Sir: Having at first taken Ferdinand Mount's article (`No pontification
in this realm of England', 29 January) for a rather amusing parody of ecclesiastical paranoia, I was disappointed to discover, in this week's Spectator, that it must have been seriously intended, since it elicited not only letters of a similar tone from your readers, but also an equally unedifying reply from Paul Johnson.
It is uniquely gratifying to the supporters of inter-faith understanding to witness how, although modern historical research must tend gravely to disturb Mr Mount's child- hood prejudices, the Catholic Mr Johnson is at hand to vindicate and restore them fully to his comfortable possession. While a Catholic and unhappily barred from the wellspring of English genius, I cannot help suspecting that Mr Mount's vision of Angli- canism as the Higher Table Manners is as much a travesty of the practising Anglican's tradition as Mr Johnson's beef and bluster is of mine.
Instead, it would seem that both gentle- men have fallen victim to the same popular heresy, a godless and revolting sentimental- ity about being English. If there is a spirit of kindness and justice and humour shared by the English characters we hold in affec- tion (one thinks of such funny, civilised and unsentimental Christians as Geoffrey Chaucer and Dr Johnson, Thomas More
LETTERS
and Jane Austen), it is surely the natural fruit of their love of Christ and desire to follow him, rather than of exhalations from the English countryside. We must assume so, since the Englishness of Messrs Mount and Johnson has in no way deterred them from embarrassing Anglicans and Catholics alike with their unseemly and unintelligent scrapping.
Cecilia A. Hatt
39 Kingsmead Road, London SW2
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