Julian Maclaren-Ross At 100: July 7, 2012

 1. No memoir of metropolitan literary life in the 1940s and 1950s would be complete without a vivid  supporting part for him, invariably one where he wreaks inadvertent havoc on the memoirist's hitherto orderly existence.  No earnest study of London’s artist demi-monde would be complete without quotations from Memoirs of the Forties, his classic paean to the vanished world of the blackout, “buzz-bombs,” and boozy nights with Dylan Thomas.  And no misty-eyed portrait of mid-century Soho would be complete without an appearance from him.  Tall and aloof, he’s more often than not seen standing at the bar of the Wheatsheaf pub  or some shadowy  dive.  Resplendent in his trademark camelhair coat, worn over an immaculate suit, a fresh carnation in his buttonhole, a malacca cane propped beside him, a cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, mirror-sunglasses lending him a gangsterish demeanour at odds with his otherwise dandified costume, he cuts an incongruous figure.  Around him, a gaggle of fawning cronies provide an attentive audience for a relentless, well-rehearsed monologue, declaimed in a distinctively deadpan drawl.

 

    For Maclaren-Ross, the pubs and clubs offered an atmospherically lit film set on which he could perform.  Immersing himself as thoroughly as any Method actor in the role he’d chosen, he projected an unforgettable persona, part Oscar Wilde, part Hollywood heavy.

2. Back at his flat in Maida Vale, he’d uncap the Hooded Terror, light up the first in a succession of cigarettes, and open one of the notebooks in which he did most of his writing.  The rest of the night would be spent copying out the stories he’d rehearsed earlier in the day, his handwriting as lilliputian and fanatically neat as ever, his faculties apparently unimpaired by the booze he’d consumed.  Only at dawn would he grab a few hours sleep before summoning the taxi that would carry him back to the Wheatsheaf.

 

To ward off fatigue, he began using benzedrine, a stimulant that could be obtained without a prescription . . . . It wasn’t long before he’d graduated to the vastly more potent methedrine capsules, only available on prescription . . . . These, he explained to Dan Davin, ‘had the useful property of simultaneously pepping you up and calming you down.’

From Paul Willetts, Fear & Loathing In Fitzrovia, The Bizarre Life of Writer, Actor, Soho Raconteur Julian Maclaren-Ross, Stockport, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2005.


For more Julian Maclaren-Ross on ACravan, please see these links:


1.  Of Love And Hunger (Julian Maclaren- Ross)

2.  Crossed Cheque (A Writer's Life)

3.  From "The Metamorphosis of Peter Brook" (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

4.  A Soldier Dresses (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

5.  Foretold -- Easter Monday (Zeppelin Over Ramsgate)

6.  Respirators Will Be Worn; Mercer's Cafe

7.  The Party For Picasso (Excerpt) -- Julian Maclaren-Ross

8.  Major Minor

9. The Monastery of Information

My friend Gerry Howard introduced me to  Julian Maclaren-Ross' work many years ago, an encounter and discovery that have given me a great deal of pleasure as well as the wonderful autograph letter pictured in second position above (click on photo to enlarge and enjoy), written using the trademark gold-nibbed, black-barreled  "Hooded Terror" Parker fountain pen that originally belonged to his father.    


I would like to offer a 100th birthday salute to the author of Of Love And Hunger, A Bit Of A Smash In Madras and Some Time I Shall Sleep Out.

Of Love And Hunger (Julian MacLaren-Ross)

I got out my dem book to look up the old girl’s name.


     Always address the prospect by name:  it pays.  Makes ‘em feel at home, see?  The personal touch.


     This one was called Miss Tuke, 49, The Crescent.  Small house, two storeys, villa-type; small dark drawing-room full of knick-knacks, thick old-fashioned hangings full of dust.  No maid, no cleaner, woman in once a week.  A cert, if I played it right.

     Miss Tuke didn’t seem a bad old girl either.  Bit jumpy:  kept looking up at the ceiling as if expecting it might fall on her any moment.  Couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw what I got out of her carpet.


     ‘But I don’t understand. I had the carpet cleaned.  Two days ago.  I had a woman in.’


   ‘This dirt didn’t accumulate in two days, Miss Tuke,’ I told her.  ‘It’s been in your carpet for years.  The ordinary methods of cleaning won’t remove it.’

