Eulogy

By Michael Hart

From memory I first met Chris at a party at my grandparents’ house in Brondesbury Park in north-west London. My parents had explained that Tessa and Chris were ‘an item’, well of course they wouldn’t have used such an expression, but Chris was soon a regular part of family gatherings and their birthday cards to us were signed from ‘Christessatopher’. From an email I received from Chris last year, I gather that the Davises and the Benzimras had known each other for some time. Chris remembered the two families meeting by chance in Knocke in Belgium in 1952, where he said they went swimming in the pool at La Reserve Hotel (displaying Chris’ amazing memory for detail), and later at Fishers Hotel in Pitlochry in 1954.

Chris was born in 1940, the youngest child of Peggy and Clifford, and had two older siblings, Michael and Daphne. Jack and Sue Green, very close friends of Tessa and Chris, who would certainly have been here today were it not for Covid advice and wanted to share their memories, told me that Chris attended Felsted School in Essex and was grateful for the rounded education he received. Chris continued his association with Felsted as an old boy and was very proud that during his lifetime the school had received not one but two royal visits….by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in 2014 for the school’s 450th anniversary and 50 years earlier by the Queen Mother.

Sue also described Chris as a very active member of the Alumni Society, a youth group at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Apparently he was very enthusiastic, always part of any activity, keen to volunteer for any jobs and very effective in what he did. By the time Chris met Tessa he had qualified as an accountant and I remember two other skills that he had already acquired: he was an accomplished cook which impressed us all, taking a great interest in the dishes he served, and also he was pretty handy at car mechanics. I wondered if I had remembered this correctly but other friends have also highlighted Chris’ long-standing interest in cars. On the ForeverMissed website, one of Chris’ clients remembered him talking about how in his spare time he had trained as a mechanic to service his Morris Minor.

The photo at the back of the booklet shows Chris and Tessa at their wedding in January 1967 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Those of you who have looked at the ForeverMissed website will have seen what a happy family occasion it was. Other photos on the website reveal one of the central strands of Chris’ life, his devotion to his family, his love of Tessa, his sons and grandchildren, his parents and siblings. He was always willing to go the extra mile to support other family members during difficult periods. I remember, for example, the support he and Tessa gave to my grandmother in her later years, the enormous help given to Tessa’s sister, Carol, following the personal challenges she experienced, and the more recent contact with Tessa’s cousin, Nicola.

Of course, there was also lots to celebrate. Most importantly there were the births, development and careers of Richard, Nick, Adam and Rod. Chris took enormous interest and pride in them all, celebrating their successes and always keen to bring the family together…..birthdays, graduations, the weddings of Nick and Nedra and of Adam and Kerri, Tessa and Chris’ ruby and golden weddings to mention a few.  Chris was also completely devoted to his grandchildren, Lyle, Ray, Merrill, Kallista, and Huw. When I look back at emails and conversations from Chris over the past few years, they were full of details about the achievements of his four sons and his grandchildren. They also contained updates about Tessa, showing how wonderfully supportive he was during periods of ill-health. Family were always incredibly important to Chris.

Alongside this, Chris’ accountancy work played a very important role. His early employment, details of which were provided by Nick, covered jobs at Peat Marwick, at UK Optical, at Wiseman, and at Pantak EMI. His work included an eighteen month spell in Northern Ireland at a time when ‘The Troubles’ caused lots of worries for the rest of the family about their safety. Later Chris decided to set himself up independently as an accountancy consultant which proved to be a highly successful move. He was delighted to have a grandson following in his footsteps. Friends and clients have given a flavour of Chris’ approach to his work. Let me quote a few examples:

• Jack Green wrote: ‘Chris enjoyed the manufacturing processes of the firms he worked in, be it glasses, lenses or X-ray machines. He knew the detail needed in their manufacture. Walking round with him and meeting staff at work in the office or shop floor you could instantly see he had a great empathy with people and was respected.’
• One client said: ‘Chris was initially recommended to me by a former colleague who said he was a tax magician, and also an engaging and trustworthy person. I felt I was in brilliant hands as soon as Chris started looking after my accounts….I remember Chris as being unerringly supportive and patient – a brilliant professional and a special person.’
• Another client said: ‘How many other accountants could recite Kipling’s Ballad of the Cars, faultlessly and from memory, discuss the merits of Bentley versus Bugatti, or compare memories of continental road trips over the course of a long and convivial lunch?’

