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 he
fall of Jeffrey Archer, the best-selling multi-millionaire novelist,
former candidate for Mayor of London, and member of the House of
Lords, is not a tragedy because it is not about a hero — not even
a hero with a tragic flaw. It is that rarest of well-made plays,
the tragi-comedy, because Jeffrey Archer's life has been a collection
of tragic flaws in search of hero status. And the curtain that descended
on the third act at London's Old Bailey last Thursday left our anti-hero
permanently blackballed from the ranks of honor — even if he manages
to revive his career and fortune after his two-to-four years in
prison.
It is doubtful
if Jeffrey himself will see it that way when he recovers from the
shock of his first terrible days in Belmarsh prison — the loss of
his personal effects, the donning of prison garb, the covert kicks
and blows from fellow-inmates, the endless ironic cries of "My
Lord" from warders and prisoners alike. Jeffrey Archer does
not lack courage, and he will find it within himself to cope with
these humiliations. When he does so, however, the self-deception
that has enabled him to bounce back from bankruptcy, accusations
of dishonest share-dealing, tabloid tales of his adulteries, and
the rest may well persuade him that he can turn this latest disaster
into a best-selling novel and a springboard back to social acceptance.
Even the two
trials — the first in 1986 in which he denied newspaper claims that
had slept with a prostitute and collected large sums in libel damages,
the second last week in which he was convicted of committing perjury
on the earlier occasion — may now be transformed by his imagination
into the tale of a noble-hearted hero who, confronted by his enemies
with a past sexual indiscretion, told a politic lie and risked prison
to save his wife's happiness. He might even make the hero of this
future novel a president of the United States risking impeachment
— Jeffrey's plots were always somewhat over the top.
Nick Garland
of the Daily Telegraph captured this capacity for self-deception
in a cartoon that showed Archer lying on a prison bed, smoking a
pensive cigarette, and reciting in his mind the lines from Thurber's
famous story: "Then, with that faint fleeting smile playing
about his lips, he faced the firing squad; and motionless, proud
and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the
last..."
Jeffrey's genius
was also his most tragic flaw: fantasizing. It was his mistake to
take Oscar Wilde's epigram literally and to put that genius into
his life rather than into his novels.
Mention of
Oscar Wilde inevitably brings up the public reactions to Archer's
disgrace. Most of them were the self-righteous and slightly gloating
homilies always brought out on those occasions when someone is completely
ruined and so incapable of protest or revenge. The BBC reporter,
for instance, retailed the news that he had been taken off to prison
in a van "with the other common criminals." It is not
hard to imagine the thrill of savage pleasure with which these words
were conceived — nor the thrills of satisfied envy they evoked from
those who relish the thought of a millionaire, a former MP, a member
of the House of Lords, a famous novelist, and a former deputy chairman
of the Tory party being carted off in handcuffs. A different sort
of crowd jeered at Oscar Wilde, as he waited in shackles on a railway
platform after his conviction, but the vicious pleasure in another's
wretchedness unites both crowds over the span of a century.
Did not Jeffrey,
however, bring it on himself? Of course, he did. He was dishonest,
untruthful, boastful, and in the end a liar, perjurer, and adulterer.
But he was also kind, generous, energetic, loyal, and a good friend.
After his bankruptcy in the early seventies (in which he himself
was the victim of con men), he sat down purposively to write a best-seller,
did so, paid off his debts, and never looked back — and never learned
his lesson. He was lavishly reckless and recklessly lavish. He was
lucky to escape prosecution for insider dealing; but he also raised
vast sums for charity. He flattered the powerful at parties where
the nosh was shepherd's pie and Krug (not only champagne but, significantly,
the most expensive champagne); but unlike many other celebrities,
he also loved meeting his readers and ordinary members of the Tory
party and spent hours pressing the flesh. He sued a newspaper for
suggesting that he had slept with a prostitute, but wrote a novel
which recounted the episode in thin disguise.
Yet threaded
through both his good and bad actions there is something curiously
missing. It was as if he had every component of decency except a
conscience, almost as if he was a new discovery in psychology —
a psychopath without malice, thoroughly self-interested but otherwise
good-natured. That is why his friends so often resorted to fictional
models when discussing the mystery of his oddball personality.
He was the
absurdly boastful Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows who
composed a poem about himself that ran: "The Queen and her
ladies in waiting/Sat at the window and sewed/ She said 'O who's
that handsome man?'/They answered: "Mr. Toad.""
He was Felix
Krull, Thoman Mann's confidence trickster disguised as a German
princeling, who graciously smiled at a train attendant and reflected
complacently that his "smile did more for the stability of
the social order than a thousand conservative pamphlets."
He was Denry
Machin in Arnold Bennett's The Card who made a fortune, married
the girl he loved, and became Lord Mayor of his beloved native Stoke-on-Trent
but who was associated with no great cause except "the great
cause of cheering us all up."
He was Walter
Mitty, inscrutable to the last. And he was all these things as the
occasion demanded and without much concern for the requirements
of truth and reality.
From the outside
it often seemed that Jeffrey was not truly serious about anything,
except getting into the limelight and staying there. Fame was the
spur — it exploited and perverted all his other qualities. Yet in
ruthlessly pursuing that fame he ruined very few people. Himself.
Perhaps his wife. Maybe a mistress or two — but they were 21 and
aware of his marital status. And, of course, the late Monica Coghlan,
the prostitute whom he branded falsely as liar. Even there, however,
Miss Coghlan declared her enmity first — she had set out to ruin
him with a minor squalid truth.
As for the
inner man in private moments away from the limelight, who knows
but Jeffrey, God and . . . . Well, here is the disinterested testimony
of another prostitute he once hired in London: "He thanked
me afterwards . . . He seemed lonely and was very grateful. He just
wanted some company and some pleasure."
But he also
wanted to be a famous man and to host prime ministers on grand occasions
— and so last week he began serving a four-year prison sentence.
This originally
appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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