SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
How strange to reflect that, at a time when the Church of Rome has entered a sea of troubles as a result of an excessive rigidity of ideas, the Church of England should seem to be, in its unspectacular way, no less determined to hack away some of its own sturdy buttresses through the exercise of a sloppy form of flexibility. Anyone with ears to hear must be appalled by the violence which the Liturgical Commis- sion proposes should be done to the splendours of the Book of Common Prayer—in the sup- posed interests, of course, of becoming 'more up to date.' I had not found it reassuring, I am afraid, when I read that the Poet Laureate had been called in to help these reverend scholars in their task; and now that I have seen the texts prepared by Mr Day-Lewis and his fellow workers (published by the sPcx) my worst fears are fulfilled. The Prayer Book, to quote that great man Bishop Bell of Chichester, is both a religious classic and a masterpiece of literature. The suggested re- writing would reduce it to a collection of well- intentioned doggerel.
What is not least surprising about this extra- ordinary enterprise is that it fails to reach even its own standard of using 'language that is alive in contemporary society.' Consider, for example, this cumbersome mouthful : 'Come, sing we to the Lord, in joy/Full-throated sing the Rock of our salvation'—the allegedly modernising 'improvement' proposed for the opening of the Venite. Or this flat-footed mangling—'Swearing to save us from oppres- sors/And the ill-will of hostile men'—of the Benedictus's, 'That we should be saved from our enemies: and from the hands of all that hate us.' Or this extraordinary piece of 'contem- porary' language from the Te Deum: 'Angel, cherub, seraph all/Heavenkind sing a time- less/"All creation's power and light, /Holy, holy, holy!" '—which sounds like an awkwardly worded commercial for some divine Electricity Board, and falls an immeasurable distance short of the Prayer Book model, 'Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of thy Glory.' One could quote many more similar infelicities, if that is not too mild a term; it would.in fact be easy to see in this insipid process of dilution the signs of a singular arrogance.
The Lambeth talk
All in all, not the best of weeks for Anglicans:' for on another front, some murmurings of discontent within the Lambeth conference (now concluding its third week) became public. The main complaint seems to be that to muster bishops from all over the world to spend a month in rambling discussions is wasteful both of time, effort and money. Anyone who has talked with some of the overseas bishops now in London will probably have detected uneasi- ness on this score; one restless visitor was sighing to me the other day at the severe penance of listening to such a prodigious flow of episcopal oratory. The Archbishop of Canterbury, evidently, while earning much re- spect for his other qualities, has not shown himself a very crisp chairman. He visualises the conference as a relaxed and friendly con- versation, which can lead to maddeningly diffuse debates with numerous discursive pas- sages. There have been times, I'm told, when the patience of some brisk and businesslike prelates has been much tried; many of these men, it must be remembered, come from parts of the world where the Anglican Church exists among turbulence and crisis, quite different from the C of E's cosy environment, and any- thing resembling amiable bumbling does not appeal.
The liberal conscience
Mr Nigel Fisher, the left-wing Tory MP for Surbiton, is not, it must be confessed, one of our better-known public figures. This week, however, he made one of his rare TV appear- ances, being interviewed in Nigeria about the situation there. After a fulsome encomium about the future of Federal Nigeria in general and the policies of the Lagos government in particular, he was asked about the course of the war against Biafra. With a beatific smile he replied: 'I believe you can make a case, on humanitarian grounds, for a quick kill.' I do hope the sac remembers to ask him for his comments if and when the 'quick kill' of God knows how many thousands of Biafran men, women and children eventually comes to pass. Meanwhile, as Beachcomber used to say— Interval for Nausea.
On the roller-coaster
One lesson of the American election already, surely, is the obvious but important one that modern democratic politics change with be- wildering speed. After the ron-conflict of last week's Republican convention, ending in the nomination of one safe; emollient old trusty
and a dim nonentity as his running mate, it's almost impossible to recall accurately the state of utter wreckage in which this party found itself less than four years ago. Re-reading Theodore White's The Making of the Presi- dent-1964, I'm reminded of how rent and shattered the party then was: it seems to have scant connection with the optimistic and (out- wardly at least) fraternal gathering at Miami Beach. White (like the rest of us) wondered whether the Republicans could ever put them- selves together again after the Goldwater debacle, the greatest defeat in the history of us Presidents. And when he looked ahead to the present time, he saw terrible troubles from entrenched reactionary elements in the party: at the 1968 convention, he wrote, 'one can fore- see another bloody rending of the Republican party ahead.' Well, it didn't happen; but there is plenty of gvidence that the Democrats, who at that time were in a state of unparalleled electoral euphoria, will do more than a little rending of each other at their conventiOn later this month. Such are the perils of punditry. Without labouring the point, there is a warn- ing here for those in this country who tend to see the ,ups and downs of our politics as some- how permanent, instead of merely points glimpsed from the roller-coaster as it swoops and climbs.
Bang, bang
Every year at this time we are treated to a crop of stories in the newspapers about grouse- shooting, and how it has become so ludicrously expensive an indulgence that only alien millionaires, or possibly multi-millionaires, can afford the luxury of a week on the moors. There's no doubt some truth in all this, especi- ally perhaps as applied to Scotland; but as a native son of England's premier grouse terri- tory I'm bound to say that the opulent and exotic picture thus presented bears hardly any resemblance at all to the reality as I've known it, in a casual way, all my life. The picture we used to be given, during the Macmillan era, of grouse-shooting as a pastime wholly reserved for ducal families, seemed equally unreal. Why this particular little brown bird and its pursuers give rise to so much myth-making I'm not sure; perhaps it's simply because they go about their affairs in very remote places.
In many parts of Yorkshire, at any rate, where the moors are naturally even more beautiful than those of Scotland, grouse- shooting retains its local and unaristocratic character: for every magnate who imports parties of dukes (or Texan millionaires) there are groups of far less grand characters who simply shoot with their friends. Of course, they have to be comfortably off, but so do people who go in for smart boats, and they're never lumped together as symbols of plutocracy. Grouse-shooters contribute modestly to the local economy, they support gamekeepers (delightful men encased in tweeds which look, and probably are, bullet-proof), and by requir- ing the services of beaters to trudge through waist-deep heather by the hour they subsidise the holiday funds of the active young. One day no doubt some odious technologist will discover a way to make moorlands `useful'- i.e., he will develop a process for turning the peat into plasticgnomes for export, or some such thing. Before then the moors, the last sur- viving wildernesses in England, will never, I hope, have to be handed over exclusively to rich men from more prosperous countries.
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