers chosen on New Year's Day to carry the first full-page advertisements proclaiming 'the forma- tion of a great new political ginger group, the National Fellowship.' I can think of other papers (in which no doubt the advertisements are still to come) the readership of which is likely to respond more wholeheartedly to the new group's condemnation of Mr. Macleod ('his appointment as Chairman of the Conservative Central Office is fraught with danger); the present leanings of the Conservative Party 'towards pink Social- ism'; government expenditure; trade union ac- tivities; and the Welfare State; and to a list of 202 sponsors that includes thirty-nine general officers and brigadiers; thirty-one officers of field rank; eight army captains; four captains RN; six flag officers; five commanders and a two- and-a-half striper; one air vice-marshal; five air commodores; four wing commanders; one flight- lieutenant; Mr. Edward Martell; Mary, Lady Bates; the Rural Dean of Hartlepool; and the McGillycuddy of the Reeks.
I went to few parties in what is grimly re- ferred to as the festive season:' one of the best of the few was lubricated solely by Black Velvet, which reconciled me to the weather, the prospect of work next day and of my oil-fired central heating nearing the end of its customary ten-day period of trouble-free functioning. My host was an Irishman, so his Black Velvet was the real stuff —real Guinness and real champagne, half and half, and very cold. (Sweet stout and Babycham makes Black Velveteen, and may the Lord for- give you.) That bloody-minded old reactionary, George Saintsbury, although he wrote of 'that noble liquor called of Guinness' as 'the comeliest of black malts,' said of Black Velvet (which was called Bismarck in his time: I can't think why— where would Bismarck have got hold of Guin- ness?) that the stout overwhelms the champagne, 'and all the wine does is to make the beer more intoxicating and more costly. Thus the thing is at once vicious and vulgar.' This is snobbish non- sense: it is equally true, and more important, that on a cold day the stout gives body to the wine and, appropriately for a party, the wine gives sparkle to the beer. Anyway, it was Gerald du Maurier's favourite tipple, and he was a much nicer man than George Saintsbury. I like it, too, and so am I.
CYRIL RAY
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