Earls, dukes
and Godly men

There is no society for the preservation of earls and dukes and the like and I would form one if I thought there were other people of similar persuasion to form a quorum. Castles and ancient buildings are preserved: I see no reason why the living successors of people who have occupied them down the centuries should not be regarded as equally valuable. After all, some tend to crumble in much the same way -creaking and groaning and even, on occasion, having loose tiles.

I say this having had much exposure to low living, but not undue exposure to high living. I was born touching a forelock. I met, in the course of my business, one duke, one earl, a covey of lords and a gaggle of baronets. Some of them were amiably dotty , some normal, and others refreshingly unconventional and lively in conversation. None was boring. All were courteous. One can not say as much for downstairs people.

At Bamburgh Castle, in the North-East -a huge pile of a design made popular by William the Conqueror when speculative building was rife and there was only one principal builder- Lord Armstrong, third baron, now, alas, translated from Lords to the Lord, sent me and a photographer companion up in a lift that had restricted carrying space and ran up the stairs to meet us at the other end. The experience deprived him of breath, as it would have deprived me. When he poured drinks at a table in his study his trousers fell to his ankles due to a defective belt, revealing the voluminous lordly underwear. He hauled the trousers up without embarrassment or explanation and was splendid in conversation, a genial host. My companion and I savoured the experience that he had the aplomb to disregard. His widow was robbed just before Christmas, 1993, by thieves who secured her door and stole her silver. She was 78. Sad. She was a woman of great charm who said that since my wife had not accompanied me she must have a little present - from her, and that we must both visit on another occasion. We never did.

Lt. Colonel Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport, MP ("to name but a few", as Bernard Levin, to name not many, once put it), of Capesthorne in Cheshire, served me a gin and tonic in a half pint glass and almost filled it. When I pointed out that the capacity of the glass was rather in excess of my own ability to absorb it, he said it was "nothing to what they serve at White's." I was Selwyn Lloyded (see elsewhere) in no time. The pudding for lunch was pecan nuts in syrup. Very good, too. He said he had the pecans flown in from Boston, his wife's old town. The following week I went to Southend and they were on sale everywhere. I concluded that, in Southend, many wives are from Boston and of independent means; or alternatively, that Sir Walter was going to a lot of trouble for no good purpose and was unaware of Southend. A guest at that lunch asked me what I thought about the situation in Africa. I explained it to her as well as I could, although I knew nothing whatsoever about that continent beyond the fact that ju-ju men throw dust in people's eyes to thwart their purpose, and when I went home I looked her up in a reference book. From her family's entry it would appear that they owned Africa. She was presumably checking up on her investment.

IN 1974 I called on the then Lord and Lady Clitheroe (family name, Assheton), who lived in the Lancashire village of Downham, to wish them well on their Golden Wedding anniversary .He was 72 and had been the 20th Assheton MP, the first being in 1324. He invited me in to the lounge, and left to bring the drinks trolley. He asked whether I would have a sherry. I said I thought not. I had a sherry in the same room, from the same trolley, served by his father on his golden wedding anniversary 26 years earlier, and considered it might be a good time to change my drink. The village telephone box was blue-grey, not red, like the rest in Britain. The Asshetons preferred it that way. So did I, come to think of it. And I was reminded here that the old squires were the best conservationists in the world. The planting of trees was decreed in leases. The replacement of dead trees was insisted upon by law.
This Assheton had married a Hotham of Yorkshire and the Hothams arrived with the Conqueror -after the Asshetons. He said his wife's lot were late arrivers. There were Asshetons and Hothams in the Long Parliament and at Agincourt. During the Wars of the Roses, a Sir John Assheton was knighted on the field of Northampton fighting for his king and eight months later two Hothams, father and son, died on the same day for their cause.

WHEN James 1 visited Hoghton Tower, near Preston, on his way to London to take up the throne in 1617 there was such food and drink that the menus - in existence to this day- are testaments to gluttony. I invited the then Sir Cuthbert and Lady de Hoghton to a meal which, in modern England, would be its equivalent. The cellars of England were scoured for the best wines and brandies. The food was, to say the least, unusual, and the cost was incredible. They had swan stuffed with goose stuffed with pheasant stuffed with partridge stuffed with quail. A man could put knife to meat and, with one downward movement get a little of each. Yet I suspect James 1 -who is popularly supposed to have knighted the loin of beef at Hoghton, making it sirloin (because he enjoyed it so much) -would have marked it down as a puny and inadequate supper and not a dinner at all. So much for progress. The following year, I had a note from my editor: "In view of the fact that you have decided not to have a swan dinner this year, I am able to give you a rise."

The point remains - Did James 1 knight the loin of beef? A web site (http://www.snopes.com) devoted to exploding myths and legends will have none of it. It says that various writers have credited various kings with knighting the beef.

"The word 'sirloin,'" it says,"appeared in English as far back as the mid-sixteenth century, antedating the ascension of any of the named kings (save Henry VIII) to the throne. More importantly, though, it was not until the eighteenth century that the word "sirloin" came to be commonly spelled with an 'i'— until then it was generally written as 'surloin,' indicating that it came from the Middle French surlonge (sur meaning 'over' and longe meaning 'loin'), just as the word 'surname' came from the same French root (sur), indicating a family name that was used 'over' (i.e., in addition to) one's Christian name."

Shame if true!)

