Monday 9 June 2008

132: Tom Driberg 4 - Auberon Waugh and Nicolas Bentley

from "Auberon Waugh's Diary" in “Private Eye” 28 October 1977

A group of Tom's friends are getting together for a Tom Driberg Memorial Lavatory, or "cottage" , as he called it, to be built on the Westminster Embankment - scene of so many romantic encounters.
Designed as a Puseyite Oratory, it will provide a convenient meeting place for MPs to sharpen their social awareness and generally to practise compassion with like-minded tramps and derelicts of the neighbourhood. It will be equipped with copies of the Bible and Karl Marx and a Division Bell in every cubicle.

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An ironic encapsulation of so many elements of Driberg’s character.

The illustration is by Nicolas Bentley. Offering two gentlemen with bouffant hair and high heels, handbags and hands upon hips. The slightly rougher nature of the gentleman just zipping his jeans up is probably in tribute to Driberg’s particular tastes. And of course the suggestion that sex is happening just off sight.

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