Classic
Amis
by Barry Baldwin
One
of the twentieth-century's
great literary
friendships was
that between novelist-poet
Kingsley Amis
and poet-novelist
Philip Larkin,
best evidenced
for present purposes
in the former's
Memoirs (London:
Hutchinson, 1991,
51-64) and Letters
(ed. Zachary Leader,
London: 2000).
Larkin's side
comes out in his
Selected Letters
(ed. Anthony Thwaite,
London: Faber
& Faber, 1992),
and the biographies
by Andrew Motion
(London: Faber
& Faber, 1993)
and Richard Bradford
(London: Peter
Owen, 2005).
While agreeing
on most things
(jazz, literature,
the virtues of
Margaret Thatcher),
they were poles
apart on the values
of a classical
education and
its place in their
own writings.
Larkin frequently
derided this,
for example in
the preface to
his Oxford Book
of Twentieth-Century
English Verse
(1973) and Required
Writing: Miscellaneous
Pieces 1955-1982
(London: Faber
& Faber, 1983):
"I have no
belief in a common
myth-kitty. To
me the whole of
the ancient world,
the whole of classical
tradition and
biblical mythology,
means very little,
and I think that
using them today
not only fills
poems full of
dead spots but
dodges the poet's
duty to be original."
Larkin was duly
taken to task
over this in Jasper
Griffin's 1984
T.S.Eliot Memorial
Lectures (The
Mirror of Myth,
London: Faber
& Faber, 1985),
albeit with the
admission that
Eliot himself
had been criticised
by classicist-poet
Peter Levi for
"going somewhat
overboard"
on the Graeco-Roman
references.
Perhaps out of
friendship and
tact, the epistolary
Amis occasionally
goes along, for
instance sending
to Larkin the
draft of a poem
that includes
a mocking mention
of the Parthenon
with accompanying
ridicule of the
Graeco-Roman "bum"
in Joyce's Ulysses,
and dismissing
W.R.Rodgers' poem
Europa and the
Bull (1952) as
"cordon-bleu
shite, vertiginous
piss."
"Serio-comedy
is the formula",
wrote Amis to
Hilary Rubinstein,
his Lucky Jim
editor. In I Want
It Now London:
Cape, 1968), a
novel partly set
in Greece, protagonist
Ronnie Appleyard,
gazing at an ancient
temple, asks his
girl friend whose
it is:
"Oh,
who cares? All
over and done
with, isn't it?"
The new pissiness,
he thought. An
older pissiness
would have tried
to make him feel
inferior for not
knowing about
Homer and Venus
and Plato and
Euclid. Well,
times changed.
You could say
that for them.
Later on, in the
American South,
Ronnie arrives
at her mother's
mansion featuring
"a portico
two storeys high,
incorporating
pillars Grecian
in inspiration
(God, thought
Ronnie, not again,
not here),"
a reaction soon
reinforced by
his hostess' neo-classical
architectural
pride: "I
think you'll be
impressed. We
have some very
gracious buildings
in our city. Our
court-house is
based on a reconstruction
of the temple
of the goddess
Diana at Ephesus,
Greece."
"Isn't
that interesting?"
said Ronnie hoarsely.
Was he never,
not for so long
as an evening,
to get away from
the glory that
had been Greece?
There's a distinction
between the genuine
and the ersatz.
Amis had just
been to Greece
and sent this
report to a friend:
"We found
ourselves near
Delphi and so
had to go there.
Really massively,
authentically
unimpressive.
With the exception
of a small treasure-house
that had clearly
fallen over at
one stage, had
been cannibalised
for its marble
and then put up
again with a good
deal of early
20th century material
incorporated,
the whole thing
is a heap of rubble.
Oh, there was
a theatre, but
not of the right
period apparently.
And a sort of
holy stream which
a lot of people
ceremonially drank
from - not I,
deeming the content
of goat-turds,
peasants' piss,
etc to be too
high for comfort."
The American section
of the novel draws
heavily on Amis'
four-month lecturing
stint the previous
year (1967) at
Vanderbilt University
(some of it is
reproduced verbatim
in his Memoirs),
most relevantly
the (in)famous
Nashville re-creation
of the Parthenon,
curtly dismissed:
"Unlike the
one in Athens,
Greece, it has
a roof on it."
