Personal column

Toby O'Brien

Dr Coggan has been Archbishop of Canterbury Or "Top Boy of the C. of E.” for a few days now. With the Church in such a ridiculous muddle and having thrown away its two No. 1 assets, the Authorised Version and the Prayer Book, one can only wish him a happy incumbency of his confused cure of souls. The Anglican archbishops have not always been so respectfully regarded. Before the last war Hilaire Belloc and Winston Churchill used to buy annually a tun of Medoc which was delivered to the cellars of Chartwell. There, once a year, Belloc and Winston would bottle it.. In the confined space of the cellars of Chartwell the fumes were distinctly intoxicating. In fact, one yeththree of the children, Randolph, Diana and Sarah, were overcome and laid on pallets in the hall. Down below the two new owners were getting on with their bottling and singing snatches of their own extemporary compilation. Suddenly at the head of the stairs there appeared the butler who announced: "The Archbishop of Canterbury and Lady Davidson, sir". What did these two naughty temporary cellar-masters do but strike Up a snatch which began:

"Cantuar can go to hell. Cantuar can go to hell, Cantuar can go to hell, Rum tiddly turn tumtum."

There was a small window opening on to the front door steps of Chartwell through which the Archbishop and his lady must have heard these highly heretical remarks. The next thing that Winston and Hilaire heard was the indignant crunch-crunch of archiepiscopal carriage wheels. The occupants of the carriage were setting off in high, middle and low dudgeon for some other less warm destination than the singers had indicated.

I am no theologian but surely one must hope that it is at least what my Roman Catholic friends call 'OPE' — "offensive to pious ears" — to suggest any such ultimate destination for anY Primate. 'OPE,' I am told, is not, in fact, a heresy but is a theologically uninformed view Which believes in the theory that limbo is inhabited by the souls of unbaptised babies, street walkers, and bishops of the Church of England, i.e. those who could not possibly be expected to know any better.

No parking

My old Oxford friend, Robin McDouall, who for twenty-nine years was the Secretary of the Travellers Club, has now set himself up as a hospitality consultant. He has arranged a Couple of lunches for me which could not have been better done. Nothing to do with Robin, although he is aware of the story, is the splendid tale of one Travellers member, Sir Almeric Fitzroy, who was Comptroller of the Household.

Sir Almeric was a dear old gentleman but alas fie suffered from an attack of old gentleman's disease which affects the prostate gland, particularly that of those who have been very well behaved or too badly behaved sexually. Sir Almeric, in the latter categorY, was arrested in the part but, because he was such a saintly old gentleman the then Archbishop of Canterbury came forward with everybody else to say that it was quite impossible that he could have performed the athletic activities of which he was accused. (I did know the policeman who arrested him. He was in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons for many years, and told me in graphic terms exactly what Sir Almeric and the young lady were up to!).

Sir Almeric was therefore, in the face of the evidence, acquitted. The Travellers had then, as now, a short umbrella stand just under the eyes of the hall porter. Not long after the trial a member of the Travellers who had left his umbrella there came out and said to the hall porter: "Where is my umbrella?" The hall porter said: "I fear, sir, I saw Sir Almeric take it." "Did he, begad," said the member. He stumped back into the Club, wrote a few lines on the Club notepaper, put it in an envelope, and gave it to the hall porter with the words: "Give that to Sir Almeric when he next comes into the Club." The lines were simple. They ran:

Sir Almeric, I would have you mark The Travellers Club is not the park. Pinch if you must some bright-eyed Polly But damn you, don't you pinch my brolly.

Beware of the bishops

Talking of club umbrellas I was brought up by my late father to believe that nobody should take an umbrella to the Athenaeum for fear of the bishops. When I was about eighteen and had my first umbrella with those absurd little black silk bobbles on it (can anybody tell me what on earth they were for?), sure enough after lunch my umbrella had disappeared. My hnst, my godfather, made a terrific fuss. gave my name and telephone number to the hall porter. About a month later the telephone rang which I answered and somebody announced himself as the hall porter from the Athenaeum and was I Mr Edward O'Brien? I admitted to the soft impeachment whereupon he said: "Oh sir, we have your umbrella." I said: "Where has it been for the last month?" Said

the hall porter apologetically: "I fear His Lordship of Truro had it."

Ponky

Any readers of The Spectator who are doglovers will be in sympathy with me at this moment. I had to have my beloved labrador, called by my younger children Ponky, put down last week. Ponky was not, perhaps, the best behaved of shooting dogs, although as he got older his wonderful nose and lately acquired discipline became better and better, but he was undoubtedly the most amiable dog of the many I have had throughout my life. What a terrible thing it is for any dog-lover to realise that when the vet says that your dog is in pain and there is nothing more he can do for him, you have to give the order to have him put to sleep.

Ponky was one of the kindest and nicest dogs I have ever had. (Before that I had always had cocker spaniels.) He had canker in one of his ears, and a beast of a golden labrador — which had already attacked two other dogs in the lane which runs from my house in the country up to the chicken farm at which it ends — attacked him when he already had a bad ear. I could not, as I still had my broken back at the time, kick the brute in the slats or pull it off Ponky whose throat and ear 'he attacked. Thereafter his ear got worse and worse and I had to send him to the vet for various operations. A very nice young woman who had been looking after him rang me up and said that he was in vast pain. had now got cancer, and they could not think of any way in which they could lighten his pain and do him any good, so I had to take that terrible decision to have him put to sleep. How ironical it is to think that there ate so many of our present Government front bench whom one would be delighted to put to sleep — and not all that painlessly either!

Ponky was, as I say, one of the most amiable dogs I have ever had. Even our ghosts, which he used to chase, finally got on well with him. In my mediaeval friary I have an oak-panelled study. Ponky from his earliest puppyhood used to see in the doorway, which separates the' study from our drawing room, the ghosts of our seven monks and one nun which used to, but now no longer do, bother us. He would growl and pursue them barking until he got to the seventeenthand eighteenth-century part of the building. There it was quite comical to see . the way he would look around as if saying: "Well, what on earth is happening? I was chasing some odd characters here and now they seem to have vanished." Oh dear, dogs become so much a part of a family that Ponky's death means the loss of some ten years of my life. I do not know whether to have a new shooting dog or not. Perhaps readers who have had a similar deprivation would like to advise me?