Life lines
THE last conversation I had with my former director of studies at Cambridge was after I had written the Times obituary of one of his colleagues. The deceased was a colourful character — one of those euphemisms that imply that the subject might be cancelled in these days of easy offence. I adored him.
Once, he warned a class that he would shoot the next person to make an error, and then pulled out and fired a starter’s pistol. He didn’t hide his disregard for rivals. One described him as a “pontifrax” (that is, he burned bridges), and I wrote that, while he abhorred cruelty to all species, he made an exception for certain academics.
My director of studies had discussed this obituary with another don, and they agreed that Roger would have “liked” the tribute. Then Neil added in his dry Yorkshire accent: “I’m not sure that’s the point of an obituary, personally.” Six months later, Neil died suddenly, and I wrote his. I hope he would have liked it, too — even if that isn’t the point. De mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that.
Here and hereafter
ONE of my jobs now is to write the weekly obituary in The Observer. I love how varied it can be. Recently, I have written about the soprano Felicity Lott, the actor Michael Pennington, a Zimbabwean women’s-rights activist, and the founder of the clothes store Gap. The past year has included the last member of Edmund Hillary’s Everest team and an Auschwitz survivor who was at school with Anne Frank. When I edited the Times Diary, I liked to say I collected interesting living people; now I curate interesting dead ones.
Sometimes, I include the subject’s reflections on death. The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was fond of quoting a line by Walt Whitman: “Muscle and pluck forever! What invigorates life invigorates death.” Jilly Cooper, on the other hand, was looking forward to a reunion with her pets. “When you arrive in heaven, all your dogs come rushing across a lawn to meet you,” the Rivals author said. “That’ll do for me.” I hope the afterlife has brought her bounteous wags and licks.
The race before us
I AM at the age when funerals come along far more often than weddings, but I tend to enjoy them. Like an obituary, a eulogy is a chance to celebrate life, not lament death. One of the wisest comments I heard at a funeral was that the most important mark on a gravestone or an order of service was the simplest: the dash linking the dates of birth and death.
Life can pass quickly (perhaps that’s why they call it a dash); it is how you spend it that matters.
Points of reference
ANOTHER piece of funeral wisdom has stuck with me for 18 years. At the service for my English teacher, the eulogist said that there were four compass points in Mr Bayes’s life that brought him happiness: the school cricket pavilion, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Trent Bridge, and his favourite pub. He could normally be found at one of them, sometimes when he was meant to be teaching.
I often recall this eulogy and ask friends what their compass points would be. We all need a few places where we can find calm and joy — and those of us who are Christian might add that it is our faith that lies at the centre of the compass.
Occupational requirement
TWO of my compass points came into existence simultaneously and 200 yards apart. Blackheath Rugby Club was founded in 1858, the same year as All Saints’, Blackheath, was consecrated. Last month, on a sunny afternoon in Richmond, Blackheath beat London Scottish to earn promotion into the Championship for the first time since 1999.
That was the year that our current Vicar arrived — not that we can blame him for 27 years of frustration. Unlike his predecessor, whose vestments would have covered the entire Blackheath front row, Fr Nicholas is built more for opera stalls than scrums; but perhaps, when the sad day comes that he is liberated from us, we could look for a rugby-suitable successor.
I am reminded of P. G. Wodehouse’s creation, the Revd Harold “Stinker” Pinker. Despite — or perhaps because of — his innate clumsiness (Bertie Wooster says that Pinker is unable to walk across the Gobi Desert without knocking something over), this fine example of muscular Christianity is awarded a living because the patron’s rugby club needs a prop forward and Stinker got a Blue at Oxford. Perhaps we should stick that in the parish profile.
Types and shadows
YEARS ago, I visited an old friend who was a history master at Gresham’s School, on the Norfolk coast. Waiting for evensong in the chapel with its wonderful vaulted ceiling, I saw boys playing cricket outside and texted my wife: “I sometimes wish I had become a classics master in a boarding school.” Back came the reply: “I think you mean you wish you had been a classics master in a boarding school in the 1920s.”
She knows me well. One of my literary heroes is Algy Herries, the amiable and eternally optimistic clergyman-headmaster of Bamfylde in R. F. Delderfield’s To Serve Them All My Days (played, in the 1980s TV series, by Frank Middlemass).
Now, my friend is headmaster at Bradfield College in Berkshire and, as I discovered on a recent visit, responsible for two places of worship, both sublime, though only one is still in use as it was intended. St Andrew’s Church, redesigned in the 1840s by Sir Gilbert Scott at the request of the vicar (also the school’s founder), was recently deconsecrated and is now a fine library, with novels and modern languages around the font where the current Princess of Wales was once baptised, and classics in the porch. We know our place.
The school chapel was designed in 1891 by Scott’s son, who had married the founder’s daughter (that’s patronage for you). Stained-glass windows honour alumni who became bishops: Winchester, St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Peterborough, Southwell; and exotic ones such as the Bishops of St Helena or Ontario; and Cecil Cooper who, as Bishop of Korea in 1950, was sent by Kim Il Sung on a nine-day forced march during which 96 fellow prisoners died.
Homeward bound
OUTSIDE the chapel, there is another moving reminder of death in conflict: a dozen rudimentary wooden crosses, hastily erected as battlefield grave-markers during the First World War so that those who died like cattle, as Wilfred Owen put it, should not be forgotten when the soil covered their remains. In time, wood was replaced by the Portland stone that fills the Commonwealth war cemeteries; but these temporary memorials were rescued rather than discarded, and were sent back to the school so that future generations could know the sacrifice they represent.
It is comforting to hope that the reminders of these fallen alumni were returning to a compass point of their lives.
Patrick Kidd is a journalist and a churchwarden of All Saints’, Blackheath, in south-east London