‘Bill … you didn’t!’ But it was true — Dad had knowingly ordered a complete garden guide when he didn’t have a garden, unless you count the Walks in all their magnificence, since he was Master of the Walks at the time, the Walks where blooms were whisked into the flowerbeds the moment they were approaching their best and whisked away in disgrace the moment a petal was out of true.
‘Why, Bill? Why would you do such a thing?’
Dad rallied his self-respect. ‘I’m not a fool, darling. Give me some credit. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know perfectly well they don’t put you into the Grand Prize Draw if you don’t order something.’
Dad’s motto about Justice being the Best Shield was in Welsh. I was able to remember it for a few months after the interment of his ashes, then it left me for good. It didn’t have the memorability of some phrases in the language, like for instance the standard Welsh way of referring to a microwave. Microdon would be correct usage, though it’s no more than a back-formation from the English word, micro meaning micro and don meaning wave. But everyone in the North says popty ping. The oven that goes ping. Then there’s the Welsh for a jellyfish, which my cousins assure me is called pysgod wibli wobli. There is of course a long tradition of mocking the ignorant outsider, or ‘soaking the Saxon’, and the Welsh word saesneg has some of the disparaging charge of the Scottish sassenach.
There were other ways in which I could have refreshed my memory about Dad’s Welsh motto, but they involved a little embarrassment, since I would have to admit to family members that I’d forgotten it. So why not contact the Royal College of Arms instead? Stick out my thumb and hope to be given a ride in the mother ship of heraldry.
There turned out to be a website and an e-mail address. What had I expected — specifications of the maximum wingspan of the owl to be despatched with the parchment of enquiry (A4 or smaller, please)? Something of the sort.
Does the Royal College of Arms have a Facebook page, even? Actually I’d rather not know.
There were some wearily polite answers on the website intended to nip Frequently Asked Questions in the bud. It was particularly requested that large amounts of genealogical data should not be forwarded at the initial stage. On the other hand there was little point in submitting an enquiry that consisted of no more than your name and a request to be told your coat of arms. Enquiries that displayed a complete failure to have read the website might not receive a reply. There was no point in asking about clan membership, clan badges and the like, since the clan system was entirely Scottish and the College of Arms had no responsibility for Scotland. English families could not be associated to a clan, still less form a clan themselves, unless they were ultimately of Scottish descent. The belief, apparently quite widespread but new, that everyone has a clan, and can wear some specific tartan or display a clan badge, was quite erroneous.
The idea of forming my own clan had never occurred to me, until the stern warning intended to quash the desire inflamed it.
I submitted my enquiry to ‘the officer in waiting’, not knowing a particular officer of arms and feeling that this was not a case for the Garter King of Arms, a heraldic emergency, even if there was a possibility of his remembering his meetings with Dad. I imagined him on call, twenty-four hours a day, sleeping in crested pyjamas next to a hole cut in the College floorboards to accommodate a pole like the ones in fire stations, only made of solid gold.
This nervous mockery of mine seems to suggest that I’m secretly impressed, whether by antiquity, poshness or arcane precision of language.
The next day an unfamiliar name showed up in the sender slot of my e-mail display. It’s ‘Bluemantle Pursuivant’, but the software processes it as if it was an ordinary name, no different from ‘First Hull Trains’ or ‘Nigerian Not-a-Scam’, though it seems to have stronger affinities with (say) Montezuma or Rumpelstiltskin. It’s only because of the comical grandeur of the title that I notice how it is displayed, as if on a pale-blue plaque with rounded edges. So are all the other senders’ names, on miniature versions of locomotive name plates, but it’s only now that I see the style of display as heraldic in its own right, an oblong shape in the tint of bleu celeste. There’s a plus sign next to the name. Do I want to add Bluemantle Pursuivant to my contacts list? Well of course I do. I press the button.
Bluemantle Pursuivant confirmed that a grant of Arms was made to ‘Sir William Mars-Jones of Gray’s Inn’ by Letters Patent dated 25 March 1986.
The blazon, or description in heraldic terminology, is as follows: Sable a Stag trippant Argent attired and unguled Or on a Chief Azure three Roman Swords erect point upwards Argent their hilts Gold. The Crest is On a Wreath Or, Azure and Sable A Dragon’s Head couped Gules langued Or and a Griffin’s Head couped Or langued Gules both addorsed and gorged with a gemel dancetty per pale Or and Gules. Mantled Sable and Azure doubled Or and Argent.
How lovely! The Inn had conspired with the College of Arms to commission a symbolist poem on Dad’s behalf, its vocabulary Old French but its perfumed hieratic sensibility closer to Mallarmé.
Sable a Stag trippant
Argent attired and unguled Or
On a Chief Azure
Three Roman Swords erect
point upwards
Argent
their hilts Gold
The Crest is On a Wreath Or, Azure and Sable
A Dragon’s Head
couped Gules langued Or
and a Griffin’s Head
couped Or langued Gules
both addorsed and gorged
with a gemel dancetty
per pale Or and Gules
Mantled Sable and Azure
doubled Or and Argent.
{Chorus: ‘With a gemel dancetty per pale Or and Gules-O, with a gemel dancetty per pale Or and Gules …’}
Dad’s motto turns out to be GORAU TARIAN CYF-IAWNDER, which had been Flintshire’s watchword until the county’s abolition in 1974, when it passed to the successor body the Borough of Islwyn (formed by the amalgamation of the Abercarn Urban District, part of the Bedwellty Urban District, the Mynyddislwyn Urban District and the Risca Urban District). This unorthodox bit of twinning, with a motto being shared by a borough and a judge, carried on until 1996, when Islwyn too was abolished. At the time of his death, Dad seems to have had an exclusive claim on his chosen slogan.
Along with the technical description of Dad’s blazon my new friend Bluemantle passed on the information that his Arms would descend to all of Sir William’s children and be passed on by his sons to their own descendants. It was open to me (and my brothers) to place on record a brief pedigree setting out details of the descent, thus establishing our own right to the Arms. If this was done certified paintings of the Arms could then be issued. He attached an example for my information — but at this point I got a faint whiff of the Reader’s Digest all over again and decided not to go any further. All the same, it was nice to know that if I developed heraldic cravings of my own they could be satisfied with a pedigree and a cheque.
Dad’s concern with his status seems to have become almost legendary. In an informal interview in the Financial Times (18 January 2013) doubling as a restaurant review, the barrister Sydney Kentridge, aged ninety and going strong, mentions him as a sort of cautionary tale, an example of ‘judge-itis’ or elephantiasis of the self-esteem. Kentridge (who ordered herring with beetroot and mustard, followed by sole goujons with duck-egg mayonnaise) recounts that it fell to Benet Hytner to pay Dad tribute on behalf of the Bar when he retired, saying, ‘There is one distinction that your Lordship and I share. We both have sons who are more distinguished than we are.’ Hytner was referring to his son Nick (already well established as a theatre director) and, presumably, to me. Kentridge goes on, ‘He infuriated the judge and delighted the bar.’