Lucky Jim Dixon's
one remembered
classical attribute
is his Sex Life
in Ancient Rome
face; cf. a note
(1946) to Larkin:
"Remind me
to do a Caesar
and Cleopatra
for you."
I once saw Amis
do this on television;
it mimics a Satyr's
lecherous grin
with mind-boggling
accuracy. Though
he claims not
to have seen it
(admission price
too steep, a reason
the penny-pinching
Larkin would appreciate),
one possible inspiration
may lurk in a
letter (1953)
apropos the Swansea
premiere of the
movie Quo Vadis?
: "These
Roman pornographic
things are never
any good for my
money."
Though stumped
over some pictures
depicting "scenes
from a remoter
past -Spartan?
Macedonian? Roman?"
- Dixon can recall
"some Greek
or Latin tag about
God not being
able to abolish
historical fact."
It is equally
in character for
him to apply this
to "the historical
fact of his drinking
out of Christine's
coffee-cup"
and not to identify
the precise source:
Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics 6.2.1139b,
attributes it
to the playwright
and prose-writer
Agathon (c. 446-401
BC).
This is not the
only time the
gorgeous Christine
evokes classical
stirrings in Dixon:
"He'd read
somewhere, or
been told, that
somebody like
Aristotle or I.A.Richards
had said that
the sight of beauty
makes us want
to move towards
it. Aristotle
or I.A.Richards
had been wrong
about that, hadn't
he?" - not
to mention the
likes of Plato,
Symposium 207b.
What a shame that
Amis (letter to
Larkin, 1951)
doesn't pass on
C.S. Lewis' explanation
why "pornographic
bookshops always
have Aristotle
in the window."
His many large
and small classical-erotic
connections provide
a significant
gloss to Zachary
Leader's essay
(Times Literary
Supplement, August
29, 2003) on how
Amis' characters
"got the
sex thing licked."
Three novels (four,
counting Difficulties
with Girls, London:
Hutchinson, 1988)
feature libidinous
classicists: Take
a Girl Like You
(London: Gollancz,
1960), Jake's
Thing (London:
Hutchinson, 1978),
You Can't Do Both
(London: Hutchinson,
1994). In the
last one, Robin
Davies, to suppress
a public erection,
"Had to think
about Gilbert
Murray's translation
of the Medea for
several minutes."
Roger Micheldene,
his One Fat Englishman
(London: Gollancz,
1963), drawing
on Amis' Princeton
period (1958-1959),
"falls back
on Greek and Latin,"
reciting this
medley of Virgil
and grammatical
paradigms to defer
ejaculation:
Conticuere omnes,
intentique ora
tenebant. Inde
toro pater Aeneas
sic fatus ab alto:
"Infandum,
regina, iubes
renovare dolorem;
sed...Hell: colle
sub aprico celeberrimus
ilice lucus...Oh
God - hic haec
hoc hic haec hoc
yes yes now hunc
hanc hunc three
huiuses three
huics hoc hac
hoc ...Get on
with it - hi hae
haec then straight
on to the Greek
irregulars esthio
and good old blosko-molumai...
Eric Jacobs' biography
of Amis (London:
Hodder & Stoughton,
1995) reproduces
a holiday snapshot
in which his soon-to-be-estranged
wife Hilly has
lipsticked on
Kingsley's back
"1 Fat Englishman.
I fuck anything."
Another Micheldene
source is this
exchange in Amis'
piece (London
Observer, January
3, 1960) on Englishmen
abroad:
"And what
do you happen
to be working
on?"
"Sir,
the Aeneid of
Virgil."
"Really?
Tell me, what
state do you come
from?"
"I'm
a Texan, sir."
"Really?
Ha, ha, I must
say I find the
notion of an Easterner
working on Virgil
interesting; a
West-Coaster would
be amusing, but
a TEXAN - it's
simply GROTESQUE."
Not only Americans
will sympathise
with the local
who tells Micheldene,
"Dura lex
sed lex, old man,
which is Iroquois
for Why don't
you go back to
your island and
stay there. Good
night." Amis
would later recycle
this in a 1975
letter: "Satis
sufficit, old
man, which is
Iroquois for that's
as much as I'm
going to tell
you."
At Peterhouse
College (1961-1963),
where Amis was
chiefly notable
for F.R.Leavis'
absurd characterisation
of him as a "pornographer",
the only Cantabrigian
classicist memorialised
by him is A.G.