Chris brought the same skills and interest to other activities, whether it was organising a synagogue music club called Turntable, which met at Tessa and Chris’ home, supporting a client’s charity work in Sri Lanka, or taking on the role of Worshipful Master of the Halcyon Lodge in the 1980s. He continued his involvement in the lodge throughout the rest of his life, describing it as ‘drama with lovely prose and followed with a lively social meal.’

The mention of drama and prose reminds us of Chris’ love of music, theatre and literature. Today’s readings were selected by the family as a sample of Chris’ favourite pieces, which he would frequently recite by heart. He had a wide-ranging knowledge of literature (the rest of us sometimes had to nod politely) and he simply loved books. For many years he and Tessa ran the Four Pages book business from their home; perhaps an opportunity for Chris to purchase books that he wanted to read himself? Sue Green told me that she always admired Chris and Tessa’s knowledge and love of literature; when she brought her own children to tea at Tessa and Chris, the children read books and ate chocolate spread sandwiches.

That brings us to Chris’ culinary skills and his love of food. His particular favourite was cheese. He would quote Eugene Field: ‘But I, when I undress me…Each night upon my knees…Will ask the Lord to bless me….With apple pie and cheese.’ Richard and Nick recall how Chris would often (always?) over-order and when he organised a celebration for Richard’s 21st birthday, they all ended up with huge doggy-bags. Nick took his back to university and had so much cheese that he didn’t need to buy any food for a fortnight, just surviving on cheese. Nick also remembers a family holiday in Italy. They arrived in a town in Tuscany where Chris led them on a walk, which took all morning, searching for the perfect restaurant for lunch. And after lunch they spent the rest of the afternoon walking round the rest of the town to find the best place for dinner.

Throughout his life Chris loved the opportunity to travel. He and Tessa had many overseas holidays, particularly enjoying visits to all parts of the United States and to Canada. But equally, Chris loved his journeys, often with family, around the UK from the Scillies to the Orkneys, including many trips to the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. These often lasted for five weeks incorporating a stop in Manchester to see Nick, Nedra and the grandchildren, with Chris working on his laptop while he was away. Chris and Tessa particularly enjoyed their stays in the New Forest and in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight.

On holiday Chris loved meeting up with other people, talking to those he met, arranging to rendez-vous with friends and contacts, such as a hotelier in Fort William who was one of his clients. He also took a real interest in the holidays of his four sons. Chris and Tessa visited Pam and me a few years ago and was very interested in our New Zealand trips, immediately relating them to Richard and Rodney’s holidays in the same places. He knew all the details of their journeys and was delighted that they were also enjoying travelling.

This conversation reminds me of another of Chris’ characteristics, his sense of humour. As Chris and Tessa sat having lunch in our garden on a baking hot day, Chris looked around at our grass which was completely parched and yellow, and commented with a chuckle that of course in their garden in Woodhall Drive he didn’t have to worry; their lawn was still very green because, as Chris said, there wasn’t much grass left as it only consisted of weeds. Family, friends and clients all experienced this sense of fun and his enjoyment of life.

So now as our thoughts today are with particularly with Tessa, with Richard, Nick, Adam and Rod, Nedra and Kerri, and with all the grandchildren. I hope that these many happy memories will provide a little comfort and over time we will all find consolation in Chris’ many positive contributions. It seems appropriate to conclude with a verse, this time by David Harkins:

You can shed tears that he is gone

Or you can smile because he has lived

You can close your eyes and pray he will come back

Or you can open your eyes and see all that he has left.

I found this essay while trying to find pension paperwork:

Cheese
by G.K. Chesterton
Published in `Alarms and Discursions' (1910)

---

My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,' is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: `If all the trees were bread and cheese' - which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to `breeze' and `seas' (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say `Cheese it!' or even `Quite the cheese.' The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient - sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.

But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese to soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's Soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.

When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits - to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits - to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.

Chris was regularly in contact, most recently in January when he shared his excellent memory of family events going back into the 1960s. Pam and I recall his visit with Tessa a few years ago when they sat in the garden enjoying the home-made gazpacho soup.....Chris demonstrated his culinary expertise by commenting on it being made like 'proper' gazpacho soup, as he described it!
Two things stand out in our conversations over the years: his dedication to his family and his extensive knowledge of English literature. I have found some photos, added to the ones on this website, which show family gatherings on happier occasions. A very sad loss.

IF by Rudyard Kipling
(one of Dad’s manyfavourites)

If you can keep your head when all about you  

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;  

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:



If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;  

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:



If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,  

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’



If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!