As I Hear... YOU TOO CAN BE 100

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30829, 14 August 1965, Page 12

As I Hear... YOU TOO CAN BE 100

I By

J.H.E.S.]

MANY, I fancy, are wondering why the Churchill Memorial appeal partly failed, or only partly succeeded, as you may look at it. After all, it is no small feat to raise nearly a quarter of a million. Yet the wonder remains, why the set aim of half a million was not reached. It is not being dispelled by any public comments I have seen; and they are very few. Perhaps it is felt that there i$ something unseemly about discussing the question? As I do not share this feeling, I shall offer my own explanation: one in which early forebodings were fulfilled. It is first necessary to dismiss the notion that Churchill had not caught and held this country’s imagination and that the project of a memorial in which it would share was accordingly shallow-rooted. Of course the notion is nonsensical. What then? Then, I think, two things obstructed the appeal or tangled it or damped it. The first was that it was announced too soon, and announced as one the conception of which had

Churchill’s approval. If what is seemly or unseemly is in question, was there not something that would strike many as unseemly in announcing (as it were) at Churchill’s graveside a project that must have been discussed and decided long before the mourners assembled there? In precluding discussion of other projects? In invoking Churchill’s name to bless this one? It occurred to me and I do not doubt to others that Churchill, at his age and in his condition, would not have cared a biscuit what memorial was projected for him, or whether any at all, but history’s. Whatever notables carried the project to him, I can hear him say, “Yes, yes, yes! But do go away and don’t bother me!” I admit it, I assume that the thing was put to Churchill when his end was visibly near; but if it had been put sooner, was the answer likely to have been of another kind and in another, less Churchillian mood and tone? Sc * * The second thing that stood in the way, I believe, is that the project has never been

persuasively defined. Everybody is eligible for a Churchill Memorial scholarship or fellowship or award, whatever it is: not a member of this group or class or that, but everybody. But eligible for what reasons? To do what? To return what to his country and how? These things are obscure, more obscure than they should have been to engage the sympathy and support of the public appealed to. The future is in the hands of the New Zealand trustees. If from their administration emerge a clear and convincing principle and practice, then the fund will still be fed, as the Prime Minister has said it may be. « # • In the Spring 1965 issue of the “Periodical,” the house journal of the Oxford University Press. I find recorded the death of Charles Talbut Onions, who joined the staff of the Oxford-English Dictionary in 1895 and upon whom, with Craigie, the main burden of the great work fell when Murray and Bradley died. Onions was 91. He was the last of those to be connected with the original en-

terprise that gave us N.E.D., the unique Oxford Dictionary. Reading this notice, I thought how long our modern lexicographers have lived. J. A. H. Murray, the first editor-in-chief, lived from 1837 to 1915—78 years; Skeat, from 1835 to 1912—77 years; Wright, from 1855 to 1930 75 years; Bradley, from 1845 to 1923 78 years; Craigie, from 1867 to 1957—90 years. And now there's Onions. 91. Those who want to live long, therefore, obviously should go in for lexicography <s> * * 1 am bound to admit, however, that this formula for longevity is one that very few may pursue. 1 therefore add another, open to many of us. Years ago, the cables told us of a Finn, an old woman who had far passed the century mark and was, as they say, “in full possession of her faculties.” She could read fine print without glasses; she could hear without an eartrumpet. And so on, poor dear old girl. She was asked—the women’s page reporters being as alive in Finland then as ours today—how she explained her long and lively

survival. Her answer was short and final; “Eating raw herring, fresh, and drinking hot, strong, black coffee." Now at this period Christchurch was involved in one of those intestinal struggles that from time to time vex it: a long one, this, about the tram shelters in Cathedral Square and the placing of that war memorial that now stands in the Cathedral grounds. A body heavily engaged in this argument was called the People’s Committee. Professor Arnold Wall—who will forgive me if, quoting him from memory. I misquote him slightly—brilliantly illustrated in “The Press” the faculty of wit in bringing together like and unlike; for he wrote this comment on the old Finn's formula: Oh, bring me raw herrings, all fresh from the sea, And pots of black coffee as strong as may be; For I want to be there, I want to be there, When the People's Committee has fixed up the Square. But where do you get these herrings fresh from the sea?