The Old Un’s Notes

Just before Christmas, historian Lady Antonia Fraser composed a verse on confronting that age-old companion to faith – doubt – at Farm Street Church, Mayfair.

Whenever I doubt, I get out and about. To Farm Street I go –The journey is slow. I mutter and murmur, ‘My resolve should be fi rmer… Doubt? Kick it out.’ Then I fl op down on my chair. They put it specially there. So it’s solid and true, As I should be too. I pray throughout Mass. Doubt? Kick it out. Suddenly there’s a change Just within range. The Host is held high Into the church sky. Peace is retrieved I believe…

Nick Downes is one of the most treasured cartoonists at Oldie Towers (see above right for an example).

The American cartoonist has been contributing to these pages ever since The Oldie was founded in 1992.

Also prominent in the New Yorker, he is the cartooning heir to the great Charles Addams (1912-1988) – as in The Addams Family – in the gifted way he reveals the dark

Doubt by Antonia Fraser

‘I want to make you Mrs Psychotic Drifter!’ Charles Addams’s heir: a Downes cartoon from his new book

Among this month’s contributors

Kenneth Cranham (p17) is one of our leading actors. He was in Oliver! and starred in Shine on Harvey Moon. On stage, he’s appeared in Loot, Entertaining Mr Sloane and An Inspector Calls.

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (p18) is known as the Black Farmer. He farms on the Devon-Cornwall border. Born in Jamaica and brought up in Birmingham, he was a BBC producer of food and drink shows.

Amelia Butler-Gallie (p31) is a postgraduate at Lincoln College, Oxford. She is doing an MA in 18th-century literature. In this issue, she writes about the threat to Virgil and Homer at Oxford.

Elinor Goodman (p32) was political editor of Channel 4 News from 1988 to 2005. She is a regular presenter of The Week in Westminster and was a member of the Leveson Inquiry panel. underbelly beneath everyday American life.

Nick has published a new book, Polly Wants a Lawyer: Cartoons of Murder, Mayhem & Criminal Mischief. Perfect for anyone with a macabre taste for the blackest humour.

Any oldies who are a little hard of hearing will be moved by Norman Lebrecht’s new book, Why Beethoven? A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces (Oneworld, £20), published in February.

The book includes a moving translation of Beethoven’s renowned Heiligenstadt Testament, written to his two brothers – Carl Caspar, a government clerk, and Nikolaus Johann, a pharmacist, who unfortunately prescribed accidentally harmful remedies for Beethoven’s ailments.

Beethoven wrote the testament in 1802, when he accepted he’d gone completely deaf after six years of increasing deafness.

He’d fi rst spotted a shepherd, out in the fi elds, blowing on a wooden fl ute – and he couldn’t hear a thing. Then he went out for the evening in the vineyards of Heiligenstadt, on the fringes of Vienna. Around him, revellers chatted and drank new wine, clinking tankards, and Beethoven couldn’t hear any of it.

And so he wrote to his brothers, ‘I was compelled to isolate myself, to live life alone. I could not say to

‘I hear you’re Australian…’

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‘Ah, how could I admit an infirmity in the one sense that ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession have ever enjoyed.

‘Oh I cannot do it; therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would gladly have mingled with you.

‘For me, there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished.’

Poor Beethoven! Next time you’re tempted to irritation by an oldie who keeps saying, ‘What?’, remember the agony of the Heiligenstadt Testament. Calling all oldie women artists!

The artist Posy Simmonds has drawn a brilliant cartoon (pictured below) to help promote Hosking Houses Trust.

The trust is inviting applications from women artists who would benefit from a residency (two weeks to two months) in a country cottage near Stratfordupon-Avon.

Since 2002, the Trust has offered residencies to older women writers. Over 160 writers have benefited from a period of peace for personal work without other duties.

Church Cottage is a one-up, one-down artisan cottage beside the churchyard in the village of Clifford Chambers, Warwickshire. In 2019, Arts Council England sponsored the building of a small, light studio extension. The cottage is free and utility bills are paid.

Artists with a substantial body of successful work – particularly cartoons, illustrations, graphic novels, calligraphy or animation – are invited to apply (hoskinghouses.co.uk).

All applicants are advised, though, to keep an eye out for ‘something nasty in the woodshed’, as Stella Gibbons put it in Cold Comfort Farm (1933). Look closely at Posy’s picture to stay fully abreast of the perils.

One of the perks of the theatre critic is the occasional glass of free wine laid on by the theatres.

That’s what happened at the opening night of Hex, a musical at the National Theatre.

During the interval, the

Something nasty in the woodshed: Church Cottage, Warwickshire, by Posy Simmonds

Ice-cream-lover: Libby

National laid on free wine for the drama critics, traditionally a not unthirsty crew. The Daily Mail’s Libby Purves, 72, was not in the mood for Château Screwtop – so she moved towards a large tray of free ice creams.

‘Hands off !’ she was told. ‘They’re for the children.’

Purves is a quiet soul and made nothing of it, but a couple of other critics were also shooed away from the tubs of vanilla and chocolate.

The New York Times International Edition’s Matt Wolf informed the National press offi cers they were displaying ‘ageism’. That did the trick. Modern offi cialdom lives in terror of being accused of an ‘ism’.

The central truth, though, is surely this: no one is ever too ancient for an ice.

James Gillray (17561815), the great caricaturist, is having a comeback!

First came Tim Clayton’s new book, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire.

In his biography of the ‘Prince of Caricatura’, Clayton followed Gillray from his fi rst satires on the American War of Independence through to revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars, expertly skewering British politics and behaviour along the way.

And, in March, Alice Loxton, a 26-year-old historian, publishes Uproar! Satire, Scandal & Printmakers in Georgian London. She writes about Georgian Britain through the illustrations of Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank.

Her particular themes are wild royals, political intrigue and the birth of modern celebrity – there’s nothing new under the sun!

James Gillray’s Very Slippy Weather (1808): the shop at 27 St James’s Street, with Gillray prints in the window, was owned by Hannah Humphrey. Gillray lodged there, 1797-1815

Slightly Foxed have reissued The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, Colin Clark’s delightful memoir.

It tells of his time as third assistant director on The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), the fi lm version, starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, of Terence Rattigan’s play The Sleeping Prince.

Colin Clark, Alan Clark’s younger brother, captures Marilyn Monroe’s charm, vulnerability – and enchanting looks.

One day, he walked into her room, to fi nd ‘MM, completely nude, with only a white towel round her head. I stopped dead. All I could see were beautiful white and pink curves. I must have gone as red as a beetroot… MM gave me the most innocent smile. “Oh Colin,” she said. “And you an Old Etonian!”’

The introduction to the new edition, by Derek Parker, also recalls Colin Clark’s later reminiscence, My Week with Marilyn (2000).

One morning, a car drew up, with Marilyn in the back seat under a blanket. ‘I don’t want to be Miss Monroe today,’ she said. ‘I just want to be me.’

So Colin set off in the car, cuddling up to Marilyn in the back seat. They went for a walk in Windsor Great Park, where they soon attracted a little crowd.

‘Shall I be her?’ Marilyn asked.

Colin continues, ‘Without waiting for an answer, she jumped up on a step and struck a pose. Her hip went out, her shoulders went back, her famous bosom was thrust forward. She pouted her lips and opened her eyes wide, and there suddenly was the image the whole world knew.’

Oh, how the Old Un wishes he’d been there, too!

‘Before we can make it o icial, we’ll need you to pee into this cup’