A KITTLE-KATTLE QUAKER

The other day the bus I was on broke down. One minute we were all peacefully rumbling along, the next motionless. The driver after some fumbling skirmishes with the engine turns round in his cab, shakes his head and tells us that "she won’t ‘ave it", rather as though the bus was a faithful old dog who needed humouring.

Well, too bad, but we’ll be off again soon, we think, but not so. Time passes and the old dog of a bus is still motionless and so is the driver by the look of his back. Gradually a growing sense of pent-up emotion pervades the bus. Each one of us is like an unexploded bomb, yet no one moves, no one asks what’s up, no one hurls himself along the gangway to demand an explanation on pain of death from the driver. No, all remain locked in this Trappist sort of silence.

Odd, you may think? On the contrary, only too familiar. Take a doctor’s surgery, for instance, crammed with waiting patients and nobody has been called in for a long time. Has the doctor gone out? Fallen asleep at his desk? Dropped dead? Anybody’s guess -- yet no one moves a hair, all look miserable, some desperate in fact. But does anyone speak, stretch, sigh, groan? Pounce on the ancient copy of Homes and Gardens and tear it to shreds? Not on your life. On they sit in nail-biting silence. Now what is all this about, I ask myself. Why does the majority of British people feel compelled at times of stress and strain to retreat into this zombie-like trance?

I am not for the world suggesting that destroying magazines in fits of frustration, or holding bus drivers to ransom is a habit to be cultivated; but there is a saying, true I think, that a repressed reticence is the British disease. I go further and suggest that Friends, estimable as they undoubtedly are, known for their philanthropic deeds, for their honesty and uprightness (you name it, Friends have it) are nevertheless tinged with this disease. And I suppose that is what unnerves me. What do I mean? Let me explain. I remember when I first became a Quaker many years ago, the Friend who was appointed to welcome me into the Society said smilingly, no doubt in the face of my starry-eyed demeanour, "you must remember, dear, that Friends are not perfect, they have feet of clay." But so enamoured was I then that I refused to take such a remark seriously. Feet of clay. Friends. Nonsense. I wouldn’t hear of it. I positively revelled in their claylessness (if you’ll excuse the term).

Today it’s different. I don’t. In fact I find myself actually longing to discover in Friends even one little crumb of clay and seldom succeeding. This, of course, is a confession of my own inadequacy and only goes to show my own
"clogged" state. I know it and I deplore it. But let it be remembered that many people have their work cut out dealing with what that dear old Catholic priest Baron Von Hugel spoke of as his "restive kittle-kattle machinery". Friends on the other hand seem to have their machinery wonderfully under control or certainly with no hint of anything of a kittle-kattle nature to interrupt them in their steady pursuit of good works. Too much there is in the universe that needs attention and we must not be unduly concerned with little shivering egos, is their attitude, one feels, and of course they are right. Oh, Friends, you cannot really be faulted. But stop a moment, I beg of you, consider those precarious souls who are constantly hindered by their own unpredictable natures, whose fund of calmness in the face of adversity is questionable, who are inclined to rush in where angels fear to tread and who have a tendency, for want of a better expression, to blow their top.

So where does this leave me, guilty as I am of all those transgressions? Well, I decided that there are Quakers and Quakers surely, different grades perhaps. And if so, which grade, I asked myself, do I belong to? And, suddenly spurred on by remembering dear Von Hugel and his restive kittle-kattle machinery, I came to the conclusion that I would coin a new phrase and call myself a "kittle-kattle" Quaker. Forgive me, Friends, if this sounds a little trifling, but it is a cap that fits me at present and, more importantly, leaves a nice lot of room for improvement.