AND FINALLY All duty and no fun? No thank you!
THE recent centenary of the first women getting the vote made me re-read history that enthralled me in my teens, when I realised just what it is to be female.
I also watched Suffragette, the 2015 film starring Carey Mulligan, which reminded me just how much those brave women sacrificed. (Please don’t write to tell me they were stupid or terrorists etc. I’m proud of their heritage and that, for me, is the beginning and end of the story.)
I discovered a campaigner new to me: Anglo-Irish socialist Charlotte Despard, who even has a pub in Archway, North London, named after her.
I’m sure we wouldn’t have got on, but that’s not the point. It seems to be forgotten, in these shrill days of tribal hate (especially online), that you can still admire the courage and conviction of those with whom you have serious natural political differences.
Anyway, I read what was inscribed on Despard’s tombstone. It’s a stern little quote from the 19th-century American poet Ellen Sturgis Hooper: ‘I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.’
I wonder if she’d chosen it herself? This is the point at which I become a little Irish rebel myself. For why does it have to be an either/or? Why can’t we read improving books and do good works — then go out for some jolly good craic?
Why do serious, committed people have to don their pesky hair shirts — and consider themselves superior for so doing?
Just imagine living by the maxim that life is not about ‘beauty’, but an endless round of ‘duty’. You’d never splurge, never eat candyfloss at the fair, never buy yourself a bunch of flowers just because you love their colours, never pop a cork because it’s time for fun. How joyless life would be.
Oh, I have a strong sense of duty to Queen, country, family, faith and ideas — but give me a bunch of daffs and a glass of fizz to toast their splendour!
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.