Sunday, December 30, 2018
Mumbo-Jumbo
Adam Sisman, An Honourable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper (New York: Random House, ©2010), pp. 75-76:
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Hugh attended the memorial service for [Lascelles] Abercrombie, which he thought "a drab and melancholy affair." There was not a single sentiment in hymn, psalm, prayer or lesson with which Abercrombie would not have violently disagreed, he felt; and thought much the same about [Robert] Beaumont's memorial service, lamenting that "this ridiculous mummery and mumbo-jumbo" should be the only way we know of paying tribute to the dead. "To think also that such a farce may be performed over myself," he railed: "that one day some old gaffer may intone to a sceptical congregation that I am now seeing my Creator face to face, & similar undiluted rubbish."
