Eulogy for My Great Aunt Ben

Great Aunt Ben

Great Aunt Ben

Yesterday I gave the Eulogy at the funeral in North Wales of my 100 year old great aunt, Ben. I include the text below.

It was a beautiful service in the small parish church of St Tyrnog in Llandyrnog, North Wales. The coffin arrived on a cart pulled by Ben’s aged log pulling horse Neville and followed by a procession of mourners. Inside was a full Welsh Choir.

It was a happy occasion, celebrating a long active life. We left the church to the light notes of the Strauss Waltz (or 2001 – A Space Odyssey for those who know it better as that!)

Preparing Ben for her last journey

Preparing Ben for her last journey

Eulogy to Ben Muir 11th January 2014

“When the last day of the old year was fading and  the winter light was dimming over the beautiful Vale of Clywd in North Wales, my great aunt, Ben Muir, was breathing  her last in a hospital not far from where she first came just short of a hundred years ago.

“By Western  count she missed her centenary by four months, and this was sad because she would have enjoyed the big party planned for April, but when I said this to my long term colleague Mdm Liu, a great fan of Aunt Ben, she looked at me as if I was mad. “Of course she was a hundred. You foreigners don’t know how to count,” she retorted. “You forget  the time in the womb, for a start. She was more than hundred years old already, and if you include the  eight hour time difference with China, by the time she died, she had actually entered another year – her hundred and first.”

“Actually, China had played a not insignificant part in Ben’s long life, although there had been nothing in her early years of rural gymkhanas and fox hunts and summer balls and picnics to suggest she would ever one day go so far afield.

“On the contrary. But she had always been lively and adventurous. There was a wild side to a Georgian upbringing, as anyone knows who has read ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and ‘Peter Pan’. Living very close to Ben in the Vale was the Irwine family. Ten year old Ben hero worshipped the Irwine boys, especially the handsome elder son, Andrew. He was with George Malory on the first ascent of Everest and died with him on the mountain.  Young Ben felt the tragedy deeply but it was also a matter of  pride and inspiration.

“The opportunity to have an adventure of her own came when she was in her mid twenties. She received an invitation to stay with family friends who ran the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank in North China. She gave up her dull job in London and set off for the other side of the world.

“And when her ship arrived at Taku, the port of Tientsin, in late 1938,  Ben impacted on the dowdy British expatriate community like a force of Nature. She determined to enjoy herself, despite the shades of war drawing down on an occupied city. A  horsewoman since birth, she galvanised the gymkhanas in Tientsin and Peking. She was the toast of every party and she brought with her from London the latest dances. On New Years eve she led the whole community in the steps of the Lambeth Walk out of the ballroom of the Tientsin Recreation Club into the starlight.  And after the parties came the night clubs.

” She had madcap adventures. At  three o’clock one morning, flush with champagne and dancing, she found herself coming out of the Forum Club on the Russian side of the river in the company of an unknown Frenchman who had offered to drive her home in his sports car. In those days the iron bridge to the British Concession was guarded by Japanese soldiers who demanded that every driver get out and bow. As she told me sixty years later. “We were having none of that. ‘A l’outrance!’ the Frenchman shouted as he put his foot down on the accelerator, and with swords, puttees, caps and spectacles flying behind us, we disappeared into the night in a hail of bullets and laughter!”

“That extraordinary spirit – the cheerfulness, limitless energy, daring and joie de vivre never left her. It characterised her every living moment for the next three quarters of a century.

“China was soon forgotten as Ben threw herself into the War as a First Aid Nurse Yoeman, or FANY, but though she did not know it, her short visit to China had changed her life. The first of the many friends she made on that epic Journey had been my grandmother, Catherine Newmarch nee Muir, who happened to be returning to China on the same ship that Ben was going out on.  Catherine, a red head, was as wild and vivacious as Ben, and had been a perfect guide and companion in her weeks in Tientsin, and after War had broken out and  my grandmother and her daughter, Anne, were evacuated from China a year later, they had renewed their friendship in London.

“So it was not unnatural, as the war was ending, for Catherine to introduce her younger brother, Stephen, to Ben. He had been a Chindit in Burma and was now in military intelligence. Very rapidly he found that he had also become a married man. And Ben became a Muir.

“And that was not the only significant introduction.  Before she left the FANYs Ben threw a party  and invited Catherine’s daughter, Anne, who was then a model at Hardie Amies. And one of the other guests among the military types who turned up was a saturnine young artilleryman, Captain Peter Williams, so there was another marriage that came out of that China trip, one which was very significant for my brother Piers and me and for my children, Alexander, Clio and Sybil. If it hadn’t been for Ben, we would never have been born.

