psmv5: Fossett's memory

This being notice of the book at reference 1, a recent pick-me-up from the Raynes Park Platform Library. One of two spin-offs from the book by the same author at reference 2 below, snapped above. A small hardback book of some 250 pages, produced according to the war economy standard (cheap paper and that sort of thing) and originally bought from Foyles, whose distinctive green sticker is still to be found inside the front cover. Last sold second-hand for 2p. Previously noticed in a peripheral way at references 6 and 7.

At first, I thought this was going to be a book of reasonably gentle humour and social comment, a chunk of fictional autobiography by one Peter Hartington-Smith, brother in-law of the now dead Fosset of the commercially successful reference 2. A strong whiff of Wodehouse (of Jeeves & Wooster) and a faint whiff of Stella Gibbons (of Cold Comfort Farm).

Hartington-Smith’s father was a self-made man from Scotland, mother from Kentucky. Eton and Oxford followed by a stint as a car salesman in Wolverhampton. Married above his station. All of which left him both at home and not quite at home everywhere, above or below stairs as it were. A man with a good education and with a taste for quoting both from the Latin and western literature more generally. A fictional memoir of a second world war spent mostly in London by someone who was too old to fight. Scenes from the offices of Whitehall, the clubs around and from the west country where his sister has taken up farming to make ends meet after the death of her country-squire husband (the gentleman/Fossett of reference 2) in the Dunkirk campaign. Hartington-Smith loses his wife to an air raid early on, with these two deaths prompting much reflection on the meaning of life and death.

Which opens the door to great slabs of what I might call philosophising stuck into the narrative. Why it was a bad thing when politicians were full-time career men who needed to make a living out of it and did not do anything much else. A bad thing for people to make their living out of selling things, an occupation which was bound to corrupt. The meaning of life and death and from there to debating the existence of God, something in the way of C. S. Lewis’s ‘Screwtape Letters’. Some advantages of the Catholic faith. The place of Purgatory on the way to heaven. And a lot on the virtues of the country life, close to the land and far from the greed & arrogance of the towns.

Was there a taste for this sort of thing in the middle of the second war? People on the home front who were both close enough to death and with time to read – and who wanted a bit more than holiday romances and light relief? On the other hand, the novels of the roughly contemporary Aldous Huxley also include slabs of preaching and lots of literary frills. And my father, also of that generation, while he probably would have been impatient of all the literary frills, certainly had a taste for this sort of argument and subject. A product of the arrival of mass education?

Turning to Hollis, I found reference 4 a useful supplement to reference 3. Teacher, author and politician; the son of a suffragan bishop, he went to Eton and Oxford, knew lots of literary types of his day and converted to Catholicism as a young man. During the second world war, by the day the niche publisher Burns & Oates (curiously, not the publisher of the present book), by night an RAF intelligence officer in Whitehall. After the war he became a Conservative MP for 10 years. Brother to the one-time director general of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis – the chap who got caught up in the spy scandals of the 1960s, but who was eventually exonerated. The age of James Bond, Harry Palmer and George Smiley. So our Hollis is not so very far from the fictional Hartington-Smith, authorial denials notwithstanding.

From reference 5, it can be seen that I have had the book for around two months now and reading it has been a bit of an on-off affair. At one point, having been close to giving it up, I returned to dip a bit. And then to read it properly, at least most of it, and it was much better second time around, finally getting to the end a day or so ago.

And there were a lot of quotes and literary allusions, with most of which I needed help and for some of which I bothered to get it. That is to say, to look it up on the Internet. All this was the subject of references 6 and 7.

Notes

Some notes on some of these philosophical and other matters follow.

Much of the book might be read as something of an essay on being young, say between 15 and 20 – and from the middle classes, the sort of young man who went to school to a place like Eton. Not sure what a worker of the time of writing would have made of it all.

