To construct a Celebration of a life such as Sir Alan Goodison’s is a challenge indeed. A man of many parts, who rose to distinction in his main field of diplomacy, whose interest in and relish for life included the arts in all their forms especially literature and music, and a delight in good food and drink – above all a ‘questioning but confident faith’ – how to combine all this in the two-hour’s traffic of the stage? Marvellously Doris Asher achieved this last night in a crowded Parish Church, a crowd whose deep appreciation – from laughter to tears – showed how exceptionally she had succeeded.
She took us through different phases and aspects of Alan’s life under such headings as ‘Undergraduate’, ‘Foreign Tongues’, ‘The Peacock and the Bon Viveur’ and ‘Opera’, the whole evening flowing smoothly, skilfully linked by brief but pertinent introductions.
All the many players in these sections were so clearly inspired by a memory that touched their minds and ‘their hearts, and they all played to the top of their bent, that I found it best not to name them individually. I feel in any case that they would be happy with this, for (as I remarked in the tribute to loan Barton not long ago) they were not there for themselves, but for Alan.
From the engaging memories of Trinity College, where Alan met his beloved Rosemary, the nice but distant times of chaperones, we began on the journey which would travel far and enable Alan to speak in many tongues. And in the course of this journey we met a fine mixture of characters some happily familiar, from Gwen Raverat to Montaigne, Lancelot Andrewes to Noel Coward, some till now unknown like the female Islamic poet known as the Gazelle, whose line ‘impatient death … could you not wait a little longer?’ haunted me.
An integral part of the whole was of course the music, threaded through the sections like a gleaming river of sound and song, giving a sense of delight and triumph – especially as these were pieces largely chosen by Alan himself. Of the music in depth I must leave others to speak – I can only say that it was for me indeed a delight.
Another character is Lawrence Durrell, with a hilarious account of plum pudding landing on the laps of Yugoslavs at a disastrous Embassy dinner – one of the triumphs of this selection was the nice balance between grave and gay. So that it was right that after Noel Coward we should hear the recording of Alan’s own voice – and Rosemary’s – for her loss was a dark milestone in Alan’s life, and he more than once spoke of his grief which did not fade. There came to mind ‘If God choose / I shall but love thee better after death.’ Alan had a deep love of the theatre – we have a typical Bernard Levin slant on Shakespeare, and then Cleopatra sails into view in her barge of beaten gold with purple sails, love-sick winds and silver oars – such a plethora of colour that one is somehow reminded of the coloured shirts in The Great Gatsby which Daisy cries over. (Colour in clothing was not foreign to Alan’s nature.) T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral brought Rosemary and Alan again together – he as a most memorable tempter, she in the chorus of the women of Canterbury – here heard again with the powerful mourning words. And to follow, a surprisingly comic ‘take’ on opera by – of all people – A.E. Housman. And the alluring Siren Song, played many times by Rosemary herself.
Who else on this journey? Why Flora Poste, from that Farm of Cold Comfort which we delighted in many years ago – the charming girl from the town who visits the murky depths of the country to discover something nasty in the woodshed, and even more alarming, Amos, the Preacher who shivers the spine with his hell-fire oratory, and with whom Flora remains as coolly reasonable as surely Alan himself would have been. A further slant on ‘Peacock’ – a delightfully light-hearted look at clerical dress, and a nice echo in the always original voice of Ogden Nash. And then – ‘Credo’. Aware of the blaze of flowers – red-orange gerbera, strelitzia (known as the bird of Paradise) and (of course) sprigs of Rosemary, the small statue of Alan himself amongst them, hiding the place where he used to sit, the tall windows and the altar of our familiar church and the crowded pews, it seemed to me that something more powerful than memory was abroad here. As we heard readings of Alan’s own words on Faith we could sense that mystery which always attends any ceremony for those lost to us – the large question mark, the echoes from that bourne from which no traveller returns.
The evening ended as it should, by quoting Shakespeare – ‘Our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ But as we stood to sing ‘Thine be the glory’ we felt a deep sense of gratitude for all of those -players, musicians, singers, dealers in sound and light, and in stage-craft of all kinds – who on this life-enhancing evening – had combined to bring Alan so poignantly before us.
(Nearly) to quote Shakespeare – ‘He was a man / take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.’
Diana Raymond
Remembering Alan
Diana Raymond