(Guy) Lee, Fellow
of St. John's,
who asked him
for the worksheet
and manuscript
of his poem Waking
Beauty. But, over
at Gonville &
Caius was the
formidable Latinist
(officially, Lecturer
in Tibetan) David
Roy Shackleton
Bailey, to whom
his ex-wife Hilly
was married in
1967. In keeping
with his policy
of reticence over
private matters,
Amis omits Bailey
from his Memoirs,
nor is he mentioned
in a brief congratulatory
note to Hilly
on her engagement.
However, in another
note (unindexed
by Leader), he
writes "Fine
to see you and
old Shack, who
I thought was
a very good bloke."
I doubt this good
opinion persisted:
Bailey was notoriously
too miserly to
stand anyone a
drink, just about
the ultimate crime
in Amis' eyes.
Moreover, Amis
had recently satirised
in Take a Girl
Like You Bailey's
kind of textual
scholarship where
Patrick Standish,
waiting to seduce
Jenny Bunn, stumbles
upon this long-abandoned
textual note,
a scene that may
have influenced
the cognate one
in John Wain's
Strike the Father
Dead (1962):
What the hell
was this? He unfolded
the battered sheets
with foreboding
and read: More
recent editors,
but first advanced
by Otto, that
we have here a
short lacuna.
Although Otto's
views are always
worthy of respect,
on this occasion
he appears to
have reached out
too eagerly for
the traditional
versus nonnullos
excidisse credo
lifebelt. Further,
he was not aware,
as we are, that
MS G is not derived
from M via A,
but descends from
the authoritative
P. Retention of
the G and A reading
admittedly involves
us in a form of
anacoluthon to
which elegiac
verse affords
no exact parallel.
However, we read
at Metamorphoses
oh christ why
has Thackeray
still got my copy
cant he get one
of his own why
cant he learn
the mean sodding
calibans deathmask
of a.
The couple moved
to America, where
Shackleton Bailey
held chairs at
Ann Arbor and
Harvard. He in
no way conforms
to the Amisian
fictional type
of satyr-classicist,
indeed was perhaps
the polar opposite.
The nuptials had
amazed his Cambridge
colleagues, to
whom he had seemed
the archetypal
bachelor. Eric
Jacobs speculates
that he may have
been a virgin
until married.
A seemingly ill-assorted
pair, their union
did not last.
An agreeable Oxford
chum of Amis was
classicist Graham
Parkes, who wrote
Greek proses to
the accompaniment
of jazz: "What
a nice fellow:
nothing to offend."
On the other hand,
"Afraid I
never had anything
to do with old
Bowra" (to
Hilary Rubinstein)
sounds unregretful,
albeit some twenty
years later Amis
asked boon companion
Robert Conquest
to supplement
a list of "rich
and fashionable
dons to give the
flavour of that
side of passed
away Oxford life.
So far, I have
Bowra and Coghill."
Conquest came
up with Richard
Dawkins, Bywater
& Sotheby
Professor of Byzantine
and Modern Greek
Language and Literature.
Patrick Standish
compiles a cricket
team of big names,
including Cicero,
a fictional variant
on the 'Bad Men'
Eleven (no classical
personnel) in
a 1946 note to
Larkin. In his
own Oxford years,
wartime and post-war
austerity ones,
Amis saw little
of this and, being
in his card-carrying
Red period, would
have been bound
to deplore any
remnants, albeit
someone (Noel
Annan, I think)
once observed
that it was all
right to be a
communist in 1930s
Oxford provided
one could afford
the life-style.
In Conquest-Amis'
The Egyptologists
(London: Cape,
1965), a group
of sex-mad men
hide behind this
antiquarian cover.
There are some
lethally precise
parodies of Egyptian
religious texts,
also a mock professorial
lecture of the
kind we have all
endured in real
life, whose general
babble includes
"Swisser-Swatter
se Divine Wives
of Amun."
Not mere phonetic
foolery, this
illustrates authorial
literary-linguistic
sharpness. Not
in the Oxford
English Dictionary,
the onomatopoeia
comes from John
Aubrey's description
in Brief Lives
of a serving-wench
being enjoyed
by Sir Walter
Raleigh up against
a tree: "At
last, as the danger
and the pleasure
at the same time
grew higher, she
cryed in the extasey
Swisser Swatter
Swisser Swatter."
A cognate nicety.
