LIFE’S RICH PAGEANT

I have borrowed the title of this piece from the modest autobiography of my much-cherished Arthur Marshall, the humorous writer and acute stylist (1910-89). Arthur was a most entertaining fellow, who found amusement in almost everyone he met and whose gentle mockery of some contemporaries among his amazingly wide circle is an example of us all – beam warmly at mankind and avoid being harshly critical!

                            Arthur Marshall, humourist

I have now been 22 days in Greece, much of it bucket and spade time with our delightful 3-year-old grand-daughter, Theodora, on sandy beaches near Athens. The internationalism of modern life is striking. Despite gnashing of teeth from Macron, the world speaks English even though the speakers originate from Germany, Poland, Mexico, Egypt or wherever. Theodora made sand-castles with a 2-year-old Chinese boy appropriately called Theodore, whose charming Anglophone parents now live in Vienna.

French is of course a fine language and its literature is unparalleled, although one has to admit to some longueurs emanating from the over-fertile pens of Corneille and Racine. Macron, Barnier and before them de Gaulle were anachronistic in expecting the world to return to an unattainable Francophone paradise. I have always loved France, notably Paris, Normandy, the Champagne Country (all those delicious bubbles!) and my favourite, majestic Rococo Place Stanislas in Nancy. Long may they prosper and add lustre to our proud Western civilisation!

I must now leap to the defence of an old gentleman, much disparaged in the popular prints. Joe Biden is admittedly an old git, painfully miscast as President of the USA. He is a mere 79-year-old (like me), forgets names (like me) and shuffles around with a tottering gait (ditto me). His recent speech proclaiming the triumph of the Kabul evacuation, was humiliating nonsense but he had to cheer up his domestic audience. Charitably I would concede “he means well” but that is faint praise indeed. The truth is that the US and UK should have quit Afghanistan 10 years ago and left it to its peculiar ways. No vital Western interest was ever at stake. If it ever threatens the security of Pakistan, Iran and Uzbekistan, that is a matter for those countries to sort out.

                                                     Beleaguered Joe Biden

As for inept Old Joe, he was elected on the ticket of “Not Trump”, his only visible virtue. If the strain gets too much, Biden could resign to be succeeded by his VP Kamala Harris, ten times worse, certain to dispense heavy doses of Californian Wokery. She would thereby lay a strong foundation for the predatory return of Donald Trump, a most alarming possibility. So, let’s keep Joe going, supported by blinking Blinken and his gang and pray that meanwhile the Republicans return to some semblance of sanity.

Oddities among US politicians are not new. I have been re-reading some of the inter-war pieces by hard-boiled and hilarious H L Mencken and his verdicts on Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and perennial presidential candidate W J Bryan are far from flattering. Even in our time, genial Ronnie Reagan was no streak of intellectual lightning, although he actually did very well.

Current affairs are just too depressing to contemplate – Boris’s lot foul up almost everything they touch. I have taken some solace from leafing through the Oxford Dictionary of The Popes, a weighty reference book produced by the then-retired Principal of my Oxford College, St Edmund Hall, John Kelly, a vivid Oxford character. The Renaissance Popes were a very rum lot, much prone to outrageous nepotism and with Borgias about, not above spiking the drinks with lethal poisons. Not much had changed with Pio Nono, (Pius IX) the mid-19^th century “reformer” who fought for and lost the Papal States, promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, enunciated the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and declared war on the modern world with his Syllabus of Errors. Not a life-enhancer in my book.

So, to life-enhancers I speed. In Athens I always read the Mr Mulliner story The Truth about George by incomparable P G Wodehouse which has me guffawing even on my 20^th reading. For comfort reading, I peruse Arthur Marshall on show-biz as a child in Barnes theatre-going with his mother, or as a performer himself meeting such luminaries as the Oliviers, Terence Rattigan, Ivor Novello, Somerset Maugham, Gielgud, the Lunts, Noel Coward, Dame Edith Evans – wonderfully anecdotal and light of touch, or experiences at prep school or at his beloved Oundle both as pupil and school master or rhapsodies on his beloved Devon cottage at “Myrtlebank”.

Frank Muir once described Arthur as “England’s Unofficial Sunbeam”, most apposite, and no other writer has given me such consistent and gentle pleasure.

SMD

2.09.21   Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2021