Paperweight

by Stephen Fry

  The laws of blasphemy, like those of treason, still go unrepealed in this great free land of ours. Blasphemy, like treason, had its uses in time of tyranny. To question in the smallest detail the obvious lies upon which the power of Church and State was founded might have caused the whole house of cards to collapse. A chain of mendacity is only as strong as its weakest link. It was blasphemy to suggest that the world was millions not thousands of years old, treason to wonder whether the king was just and good. The Church and State fed lies to their subjects for centuries and needed the kind of laws that Stalin showed himself expert in to keep the truth at bay.

  But what, we are in a hurry to ask, are blasphemy laws doing in Britain now, and what does the episcopacy think it is doing attempting to invoke them? The Church has no power over our lives any more, which is something in the nature of a blessing for those who do not enjoy red-hot pokers or iron thumb-screws, so whom is a blasphemer threatening when he makes light of a religion? Not God, who, it must be faced, as inventor of laughter and creator of all things is quite big and strong enough to handle a joke without some humourless cleric springing to his defence. No, blasphemy only threatens those whose faith in their religion is weak, whose beliefs in it are insecure. A lifetime’s commitment to a church is a noble thing, and those who embrace their faith with strength will find that the sniggerings of the unfaithful glance off them harmlessly; but those who doubt it, or who have allowed the glory and the politics of rank and favour within the Church to mean more to them than their faith itself, then they certainly will quiver with baffled vanity and scared outrage at every joke or squib.

  ‘But people, the ordinary faithful, are offended by crude comic blasphemies,’ voices are raised to tell me. Yes indeed. But what of my religion? I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse to ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish. The starving of Africa might also be pleased to reflect that a public denouncement from the pulpit is as effective a booster of sales as a two million pound advertising campaign.

  Oh I’m too old to care. Let these hideous cassocked apes raise the tyrannical ghosts of dead statutes, let them clap their warty hands over the mouths of those who would speak, let them be consumed by their own vanity; the leaves have fallen quite from the immemorial elms, a watery sun strikes feebly the stones of the college courts and I have a bassoon lesson in half an hour. If you have been, bless you.

  VOICE: The BBC would like to make it plain that, however decent or logical or true they may be, the views of Donald Trefusis are those of a sad, laughable and monstrously opinionated academic, and we dissociate ourselves from them entirely. Except for the bit about Stalin. That was all right.

  Trefusis on Any Questions

  As an intemperate and passionate listener to the wireless I was very surprised to hear that certain persons have been pestering the good officers of the British Broadcasting Corporation and demanding to be allowed to be heard on that oldest of sound arenas Any Questions. Do you know the whole story?

  There is a frightful programme on the Home Service called ThrowUp or Feedback or HowlRound or some such drivel. It’s one of those monstrous ideas that can only emerge from the dripping caverns of the mind of the criminally insane or the Oxford educated. It seems to exist entirely for those unconscionable members of our society who demand that the wireless should be some kind of genteel hermitage upon which the language, idiom and vitality of the real world never impinges. These poor afflicted creatures spend their time with an ear against the speaker counting occurrences of the word bugger. If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears. The only advice I would give anyone who loves the wireless is to write in each time you hear a drama or a comedy that compromises on language. How can I listen to a play that is supposed to be a reflection of real life where characters say nothing but ‘bother’ and ‘dash’ all the time? It is a grotesque offence to the integrity of art. Unless you are heard the gibbering lunatics will carry the day. However, this is really by the way.

  Feedback is a Radio 4 programme and therefore is naturally a kind of sanctuary for the mentally deficient – you mustn’t think I’m biting the hand that feeds me here, I happen to know that the small but charming audience for my little wireless essays is composed of none but the judicious and the wise. I am aware that none of you has ever written in to complain at the phrase ‘bloody bastard’, you’re not insane. Most of the Feedback audience, however, is insane. Quite appallingly potty. Barking mad to a man. Imagine then the length, breadth, depth and height of my dismay on hearing that from amongst this audience was to be culled a pool or well or reservoir of potential guests on Any Questions. Two hundred of the ripest bedlamites in Britain have written in to be considered for the post of Ordinary Person On the Panel.

  We have to thank for this barbarous notion a deluded soul, a forlorn stumbler in the darkness of unreason, who wrote to Feedback complaining that the politicians, authors and financial rapists who usually comprise the bench are not representative of the wide world. ‘Let us hear the voice of the common man’ is the cry. How you could get more common than Peter Marsh, Gerald Kaufman or Edwina Curry or other such ghastly confections I should be very interested to know. However, the motion has been carried and certain persons will soon be heard on the programme.

