DIARY
JOHN GRIGG The 30-odd million raised by the sale of the Windsors' jewellery, and destined for the Pasteur Institute, may represent the largest charitable benefaction by any mem- ber of our royal family since the middle ages. Though the Duchess of Windsor was never treated as a full member of the family, her bequest has done something quite unusual for its reputation, since its many virtues have not conspicuously in- cluded financial open-handedness. True, her act of generosity was posthumous, like that of an otherwise very different Amer- ican, Thomas Jefferson, who kept slaves throughout his life but freed them in his "'ill. The Duchess did not part with her Jewels while she was capable of using them, any more than Jefferson parted with his slaves. But to the recipients of such a gift the sacrifice, or absence of it, on the part of the donor is neither here nor there. The motives for charity are nearly always rather mixed, and often selfishness is the dominant motive. In the middle ages donors were chiefly influenced by the desire to save their souls and achieve heavenly immortality, whereas in modern times there has been more concern to secure earthly immortality for a donor's name. Pure altruism is rare. But, as that nice man Sir Walter Scott says, 'It is melancholy work to criticise too closely the motives of our most worthy actions.' The Duchess may have derived some vindictive pleasure from not leaving her jewels to her husband's relations, but it was natural enough that she should have wished to endow the Pasteur Institute, seeing that the Duke died of cancer. Incidentally, Anthony Holden's statement (in the Sun- day Times) that George VI made a 'very generous settlement' on his brother after the Abdication is hardly correct. The Duke had money of his own from Duchy of Cornwall revenues unspent while he was Prince of Wales. But the net £21,000 a year that he received by agreement with the new king was mainly interest on the sale of Balmoral and Sandringham to royal trus- tees, at a valuation which favoured. the King rather than the Duke. (No provision was made for the Duke in the Civil List.) It IS, therefore, misleading to suggest that the Jewels sold last week were in some degree Paid for out of largesse spontaneously Provided by George VI. To the extent that he contributed to the Duke's finances, he did so because he had to, as part of a tough family negotiation.
The traditional English name for the Place where Mrs Thatcher ended her Soviet trip is Tiflis. Yet our correspondents and newscasters last week irritatingly refer- red to it as Tbilisi, which seemed all the
more foolish when she was said to be flying there from Moscow. If Tbilisi, why not Moskva? If Moscow, why not Tiflis? The recent tendency to abandon familiar Eng- lish versions of difficult foreign names has gone too far, and efforts should be made to counteract it. The worst case is Peking, which more and more people are now calling Beijing. This deplorable habit should cease. The idea that it is necessary for the sake of Sino-British relations is surely absurd. We are not insulting the Chinese when we use our own name for their capital city but, on the contrary, paying them a substantial compliment. Only famous places are likely tc, be so treated, becoming household words, just as only famous authors qualify for the honour of being parodied. All is not yet lost. Other names besides Moscow are resisting the trend. Nobody here, so far as I know, is yet calling Venice Venezia, Flor- ence Firenze, Munich Miinchen or Brus- sels Bruxelles — to mention only a few. But we have to take warning from the Tbilisi experience. Unless we are careful we may one day find ourselves talking about Bruxelles sprouts and Beijingese dogs.
It was rightly regarded as a breakthrough that the full text of Mrs Thatcher's speech at the Kremlin banquet was printed in Pravda. But how many British newspapers printed the full text of Mr Gorbachev's speech on the same occasion — or of hers, for that matter? Verbatim reports of im- portant speeches are nowadays seldom found in our journals of record. Instead, we are given only extracts or summaries. This is particularly true of parliamentary reports, where as a rule only the two leading front-bench speeches in a debate are given at any length. In the recent Budget debate Roy Jenkins was one of the speakers, but it was only by buying Han- sard that anyone could have had a proper idea of what he said. Yet by common consent he was an outstanding Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his speeches are good copy. This is surely quite wrong. The
considered thoughts of a major politician who can express himself well are far more worth reading than the political 'news' stories, now much in evidence, in which quotations from speeches are mixed up with opinion poll findings, Lobby briefing and sheer speculation.
Iwas interested to see Jonathan Miller's production of Tosca at ENO, though it seemed to me that placing the action in 1944 did not really work. Quite apart from the fact that modern dress is wretchedly dull, and that the visual monotony was not even relieved by colourful church vest- ments at the end of Act I, there was a fundamental anachronism that vitiated the whole concept. Scarpia is essentially the agent of an ancien regime despotism, against which Cavaradossi represents the force of revolutionary nationalism. To make Scarpia chief of the Fascist police is to lose the vital element of dramatic contrast, because Fascism is not the anti- thesis of revolutionary nationalism but its perversion. The moral distinction between good and bad was not blurred by Dr Miller; but the modal distinction between old and new, Classical and Romantic, undoubtedly was. The failure of the experi- ment was most apparent at the beginning of Act II, when Scarpia was revealed not in his elegant, high-ceilinged palace room, but sitting at a functional desk in his office at police headquarters, and with a cantata being sung off-stage.
Political canvassing used to be an occupation of some danger, when politics were far more passionate than they are now. Today it is rare for somebody answer- ing the door to threaten violence, hurl abuse, or even slam the door in the canvasser's face. A little surliness is the worst that one normally encounters. But while canvassing has become less perilous, the delivery of leaflets has become more so. As a by-product of the crime wave, many more people now keep savage dogs; and they tend to keep them not tethered in kennels in their back yards, but untethered in their front halls within easy springing distance of the letter-box. Moreover, letter-boxes are often tightly sprung like traps, and blocked by what feels like a stiff scrubbing-brush. To penetrate these de- fences with a fragile leaflet can be very difficult indeed, and fraught with hazard. It is quite possible for a hand to be caught in the clamp of a letter-box while fingers are bitten off by the slavering, snarling mon- ster within. This fate has yet to befall me, but I fear it may before the year is out. We should pity the modern postman.
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