Humiliation

London is the first city of humiliation: London does it better than anywhere else. I should know, its latest victim. First my divorce — you would think, what with war in Korea and the death of King George — that the Times would have more newsworthy events to report than my decree absolute from my wife of 18 months. ‘Novelist Yves Hill divorces, confesses to adultery’. Of course I confessed — only to spare myself the further wounds, the death by a thousand cuts, of admitting to Felicity’s adultery with that zero, that nul, that parvenu nonentity Gerald Laing-Turner.

Yet after the humiliation of the divorce came the further humiliation of the publication of my fourth novel, Oblong (Dunn & Melhuish, 10s 6d) and the sudden, brutal auto-da-fé of my long-nurtured reputation. Does it seem crass to admit that I felt this last humiliation more keenly than the first? I am still an artist, after all: I have stopped being a husband. The pain I felt, the physical pain in my belly, as I read review after hostile, bile-charged review (why do they hate me so, these strangers?) still lingers. What is an artist to do in this ghastly situation? Why, go to Paris, city of artists, city of Degas, Proust, Larbaud, Jean-Paul and Simone. I took the boat-train that night, played records in my solitary compartment, dreaming of Paris and the Paris-cure. But the city was slow to work its magic, this time. First, there was the flaccid and embarrassing session in the maison de tolérance, followed by a melancholy solitary meal and far too much drink. Crapulous, angry with myself the next morning, I sat in the Café Flore contemplating a spitting glass of mineral water (liver salts fizzing within) and wondering vaguely about my life. Why do they call that potent liqueur eau de vie? Eau de mort is more apt.