Tony at the Travellers: Anthony Powell as clubman

Spectator, The, Dec 14/Dec 21, 2002 by Massingberd, Hugh

He had already shown his independent streak by joining another club well removed from the world of publishing, Pratt's, in 1929. 'In those days,' he recalled, 'the two subterranean rooms were all but empty except for the occasional Guardee dropping in for dinner somewhere it was not necessary to change.' As the only child of a soldier, Powell was quite capable of holding his own in a non-literary milieu. His father had contacts with the diplomatic world and would have been familiar with the Intelligence community, which has always loomed large at the Travellers.

And so, on 4 June 1926, the names of 'Anthony Dymoke Powell' were entered in the candidates book at the Travellers. He was described as an 'undergraduate' and his address was given as 'Balliol College, Oxford'. His proposer was Balliol's own F. F. Urquhart, the legendary 'Sligger', who some still insist upon claiming was the original for the power-seeking Left-wing don 'Sillers' in Dance despite Powell's unequivocal statement in his memoirs that 'Sillery and Urquhart were persons of altogether different sort'. The name immediately preceding Powell's was his old school friend, Henry Yorke, the novelist 'Henry Green'. Yorke, described on his page as being employed by 'Messrs Pontifex' (the family firm in Birmingham best known for making lavatories), was even keener than his fellow-novelist to keep well away from the literary world.

After a three-and-a-half year wait Powell and Yorke were both eventually elected to membership of the Travellers on New Year's Day 1930. Among those also elected on the same day were Powell's friend and future editor on the TLS, Alan Pryce-- Jones, and his future neighbour in the country, Henry Weymouth (later Marquess of Bath). Other new members of the early 1930s included the artist Adrian Daintrey (whose passing, Powell noted in an obituary in 1988, 'will bring a tear to the eye of more than one lady of quality and black bus conductress') and Wilfred Thesiger, traveller par excellence, who succeeded Powell as the 'father' of the club on the novelist's death in 2000.

With his customary attention to detail the young Tony Powell spotted that an old but unrepealed bye-law permitted members of the Travellers to keep their hats on when lunching or dining in the coffee room. He decided to put this into practice in order to sustain the tradition - and there are attested sightings of him behatted at the table.