“SWEEPING VICTORY”

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 114, 27 February 1950, Page 4

“SWEEPING VICTORY”

LIFE STORY TOLD The only resident chimney-sweep in the village of Sutton-at Hone, near Dartford, Kent, is a Knight Commander of the Most, Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George and a Balliol man. • He sweeps the chimneys of a house called St. John’s Jerusalem because he lives there. He also writes very well, and has an article, signed by himself—Sir Stephen Tallents —in the “Spectator.” - - He tells how he became what the Americans call a “fluonomist.” “The old man who for years swept our chimneys, and used to tell me how, as a boy defying the new law, he climbed many a farmhouse chimney, not long ago withdrew his faithful mule to the more tranquil task of hawking vegetables down our village street.” So. Sir Stephen, once a BBC controller and former principal secretary to the Minister of Town and Country Planning, learned the business himself. “Here,” he said, “was yet another freedom to be secured —freedom to choose a day for the sweeping that would dovetail with the spring-clean-ing: freedom to clear and cover up one room and sweep one chimney at a time. “I learned long ago—when I took up scything—that there are three golden rules for mastering a new craft. First, burn your boats by buying the equipment. Then appoint a consultant and select a field of operations.” Sir Stephen chose as his consult ants little Tom of Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” and an observant gardener who had never swept a chimney but had often been present at a sweeping.

His first operation succeeded. Hei was surprised how clean he looked after sweeping the drawing-room chimney.

“I am still a “one-chimney man, though my engagements will not allow me long to remain so,” he says. “It is well in these precarious times to look ahead and ensure one’s living.”

Said Sir Stephen last night: “I wrote that article a year ago. I am much more of an authority to-day. No longer a one-chimney man, I sweep very one in the house.”

Sir Stephen, who has retired from public life to become director of a chocolate firm, hopes one day to bring luck to a royal bride by standing outside the church when she leaves. If he does he says he will depict on his notepaper a crest with the words “By Appointment to Her Royal Highness ...”