Standish's noisy
car is nicknamed
'Boanerges'. So
was Michael Redgraves'
"thunderous
motorbike,"
according to Alan
Strachan's biography
Secret Dreams
(London: Weidenfeld
& Nicholson,
p.99). Amis may
or may not have
known the actor,
but he did praise
(to Larkin, 1951)
Redgrave's playing
of the tragic
classics master
Andrew Crocker-Harris
in Rattigan's
The Browning Version,
especially his
reaction to the
gift of the Agamemnon
translation from
his pupil Taplow.
An early (1958)
letter to Conquest
(cf. New Maps
of Hell, London:
Gollancz, 1960,
p.27) declares
Lucian's True
Story to be the
first real Science
Fiction novel.
When applying
to Amis for help
with a Latin epigraph
(1980), Conquest
addresses him
as "you classical
sod." Four
years earlier,
Amis had sent
to Conquest a
frank disquisition
on such Roman
sexual practices
as copulatio penibus,
fellatio, and
irrumatio, the
kind of thing
A.E. Housman kept
in a Gibbonian
"decent obscurity
of a learned tongue"
in his notorious
Praefanda article,
suppressed at
the eleventh hour
by the Classical
Quarterly and
published (1930)
in the more tolerant
German journal
Hermes.
Amis rounds off,
"I say, what
a lot of filth,
but it does show
the polish a classical
education puts
on a chap. This
evokes Ezra Pound's
"The thought
of what America
would be like
if the Classics
had a wide circulation
keeps me awake
at night."
Amis twice (to
Conquest, 1979,
and Memoirs )
recalls his schoolmaster
C.J.Ellingham's
article exposing
Pound's Latin
deficiencies in
a 1938 issue of
Greece & Rome.
Ellingham was
then joint-editor
of G&R: Standish
filches his Gracchi
background material
out of one; Jake
Richardson hunts
for back copies.
In fact, I can
see no sign of
this article -
a request for
information from
the current editors
has gone unanswered.
There are other
Homeric noddings.
Robin Davies (You
Can't Do Both)
is plagued by
Bury's History
of Rome. As far
as I know, there
is no such book
(it is in no Bury
bibliography that
I have seen);
he probably means
Cary's. The Riverside
Villas Murder
(London: Cape,
1973) mentions
a museum's Syracusan
tetragram, an
error for tetradrachm,
as Amis wrigglingly
admits to Anthony
Thwaite who pointed
out the slip.
When he wrote
(The Amis Collection,
London: Hutchinson,
1990) that Virgil
would have hit
back at his critics,
"had reviewing
flourished in
classical Rome,"
he forgets that
it DID flourish
there and that
Suetonius records
Virgil's ripostes
and planned book
of rebuttals.
At Swansea, Amis
got a "bollocking"
for writing in
a Daily Express
article (September
14, 1957) "Few
of my colleagues
are barbarians
in wire-rimmed
glasses; fewer
still are tremulous
Greek-quoting
ninnies."
His digs-mate
W.R. ('Willie')
Smyth will have
relished this
barb. Though his
intoning of Greek
and Latin to a
shaving or lecture-grubbing
Amis was unwelcome
(to Larkin, 1949),
he gets a warmish
Memoirs write-up:
"Not a bad
digs-mate. An
eccentric Latinist,
a Dubliner, a
furious cigarette-smoker,"
whose passion
for Latin (Smyth
published articles
on the likes of
Propertius and
Statius) "put
him rather on
his own in a department
full of Graecists
and, within a
few years, under
a professor who
favoured teaching
the classics in
translation."
This was G.B.Kerferd,
a specialist in
the Pre-Socratics,
who later moved
to a chair at
Manchester. The
incumbent was
Benjamin Farrington,
never mentioned
in the Swansea
letters, one reason
being his Marxism,
which the now
apostate Amis
excoriated in
a letter (February
14, 1957 - a poisoned
Valentine indeed)
to the Daily Worker
, complaining
of communist professor
Arnold Kettle's
review of his
Socialism and
the Intellectuals
pamphlet - I have
explored all this
in my foreword
to the new edition
(Nottingham: Spokesman
Books, 2001) of
Farrington's Head
and Hand in Ancient
Greece.
Smyth is a model
of sorts for the
"veteran
Ulsterman"
Latinist who offers
Robin Davies "useful
tips" on
sex with students
at their "university
college in the
English Midlands."
One runs "Nobody
who cannot distinguish
between in medias
res and in mediis
rebus is to be
taken seriously."
