The Unhappy Valley
White Mischief by James Fox
They flocked to Kenya from England, the rich and titled and footloose, in the first half of the twentieth century. There they avoided bad debts, marital commitments and the war. They drank too much and spent an inordinate amount of time eating — so much time that it perplexed their servants. The centre of their world was the club. And in the club people behaved riotously and badly. They threw food and knocked each other over at dinner. They went to each others’ houses, slept with each others’ spouses, and generally behaved with intemperance and dissipate luxury.
And then, in 1941, one of their number was murdered. Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll. He was shot in the head, so close that the black powder of the cartridge burnt his face, and a fevered and unsuccessful investigation commenced.
The book James Fox has written is largely about that investigation. It’s a fine work of journalism. He travelled far and spoke to many people. His pen portraits are good and reasonable. He interrogates the transcripts of the trial carefully and produces some good precis. I learnt a little about the legal system of British Kenya, and for that I am thankful.
My problem is with the tale, not the teller. I dislike the social world Fox has chronicled. I dislike its aspect, its period, and its people. They were immoral layabouts, many of them hiding away from a war in which millions of others served and suffered. Their indiscretions and passions are supposed to be interesting and glamorous, but I must say I found them petty and tawdry by turns.
To give you an example, all the major characters — male and female — of these various triangular relationships are held to be terribly attractive. Lord Erroll, for example — he was apparently irresistible to those of either sex. I’ve seen a fair number of pictures of him — they came enclosed — in both life and on the mortuary slab. I’m no philistine — I can largely tell if someone was pretty or not. And I must confess to being baffled by his apparent appeal.
The various waif-like women, too, with which the story is populated — the book has endless little recollections of the transfixing power of these women. Fox even allows himself to be psychologically overpowered by the presence of Diana, Lady Delamere, née Caldwell, lately Delves-Broughton and Coleville.
Fox’s writing partner, the late Cyril Connolly, is one of the stars of the book. Connolly was a great critic and aesthete, a clever man whose copious notes provided the basis for the article Fox and Connolly wrote on the case for the Sunday Times Magazine and for this book. Connolly’s notes are astute and quite witty. The man was in many ways a self-conscious failure, but he applied himself quite well to this.
A man of great inventiveness and capacity for investigation. Someone who gave the whole enterprise its shape. Connolly was also a fat old snob — a gourmand with a good memory, whose interest in the ‘Happy Valley set’ had some sycophantic, and even discreetly amorous, undertones. These were the types of people he never felt at home among — whom he wanted to love and appreciate him in his own way.
One of Fox’s asides describes quite well this desire Connolly, and perhaps too among some observers of the case.
The possibility that he could never know the truth about Diana drove Connolly mad with curiosity. He was like the German Prince in Marlowe’s Dr Faustus who asks Faustus, now in league with the devil, to summon up Alexander the Great’s concubine so that he can satisfy his burning, obsessive curiosity: does she or does she not have a mole on her neck? One of Connolly’s informants told him that, as a result of a shooting incident long after the trial [of her then-husband, Sir Jock Delves-Broughton, accused of the murder of Lord Erroll], Diana had been marked by a bullet which had grazed her back. He once suggested, as a joke, that I go and fine out if it was true. But he badly wanted to know.
This gives a flavour of the careful, revealing style of this book — and contains much psychological truth. Anyone who has read Martin Amis’ “Let me Count the Times” or has speculated personally, as some have, on the shape of Cleopatra’s nose, or the real colour of queen of Egypt’s hair, could explain some of the suppressed erotic appeal of these little historical mysteries. But as to why this shabby story excited such interest as it did, or why it survived in popular culture for forty years — long enough to interest the journalist Fox — I am at a loss.
There is also rather a lot of rubbernecking from the people Fox interviewed, people who knew the case and not. They all had their absurd little theories — dinner time distractions, fun little diversions to while away the idle years. All this in the same way that people enjoy costume pictures and gossip about the distant past. A waste of energy and time, most of it.
All of this is quite silly, which is perhaps a strange paratext for the story of a murder. But the whole thing is almost high camp. The absurd social ritual, the dressing for dinner — the question of purloined pearls and paintings. Does Lady Delamere wear her jewels in the bath and the swimming pool, or was this the African servants telling tales among themselves? And on and on.
The characters of this tale have lives which are not themselves interesting, and are even repulsive — but which are seemingly too interesting for them to take. I lost count of the number of suicides. A few decease from heart conditions before the main murder plot even gets going. Perhaps these transplants cannot take to Africa — a canvas for their poor behaviour but not a place they appear to love, or know anything about. Or perhaps it was the stress of running all those affairs, and making all that elaborate mischief.
I finished the book surprised at the meticulousness of Fox’s work, but surprised also that someone so talented would find it worthwhile to pursue so diversionary an exercise. And to fall, however knowingly, a little in love with such an inferior cast of people.