Pride of place
Prom Mrs C. Ackroyd Sir: I am sorry about Mr Gibbs's bladder complaint (week before last), and Mrs Pryce's reproductive woes Oast week). But by whatever reasoning do you give them pride of place? You are not running a medical correspondence column. Please render unto Dr Linklater the things that are his. , Because Mrs Pryce had to surrender ner dignity in the labour ward, must She also hurl it to the winds in your Paper? I thought The Spectator understoeu that you cannot lower the standard and retain the style; now I wonder. Surely it is better — and a hallmark of maturity — to accept that we cannot alter. The processes of nature are, an fond, impersonal and functional; and it is, after all, a Privilege to be able to bring forth one's otvo kind. Since she brings in the Virgin Mary, '7 Your correspondent open the Book Common Prayer and read the in_ccuriparable words of the Magnificat. hen she may get a glimmer of the real reason why Mary said in it, "All Lgenerations shall call me blessed.” It ",as to do with ideals: of holiness, simplicity, gentleness, humility, and Possibly other graces that were more „°ften regarded as feminine, but are "mv downgraded — at least in the w, best, but that of course is not the n°irie of our religion. "There is a lady sWeet and kind" wrote someone in the Sixteenth or seventeenth century '4111en things were a lot tougher for 4.'1Physically); he only saw her passby, but let Germaine Greer and 'intone de Beauvoir inherit the earth and she would be wiped from the face of it.
arin any case the frailties of the flesh e common to all humanity. What is hernearkable about man (woman) is that his(sh.e) is a spiritual animal. That, and h rniod and the few individuals who "ave sucome among us endowed with L euc," apparently God-given gifts as to raisesear the general run of us, are what „ our average as a species. There is "sh° reason why men more than women bier d find it easier to transcend their n, °gical construction. It is true that ereeri have always predominated in the ative arts, but not in those faculties, ,wieintal, aesthetic and emotional, thee„,..rebY we absorb and benefit from have ", and glimpse the heights which the 'en reached. The weariness of
a sh and its limitations are only for
us,'"e it may delight, disgust or fail sio but incontrovertibly we shall fia Ugh it off, to the worms or the the There is no evidence at all that tionother perishes. Universal aspiravver(l immortal longings; Homer's dire s and Mozart's music reach us thructlY across the centuries — bat u..Igh physical channels I know — thi,`"eY themselves are not physical a ;,:g8. As Othello reminded us, there is
"'orld elsewhere.
Nutr Caroline Ackroyd ield, Weald Sevenoaks.
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