They don't get much better than this - a memoir which does not shudder into self-pity or become bloated with self-satisfaction. Christopher Logue's Prince Charming is an absorbing read. It tells the story of the English poet in three parts: from 1926-1951 on his way to Paris; 19511956 his life in Paris; and 1956-1966 on his return home to London, where we are left, more or less, with a retrospective of friends lost and a life lived: "So far," he writes in 1998, "my life has been pretty easy. I have not been driven away from my own country, or emotionally betrayed. Nor have I had to face a debilitating illness, or poverty, or professional neglect. I have not seen one close to me suffer terrible damage, or go mad, or kill themselves. Indeed, sex aside, I have done more or less what I fancied doing, and the greater part of my time has been passed in the company of those who have done likewise."
Spliced throughout this first forty years of his life retold, Logue introduces us to his parents, their parents, his schooling in the Irish Christian Brothers Prior Park College in Bath, his army life in the aftermath of the second World War (a bizarre story in itself) and the seemingly inevitable fate of his writing life as a poet. Logue recalls a London which has more or less disappeared: the Royal Court Theatre heyday in the '50s and '60s, CND, a forceful creativity which embraced politics and the imagination without po-faced correctness or an eye on the main chance.
"Everybody knows," Logue writes in one of his darting asides, "that until the fifties British artists - poets included - came from the middle classes, helped out by the occasional aristo, well-to-do gent or taken-up-nobody. But since then those entering the world of the arts have arrived from all parts of the world, many from lower-middle-class and working-class backgrounds." This is the world of Kenneth Tynan and Doris Lessing on the first Aldermaston March (1958), of George Devine and Lindsay Anderson; of Nell Dunn and Vanessa Redgrave working with BBC radio on Logue's "versions" of Homer (subsequently published as War Music). Fleeting glimpses of the revered Beckett, however, cast long shadows both from the Paris days and later in London. This is Paris, autumn 1955: "Beckett arrived unannounced. Having asked if we would care to accept them, Beckett unwrapped a brownpaper parcel and distributed copies of his two books of poems, Whoroscope, from 1930, and, from five years later, Echo's Bones. `I was having a clear-out and found them in a box. There was no great demand for them,' he said, sounding pleased."
Logue is a great storyteller. One moment we are in one time-frame; the next we are in the present looking back; the next we are in a siding pondering his sex life - a thorny question finally resolved by the half-Finnish, half-Welsh daughter of an oil-company executive; or we are wandering down through Portobello; upstairs in Tynan's cool apartment; or bumping into one or other of the real names of post-war English (by which I mean Scottish) poetry, such as W.S. Graham: "I answer to Sydney."
"Eliot was his publisher," remarks Logue of Graham. "He (Eliot) loves gossip. He told me that Hemingway went to the lavatory in Pound's Paris hotel and pulled the chain so hard the cistern came off the wall and knocked him out. Then he claimed his bruises were from defeating three Lascars in a street fight."
There is, nonetheless, a darker side to Prince Charming as the young Logue becomes somewhat detached from his self; is wearied by his life and saved by friends. Like Yeats, Logue has been fortunate in not only having the friends he has had but in keeping them. Their contribution to this book, in the form of recorded speech drawn also from notebooks and diaries, makes for a curiously complete portrait of the poet. A kind of courage shows through the memoir, what used to be called "a willfulness", which isn't so common these days, but above all Christopher Logue has written a great read full of true stories and fascinating people, such as the following, one of my favourites from this important book:
A call came from Ken Tynan inviting me to meet Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller at his flat. As far as dress went, I was still in my roundhead days, varying my white shirt, black pullover with the Chinese worker look. For my audience with Monroe I had bought a new shirt, had my trousers cleaned and pressed, polished my shoes, washed my hair, brushed my teeth. What would she be wearing? How would her hair be done? If she smoked, would I be able to light her next cigarette? I made sure my fingernails were clean.
Marilyn was, however, crying and talking on the phone with Arthur in separate rooms in the Tynan apartment. `He's been talking to her for an hour. It doesn't sound as if he's going to be off for a while.'. Oh. `Elaine (Tynan's wife) is in the kitchen. Have a cup of tea with her.' While I did, Ken wandered in and out, cigarette on the go, saying: `He says she's soon going to feel better . . . He needs another cup of coffee . . . He's still on the phone . . . ' I left an hour later without even seeing her handbag.