This consorts
with Amis' description
of Smyth as "pedantic,
pernickety, letting
nothing inaccurate
go by," qualities
which when allied
to his ugliness
spoiled his chances
with women, characteristics
of both Dixon's
academic colleage
Alfred Beesley
and Standish's
flat-mate Graham
McClintoch.
In his posthumous
(London: Hutchinson,
1997) The King's
English, Amis
insists on the
value of classical
languages, perhaps
partly for the
benefit of author-son
Martin, a person
of self-confessed
small Latin and
no Greek. Berks
are distinguished
from wankers thus:
"Berks speak
in a slipshod
way, with dropped
Hs, intruded glottal
stops, and many
mistakes in grammar.
Left to them,
English would
die of impurity,
like late Latin."
In 1950, Amis
(to Larkin) wrote
a snatch of dog-Latin
("Costin,
me nolente"
= I don't like
Costin) to mock
an Oxford enemy.
One young wanker
saved by schoolboy
Latin is Peter
Furneaux (The
Riverside Villas
Murder, London:
Cape, 1973), when
interrogated by
a police chief:
"You
read Latin, do
you?"
"Yes,
sir, a little."
"You've
a good memory.
It must be all
those Latin verbs.
What's the supine
of constituo?"
"Constitutum,
sir."
"You're
the sort of witness
a policeman dreams
about."
"Glad
I did Classics"
(a 1958 letter).
Amis twice (1984,
1986) told correspondents
Take a Girl Like
You was his favourite,
"the only
book of mine I
have contemplated
a sequel to"
(forgetting? suppressing?
the abandoned
Lucky Jim in Portugal,
partly realised
by I Like It Here,
London: Gollancz,
1958, "by
common consent
my worst novel.").
Patrick Standish's
Latin was muted
in the BBC television
version and in
a much older movie
transmogrified
into painting,
a double insult
when you remember
Bernard Welch
in Lucky Jim.
Even his arch-enemy,
the headmaster's
secretary, concedes
"You're a
good teacher and
I've nothing against
you on that score."
He mugs up Horace
for class, quoting
Nil admirari prope
res est una, Numici
, and is seen
"taking,
or rather hauling,
the Junior Sixth
through not nearly
enough of In Marcum
Antonium II,"
generating this
address to Cicero's
shade: "I'll
patres conscripti
you. I'll give
you ut ita dicam.
And what makes
you so proud of
esse videatur,
eh? Shakespeare
had your number
all right."
For a man so long
and thoroughly
dead it was remarkable
how much boredom,
and also how precise
an image of nasty
silliness, Cicero
could generate.
"Antony was
worth twenty of
you, you bastard,"
- this last sally
has served me
well as an exam
question.
The undergraduate
Patrick had won
a medal for Latin
Verse, an activity
commended in The
King's English.
When drunk (a
fellow-roysterer
informs him),
he "kept
repeating a poem
by Martial or
some gagster."
Jake Richardson
(sober) does the
same, to annoy
his wife's classically-named
friend Alcestis.
He describes a
sexual bout as
"an excerpt
from the Ars Amatoria.
His mental response
to a dim-witted
one night stand's
scorn of foreign
food is "As
well go on respecting
Robinson Ellis
after Housman
had finished with
him. Similarly,
when she uninterestedly
parries a physical
compliment: "He
might just as
well have said,
Dies in the singular
Common we decline.
But its plural
cases are always
masculine,"
remembered from
the venerable
Kennedy's Latin
Primer. In Difficulties
With Girls, Patrick
has moved into
London publishing.
Amis circumvents
this implausible
switch by simply
recording the
"awed"
industry reaction
to the board chairman
"who on a
couple of hours'
acquaintance went
and hired a schoolmaster
who taught Latin."
This hardly fits
with his put-down
of Patrick at
an editorial meeting:
" You must
always keep trying
to remember, dear
boy, you're not
publishing for
the Latin Sixth.
That's it in a
nutshell."
Patrick's reason
for taking the
job is more interesting:
advice from his
headmaster that
"Latin's
on the skids,"
forecasting that
when Patrick retires
in 1996, "even
if there's anything
left of it by
that time, you'll
have been fighting
a losing battle
for ages before
then," a
pessimism felt
by many real-life
classicists, also
an instructive
pendant to Amis'
more notorious
"More means
worse" prophecy
(first aired,
it is often forgotten,
in Lucky Jim)
for higher education.