 

    ‘Then what can I do?’


     ‘There’s only one thing ,’ I said, pointing to the cleaner.  Miss Tuke looked at it and swallowed.  I wanted to let the idea sink in.  It was too soon to start on her yet, but I felt in my pocket to make sure I’d an order-form ready when the time came.  It was there all right.


     Miss Tuke said: ‘And how much did you say the price . . .’


            ‘A pound down,  a pound a month.’


     ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream.  I don’t hold with hire-purchase.’

  

    ‘It’s much the best way, Miss Tuke.  We never advise buying one of these machines outright.  Think of the advantages you become eligible for under our instalment-system.  Free service every six months.  A thorough overhaul of your cleaner twice-yearly free of charge.  After all, you wouldn’t pay your maid a year’s wages in advance, would you?’ 


    ‘Of course not.’


           ‘Well we look on this cleaning system as a mechanical maid.  More efficient, naturally, as this dirt goes to show.'

     Always bring ‘em back to the dirt.  I switched on again and pushed the cleaner to-and-fro across the carpet.  I was a No. 1 model, the biggest sort and the one that costs the most money.  Kicks up a terrific row, but you get round that by saying you can only silence the machine at the price of efficiency.




NOTE: 



     Several years ago or more (or more, I think), my friend Gerry Howard introduced me to Julian MacLaren-Ross’s writing.  Gerry had acquired Memoirs of the Forties (I don’t recall why) and liked the book for reasons that would quickly become apparent to any first-time reader.  Gerry’s enthusiasms (any of them) and recommendations (ditto) mean a lot to me, so I bought and read the book. 


     I think Gerry fell in shallow; I fell in deep, but at the right time because the Julian MacLaren-Ross revival -- a series of republications through Black Spring Press, Paul Willets’ remarkable biography Fear  And Loathing In Fitzrovia, internet chatter and other enthusiasms (including the attention paid by many dedicated readers to Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time; MacLaren-Ross was the model for the novelist character, X. Trapnel) was afoot and picking up steam.


     I’ve previously posted other examples of this author’s work -- short story and memoir excerpts, as well as a haunting snippet from his autobiographical novel, The Weeping and the Laughter, concerning a World War I zeppelin raid on Ramsgate, MacLaren-Ross's childhood home before his family decamped for a life on the Côte d’Azur, an event that turned out to be a mixed blessing in terms of the author's personal and professional future.  The passage above, taken from the first chapter of Of Love And Hunger, his great novel, is new here.  Set in cusp-of-World War II Brighton, the book is based on MacLaren-Ross’s experiences selling vacuums door-to-door.  As he told Graham Greene, it was Depression-era labor, the best he could find after losing, through no fault of his own, his private, family income, fortune, i.e.,  he wasn’t just collecting material to write about in a novel.  


     Of Love And Hunger is a fully-accomplished, deeply moving work of art, the  summation and apotheosis of J M-R's great work of the 1940s, which included the publication of his best and most popular short stories.   All his subsequent writing (journalism, book and film reviews, radio plays, memoirs, astonishing literary parodies, other novels), whether superb or somewhat less so, never matched this novel’s perfect, sustained emotional pitch and style subsumed, immersed, in every single sentence and scene.


     Re-telling Julian MacLaren-Ross anecdotes (they are as outlandish and improbable as any stories about intense, esoteric literary or artistic eccentrics maintaining  24-hour schedules until inevitably checking out too early) all night is an entertaining thing to do to delight old friends and new companions.  One can still do so today, standing in J M-R's usual spot at the Wheatsheaf bar in Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia.  What I find really difficult to fathom, however, is the degree to which my life has come to resemble aspects of Richard Fanshawe’s life in Of Love And Hunger.

Crossed Cheque (A Writer's Life)

The bank cashier was counting pads of pound notes when I appeared at his grille the next morning.  He carefully examined the amount and the signature on the Horizon cheque, all of it in Connolly’s green ink, then asked, ‘What do you want to do with this?’

     ‘Cash it,’ I said.

     ‘Have you an account at this branch?’

     ‘I haven’t, no.  But Mr Connolly has.  He said you’d cash this for me.’

     ‘Sorry,’ the cashier said.  ‘I can’t cash it, you’ve no account here,’ and he pushed the cheque back under the grille. 

