ANOTHER VOICE
Separating the truth from what is dross
AUBERON WAUGH
Inever met James Watts, the American neurosurgeon who helped popularise the pre-frontal lobotomy in America between 1945 and 1955. Now I fear I never shall, as he died last week at the age of 90, but his excellent obituary in last Saturday's Tele- graph tells me all I could possibly wish to know about him and about his life's achievement.
It occurs to me that, in the fashion which is more or less universal throughout offi- cial, prosperous or established England for swearing at the press, we should pause from time to time and give thanks for what is, in fact, the best press in the world — the most varied and most excellent at every level, from the Sunday Sport and Sun at one end of the spectrum to the Telegraph at the other. Above all, the obituaries — in the Telegraph, Times, Independent, Guardian and their Sunday equivalents — should be a source of pride. Although the standard varies, they summarise a man or woman's life as sensibly and fairly as may be in any- thing between 600 and 2,000 words. How many lives are worth more? Would all of us not be better off thus summarised? We are well used to the idea that neither storied urn nor animated bust can back to its man- sion call the fleeting breath. Perhaps it is because there are already enough storied urns and animated busts around that the monumental and plastic arts have dwindled into formless abstractions: Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Only for a while, as the Daily Mirror found when its beloved chairman, saviour and osagyefo was miraculously found floating in 20,000 square miles of the Atlantic ocean or a small, dead, white whale closely resem- bling him was found — and buried with great honour on the Mount of Olives.
Look at all the mountains of paper Cap- tam Maxwell has left behind. A 1,200-word obituary would say it all much better, even- tually reducing to 600 words in the DNB; 20() words in Chambers's brilliant Biograph- ical Dictionary, surely the world's most use- ful reference book. James Watts has not made it to Chambers, and I doubt whether he will do so now. To that extent he might not have existed, but now his obituary has appeared in the Telegraph, anybody will be able to summon it up on the appropriate electronic device and his immortality is assured — at any rate until someone press- es a wrong button on the Information Highway and everything is lost.
We learn of Mr Watts that he popu- larised the pre-frontal lobotomy — 'one of the most contentious and macabre prac- tices in the history of medicine' — which involves cutting some white fibres in the front of the brain, to relieve the symptoms of anxiety. There was particular demand for this among traumatised American troops returning from Europe and the Far East, some of whom had been subjected to physical dangers. Between 1945 and 1955, about 40,000 Americans were lobotomised.
A post-operative feature among males was an implacable drive for copulation. How could we ever learn this except in an obituary? Nowadays Americans achieve the same results through tranquillising drugs and the popularity of lobotomy has declined. It was not without risks. Some patients suffered a relapse, others descend- ed into a vegetative state, some bled to death in the course of the operation. But many had their symptoms relieved, their characters improved. At last we understand the reason for trepanning in ancient times — it was not a superstitious practice to let evil spirits out of the brain, it was an empir- ically justified, if inexplicable, means of reducing anxiety.
These are only a few of the thoughts pro- voked by Mr Watts's obituary. Another concerns the influence of lobotomy on the subsequent course of what has come to be known as the American disease — Aids. If lobotomy creates an implacable drive for copulation among males, and if this drive is not reciprocated among American females, many of whom seem to have an entirely dif- ferent agenda nowadays, who can be sur- prised that a disease spread by sodomy now threatens to wipe out California even faster than the cholesterol released as gas by the 3,000 tonnes of hamburgers cooked daily in that state?
One could wander forever along the paths suggested by this brief obituary. My point is that he lived 90 years, this James 'It's the lady of the wine lake.' Watts. Now he is dead, as we must all face death. Watts wrote a book with his colleague Walter Freeman — Psychosurgery (1942) which claimed, among other things, to reveal how personality can be cut to measure by judicious slices in the brain. Watts and Free- man had graduated from use of an apple- corer to a fish-knife for their trepanning operation. Of course, we all have silly ideas to improve the world at some moment in our lives. All this can be thrown away, as dis- credited. What remains, or should remain, is the essential obituary, both as a monument to the life which has gone and as a provoca- tion to the muse of those left behind.
Beside that permanence and immutabili- ty, all other forms of writing fall into place as temporary distractions — whether nov- els, or biographies of the novelist, or criti- cisms of the biography, or commentary on the criticisms. It goes without saying that much too much is being written, and print- ed, and photocopied — more than people can possibly expect anyone to read.
My own immediate family — self, wife and children — has inflicted seven books on the country this year — a novel and a translation of an Italian biography of a Frenchwoman (by my wife), two musical textbooks by my elder son, a biography of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, by my elder daughter, the account of a small town in Africa by my younger daughter and final- ly a 425-page volume of collected Daily Telegraph journalism by myself: The Way of the World (Century, £15.99). On top of that, we have seen Selina Hastings's moving biography of Evelyn Waugh, which has attracted endless acres of richly deserved praise in every respectable newspaper or magazine. Many will remember G.A. Wheatcroft's long and impressive review in this magazine. Then we had to read the afterthoughts and medical commentaries: `Did Bromide make Waugh Vile?' asked Dr Thomas Stuttaford in the Times. The same G.A. Wheatcroft wrote a 'Why Oh Why?' — also in the Times — on 'how our tolerance of monsters such as Evelyn Waugh may be wearing thin: HOW OBNOXIOUS CAN AN ARTIST GET?'
There is no end to what we journalists are prepared to do to keep you all enter- tained. My important discovery this week is that everything we need to know is con- tained in the obituaries section. All else is dross. Who is going to be interested in Ire- land in three weeks' time?
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