Julian Maclaren-Ross: Of Love and Hunger (1947)

Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912–64) is one of that slightly contradictory group of writers – both obscure and well known. Many readers are aware of him in a secondhand fashion, in the pastiche of Maclaren-Ross as X Trapnel in Anthony Powell's Books Do Furnish a Room (1970). But quite recently this novel was incorporated into the Penguin Classics canon with J. D. Taylor's eight-page Introduction to this dandyish, hard-drinking, impecunious, self-destructive inhabitant of the drinking dens of Fitzrovia. As he died at the relatively young age of 52, Maclaren-Ross was too young to have attained the status of 'national treasure' or, conversely, to have disgraced himself by embracing conformity in old age; so, fuelled by photographic images of his handsome features, his malacca cane and his cigarette holder, he has developed a kind of cult status, and in 2006 his formerly unmarked grave in Paddington was furnished with a headstone by a group of admirers led by Virginia Ironside.

Of Love and Hunger doesn't have a complicated plot: it portrays the life of a heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking vacuum cleaner salesman chasing door-to-door demonstrations (or 'dems' – which would no doubt be called 'leads' today) and falling foul of the cut-throat nature of the work. Inadvertently he is sucked in by the powers of Sukie, the rather capricious would-be femme fatale who is the wife of his friend and colleague Roper. But in the end the increasingly black clouds of war bring a silver lining in the form of a 'respectable' job for Captain Fanshawe, who is getting married to the reliable, loving Jackie Mowbray. The complexity of the novel is in the network of subsidiary characters, some of whom have bit parts, often supplying humorous diversions, such as Larry Heliotrope who survives the system largely by conning his way through it; or Sukie's unnamed landlady sticking her ear to the keyhole when Fanshawe visits her; or Barnes, who spends more time in and out of the pubs than selling vacuum cleaners, etc.

Of Love and Hunger evokes a number of books, either coincidentally or deliberately: the title is from Auden and MacNeice's 'Letter to Lord Byron' in their Letters from Iceland (1937); the title, the context of poverty and the frequent telegraphic styles recall Lionel Britton's Hunger and Love (1931); this world is redolent of Patrick Hamilton's boarding house novels, and the doomed love affair to a certain extent reminds us of Hamilton's The Midnight Bell (1929); Frank Tilsley's The Plebian's Progress (1933) painfully highlights the twilight world of the vacuum cleaner salesman; Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) concerns the deadening effect of conformity and has a background of poverty (a kind of retribution for those who don't conform), Coming Up for Air (1939) has conformity in a pre-war setting as a major theme, and then there's the coincidence of Orwell and Fanshawe's background in India. D. J. Taylor mentions Hemingway's pared-down style in passing, but in addition there's a vague, general American cultural influence running through the book. Highly interesting for comparison to and contrast with this novel are the depictions of lives of salesmen in two  later plays: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949) and David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (1984).

Frank Tilsley is perhaps of particular interest here, not only in his representation of vacuum cleaner selling, but as a counterpoint to Of Love and Hunger's representations of class and sexual behaviour: Tilsley came from the working class and several of his novels form part of the (more obscure) working-class canon, although Maclaren-Ross wasn't working class and Fanshawe and Sukie don't align themselves with the politics of the left but identify more with the apolitical 'misfit' as Sukie terms it; and whereas Of Love and Hunger is very coy in its portrayals of extra- and pre-marital sex, Tilsley's allusions to sex (particularly to contraception) in The Plebeian's Progress and She Was There Too (1938) are bolder, no doubt largely because they are within socially approved marital parameters.

The Literary Pubs of Fitzrovia: Literary London #5

The Fitzroy Tavern on 16 Charlotte Street was a key drinking spot in the pre-World War II years for such writers as Dylan Thomas, Julian Maclaren-Ross and John Singer, and the artists Augustus John and Nina Hamnett.

Ed Glinert gives an amazing story about the Duke of York on 47 Rathbone Street. On one occasion in 1943, Anthony Burgess and his wife Lynne were drinking there when a razor gang invaded, tipped beer on the floor, smashed glasses and menaced the customers. When Lynne protested about the waste of beer, they poured a large number of pints and challenged her to drink them, which she did. Such was their subsequent respect for her that they paid for the beer and offered Lynne protection from any other gangs.

The Newman Arms on 23 Rathbone Street was the model George Orwell used in the argument about socialism between his characters Gordon Comstock and Ravelston in Keep the Aspdistra Flying (1936), and also the model for the prole pub Winston visits in 1984.

The Marquis of Granby on the corner of Rathbone Street and Percy Street was thought too violent for many literary Fitzrovians, but it appears to be the very reason why Dylan Thomas chose to go there.

The Wheatsheaf, on 25 Rathbone Place, is where the Fitzrovians, tired of the attention they were receiving at the Fitzroy Tavern, felt forced to move to. Here, Augustus John introduced Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Macnamara, who would become his wife. In Anthony Powell's A Buyer's Market (1952), X. Trapnel is modeled on the hard-drinking, frequently in debt, Julian Maclaren-Ross, who wore a teddy bear coat and carried a silver-topped cane. Raynor Heppenstall's character Dorian Scott-Crichton in The Lesser Infortune (1953) is also modeled on Maclaren-Ross.

Tucked away on tiny Gresse Street, the Bricklayers' Arms was a quiet place for the Fitzrovians if the mood so took them. Glinert says that this was known as the Burglars Rest following a buglary in which the culprits drank themselves senseless and fell asleep.