NICE OR NASTY?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 943, 6 September 1957, Page 16

NICE OR NASTY?

STARS AND MARKETS, by Sir Charles Tennyson; Chatto and Windus, English price 21/-. OLD FRIENDS, by Clive Beil; Chatto and Windus, English price 21/-. HEN we read a volume of reminiscences by someone still alive about people still alive or recently dead, what do we expect? Or rather, what do we enjoy? Long lists of "I met so-and-so" and "What my grandfather said," and "Committees I have served on," or wit and grace and skill even if they are sometimes exhibited at the expense of other people and perhaps even at the expense of the literal truth? If you like the first, there is Sir Charles Tennyson. He tells of his boyhood, his visits. to his grandfather (who was the Tennyson), his education in the fabulous days at King’s College, Cambridge; then the jobs-Government service, big business, high-level conferences and decisions. Sir Charles obviously played a great part in affairs. But he never seems to fell you anything. Even when he moved to his biggest job, he just says he "took a position" with the Dunlop Rubber Comipany. He emerges as an able and a kind man. I'd like to know him. But not as a writer. Clive Bell, on the other hand, probably would terrify me if I met him. He is obviously snobbish, culture-conscious. He’d make me feel like an outsider, (continued on next page) 3

while Sir Charles would be gracious and even helpful. But Bell can write. His sketches of the Bloomsbury group (which he denies the existence of) are witty, probably unfair, sometimes wicked and a joy to read. Here he is on Virginia Woolf. What could be more devastating, more unfair! But it’s probably nearer the truth than many of the "facts" about her:"Virginia, like the merest man, was not always guided by reason. I said ‘the merest. man’ because Virginia was, in her peculiar way, an ardent feminist ... she resented the way in which men, as she thought, patronised women, especially women who were attempting to create works of art or succeed in what were once considered manly professions. Assuredly Virginia did not wish to be a man, or to be treated like a man: she wished to be treated as an equal-just possibly as a superior." And more like that. Very enjoyable.

I.A.

G.