     ‘Why can’t you cash it?’ I asked.  ‘Here’s my name, quite clearly made out.’

     ‘It’s a crossed cheque,’ he told me.  ‘It’s not been opened.  You could put it through your own bank, would be the best way.’

     ‘I haven’t a bank.’

     The cashier went back to cashing pound notes.  People without banks did not interest him.

     ‘What d’you mean, the cheque hasn’t been opened?’ I asked. 

     He glanced up, surprised to find me still there: he thought the matter settled.

     ‘A crossed cheque can only be paid into a banking account,’ he said patiently.  ‘It cannot be cashed unless it’s been correctly opened.’

     ‘Against banking regulations otherwise,’ said a second, older cashier, who’d come up to listen.

     ‘And if this cheque were opened, would you cash it then?’

     The second cashier in turn took the cheque and examined every inch of it.  ‘But this hasn’t been opened,’ he said at last.

Cyril Connolly

From:  Julian Maclaren-Ross, Memoirs of the Forties.  London, Alan Ross, 1965.

From "The Metamophosis of Peter Brooke" (Julian MacLaren-Ross)

Even the steady thunder of bomber planes on the way to Germany overhead failed to wake him, but before dawn he had a fight with himself in his sleep.  I watched from my ringside seat:  himself seemed about to win but just in time he knocked himself out.  I counted ten but he lay stiff and silent, not even snoring now; and in the morning we were roused by the ringing telephone.  It was my girlfriend to say that Germany had surrendered, which places this meeting in early May 1945.

The Monastery of Information

  “Another, more serious proposition he received was from Charles Wrey Gardiner of the Grey Walls Press, who was present when Brooke outlined a projected fantasy novel called ‘The Monastery of Information’.  The basic elements included an astrally projected Tibetan lamasery, controlled from the forbidden city itself and invisible to all except those in a state of ecstasy: drunks, lovers etc;  there was also a London bank which financed the nefarious operations of the Tibetan fifth-column with phantom money and was manned by cashiers stuffed with straw.  Murders of people who knew too much were committed by a band of trained commando midgets, and the conspiracy’s total aim was world domination, narrowly averted.

     Wrey Gardiner, impressed by what he called a poetic variation on thriller themes, actually offered to advance something on a synopsis if I collaborated on the writing of the book; and, as the music publishers’ tenner was running out faster than the spirits in the pubs, we got down to work that night, but Brooke fell asleep over the table just as we reached the first murder by midget.”

         

Respirators Will Be Worn; Mercer’s Café

Wells scrawls a signature in pencil and beneath it embarks on a series of crosses.  I count forty-six.   Wells searches among my papers for an envelope, sticks it down, writes SWALK on the flap.  RUNNER is called out in the voice of the CQMS.  Williams, flinging away his fag, lopes off along the corridor;  Wells starts on a long yarn about his cousin who has inherited a hundred pounds and how he can go about tapping her.  My head is empty of ideas.  

         Now there is a sudden speeding-up of work, people run in and out, with papers to be sent off, the Education Officer drops two letters in front of me,  the PT Sergeant wants a sports programme typed, a lieutenant asks me how to spell loofah.  

        Wells picked up a magazine of mine and opening it is faced at once with a reproduction of a painting by Dali.  What the deleted’s this? he says.  It’s a picture. Yerce, but  what’s it  meant to be?

 

        A scraping of rifle butts on the landing advertises the presence of men waiting outside the CSM’s for their leave passes.  It must be ten o’clock.  Thank God for that.  At half-past I can slip out for a break.  A sudden shout goes up.  One of the passes, supposedly for seven days, is found to be made out for fourteen.  A row begins, the guardroom is mentioned.  The CSM gets the best of it, the man doesn’t get his pass, Wells gives up Dali as a bad job. Can he post  his letter?  Yes but don’t forget to come back.  Garn whatcher take me for.

