SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

The blackest cloud over this third Christmas of the Nigerian war is the collapse of the peace talks at Addis Ababa. Lord Carring- ton returned from his trip to Biafra believ- ing that the talks would at least take place even if they did not lead very far. Sub- sequent events have cast a curious light on some of the Foreign Secretary's state- ments during the Commons debate of 9 December. The whole tenor of his remarks was that General Gowon was ready and willing to talk peace but that it was doubt- ful whether General Ojukwu was similarly willing. He must have been most surprised when a Biafran delegation arrived in Addis Ababa but there was no sign of anyone from Lagos.

The cause of the breakdown is Nigeria's insistence that 'peace talks' should begin with the abandonment of Biafra's secession. This is the 'pre-condition' which Biafra (not even, perhaps, to Mr .Stewart's surprise) re- jects. Mr Stewart made the point that if General Ojukwu was unwilling to talk, then the blame for 'the continuance of strife' could not be placed upon either General Gowon or the British government. After Addis Ababa, the next move is his.

Late post

I have put aside the recent collection of Aldous Huxley's letters for Christmas read- ing, since books which can be dipped into are useful at such times. But after glancing through the massive volume I am already amazed by the sheer quantity of his letters which has survived. Who, nowadays, so carefully preserves private correspondence? I am not thinking of the long essays with which Huxley favoured some friends (one might expect those to be kept) but of the more casual communications. On 5 June 1916, for example, he wrote to Lytton Strachey from Balliol: 'Dear Strachey, Would you care to come to-tea either on Thursday or on Saturday? Yours sincerely, Aldous Huxley.' I find it astonishing that this should have survived until today, and hard to believe that there are still people who accumulate such missives.

My own collection of letters is almost invisibly small, if the bundles from such dispiriting correspondents as the Inland Revenue are excluded. Indeed, I often find it hard to put my hands on the letter I ought to have answered a week ago. Any- one who invites me to tea is hereby warned that the chance of a bonus in the form of printed immortality half a century hence is very small indeed.

Winter fuel

More than ever this year, the place of the Yule log in our festivities is being taken by the central heating installation. It may well be, as I heard someone hoping the other day, that our descendants will at least remember this generation kindly for having adopted this comfort in a whole- hearted way. But it's a blow to the stock picture of Christmas, with the merrily blazing fire at the centre of the family gathering, although people seem to grieve over it remarkably little.

Visiting Americans notice with almost pitiful gratitude nowadays that they quite often find English houses reasonably warm.

It is one of the profounder changes in our way of life. One such visitor asked me anxiously the other day, though, whether I didn't think it might ultimately change the English character. He felt that just as our unreliable climate has encouraged the habit of putting up with things and hoping for better conditions soon, so our chilly houses have fostered a kind of tweedy stoicism beyond the reach of warmer countries. I suppose one could even be sententious about it and see the change as part of our general levelling off of life in all depart. ments: the pains of arctic bedrooms are abandoned but so are the joys of the open hearth, and yet another element of contrast is lost. Possibly. But I think it's more sens- ible to take the Romans' view that houses well warmed are conducive to higher civilisation.

The Duke's tubes

I was able to assure my American friend that at least the great Duke of Wellington, that personification of so many stern British virtues agreed with the Romans. His 'Bos- well', Lord Stanhope, visiting Strathfield- saye in 1834, noted that 'the Duke showed me over his new apparatus for warming the house by tubes of hot water, and told me that including the expense of setting it up, it had cost £219.' If the Iron Duke thought this not too sybaritic an innovation, we too might hope to survive with our national character unimpaired. Especially as we have now invented the miseries of British Stand- ard Time to redress the balance.

Civil mirth, etc

In any case at this season one thinks of what persists in human life in spite of all

the things that change. Christmas scenes in literature often have the power to strike familiar chords in unfamiliar settings; they remind us that ways of life are altered but that life itself is not. I enjoy such bridges across time and perhaps may quote an account of Christmas in 1675 as celebrated aboard the man-of-war 'Assistance' and recorded by Henry Teonge, the ship's chap- lain: '25 December 1675. Chrismas day wee keepe thus. At 4 in the morning our trumpeters all doe Hatt their trumpetts, and begin at our Captain's cabin, and thence to all the officers' and gentlemen's cabins; playing a levite at each cabine doore, and bidding good morrow, wishing a merry Chrismas. After they go to their station, viz. on the poope, and sound 3 levitts in honour of the morning. At 10 wee goe to prayers and sermon; text, Zacc. ix. 9• Our Captaine had all his officers and gentle- men to dinner with him, where wee had excellent good fayre: a ribb of belie plumb-puddings, minct pyes, &c. and plenty of good wines of severall sorts; drant healths to the King, to our wives and friends; and ended the day with much civil] myrth.'

It would be tactless, today, to wish ones patient readers the experience of bog awakened by trumpets at four a.m. 00 Christmas morning; but to wish them much civil mirth, a commodity of which we al stand in need,. is one of the pere pleasures of the season.