My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyextraordinary capacity for thought and action with qualities conspicuously humane bythe standards of that epoch. In his admiration of Caesar he went so far as to say that ifthere were now enough of men like him on earth, 'all our political, moral andecclesiastic institutions would vanish to make way for a higher order'.This theme interested me, for if we desire to practise any art we should study itsleading exponents. If a man wants to play tennis well, he should go to Wimbledon andwatch the style of the contemporary champion. If he enters politics, he should readhistory and study the form of the great masters of action. For this purpose JuliusCaesar had always seemed to me the supreme example. In my early days in politics Ithought of writing about him, but was put off by one of the foolish inhibitions ofyouth which fears to appear pretentious; so I continued these studies in silence andonce again saluted Shaw.There were several remarkable writers at this time, but—outside the professionalphilosophers and scientific writers who much influenced me—none of those whocould be described as artists or thinkers seemed to me the equal of Shaw in theirinsight or capacity for creative thought. He was essentially a thinker, and most of theothers were story-tellers or translators; what the French call vulgarisateurs: those whotranslate into relatively simple language the abstruse thoughts of more distinguishedthinkers.Among the writers I then met was Lytton Strachey, whose delightful style to my tastewas at its best in his essay on Racine. My acquaintance with him was slight and mymost vivid memory remains an occasion when we were both invited to a wine-tastingparty. He greeted me with the words: 'Thank goodness you have arrived, I wasconvinced that I had been lured here to be murdered'. He had been the first arrival atthe given address, which turned out to be an underground cellar hung with duellingswords. His high voice emerging from his strange appearance must have startled thetribunal which interrogated him on his conscientious objection to the First World Warwith the question: 'What would you do if you saw a Prussian officer raping yoursister?' only to be met with the alleged reply: 'I should try to come between them'. Iprefer this version which I heard long ago, to another account of the same incident ina recent biography.Aldous Huxley sitting on his shoulders, like some of the Cecils, is anotherrecollection of that period. It has been said, in France even more than in England, thatI was one of the characters in Point Counter Point., but in fact he only knew meslightly and the characterisation, if it exists, related entirely to my public appearances,which he had apparently studied to some extent. I suffered a good deal in this periodfrom appearance in novels which ascribed to me in private life the qualities which hadbeen observed solely from my performances in public life. My passion on theplatform was all too easily transmuted to most private occasions in the brightimagining of these artists who had only seen me in contact with crowds.Wyndham Lewis, Roy Campbell and others who were supposed, sometimesincorrectly, to represent my point of view in literature, I got to know at a later stage.Wyndham Lewis used to come to see me in most conspiratorial fashion, at dead ofnight with his coat collar turned up. He suggested that he was in fear of assassination,but the unkind said he was avoiding his creditors. I found him agreeable but touchy.189 of 424