Clarissa

Pamela (Samuel Richardson, 1740) was a best seller and an early English novel. I have not read it. Nor have I read Shamela, Henry Fielding’s satire on same; he rushed it out in 1741. Both authors have gone out of fashion, fortunately for Hugo Vickers, as a request for Clarissa today is more likely to get you his biography than Fielding’s novel of the same name. Wouldn’t Shamela be an apt title for a biography of Pamela Harriman who was at school with Clarissa Eden?

Biographies, more often than not, are written by historians but I found it refreshing to read Hugo’s gossipy, name-dropping and penetrating insight into Clarissa Eden. Lists of attendees at events reminds me of Jennifer’s Diary. Frankly, at the end of the Churchill biography I read recently, I knew the history and the politics but I didn’t know the man. Hugo knew Clarissa for decades and peppers his book with anecdotes of their friendship and travels, casting light on her forthright approach to life. I often laughed. He also as her literary executor has access to her diaries and papers and, as he charmingly says, has given himself permission to quote them. Much more importantly it is not until the halfway point that her marriage to Anthony Eden is brought into the story. Her early life is with some candour revealed. Living in Oxford in 1939, she was tutored in Philosophy by AJ Ayer – she was not enrolled as a student. That’s a bit of the brainy bit. Then there’s the relationships, intense, frustrating, never leading to marriage.

The surprise is her marriage to Anthony Eden, already with one behind him, and a son. I can guess, but a guess, that Anthony saw in Clarissa the ultimate in intelligence, glamour and sexiness – a trophy wife. (Onassis/Kennedy?) Another guess, she wanted a project and as it happened loved him to boot. The book gives little insight into Anthony Eden himself but that’s not the point. It does reveal her devotion to her husband and her championing of his reputation in her long widowhood.

I believe it is traditional to point out an oversight by an author. Well, I think Hugo might have mentioned the fish forks. Clarissa laid the table with two forks for fish. I only have one reliable source and of course it’s possible that it was a blunder by the parlour maid.

Hugo’s depiction of his friend is courageous. Fortunately she and most of those mentioned are dead. It’s the sort of book I like better than a stodgy history – champagne not small beer. Indeed on a Sunday evening, when she was well over 101 (age not temp), Clarissa had a glass of champagne, a chocolate soufflé and died in her sleep.