 

         I examine the postage book.  Somewhere there’s been a ballsup.  I count my remaining money and stamps.  I’m a shilling short.  I go over the account day by day, it goes back weeks.  The total adds up wrong, I’m in a whirl.  Suddenly a slip of paper hitherto unnoticed catches my eye, Respirators will be worn by all ranks today from 1030 till 1115 hours.  That makes me pause.  Respirators?  Three-quarters of an hour?  Not bloody likely.  I grab my cap and the two letters dumped by the Education Officer and make for the stairs.  There is no official break time for office personnel:  mine is known as going to post.  I do in fact go there but afterwards.  First I go to Mercer’s Café.  It’s down on the Front by the Pier and is civilian, that is to say although patronized mainly by the troops there are tablecloths and the atmosphere is not that of a canteen.  A stag’s head, antlers on the wall, a banner: PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN BAGS AND PAPER.  Black coffee can be obtained and it is good.  Also chocolate cakes and hot doughnuts.  There is a downstairs room for the officers where everything costs more.  Once we had a subaltern of socialistic views who objected to the implied class distinction and also to the twopence extra on tea; for two mornings he sat upstairs with the other ranks but we damn well soon showed him what was what and after that he too went below with his brother officers.

        There are two wicker armchairs in the corner:  if you’re lucky and arrive early enough you can bag one of them.  I am and I do.  I drink coffee, dust sugar from fingers,  start to write this sketch.

Reader Note:  This is an except from Julian MacLaren-Ross's 1942 sketch entitled "Respirators Will Be Worn; Mercer’s Café", which is part of a longer (but still short) piece called "Are You Happy In Your Work?", which was originally published in the October 1943 issue of The Saturday Book, one of the popular, high-circulation literary magazines that flourished in the Great Britain during the Second World War when paper shortages put a crimp into more "standard" publishing of novels and other, longer works.  Maclaren-Ross's Army sketches established his literary reputation and were his first truly popular publications. They are as lifelike and enjoyable to read today as when they were originally written and paint a vivid portrait of life in the ranks on the British home front.  Maclaren-Ross's funny, but ruefully melancholy stories paint strong pictures of  the variety of soldiers' and officers' personalities, British regional and social distinctions and the unvarying maddening bureaucracy that eventually sent MacLaren-Ross AWOL and then to the "glass house" (military psychiatric hospital) because of the frustration he felt on account of not being allowed to do what he considered more substantial war work.  Eventually, following his discharge from the service in 1943, he wound up in London doing screenwriting alongside Dylan Thomas for a company engaged in producing war propaganda films for the government.  This experience produced a couple of entertaining chapters in Memoirs Of The Forties, which was published posthumously in 1965. For other examples of Julian MacLaren-Ross's work, please see here and here.  Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to acquire an autograph letter by MacLaren-Ross in his remarkably -- practically impossibly -- small neat handwriting that was inscribed on light blue note paper using the famous gold fountain pen he used to compose all his novels, stories, radio plays and literary reviews.  A legacy from his father, MacLaren-Ross called it The Hooded Monster.  When times were hard for him, as they often were, it was the valuable possession he pawned most reluctantly.

 

The Party For Picasso (Excerpt) -- Julian MacLaren- Ross

        

Pablo Picasso arriving at Victoria Station, London, November 12, 1950

        We both bowed,  Picasso continuing to smile with steel grey hair smoothly brushed across his forehead and a face the colour of Spanish earth, oddly unlined for a Spaniard and a man his age.  In his rough sack coloured sack he looked like a well barbered version of Harpo Marx, perhaps owing to the intensity of his stare.

        I said:  'Do you remember, monsieur, saying once to Gertrude Stein.  .  .'

        Picasso nodded encouragingly, and I waited for him to say 'Gertrude' with the simple affection and confidence which according to Alice B. Toklas always characterizes his pronunication of the name, but he did not.

        Instead he said:  'Oui, oui, Mademoiselle Stein', his bright, prominent sloe brown eyes fixed unblinking on mine, and I continued:  'You told her, did you not, that when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it, and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it?'

Man Ray, Portrait of Gertrude Stein seated in front of Picasso's 1906 portrait of Miss Stein

        I was by no means sure if I'd got this quotation right or had translated it properly, it was some time since I'd spoken French, but Picasso said instantly: 'Oui, monsieur, I did indeed say something of the sort', and I went on: 'Then, monsieur, have you as yet descended, travelled by, the Tube, our English Metro?'

Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman (Femme en pleurs), 1937 

        'Non, monsieur', Picasso replied, 'I've not so far had that pleasure,' and I noted that after all those years in France he still retained his Spanish accent.

