DIARY STAN GEBLER DAVIES
The news from Ireland is more than usually frightful, but I do not care. It might even be a good thing. Because the IRA have recently concentrated their attention so overwhelmingly on ceremony, what they are up to has become exceptionally visible. The changing of the guard at Gibraltar, as orchestrated by them, would no doubt have been recorded on some- one's videotape, had all gone according to their plan, just as Enniskillen was. Two of their funerals went awfully wrong in Bel- fast, in the course of which the Irish war was brought immediately home to the great British television public. Presumably, that public would now wish the war to be brought to a close. It may very simply be brought to a close now by military means. The moment is exactly right. It is only necessary to arrest a few hundred people and lock them up until they are too old to cause any more trouble. This policy is called internment without trial and is offensive to the liberal conscience and probably to the government in Dublin as well, which is two more excellent reasons why it should be adopted forthwith. Intern- ment fails only when the wrong people are arrested, or when the internees are let loose too soon. There is no need to make those mistakes this time. Not after 20 years, there isn't.
That's enough Belfast. The furthest south you can get from Belfast without actually stepping off the island is Kinsale, and I am powerfully homesick for Kinsale. Part of my right lung was removed a month ago, and with it the tumour which was killing me. I had cancer but the cure is quite complete. Unequivocably condem- ned to death three months ago, I am now granted the rest of my natural span, which could be three more decades. I am not allowed to get on the plane to Cork (Ryanair, naturally) until after Easter but this fits in very well with my plans. I shall do my three days' Easter duty in London, as I did last year, and hear the Victoria Passion sung as I did then, on Good Friday, but this year I shall feel it deeper still, because in the interval I got to know death quite well.
Iam convalescing at Harrow-on-the- Hill, where friends very kindly indulge every whim. The Harrow schoolboys are unobtrusive, except at weekends, when they appear to conduct most of their courtship in the streets. The hill is under the flightpath to RAF Northolt but is otherwise quiet except for the neighbours upstairs. He is a do-it-yourself enthusiast and spends much of his time banging nails into walls and operating high-pitched machinery. His wife makes a more frightful racket, which drowns out even the approach of aircraft of the Queen's Flight. When they are copulating, which is more often than would seem necessary, and unusually prolonged, she emits an asto- nishing ululation, which halts all conversa- tion down here and ruins every competing entertainment. Even the dog, a springer spaniel which barks at the sound of the schools bells, is silenced. The son of the house, who has just turned 17, seeks my advice on counter-measures. He has got a tape machine which makes a lot of noise and wants to know which piece of music would, in my opinion, be most likely to put the sex gymnasts off their stroke. Rossini's William Tell Overture had occurred to him but I suggest the Ride of the Valkyries. He has bought the tape, but for some odd reason they have gone quiet upstairs. I think they have quarrelled. As soon as they make it up, we will let them have it.
From time to time, and usually in the company of aristocratic acquaintances, I pass myself off as the Graf von Gebler. (`This is my friend, the Hon. Garech Browne and I am von Gebler. I fear we have left our wallets at home.') I fell into this vice after meeting three grafs and a grafin one afternoon in quick succession. There are a lot of them about. As with many impostures there may be some en- titlement to it. There are not many Geblers in the world and they must all be relations of mine. A gentleman calling himself the Baron von Gebler made a living as a playwright in Vienna two centuries ago. Mozart wrote incidental music for at least one of his plays. I hope he was paid for his trouble. (This is my friend, Wolfgang Mozart and I am the Baron von Gebler. I fear we have left our wallets at home.') I heard one of Mozart's contributions to the von Gebler oeuvre broadcast on Radio 3 when I was very ill. The music was of course delightful. Some bits of it would not be out of place in the Magic Flute. The baron, unfortunately, was a mediocre play- wright but so was Schickaneder. My grand- father, Adolphe Gebler, who arrived in Dublin from Prague in 1912, had taken to Mozart's trade, and wrote theatre music for Michael MacLiammoir. He was a like- able man and is remembered with affection in Dublin, as I imagine our relative, the baron, was in Vienna.
Later in the year we will be noting the 50th anniversary of Munich, as we have just remembered the Anschluss. My grand- father had a sign hung out then from Liberty Hall, headquarters of the Irish Transport & General Workers' Union, to whom he was bandmaster, which read CZECHOSLOVAKIA WILL RISE AGAIN. What Dubliners made of this in 1938 I do not know. The average Dubliner is an expert at everybody's business but his own and probably knew, and wished to know, more about Central Europe than Chamberlain did. Adolphe Gebler was born within a couple of years and a couple of hundred miles of that other Adolf, and they grew up speaking the same language and subject to the same Emperor. My Adolphe, however, had no time for the other one. He spent the first world war interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man while a brother of his fought with the Czech Legion in the French Army. By 1938 the majority of their German-speaking Bohemian compatriots had opted for Hen- lein, Hitler and Sudetendeutschland, which is why, in 1945, all 3,000,000 of them were thrown out of Czechoslovakia. There are no Geblers left in Prague, but this one carries the Villa Boheme with him where- ver he goes. That is what Adolphe used to call his household, wherever it was. My grandmother used to call it Liberty Hall. Now it is in Kinsale.
My other grandfather, David Davies, to give him his English nomenclature, was born at Minsk. He was a civil engineer, a Jew and the subject of Nicholas II. He and my grandmother escaped to England after the pogroms began but their four eldest children perished. They had nine more, in Liverpool. The youngest, my father, Max, was born in 1909. When Adolphe Gebler, the Bohemian musician, was informed by my Irish grandmother (family names Wall and Russell, one Norman and one Huguenot) that his daughter, my mother, was being courted by an English Jew, he answered, 'Thank God, at least she will eat.' I mention all of this because I am often asked how Irish I am. Now you know that I am very Irish indeed.
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