Death in the Family

By AUBERON WAUGH THERE was a time when obituary notices used to list the dead person's achievements and express polite regret at his death. In the case of notorious war criminals, voluptuaries or enemies of society perhaps a hint of disapproval would be allowed, coupled with charitable assumptions of repentance. No doubt there was something hypocritical in the convention—and hypocrisy, of course, to our literary jackals is what coward- ice would be to a lion—but it sprang from the belief that few people are totally contemptible and that death is not an opportune moment to remind wife, family and friends of whatever shortcomings existed or were imagined to exist.

The new fashion is to attempt a portrait 'in the round.' Nobody can reasonably object to that if the writer has any idea of his subject. The Sun- day Times printed an eloquent and moving tribute to my father by his close friend Chris- topher Sykes. The Times obituary was the work of another old friend, Christopher Hollis. Douglas Woodruff wrote a longish piece in The Tablet. All the others, whether laudatory or primly dis- approving, had in common that they were written by people whose acquaintance with my father, if any, was of the very slightest. Roundness was achieved either by dredging up unfavourable book reviews or by raising fatuously uninformed judgments on his private life and attitudes.

Time magazine announced : in the last ten years of his life he was a flabby old Blimp with brandy jowls and a menacing pewter complexion

. . he lived in an eighteenth-century country house 140 miles from London where he played the country squire with a conservatism that soon became simply amniotic [?] . . . And then last week on Easter Sunday. home from a Mass sung (to his crusty satisfaction) in Latin, he climbed the stairs to his study and died of a heart attack.'

If the purpose of this advanced style is to in- form the public, they have been cheated. My father did not die of a heart attack, nor did he die in his study which is on the ground floor. The Mass he attended was not sung. He never at any stage played the country squire, having no in- terest in local affairs or rustic pastimes, and prob- ably never spoke to more than half a dozen people in the neighbourhood. It is true that he lived in the country, as do many writers—Colin Wilson springs to mind—and in a large house because he had a wife and six children to accom- modate. Those who saw him in the last ten years will know that they were probably the most mellow and tranquil of his life—certainly much more so than the preceding ten. In the final years he worried about some work he had undertaken and was distressed by the extraordinary simple- mindedness of Catholic bishops, but to me he was never so benign or so gentle.

Like the sneer that he acted the part of a coun- try squire. the charge of Blimpishness is familiar. It is true that he thought socialism nasty, stupid and wrong. Many of his friends were socialists, and for the most part they respected each others' views. But there is a recognisable need among less intelligent socialists to fit their adversaries into a mould—the crafty capitalist, the obsequious peasant, the half-mad racialist or the Colonel Blimp. They cannot believe that anybody who does not share their prejudices and muddled reasoning is either intelligent or humane. By one remove, any book which does not explicitly state Oat its author accepts Clause 4 of the Labour party constitution cannot be a good book—it lacks compassion; it has withdrawn from the twentieth century. Well, we shall see which survives—my father's writing or the memory of these smart young men on television who have got compas- sion and who are part of the twentieth century.

The Daily Telegraph printed a full and generous tribute by David Holloway (so did the Express, by Robert Pitman, and the Mail by A. E. W. Parsons) beside an obituary of such niggling ineptitude that it is difficult to believe it was the work of human hand. Describing him as 'a prolific writer of high literary merit,' it added: 'As his other books appeared it became obvious that Mr Waugh adored blue blood and affected to despise the common man. Yet he sprang from the modest middle class of whom he wrote so scornfully, being born in Golders Green in 1903, son of a publisher.'

What paradox! What insight! Since there was nothing affected about his dislike of the com- mon man—a sociologist's way of conjuring every mediocrity the flesh is heir to—and since he never wrote in terms of anything except the greatest affection about the kind of intelligent, educated professional background from which he came, the purpose of this can scarcely be instructive. It is to suggest that he was a snob and a social climber who turned his back on his own kind.

This is the theme song taken up by Alan Brien —who, compassionately, found it in his heart to forgive him—and Malcolm Muggeridge, who compassionately saw my father's entire inner life as a tortured class struggle.

It is true that he conceived a romantic attach- ment to the aristocratic ideal, and nurtured it when he discovered how much it annoyed people. His politics, in fact, were far closer to the Man- chester School anarchists than to the Conserva- tive right wing, but he took no interest in the subject, and I never once heard him discuss politics seriously. He despised all English poli- ticians since 1832, most particularly the Conser- vatives, just as he despised television personali- ties, but it was his unfashionable interest in pedigree which the jackals really seized on. In his life, it played a much smaller part than his in- terest in nineteenth-century chromo-lithography, his collection of Victorian narrative pictures, stone eggs, carved animals, his interest in wine, the peacocks on which he lavished so much affec- tion. If interest in architecture were to become unfashionable, the jackals could show that his books are obsessed by the subject.