“I grew up in Hong Kong and Japan but on every trip home there was a visit to Great Uncle Stephen and Great Aunt Ben. Stephen became responsible for the security of several of Britain’s nuclear power stations after he left the army and I remember magic holidays in Caithness at the northernmost point of Scotland, when Uncle Stephen worked at Dounreay, and later in Bentley Lodge, their house outside Warrington, Cheshire, when Uncle Stephen looked after Sellafield. We would play with their children, Paula and Fi, who became life long friends. And of course life revolved around horses because Ben had passed on her own love and the two girls like their mother had become champion showjumpers. For a city boy like me it was eye opening. And Ben was the presiding spirit – ever active with buckets of feed or bundles of hay, she seemed forever to be hitching on trailers to take us to gymkhanas, or helping birth a foal, always redcheeked always with a good humoured grin and the brightest twinkle in her smiling eyes. I cannot for the life of me ever recall a problem that phased her, even when I turned up one holidays from school with a home made coffin and wanted Fi to star in a vampire movie. That, for Ben, like everything else in life, was par for the course. She supplied the blood! Actually,  there was never anybody she would not help or at the very least give a cheery wave.

“That was why she was loved by everybody who met her. She had the gift of happiness, within herself, and to bestow on others.

Great Aunt Ben and Great Uncle Stephen (centre) at the wedding of cousins Sally and Charles Jamieson (standing left) in 1984

Great Aunt Ben and Great Uncle Stephen (centre) at the wedding of cousins Sally and Charles Jamieson (standing left) in 1984. Seated (below Ben) are my grandmother Catherine (in black hat) talking to Great Uncle David (Sally’s father, left). Standing right is me

The family’s horses at Cil Llywn in the Vale of Clywd, where Ben and Stephen retired

The family’s horses at Cil Llywn in the Vale of Clywd, where Ben and Stephen retired

“Her love was always the Vale of Clywd. That was to where she and Stephen retired so they could be  close to the little cottage in Bodfari overlooking the valley where her mother lived. That cottage, Minehead,  too was part of the fabric of my childhood. The best Dundee cakes I’ve ever tasted and the most beautiful view in the British Isles. After her mother and  Stephen had died,  Ben moved to the cottage. But the pace of her life never stopped. There were still the horses to look after, helping Paula and Robert, and encouraging their children, Edward and Patrick, in their adventures. And following the hunts or riding expeditions into the mountains. Or driving to Cheshire to see Fi and her daughters, Florence and Erica.

With daughter Paula and grandson Ed, enjoying an al fresco Christmas breakfast in the Vale (Ed who at Ben’s funeral ditched the reading and gave a moving eulogy of his own, reminded us  of his Gran’s motto in her long life – “Why not?”)

With daughter Paula and grandson Ed, enjoying an al fresco Christmas breakfast in the Vale
(Ed who at Ben’s funeral ditched the reading and gave a moving eulogy of his own, reminded us of his Gran’s motto in her long life – “Why not?”)

“And more and more, as she grew older, Ben took on the role that Catherine had played, being the unifier of the Muir clan stretched over the world, keeping in touch with the cousins in Australia and China and South Africa,  wherever any of us happened to be, passing on the news, preserving the history and the relationships , keeping the flame alive. More and more in her old age she became a globe trotter, attending a wedding in Tasmania, seeing Fi at the Cape and a joy for me, visiting China at the tender age of 93.

Ben’s return to Tientsin (Tianjin) in 2005: With her great great niece Clio in front of the old Astor House Hotel

Ben’s return to Tientsin (Tianjin) in 2005: With her great great niece Clio in front of the old Astor House Hotel

Mdm Liu saw her limping and solicitously asked after her leg. “Oh it’s nothing really” came the amiable reply. “Fell off a horse last week. That’s all”. No wonder she leaves a legend behind wherever she goes. She really does, like the song, have friends all over the world. “When I grow old I want to be like Aunt Ben” another Chinese lady she met on that trip told me just last year. I think I had just mentioned that at the age of 99 Ben had been caught speeding – yes, only a few months ago – and when asked whether she wished to pay or take a speed awareness course, she said she’d take the latter- and did!

“Her son in law Robert told me  that Ben is held in affection all over North Wales. I’m not surprised. There are few people in the world who reach old age so unselfishly, showing such kindness and concern for and above all interest in others. And she has given herself to the community, taking part in every society and event, from bridge to concerts. The amount of lives she has affected are as many as there are leaves in the Vale.

“In pre Christian days people told stories to preserve the memories of heroes and therein lay a sort of immortality. Ben was herself a preserver of stories and the stories will be repeated about her long after she is gone. I like to think of her as immortal.

“And I like also to imagine her now in a more heavenly Vale of Clywd. I’m sure that somewhere on the scene there will be a red dragon playing on a green baize against a white sky. Maybe because of the inherited family connection there’ll a be a little Chinese dragon prancing about too – and I’m sure she’s among horses – oh, there must be horses, because otherwise how could there be heaven?

“Yakida, Ben. We love you forever”

See also The Camels of Khanbalik – a story featuring Ben Muir, contributed by Adam Williams to the Bookworm anthology Beijing – Portrait of a City

Comments

  1. What a wonderful life, what a wonderful person! Did we meet for hotpot on Xiao Yun Lu?

  2. Thoroughly enjoyed reading the eulogy after hearing it on Saturday. It is quite simply splendid. Great to meet you again after all these years.

  3. What a stunning eulogy Adam, and she sounded like a wonderfully indomitable spirit, full of a zest for life and whatever came her way.
    I never knew that Catherine had red hair like my mother, she was always grey/white when I remembered her. Good to hear from you, as I lie here with a broken leg from early December! Family have been fantastic. Love and all the best for 2014. Tita and Gerry

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