From LIONEL FIELDEN
Some little while ago (April 1961) you were kind enough to print a notice of my book The Natural Bent by Harold Acton. It is certainly and by far the most spiteful effusion prompted by it. I am greatly puzzled by it. I know and admire Harold Acton: I think he is witty and intelligent and charming — but why all this malice? Is this really a literary review or a personal attack? Surely some line should be drawn between these two things.
Acton starts by saying, about my book, that ‘the accent is entirely on self’. Well, of course it is! An autobiography is, per se, about the autobiographer. That is the meaning of the word. Next, he says that ‘we learn little of India from his pages’. I disagree, and can produce many letters from Indians who emphatically disagree. I gather (from his preceding notice of John Morris’s book) that what Acton wants is funny figures in Anglo-Indian society. Well, I wasn’t looking for funny figures. I was interested in India in political transition and that is what I wrote about.
Next he tells me that ‘no artist could write’ such phrases as ‘she was made of gold all through’. Well — Browning wrote ‘is she not pure gold, my mistress?’ I could equally cap his other quotations, which are supposed, I gather, to show that I am not an artist.
But the oddest thing of all is that he flies into an illiterate rage about Berenson, whom both he and I knew well. I wrote: ‘The odd thing about BB was that he made culture pay.’ Acton goes up in smoke and writes: ‘This will not do, Mr Fielden, try again!’ But it will do. It happens to be true. Berenson was a fascinating character, because he maintained — successfully — the pose of the scholar, while at the same time making millions out of the dubious association with Duveen. It was part of his enormous charm that he was, and could be, both things. I don’t see what Acton is getting at: he knows it as well as I do.
I leave aside the fantastically silly remarks about adoring nymphs and their paeans of praise. Is it possible that Mr Acton is jealous?
Luckily, for me, I have been exceptionally fortunate in my reviewers. Some of them have criticized the book adversely, but always with a sense of fair play. Acton’s article seems to me to be undiluted spleen, and rather poor spleen at that.
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