Lost Classic – The Harold Nicolson Diaries

Harold Nicolson was a lifelong, unapologetic, snob. He favoured aristocratic ways, though he was not himself an aristocrat. He was a man of many talents and of real if limited accomplishments. If his extraordinary marriage to Vita Sackville-West had not been exposed by his son to public view in a notorious book, he would have been known to most people today as the husband of the originator and co-custodian of the justly celebrated garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. But Nicolson was much more than that and he had one overriding talent – he could write with great facility and zest about almost any subject and often did so in order to help keep his aristocratic lifestyle on the road. For Harold depended to a slavish extent on the financial resources of Vita and she in turn upon those of her mother; he had talent but little money, or at least not as much as his lifestyle demanded.

From his (unexpectedly successful) entry into the Diplomatic Service shortly before the First World War to participation in the Versailles Conference and postings in Berlin and Tehran, Nicolson had his pen firmly deployed in diplomatic despatches and then in literary biographies (of Verlaine, Tennyson and Byron), historical studies, a biography of George V (for which he was knighted), and even the occasional novel. Though still readable it is not those books which are actually read today. Indeed in so far as any of his large output is still read at all, it is his diary and especially its daily account of his years as an MP during the Second World War, which still draws attention.

Despite his (and Vita’s) often disdainful attitude to the bourgeois views and values of his wide acquaintanceship, Nicolson was a generally tolerant and sympathetic commentator and essayist. His interests ranged very widely indeed as reflected in the many essays which flowed from his pen and which surfaced in an extraordinary range of magazines and periodicals as well as “on air” (he was a notably accomplished broadcaster). Many appeared in his regular column for The Spectator during and after the Second World War, but as a jobbing writer he did not spurn publications such as Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair or Radio Times. With an expensive lifestyle to support (especially after Labour came to power in 1945) Nicolson could not afford to be too sniffy and he wasn’t. And though the quality was inevitably uneven, there is much still to savour, and the author’s “voice” remains distinctive and attractive. Nicolson had the knack of writing an essay as if it were a letter to an individual and the range of subjects he covered over the years was quite extraordinary.

Some of the essays read curiously to a contemporary reader. To those of us accustomed to endless news items on the challenges of inward migration, it is arresting to read reflections (in 1946) on the post-war outward exodus from Britain:

“I met a friend of mine yesterday who informed me he was thinking of emigrating to South Africa. I was astounded…  The amenities of our native land, the invisible fibres of tradition which link us with our fellow-countrymen… And of all human ills, home-sickness… is the most difficult to cure.”

Others invoke minor historical figures to entertaining or touching but never patronising effect. Thus an essay on “Mr William Fletcher” brings sharply to life Lord Byron’s valet who insisted on accompanying Byron on his final exile in Italy and Greece in 1811. As Nicolson relates:

“Already at this stage the valet had come to adopt a proprietary manner towards his master. He disapproved even of ‘that Mr Shelley’, who told his Lordship ghost stories which caused his Lordship at night to scream… At Missolonghi… his master became very ill indeed: Fletcher, a tall bearded figure in yellow trousers, went about blubbering.”

And historical resonances are always freshly served. Thus writing in 1944 after the disastrous escapade at Arnhem, Nicolson reflected on the connection with an earlier English disaster in Holland, that of 1586 when Sir Philip Sidney, having been wounded in a skirmish outside the city walls of Zutphen, was carried down the Yssel and Lek rivers to the town of Arnhem where a month later “in the house of Mrs Gruithuissens, he died” and was greatly mourned in his own country.

But best of all are the essays touching on the ordinary dimensions of daily life. His “A Defence of Shyness” is a quiet rendering of something we have all felt, especially but not only, when we were young and easily embarrassed. Nicolson analyses categories of shyness and then makes a general claim:

“In the first place you must diagnose the type of shyness from which you suffer. There are two main divisions of the disease: the physical type and the mental type. The physical type are shy about their limbs, their arms and legs make jerky automatic movements which cause breakages… The mental type are shy about what they say or where they look. It is the latter who are most to be pitied… Perhaps shyness is a purely Anglo-Saxon failing. I doubt whether even the tenderest of Roman poets… was shy… I think shyness is an Anglo-Saxon quality. And as such it should be honoured as a bind between the English-speaking nations.”

And writing of “Good Taste and Bad Taste” this fastidious would-be aristocrat remarked that “bad taste is something more than a mere lack of kindliness or perception. It is an aggressive indelicacy, it is insensitiveness translated into action.” And he offered a cautionary comment on good taste: “… let us not … elevate into a law, or render unto God the things that are Caesar’s… otherwise we shall cabin our hearts and minds in standardised boxes.”

Nor should we overlook Nicolson’s reflections on politics, about which he could be eminently sane. Writing after a by-election he lost in 1948 he remarked:

“After three weeks of a by-election it is agreeable to return to the amenities of private life. An experience such as that which I have recently undergone teaches one that it is sweet and decorous to pass unnoticed along the pavements or to sit unrecognised with other fellow citizens upon an omnibus …  Pleasant indeed are the comforts of obscurity.”

And, having lost a by-election, how many senior politicians today could reflect as urbanely as Nicolson:

“The worst of being old is that one is apt to see the other person’s point of view. A good candidate … [in an election] … should be convinced that he is more intelligent, far more honourable, and infinitely more valuable to his country than any of his opponents. I have never been adept at that sort of thing.”

Nicolson’s voice is a civilised one and we need as many of those today as we can muster. It is not difficult to locate copies of Nicolson’s published essays in second hand bookshops or online, and it is well worth your doing so.