Time to Be in Earnest (34 page)

We were less successful in amending Clause 18 of the Bill designed to reduce the powers of the universities. I wanted very much to speak but lost my chance; by the time I had got the words ready, Tessa Blackstone was on her feet to answer the points made in the debate. I shall have to be much quicker if I am to have a chance of asking a supplementary question.

I had my hair done this morning at 9:15 and then went to Goldsmiths’ Hall for the W. H. Smith Literary Award ceremony, which was due to begin at half-past twelve. It is, of course, considerably smaller than the Whitbread or the Booker, but it is usually agreeable since I can be sure of seeing friends. The prize was won by Ted Hughes for his translation of Ovid, the third time this book has been a prize-winner. He wasn’t able to be present but had written a short speech which Joanna Mackle delivered. I had the publisher John Murray on my left, who proved to be an entertaining luncheon companion. We talked about the poetry of our youth and happily recited together snatches of verse from old favourites, congratulating ourselves that we were at school before the arrival of political correctness.

Children should be exposed to a large variety of verse and should be encouraged to learn their favourites by heart, not the ones thought suitable for them by teachers or parents. I can remember at a seminar I attended on
the teaching of English being shown an anthology issued to schools as suitable for teenagers. Not surprisingly, it included Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.” This is a poem essentially for adults. Children do not often lie upon their couch “in vacant or in pensive mood” or, if they do, are unlikely to be thinking about flowers and are liable to be rapidly booted off the couch by their parents. One of the consolations of old age is the intense pleasure I now get from nature. It seems that in youth I was too busy confronting life and experience to stand still and gaze. I don’t doubt that children should be encouraged in this pleasure, but I doubt whether they will learn it from Wordsworth’s “Daffodils.”

John Murray said that he had compiled a small personal anthology of the poems he had learned by heart in youth and would send me a copy.

Yesterday two young women came to interview me for a Norwegian magazine, one to do the actual interview and the other to take photographs. It was difficult to fit them in and I was only able to spare one hour, but inevitably the photography went overtime, as it always does.

Then in the afternoon to the House of Lords for a continuation of the Education Bill, which finished its report stage. I stayed until 11:15 p.m., but after that, knowing I had an early start tomorrow, went home, confident that there would in any case be no further divisions.

This morning I caught a train at Liverpool Street station to Colchester, where I was met and taken to speak at a luncheon in aid of the Essex Autistic Society. The other speaker was Barbara Erskine, who writes Gothic novels set in exciting mood-inducing old houses occasionally peopled by a ghost. She lives, apparently, in just such a house herself and her talk after lunch was mostly about ghosts, including the one which haunts her own house.

She had an interested audience. I have seen no convincing evidence that ghosts exist, but most of us would like to believe that one or two may occasionally put in an appearance. Barbara Erskine seemed quite happy with her obviously benign apparition. Ghosts have no place in detective fiction, which is essentially a rational form. I can still experience a frisson when I reread M. R. James, particularly his “Oh, Whistle,
and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” The genre, if one can appropriately use that word, is less popular today; Kingsley Amis has written probably the best modern ghost novel with
The Green Man
. But for me the most terrifying ghost story is Henry James’s
The Turn of the Screw
.

I first came to this story in adolescence and found it a more disturbing work even than
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
or
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. I remember that, even then, I attempted to apply to it the rationality of detective fiction and conceived the idea that it was the children, Miles and Flora, who were the evil instigators. Perhaps, I reasoned, they had discovered the love affair between Quint and Miss Jessel and were blackmailing these vulnerable subordinates into obeying their every whim, eventually driving Miss Jessel away to suicide. The ghosts appear, not to reclaim the children, but to warn the new governess. I am loath to relinquish my interpretation, but the plot can’t really bear the weight of it; nor am I convinced that the governess was a deluded sexually repressed neurotic. If we accept that the narrator is honest, then we must also accept that the governess is sane since he states that he knew her years after the event, that she was his sister’s governess and that he considers her to be the most agreeable woman he had ever known in that position. I think we must also accept that the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, is a reliable witness and that she disliked Quint and saw him as evil. But were the ghosts genuine apparitions or the product of the governess’s overwrought imagination? I think we must accept that they were more than a morbid preoccupation with Quint since she sees him on the roof of the house before she knows from Mrs. Grose of his existence.

