Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

HIRED TO KILL by John Morris. (Hart-Davis and Cresset Press.)

THE NATURAL BENT by Lionel Fielden. (André Deutsch.)

This is a satisfactory period for the memoir-addict who prefers any book of personal recollections to the average novel. Two prominent virtuosi from the BBC, Mr John Morris and Mr Lionel Fielden, have recently added to this branch of literature and they form a provocative contrast.

     Evidently broadcasting breeds a new sort of frankness, perhaps as a reaction from dealing with the microphone; but between frankness and self-revelation there is still an abyss to be bridged. Thus far Mr Morris has only told half his story in a style so matter-of-fact as to conceal its unusual romance and, almost, the author’s sensibility. ‘From Croydon to Tibet’ it might be called. A soldier in spite of himself, he exerts a military discipline over his emotions to the point of self-disparagement. His references to homosexuality are refreshingly sane, and he accepts it without hypocrisy or mawkishness, snapping his fingers at puritan poltergeists. ‘We refuse to believe that he had no competence for his commission in the regiment of Gurkhas. It is obvious that his affection for his men was reciprocated, to the advantage of their esprit de corps. He took the trouble to study their language and familiarize himself with their customs. Reticent for all his frankness, he leaves one wondering: after bouts of introspective relaxation he invariably becomes rigid and poker-faced, returning to that military salute against which he is apt to protest. He tells us that he has only felt true contentment when surrounded by people of an alien culture, an experience which the present reviewer has shared. This is the stuff of poetry, but it is somehow stifled, perhaps through fear of rhetoric. Mr Morris lights shy of an innate lyricism. He is most communicative about his love of music and mountains, and the best passages in this stimulating book describe the desolate regions of Sikkim, Tibet and the Sinkiang frontier where he found himself alone with nature in the raw. Here and there a spice of rhetoric would not have come amiss, yet the plain business-like style conveys a moving sincerity.

     It is easy enough to poke fun at the absurdities of bygone Anglo-Indian society. ‘While Mr Morris’s acute boredom with the sahibs and memsahibs is comprehensible, we cannot resist a creeping admiration for their stubborn strength of character. Here Mr Morris, without indulging in opportunities for broad comedy, has overlooked a certain pathos, yet it floats from between his pages. Much more could have been made of Mrs Fizzer and the Lansdowne Ladies’ Rifle Club: ‘Mrs Fizzer was a great supporter of the club. She herself did not get down on the firing-point but was adept at seeing that each of her various protégées was instructed by the particular young officer she had marked down as a potential husband.’ This is a subject worthy of Mr Betjeman. But we cannot complain, as in the case of Mr Fielden, who intolerantly dismisses Anglo-Indian officials and their wives as ‘the most ignorant, insensitive, arrogant, and stupid conglomeration that the world has ever produced’, for Mr Morris has enriched our knowledge and appreciation of those Gurkhas who helped him to discover his true self. Whatever he may say, the spirit of mockery has not quenched a polite sense of obligation. He remains sober where others would take to drink. But he is rather perplexed and perplexing, as if he were soaring unsteadily towards Nirvana and pausing to peer back in his flight. Did he find it in the sanatorium of Montana, in Nippon, or in Broadcasting House? As in Dr Waley’s Monkey, you must wait for the next chapter.

     Mr Lionel Fielden also went to India, but in a very different capacity and frame of mind, as Director General of the new All-India Broadcasting Stations. ‘Apart from India hating me, I might hate India,’ he muses. Which sets the tone of what follows. The accent is entirely on self. He met Gandhi and Nehru and expressed sympathy with their aspirations: so far so good, but we learn very little of India from his pages. At best these are sprightly, but there is a gradual diminuendo towards sheer grumpiness. He can be entertaining about himself, whom he visualizes as ‘that uneasy misfit, the artist without talents’. ‘I had been born a painter, and a painter I remained and should remain,’ he declares, but where are the proofs? Is he not another exemplar of Henry James’s parable ‘The Madonna of the Future’? The craving for emotional expression must be accompanied by a formative impulse. The painter has to paint: he cannot help it; and sometimes he is an artist in words. No artist, for instance, could write: ‘I felt as if I had been transported on a magic carpet into an Arabian Nights Entertainment.’ Or: ‘She was just one of those people who are made of pure gold all the way
through.’ Or: ‘the incomparable St Basil’s Cathedral, straight out of a fairy-tale.’

     Mr Fielden was educated at Eton, but the BBC was his finishing school and he writes, or rather prattles, on and on, like some confidential commentator on the microphone: ‘I am astonished by the desire of many human beings to share a bed with another, even for one night, or, God save us, sometimes for a whole lifetime: to me the idea seems repulsive,’ etc. Many a nice clean hand may reach towards him in the darkness with a ‘Shake, old chap!’ — many an auntie nod assent with a twinkle in her kind, grey eyes. But one thinks of various painters — of Rubens who, as Guido Reni observed, mixed blood with his colours. After another fifty pages one also thinks of Van Gogh’s remark: ‘The symbol of St Luke, the patron saint of painters, is an ox. So one must be as patient as an ox if one wants to work in the field of art.’ For Mr Fielden has been impatient since birth, with himself as well as with others. The more we consider his talents as displayed in The Natural Bent — (a modest title derived from Kipling) — the more convinced we become that far from being a failure, Mr Fielden has enjoyed a fair modicum of merited success. He seems to have fitted perfectly into the original organization of the BBC — not only as an indomitable mover and shaker but as a spirited foil to Lord Reith, who wrote to him: ‘It is your kind of temperament which is required and essential for this work. It is your temperament which will in due course make a triumphant success.

     He was clearly at home with the officials he affects to scorn, for his unconventionality is thoroughly conventional. About broadcasting he makes many sensible if sententious pronouncements: somebody ought to compile them for a BBC calendar. One pictures him as the Constant Narcissus surrounded by nymphs of various ages with garlands of red tape. The nymphs adore him all the more because he is impervious to their charms, if not to their paeans of praise. Many a reviewer has joined them. About Florence, to which he typically retired, he is less amusing than about his life with father. Of Bernard Berenson he writes: ‘his quality still escapes words’. Unfortunately he adds: ‘The odd thing about BB was that he made culture pay.’ This will not do, Mr Fielden, try again! Let the ‘unsuccessful artist’ ponder Pierre Bonnard’s words: ‘I always work on paintings that miscarry. They pose exciting problems. It’s good to fail.’