When this book was first published in 1934, at least one reviewer described the author's tone as "cruel," while another commented on his "audacious honesty." Remarks of this kind might suggest an autobiography of exceptional, probably unpleasant, self-exposure, whereas the considerable charm of First Childhood lies in its writer's skilful manipulation of truth. His own biographer, Mark Amory , whose book, Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric, was published in paperback earlier this year, last year described the work as a "literary masterpiece, although a minor one." It now seems likely to be the most enduring creation of Berners, a wealthy dilettante in interwar England who made a career of eccentricity. The extensive circle entertained at his country house, Faringdon in Oxfordshire, included Stravinsky, Picasso, Diaghilev, the Sitwells and Nancy Mitford - who used him as a model for Lord Merlin in her novels.
It is no surprise that Berners was a talented composer. First Childhood, which covers only its subject's first 13 years (his second volume, A Distant Prospect, is being reissued by the publishers in late August), ought to be seen as a carefully orchestrated example of the autobiographical genre instead of an accurate record of one man's life. Children who have no siblings are often inclined to invent stories and this was obviously the case with Berners, whose parents appear to have led largely separate existences after their son's birth in 1883. The audacious honesty already mentioned lies in his refusal to dissemble about this ill-matched pair; he writes that it seemed unlikely his extravagant and penurious father had ever been in love with the older but much wealthier woman he married. "But it is only fair to add," comments Berners, in another instance of his somewhat startling frankness, that his father "does not seem to be the kind of man who could ever have been seriously in love with anyone."
Among the many instances he gives of his father's lofty coolness is the latter's response to a family friend who complained about a man who had kicked his wife. "It's not cricket, is it?" the friend remarked. " `No,' said my father, stifling a yawn; `it seems to me more like football.' " Paternal indifference obviously rankled. When it was suggested he should beat his son for an offence, "he merely said he couldn't be bothered. I suppose I ought to have been grateful to him, but I remember feeling a little offended by his lack of interest."
HIS mother, on the other hand, gave a great deal of attention to her child, who repaid this devotion with a candid portrait in his autobiography. Harold Nicolson described Berners's mother as having the face of William Gladstone and the brain of a peahen, and while her son is not quite as blunt as this, he calls her "unworldly, naive, impulsive and undecided." He comments constantly on her want of imagination and humour - "the keystone of my mother's character was an artless simplicity" - and notes "fox-hunting was the dominant interest in my mother's life." Regretfully, he detested horses from the moment when, as a very small boy, he was first placed on one. It is to Berners's credit that he can be as ironically amused by his youthful self as by those who surrounded him. There is never any sense of pity for the solitary, rather vulnerable little figure he must once have been, especially when sent off to preparatory school. Here, like so many other sensitive but intelligent children, he quickly learnt the necessity of adopting an impenetrable facade.
"For the first time social discrimination became a matter of importance. One's behaviour had to be adjusted accordingly." Berners perfectly captures the hermetic atmosphere of boarding school - a prison where the inmates pay for the privilege of being unable to escape - in which petty rules and traditions devoid of any inherent value are regarded as immutably sacred. Naturally, as in all such institutions, sport was considered of the utmost importance and boys were encouraged to believe "that organised games were the touchstone of character and that, unless you happened to excel in them, there was little likelihood of your ever being good for anything in later life." Given his own ineptitude on both the football and cricket pitch, the years spent at school were less than happy, but Berners never overtly pleads for the reader's sympathy. This is one reason why First Childhood deserves to have been reprinted; frank and unmawkish, it provides a faultless portrait of a society which, in many respects, still persists across the Irish Sea.
Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times journalist