| From The Times,
Friday October 18 2002 COURT CIRCULAR Dinners The Duke of Kent was among the P G Wodehouse Society (UK) members who marked the centenary of the publication of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse's first book, The Pothunters with a dinner at The Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn last night. Lord Scott of Foscote read from Dickens' Bleak House and Sir Tim Rice, Ms Lara Cazalet, Ms Eliza Lumley, Mr Hal Cazalet and Mr Steven Higgins entertained guests with songs written by P.G. Wodehouse. Thursday, 17th October, 2002 Diners foregathered in the crypt of the Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn, and at 7.30 moved out of the crypt into the Old Hall itself.
After the Chairman, Mr Tony Ring opened the proceedings with a welcome. This room, he said, the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn, was once the court of the Lord High Chancellor, as described in the opening scene of Bleak House, that work by Charles Dickens which featured the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, the longest saga recorded in the history of our legal system. The Lord High Chancellor sat on top of that raised daïïs. Our Patron Lord Scott, now a Law Lord, formerly held the position of Vice-Chancellor, and was, in holding that post, the senior judge of the Chancery Division, sitting in the Lord Chancellor's court. Accordingly, it would be fitting to take you back to the nineteenth century, when this room was the Lord Chancellor's Court. Let your imagination roam free as Lord Scott reads an extract from Bleak House. ~~~~~~~ Lord Scott read in part as follows: "London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. . . . Fog everywhere. Fog up the river . . . fog down the river. . . .Fog on the Essex marshes. . . The raw afternoon is rawest, . . . and the dense fog is densest . . . near Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick . . . to assort with the with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the sight of heaven and earth. On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here — as here he is — with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. This is the Court of Chancery; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give –– who does not often give –– the warning ‘SUFFER ANY WRONG THAT CAN BE DONE YOU, RATHER THAN COME HERE!' ~~~~~~~ Lt. Colonel N T P Murphy then said grace, printed in the menu [see the end of this report for a reproduction of the menu]. Mr Ring invited those present to observe the crest of Charles II and a number of peers high on the wall at the end of the room. On one occasion when they had enjoyed a three-day banquet in this room, the peers were too drunk to stand for the Loyal Toast, and the King granted a dispensation from standing. It had been a tradition carried on ever since that diners remain seated for the Loyal Toast, which will now be proposed by the Chairman. ~~~~~~~ The Chairman, Lt. Colonel N T P Murphy, proposed the Loyal Toast. ~~~~~~~ Mr Ring then introduced Sir Edward Cazalet, Wodehouse's grandson, who proposed the toast of The HSBC Bank. ~~~~~~~ Sir Edward welcomed the guests from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, especially Marcus Gregson, Chief Executive of HSBC Republic. The UK Wodehouse Society were grateful for the support HSBC had given the Society, and were especially giving the Society that night. In return he had asked that the Society confer honorary life membership on Mr Gregson. (Applause.) Wodehouse had been aware of Jarndyce v Jarndyce and brought it into French Leave when Jo Trent had said in chapter 1 "Oh, gosh! It isn't going to be like that Thing and Thing thing in Bleak House, where all the money went to the lawyers?" He described the meetings of the Society and the quarterly journal. He referred to this dinner which attracted members from all round the world. We were glad to welcome that night three members from Alaska, whom he asked to stand up.
He welcomed Robert McCrum, giving an account of his visits to Plum's internment camps, and the news that his biography was going well and due out in September 2004. (Applause.)
His latest appointment as President of the MCC took effect from the beginning of this month. In view of Plum's own cricketing and theatrical pedigrees, he said, Sir Tim was particularly welcome here that night, and it was appropriate that he should introduce the next section, entitled "My God! What a Sex, A light entertainment offering alternative visions of the delicately nurtured", to remind us of another side of Wodehouse. ~~~~~~~ Sir Tim contrasted the attitudes of knights of old, and in particular Sir Agravaine the Dolorous of the Table Round (from The Man Upstairs) with some of Wodehouse's later statements about the opposite sexes' opinions about each other. For instance, Sally in The Adventures of Sally was told "Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him." Or Lady Julia Fish on actresses. "I regard the entire personnel of the ensembles of our musical comedy theatres as — if you will forgive me being Victorian for a moment — painted hussies". Ronnie answered "They've got to paint." "Well" replies Lady Julia, "They needn't huss." He said he had sometimes been asked why he was no longer working with Andrew Lloyd-Webber. "Would you be willing to work with someone who took 75% of the credit? Who took 75% of the money? Who captured the hearts of all the beautiful leading ladies? No of course not. Neither did Andrew see why he should." (Prolonged laughter.) ~~~~~~~ Tony Ring then announced that Tim Rice would be joined by Lara Cazalet for a conversation about P G Wodehouse's attitude to women. Lara was not only a theatre and television actress but Plum's great-grand-daughter too.
We were exceptionally fortunate, he said, to have Hal with us. He had contrived to take a rest from rehearsals at Glyndebourne, where this following Saturday would be the opening night of the opera Albert Herring in which he was playing the lead, Albert Herring himself. It would then go on an exhausting national tour. They would be accompanied by Glyndebourne pianist Stephen Higgins. Their songs were: It's a Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard, World for a Man (Hal Cazalet) Rolled in One (Eliza Lumley) The Siren's Song (Eliza Lumley) All You Need is a Girl (Hal and Lara Cazalet) The Church Round the Corner (Hal and Lara Cazalet) and by popular demand Bill (Lara Cazalet) which brought the proceedings gracefully to an end. The Menu, page by page
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Mr Ring invited Sir Tim Rice (pictured
left) to propose the toast of P G Wodehouse and the P G
Wodehouse Society (UK). Sir Tim had been active in the
world of entertainment for more than thirty years, and
had made a major contribution to the success of the
twentieth century musical.
Their comments would be
illustrated in song by West End performer Eliza Lumley (pictured
left) and Hal Cazalet.
