‘Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.’ Virginia Woolf
Seldom have I written an essay feeling so spoilt for choice. Which episode, from a career glittering with mortifications, shall I choose? Should it, for example, be my first literary lunch? The other speaker was Harry Secombe. He had written a serious book and wished to speak seriously about it. I had also written what I hoped was a serious book, a serious comedy of manners, and wanted to make some jokes. But his reputation as a famous ‘Goon’, and the description of me as a literary biographer, completely prevented us from doing what we wanted. When Harry Secombe rose to his feet and said ‘Good afternoon’, people fell off their chairs with laughter and rolled around in ecstasy; while I, firing off some jokes, saw the same audience frown learnedly and begin making notes on their menus. It was a fiasco, and we agreed afterwards that we should have swapped speeches.
Worse than this was my first literary festival, the Bedford Square Book Bang. I hadn’t been asked to do anything very difficult – simply stand in the rain next to a wheelbarrow full of books and sign all those that were bought. The trouble was that none was being bought. Seeing me standing damply there, like an unemployed gardener, my publisher commandeered a megaphone and bellowed out the news that ‘the famous biographer’ was even now signing copies of his book. ‘Roll up!’ he cried – and suddenly out of the gloom someone did roll up. He was carrying a copy of my book which, he explained, he would like to return as not being worth the paper it was written on – an insult that, as the rain fell on its pages, swelling and distorting them visibly, was much magnified. A scuffle developed during which, I like to think, I inserted my blurred name. But in the end I sold minus one copy – a score that should surely earn me an entry in The Guinness Book of Records.
But perhaps it is wiser to choose an overseas humiliation, such as the time I gave a lecture in a very large, totally empty hall in the United States. ‘We’ll wait a little for stragglers,’ said the polite professor who was to introduce me. We waited but no one straggled. Eventually we clambered on to the stage and the professor introduced me in glowing language –1 only wish someone had been there to hear him. It seemed he was too paralysed by embarrassment to call off the event, and I, needing the cheque, was obliged to deliver my lecture, speaking for forty minutes into the thin air. Halfway through this performance someone came through the door, stopped and stood staring at us. Was this surreal soliloquy a rehearsal for something? I turned to him and, like the Ancient Mariner, tried to hold him there. But with a look of alarm he turned on his heel (a movement I had read about but never seen before) and ran out. I felt exhausted by the time I finished speaking, and, there being no questions, the professor rose and thanked me. As we climbed off the podium together, he remarked without, so far as I could tell, any trace of irony: ‘Your lecture would have gone down even better, Mr Holroyd, with a larger audience.’ I consoled myself with the thought that there had been an audience of two: us two. Later I heard that there was a students’ uprising that day, sounds of which – a muffled chanting – had wafted through the hall, accompanying me as I stood mouthing my words.
Irony, I have discovered, is often a good defence against mortification, but sometimes it can backfire, especially when you are abroad. A prime example of this happened to me in Moscow where I went as a member of a GB/USSR conference of writers. We fielded a distinguished team: Matthew Evans (now Lord Evans), Melvyn Bragg (now Lord Bragg), my wife Margaret Drabble, Francis King, Penelope Lively, Fay Weldon and myself. These were pre-Gorbachev days and the Soviet team of writers seemed to us old and dour. When it was the turn of one of us to speak, they would put their feet on the table, read their newspapers, and tell each other incomprehensible jokes. I was scheduled to speak on the last morning and, angered by what I had witnessed, I rewrote my speech and gave a copy to the simultaneous translator. I spoke slowly, with withering scorn, even contempt, and was gratified to see that I was getting the full attention of the Soviet team. They put down their feet and their newspapers, ceased joking and listened attentively. Much encouraged, I assumed my most acid tone, piling one ingenious insult upon another, building up a Gothic edifice of cunning invective. My final crescendo of abuse was greeted with loud applause, and one of our team passed me a brief note: ‘Does irony translate?’ Evidently mine did not, and what left me as subtle and devastating satire arrived at the other side of the table as a peculiarly sophisticated hymn of praise.
The afternoon sessions of our conference were jollier affairs, largely because of the excellent lunches which featured many simultaneously translated, simultaneously drunk, toasts. I drank for England that week and often appeared at breakfast wearing dark glasses. At lunch, on the final day, much to Maggie’s embarrassment, I rose swaying to my feet and raising my glass high (before attempting to smash it to the floor over my shoulder) proposed a toast to the great spirit that had brought us, and our literature, together – ‘the spirit of vodka!’
Maggie said she would never take me anywhere again. But occasionally she relents and I am able to send her children evidence of some fresh mortification – such as the photograph of us before dawn in Ireland, in front of the cream of Irish literature, singing along with that notorious pop group, the Dubliners.