Customer Reviews

Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure

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If you are, as I am, fascinated with the "Bright Young People" who made headlines and gossip columns in Britain during the 20's, then this book is tailor-made (or 'bespoke' as they say in England.) It might be a little long, but if you are not bent on reading it quickly, then it's just right. Full of letters and photos, this biography of a man who hadn't a chance, given the circumstances, is riveting. I do not think, in the long run, that he was a failure. I think he did his best, which -- unfortunately -- was not good enough in the long run.

Ms. Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (What an oddly spelt and hyphenated name.) who met Brian Howard as a girl during the London Blitz and, like so many portrayed herein, was both charmed and fascinated by him, has her tongue firmly ensconced-in-cheek in subtitling this very readable, extremely well-documented, delight of a biography, which she calls a "three year (1964-1967) labour of love" in the Acknowledgements a "Portrait of a Failure". What she intends is that this is how the world saw him. Reading about Howard's exploits in this sparkling tribute to him, he comes across throughout as a character with considerable éclat and sensibility, and though his life is more than a bit of a shambles towards the end of it, he seems to have died happily.

Of course, he didn't produce the great opus everyone, for whatever reason, expected of him and that he - to a certain extent that's hard to judge - expected, in a rather desultory way, of himself, but he lived a fuller life - an aesthetic one, devoted to literature, which Proust maintains - in a poignant passage amongst so many other poignant passages of his - is the only REAL life to be lived - than most who pass their life, as Thoreau famously put it, in "quiet desperation". He rather reminds one of Shelley's - a poet he read much and admired - poem "The Sensitive Plant" though perhaps with sharp petals: His wit could cut and hurt. In the end, one feels more appreciative of the fact that such a person existed for a time on this planet. Further, how can one call someone who writes a poem such as the following a failure?:

THE DUST

No soap can wash away this sundust

And no scrubbing, this salt dust of the sea.

What is this powder with which you are covered

When the sun lies on your skin, slantingly?

Something like pollen, yet finer, lighter

And more of a mineral thing. It glows

A St. Elmo's fire, a quicksilver wire

Which grows with the sun and with the sun goes.

Is it the true state of being clean? It smells

like an approaching island, or a shipload of hay.

Made of seadust, sunsalt and flesh, is it the true sign

Of being well and whole? It cannot be washed away

All I know is, this thing is not a substance

Found on the ill or ugly, or on those

Whose favourite word is `No'. It is very often

Worn by the beautiful instead of clothes.

All I know is, the desperate have washed you

Using their holy water, for two thousand years

And still the dust I speak of burns upon you

As bright as Love. Brighter than all their tears.

As Howard said in a letter to his mother, "Failure has its successes, you know."