Gladwyn Jebb was a distinguished civil servant, diplomat and politician. References to him abound in Kenneth Rose’s Journals and, to a lesser extent, in Harold Nicolson’s Diaries. Curiously Chips Channon only mentions Gladwyn once in his Diaries.
I have always been puzzled by the title he chose when created an hereditary Baron in 1960. He chose to be Lord Gladwyn making himself, I thought, rather ridiculous being Gladwyn Gladwyn. Kenneth Rose provides some justification in this entry.
15 April 1960
Talk with Robert Wade-Gery about Gladwyn Jebb’s peerage – he is calling himself Lord Gladwyn. A few weeks ago, when Robert was dining with him, he said he would choose this title so that he could sign his letters ‘Gladwyn’ – & nobody would know whether he was being particularly amicable or not!
It seems to me that it would cut both ways – he wouldn’t know if he was being treated more intimately than he would have liked. Anyway, I only raise the whole matter because I knew his son slightly, Miles Jebb, who became the 2nd Baron Gladwyn on his father’s death. We were staying with mutual friends in Northumberland for a couple of days walking in the Cheviots. I was training for a walk in Kyrgyzstan and he turned out to be a keen walker and wanted some exercise.
He told me about his 1986 book Walkers which I subsequently bought. The illustration on the cover is a detail from Gustave Courbet’s The Meeting, not one of Courbet’s best or even in the style for which he became better known, but apt for the subject matter of Walkers.
Ten chapters discourse with erudition on ten types of walker; pilgrims, tourers, romantics, athletes, strollers, intellectuals, discoverers, tramps, ramblers, backpackers. There is an appendix on warriors. I must re-read this quirky but interesting examination of various motives for going walking. Tucked in the front I found this self-explanatory letter.
I haven’t read Mountains of the Mind nor did I go walking with Miles Gladwyn again. We did meet from time to time at our club.
While on the subject of diaries, those of Cynthia Gladwyn which Miles Jebb edited are well worth reading.
His recommendation of Mountains of the Mind is a good one. It was Robert Macfarlane’s first published book and follows the trials and travails of Mallory. It needs no love of mountaineering to enjoy it.
His subsequent books do exactly what Miles Jebb didn’t and have the most excellent bibliographies. He has led me to Nan Shepherd (five stars for 80 odd pages recalling her life of walking in the Cairngorms), John Muir on US national parks, JA Baker’s The Peregrine and Barry Lopez on the Arctic. All brilliant and all thanks to the Cambridge geography don.
Now if T May had only read geography at Cambridge……….
Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Mountains of the Mind’ is delightful & wears its learning lightly. I have recommended it to a number of friends over the years all of whom have enjoyed reading it and some of whom have read Robert’s later books. He writes in a way that makes one wish to read the books out loud, and he makes a point of checking the melodious sounds of his phrases & sentences with the help of his wife. He also delights in using the ‘mot juste’ particularly if it is a word that has fallen into disuse: so a particular shape of stone, or the marks left on a muddy puddle by evaporation, of the shape of frost on a leaf, all find expression.