Mind your language
The National Trust and the danger of crimethink.
Founded in 1895, the British National Trust was created to "promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest". Today, the National Trust owns almost 250,000 hectares of land, 780 miles of coastline, and more than 500 historic houses, castles and gardens.
Once upon a time - up until, say, the millennium - visiting a National Trust property was a joy. Beautiful properties, beautifully cared for and clearly loved by the elderly (although younger than I now am) volunteers who would readily provide fascinating facts about the property in their care.
You know the sort of thing …
It was 1998 and I’d driven up north to attend a business meeting. It was all over around lunchtime and rather than hang around I decided to head back south, towards home. It was late spring and the world was green and lush, and the flowers and the birds were all declaring the imminence of summer. And I realized that I was close to Feeling Manor.
Now, as it happened, I’d recently read an obituary of Lord Fitzwilliam-Cholmondoley whose family home the Manor had once been. I gathered that the old boy had had a good life and contributed a great deal to his community and to the nation, so it just felt appropriate to make the short detour to take a look.
I’d walked around the house, enjoyed a sandwich and a cup of tea in the tea room, and was walking back through the kitchen garden in the direction of the car park. Then, some distance to my left, I caught sight of a woman seated in the garden. She appeared to be knitting. I don’t know why but I just rerouted in her direction.
As I got closer, she stood. She carefully put down her knitting on the seat of the chair - an original Thonet No. 14 bistro chair, as it happens, dating from 1859. I could see the official National Trust Volunteer badge clearly displayed on the ample bosom of her flowery dress She adjusted her sunhat and spectacles and welcomed me: Lovely day, isn’t it.
I nodded: A lovely day, indeed.
The lady pressed her hands together and smiled: Oh yes, and, you know, the kitchen garden here at Feeling Manor has been supplying fresh ingredients for the house - herbs, vegetables, fruit - ever since Possibility Smith - he was the less well-known cousin of Capability Brown, you know - planned and planted it in 1750.
- Really? I responded and leaned back against the low stone wall behind me.
- Oh, do be careful, said the lady. You’re leaning against the wall that encloses Feeling Well.
Surprised, I turned round and looked down into the well. Two or three meters below I could see the clear water, encircled by a stone platform.
- The well has a very important place in the history of the house and family, the lady continued.
- Oh, really?
- Yes. You see, it was here, on Midsummer Day 1767, that the young master of the house, Horatio Fitzwilliam-Cholmondeley, fell in.
- Gosh. Was he alright?
- Well, he fell straight into the water and, do you know, in all of his eighteen years he’d never learned to swim.
- Oh.
- Well, you can imagine, can’t you. Just think about all the heavy clothes they wore in those days, and he’s flailing about in the water, frightened for his life.
I looked suitably concerned.
- But … a miracle! All of a sudden a hand reaches out in the dimness and takes hold of his shoulder. She paused for effect, and then continued. ‘There, there’, says a voice, ‘I’ve got hold of you. Come on, young master Horatio, let me tug you out.’ And she does.
- She? I enquired.
The lady smiled: Indeed. It’s Molly Mainchance, the daughter of a poor family who live in one of the estate cottages. Turns out that, because there’s no fresh water supply in their cottage, Molly sneaks down onto the well platform when she wants a bath, and that’s how she just happened to be there.
- Wow, that’s convenient.
- ‘Tis, isn’t it. Anyway, she soon has him out of his wet clothes.
- And, I’m guessing, if she’s having a bath she’s not exactly overdressed?
- Stark naked.
- Ah, would I be right in thinking this escapade may have resulted in a marriage?
- You’ve got it in one. As a result of the rescue, Molly was pregnant with the first of eight children.
- Wow.
- And, ever since then, it’s been a family tradition that, on their wedding night, members of the Fitzwilliam-Cholmondeley family … how shall we say … visit the Feeling Well platform.
- English social history at its finest.
Smiling, the lady sat down again on her No. 14 and recommenced her knitting.
- Thank you so much, er … I said, with the unspoken question left hanging there.
She picked up the cue. Lady Fitzwilliam-Cholmondeley, she said. The smile broadened.
Well, okay, I made that piece of history up but it seems to me to be no worse than the liberties that the National Trust now takes with our heritage.
In the past couple of decades, the Trust seems to have gone headlong in the direction that finds British history predominantly repugnant. Now, of course, anyone can find both good and bad in the history of any nation or group but you really have to go some to find things predominantly bad … although I can think of umpteen more likely candidates than Britain for the wooden spoon.
Slavery seems to be a favourite point of criticism, which, considering that Britain took the lead in banning slavery, and sacrificed many lives and a vast amount of treasure to see the back of it, would seem to be a particularly inappropriate target.
And, now, in the latest idiocy, the National Trust is playing games with language in a sort of Orwellian reconfiguration. George Orwell wrote in his fictional account …
It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050.1
… which may prove not to be too far out in the real world!
Part of the Trust’s self-appointed remit is a project titled the Walk Together Pathway project. It’s the idea that relatively few ‘non-whites’ use the opportunities that exist to enjoy the great British countryside.
Well, the fact is that anyone can walk in the British countryside and, in my experience as a countryside resident, anyone of any ethnicity is welcome provided they don’t chuck rubbish around. Nonetheless, to help resolve this supposed issue the Trust is training some non-white ‘walk leaders’ and, most criminally, has invoked a linguistic inversion. What have hitherto been termed ‘ethnic minorities’ are now relabeled ‘global majority’. Geddit?
Because, apparently, whitey only amounts to 15 per cent of the world population the others inevitably amount to the global majority.
Mind you, that makes whitey the minority. And minorities, as everyone knows, are underdogs. So, perhaps we’ll come in for a bit of preference?
Some hopes!
Thank you for reading.
Image at top: Shutterstock
Orwell, George. 1984 - Appendix (1949)
I wouldn't mind visiting Feeling Well myself!