This week’s issue is dated 2 August. On that date 100 years ago, my great-grandfather, Norman Moore (always known as ‘NM’), went to Sunday Mass. ‘Father Ryan,’ he noted in his diary, ‘seemed hardly to have thought of the war… I told [him] I felt uncertain whether August would be a good time for a mission to Protestants but I gave him the £5 I had promised.’ Later, he and his wife Milicent went to tea with their Sussex neighbours, Lord and Lady Ashton, who ‘seemed very little informed of the gravity of the situation’. Back at home, a telegram arrived from NM’s friend, Ethel Portal: ‘Germany occupied Luxembourg Reported repulse of Germans by French near Nancy unofficial.’ NM drove to pick up his younger son Gillachrist (‘Gilla’) from Robertsbridge station. On the platform, he heard a young man saying that England would not be drawn into the war, since she had no treaty with France. NM there wrote a telegram in Irish (a language of which he was a scholar) to thank Ethel for hers. The clerk came on to the platform and said: ‘“Is this telegram in code or cypher for we have orders not to send such?” No I said it is in Gaelic. I will read it to you & so I did and he was satisfied.’ The train arrived ten minutes late, a thing almost unheard of.
Gilla was on the train, and the family, including ‘all the men of the house of Moore’, gathered at Browns, an aunt’s house nearby. They included a cousin who had just sailed back across the Channel. He had caught a crammed train from Paris to the coast and ‘thought the French seemed depressed about the war and heard talk of the probability of defeat’. Then the Moores went back to NM’s house, Hancox, calling en route on Lord and Lady Ashton, who ‘grew more serious’ at the news of war. NM’s elder son, Alan (my grandfather), who was a doctor, spoke of joining the navy, or ‘if this impossible then the R.N. as a surgeon’. Gilla, who was 20 years old, was seeking a commission in the army.
The next morning after breakfast, Alan did the Sortes Virgilianae — the custom of opening the Aeneid and reading whatever lines present themselves, as auspices. He hit on line 622 of Book II, ‘apparent dirae facies inimicaque Trojae’. The lines noted in NM’s diary translate as follows: ‘Dreadful shapes appeared,/ and the vast powers of gods opposed to Troy./ Then in truth all Ilium seemed to me to sink in flames,/ and Neptune’s Troy was toppled from her base:/ just as when foresters on the mountain heights/ compete to uproot an ancient ash tree, struck/ time and again by axe and blade, it threatens continually/ to fall, with trembling foliage and shivering crown,/ till gradually vanquished by the blows it groans at last,/ and torn from the ridge, crashes down in ruin.’ ‘A melancholy Sors indeed,’ wrote NM. Alan and Gilla left for London, to arrange their war service.
On Tuesday 4 August, NM rang his London house: ‘Roberta our house-maid said that “Master Gilla had got a commission in the Army & Master Alan was to be appointed a surgeon in the navy”.’ Gilla sent a telegram saying ‘sorry cannot return shove off this evening’. NM read and admired the Commons speeches of the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and the moderate Irish nationalist leader John Redmond in the Times. Ethel Portal wired: ‘Ultimatum sent to Germany respect Belgian Neutrality or we declare war at midnight.’ ‘Milicent & I dined,’ wrote NM, ‘a large bright moon visible through the glass door into the tennis lawn.’ They went to bed in the last hour of peace.
The following day NM received a letter from Gilla which ended: ‘Goodbye… I shan’t see any fighting yet. Hope we smash the Germans.’ At his aunt’s request, NM painted a shorter quotation from Virgil on the beam above her fireplace ‘to commemorate the beginning of the war & our meeting together at Browns’. He wrote: ‘ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO A.D. IIII. NON. AUG. MCMXIV.’ Alan survived the war, or I should not be writing this. Gilla was killed at the first battle of Ypres, three months later.
Dom Philip Jebb, the former prior of Downside, who died recently, set a good example of priestly sanity. The best priests (perhaps monks especially) have the type of holiness which makes them understand the world without succumbing to it. I am very grateful to Fr Philip because he invited me to Downside when I was thinking of becoming a Catholic and heard my confession just before I was received. Such confessions are unique because one must review one’s entire past life. He guided me. I wrote down the whole lot — not to read out, but to clarify my thoughts. The next day Fr Philip heard my confession. I had told him that my family was much more upset than I had expected by my decision to convert. As the penance for all my sins in 37 years on the planet, he said that I should offer up my first Mass to Jesus. I more or less said, ‘Is that all?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your family difficulties are penance enough.’ This was true, perhaps, and certainly kind. I went for a walk in the fields and tore the notes for my confession into tiny pieces, and scattered them.
Richard Cohen, the Olympic fencer, who was a pupil at Downside, tells me that one day, when Fr Philip, as headmaster, was about to beat a boy for some misdemeanour, his left-wing, anti-private education brother, Julian Jebb, rang up. ‘Anthony,’ he said (Anthony was Fr Philip’s baptismal name), ‘are you about to beat a boy?’ ‘Well, actually, yes,’ said the headmaster. ‘Don’t,’ said Julian, and rang off. Philip put down the phone, looked at the boy, and told him to go. A few minutes later, the boy returned. ‘I wondered, sir, whether that phone call had anything to do with you letting me off.’ Philip explained. The boy asked for Julian’s address, to thank him. Philip wrote it down, and gave him some cash: ‘Take the money and buy my brother 20 Gitanes. They’re his favourites.’
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