15 NOVEMBER 1957, Page 13

Reported Slain

By STRIX OF the four obituary notices I have just been reading three appeared in The Times during July, 1900. The fdurth was published by the New York Times in April, 1940. The only thing which all four have in common is that their subjects, not having been dead when they were printed, were able in due course to read them.

The fourth obituary (Noted Writer Reported Slain') is my own. It is kept in a drawer full of birth certificates, dogs' pedigrees, unexpended petrol coupons, letters from a long succession of Under- Secretaries of State for War, a ceadunas tiomana (which is 'not a small Minoan urn, a rare sea- shell or a deadly tropical poison but an Irish driving licence) and obsolete certificates of inoculation against a wide variety of terrible diseases. Most people, I imagine, keep these little caches to which they consign the more basic type of personal document under the twin delusions that (a) they will be bound to need it one day, and (b) they will know where to look for it when they do.

My obituary in the New York Times is kindly and even eulogistic, and for that reason dull. But the mere fact of having survived its publication confers a sense of freakish privilege. One feels (quite unjustifiably) that one has played a trick on Fate, that the Grim Reaper has taken an air- shot. Without thinking very much about it, I had supposed that a mild, fading, schoolboy glee was the only sentiment likely to be aroused by this Particular experience. After reading the three Obituaries of fifty-seven years ago I am not so sure.

Their subjects were Sir Claude MacDonald, then Her Majesty's Minister in .Peking : Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Imperial Maritime Customs of China : and Dr. G. E. Morrison, The Times Correspondent in Peking. These men were believed, in the light of a false but circumstantial report in the Daily Mail of July 15, to have perished in a general massacre of all the foreigners besieged by the Boxers in the Legations.

All three obituaries are, by modern standards, long. They are also quite admirably done—far better, if I may say so without giving offence, than the general run of The Times obituaries today. Each, while rehearsing the various stages of its subject's career, evaluates those stages with care and good judgment, so that by the end you have a very exact impression, not only of the man and what he did in the world, but of the world's probable verdict on him.

It goes without saying that the verdict was in each case favourable. The respect due to dis- tinguished public figures was enhanced by the belief that they had met—'in what circumstances one shudders to think'—the deaths of martyr- heroes; the writers (or writer?) contrive with un- obtrusive craftsmanship to animate what seems to us a stilted prose with the throb of emotions which were shared by an outraged and sorrowing nation.

But in arriving at those verdicts th:.: evidence is set out with objectivity and interpreted with percipience; and when, some two months later, the three men were able to peruse these memorials, two of them must, I think, have found between the lines implications which gave them food for thought.

• During Sir Robert Hart's forty-six years in China, The Times noted, he had visited Europe only twice; for the last twenty-one years, save for one journey to Hongkong and two short visits to the seaside, he had not left Peking. Had it occurred to this cock on his Imperial dunghill that in some respects his usefulness might have been greater if he had kept himself more in con- tact with the outer world'? The Times did not say that Hart was so much in the pocket of the Chinese that, as a local expert whose advice was automatically sought by successive British Minis- ters, he was a bit of a menace. It said : 'The influence which he thus exercised over British policy cannot be said to have been wholly bene- ficial, for, in his uncompromising loyalty to those he served, he was bound to act above all, whether consciously or unconsciously, as their advocate and champion.' Had this conception of the leading role he had played for so long in Peking ever presented itself to Sir Robert?

I wonder. We sometimes learn, with or without a shock, what some people think of us at a given juncture. How often do we know what everyone has thought about us for years?

There were (so to speak) fewer bones in Sir Claude MacDonald's kedgeree. But when he read that his appointment, after a successful tour of duty in West Africa, 'to one of the most difficult and responsible posts in the diplomatic service . . . caused at the time widespread surprise,' Was he, too, a little bit surprised? Widespread surprise is frequently generated by appointments in every walk of life; but how many candid friends tell the appointed that everyone is dumbfounded by his superiors' choice? It is the sort of thing that only comes ont in one's obituary.

Morrison's included no reservations. At thirty.; eight he was the youngest of the obituarees; Sir Claude was fOrty-eight, Sir Robert sixty-five. He had only the years of achievement behind him; there was no question of the second or the third act disappointing. All sources combine to suggest that he had in his nature and his outlook on life that golden quality which 1, On slight acquain- tance, found in his son Ian, who met in Korea a death narrowly and rather often risked elsewhere as a War Correspondent of The Times.

Morrison's obituary is a fine but never a flowery tribute to a solitary adventurer who became a figure to reckon with in his country's affairs. Curzon's 'now historic phrase about "the intel- ligent anticipation of events before they occur"' was, The Times felt, 'though not primarily in- tended as a compliment, perhaps the most genuine tribute ever wrung from unwilling lips to the highest qualities which a.correspondent can bring to bear upon his work.' Among the experiences which had qualified Morrison to earn this tribute were a transit of Australia on foot (2,043 miles in 123 days : 'when he was overtaken by floods he waded and swam') : an expedition to New Guinea, where he was left for dead with two spears in his body : and a 3,000-mile walk from Shanghai to Burma which cost him £18.

One would like to think that he read his obituary with unmixed pleasure. But he was, as it pointed out, 'essentially modest and unassuming'; and when, three months after it appeared, he wrote to The Times '1 shall never be able to live up to the reputation given me in your obituary of the 17th July,' it is fair to assume that his words expressed a genuine misgiving.

You can, I suppose, at a pinch dine out on the fact that you have read your own obituary; but there is a rule that you cannot have the best of both worlds, and you were in the wrong world when you read it. I suspect that it pays, in this as in many other matters, to stick to the rules.