ABOUT eight years ago, Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn) and I debated two high priced lawyers at the Oxford Union. The motion, which we were defending, was, Resolved: Gossip has a place in journalism. We wiped the floor with them. The two mouthpieces got up first and read out a long list of people whose lives had been ruined by the yellow press of Fleet Street and its vicious gossip-mongers. Then we got up and went to work on them. I excused myself for arriving late by telling the audience that two stretch limos, presumably owned by the lawyers, had blocked access to the ancient town. (This was to remind the students how well paid lawyers are, although I did confess later that both had arrived by train.) Our main point was that without gossip, history as we know it would not exist.
Take, for example, the Duc de Saint Simon. Sainte-Beuve called the duke the spy of the century, and, thank God, he was. Were it not for Saint Simon’s chronicles of life at Versailles, we would probably adhere to a Hollywood version of what went on in the ritualized society of the Sun King.
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