        'Then when you do, monsieur,' I said, and he nodded several times emphatically to indicate that he couldn't wait to get down the Underground:  his eyes were still fixed on mine and he must have been wondering what the hell, if anything I was getting at.

        'Then,' I said, 'you will realize from the crude imitation Cubist advertisements on the platform walls, the truth in reverse of your so brilliant axiom.  For, in seeking to exploit your discovery for vulgar commercial purposes, they have only succeeded in making the beautiful ugly'. 

Pablo Picasso, She-Goat, 1950

        I bowed, taking a step back to do so: sweat was standing on me as I ended, more or less as I'd begun, by saying it'd been a great honour.

        'That, monsieur, is reciprocal.' Picasso said bowing in his turn; at which Adair whose arm all this while had been hooked in his turned him about and led him away, completely bemused by now, to his corner where she left him among the indignant clucking women:  while I hurried back to the whisky bottle behind the statue.

        At the time I thought I'd carried it off rather well, only later did I feel embarrassment and shame, and later still in self defence began to think of it as funny.

Pablo Picasso arriving at an art exhibition, London, November, 1950

                                          

        Nonetheless, when beset by celebrity snobs, I can truthfully say that I've talked about painting with the greatest living painter:  moreover Picasso made a special point of turning to smile and bow in my direction.  Perhaps he really did believe he had met somebody important:  on the other hand, his politeness being almost oriental in its inscrutability, he may have been dying inwardly of laughter.

From Memoirs Of The Forties (London, Alan Ross, 1965)

Note to reader:  When I was researching illustrations of ugly London subway advertising during the period MacLaren-Ross is describing to Picasso in this excerpt, in order to include them here, I was extremely surprised to find the number of images I did, very few of them at all ugly, despite  MacLaren-Ross' account.  Most of what I viewed (and I trolled the years beginning about 1918 through the 1960s) was interesting and visually strong, especially London Transport's (now called Transport for London or TfL) advertisements promoting the Tube itself, as well as London's peerless  qualities and places to visit.

A vast quantity of these images can be viewed online at the London Transport Museum's website, a destination I highly recommend.  I've included a few of these below, including several by the brilliant American artist, Edward McKnight Kauffer, who is recorded as creating the first cubist-influenced subway advert.  Among the pictures shown, The Barmaid (what an unexpected image this is for display in a public transport system; it immediately summons up for me the world of Patrick Hamilton's Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky London trilogy) was created by the Royal Academician, Ruskin Spear, CBE, the father of the musician and painter, Roger Ruskin Spear of the Bonzo Dog Band.  Another, which recommends a visit to Highgate Ponds (a good idea) is by the contemporary British master Howard Hodgkin.   I have also included a nice, but rejected, work by the well-known painter and graphic artist John Nash (the younger brother of key British printmaker Paul Nash) to show that apparently not everything works in the subway context.  London Transport declined to use Nash's Chilterns piece because his color palette was deemed unsuitable for typical Tube station lighting.

Some of the most interesting and haunting posters were created during World War II and dictate war precautions and other matters of patriotic import.  Readers familiar with MacLaren-Ross will know that, despite his capacity for cynicism and his disastrous Army experiences, it would be out of character for him to criticize material created in support of Britain's war efforts merely on aethetic grounds. 

One thing I really enjoy about MacLaren-Ross's sketch is his description of Pablo Picasso's powerful and captivating way of regarding his partner in conversation.  It brings to mind the great line in the Modern Lovers' song, Pablo Picasso, which goes:  "He was only 5' 3", but girls could not resist his stare".  Possibly you know the rest.

Edward McKnight Kauffer, Daily Herald advertisement, 1919 (considered the first cubist-inspired subway advertisement)

Unknown Artist, Her Majesty The Queen Broadcasting To The Women Of The British Empire, 1943

Misha Black and David Langon, For Comfort's Sake, Stagger Office Hours, 1943

Howard Hodgkin, Highgate Ponds, 1989

Ruskin Spear, Bar Maid, 1987

Edward McKnight Kauffer, Shop Between 10 and 4, 1947

John Nash, Chilterns, 1950 (rejected design)

Abram Games, A Train Every 90 Seconds, 1937

Eric Henri Kennington, Seeing It Through (Station Woman), 1944

Julian Maclaren-Ross