D erek Conway maintains his position. ‘I still believe I have
done nothing wrong,’ he told the Mail on Sunday. To understand why he could possibly think that, one has to dig deeper into British class feeling. In wanting to become a Conservative MP, Mr Conway, a workingclass boy from Gateshead, seems to have believed not only that he could serve his country, but that he would become posher. He exclaims that ‘An MP is paid less than a sous-chef in the Commons’, as if this were a self-evident absurdity. He says everything would be fine if only MPs were given ‘the salary for the job’, which he thinks would be between £80,000 and £100,000. But I do not think he could explain rationally why that range might be the right rate — why not much more, in order to get the best, or much less, in order to make sure that no one goes into it for the money? He wants what he sees as the befitting lifestyle, and he thinks the taxpayer should provide it. All MPs want status, but for a Tory MP, this is bound up with resentment against those colleagues who are well off and ‘well-born’. It must be infuriating for Mr Conway that people like David Cameron don’t have to struggle as he has done. At the same time as disliking such people, however — and this is a very Tory thing — he wishes to imitate them. His children are called Freddie, Henry and Claudia and all were educated privately, the boys at Harrow. He is a Geordie, but they are Sloanes. Behind almost every act of financial desperation by a Conservative MP lies some difficulty with the school fees. Until the end of the second world war, any Conservative candidate had to be able to show that he could pay for the running of his constituency association out of his own pocket. Perhaps there should be a modern equivalent by which anyone seeking to become a Conservative MP should be made to promise to educate his (or her) children in the state system unless he could show that he has enough money for the school fees. It would save so much pain later.
Iwonder if Mr Conway has read William Cobbett’s autobiography, which is entitled The Progress of a Ploughboy to a Seat in Parliament. Cobbett was just as boastful of his upward mobility as Mr Conway, but his purposes were different. Here he is, in his final illness, looking back: ‘I am once more in a farm. I might have been ... possessed of bags of public gold ... I trudge through the dirt, and I might have ridden in the ring at Hyde Park, with four horses to draw me along in a gilded carriage with a coachman before me and footmen behind me. What I might have been is hard to say; what I have been and what I am, all the world knows: I was a plough-boy and a private soldier, and I am a Member of the House of Commons sent thither by the free voice of a great community.’ Of course the Tory party is no longer the political wing of the Church of England, but wasn’t it unnecessarily pagan of it to hold its Black and White Ball this week, on Ash Wednesday?
In her marvellous talk on parsonage gardens to the Rectory Society last week, Mary Keen challenged this column’s assertion (19 January) that Jane Austen is inaccurate, in Emma, in describing an orchard in blossom ‘at almost Midsummer’. According to Mary, there is an apple called Court Pendu Plat, cultivated since 1613 and known as the ‘wise apple’ because its late blossoming escapes the frost. It flowers on about 10 June in Kent, and therefore might, said Mary, do so a week later in colder (?) Hampshire. At the end of the talk, a woman with both literary and horticultural knowledge came up to me and said that I must be right because the entire orchard would not have been composed of Court Pendu Plat and so Jane Austen’s distant prospect of a midsummer orchard in blossom was mistaken. She was so in awe of Mary Keen’s learning, however, that she declined to throw down the gauntlet, or gardening glove, in public. The critic John Sutherland offers the ingenious theory that the contentious passage with the ‘orchard in blossom’ is really referring to Abbey-Mill Farm in all its seasons: as well as mentioning the ‘rich pastures’ of summer, it also conjures up ‘spreading flocks’, which suggests lambing in the spring, and ‘a light column of smoke ascending’, more associated with winter. Who’s right? Being up against Jane Austen and Mary Keen, I need some help.
Mary Keen also quoted, to good effect, modern official church guidance to clergy about parsonage gardens: ‘The permanent planting of low-maintenance ground cover is encouraged, as clergy and their families may be reluctant to contribute a great deal of effort to maintaining their gardens when faced with many other calls on their time and energy.’ It is certainly true that the hard-pressed clergy have much to do, but it is infinitely depressing that they are actually officially advised to have dull gardens. Will the diocesan authorities look askance at them if they grow labour-intensive vegetables or lots of bedding plants? It comes as no surprise that a proposal before the General Synod of the Church of England next week will deprive vicars and rectors of the rights which they currently possess over the buildings which they inhabit.
Adrastic solution to the intrusions of TV Licensing (see previous Notes) reaches me from Cornwall. Martin Tutthill, a teacher, tells me that he was pestered by letters demanding he buy a licence. Because he did not have a television, he wrote ‘NO TELEVISION’ in crayon on one letter and sent it back. More letters came, so he wrote ‘NO TELEVISION, S***HEAD’, but still the letters flowed. Then Mr Tutthill bought a television, and a licence. But letters demanding money with menaces still arrived, and then an inspector called. Mr Tutthill invited him in and locked the door. He showed him his television and his licence, and then said, ‘Sit down, and have a cup of tea. I want you to read out every letter your people have sent me. If you try to leave, I’ll break your arm.’ At this, the inspector said, ‘You’re threatening me.’ Mr Tutthill said, ‘Yes I am. And you people threatened me with a court appearance and a criminal record though I’d done nothing wrong. Sit down and read them out.’ The poor inspector sat down and started to declaim the huge pile of TV Licensing letters which Mr Tutthill had accumulated. After about an hour, he began to cry. Mr Tutthill then took pity on him, and cut the session short. As he released the inspector, he told him, untruthfully, ‘I know where you live. If I get any more of those letters, I’ll come and hunt you down.’ He has had no more trouble from TV Licensing.
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