AS I HEAR . . A most beautiful lady

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32679, 7 August 1971, Page 19

AS I HEAR . . A most beautiful lady

(By

J.H.H.E.S)

I was delighted when, some weeks ago, my friend and colleague “Pandora” extolled Alistair Cooke’s 8.8. C. talk, beautifully threaded between adventures in journalism and adventures in literature. When I heard it, I at once thought of making it, or finding in it, the. topic of one of' these paragraphs, or more; but “Pandora” forestalled me and I turned aside. Now, though, so much polluted water has flowed under the bridge mat I feel entitled to add a tailpiece.

Cooke described one of his most fascinating assignments as the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent in the United States: to attend and report a memorial service for King George—was it V or VI? I don’t remember; anyhow, a sufficiently remarkable occasion, upon his approach to which Cooke was uncertain. But he remembered having heard that on his way to the scene there lay a small town and its cemetery, in which stood a monument to the dead on both sides in one of the battles of the War of Independence, near their battlefield; and that the inscription was a fine one. He found the town, the cemetery, the monument, and the inscription, which was indeed a fine one. I can recall only its tenor: that here lay men who had met as enemies but now lay side by side as friends. It was, Cooke said, a superb epitaph in his memory was—plicity; and he used it in his assignment. Here, I dare swear on the spur of the moment, Cooke interpolated that the loveliest

epitaph in his memory was—and I knew he wu going to say it—a short poem by Walter de la Mare; and he spoke it: This is it:

Here lies a most beautiful lady. Light of step and heart was she. I think she was the most beautiful lady. That ever came from the West Country. Bui beauty vanishes, beauty

passes. However rare, rare it be; And when I crumble who will

remembee. This lady of the West Country? This poem was first printed (in book form) in de la Mare’s ’The Listeners,” 1912; but I had already seen it in the “Illustrated London News,” in the magazine room of the Carnegie Public Library, Hokitika, where I sat shaken, electrified, beside myself. For I had first realised what poetry was, or could be. We knew poetry only as such grand rhetorical stuff as Byron’s lines on the eve of Qautre Bras, from “Childe Harold,” or such moralistic stuff as Kingsley’s “Be good, sweet child,” which was set before us in our Readers. But now the blinds were up and the light streamed.in. Alistair Cooke’s illumination cannot have been earlier than mine; but it came in the same way to the same effect. Bless the man.

I am not yet done. He spoke it well, arid I say “spoke it” from memory not from script; for in the last line he introduced the adjective “beautiful” before lady: “This beautiful lady of the West Country.” So, unhappily, wrecking its rhythm and that of the whole poem.

And that is why I’m sure his quotation was interpolated and that his memory betrayed him; or his tongue, or (momentarily) his ear. I feel so strongly about this that I shall try to reach Mr Cooke and put the question to him, with my gratitude for a fine programme. * * *

Now there is Mr Gair, Under-Secretary ' for education, saying that clergymen should not discourse from their pulpits on political issue*. Let them (he generously concedes) come out on public platforms to declare themselves on such issues; but not from their pulpits. Not from their pulpits, though it is from their pulpits that their flock have the first and the best right to hear them and they have the first and best right to speak. Dear Mr Gair, we have long had enough of finical clergymen, too timid to speak to their flock when they are sufficiently informed and convinced to speak. If they are, their pulpit is their proper platform. If they choose another or others, well and good; but no politician has the right to deny them their own. If any did. Archbishop Temple would have stood up to deny the right; and he stands up now to deny it So do scores of the clary, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and

non-conformist, through the years. Mr Gair may well claim that many laymen stand behind him. Of course. Many laymen have limp attitudes towards the responsibility of their clergy and, indeed, towards their religion, to which they defer bn Sunday (if then) but to which they acknowledge no obligation (except faintly) in principle and none (in prac-

tice) during the week. This is a hard statement; but I stick to it.

To cool off, to mathematics. In the copious cabled report of press reactions to Mr Harold Wilson’s speech to the Labour Party on the E.E.C. situation there was quoted a reference to the lowest common denominator of objections: The “Sunday Times” said that with an unfailing eye for the lowest common denominator, Mr Wilson was awaiting only the right moment to announce his opposition to entry.

Which I quoted, not to argue about it, but to observe that Lowest Common Denominator is here, as commonly, used to mean what it seems to mean: the minimum of agreement. But it does not. Any arithmetician will tell you why. Of any series of numbers, the L.C.D. is the number into which all will equally divide. So we take 12, 35, and 82. If you try, you will find that 34,400 is the lowest number into which those three will divide evenly. And that is their lowest common denominator. So we take 21, 77, 119, each divisible by 7 and by no higher number; and 7 is therefore the Highest Common Factor, which is presumably what people mean when they write about the lowest common denominator. But they have it wrong, and will go on having it wrong. It is one of those things.