ANOTHER VOICE

The wind may listen, but by Gadd who wants to read?

CHARLES MOORE

In last week's Spectator, a letter appe.ared from Mr Thomas W. Gadd. It complained that for the past six years the magazine had failed to publish any letter, article or poem by him. Mr Gadd reasoned that since this failure cannot have been because the magazine thought his work of too high a standard, or of a standard equal to the rest of The Spectator, his work must have been 'considered of too low a stan- dard', 'which would indicate that The Spectator has a fictitious estimate of its own standard "height" '.

Mr Gadd went on to suggest that there had been a veto on his work because of 'a pervading Roman Catholic and high- Anglican domination' during my editorship of the paper. He thought he had 'offended simply because some of my submissions have been too freshly, effectively and correctly critical of the highly erroneous Catholic version of what Jesus said, did and meant at that Supper event which the Mass is supposed to celebrate'.

There are many people, of course, who write to the papers and are seldom pub- lished. There is Mrs Jessica P. Harris, now well over 90. Mrs Harris believes that Mrs Thatcher is actually divine. Since the events of last November she has therefore been very unhappy, and this Passiontide particularly upset her, causing her to write almost every day. She is a very kind woman, but not without a sharp awareness of politics: 'I have noticed Mr Heseltine on the television a great deal again. I think an election must be coming soon.'

Then there is Mr S.E. Moon, of Isle- worth. Mr Moon greatly dislikes mis- cegenation, and sees a lot of sense in the Nazi policy of closing brothels in Amster- dam. He often illustrates his letters with vivid drawings, sometimes of black men with white women, sometimes of Mr Ed- ward Heath in an unusual position. What he has to say about Mrs Thatcher is unrepeatable. A couple of years ago, he became very angry about the Malicious Communications Bill, then going through Parliament, but so far as I know, no one has tried to enforce the new law against him.

There is Miss Theodora Van Lottum, who types with wild enthusiasm on rice paper from a public library in Guatemala. There was the late Lord Rayleigh, who told of the extraordinary behaviour of Edward VIII to his relations, of his own attempts (unsuccessful) to persuade Mrs Thatcher to come and stay with him. There is Mr Jeffrey Hamm, ready at any time to spring to the defence of Sir Oswald Mos- ley. There is Mr Alastair Forbes, whose published work is the tiniest tip of a gigantic iceberg.

Less sympathetic, I find, are those, very frequently rejected, who yet get published now and again by dint of writing to every publication the entire time. These include R. Simmerson (Against the Common Mar- ket), Mr Nicholas Walter of the Rationalist Press Association, and Mr George Stern, who once sent. me a questionnaire deman- ding to know why I did not publish his letters.

But Mr Gadd stands out. At one time he wrote to me — unfortunately I did not keep the letter — and pointed out that he had sent me the only truthful explanation of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection ever given, 'AND YOU REJECTED IT'. Actually, it is more likely that it was rejected by the production editor, who read most of the unsolicited manuscripts, but that does not make it any better. I felt like Pontius Pilate.

Skimming through the letters of Evelyn Waugh recently, I found the following, dated Easter Monday 1955:

To T.W. Gadd Dear Mr Gadd, Thank you for sending me this poem. I wish I could give an opinion on it. The trouble is that I simply don't understand anything later than Tennyson. You must go to Spender or Lehmann for appreciation.

I am glad you find 'Sebastian' an interest- ing character. I don't think he had any egotism. He was a comtemplative without the necessary grace of fortitude.

Yours sincerely, Evelyn Waugh

This seems not to have satisfied Mr Gadd, for there follows this postcard, written in the same month:

To T.W. Gadd Thank you for your letter. Pray do not suppose that my inability to enjoy modern art is a source of pride to me. I deplore it. Nor is it the fruit of affluent circumstances. I know many richer and better educated than myself, who rejoice in Picasso.

E.W.

So before I was even born, Mr Gadd was firing off his writings and not taking no for an answer. How far back does the corres- pondence stretch? Does the file include a temperate rebuke from J.H. Newman, even a

Sir, Your verses want form and sense. Where they are intelligible, they are blasphemous. Your servant Sam. Johnson

The unworthy suspicion arises that Mr Gadd may be a far bigger, longer-running, funnier Henry Boot, writing to every edi- tor or author of his era in order to amass a unique collection of the literature of embarrassment, evasion, feeble kindness and fobbing off. What an archive there must be at 45 Lever Road, Rugby, War- wickshire.

But, as I say, the suspicion is unworthy. Mr Gadd is not messing around. He is pursuing his theory about the Supper event in first-century Palestine with sincerity and single-mindedness, without hope of world- ly reward, though not without a needling sense of the idiocy of the world in refusing to recognise the truth which he has disco- vered. And we may well be idiotic: the awful truth is that I cannot in the least remember what Mr Gadd's theory says. He is prophesying to the wind, for only the wind will listen.

One judges too much by appearances, by a cynical sense of what is likely to be in any piece of writing, based on a quick assessment of the typing, the character of the covering letter, the colour of the ink. I have a horrible feeling that if something called 'The Proverbs of Hell' had landed on my desk early in the 19th century, the following letter would have gone out:

Dear Mr Blake, The editor thanks you for your interesting poem, but regrets that he does not have the space to publish it.