ANOTHER VOICE
Kind hearts and baronets
CHARLES MOORE
As Auberon Waugh wrote in this space last week, `. . . it is extraordinary what complicated emotions titled people stir in the breasts of the more sophisticated'. How true. It was A.N. Wilson, in the Diary of the week before, who first raised the Strange Case of the Reluctant Baronet, provoking Waugh's intervention. Several friends have pressed me to give my own testimony.
We are dependent on Wilson for the few, sketchy facts. These are that a friend of his inherited a baronetcy this summer and decided not to use the title. 'He and his wife both lead middle-class lives in London and felt it would be vaguely ridiculous to dub themselves Sir This and Lady That.' Without knowing more, we cannot properly judge the rights and wrongs of the decision. Perhaps Wilson's friend was happy with the prospect of being Sir This, but was forced to back off by a fiercely egalitarian wife who refused to be Lady That. Perhaps, as Waugh suggested, he works for Rupert Murdoch. The public may never be told. All I can do is record the complicated emo- tions stirring in this particular breast, in the hope of helping others.
`He and his wife both lead middle-class lives in London.' How the mind races. My wife and I lead middle-class lives in Lon- don. For all we know, this missing baronet might live a mere 200 yards from our door. He might, like me, be a journalist. Perhaps his wife, like mine, is clever, dark-haired and beautiful. Do they, like us, have an heir called William? Just think! The woman who does not wish to be known as Lady That could be our son's godmother. Mere idle day-dreaming, I know. But if you lead middle-class lives in London, you need all the day-dreams you can get. How sad that this lucky couple are refusing to brighten the lives of their friends, neighbours and relations.
I speak from a full heart, for, perhaps like Wilson's friend, I am the nephew of a baronet. In his entry in Who's Who, my uncle records that he 'has established his claim, but does not use the title', a choice which is often made in practice but which I have never elsewhere seen formalised in print. Now as it happens, my uncle is as nearly a saint as any man I know, and so his reason for putting these words in Who's Who can only be to express a piety to his father's memory while at the same time modestly disclaiming all honour for him- self; but if he were any other sort of man, I should sometimes, in dark moments over these long years, have been moved to exclaim, 'Dog in the manger'. For if he does not want to be Sir This, there's them as does. Since I am the elder son of my uncle's younger brother, I am in the run- ning. It is true that I would have to wade through slaughter to the throne. My father is still alive. My sainted uncle has an equal- ly admirable son who has, in turn, a charm- ing infant boy. The prospect seems remote and I wish all my dear relations well. But one does dream.
`Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who . . . never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour and consolation in a distressed one', thus Jane Austen begins Persuasion, `. . and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed: this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened.' My sister and I were like Sir Walter in our childhood (though not, I hope, in the rest of our char- acters). The 1959 edition of Burke's Peer- age and Baronetage — the most recent in the house — tended to fall open at 'Moore of Hancox'. My sister was born in that year and so did not feature in the book whereas I, being born in 1956, did. One day I turned to the entry as usual and found that a child- ish hand had entered her names and birth- date and those of our brother exactly as, 150 years before, Sir Walter had inserted the marriage of his youngest daughter. It was a good subject for a tease, but I knew, if our positions had been reversed, that I would have done the same thing myself.
I have in front of me the 1918 edition of Burke. It sets out the 'privileges of the Baronetage'. For example, The daughters of Baronets have the rank and precedence of their eldest brother', and, 'Since the Leg- `At least it'll mean fewer delays.'
islative Unions between England and Scot- land, and Britain and Ireland, the separate Orders of Baronets have been superseded by one general institution of Baronets of the United Kingdom, who also bear on their coat armour, as an augmentation, a canton (or inescutcheon), arg. charged with a sinister hand, couped and erect, gu.' Despite all this, the author regretfully records that 'the Order of Baronets is scarcely estimated at its proper value'. If that was true in 1918, which, by the way, was the year before the Moores joined it, how much more true is it today. I dare say that there are people who do not know of the existence of a baronetcy. Certainly there are people living middle-class lives in London who throw it away as if 'twere a careless trifle.
But if a baronetcy is now despised and rejected, all the more reason to rejoice in one. It is unique among hereditary honours (unless one includes the still disputed ques- tion of Irish peerages) in being absolutely useless. It does not entitle one to use any tea-room or free postage, to collect small sums of money for attending anything, or to have one's speeches recorded in Hansard. Nor is it tainted, as honours newly bestowed always are, by anxiety about merit. One reason why almost every person in Britain who might conceivably be given a knighthood or peerage finds the matter painful, though fascinating, is that he wonders whether he really deserves it or, more often, believes that he deserves something better. With inheriting a baronetcy, deserving does not come into it. It is a pure honour, pointless and therefore perfect.
Yes, I can see that there might be snob- bish reasons for disclaiming the title — that one would otherwise end up in the same boat as Mark Thatcher, for example. Yes, I can see that it would be difficult, as one leads one's middle-class life in London, to have to say to the Council Tax Office in Islington, as it might be, or the typesetters at The Spectator, come to that, 'It's Sir This, actually,' or, 'I'm Lady That, now,' but then a certain station in life carries certain responsibilities. If the heirs to these hon- ours are turning up their noses at them, could not a system be devised for passing them on to others brave enough to take on the burden? Some of us would mortgage a bit more of our middle-class lives in Lon- don for the chance.
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