"Jake
Richardson is
a deliberate reformulation
of Jim Dixon"
(Amis, letter,
1985). This Oxford
Hellenist's difficulty
with girls is
his dwindling
libido and bouts
of impotence,
themes both classical
and autobiographical.
Amis wrote (1979)
to Larkin that
he was suffering
"a total
loss of sex-drive.
I haven't had
a fuck for more
than a year or
a wank for over
a month. Don't
tell anyone."
Larkin and others
might have thought
Amis had already
told the world,
both in this novel
and the contemporaneous
poem Senex:
To find his sexual
drives had ceased
For Sophocles
was no disaster;
He said he felt
like one released
From service with
a cruel master.
I envy him - I
miss the lash
At which I used
to snort and snivel;
Oh, that its unremitted
lash
Were still what
makes me drone
and drivel.
Jake's academic
thing is also
running down.
Near 60, he is
coasting towards
retirement. His
chosen field was
"Greek colonisation
from the 1st Olympiad
to the fall of
Athens, developments
in which he tried
fairly hard and
with fair success
to keep up, and
did a sporadic
something about
the, to him, increasingly
dull mass of the
rest; but he hadn't
revised his lectures
and his seminar
material except
in detail, and
not much of that,
for how long?
- well, he was
going to say 5
years and stick
to it." His
first book, followed
by three others
(unspecified),
had been on the
first Greek settlements
in Asia Minor
(elsewhere dubbed
"those sods
in Asia Minor"):
"They were
probably enough
to justify Dr
Jacques Richardson's
life. They were
bloody well going
to have to."
Archaeological
field-work is
now confined to
tax-deductible
jaunts to Sicily
with his wife.
One article-writing
ambition subsists:
"He must
get that bit of
nonsense about
Syracuse off the
ground again before
too long."
Jake may, in fact,
have been wise
to vegetate. Having
been informed
by a sulky girl
pupil that the
Bodleian copy
of his JPCH piece
on Ionian trade-routes
had been defaced
by graffiti, he
finds on checking
that the student
scholia range
from "Wanker"
(a bit like Bishop
Arethas on Lucian)
to accusations
of out-dated theories
and downright
plagiarism ("Copied
from Grossman,
PAHS, vol.xlvi,p44").
One envies Jake
this level of
scholarly sophistication
in his students
- or were the
rhyparographers
his colleagues?
One vestige of
his linguistic
self does survive:
his insistence
on 'Agendum' over
'Agenda' as singular
noun. He here
sounds like Crocker
Harris. For me,
it evokes an old
classical friend,
the late Greek
historian Malcolm
McGregor, in whose
bonnet this semantic
bee loudly buzzed.
Amis' penultimate
novel, You Can't
Do Both, is his
most autobiographical
- he had intended
to read Classics.
It takes Robin
Davies through
schoolboy Greek
and Latin to Oxford
to a red-brick
Readership, lecturing
on Pindar's prosody
to first-year
Honours candidates,
hoping to land
an Oxford fellowship:
"A timely,
carefully pitched
book on the lessser-known
Greek myths, and
a series of talks
on the Third Programme,
had strengthened
his position."
His Memoirs provide
Amis' own commentary.
Apart from the
aforementioned
Ellingham, he
recalls with affection
his 1934 City
of London School
headmaster, "the
great F.R.Dale,
a classical scholar
in the best old
style. To hear
him read Greek
verse, observing
tonic accent,
metrical ictus
and the run of
the meaning all
at once was to
be given a distant
view of some ideal
beauty as well
as to marvel at
a virtuoso, When
the BBC wanted
someone to read
Homer aloud, the
chose him. He
was human, too.
If ever a kind
of man vanished
for goof, his
did." In
my own Sixth-Form
and undergraduate
days, Dale's work
on Greek metrics
was still read
and admired. A.E.Douglas,
The City of London
School (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1965)
praises Dale as
combining a Roman
"unresting
sense of duty"
(he was a distinguished
officer in The
Great War) with
"Sophoclean
harmony and serenity
of outlook."
