One passes by the graveyard so often that sooner or later one falls into it, says the Russian proverb. Jeremy Clarke wrote the “Low Life” column in the Spectator from 2001 until his death from cancer, aged 66, in May 2023.
The column had been created by Jeffrey Bernard, recruited to the Spectator in the 1970s by the then editor, Alexander Chancellor, who admired Bernard’s writing in the New Statesman and devised “Low Life” to complement the “High Life” offerings of the gossip columnist, Taki. Bernard, an alcoholic, diabetic and perpetual chancer, excelled in exquisitely poised accounts of his chaotic days, making what would be painful to encounter – his editor described him as a nightmare; his agent called him a little shit – hilarious to read.
That feat seemed to be wholly individual, yet the column didn’t perish with Bernard in 1997. There have been two great exponents of such derelict dandyism since: Nicholas Lezard, in “Down and Out” in this magazine, and Jeremy Clarke.
Jeffrey Bernard was a fallen nob. Jeremy Clarke, lower middle class, raised in Southend, left school with two O-levels and supported West Ham. His dedication to drink, drugs, sex, partying and general mayhem, resulting in a number of convictions, was supplemented by work as a bin man and an assistant in a psychiatric hospital. Yet he was profoundly literary, his great inspiration being early Evelyn Waugh, above all the relished anarchy of Decline and Fall.
A first collection of his marvellous columns was published in 2011. Clarke offered launch-party invites to the ten readers who sent in the best poor-taste jokes. One of them was Catriona Olding, a former nurse. When her marriage broke down in 2014, she and Clarke got together. In April 2013, Clarke had been diagnosed with prostate cancer with metastases. “We thought we’d have two years. We had almost nine,” Olding recalls in a tribute written immediately after his death. “His last words to me, the afternoon before he died: ‘We can all live happily ever after.’”
So this is a collection of pieces not only written with awareness of limited time, but also detailing his treatment and decline, in sentences as accurate, perfectly balanced and devoid of self-pity at the end as they are at the beginning. “I found that I’d never been happier. Everything became a lot simpler,” he writes.
Olding moved to Provence after her divorce, and Clarke joined her there in 2020, living in a cave house – “it feels a bit like sleeping in a big cool vagina” – above the picturesque village of Cotignac in the Var. He spoke only “trousers-on-fire French”, and his portrait of expat life, all G&Ts and “sodding box sets”, is more truthful than the usual rhapsodies. “When people profess a love of France, I assume they mean a love of eating.”
These columns, whether about visits to the oncology unit in Marseille or strangers on an airport bus, are all expertly calibrated to the word count and their place at the end of the magazine, which naturally makes them less suited to continuous reading. There’s nothing quite like receiving such reports from a life as it happens. Following Clarke’s columns week by week as he approached the inevitable was a remarkable and moving experience.
Both the Spectator and the New Statesman would be different, duller propositions without “Low Life” or “Down and Out”. It’s not just that they are satyr plays wrapping up after the serious stuff, or there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-Is, though the writers may sometimes suspect that’s their purpose. “If you’re living where the grass is greener it must be reassuring to glance occasionally at a rubbish dump,” sneered Bernard. “My dramatic failure gives everyone a fillip whether they would care to admit or not. So at least I’m of some use,” Clarke, a much better man, hoped near the end.
After all the political prognostications, dashing pronouncements and expert analyses that are the main business of these magazines, these untoward incidents – a mislaid passport, the prospect of cleaning vomit from the car, hopelessly falling asleep – return us to the real life we know. That’s why some of us read diarists so obsessively, philosophy rather less so. Eternity gives way to a salted cucumber, another Russian proverb advises. Jeremy Clarke is much missed. For his part, Nicholas Lezard is frequently cited as a favourite writer by New Statesman readers, whether or not that delights other contributors and editors. It is not for his economic policies.
Low Life: The Spectator Columns – The Final Years
Jeremy Clarke
Quartet, 300pp, £21.99
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[See also: Cricket in an age of heroes]
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This article appears in the 28 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump in turmoil