SPECTATRIX
'I am Proud to Believe'
OY E. ARNOT ROBERTSON
THE things I've been invited to be proud of, in my time 1 It's not only the variety which I find astonishing, but the fact that in almost no case have I deliberately done Waything myself to bring about the creditable state of affairs, Or whatever it is over which I'm expected to feel complacent. Supposed sources of pride for me have ranged from being imt a school where I was bitterly unhappy, to keeping bees t the time when Sir Edmund Hilary got to the top of Everest. Y neighbour put her head over my garden wall, while I was Muffled up in hat, veil and gloves, to tell me about the con- test of the mountain. ' Now doesn't that make you proud be a bee-keeper ? ' she asked. Sir Edmund apparently ceps them on a big scale in New Zealand, but I suspbct e is the rugged sort of handler who never uses a veil. I Couldn't get up any real fellow-feeling.) Numerically, the top source is having Scottish blood. I had i, o option, and I don't think it matters either way, but actually ' Prefer most of the English, among whom I have chosen to ye, to the majority of my compatriots, and if my co-opera- on could have been sought at birth, I fancy I should have declined the northern-honour, but for every occasion on which I have been asked to be proud of being British (and there have been plenty) there must have been at least two, possibly more, of the specialised, Wha's Like Us ? ' kind.
Pride by proxy seems to me particularly hard to work up: my husband's job leads me to listen to more after-dinner speeches, or to be present while they are being made, than fall to the lot of most people. When I am a guest, and someone else is answering the toast to us, I am almost certain to be told that I ought to be proud about something, if it is only getting an invitation to the occasion. Of being in certain places at certain times (` I speak without fear of contradiction, Mr. Mayor, when I say how proud we are, one and all, to stand, on this centenary of Blank, in your historic city ')—Of owning an Empire, or giving it freedom—Of shaking hands with foreigners (` proud to greet the representatives of ') who, without being grossly rude, could not refuse to shake hands with me—Of being a woman, a mother, a housewife, and also, unwittingly, the two millionth purchaser of a well- advertised household commodity—On all these counts— blessings which came to me by chance—I have at one time or another been exhorted to congratulate myself.
No one ever asks me if I am proud of being able to read. I am. I got the knack of it by my own efforts one afternoon.
I was one of_the children who learnt very late: spelling out cat-on-the-mat stuff when I was too old for this exercise bored me so frantically—literally, to tears—that I couldn't take in the shape of the words; and I still couldn't manage it when, at eight years old, I was sent to stay with some younger cousins who could all read, except the threeyear-old. On a rainy afternoon I was detailed to read to her. I wasn't going to admit I couldn't. I grabbed a book of nursery rhymes. which I knew by heart, and guessing which was which by the pictures, I repeated them aloud while running my eyes along the lines, in imitation of real readers. After a time I found I was reading. Now this seems to me an achievement worthy to swell the chest, and so does the ability to ride a bicycle, an improbable conquest of instability which I also managed for myself. Mechanically-minded friends have explained to me several times why it is possible to balance on two wheels when moving, but not being mechanically-minded I can never remember the theory, and I still think it's a miracle I perform, although rarely and reluctantly and only when all other forms of transport have failed. Yet not for this, nor the fact that I can milk a cow, has anyone ever suggested that I should pat myself on the back. On the other hand, only last week I was told that all of us (the Scots again) should be proud that the Queen has gone to Balmoral for a holiday. Believing as I do that nobody deserves one more, I still can't feel that I influenced her decision about the locality, surely the only possible source of personal satisfaction ? But the most astonishing pride of all is one which seems to be reserved for politicians. They and they only, in my experience, claim that they are `proud to believe' something. I've heard them say so publicly, and I've seen the phrase reported in print, over and over again. Whatever their party, that gets funnier and funnier, the more you think of it.
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