Home thoughts of the average mullah on the Clapham omnibus
here is nothing more luxurious than taking a London taxi. To emerge from a splendid West End establishment, hold up an imperious hand, see a silent cab instantly slink towards you, open the door with a brief Vestbounte Grove. please'. then sink gratefully into the capacious back seat, secure in the knowledge that the fellow will take you swiftly and accurately to your destination — without all the nonsense and argument of foreign cab-drivers — and with the fare honestly registered on the clock: all this is deeply satisfying. As Philip Hope-Wallace used to say, 'Taking a London cab makes you feel you are a gentleman, even if you are just a theatre critic.' All the same. I am quite happy with public transport, especially now that I have my free pass, so I can ignore the queues at Tube guichets and hop on and off genial red buses without worrying about its-y-bitsy coins.
This OAP pass is a delight to thrifty persons like myself. It appeals to grandees, too. During his long retirement I periodically saw Harold Macmillan on the Tube (and once on a Number Nine bus). Though a millionaire many times over, he was not merely thrifty but actively mean; or perhaps I should say parsimonious or saving. Using his OAP pass gave him almost as much pleasure as producing his gold GWR director's seal when travelling first class on the railway for nothing. He would sit bolt upright on the Piccadilly Line, not reading or speaking but inquisitive. I had known him on and off since I was 18 (the story of our first encounter I reserve for my memoirs if they ever come to he written) and he would give a nod in my general direction. But if I asked a question. 'Well, sir. and how do you think Mrs T. is doing'?' or 'What do you think of that man Murdoch?' he would assume an expression of owl-like omniscience, his large lids low over his eyes like a conjuror, and then slowly nod his head up and down, a sign of approbation swiftly contradicted by a prolonged spasm of head-shaking. Then he would smile a toothy grin and close his eyes to indicate that the audience was over.
Gladstone was said to take an omnibus from time to time, and one of the versions of George W. Joy's superb painting 'The Bayswater Omnibus' includes the GOM sitting stiffly, his hands clasped on his umbrella, while bosky Hyde Park rolls by over his shoulder. Harold Nicolson, whose inexhaustible store of anecdotage contained a special compartment of choice Curzoniana, used to say, `The Marquess had never been on a bus. One day, coming out
of what is now South Africa House. he spotted a red double-decker and got on, -drawing a bow at a venture" as he put it. The experiment was not a success. He told me, "These omnibuses are not all they are cracked up to be. I told the man who seemed to be in charge to take me to Carlton House Terrace, and the fellow flatly refused.Harold, I don't believe that story.' I'm not sure I do either. But the Marquess did. He said that now the lower orders had got the vote and were vested with a little authority, they were becoming narrowminded and bureaucratic.'
A public-transport story which is certainly true concerns Montagu Butler (1833-4918), the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and great uncle of 'Rab' Butler, the Tot y magus. What the two Butlers had in common, apart from being head of the same college. was making remarks which, though not intended to be funny, were greeted with hilarity. I still remember Rab's astonishment, real or assumed, when peals of laughter followed his assertion, meant to be supportive, that his leader, Sir Anthony Eden, was 'the best Prime Minister we have got'. Before ascending to Trinity, Montagu Butler had been headmaster of Harrow, where his grandfather had taught Byron. On entering a classroom unexpectedly, he was confronted by a scrawl on the blackboard, 'Butler is an Ass.' He commented. 'The melancholy truth stares me in the face.'
By the time he became Master he had acquired an unruly shock of white hair and grown a huge white beard and side-whiskers, so he looked like the Almighty in Blake's designs for Job'. At college meetings, he would fall asleep, then wake with a start in the silence following some ponderous intervention, exclaiming, 'A good point, powerfully put.' He made continuous noises, 'little cries and groans'. And he was liable to pat the hand of anyone who sat next to him, more in absentminded affection than for any other reason.
Being gregarious, he liked public transport. In his diary for January 1900. A.C. Benson recorded an expedition Butler made to London to attend an ecclesio-academic function. He wore full canonicals, a gown reaching to the floor, skullcap and mortarboard crushed down on his flowing white locks, bands at his neck, a red silk hood and other fineries. But at the station, instead of taking a cab, he got into an omnibus:
Everyone regarded him with amazement as he sat like a dissipated Stuart Prince, with a serene
and all-embracing smile. Who should get in but the Master of Jesus, that rough Welshman Morgan. who took a place at the far end, hoping to be unnoticed. At last Butler's eyes fell on him. He nodded and smiled and said, across the bus, `Ah, is that _you. dear Master of Jesus, and how are you?' There was a sudden sensation in the bus, the spectators perceiving that Butler was a lunatic, and they sat looking at him. ready to dart their eyes away if he looked at them. The conductor collected fares but was so afraid of the lunatic that he left him undisturbed. But Butler did not like to be ignored, and called out. 'Boy! Boy! What are the expenses of this transit?' The terrified conductor could say nothing but held up two fingers. Whereupon Butler, puzzled, turned to Dr Morgan and called out, 'Now, dear Master of Jesus. I must ask you to interpret this symbol for me: The angry answer was. 'For God's sake, Butler, pay your twopence and have done with it.'
Personally, I rather enjoy a good lunatic on a bus. There used to be a splendid religious maniac with whom I often travelled up to Paddington. He was an outspoken member of an organisation known as the Protestant Truth Society, Belfast-based, I imagine, since he invariably wore a greenish-tinged bowler hat, a definite sign of sectarian respectability in Ulster. This austere and righteous man, who wore a three-piece dark-brown suit and black lace-up boots, was always on the look out for stray sheep, backsliders and the like, whom he could chastise or at least rebuke. What got him going was the sound of a four-letter word, not unknown on omnibuses. His objections were prompt, loud and sustained, and often included biblical phraseology of a colourful nature. Other people on the bus would take sides and join in, and a delightful debate ensued. I have not seen this character for some time, to my regret, for these days he could expect strong support from fellow-fundamentalists of the Muslim faith, mullahs, bins and suchlike, well represented on our buses. But there are wheels within wheels in the Islamic world. Last week I overheard a conversation, in Arabic, Persian, Afghan, Tuareg or similar tongue, between two females sitting behind me. Every third word, I swear, was 'Viagra'. I slyly stole a glance behind and saw two enormous creatures of such monumental hideousness as to dispel at a stroke my hypothesis about the drift of their conversation. We all know what 'Unesco' means in Turkish. Then what, I ask learned readers, does 'Viagra' stand for in a common Afro-Asian lingua franca?
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