SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, Macheath, Charles Wilson: many ages have produced folk heroes of one sort or another from the underworld. The recaptured train robber fits today's speci- fications to perfection. He set himself to a massive get-rich-quick adventure, achieved a startling success, and thus gained his prize: a life of modest luxury in unruffled suburban surroundings. It is the dream of everybody who gambles on a football pool. Except for the unfortunate illegality surrounding his enter- prise, one can imagine Wilson being inter- viewed after his coup: 'I just want to settle down quietly with my family and enjoy life.' Not for him, evidently, a nagging itch for an outlaw's uncertain thrills. His objectives were consumer goods and security, expensive cameras and cars, cosy domesticity and a nice school for his children. Such are the aspirations of modern man. It is not surprising that in these past days one has been aware of a general, half-guilty sympathy for him at the abrupt collapse of his suburban idyll. There is no com- fortable gulf of the kind that seems to separate Bonnie and Clyde from the daily realities. He represents too clearly the criminal side of a coin that is familiar to all.
Backward Britain
The plan to introduce a new kind of carriage on the Southern railway, with a lot more room for standing passengers, is an example of how progress in this field tends to be ever back- wards. In due course, I dare say, we shall come to a sardine-type railway carriage without any seats at all. At the moment, I gather, regular users of this railway system would gratefully settle for open cattle-trucks if only some element of punctuality could be introduced as well. Like any person in his right mind, I try to keep out of the clutches of the Southern whenever possible; sometimes it isn't possible, though, and I seldom complete a journey on this huge section of London's communica- tions system without suffering delay and frustration.
The other evening I found myself one of a - disgruntled trainload evicted from our seats (no one could explain why) to wait for some other train to pick us up (no one could forecast when). The platform was windswept and dreary and for shelter I penetrated to a room used by railway staff. As I warmed myself by their fire we passed a cordial half-hour discussing the scandalous decline of railway efficiency. There were three oldish railwaymen there, and they all displayed a sense of shame at the decline of standards. Coupled with this was a feeling of absolute helplessness to do anything about it. Everything was in the hands of remote controllers and the local men seemed as baffled as the passengers. 'It makes you ashamed to stand out there wearing railway uniform,' one of them said.
After one or two false alarms a train was eventually found to finish our journey. My mood wasn't improved by the presence of a couple of French travellers who passed the time making disparaging remarks about British efficiency. We might have been in some ramshackle underdeveloped country. 'No one gives a damn,' said one Frenchman. Which. as I had just seen for myself, was not true. But why can't we get ourselves better or- ganised?
Treasure hunt
Someone at University College, London, tells me the department of English there is trying 'to initiate a rescue operation for the old diaries which must be lying unregarded in many an attic or lumber room. This seems an ex- cellent idea and I wish them luck. For years now I have been an addicted reader of other people's diaries (those that get published, I mean), and for my money the best are those kept by obscure people who but for their itch to scribble would by now be completely for- gotten. The grander type of diary is valuable: we would know a lot less about nineteenth century history without Greville, for example; and I hope to live long enough to enjoy the fruits of Mr Richard Crossman's assiduous weekend journalising. But for that elusive thing, the feel of what it was like to be alive in another age, the daily notes of the less exalted are priceless. Country parsons, such as Kilvert or Woodforde, describing their days in a village society now wholly extinguished, compress volumes of social history into a few lines. And good gossip, such as Crabb Robinson enjoyed, gains a patina with the years. (`Yesterday I had a melancholy letter from Wordsworth. He talks of leaving the country on account of the impending ruin to be apprehended from the Reform Bill.') For some reason the nineteenth century seems to have bred a host of diarists; perhaps it was simply that they had more time. It's tantalising to think there may still be hoards of yellowing papers which have escaped generations of spring-cleaning but have still to be brought to light. Perhaps this new inquiry will produce something. Who knows, there may even be major literary discoveries still to make. It's only a few years since the last of the Boswell papers were rescued from oblivion at Malahide Castle, where they had been lying around unnoticed in odd bits of furniture and even, in the case of the manuscript of his Hebridean journal, in an old box thought to contain croquet equipment.
Conspiracy
Many of our ancestors would have found present-day politics startlingly free of corrup- tion. Money is not used to manipulate public life as it once was. Consider this devilish plot which was frivolously concocted the other day. The object is to bring about a quick change of government. The instruments are fifty large companies of Tory persuasion (not a particu- larly difficult requirement). Each company pri- vately tackles one obscure Labour se repre- senting a marginal seat and signs him up in strict secrecy as its 'political adviser' at, say, 0,000 a year. When all contracts have been signed the fifty simultaneously resign from the House. Consternation : fifty marginal by-elec- tions: collapse of Government. Nowadays such a notion could never develop beyond the stage of after-dinner whimsy. In the heyday of boroughmongers and placemen, the sole ques- tion would have been: will it work?
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