Don't Tell Sybil: An Intimate Memoir of E.L.T. Mesens by George Melly Publisher 226pp, £17.99 in UK
`Surrealism is dead. Long live Surrealism." George Melly first declared his leitmotif in the catalogue of a surreal exhibition called "The Enchanted Domain" in Exeter in 1967. He repeated the declaration in the same words in the 1991 text of Paris and the Surrealists. That book, with Michael Woods, whose "eye exists in a savage state", was dedicated to the late E.L.T. Mesens, the subject of this rather stale new work.
Sure enough, here comes the old favourite paradox one more time. "Surrealism is dead," Melly writes. "Long live Surrealism." If saying so over and over again could make his wish come true, the Surrealist art of the Thirties and Forties would live forever.
If Melly can keep recycling his tributes to Andre Breton, who ruled the Surrealists of Paris in their heyday, and E.L.T. Mesens, who attempted to do as much in London, I don't see why I shouldn't quote myself on Melly. As he had demonstrated, running one's own old words repeatedly through the typewriter saves a good deal of mental exertion.
George Melly, I always say, is one of the ornaments of London, a jovially ageing Bessie Smith (he sings the blues in her style) in an old-fashioned gangster's glad-rags. A connoisseur of Magritte and trout-fishing, he is an animated Surrealist artefact, self-made, that people get hooked on.
He is a perceptive critic of almost all the modern arts, and an excellent writer. In this slightly charming, slightly kinky, slightly self-indulgent memorandum to himself, George Melly looks back at George Melly when young, discovering Surrealism. That last sentence is as relevant now as it ever was.
His fondest readers will find a lot of Don't Tell Sybil familiar - a wee bit yawn-making, I'm sorry to say. Who among us fans need to be reminded once more than George is a Liverpudlian who was educated at Stowe, joined the Royal Navy, discovered Surrealism, worked dilatorily but excitedly in Mesens's avant-garde gallery, became a singer with the Mick Mulligan Magnolia Jazz Band and, at the same time, an art critic and collector?
Which of his readers can have forgotten that while George was still wearing bell-bottoms, and when he wasn't wearing them, he was "involved .. . with a clique of aristocratic homosexuals, and busy exploring the bohemian and drunken stews of Soho"?
Edouard Mesens, born in 1903, was a displaced Belgian who helped to organise the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. He was a friend and supporter of Belgium's master Surrealist, Rene Magritte.
Melly's portrayal of his avowedly beloved mentor is not flattering. He was "comparatively short, chubby". "His face was rather like a determined baby. There was something of the music hall about him too, a touch of the Maurice Chevaliers." He was an obscure poet, an unsuccessful art dealer and, eventually, a collagist whose success was blurred by alcohol. At the age of sixteen, he was the "Oedipal son" of Paul-Gustave Van Hecke, an impresario, and his wife, who were childless. Melly performed the same role in a menage a trois with Mesens and his wife Sybil. George and Edouard did things together that he didn't want anyone to tell his wife about.
Even old hands will discover some new details of Melly's intellectual promiscuity and bisexual adventurism in Don't Tell Sybil. Newcomers will probably find Melly's candour amusingly daring. They will certainly learn how Surrealism died in England, if not how it could be resurrected.
Patrick Skene Catling is a novelist and critic