A sense that the author had little confidence in the peace that would follow the war, his view perhaps shaped by the mess we had made of the peace after the first one. With one result being that he thought the most important thing for a soldier was to do his duty and to behave well. Dying was not particularly important in itself, but dying badly was. And behaving decently generally was too, where decent included having a decent self-image to aim for, while allowing for various lapses. The Christian church was said to be good at fostering this sort of thing – and at least better than most others. And, on the whole, less self-serving.

The dirty ways politicians and politics. A need for more decent people in politics, people who had a life and did not need to make a living at politics. A need to hold the decent middle ground between the left/communists and the right/fascists. A middle ground where you could be friends with someone with whom you disagreed and where disagreements were not used for fire up unsavoury slanging matches in the media or anywhere else.

In which connection, a suggestion that Hollis did not care for the left’s noisy protests about the release of Moseley in 1943. Whom a quick look suggests was a rich and gifted man – a very effective public speaker – backing some good causes – but who somehow went very wrong – dying peacefully in France in his eighties.

The importance of children. Parents dealing with the death of their children. The importance of older people staying in touch with younger people. ‘Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem’ (Virgil).

The proper balance between liberty and slavery – the idea being that we all need some of both, perhaps oscillating between them a bit. Hitler and Stalin representing societies which maximise the slavery. The Greeks and Romans being a valiant attempt at balance (putting aside for a moment the actual slavery in both places, particularly the latter). The Christian church being another – on this account – more successful attempt.

In which connection, there was also more than a touch of anarchism. Disobeying the rules to prove we are not under Hitler’s – or anyone else’s – thumb.

I associated from a discussion about the word of the Lord in the Bible to the troubles they have in the US with their constitution. Not a good plan to put too much weight on ancient texts. There was also a suggestion that it was best not to poke rules too hard, to take them too seriously or too literally. Just try and stick to them in a rough and ready sort of way.

At one point we moved from Wodehouse to Waugh. With the result that one did not know which side Hollis was batting on. I think he was a serious person, not just taking a pop at anything in sight, but I would have preferred a clearer view of where he stood.

At the end we had a couple of quotes which I did look up. ‘O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem’ (Virgil) and ‘But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand / In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour’ (Dryden). In both cases, I thought that knowing these texts was important and that including them in the way that they were worked – the conclusions of reference 6 notwithstanding. A civilised way of making a point without labouring it, without banging on about it. Leaving the other party some space in which to make up his own mind.

Trivia

Hints about goings on in air-raid shelters. Not the first time I have come across such hints, and now I come to think of it, I imagine lots of it went on.

At one point we are told of a fine lunch at a pub in Victoria. So not altogether true that pub grub is a recent invention.

The importance of Dante and his work. A small role for William Langland and his plowman - one result of which being that I am now the possessor of a photographic copy of a translation by the Rev. Professor Skeat into modern English, published in 1905. This copy made from a copy once in the possession of Erindale College Library (of Australia). Maybe I will look at it one day.

The virtues of village cricket and of public schools.

Quite a lot of pops at the ways of civil servants in their offices and dons in their cloisters.

Quite a lot of pops at the ways of the rich. Both of the earned and unearned variety.

Conclusions

Having something of a taste for this life and death stuff myself, particularly when I was young and not gone now, I found many of the philosophical slabs interesting. Even if one felt that the author was grasping for an idealised, rose-tinted middle ground which does not exist. And to the extent that it does, not a good foundation for managing the complexities of the world as we know it now.

A book which irritated and caught my interest by turns. But coming around to a strong ending about the proper way to behave in the world. Which includes trying to maintain a bit of humility, trying to avoid envy and greed and knowing how to stay in one’s place, to stick with what one knew.

Another interesting find – which shall have its place on our bookshelves, at least for a while.

PS: I have learned that ACT is strine for District of Columbia, aka Australian Capital Territory.

References

Reference 1: Fosset’s memory – Christopher Hollis – 1944.

Reference 2: Death of a gentleman – Christopher Hollis – 1943. Browsing copy available at https://archive.org/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hollis_(politician).

Reference 4: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hollis-maurice-christopher.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/songs.html. Provenance.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/classical-and-literary-allusions.html. With Gemini.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/dryden.html. With Copilot.