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Alice Thomas Ellis
Things keep surprising me. We are told to retain our childlike sense of wonder and I can't understand why. You look neither intelligent nor dignified with your mouth hanging open. It all began when I was trying to bring order to some bookshelves and my eye fell on a work entitled The Life of Insects by a man with the name Wiggles- worth. It seemed so unlikely that a person with such a name would choose such a subject as his life's work. Nevertheless he clearly had — perhaps out of bravado whereas anyone with any sense would have shortened his name to Worth and written a book about money. Then I started reading a book called The Story of Papa's Wise Dogs, written in 1867. One of the tales concerns a Newfoundland called Lion who was given to trying to rescue people who were enjoying a quiet swim. This must have been annoying, but Lion clearly meant well and was a lovable beast; so when you get to page 65 and read at the bottom the child's query, 'And what be- came of him at last?' you turn over with misguided 20th-century optimism to find the words: 'He went mad, and your Uncle Harry shot him, poor dog.' Nobody really writes like that any more.
I don't know why the Victorians were considered sentimental. They strike me as quite ruthless. I have several 19th-century domestic encyclopaedias which contain de- tailed instructions on how to lay out a corpse. One minute you're reading about how to arrange the flowers for the dinner table, or how to embellish a bonnet, and the next you're into do-it-yourself morti- cianry. Admittedly I have one book where when you get to Childbirth you are told to turn to Parturition and when you get to Parturition you are told to go back to Childbirth, but all generations are shy about something. Every magazine you pick up these days is brimming with information about various abstruse ways of giving birth — not to mention methods of getting pregnant in the first place — but I have yet to see any recent information on what practical, immediate steps to take when Grandpapa has breathed his last. Then when I was listening to the wireless while idly dusting the bookshelves I heard an American talking about somebody who was life-threatened. 'Dying' is not only a more economical but a more poetic word. Nobody would write `Life-threatened Egypt — I am life-threatened' and expect to get put on the stage, would they? But the Americans seem to be shyer of death than we are — and, I would have said, crazier — but I'm not sure.
I heard another programme about Orange County and the numbers of hispa- nics there, giving rise to fears that English will die out because everyone will be talking Spanish, and the man said he'd heard another man say: 'English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it's good enough for me.' Well, that was mad enough but I wasn't too smug because I watched Black Narcissus on the telly and there was Deborah Kerr saying of our Lord something to the effect that 'Well, he took the shape of a man', which is a simply walloping great heresy. Did they not have a religious adviser on that film? It's meant to be about Anglican nuns, but even that doesn't excuse such a blunder.
My biggest surprise came from an Angli- can nun. She wrote to me and confided that she knew dozens of women who had been raped by their fathers and who, because of this — wait for it — identified with Mary because she had been raped by God, her father. I'd never thought of that one and, asking around, I discovered no one else who had. Where do they dredge these ideas up? I think my correspondent may be an American Anglican nun, but that may just be wilful thinking. I am going to bed now, because I am sick of tidying up books, and if I have many more surprises my jaw will become dislocated and prob- ably stay that way for ever.
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