If I gave you a butterscotch early 1950s Fender Telecaster with a Gibson PAF humbucking pickup, what would you do with it? I might add, to make my theoretical gift more interesting, that it’s called Micawber.
I have finished the first volume of James Lees-Milne’s diaries. The second, Prophesying Peace, is making its way to Barons Court from a secondhand bookshop in America. While I wait I have returned to James Agate’s diaries and am in March 1935. He has been to see David Copperfield, the M-G-M film adapted by Hugh Walpole. In so far as Walpole is remembered today it is as the subject of Rupert Hart-Davis’s 1952 biography. Like Carlyle and Quiller-Couch he is famous but never read. Like the film Barry Lyndon, the title of the book was shortened to David Copperfield from The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger. A wise decision. The film was acclaimed by the critics and the public. It is still considered a screen classic.
There was one dissenting voice: James Agate. He finds fault in particular with WC Fields’ portrayal of Mr Micawber. He finds Fields a buffoon giving the character none of the gentility and learning that Dickens gave Micawber. It doesn’t help that Fields is short with a full head of hair and Micawber was tall and bald. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that often Dickens is more approachable on the screen than on the page. I have ordered a DVD and got Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist as well.
Agate’s main job is as theatre critic for The Sunday Times. He comments on a production of Frolic Wind:
“Rather a nuisance that the part of the young man is played by an actor called Sir Basil Something, I forget what. A nuisance because he acts like a gentleman, whereas most of our juvenile leads are nondescripts with a fake Oxford accent imposed on a genuine Brixton one, or else pushing young particles who have left the glove counter to better themselves. I shall say that this fellow behaves like a gent, but all the same I could wish he hadn’t a handle to his name.”
The actor’s name is Sir Basil Bartlett who went on to become a screenwriter and head of the BBC’s script department. Now what have you done with the Fender Telecaster I gave you? Actually I couldn’t give it to you as it’s still Keith Richards’ favourite guitar. I expect some of you knew that and some of you, fewer perhaps, knew that Hugh Walpole adapted David Copperfield but in the great Venn diagram of life I suspect few knew both. For my part I didn’t know either until I wrote this post.
https://youtu.be/dbgPF-xY1ks
Eric Clapton gave Micawber to Keith Richards for his 27th birthday when the Stones were getting ready to start work on their magnum opus ‘Exile on Main Street’, recorded at Nellcôte, an ex-Gestapo HQ in Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice.
Names are intriguing. His beautiful S3 Continental Bentley Flying Spur, nicknamed ‘Blue Lena’ in honour of his favorite American singer Lena Horne sold in 2015 for $1.2 million by Bonhams. Bought in 1965, it featured some unusual features, ie darkened rear windows, a record player and a secret compartment in the chassis for what he called “illegal substances.” He relates that it was used for many an acid-fuelled journey including a legendary 1967 trip to Morocco with Anita Pallenberg where romance blossomed.
Imagine meeting that machine on the road being driven by a much refreshed Keith……
Great stuff, thank you, I relish that sort of trivia.