The Memoirs also
invoke Mr Copping,
"who spoke
with an Attic
Greek accent of
the 5th century
- I can hear those
Periclean tones
now." But
not H.C.Oakley,
who teaches Greek
history in the
novel under his
own name. Contemporary
school reminiscences
(available 'on-line')
speak of his "engendering
respect for learning"
and his "exquisite
courtesy, even
to us." Robin
is spellbound
by his talks on
Athens' Sicilian
disaster, especially
the siege of Syracuse
with its thought-provoking
conclusion on
how "the
history of the
world might have
been changed by
events in a remote
corner."
Amis himself retained
a thing about
this. Apart from
the earlier "tetragram"
and Jake's interests,
even Garnet Bowen
in I Like It Here,
for whom the Iliad
was "a gruelling
cultural monument,"
was reminded of
Thucydides' narrative
in a Portugese
olive-grove: "When
had that been?
415? 413? he had
known once."
Robin's school
routine was basically
my own: Caesar
(though I never
found him "insultingly
easy"), Virgil,
the Alcestis,
the weekly unseens.
Apart from the
apparent slip
over Bury, the
only false note
is his fear that
Roman history
will be boringly
preoccupied with
corn laws: all
that fighting
in Caesar should
have told him
otherwise and
quickened his
teenage blood.
But he was still
odd about such
things at university:
while waiting
for his girl friend
to have an abortion,
"he tried
to read the Anabasis,
or, to give it
his private alternative
title, How To
Fuck Up A Good
Story," an
opinion few would
share, despite
all its stades
and parasangs.
At Oxford, Robin
"attended
a talk to the
Classical Society
on the non-Latin
languages of ancient
Italy," perhaps
suggesting J.
Whatmough's Foundations
of Italy (1937),
while other spare
time "he
filled in with
reading a long
book on the Hellenistic
age, admittedly
work of a kind,
but of a very
lowly kind, not
truly justifiable
unless he expected
to be sitting
his final exams
some time in the
1950s." A
key scene subsumes
Greek drama and
the Amisian battle
of the sexes.
His girl friend
responds to Robin's
dismissal of the
"psychological
absurdity"
of the Alcestis
with: "Any
absurdity was
purposeful, designed
to emphasise that
of the main story.
The intention
was to attack
the subjection
of women by portraying
an absurdly extreme
example of it."
Robin's scorn
of this leads
to the general
conclusion that
"seven years
study had furnished
the insight that
with a few exceptions,
of which the Alcestis
was not one, those
fellows had been
getting at something
beyond a modern
understanding,
or, just as likely,
had not been getting
at anything in
particular"
- another ideal
essay topic. This
is a (per)version
of an anonymous
Oxford digs-mate's
remark quoted
in the Memoirs:
"He had told
me two things
I have never forgotten.
One was that at
the end of a dazzling
career in classics,
in which he had
won every award
in sight, he thought
he was just beginning
to acquire some
dim idea of what
the Greek tragedians
might actually
have been saying
and doing."
As reported by
Eric Jacobs, drawing
on conversations
for his biography,
Amis and schoolboy
friend Leonard
Richenberg "recognised
that classics
was a good education
in its way, but
what was the point
of it? Nobody
explained. It
was simply taken
for granted that
classics was best."
Richenberg stuck
to classics; Amis
switched to English.
But this was not
an intellectual
or emotional apostasy.
From his first
book to his last,
classics was part
of Amis and Amis
part of classics
- we may compare
the similar case
of Simon Raven.
His last letter,
six weeks before
death, was to
the Spectator,
rebuking Auberon
Waugh (son of
Evelyn) for preferring
American usage
to British - the
Horatian sub-text
of "Conquered
Greece...Conqueror
Rome" is
palpable. A final
note to Robert
Conquest (1994)
combines one of
their favourite
dirty limericks
with criticism
of his friend's
grammar supported
by a Greek parallel:
"Kindly note
they carried out,
not off. Carrying
off was what the
Greeks did to
Cassandra when
they took Troy."
Unless one risks
a comparison with
the street thugs
demanding to be
taught Greek and
Latin in Anthony
Burgess' 1985
("Most improbable,"
Amis remarked
in his London
Observer review),
these life-long
classical concerns,
from school to
death, from first
book to last,
give a resounding
lie to the accusations
of philistinism
that have haunted
Amis since Lucky
Jim, typified
by V.S. Pritchett's
pseudonymous dismissal
of him (in a 1955
New Statesman
review of That
Uncertain Feeling,
London: Gollancz,
1955) as a "literary
teddy boy."
Classic
Amis
© 2006 by
Barry Baldwin
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