In the first of two articles Andrew Varley looks at issues raised by Kingsley Amis' letters and by his son, Martin's, autobiography.
Kingsley Amis' letters make painful reading (1). In one of the many he wrote to Philip Larkin (2) he remarks that posterity is in for a treat when their correspondence is published. Well, now we have the opportunity of judging how much of a treat Amis' contributions are. Sometimes his letters are scatalogical, affected, posturing, and plain silly; sometimes they are brilliant, witty, and full of insight.
The opinionated abuse he pours on other writers, usually far superior to himself, is sometimes amusing and, in its scattergun way, effective but it is half-serious and sits uncomfortably alongside his assumption of the rôle of analyst of what is and what is not good writing. If his books - with the exception of Lucky Jim, his first and best - were not enough evidence, then Amis' letters would confirm anyone in the prejudice that reading and teaching Eng Lit as an academic subject is the worst possible training for a novelist. Much the same could be said for Experience (3) the autobiography of his son, Martin. The one advantage, however, is that the background tends to cocoon the writer in a precious literary world where mutual advertisement is the rule. It is, of course, fatal to instinctive talent.
Kingsley Amis' second wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard (4), a better but underestimated novelist (and an instinctive writer, according to her stepson), left him because of his drinking. Boozing is a leitmotif of his work and his life - "Alcohol infuses and even saturates his fiction", says his son. His attitudes and habits reflect his dependence on alcohol. Like many severe boozers, he could be entertaining company and, when younger, was attractive and capable of dazzling. Again, throughout his life he found people who were willing to look after him and indulge his unreasonable behaviour. Whilst Miss Howard, understandably, gave up - and was rewarded with prolonged and vengeful abuse - his first wife, Hilly, took him on again. She and her husband, Lord Kilmarnock, provided a home and all the practical care he needed. In return he paid the household bills. People who behave outrageously, or at least go through life entirely on their own terms, often get away with it because no one around them objects, becoming what therapists might call "enablers". It is a useful tactic for the utterly selfish. As a grown man, it is possible to throw childish tantrums, to adopt habits which inconvenience everyone around, to insult, denigrate, and cavil with impunity. Perhaps these men - women, it appears to me, are more subtle - imagine that they are terrific characters. No doubt many, because they have been surrounded by acquiescence, fool themselves into thinking that they are merely receiving their proper tribute. Artists have been especially prone to this view of life and, of course, it is a commonly observed characteristic of alcoholics.
Evelyn Waugh, the greatest English stylist of the twentieth century, loathed English Department literature - he called it the "Cambridge School" - which, for him, was typified by Amis. Amis, in his turn, whilst recognising the other man's genius, mocked his social pre-occupations and his chosen style of life. Waugh, of course, had adopted a combative persona - as someone said, part irascible colonel, part crusty don - with which to confront the world. There is a ben trovato story that Waugh left a party in horror, unable to bear the presence of Dylan Thomas (5), who was by that time an alcoholic wreck. When Cyril Connolly, the host, later asked him what had been the matter, Waugh said that Thomas reminded him what he would have been like himself had he not become a Catholic. Waugh, of course, also drank a great deal and the hallucinations - "When I was off my rocker" - described in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold were in part the result of washing down narcotic sleeping draughts with crËme de menthe after a day's intake of gin and wine which would have poleaxed a lesser man.
There is a photograph, taken, I should think, in the mid-fifties, of Amis doing "his Evelyn Waugh face". By the end of his life this had become his own. Just as Waugh rejoiced in White's Club, so Amis loved the Garrick. It is a modern convention to regard the gentleman's club as a practical expression of mysogyny or, at least, an attempt to perpetuate the all-male camaraderie of public school and officers' mess. The same sort of thing might be said for Northern working mens' clubs (though not, of course, for that champion of women's rights, the MCC). Both authors were elected to their favourite clubs in middle age, Waugh in his early forties, Amis in 1973 when he was fifty-one. Waugh used White's to let off steam.
Coming up to London from the West Country, he launched into a round of lunches and dinners with cronies punctuated by long sessions at the club bar. Helping him prop it up were examples of what he most admired, self-confident noblemen who had proved their courage in war. It was, and I dare say, even today, is, a hard drinking school. The porter handles telephone calls from wives with a tactful deflection or a straight lie: "His Lordship is not in the Club, my lady." Waugh records, in a letter to Nancy Mitford, his puzzlement at a random, expensive, and forgotten series of purchases made during a particularly vinous day. After such visits he would routinely send flowers to his hostesses on the assumption he had behaved badly. But Waugh did not escape to White's in order to be able to drink. He felt no particular restrictions at home, other than the constraints of marital consideration, good manners, and want of convivial company. London was the place for getting drunk to the point of oblivion. Waugh's club represented an escape from boredom and the painful vulgarities of twentieth century life. Drink is a frequent tool in dealing with ennui but it is a very short-term solution.
