As I Hear... HASTY PUDDING

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 5

As I Hear... HASTY PUDDING

[By

J.H.E.S.]

T AST time I contributed to this page I wrote sadly about two old acquaintances of mine, one of whom I knew had not followed his bent towards caricature, because he told me he had gone in for potatoes; and the other of whom, so I deduced from a few minutes’ conversation with her elder sister, had abandoned the drawing board for the pastry board and the wash board. It very soon appeared that I had too rashly supposed Josephine Mayo, or Jo, my old colleague had unwisely dropped her pencil; for, as I looked at a stray copy of an Australian literary journal, I came on a review of the recently pub-

lished book, illustrated by Jo. If there had been time, I would have asked a few more questions and have more exactly informed myself; but there was not and I did not, I jumped to a conclusion, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, the more so after a lifetime during which it has been my professional and official duty to recommend my juniors to check and verify. But I feel no more shame than prompts me to confess my rash blunder and correct it. One reason for my feeling no more is that I have comfortably learned that I am in excellent company. $ $

WHAT could be more gratifying than to find oneself the companion in error of an Archbishop of Canterbury, and to find him erring where he might be expected to be most certain, on the text of the Bible? I have just read H. Montgomery Hyde’s “Norman Birkett,” the life of Lord Birkett of Ulverston, the distinguished K.C. and judge. Birkett himself refers to a “little incident” at a dinner given by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s when, as one of a handful of laymen among clerics, Birkett was invited to respond to the toast of “The Guests”:

I said that of course I would. When the Dean proposed the toast, he used the phrase, “This is really a dinner given in honour of St Paul.” It occured to me—l was seeking to curry favour with the clerical audience —that I might show a little knowledge of the New Testament, and I

thereupon said that I thought that was a delightful thing because it was St. Paul, was it not, who in the Epistle to the Romans used that neat phrase ... “a man given to hospitality”— which I thought and still think a lovely phrase. When Lord Fisher, the Ashbishop as he then was, corrected me before this audience, you can imagine the contrition with which I expressed my apologies for being so bold as to refer to the New Testament before such an audience. When I got home I looked up the passage, and there, in the Epistle to the Romans, was the very phrase -that I had used. So I had then the intense satisfaction of writing a letter, which I trust is still in the archives at Lambeth.

It was not long before the Archbishop made public amends. Birkett was presiding at a dinner of the Pilgrims Trust, and the Archbishop proposed the toast of the guest, Sir Harold Caccia, retiring British Ambassador in Washington. He took the occasion to recall that he had “learnt by a bitter experience never to controvert Lord Birkett,” and explained it. ♦ ♦ ♦ J DO not know where, but in this book, it is possible to get so clear and detached an estimate of the Nuremberg ■Trial, at which the Nazi war lords were arraigned. Birkett sat as an alternate judge, a capacity which limited his rights but did not limit his

influence. The interesting thing is that he found the proceedings in many ways tedious and incompetently conducted, and yet concluded that justice was done. $ * TT is now a few weeks since I mixed and baked my annual Christmas cake, and mixed and boiled my batch of Christmas puddings—a batch, because by an old custom several are delivered as Christmas presents. I now record an annual grievance. Most receipes, whether for cakes or for puddings, are made up in pounds or half-pounds or quarter-pounds or ounces, of this component or that. ,This is no doubt a fact well known to the manufacturers who packet these components. Some of them, I acknowledge, recognise it and put up pound or half-pound or quarter-pound packets; and die spices are still in ounce packets. But other components are put up, and have for some years been put up, in packets or 14 or 12 or 10 ounces; and this means that you must break packets and leave yourself with remainders. Why? I can think of a reason; but it is not one that makes me think more kindly of the ingenious purveyors. To this I may add that some components are marketed in packets that do not declare the net weight I may be wrong; but I have supposed that it was a statutory obligation to declare the net weight. Never mind. The cake and the puddings turned out all right