Memoirs of a Polyglot

by William Gerhardie

Written with rare candour, this is William Gerhardie's enchanting and entertaining memoir of his early life.

Gerhardie writes about his grandparents and parents, and about his childhood in St Petersburg where his father, a British cotton manufacturer, settled in the 1890s. He joined the Scots Greys in the First World War, and was commissioned and posted to the British Embassy at Petrograd, where he saw the Russian revolution in various stages. At Oxford, he wrote Futility, the first of his novels.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Gerhardie was friends with many of the most interesting people of the era, from Lord Beaverbrook to the Sitwells, and he writes brilliantly and amusingly about the literary and political scene of that time. Michael Holroyd notes in his preface that 'The narrative, which contains so many percipient pen portraits, stops for no man, but merely seems to pick them up in its stride'.

Memoirs of a Polyglot is illustrated with photographs, many of them from Gerhardie's family albums.

'To those of my generation he was the most important new novelist to appear in our young life.' Graham Greene

'William Gerhardie is our Gogol's Overcoat. We all came out of him.' Olivia Manning

'In my opinion Gerhardie has genius.' Arnold Bennett

'He is a comic writer of genius ... but his art is profoundly serious.' C. P. Snow

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

William Alexander Gerhardie (21 November 1895 – 15 July 1977)[1] was a British (Anglo-Russian) novelist and playwright.


William Gerhardie by Norman Ivor Lancashire (1927-2004). Photograph by Stella Harpley
Gerhardie (or Gerhardi: he added the 'e' in later years as an affectation) was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of the 1920s (Evelyn Waugh told him 'I have talent, but you have genius'). H.G. Wells also championed his work. His first novel, Futility, was written while he was at Worcester College, Oxford and drew on his experiences in Russia fighting (or attempting to fight) the Bolsheviks, along with his childhood experiences visiting pre-revolutionary Russia. Some say that it was the first work in English to fully explore the theme of 'waiting' later made famous by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot, but it is probably more apt to recognize a common comic nihilism between those two figures. His next novel, The Polyglots, is probably his masterpiece (although some argue for Doom). Again it deals with Russia (Gerhardie was strongly influenced by the tragi-comic style of Russian writers such as Chekhov about whom he wrote a study while in College).
He collaborated with Hugh Kingsmill on the biography The Casanova Fable, his friendship with Kingsmill being both a source of conflict over women and a great intellectual stimulus.
After World War II Gerhardie's star waned, and he became unfashionable. Although he continued to write, he published no new work after 1939. After a period of poverty-stricken oblivion, he lived to see two 'definitive collected works' published by Macdonald (in 1947-49 and then revised again in 1970-74). An idiosyncratic study of world history between 1890 and 1940 ("God's Fifth Column") was discovered among his papers and published posthumously. More recently, both Prion and New Directions Press have been reissuing his works.

Reviews

[Tina Tamman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I bought the book because it had the word 'polyglot' in the title, not knowing that it was a reference to the author's work as well as to his background. But having read the Memoirs, I think I may graduate to reading a novel of his because he seems to have put a lot of Russians into his fiction and this sounds intriguing.
Gerhardie was born in Russia (in 1895) and lived there for the first 18 years of his life. In the Memoirs, originally published in 1931, Russia certainly forms the more interesting part - it takes up slightly over half of the book. What follows (his fame in England, meeting other authors, foreign travel) is more episodic and his heart does not seem to be in it while Russia, I feel, is what he feels for. The way he writes about his father, for example, is very interesting and moving. But altogether his childhood comes to life on these pages: he has good observations and a sense of humour.
It is also quite remarkable to think that Gerhardie, as good as forgotten today (although William Boyd mentioned him in 'Any Human Heart'), was born of English parents in St Petersburg but his first language was Russian (albeit not mother's tongue!). He had a French governess and a German housekeeper, was fluent in both but his English was poor. Quite a thought!

[Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit was een hele kluif! Deze Gerhardie is op zijn 25e opeens een bejubelde, bekende schrijver.
Hij wordt bij iedereen uitgenodigd, kent opeens de hele society, omdat men denkt een nieuw genie te hebben ontdekt. Op zijn 35e schrijft hij deze memoires, die ik vooral interessant vindt omdat hij zijn jeugd heeft doorgebracht in St. Petersburg als zoon van een rijke Engelse fabrikant. Daar maakt hij de revolutie mee, waarna ze straatarm naar Engeland terugvluchten.
Hij schrijft vaak heel geestig, maar zijn meningen over van alles en nog wat, die hij stevig neerzet, zijn niet erg boeiend.
Dit boek schrijft hij dus in 1930, Hij overlijdt in 1977 in armelijke omstandigheden en heeft al die tijd verder niets interessants meer geproduceerd.