Notebook
I referred in passing last week to the fact that this year the Spectator is celebrating its 150th anniversary. To be exact, the first Issue of the paper was published on 5 July 1828, so the anniversary falls this week. A sPecial issue to commemorate the event will be published in September, so I will not go on about it now. Nevertheless, we should Perhaps briefly remember the 'gaunt, dour and peremptory' Scotsman, Robert Rintoul, who founded the Spectator and edited it for some thirty years. It was due to his Perseverance that we are still here, for the Paper ran for some time at a considerable loss. The original cover p-rice of ninepence a Copy had soon to be raised to one shilling, Which of course was then very much more than the 30p we ask for the paper today. 13intoul and his family lived in a small house In Wellington Street off the Strand which also contained the Spectator's original Offices and its printing machines. The racket and disturbance must have been appalling. Surprisingly little is known about Rintoul, Partly because he appears to have written very little himself, but he was clearly a gifted and dedicated Editor, and we owe him a great debt.
It seems to me a fairly basic tenet of good manners that one should reply when one is Spoken to. At least that is what most Children are taught. But it is not a view Shared by the umpires at Wimbledon who seem to take pleasure in ignoring the pathetic, gesticulating Nastase when he asks them to explain their often rather dubious decisions. Why is it part of an umpire's duties to treat a fellow human being with such contempt? Why does he feel obliged to avert his eyes with an expression of intolerable Smugness, rather than smile politely at the distraught tennis player and inform him that the decision, disagreeable though it might be, is final and must stand? I suppose that umpires, whose duties seem to consist prine?pally of saying `Thirtay, fortay' and things like that, have to cultivate feelings of selfimportance to make the business of umpiring seem worthwhile. Still it would be Pleasant to see one or two umpires banned from tournaments for a month or two.
I think I have guessed who is bc:•ind it all. When members of the Royal Family are engaged in delicate negotiations with the Church of Rome, whom would you expect them to consult? Why, of course, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Donald Coggan. I am not alone in this suspicion. There are those brooding at their desks within the Walls of the Vatican who think they can
detect the same lethal hand at work. After all, Prince Charles's remark at the Salvation Army Congress last week could almost as easily have come from the mouth of the Archbishop. He, too, is impatient of divisions between the churches and, it seems, cannot comprehend them, however deeply rooted they may be in cherished doctrines. For twelve years now distinguished theologians, Roman Catholic and Anglican, have been regularly meeting in secluded villas on lakes and mountainsides and trying, with all the wisdom and subtlety at their command, to broaden the common doctrinal ground between their churches. Have they been wasting their time? As Andrew Alexander accurately summed it up in the Daily Mail this week, `no dogma, no church'. Prince Charles will one of these days become head of the Church of England and 'Defender of the Faith'. What faith? Faith in the doctrines of the Church of England. But if the Primate attaches little importance to them, why should the Prince?
This slightly absurd business has itself been causing 'needless distress to a number of people': in particular to the officials of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity who are accustomed to feeling generally ignored and unloved. They were first of all upset when the Pope failed to consult them before making his decision to deprive Prince Michael of a church wedding. Then they succumbed to panic when they read last Monday's Daily Mail. This had a front-page story under the headline 'Now Rome lashes out at Charles' which attributed to a 'high-ranking official' of the Secretariat the statement: 'It is sheer impertinence for the Prince to speak in this
fashion'. This, of course, would be a most inappropriate statement to come out of a Vatican department whose much-despised role is to display boundless humility and admiration towards the other Christian churches in the cause of fostering closer relations. What actually happened was that an American priest, a Vatican civil servant of no great importance, who had been unaware of Prince Charles's speech, was rung up and asked what he thought about it. He replied off-the-cuff that it sounded impertinent. This is how popular newspapers obtain 'scoops'.
The most unloved people in the world must be the members of nationalised industry boards. Distaste for these people appears to unite the two major political parties. Socialists believe that they ought to rejoice in the opportunity to serve the state and be content with some measly wage. Conservatives think that no man of spirit would consent to work for some dingy, loss-making enterprise subject to constant government interference. Everyone, it seems, resents giving them money. Indeed, the Tories might be even less generous than the Labour government, if they decide that squeezing state employees is to be the basis of a Conservative 'incomes policy'.
Horrible thought that cosy Joe Gormley might be replaced as president of the National Union of Mineworkers by wicked Arthur Scargill. But I am assured that Scargill's knavish tricks will be frustrated. Gormley, although he is fed up, will serve his term, if only to help his old friend James Callaghan by blunting the efforts of the union's militants. By the time Scargill makes it — which one day he no doubt will — he will find the power of the miners on the wane. He will have to wait until North Sea oil runs out before he can mastermind the sort of strike that brings governments down. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that among Scargill's spine-chilling ambitions is the creation of a European-wide 'Energy Union', covering miners, power station employees, nuclear energy and gas and oil workers.
We have read in the newspapers that England's largest herd of deer at Petworth Park in Sussex is being threatened by the notorious soppiness of the British about animals. Visitors apparently cannot resist the temptation to pick up the little fawns, fondle them and then put them down somewhere else. Sometimes visitors are so moved that they try to put the poor little creatures in their cars and take them home. What the newspapers have not revealed, however, is the principal reason why the fawns subsequently tend to die. It is not so much that their mothers cannot find them again (though this is one reason) but that when they do find them, they abandon them — because they are so revolted by the smell which human beings have left behind.
Alexander Chancellor
Previous page
