Diary
As I spent most of June and July in the United States it was natural for peo- ple to ask me on my return how the presidential election was going and who would win. The answer is, I don't know. I have a hunch – in fact I have a bet – that Mr Mondale will carry no more than half a dozen states; but then I had an earlier bet that he wouldn't choose a woman as his running mate. The easiest but worst mis- take any reporter can make is to suppose that he knows exactly what is going on. All perspectives are distorting. The most acute observer can be wildly wrong. Four years ago the Spectator had two intelligent and well-informed American correspondents, Mr Henry Fairlie and Mr Nicholas von Hoffman. They both predicted a Carter victory up until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. I sympathised with them. How does anyone know what America is thinking? Which America? I spent some of that summer also in the United States and it occurred to me that a visitor who stuck to the Georgetown- Manhattan-Cambridge-Martha's Vineyard axis might very easily have decided that the election would be won by Mr John Ander- son (remember him?). Similarly, it seems reasonable to ask a reporter who often goes to South Africa what is the mood of the blacks there. But in fact the blacks a visitor meets are either servants or intellec- tuals, both highly unrepresentative classes. I simply don't know the minds of factory workers in Port Elizabeth or peasant far- mers in the Free State. And I certainly make no prediction about the course of events in South Africa, at which game many people have come heavy croppers. A foreign correspondent was once asked by his London office for a full prognostication of what would happen next in Ruritania (or wherever it was). He telegraphed back, 'My balls uncrystal'. Quite so.
One pretext for those American trips was to see the London opera com- panies, English National and Royal Opera, on tour. Just before leaving I went to fortify myself at Glyndebourne for two nights at the start of its 50th season. Poppea left me cold: like have a tube of musical toothpaste relentlessly emptied over me. But Figaro the next evening under Bernard Haitink was a precise re- minder of why strong men can sob at the name of Glyndebourne. It was five hours of magic. (I include the supper interval.) It would be repetitious to list all the reasons why Glyndebourne is unique; it is so. Sir Rudolf Bing wrote a touching passage recalling his work there in the early days before the war. John Christie was a man with his fault and his vanities, but his principal vanity was the belief that Glynde-
bourne was an astonishing achievement, that he had achieved it, and that nobody else could have done. And there, as Sir Rudolf adds, he was entirely right. Nor, I suspect, could anybody but Sir George Christie have managed to preserve that achievement.
Anew book by Mr Arthur Miller has the mysterious title 'Salesman' in Beij- ing. 'Salesman' is his famous play, but where or what is Beijing? The answer proves to be the capital of China, which we used to call Peking. Some pedant with a faddish new system of transliteration has decided that the name should be respelt. I suppose that the new version will work its way into print generally. There are two kinds of daft name-changing, which overlap in practice. On the one hand is the national- ist, propagandist change. A touring party of cricketers has just arrived here from 'Sri Lanka'. 'Bangladesh' is the Bengali for 'Free Bengal'. Why not go on calling them Ceylon and Bengal? We don't call Ger- many 'Deutschland' or Finland 'Suomi'. Then there are the changes imposed in the name of supposed scholarship or accuracy. Beijing is one of these, dreamed up by the sort of people who think we should call the sacred book of Islam the Q'r'n. In southern Africa nowadays everyone carefully speaks of the Sotho or the Ndebele rather than the older forms, Basuto and Matabele. All of this has less to do with anti-colonialism or national dignity than with what Fowler condemns s.v. 'Didacticism'. In any case, it rests on a logical error. There cannot be a `correct' form of transliteration from Ara- bic or Chinese and the Basuto or the Matabele or the Bechuana did not, actual- ly, have written forms of their own names. The government of Upper Volta, by the way, has just announced that the country will be known in future as Bourkina Fasso: being translated, 'Country of Incorruptible Men', which at least wins a prize as African joke of the year.
The West Indians can't be blamed for being a very strong side playing a very weak one, nor for having four (or is it six?) startlingly fast bowlers. But the predomi- nance of fast bowling threatens to change the game, not for the better. Cricket has always been a tough as •well as a subtle game, tougher and more dangerous than baseball, for example. Soon it will become a gladiatorial contest. The change is both reflected and in part, I think, caused by the arrival of the helmet. Helmets should obviously be banned for fielders: they allow an unfair intimidatory advantage. If someone wants to field at forward short leg a few feet from the bat he should take the risks involved. I am not sure that even helmets for batsmen are ultimately in the interest of the game – or players. The more that batsmen are armoured from head to toe the more it seems respectable for fast bowlers to let them have it continuously, as we have seen and with results we are seeing. The odd fast, short ball is a traditional part of cricket; the traditional answer to it was not protective equipment, but the hook. But short bowling should be salt on the meat, not the whole dish. The real culprits are the umpires. There has never been any need for such idiocies as lists of 'recognised' batsmen. The umpires know who is capable of facing bumpers and how often. And Law 46 — 'They are the sole judge of fair and unfair play' — gives them complete discretion, among other things, as to who shall bowl what at whom.
Although the Spectator is thought by some to uphold the masthead motto of the old 'Pink 'Un' – 'High Toryism, High Churchism, High Farming and Old Port' – it has not yet pronounced on the method of episcopal appointments. On the face of things, the old form of conge d'elire and formal election with but one candidate is anachronistic. But quite apart from Enoch's wonderfully ingenious argument for the Royal Supremacy, anything which the hierarchy, clergy and 'Synod' of the Church of England now favour is suspect: 'It is one of the functions of an upper class, Evelyn Waugh once said, `to see that the clergy do not get above themselves', and in England for four centuries this has been specifically the function of the state, a duty now neglected with displeasing consequ- ences. There is something insufferable about these turbulent priests with their devotion to modish causes and their phar- isaical scrupulosity when asked to follow prescribed forms. We could surely do with a few more bishops who knew about old port and who didn't publicly question the meaning of words which they were paid a salary to recite. If Mrs Thatcher has any more trouble in the clerical ranks she should remember Lord John Russell's delicately phrased reply to the Dean of Hereford, who had made some conscien- tious objection to electing a bishop as nominated: 'Dear Sir, I have received your letter in which you inform me of your intention to break the law . .
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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