The Oxford Book of British Political Anecdotes
Johnson, Paul
THE OXFORD BOOK OF BRITISH POLITICAL ANECDOTES Edited by Paul Johnson/Oxford University Press/$17.95 Herb Greer T here is bound to be a certain vari- would make his children fear him); ation of...
...It is a funnier version than Aubrey's and is probably one of those jokes (like the one about buying a grave to use for just three days) that crossed many frontiers and attached itself to many people...
...We see wit, generosity, shrewdness, strength, humor, adroitness in the handling of people, and a certain indomitable temper...
...It points either toward haste—odd for a collection that was commissioned in 1979 and published this year—or it indicates a blindness to tedium and anticlimax that is unexpected in a writer as acute and powerful as Paul Johnson...
...Burke observed stern and inflexible silence...
...Some of the swinishness in this book does have that flavor, showing that Sheridan, for example, can still be witty even when being pulled drunk out of a gutter...
...But there is so much of it that is ordinary, which betokens that glum contempt for anyone in authority which is so fashionable among certain journalists and so-called intellectuals of the liberal left in America and Britain—very odd company indeed for someone like Paul Johnson...
...Another absent tale, cited in the London Observer, recounts how the late Victorian Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone installed a fireproof cabinet in his home, to contain letters marked "burn this...
...There is, for instance, a fine account of the parliamentary quarrel over the French Revolution between Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, and how it destroyed their friendship...
...Queen Elizabeth I and, "abashed and tr...
...it is merely irritating to read about a legendary, eloquent speech by Richard Brinsley Sheridan that was, alas, never transcribed...
...The Queen shrunk in her head, but was heard to say, "Well, Sir Edward, I must not confute you...
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...More important, this is simply not very interesting, because it does not touch on the salient question about those who rule: what is it that makes them extraordinary, and places them above the common run of human beings...
...Neither critic mentioned that this story can be found in The Arabian Nights...
...A nd so on...
...And then and occasional chitchat which might what does he give him...
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...But much more often we see the establishment as ruthless, cruel, stupid, given to fornication, gluttony, and intemperate boozing, greedy for office, depressingly shaken by pure chance and all the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to—and frequently as dull as ditchwater...
...The presence of so much dross, plus hackneyed tales like that of Sir Walter Ralegh, his cloak and the puddle, is the more annoying because of the good stories it crowded out...
...Not only are they culled from well-known sources (the word "anecdote" suggests something unpublished, new, surprising), but they are simply trite and—unforgivable in such a collection—boring...
...question would list a motley assem- "livo of London's most serious newsblage of scraps—excerpts from pub- papers, the Times and the Sunday lished history...
...Naturally it is amusing—for a while—to see the mighty caught up in the biological squalor which their weakest parts share with the rest of us...
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...My complaint is that too much of the book moves -in just the opposite direction...
...But, as I have said, the actual subject is neither politics nor just politicians, but the class who filled out the oligarchies which ruled Britain until it began to become a real democracy in this century, and to some extent still do rule the country, though changed in personnel and background...
...v "I-1,,,44, 0,., , u„_.2 1 . 1 iii4 IL.,•-_ ---,I...
...If this collection was really to do with politics, that would all be fair enough, though a bit cynical...
...He gives his anecdotes "the benefit of the doubt: true (at least in spirit) until proved false...
...In the case of Elizabeth I, si non e verq e ben trovato, but what does it have to do with valuable historical truth...
...least hints at one, in the opening para- Some of it is dull, much of it will be graph of his introduction...
...It is hard to imagine why any reader, British or American, would care to plow through a turgid account of how Disraeli lied to the House of Commons about asking Sir Robert Peel for office (it is hardly a revelation to acknowledge that politicians lie...
...after their arrival he only replied to questions in harsh and abrupt monosyllables...
...There ought to be hints of the virtues in these figures, and so there are...
...he threw up the windows of the apartment, flung open his waistcoat, and in a paroxysm of passion paced up and down the room until nearly 4 o'clock in the morning...
...Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor...
...S material is scattered through k...
...But the effect is spoiled by the sequel, as told by the son of Burke's friend Therry (I give the whole "anecdote," no...
...But every anthology leaves out some good things...
...45 Not many of the anecdotes rise to that level, and a fair number of them are much too far below it...
...Why is so much space in this anthology given to that species of shaggy-dog stuffing...
...A more accurate title would have been Anecdotes of the British Ruling Class...
...Now and then the snippets become positively exasperating...
...Johnson might have included, for example, the exchange between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor, in which she declared that if she were his wife she would poison his coffee...
