I can never remember what the other "enemies of promise" are supposed to be, but one line stands out in Cyril Connolly’s famous memoir-manifesto: "There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall".
Connolly’s centenary passed pretty much unremarked last year, which may be a sign that his own genius succumbed either to parenthood or to another of the fifth columnists that lie in wait for brilliant young writers as they turn into rather older bil
l and tax-paying authors.
It’s never been clear whether having children (and this applies to both males and females of the species) marks just a change in outward circumstance and responsibility or represents a fundamental change in the way we’re hard-wired. Having a new baby does change the way we look at the world, in that every speeding car is aimed like a bullet at our very own perambulator, every toxic waste and terrorist atrocity a direct threat to our nestlings. But does it change us beyond that?
Connolly was convinced that art and the disciplines of art were the highest expressions of selfishness. Artists made worlds for themselves and invited us in as paying guests. No room for passengers, dependents and hangers-on. To a degree, he’s been proved right. Many artists have remained "selfishly" childless, a judgment that harks back to a time when not providing the army, church, revolution or marriage market with fresh stock was considered to be treasonable. And yet many artists have surrounded themselves Micawber-like with children. Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, where the father is a haplessly blocked novelist, is a brilliant evocation of just such a family, and possibly a direct response to Connolly’s sour observation. Norman Mailer will tell you that he’s been chained to his desk for the last 40 years not to pay alimony to ex-wives, but to look after his children.
And so he should. As the late lambing, nest-building, beak-pecking, spawning and whelping goes on all around us, we’re reminded more than ever at this time of year that for all our high ambitions, our only real purpose on the planet is to do enough (and that nowadays means earn enough) to pass on our DNA. Art is just a version of that, part of the life - sentence in the dungeon of the self that Connolly - chipper as ever - determined was our lot. I think the other villains identified in Enemies of Promise might have been journalism and politics. Connolly stayed away from the latter but gave his life and what he presumably believed to be his genius to the scribbler’s club. If money is the only seemly motivation for writing - and apart from the odd exquisitely crafted lyric poem, it is - journalism is by far the best way of going about it. Connolly was very hard on book publishers, whose motivation he thought very similar to repressed sadists becoming policemen or butchers: "those with an irrational fear of life become publishers". Publishers do it because it’s one way of making a living. Those who want to write books have an irrational fear of not being noticed, of leaving the scene without a monument. Stand them up on your study floor and books look very much like gravestones. Journalism at its worst is a bedtime story or a convenient lie to cover up a painful truth: "Goldie isn’t dead, he’s just sleeping" or "the fairies will take that bad tooth away" - how often are newspaper stories no less patronising and evasive. Journalism at its best has the same urgent imperative as a crying child. It’s pretty hard to ignore and it makes you want to help, even if comfort is impossible.
If I had my way, I’d sneak into the darkened home of every garlanded first-time novelist, every opinion-forming news hack and leave a large Silver Cross parked in the hall. Just to remind them: that’s where it begins and ends.