I visited Lord Derby a couple of times, and found the experience unnerving. It is not easy to meet people whose forbears threaded their way through English history like forget-me-nots. I first saw him on my own and I looked around his paintings in panic, hoping that I would recognise the work of a particular artist. Over the fireplace was a Stubbs. " Ah," I said, thankfully, "a Stubbs."
"Yes," said Lord Derby. "My grandfather fired him." Stubbs, it appeared, was the estate painter and grandfather did not like the price he was charging. We went to see his safari beasts in a new Range Rover, and one of them clawed at the paintwork. He did not flinch. I did. When next I met Lord Derby I had with me the Northern editor of the Daily Express. We were there to discuss politics -our views were coinciding with his on something or other - and there seemed some merit in combining them to give them strength. We stood in a corridor and were
announced separately by a servant. When the editor settled himself on a settee, he was immediately overrun by small dogs which arrived in a pack from the next room. Fighting them off, he thought he might have a better chance of dignified survival on his feet and went to the window to stare out.
"Beautiful lawn, sir" he said. " Ah," said Lord Derby, wrongly assuming he was talking about the estate " - but they keep whittling away at it." (When the same editor and myself went to see a Liverpool bishop, he tripped at the entrance to the reverend gentleman's study and was out of control until he reached a wall at the other side of the room. The bishop observed the strange and unpredictable ways of the Press without comment or change of expression.) We had tiny ducks for dinner, followed by strawberries, just the three of us, with a butler serving. In the end, Derby said, "I wonder whether you could lock up on the way out?" We drove through what seemed half a county before arriving at a large gate, and the editor struggled to find the lock in the darkness. The large key was posted back to the earl. Now what man alive would care to have missed all that?

BY the time I reached the Duke of Devonshire (Pictured, right, as I interviewed him) at Chatsworth I had, as it were, served my apprenticeship among the contents of Debrett. There is a word in the English language which is there only for the gentry; lesser people never hear of it. That word is primogeniture -the system by which property descends to the eldest son or child. The Duke had been unfortunate in losing an elder brother; he was fortunate in inheriting Chatsworth. He had married one of those surprising Mitford girls (never, ever, referred to as women whatever their ages) and I saw her, occasionally, flitting from pillar to pillar or in the far distance. Chatsworth is like that. The Duke noted his appointments on a small blackboard, in large letters, and carried out his work in a gloomy study.

After we had chatted for a while, Daily Express cameraman Brian Duff suggested pictures outside. The duke appeared carrying oilskins representing both trousers and jacket. Brian Duff was ecstatic at the thought of Devonshire looking like something from the white fish authority . They reached the door. The Duke handed the oilskins to Brian Duff. The photographer's face clouded over. "They're for you," said the Duke. "So that you won't get wet. I will stand in the doorway ."

In that moment, I remembered with satisfaction, the revelry over Oliver Leese's leg (see elsewhere).

The Duke had sold a Poussin for £1.,650,000 but had a better one to comfort him in the grandeur of Chatsworth. He said: "If I was to wake up one morning and find the government of the day had decided to do away with all titles, and particularly heriditary titles, I would not mind in the least. If, however, I awakened to find that the government was going to remove virtually all privately owned assets, such as works of art, then I would mind very much."

On class distinctions:: "In Wagoners' Walk there was a young man who had gone to a teenage dance, and he got it wrong, arriving in dinner jacket when everyone else was in jeans; and he soon lost his girl and she danced with a young man more conventionally dressed. She explained what had happened and the young man said, 'That chap, I thought he was the wine waiter.' That sort of remark really shocks me, because it is the most honourable profession to be a wine waiter."

BISHOPS are no less awesome than earls on occasion, and one such prelate was the man I met in November, 1966: The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Donald Coggan, Primate of England, Arch bishop of York, as he was at the time. We discussed sex and morality, as one would after a light lunch, and I forget every single word of it, as one does. What I remember vividly is reaching a point where, inexplicably, I decided to explain to him: the difference t between European philosophy as expressed through cogito ergo sum (I thInk therefore I am) and Buddhist philosophy, where there is no 'I' to think, since the feeling 'I am' is an illusion (This reasoning requires a long dissertation and there would be no merit in it here.)

The impertinence, I believe, was noted: He had the severe correctness of a headmaster. At any rate a nasty little furrow appeared around the bridge of the archbishop s nose and I had been warned to look out for that by one of his aides, who regarded it as a modern form of pestilence akin to locusts. I abruptly changed direction and he reassumed his authority and his good humour.

I met the controversial Bishop of Durham much later, and at the time of his appointment. David Jenkins, a professor of theology who "did not wish to be a bishop; I thought I had avoided it", was a much different man - jocular (by contrast with Coggan's severity), very confident, and ready to express his beliefs without regard for their popularity. I liked him immediately and was not surprised when he plunged Christmas, 1993, into uproar with a few well-targeted remarks at common beliefs he considers rather suspect (and in any case irrelevant to the central core of faith), incurring, in the process, the displeasure of Dr Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury .

There was a fire at York Minister which coincided with Jenkins's appointment. During a lightning storm, the building flared into an orange glow and by morning the South transept, which almost nudges the place where Guy Fawkes was baptised, was destroyed: in its place was a black gap. Some backward-thinking creature in the London office of the newspaper I worked for decided that this could be the hand of God made manifest. For my own part, I could not imagine anything less likely. But I was requested to put the question to the bishop, and put it I. did, reluctantly and with apologies. Jenkins understood, remained genial, provided a suitable quote (" Ah, this kind of thing tends to happen once every hundred years", meaning the fire) and went on to torment the complacent and orthodox members of the flock whose sharpest vision of Christianity is a cricket field, a village pub and a church spire in artistic conjunction for ever more. I imagine the London journalist went back to his bat's blood, ducking stools and incantations. I never heard from him, or of him, again, which is a great mercy.

 

 

 

 

Geoffrey Mather © 2004

2 March, 2007

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