For me the story is about the moral ambiguity of physical beauty and its seductive power to subvert moral judgement. It is also about responsibility, or the lack of it. The uncle is the most irresponsible, using his authority and charm to relieve himself of any involvement in the lives of his small charges. The governess, beguiled both by his attractiveness and his flattering confidence in her, accepts a charge which she must have known was beyond her capabilities, and doesn’t even notify him when Miles is expelled from school. She puts her standing with her employer before her duty to the children. Both the governess and Mrs. Grose are so enchanted by the Botticelli angelic beauty of Miles and Flora that they find it difficult to believe them capable of wrongdoing, let alone evil. Henry James was right to make the children exceptionally beautiful, striking at our preconceived notions of the physical manifestations of evil. The wicked witch is always dark and ugly.

And how exactly were the children corrupted? Henry James could not, of course, be specific. The story is overlaid with such Victorian preoccupations as childhood sexuality, the ambivalent position of the governess in the home and in society, and their fascination with the supernatural. Coming to the story afresh, I am surprised at its enduring power to puzzle and discomfort. Beside it, James’s short ghost stories—“Owen Wingrave,” “Sir Edmund Orme” and “The Friends of the Friends”—are no more than tales to frighten children.

My visit to Essex was an enjoyable occasion and for a very good cause which I was glad to be able to help. I feel desperately sorry for parents with autistic children. It is hard enough to cope with physical disability but to have a child who is mentally remote, inaccessible, and may indeed be belligerent and incapable of responding to love, must be very difficult to bear. The day was overcast but the countryside still looked beautiful seen through a soft mist, the wayside daffodils sharply yellow against the muted green of the grass.

Yesterday I went to Stockport to speak at a dinner organized by the Patrons’ Club of the Altrincham and Sale Conservative Association. I decided to save them money by travelling standard class, but began to regret it when the carriage became full and the seats close by were taken by four young men each carrying four linked cans of beer. They became increasingly noisy as the journey proceeded and more and more beer was fetched from the buffet. After that at least three other passengers began using their mobile phones, so that the hope of a peaceful journey, with time to look at the countryside (though not particularly interesting, I admit, on this journey) and to think, was lost. But then I overheard some of the young men’s conversation with a neighbouring passenger, and realized that they were four squaddies returning from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. Immediately the noise they were making seemed both excusable and, for my part, supportable.

It was a much more comfortable journey back today, leaving me plenty of energy to walk down to Kensington High Street to shop. I went into the Roman Catholic church in Kensington Church Street,
feeling the need to light some candles for friends who are ill, and also to rest for a moment and sit quietly. Preparations were being made for a wedding. Already the best man and some of the ushers, wearing morning dress, had arrived, someone was making last-minute rearrangements to the flowers and there was that quiet determined air of purposeful activity which is surprisingly restful if one is able to sit apart from it. The building for me has no architectural merit, but it is a wonderful staging post on the walk down to the High Street since it is always open and one can sit in solitude without disturbance. I need moments of absolute quiet and stillness, and churches are among the few places where one can find them.

This morning I went to Mattins at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, with Miss Ellen Lowe. I met her two years ago in the local hairdresser’s, but I have seen her fairly frequently since as we usually stand at the same bus-stop on Sunday mornings to go to church. She asked me if I would accompany her one day to the Chapel Royal, and this was the day.

We took a cab, since it conveniently arrived, which made us rather early, so we walked for fifteen minutes in St. James’s Park. I never get tired of the view from the bridge towards Whitehall, seen this morning through a white flutter of seagulls’ wings. A plaque outside the Chapel stated that it was here that Charles I had received Communion for the last time before his execution. Before the service I sat quietly, thinking—I hope prayerfully—of that tragic king who paid so dearly for his obstinacy and folly. He now has a day in the revised lectionary, which seems to me entirely right. The Chapel was very full, and I enjoyed the quiet dignity of Mattins, now so seldom heard. The anthem, Parry’s “My Soul, There Is a Country,” is one of my favourites. It was helpful to find myself provided with a large Prayer Book I could easily read from a distance, and a comfortable hassock for kneeling.