  Any Questions is one of those institutions designed to provoke anger and precipitate apoplexy across the kingdom. If you see a purple-faced person shouting and screaming at a wireless set then there is a better than even chance that it is Any Questions that is exercising them. It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counterarguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one’s lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager. But the BBC in its wisdom provides a remedy. Any Answers. It is there to prove precisely how much more worthless, even than a politician’s views, are the opinions of the wireless-listening public. That is where to go if you wish to embarrass the intelligent members of your family by discussing concepts you barely understand, like law and order and morality. It is to Any Answers that you turn when you want to deliver yourself of your prejudices and hatreds. Any Answers will be an important document for future generations, when they seek to examine the decline in literacy, courtesy and understanding that finally propelled the twentieth century into an abyss of selfish individualism and unneighbourly aggression. But Any Questions has a more immediate function.

  We live, my dears, don’t we, in a democracy of sorts. A democracy is a means whereby we channel our contempt for our fellow man into a lively scorn for those elected to represent him. Kindly men and women accept invitations to appear on Any Questions to absorb the hatred that would otherwise spill onto the streets. We know who these people are, we pay them handsomely for their sacrifice. They come to stand for the intemperate views that are killing our country. If we dare to replace these souls with ordinary people I fear for what may happen. I know that if I were driving my Wolseley around Cambridge and I happened to hear some lawyer or housewife talking about moral fabric or the family unit I should very likely swerve onto the pavement and massacre a dozen family units there and then.

  No, no, it’s too dangerous. Let the maniacs continue to write their let
ters and let the public men do the speaking. I must hand you back to London now and leave you with this public maniac. Nedwin.

  Trefusis Goes North

  At the time of broadcasting, the ‘North–South Divide’ was au courant. Trefusis muses on the subject after a trip North:

  Hello. You notice that I say ‘Hello’ rather than ‘Good morning’; that was a tip from young Alistair Cooke, because you never know with the BBC, do you, when you are going to be repeated? The World Service for instance may decide to transmit me to Zimbabwe in the evening, or to Malaya at midnight. We broadcasters must arm ourselves against such possibilities, and so we say ‘Hello’. Perceive that I don’t say ‘Hello everybody’, because it is perfectly possible, however unlikely, that not everybody is listening. And I don’t say ‘Hello my lovely darlings’ in case any of you are driving as you listen to this, it would be easy to swerve off the road after so shamelessly provocative a come on. And so ‘Hello’ to you.

  I want to address today a totally illusory subject, which is to say I wish to discuss something that simply doesn’t exist. In my capacity as Saussurian Visiting Lecturer to the University of – well, I shall name no names here, let us call it the University of North Yorkshire, I had cause this week to visit a large Northern city to deliver myself of a talk on Mauritian dialects and their relation to Melanesian aphatic sign systems. Never having been further north than King’s Lynn before I set out with some trepidation. I had decided to make a few days of it and visit Leeds, Bradford, Barnsley and even venture west of the Pennine chain and pop in on Manchester and Liverpool. One thing I knew, there is no such thing as a North–South Divide. The Daily Telegraph told me so, as did the Mail and the Express. No such thing. I can only conclude that it is a coincidence that Northern towns have parades of boarded up shops and streets where, rather than bustling prosperously, the citizens hang morosely about on street corners with nothing to do. A coincidence that grocers’ have half empty shelves, that the only full emporia in the High Streets are betting shops. A coincidence that the North breathes poverty, neglect and despair where so many Southern towns ooze comfort, prosperity and confidence. A coincidence that a party of Eton schoolboys visited Newcastle the other day as part of some kind of A level Social and Urban History course and the story made the evening news on television. I am not a sceptical man but I shall read the Telegraph that the Senior Combination Room of my college still insists on taking, with rather more care in the future.

  Am I to advance a sentimental view of the North after such a brief glance about it? Did I find the people more friendly, kinder, simpler, straighter, stronger and truer? I am glad to say that I did not. Some were disposed to be amicable, some disposed to favour me with looks of such deep loathing that the glass in my spectacles came close to melting. Most Northerners struck me as people like any other. Others just struck me. They’re only flesh and blood, how can I blame them? A strange, windy old man wandering vaguely about their streets, his tweed, his gait, the very angle of his stoop shouting centuries of Southern privilege, it must have been insupportable to them.

  The North seemed to me to be like a restaurant kitchen which still uses an old coal range and cold room and tries to compete with a kitchen that has microwave ovens and deep freezes. A blacksmith’s forge on a motorway. Here is Southern Britain showing that fortunes can be made out of making money and offering services and there is the North still trying to make things. But our castle down here is built on sand, their meaner dwelling is built on rock. Their neglect I sense is real, our prosperity an illusion. But then the aim of politics has always been to keep a grip on fantasy.

  Why is he West Wittering about South and North, you ask? I pay politicians and journalists to spout specious and facile lies about society, I don’t need jumped up old monsters like this Trefusis idiot to add to the problem. Well mayhap you’re right, so I shall leave you.

