Preserve your history
Dear Bereaved( whoever you are), I am sorry for your loss of a loved one. But here ' s a bit of advice: In the turmoil that is your life following the death of a close relative, and the anger and sadness that is part and parcel of this difficult time, don ' t do anything rash. For example, don ' t immediately embark on a massive clean-up of the dead relative ' s stuff, notably his or her papers. Rather, wait a while and, when the immediate upheaval of the death and funeral is over, and you are coming to terms with your grief and sense of loss, then turn to the drawers, cupboard, boxes and suitcases and deal with them in a sober and sensible manner. Believe me, I know what I ' m talking about: When my own mother died in the 1980s, she left behind a lifetime of her writings. From an early age, long before World War 2, she ' d carried on correspondences with friends and relatives spread far and wide, and in a number of professions and fields of interest. In the many times that she was apart from my father, a diplomat, they had a rich and intimate correspondence between them. And in her later life, as a widow she carved out a career as a journalist and, of course, in those days members of our profession were obliged to keep carbon copies of everything we wrote on little bits of paper called“ takes”.( The paper itself, cheap, absorbent, yellowing and thin, was called“ bumph”, an allusion to the fact that one could( and did, in fact, in emergencies) use it to cleanse one ' s rear). All of this material, as well as the manuscript of an unpublished book she wrote on the Gold Standard, along with menus, itineraries, invitations, postcards and all the written paraphernalia of her life, she stored meticulously, much of it carefully bundled with ribbon, in boxes and drawers in her capacious study. And two days after her death, my two sisters, anxious to“ spare me grief” tossed the whole lot into a skip and it was gone. Gone, thus, too, was any chance of ever recording in a book, in any detail, what had been a quite extraordinary life. For without access to such material, all one is left with should one wish to write a biography of such a person, is anecdotal stuff, and the memories of those who had known her, many of whom are, too, now, pushing up daisies. I contrast this with the recently-published biography of Monica Wilson, arguably South Africa ' s leading anthropologist of the 20th Century. Why, you ask, would anybody want to write a
THE BACK PAGE
book on so obscure a subject and why, too, would anybody want to read such a book? Well, the reasons are many. In my case, it ' s because of fleeting contacts I have had with the Wilsons. Monica Hunter grew up in Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains of the Eastern Cape, on her parents’ estate, named Hunterstoun. An only child, she inherited it when they died and lived there till her own death, and her offspring still own and occupy the property. My wife introduced me to Hogsback on our honeymoon, and we have periodically returned, and we remember seeing Monica in her garden as we trudged up and down the Wolf Ridge Road. And, even at that early stage I knew of her family. Her eldest son, Francis, lectured me in first year Economics at UCT( one of the few lecturers, I have to add, who made the subject understandable). And more recently, at the invitation of a mutual friend, we dined at the home of Francis ' younger brother, Tim, in Johannesburg. They ' re an interesting family of high achievers who have all made their mark on South African public life. But there ' s another reason for reading a book such as this. Yes, it ' s a beautifully-crafted, richly illustrated, meticulously edited( important, that, in today ' s often slapdash world of book production) work of scholarship. Carefully researched, from Monica ' s correspondences, research and academic writing, coupled with face-to-face interviews and other material, it is a wonderfully gentle tale of a remarkable woman, highlighting her undisputed academic brilliance, but also laying bare, in a very gentle and balanced way, the human frailties that she, like us all, had in her personality and life. By writing such a book, the author has added to the rich tapestry of South African life. He wouldn ' t have been able to do so had Francis and Tim Wilson ditched their mother ' s papers when she died.
WRITTEN BY SMALLHOLDERS, FOR SMALLHOLDERS