Testament of Seven Lifetimes
The Forging of a Family. By Lord Geddes. (Faber. 25s.)
Tins is a very long book. Well it may be, indeed, since into it the author packs not only the chronicle of seven generations of Geddeses, with much information about the families they married into, but also his views on the light which this history throws upon the great general problems of the universe. Granny O'HoyG5 (for the generations are so distinguished, by the appropriate number after the proper name) who disapproved of a shipbuilding family connect- ing itself with' sheep-farmers, Aunt Harry„ and her strawberry preserves, the number of schools from which EricG, was expelled and Mr. Lloyd George's methods of cabinet-making thus find place side by side with the definition of matter, gene banks, the psychic continuum and the Pelagian heresy. It is almost with surprise that the reader, on reaching p. 405, discovers that" it is not our purpose to attempt to follow in detail from its start . . . the great adventure of the evolution of Life " : nothing else, he is inclined to feel, has been omitted.
So vast a canvas, so serious a theme, sets the reviewer an arduous task. The testament of a lifetime—indeed, of seven lifetimes, for Lord Geddes sees his family during this period as a single whole— cannot fail to command respect. Yet, as often, the values which the author sets out to proclaim may be other than those which the reader discovers for himself. For the former, the purpose of the book is to use the separate and collective experience of his family (or" Ing " as he prefers to call it) as evidence to combat the doc- trines of humanism at present" expressed scientifically as dialectical materialism and politically as Marxian communism," and to assert the divine direction of the universe. He demands that events should have meanings. "The importance we attach to the telling of [our story of an Mg] " he writes in his last chapter " is that it seems to contradict flatly much of the materialistic and in practice atheistic thought of our time." There will doubtless be many readers who will find this conclusion acceptable and the processes by which it is reached convincing ; but for the majority, surely, the story itself will be more rewarding than its interpretation sub specie aeternitatis.
Such readers, unless they are Scots or genealogists, may omit the first, or historical, section as well as the last, or interpretative, to concentrate upon the two central books : the detailed record of the author's own generation and that of his parents. These are the products of the double Geddes/Anderson cross. This inbreeding alarmed contemporary doctors profoundly, and their alarm left a lasting mark on the members of Generation Seven. But in fact it brought about a distillation of energy and resilience that was to carry the family from the back streets of Manchester (to which it had been driven in the slump after the Napoleonic wars) to some of the highest places in the State. By the end of 1917 Eric, after re- organising transport in all theatres of war, had become First Lord of the Admiralty; the author, who refers to himself as Campbell, but is more familiar as Sir Auckland, was Director of Recruiting and soon to become Minister of National Service ; their sister, Mrs. Chalmers Wilson, had temporarily abandoned medical research combined with domesticity to become the first Chief Controller of the W.A.A.C. ; while Irvine, whose career did not reach its peak until later, was already Chairman of the Orient Line. To the historian, if not to the moralist, the account of these war years, when all the accumulated vigour of past generations seemed to be at the disposal of this group of serious Scots, is by far the most interesting part of the book.
Renewed ill-health and a long fight with blindness were soon to remove the author from the centre of affairs. As a result of a boating accident when he was Ambassador to the United States, he found himself " at the age of forty-four, with peripheral vision only in one eye and no vision at all in the other, left to face the world anew." The Anderson-Geddes qualities reasserted themselves. Not until he was blown up by a VI some twenty years later did he consent to go finally blind and relinquish active life.
How admirable to look back over a completed life, over a com- pleted period of family history, and find that it makes sense : how fortunate, to be able to set this sense down in black and white ! It is not necessary to share the author's convictions, nor even to find his pages entirely free from longueurs, to regard such an achievement with a degree of envy as well as with respect. LErricE FOWLER.
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