  As I look out of my window I see the gales whipping the surface of Father Cam into little wavelets that feather their way upstream bearing windblown twigs along on a winding course away from the parent trees from which they were so rudely snapped and I think that perhaps we are twigs wrenched from some great mother oak, bobbing and ducking in the stream of exigency until we reach the ocean of evidence. And then the thought occurs that I’m an old and silly man who should know better. If you weren’t: goodnight.

  Lady Madding Again

  VOICE: STEPHEN FRY went along to Eastwold House in Norfolk, to visit Rosina, Lady Madding, the Dowager Countess of Brandiston.

  I hope you don’t mind sitting in here, at my age you get rather fond of draughts. I know you young people feel the cold terribly but I’m afraid I rather like it. That’s right. Yes, it is nice isn’t it? Though I wouldn’t really call it a cushion, Pekinese is a more common name for them. No, well never mind, he was very old – just throw him on the fire would you?

  Parties? I don’t know why you want to talk about parties. I’ll try to remember for you. Ah! Now, you see that photograph there … there, on the table, next to the skateboard? Noël Coward. I didn’t mix with him very much, he was a little … what we used to call a ‘little Strachey’, that was our code word. But I liked him, oh I liked him very much. We were in Paris once, I remember, where my husband Claude was attached to the British Embassy, well he was attached to the British Ambassador as a matter of fact, Rupert Davenant, everybody was. We gave a party in our house off the Pont Mirabeau. Noël came, Christian Dior, Bournvita Chanel, Pablo and Rosie Casals, indeed as F.E. Smith remarked, there were too many candles and not enough moths. Molotov was there from the Russian Embassy, you know, and Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau. Jean and Molotov had been asked to leave Maxim’s earlier in the evening for upsetting the diners with their Edward G. Robinson impersonation and I asked Noël if he didn’t think this was an absolute riot. ‘Not a riot, Rosina,’ he replied in that way of his, ‘they were only asked to leave – in a riot a Molotov Cocteau is usually thrown.’ Well of course I screamed with laughter. It was so funny, you see. And I remember another occasion when I gave a party at my house in Dereham Square, Queen Mary came, and Queen Dagmar of Denmark, Noël was there and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and E.M. Forster and Guy Burgess and Queen Tsatsiki of the Hellenes. ‘Look at you, Rosina,’ said Noël, again in that way of his. ‘The Queen of Society, in the Society of Queens.’ Everyone screeched, I may tell you. Yes, help yourself to sugar … Mm, I think you’ll find it easier if you just use your fingers. Those coal tongs are a little dirty. Mm? Oh that, that’s a nude study of Brian Close, the Yorkshire and England cricketer. I have hundreds of copies. I keep them for the Scouts to polish when they come bob-a-jobbing.

  My husband Claude died seventeen years ago and Bobby succeeded to the title. He was only ten. Kit, my other son, he’s a furniture restorer in the East End of London somewhere. I hardly ever see him. If he isn’t stripping a dresser or French polishing a tallboy then he’s usually at work on his furniture. You know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed, you’re not the eldest son. My daughter Mawinda is an actress, you may have seen her. She’s the girl who says she can’t believe any powder could get that nightie clean without boiling. We’re all very proud. Though I have no idea what a nightie is. Something poor people wear I suppose. But there was tremendous competition for that part, you know. They say Judi Dench swore she’d tear Mawinda’s eyes out, she was so jealous. Really? Well I’ll call Crith, he’ll show you out. You must call again, it’s so pleasurable to sit and remember. I’m having a party tomorrow night as a matter of fact, can I persuade you to – ? Everyone has to come dressed as a famous character from history. Ned Sherrin’s coming as himself. Oh, do you know Nedwin? I can tell you a very funny story about him. Do you know the lingerie shop in New Bond Street, well, I was about to go in there one afternoon when –

  SHERRIN: Unfortunately that’s all we have time for from Rosina, Lady Madding, as we have to get on with the next item, which is …

  Trefusis’s Postcard From America<
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  During the early summer of 1986 I went to America, where Me and My Girl the musical was being rehearsed prior to a Broadway run. Trefusis sent back a number of Aural Postcards:

  VOICE: Donald Trefusis, Emeritus Professor of Philology and Fellow of St Matthew’s College, Cambridge, is in America at the moment. He has sent back some of his impressions of a country he is visiting for the first time.

  Yes, well, hello to you all back home. To think of you all folded in England’s green bosom, thousands of miles away, while I am here in this thrusting virile forest of concrete and glass, baffles my mind and threatens to unseat my reason. I find it hard to obey the instructions of the very kind young sound engineer and speak in a normal, level tone of voice. If I am shouting, I apologise, but it is as much excitement that causes me to do so, as the feeling that you are a whole Atlantic away from me.

  I am here, as those of you who read the Neue Philologische Abteilung will be aware, for a conference on the migration of the forward labial, here at Columbia University, New York. Without getting too technical it concerns itself with the influence of the Hispanic plosive on American English, a field in which I have been counted something of a specialist.