A Spectator's Notebook
Having to do TV at Stratford-upon-Avon for a film later on, while hanging about the church, churchyard, grammar school and birthplace, this miserable summer, cold and wet, I had time to reflect on what is what about Stratfordupote-Avon. So often, on campuses in the US, girl students would ask me, "Isn't Stratford terribly commercialised?"— 'commercialised' being a regular cliche with this sort of person. One has to keep a balance in the matter. A town can't exist without commerce, some Considerable part of it must be commercialised, there must be shops, and the town must cater for the thousand-and-one trinkets and trivial Objects that appeal to the hearts of the people. The really remarkable thing is that Stratford has managed to maintain so much of the past as it has done — not only that splendid church, the grammar school and Guild Chapel, the BirthPlace and Hail's Croft, but so many houses and good streets providentially unspoiled. The chief oss, of course, was New Place, the l finest old house in the town, which Shakespeare bought and owned during his later years and where he died. But that was pulled down by its vandalowner as early as the eighteenth century, when Stratford was already a place of pilgrimage. The fact that, on the whole, Stratford is essentially unspoiled must be due to the public-spirited efforts of its better class of citizens, the corporation and the local Conservation Society. On the other hand, I must admit that the standard of building in the latest shops put up in the commercial streets, especially Sheep Street, is deplorable, cheap and nasty. There is no intrinsic reason why what is cheap should be nasty; it is simply that ordinary folk have no taste — they never know. The only good rule in these matters is to employ a good architect: there must be some pretty poor local builders at work in the 'commercialised' parts of the town, I registered.
Compton Verney
Pne thing that gave me much greater concern iS what is happening to Compton Verney. had long wanted to see one of the grandest unuses in Warwickshire, and had once or twice caught sight of that noble grey Queen Anne r4agade sitting there sideways to the lake exto the roadside. Part of the house in the v anbrugh idiom, another part designed b A y d,arn, hall with coffered ceiling, saloon with ,.,?.annned apses — I promised myself a glimpse k,something like the library at Kenwood. c "ot only that, but stables by Gibbs, chapel by t aPability Brown, complete eighteenth-cenNit:Y interior filled with monuments of the of`rilaYs, one of them a Nicholas Stone. Think it! With an evening in hand I set out to investi!„, _,ate; if possible, infiltrate. The iron gate on the Padlocked, the drive overgrown, I tried circling round the estate, in at the lower-farm entrance. Coming to a dead end I tried the uPPer-farm approach — to be completely fruswtrated, barb-wired in every direction, ruinous A ails, gardens uncultivated, dereliction and uecay. . , I learned to my horror that this splendid nouse had been empty for thirty years, going to rack and ruin — for centuries the home of the Willoughby de Broke family, who had sold it !orne thirty years ago. I don't know what Pened after that. But it §eems inconceivable `flat some use could not be worked out for a place only six or seven miles from Stratford, in connection with some of the multifarious cultural activities (some of them less useful than others) going on there. Charlecote — owing to the public spirit and devotion of the Fairfax-Lucy family — plays its full part, much visited and its treasures appreciated by the public. I went to a concert there one evening in that beautiful library. But Compton Verney? — heart-breaking! Do you suppose that a splendid mansion like that, a part of the nation's heritage, would be allowed to become derelict if the. US had the luck to possess it?
Cri de coeur
The trouble is that it would now cost so much to rehabilitate it, even when a use was found for it. But I noticed that the Warwickshire County Council had found a use for an infinitely less interesting twentieth-century house a mile or two away as an agricultural college. There was Moreton Morrell, spick and span, the drive well cared for, lawns mown, the students' herd comfortably provided for — and historic Compton Verney, a finer estate, going to ruin. My heart bled for it. How often, as I perambulate a ruined country, a broken-down, down-at-heel society, I wish I were a Rockefeller! The irony' of calling this the Affluent Society — when it can't keep the roofs on the churches or the historic houses that are the relics of a simpler, better society with proper priorities. If Rockefeller gave me a million, or even half a million, I reflected as I gazed down on the dereliction that melancholy evening, I could rehabilitate Compton Verney.
Out of gear
Only a million — and when you think of the hundreds of millions, no, thousands of millions, wasted on the so-called education of the more-or-less uneducable — the millions wasted at such mushroom universities as Essex, Warwick, Kent! The sheer idiocy of it! Everything in our filthy society has got simply out of gear. Everybody of any sense has got round to realising it now, but I have seen it coming ever since the end of the war, with no real direction from on top. What do we pay our politicians for, but to look after. the best interests of the country, instead of having a fine old, well-paid time with their shadow-boxing, their party games? I have said all along that the sinister dialectic of party was ruining to us, each of them trying to outdo the other by higher bribes to an idiot masselectorate incapable of understanding its own true interest, let alone the long-term interest of the country. That is what, supposedly, we pay politicians to look after — while they carry on their childish games at Westminster. No wonder there is no respect for politics or politicians — I have watched that attitude spread ever since the 'encouraging slogan, 'They have never had it so good.' In fact, I date the rapidity of the decline from the deliberate option of Macmillan's government not to balance their budget — Thorneycroft and Powell were completely right (as Powell has been on a no less crucial matter for the well-being of the country — uncontrolled, unlicensed immigration). These are all phenomena of the breakdown of society — anybody can see it now; but I have seen it coming, watching as a historian watches, ever since the end of the war. Every wrong turning has been taken. My second conclusion: ordinary people cannot operate without direction. They have had none: is it any wonder they are out of hand, and society out of gear from top to bottom?
Graffiti
Let us end on a lighter note — if indeed it is lighter. In addition to the astronomical waste on 'education,' to take only one field of footling extravagance, there is the loss by sheer damage to property, vandalism, ubiquitous thefts — books, cutlery from college premises, from each other — defacing of walls, The moment an ancient wall has been repaired here at Oxford, presenting a clean sur face on which students can scrawl, they cover it with their revolting handwriting. Such are 'the uses of literacy,' to quote a work of contemporary `with-it' humbug, already out of date. No spoilsport of any fun that's going, I appreciate an occasional scrawl that shows signs of a sense of humour. Here is one I noticed on my way down New College Lane, towards Warden Hayter (of liberal sympathies): "Donate your don to Oxfam." But who conceivably could be the target of the inscription on the other side of the High? — "Warden Finch is an enthusiastic actor and an outrageous debauch." No prize is offered for suggestions as to the author from whom this is a quotation, or the contemporary target intended.
A.L. Rowse
'Dr A. L. Rowse, guest contributor of the Notebook, is a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. His recently published books include Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age.
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