...apocryphal incidents Times, led their reviews with one of (King George V's statement that he these last bits, a tale from John Aubrey's Brief Lives of how the Earl of Herb Greer is an American writer and Oxford broke wind in the presence of playwright living in England...
...If this were true of Johnson's anthology it would bring the book closer to the original of the genre, the Anecdota of Procopius, which assembled scandalous stories and backstairs gossip from the court of Justinian in order to (pater his readers and attack the empress Theodora—more like today's Ici Paris or the National Enquirer than serious historical discourse...
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...Even this does not necessarily make them into people "like you and me...
...The anthology form is peculiarly suited to explore such matters, and, judging from Paul Johnson's introduction, he is conscious of this...
...3 The Oxford Book of British Political Anecdotes, with politicians and other establishment figures showing great flair for non-political activities such as lechery, gourmandizing, giving birth, extra-marital passion, idle chatter, and the like...
...In the great and the highly placed, lechery, gluttony, even flamboyant slobbishness can represent a special exuberance, an excess of energy which marks out exceptional men and women...
...1111, ., _,.?P..-1:.\..\ e4/1, / ! / /_, ,A...
...In the carriage, Mr...
...He too flees for seven years...
...sayings" (e.g., Wellington's questions: What does the editor really famous "publish and be damned...
...He says flat- very obscure to the American reader ly, "Anecdotes are a source of valuable not versed in British history, and there historical truth...
...Burke home...
...This is a large qualification, like a defense of those Hollywood bio-pics that claim to "catch the spirit" of some famous personage or other, but are really meant as light entertainment...
...122): After the debate concluded, my father accompanied Mr...
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...It is all very well to comfort the groundlings by stressing the gonadal and other weaknesses which their leaders share with everyone else...
...Where his collection points up this "historical truth" and reveals the qualities in its subjects that make them into rulers, the reading is entertaining, and useful enough to supplement anyone's view of history...
...his reply was that if he were her husband he would drink it...
...y-rr-,1...
...What sort of historical truth does one look for in a collection like this, spanning centuries and focusing on a relatively narrow stratum of a nation, i.e., its ruling class...
...When he comes back, after dark, he overhears a woman telling her child that it was born "on that night when Abu Hassan brake wind...
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...The poor devil, seeing that "verily my fart hath become a date," leaves again, never to return...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987...
...Paul Johnson have been swapped over the cigars and gives a reply to the first question, or at port, after the ladies had left the room...
...mean to give the reader...
...The brighter facets only serve to emphasize the main thrust of the text, which is reductive, much like Procopius dragging out the nasty underside of Justinian's court...
...ii 2 , ----,,,_ ill .,,,,N(....- y----- IV jz ;,;:1_1 0 , THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 ashamed," exiled himself for seven years...
...Sir Edward (who had not the effect of some of the Queen's grants as soon as he had hoped and desired), paused a little, and then made answer, "Madame, he thinks of a woman's promise...
...ation of quality in any anthology, resurrected bits of journalism and but the entries in this one vary more memoirs from people like Fanny widely than most, prompting these Burney...
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...A superficial answer to my second raise a coarse chuckle...
...It is a brilliant portrayal of how the greatest political issues and figures can be swayed by something as trivial as an ill-judged exuberance...
...MY //,';,"9"4.- f _r-----...7 it_ .J7'1...
...Coming back to the main point, what about the editor's pretensions for his choice as "a valuable source of historical truth...
...and very hard to stoke up interest in the attempted impeachment of an eighteenth-century governor of Bengal, even as told by Fanny Burney...
...Even if it were confined to politicians, the prevailing cynicism about that profession would justify the approach more or less on a popular level...
...but the essential truth about real leaders is that they are outstandingly not like everyone else...
...Yet another has Churchill saying to Stalinthat he likes goldfish, whereupon the dictator suggests that the Prime Minister might have some for breakfast...
...a luckless fellow commits the same offense on his wedding night, while his wife is removing her veils...
...I will come back to are passages here and there which can this...
...Paul Johnson's introduction suggests that he is not too concerned with literal truth...
...Some of these scraps are very entertaining and civilized, and do cast a clear light on politics, like another glimpse of Elizabeth I: The Queen seeing Sir Edward Dyer in her garden, looked out at her window and asked him in Italian, "What does a man think of when he thinks of nothing...
...On his return the Queen "welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgot the Fart...
...Gradually a strong fit of passion came over him...
Vol. 20 • February 1987 • No. 2
