Another voice
Not to worry
Auberon Waugh
Three years ago I received a letter out of the blue from a lady living at the other end of country. She claimed to detect a resemblance between me and a portrait of the first Lord Herbert of Cherbury or Chirbury (1583-1648), the English adventurer and braggart, in a 1770 edition of Lord Herbert's Life which she possessed, and wrote to ask whether I had any idea how much the book was worth.
I replied on a postcard that I already possessed the 1886 edition, edited by Sidney Lee; that the portrait in this edition bore no resemblance, although it was true that Lord Herbert (brother of George Herbert) was a first cousin of mine, many times removed; that I had no idea how much her copy was worth, but would offer her a fiver ,for it.
There the matter rested. I do not think she answered my postcard. Then, soon after my return from France in September this year, I found a parcel among the pile of correspondence.which took a week to clear. In it was the copy of Lord Herbert's Life, and two cards. The first was my own postcard of three years earlier. The second was from her: 'This present in appreciation of your articles in Spectator and PE. I much enjoyed today's 'The French Solution'.
Why is P.E. so anti poor J. Thorpe? . . I'm killing myself tomorrow so I won't know. So no need for you to write to thank. No reason really, just inclination and general tact. I'm sixty one anyhow and my throat bleeds — and of course there's Bruce Forsyth pending — etc. Also I'm pettyminded which is depressing. Widow, no window cleaner, gardener, sweep — all v. boring. Lots on dole. Washing machine on blink.
I really do enjoy you, and many thanks. All best wishes, Yours, When I read this it was already eight days after she had written. A reasonably responsible citizen would probably have discovered her telephone number and found out whether she had carried out her intention, or at least telephoned the local police or Samaritan organisation. Psychiatrists and others will declare that this was a classic cry for help, addressed to a stranger from whom she expected sympathy. I can only say that having thought about the matter, I decided it wasn't. There was a sporting chance she was a lonely, loopy, self-pitying woman who had no intention of doing anything but draw attention to herself, but I decided she was a sane, intelligent and likeable woman who, if she had changed her mind, would be gravely embarrassed to receive telephone calls from Somerset, or from her local Samaritans, or visits from the local police and welfare apparat. I am not yet a disciple of the mysterious Thomas Szasz, who seems to be emerging as patron saint of the Spectator's back pages, and whose practice, as I understand it, is to advise those patients who wish to commit suicide to go ahead and give it a whirl. But it seemed to me then, as it does now, that I had no business to intrude on the personal arrangements of a totally strange lady. So, instead, I sat down and wrote her a letter: Dear Mrs.
Thank you very much for your magnificent book The Life of Lord Herbert. It has caused enormous pleasure and I look forward to reading it from cover to cover.
Your parcel was awaiting my return from France and I can only hope that you did not carry out your declared intention. It seems to me a great mistake, however much one is depressed by Bruce Forsyth or sympathetic towards Jeremy Thorpe. There are always pleasures to be found in life, and none with any certainty thereafter. Of course, if you carried out your intention I am wasting my time and speaking to myself. But I hope not, and that you will come to accept that if you can enjoy my articles in the Spectator and Private Eye there are many enjoyments left to you.
In any case, please accept my sympathy in your depression and my sincere thanks for your present, which has caused me so much happiness.
Best Wishes, Yours sincerely, Auberon Waugh In retrospect, of course, I am appalled by the inadequacy of this letter, dictated on 12 September 1978 while I was desperately trying to tidy up my affairs (which include an in-depth investigation by the Inland Revenue, of which more, no doubt, later) before going to Morocco. To have quoted my own scribblings in the Spectator and Private Eye as a possible reason for staying alive is quite exceptionally odious, and it is an aspect of the narrative which might easily have been suppressed if it had not been crucial to my reasons for telling the story here. _ How much more eloquently I might have argued the case! I might have quoted my cousin George Herbert from his poem The Flower: 'And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: 0, my only Light, It cannot be That I am he, On whom thy tempests fell all night' Or, in more pedestrian vein, the whole of To Be or Not To Be: 'But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills ;we have, Than fly to others that we know not of?'
In the event, it would not have made any difference, as I was speaking to myself. On my return from Morocco, I found a buff envelope from the Post Office waiting in a pile of correspondence which took several days to clear. It had 'Returned Postal Pac ket' printed on the outside, and inside was my letter. Two lines were drawn through the address, and the word 'deceased' scrawled beside, apparently by the local post office. So I must assume that an unknown woman at the other end of the country had taken her own life after sending me a card. It is an odd and moving tale, and I am aware in telling it that some readers may be moved to anger by my own part — or lack of part — in the unfolding narrative. But it is not that aspect which makes me most uneasy. Among the things which depressed mY correspondent was the thought of Bruce Forsyth's return to television, and I fear I may be responsible for this, as I drew attention to the impending threat in the Spectator a few weeks earlier. In fact, this page nearlY always seems to be drawing attention to disagreeable matters: Larry Lamb, the collapse of education, the proletarian debouchement of Moss Evans and all the other Evanses. I think I am right to castigate these horrible developments, but we must never allow ourselves to become depressed by them. Let us examine the case of Bruce Forsyth. Since my warning, I gather he has, indeed, returned to television. I would not dream of looking at him nor, I imagine, would many Spectator readers. We can scarcely claim that he has impoverished the quality of our lives. He is just one of the numerous disgusting things happening on television. For my own part, I watch practically no television except the ten o'clock news and even then am nearly sick by the advertisements Ifl the middle — why do the daddies always wear woollen cardigans and pudding-basin hair styles? No Englishman I know wears either; they might be creatures from outer space, these typical English daddies. There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.
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