LUCINDA LAMBTON
Ared-letter day last week, a brilliantly scarlet red-letter day: discovering two heroines under one roof in Derbyshire, one stuffed, the other aged 99 and zingingly alive. The first was a tiny owl which had been rescued from tormenting boys by Florence Nightingale, beneath the walls of the Acropolis, on 5 June 1850. I have long known and loved the story, indeed have been daily reminded of it by a drawing of the duo, occupying pride of place in my house. Florence leans against a stone pedestal on which perches the owl. What I did not know, and what came as a sensational surprise, was that the little creature still survives, stuffed, and sitting on a branch in a glass case at Lea Hurst, in Derbyshire, where Florence grew up. I thundered north, scarcely able to believe that I was actually going to see her, but there she unmistakably was, distinctive little curved sharp beak and all. She had been called Athena (named after the city of her birth, as were both Florence and her sister Parthenope) and brought back to England in Florence's pocket. Parthenope wrote and illustrated an enchanting biography of Athena, recording her 'sitting on her mistress's head' and 'crowing loud and triumphantly as being the most noble and conspicuous position which she could find'. When the call came to the Crimea, the owl was abandoned in all the confusion and died. The only tears shed by Florence Nightingale during that time were for Athena. She delayed the departure for Scutari by two days, so as to arrange the embalming. Athena's biographer wrote, 'She had fallen from her nest. She was rescued for the sum of six lepta or one farthing. On what slight accident does fame depend! Athena's brothers and sisters have lived and died unknown!' I went with my friend Tim Knox, historic buildings supremo of the National Trust. Our dream is that Athena be taken for a spell to Claydon in Buckinghamshire, where Parthenope and Florence lived much of their lives together. We would bear the little owl through the rooms to the sound of trumpets as her biography was read aloud.
Lea Hurst is now a residential home for the elderly run by the excellent charity Age Care. As if finding Athena was not enough, while there we also met Miss Bassett, who is 99 years old and as lively as a cricket. Her grandfather had been the first to make Liquorice Allsorts in 1899, and it was from her that I heard how his salesman 'tripped on a step and scattered Bassett sweets far and wide', thus inventing Al!sorts. 'Everybody calls me Bertie here,' laughed Miss Bassett. She reached beneath her chair and hauled forth a 'family pack'. Having gorged on Liquorice Allsorts for 58 years, no bejewelled golden trophy could have given
me more pleasure than a bumper bag from one who proudly claims to be the last surviving Bassett. In ecstasy I guzzled them all, save one or two which, along with the bag and photographs of Miss Bassett, will be assembled in a frame, to stand beside Florence Nightingale with Athena.
What can the enraged but impotent layman do to halt the urban killers of our countryside? Should I insist that I myself be chased, then slaughtered by gun-wielding men, then left rotting where I fall before finally smouldering on a pyre, legs in the air, for all to see? What hysterical rubbish, you mutter, but a permanent and perplexed hysteria is what I feel. A lone human life extinguished — there have been some four million animals killed — might jolt the nation's inexplicable tolerance of the government's foot-and-mouth policy. It would certainly have more effect than the measures being so relentlessly pursued today. In stricken Northumberland, my friend Humphry Wakefield tells me that he is unable to persuade the trustees of the
ancient Chillingham Wild Cattle to take even the necessary — and proven successful — precautions to protect those rare and precious beasts. Even IVF is beyond them as it is not 'government policy' — the same policy that has ensured that the virus is now as endemic as should be the nation's wrath.
Our local lay-bys are becoming rubbish tips, filled with the soiled contents of entire houses, let alone their kitchen sinks. I could filthily furnish a whole terrace with detritus from the stretch of the A4 not far from where we live. Norman Grundon is a local live-wire hero, who as well as judging our village dog show for five hot hours last week — giving my not-shaved-for-days husband Perry and his whiskered dog Ob first prize for the dog and master who looked most alike — also disposes of a weekly 10,000 tons of rubbish from his giant recycling kingdom at Heathrow. Not only that; as director of the Groundwork Trust he has reclaimed land for many miles of walks through abandoned industrial areas, always kept litter-free. As a vigilante myself against the vile 'flytipper', I hang on his every word and plunge my hands into unimaginable horrors so as to find clues as to the villain who did the dumping. Mr Grundon gave me a number for reporting these outrages — 0800 807060 — and told me that Germany has got it right. Their home-owners and businesses are held legally responsible for keeping their land free of litter, If they fail, they are fined — and it works. In Britain. Westminster has just adopted the same policy with fast-food joints. Hurrah!
There can be few places more enlivening than the cemetery at Kensal Green, a setting that makes your spirits, like those of the remarkable people that lie about you, soar into the skies. I have never been in any doubt that there is a perpetual party going on here, a glittering gathering of 19th-century illuminati including, among others, Trollope, Wilkie Collins and Thackeray. For you could find no more vibrant a collection of characters than those gathered together at Kensal Green. This week, within the cemetery's walls, I joined the celebrations — refreshed by cheese biscuits cut as skeletons in coffins — for the publication of the brilliantly odd and sympathetically clever Vigor Mortis by Kate Berridge. A few weeks ago I had the honour of taking the illustrious members of the Pen Club around the graves. With such luminaries as Victoria Glendenning, Michael Holroyd and Margaret Drabble, the perpetual party was most suitably extended, the 21st-century company above ground quite as dazzling as the 19th-century company beneath their feet.
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