Martin Amis tells us that his father never lost his excitement at the prospect of a treat and attributes this to a lonely childhood. Possibly so, but there is a variety of drunk who approaches every opportunity for a booze-up with the enthusiasm of a young man setting out on a promising date. This may have something to do with an enduring belief in the wonder-working powers of alcohol. Many addicts claim to remember their first drink as a kind of Damascus road experience and never forget the feeling of elation and self-confidence. Amis entered the Garrick with an enthusiam and anticipation which can have been matched by few of the clubs members throughout its history: "Off to the Garrick," he writes to Larkin in 1984, "for my Christmas drunk there. If nothing else kept me in London that place would. Somewhere to get pissed in jovial not very literary bright all-male company." On the other hand, to Robert Conquest earlier in the same year: "Garrick shut for another 6 days but as you know I can drink anywhere." Well, obviously. Waugh similarly laments the annual closure of his club - just as Bertie Wooster does of the Drones (6).
As he grew older, Amis' political views moved to the Right. He had been a communist whist at Oxford and later a supporter of the Labour Party. Eventually he became a vociferous supporter of American policy in Vietnam and an admirer of Lady Thatcher. He developed an inarticulate loathing of Nelson Mandela. It is not always clear with Amis' opinions whether conviction or a desire to tease came first. Waugh, on the other hand, was a genuine reactionary whose political views were the reflection of a coherent world view. That they infuriated liberals was simply an incidental pleasure. It has been observed before that, with age, Amis became more like Waugh, at least superficially. What rôle did booze play in this? How far was it part of the act and how far was it a cause of the act?
Waugh would have recoiled at any suggestion of points of similarity between him and Amis but there were many. They both maintained a voluminous correspondence with a circle of friends. Waugh's was more glamorous and part of the interest of his letters is the light they throw on their recipients by the nature of the subjects discussed and the tone in which they are expressed. This interest is largely absent from Amis' letters. Waugh used his correspondence and his diaries to record "convertible literary stuff". There is less evidence of this in Amis', although the plays on language, phonetic representations of peculiarities of speech (7)and grammatical preferences are all there.
Drink plays an important part in the fiction of both Waugh and Amis. Lucky Jim contains what must be the funniest and most painful description of waking up with a hangover - Martin calls his father "the laureate of the hangover". The Old Devils is a geriatric booze-up from beginning to end. Its other strengths apart, it is a bleak portrayal of life when it appears that there is nothing else left to do - "All those hours with nothing to stay sober for". There are two pictures of alcoholic decline in Waugh: Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited and Apthorpe in Officers and Gentlemen. Although Apthorpe is one of the great comic figures of English literature, his final days and death are movingly told8. His earlier episodes of drunkenness are thrown into relief and the tragedy of his condition left to the inference of the reader. A possible conclusion to Sebastian's alcoholic journey is sketched out in Brideshead by his sister Cordelia. She sees him ending his days as one of those hangers-on who seem to be loosely attached to every monastery, performing menial tasks, disappearing on occasional benders, treated indulgently by the monks, almost a Fool of God. This is not, however, meant to be seen as a disastrous end to a promising life, but as a solution to the problem. Evelyn Waugh was well acquainted with the anarchy of drink. He knew it from his own youth and it is used in the early novels as an image of the state of man in the modern world.
The champagne-fuelled wager between Adam and the drunken major in Vile Bodies, the 'phone calls made by Tony Last to the adulterous Brenda after a night's heavy drinking in A Handful of Dust, even Mr Prendergast's shooting of Lord Tangent after an unaccustomed visit to the pub in Decline and Fall, are designed to illustrate our helplessness at the hands of a malign fate.
1. The letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader, Harper Collins
2. Philip Larkin (1922-1985), the eminent poet and Librarian of Hull University, met Amis at St John's, Oxford and they became lifelong friends.
3. Experience, Martin Amis, Jonathan Cape
4. Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-). They were married from 1965 to 1983. Her novels include The Beautiful Visit (1950), After Julius (1965), and Odd Girl Out (1971).
5. Despite thinking that the Welsh poet wrote "miserable incoherent rubbish" (Letter to John Davenport, p.449), Amis was one of Thomas' literary trustees.
6. The Drones was probably more like White's than The Garrick, though the membership was younger (if equally Etonian).
7. In one of the novels a Texan says, "Arcane standard, Hannah More. Armageddon pier staff."
8. Apthorpe dies after Guy Crouchback smuggles a bottle of Scotch into his hospital ward.