The charge of snobbery is easy to explain. My

father's life was largely spent in the avoidance of boredom and of people who were likely to bore him. He occupied the social position which his talents commanded, and although he punc- tiliously answered all letters except those from obvious lunatics or Americans, he saw no reason why his time should be spent in the company of those he had not chosen. Many people who pushed themselves on him were rebuffed. Under- standably reluctant to accept that they were bores, they attributed his avoidance of them to some genetic inadequacy on their part for which they could not be held responsible and which might even win a little sympathy. When Mr Muggeridge noticed that my father had stopped listening to his speech at a Foyles lunch, he natur- ally assumed that it was out of dissatisfaction with his lineage. It did not occur to him that he was making a boring speech. Equally, when n father was eventually driven mad by the jackals snarling and whining around his ankles, Mr Muggeridge sees this madness as the moment of truth. It was certainly Mr Muggeridge's moment of triumph. All the malicious sneers which the Muggeridges and Briens had been directing at him in his lifetime came home to roost until, by an iron effort of the will, he sent them back to Fleet Street and the obituary columns.

Another triumph for the jackals was that my father died unhonoured by the country to whose literature he had contributed so much. Once, the Prime Minister of the time—an infinitely depress- ing publisher some years his senior—wrote offer- ing him the CBE --or perhaps it was the BSc— and he wrote back proudly that he would wait until he had earned his spurs. Often he would pat his corporation with its heavy gold watch- chain and say to my mother, like Alderman Foodbottom : 'You will be Lady Waugh before I die.' This was not. Mr Muggeridge, evidence of class conflict. It was a JOKE. Although one may doubt whether anything coming from the present troupe of clowns would have caused him much pleasure, he certainly would have liked recogni- tion, and it was a modest enough ambition.

The main point about my fath-- which might be of interest to people who never tnet him, is not that he was interested in pedigree—it was the tiniest part of his interests. It is not that he was a conservative—politics bored him and his in- terest was confined to resentment at seeing his earnings redistributed among people who were judged more worthy to spend them than he. It is not that he was tortured by class aspirations—he was not. It is not that he had a warm and compas- sionate heart—warm and compassionate hearts are two a penny. No doubt Kenneth Allsop has one, too. It is not even that he was a Catholic-- there are 550 million of them and a fair number must be Catholics by conviction. It is simply that he was the funniest man of his generation. He scarcely opened his mouth but to say something extremely funny. His house and life revolved around jokes. It was his wit—coupled, of course. with supreme accuracy of expression, kindness. loyalty, bravery and intelligence—which en- deared him to everybody who knew him or read his books.

Wit is something mdennable and absolute. Can one ever hope to explain this to the mean and humourless prairie dogs who prowl around in our literary desert? Is it even worth the effort?

But the new-style obituary notice is with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. Alan Brien, I fear. will scarcely merit more than a two-line mention, unless he dies in particularly dramatic circum- stances. As he observed, he has little to lose. I think I can leave-it to the news desks to concoct some variation on the from-rags-to-a-terrace- house-near-Tufnell-Park theme should he choose to immolate himself in Trafalgar Square.

But Mr Muggeridge is another kettle of fish. I am twenty-six, and have a reasonable chance of surviving him. Reading through his contribution in the Observer, I see that he claims to have met my father first at a picnic party given by the Duff Coopers in North Africa during the war. I won- dered rather about that, since I seem to remem- ber being present at the first meeting between Mr Muggeridge and Lady Diana Cooper—at Portofino in 1955. A small point, of interest only to those like myself who are obsessed by class attitudes. But my pencil will be out, my throbbing compassionate heart in my hand, when the un- happy event occurs: 'I was surprised to feel so distressed when I heard that. Malcolm Muggeridge had died sud- denly at the age of 150. After all, we had scarcely met, and I found most of his newspaper articles and television appearances silly, illiterate and mean. But for all his spite, his insecurity and his fake patrician accent, he was basically a sad man, and that, to me, was infinitely appealing.

'I remember the first time we met, with Lady Diana Cooper, in Portofino. There was an ex- tremely unpleasant smell around that day and Lady Diana led each member of the company aside (except, to her eternal credit, Mrs Muggeridge) to denounce Mr Muggeridge as the origin of it. In fact, it turned out to be some olives which had putrefied, and this seems to me typical of the unjust accusations levelled against a' man who, for all his postures, was capable of great brilliance and originility.-..