Notebook
I was surprised to discover that the children of life peers are allowed by the Heralds to use the courtesy title 'honourable' in front of their names, just like the children of hereditary noblemen. What is more, many of them make full use of this hereditary privilege. My friend John Vaizey, for example — the distinguished economist and man of letters ennobled by Harold Wilson — insists on his children being so described and addressed, and got quite huffed when their headmaster did not make haste to accord them this distinction on first hearing of their father's elevation. My surprise, needless to say, does not spring from the fact that life peers, like the public-spirited John Vaizey, should want to have their children known as 'the Hon so and so.' That might have been expected, since even socialists, thank God, are human and want to do well by their offspring. But surely part of the point of the life peerage idea was to eliminate hereditary privilege. So in allowing courtesy titles, the Heralds are letting in by the back door what Parliament has expelled from the front; flouting the spirit if not the letter of this particular piece of egalitarian legislation. Bully for them. But does not the existence of this anomaly suggest that it is time to think a bit more deeply about the role of titles in contemporary Britain? For if the children (not to mention the wives) of life peers are to be allowed titles, why not grandchildren too? At least there was a good idea behind the old hereditary aristocratic system: that certain noble families should have time to build up a tradition of public service, in return for the privilege of nobility. More was expected from the family of an aristocrat than from the family of a commoner. So I was delighted to hear that Mrs Thatcher has let it be known that she intends to revert to the creation of hereditary peers. For if snobbery there must always be, how much more sensible that it should be openly recognised and institutionalised and put to some constructive purpose.
Two frustrations marred my Christmas and both were at the hands of ecclesiastics. The first had to do with the annual carol service from King's College, Cambridge, which this year was ruined for me by the Chaplain's appalling manner of reading the prayers. Who teaches the Anglican clergy to whine like this? Presumably it is part of the training at theological colleges, since women deaconesses, who don't attend such places, are blessedly spared this professional 'deformation. I am vastly impressed, for example by the voices of the women who now conduct the BBC morning services on Radio 4. Instead of aping that dreadfully pious male sing-song, they read the prayers in a neutral tone rather as if they were reading the news. The effect, by contrast, is electrifying, since one listens as if one was hearing the words for the first time. Perhaps the best argument for the ordination of women is that nothing short of so major a revolution will ever break the tradition of male intonation which is such a real barrier to young people taking Christianity seriously. When Noel Annan was Provost of King's he used to read the lesson superbly, prompting one to wonder why it should have to be an atheist who was most skilled at communicating the Gospel. Judging by the BBC experiment, however, women seem to be able to do so too, if only because so far they have not yet been 'trained' to do otherwise.
The second frustration was finding Lincoln Cathedral tightly shut, after driving twenty-five miles in the hope of hearing a midnight service there. Lots of other potential worshippers also found themselves locked out. Why in God's name shut a great cathedral at one of the few moments of the year when almost everybody is prepared to go to church? Most of those who were turned away at the door repaired instead to a neighbouring pub, which had agreed to stay open, and I rather wish we had done likewise. But we went instead to another Anglican church, where the vicar preached a sermon on the text of 'Empty thyself', which was hardly the most suitable theme for a Christmas congregation about to begin a day consecrated to doing exactly the opposite. As a Catholic I took a vow then and there never again to let the ecumenical spirit deflect me from the old ancestral practices. Although these are no longer in Latin, at least every cathedral is always open at midnight on Christmas Eve, and even the dumbest bog Irish priest would, know better than to preach a sermon on a text certain to induce more ribaldry than reverence.
Novelists obviously play a very large part in determining the political climate. Thus E.M. Forster must be held significantly responsible for having currupted the will of the British ruling „class with his intense concern for the cultivation of pure — not to be confused with chaste — personal relationships. Today such writers as Iris Murdoch and Kingsley Arnis probably think of themselves as increasingly Conservative. But can their novels be thought to help that cause? I rather doubt it, since the picture they both paint of the human condition does not seem at all conducive to a restored faith in individualism. Quite the contrary. Certainly most Iris Murdoch characters seem so totally incapable of being responsible for their own actions that the reader might reasonably assume that nothing short of a collectivist state could make any sense of them at all. All of them are made to appear desperately in need of Big Brother. Before there can be said to be a cultural swing to the Right more is needed than a few writers saying that they vote for Mrs Thatcher. Much more important would be the appearance of a few novels where the characters really seemed masters of their fate, instead of mere pawns who might as well be pushed around by the state, since left to their own volition they are bound either to go to the bad or go nowhere at all.
Icy weather is sufficiently unusual in Britain for nobody to be quite sure about its social modalities. How bad do the roads have to be, for example, before one is justified in crying off a dinner party at the last moment? Has a hostess the right to feel hardly done by if a guest lets her down when snowdrifts are threatened but have not yet materialised for certain? Just what is the right behaviour in such circumstances? No doubt in countries where there is a freeze-up every year there is a well-established code of manners governing such matters. But here we are left to reach our own conclusions without any benefit of an agreed standard sanctified by precedents stretching backwards down the centuries. I risked icy Suffolk roads to bring my party to George and Patricia Gale's magnificent New Year's Eve ball. Many others, however, let them down at the last moment, much to their annoyance. Had the host and hostess grounds for feeling hardly done by? Were the absent guests being rude in not trying harder? Etiquette, so helpful generally in adjudicating about these matters, has no guidance in this particular area. But in general, of course, the British are extraordinarily lucky in having so tightly structured a social life, unlike the poor Californians who have to decide almost everything on their own. No wonder so many of them go round the bend.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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