Customer Reviews

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir

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Michael Holroyd's "Basil Street Blues" is a marvelously readable memoir by the biographer of Lytton Strachey and others. Holroyd's early life in England before, during and after WWII was filled with a cast of eccentrics-- one grandmother occasionally sported a monocle, the other shouted the odd word in French; his mother was compared in every way to champagne; his father was "a most unlikely old Etonian;" and the waning family fortune came several generations back from Rajmai Tea, a company whose dramatic ups and downs proved "better than a seat at the opera." Holroyd cleverly explains how this oddball cast of characters ultimately led him into the profession of writing biography. This is a wonderful story, told not without pathos and humor. One hopes for a sequel.

This is one of the most beautifully constructed books ....beginning slowly with an introduction too Holroyd's unusal ancestors .... his own shyness and youth among various estranged folks, and then building to a wonderful, generous, end.

I was quite overwhelmed as the last few chapters came round. I am highly recommending it to readers

Although Michael Holroyd had a difficult life growing up among eccentrics, his beautiful prose and gentle sense of humor show that he nonetheless emerged as a remarkably insightful, down-to-earth adult. His descriptions of the people who influenced him are wonderfully observant, and kinder than most of the people probably deserved. On page 142, he notes that what he can reveal "emerges more between the lines of my writing," and he gives us ample lines to read between. I would strongly recommend Basil Street Blues to anyone interested in the art of memoir writing, as well as anyone interested in knowing more about Holroyd.

Holroyd, a biographer, turns his skills as a researcher and writer onto his own family, and proves that the devil really is in the details, and in the telling of the same. The display of his skills as a writer in dealing with the homely eccentricities and dusty skeletons in the closet of his own life have convinced me that I must, at the very least, acquire and read his work on Bernard Shaw. Definitely recommended.

This is largely an autobiography, but it is subtitled "A Family Story", and the first 80 pages or so are largely concerned with Holroyd tracing back the story of his ancestors back for six generations to the second half of the 18th century, much of it his own research in public records. He even troubled to track down in the archives of the Meteorological Office that it was raining heavily on the day his parents were married! His parents had told him very little and often what they had told him turned out to be incorrect. As so often in biographies, these early chapters are fairly heavy going as the reader tries to keep track of people whom the author did not know and whose personalities cannot really be fleshed out. There is the occasional witty remark; but by and large I have found nothing particularly interesting in those pages.

The book comes to life, and most stylishly so, when Michael Holroyd could observe his family personally: his grandfather Fraser, his neurotic grandmother Adeline, their daughter Yolande, his father Basil and his mother, the Swedish-born Ulla ("Sue"). The family had come down in the world, from Brocket, an Edwardian country house near Maidenhead, to small flats in London, from the knighthood of an 18th century Judge of the King's Bench, through a Major-General, to running the British agency for Lalique glass which eventually fell out of fashion: the agency was plunged into bankruptcy in 1939. Michael was four years old at the time. Basil would then earn a meagre living as a salesman.

When the war broke out, Michael and his parents moved into the Fraser's household in the smaller house, Norhurst, into which Fraser, Adeline and Yolande had moved from Brocket. They were all embittered by a sense of failure, and there was continual and noisy quarreling in the family. It must have been hell for a small only child, but Michael took refuge in reading as soon as he could read, and in this book he wittily and poignantly recounts these quarrels (as he had done in a roman à clef - A Dog's Life - which had given deep offence to Basil).

And then of course there is Michael's own life. There is the preparatory school to which he was sent although his father had hated it there. His parents' divorced when he was eleven (Basil and Ulla would each marry twice more, all four marriages also ending in divorces. Michael will describe his mother's somewhat rackety life with filial indulgence). Basil was earning a meagre living as a salesman (and later would start up optimistically a whole series of businesses - the last one when he was approaching eighty - which never took off), but financial help first from an uncle and then from his mother's second husband enabled Michael to go to follow his father to Eton. There he fitted in fairly unobtrusively, as he had into his prep school.

There follow two boring years as an articled clerk to a solicitor, and then - hilariously described -two years of National Service.

Michael had always wanted to be a writer. Already as a boy he had read a lot of biographies, including the one by Hugh Kingsmill of Frank Harris. He became so fascinated by Kingsmill that he decided to write a biography of him. He got in touch with two of Kingsmill's friends: Hesketh Pearson and William Gerhardie, both then well-known on the literary scene. With the help of these two he broke into that scene himself, though it took him six years to find a publisher (1924). A little frustratingly, he says nothing about the process of research, or about what he lived on until he finally broke through with his famous biographies of Lytton Strachey (two volums, 1967/8), Augustus John (two volumes, 1974/5) and Bernard Shaw (four volumes, between 1998 and 1992). He says nothing about his life during those years in this book other than recording harrowing stories of the sad last years of his grandfather, of his aunt (though she loses her bitterness in her extreme old age), and of his parents. He rages against the bureaucracy he had to deal with over and over again at each stage of their decline and indeed after their deaths. And with their deaths he brings to an end this Family Story.

In 2004 Holroyd published a companion volume to this one, called "Mosaic" (see my Amazon review).

A poignant, humerous account of growing up in a multi-generational dysfunctional family in a class system so moribund one wonders why the "angry young men" were so rabid in kicking the beast.

Holroyd may be a great biographer revealing the lives of the British authors, but he struggles to portray his own life which is the subject of this book. To cope with a world he doesn't understand, he wishes for invisibility as a child. He grew up in the dysfunctional home of his grandparents and elderly aunt, but as an adult delves into the fragments of their lives and the lives of his divorced parents.
In this autobiography, he grasps as shreds of his family life, trying to piece together a coherent narrative. For the reader, the numerous relatives and switching of time frames, it becomes difficult to follow. Despite this, one feels drawn in to his search for meaning in the family's behavior.
It's an interesting, though fragmented view, of a British family clinging to past glories and bemoaning lost wealth. I really wish it included a photo section.

I am forever indebted to Michael Holroyd for introducing me to Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group. He gave me fodder for a satisfying hobby (collecting biographies of Bloomsbury figures) and for a course on Bloomsbury at our local university's College for Seniors. Here is a fine writer and in "Basil Street" his wonderful way with words is on display. Holroyd lets us in on the strange behaviors and secrets of what must have been one of Britain's most dysfunctional families (yes, even more dysfunctional than the royals). As a biographer (at a considerably more modest level), I was especially intrigued by the zig-zag trail that led Holroyd to that profession.

All of this makes for great reading, but something is missing. It's the essence of the author himself. He does chronicle his childhood, military service (one of the best chapters) and some of his career moves. But what about personal matters closer at hand? His wife, for example, is mentioned only in a sentence in the "Acknowledgements." We are not told anything about her in this memoir. Perhaps he is saving the details of his more intimate life for another book. Let's hope so. I do recommend this book for anyone who appreciates fine writing and has a fascination with biography.