Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Hugh Johnson
10 JULY 1998
Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, members of the Congregation, Ladies and
Gentlemen:
I am most grateful to the Public Orator for his account of my doings to
date. His motto seems to me to be "De Vivis nil nisi Bonum" and I am not a
little astonished that such a self-indulgent life has still led me to these
pearly gates. For what could be pearlier than an unstudied-for degree, and
at Essex, on my home turf?
May I join you, Chancellor, in congratulating all those graduating today who
have arrived here by the steeper route?
In surveying all the permutations of this route, all the courses open to
study, from Government to Electronic Systems Engineering, (but not I see so far
to cork and bottle studies) it struck me that there is still another opening to
be filled, and a course left unspoken for and 'unchaired', and that is the
Department of Happiness. I don't mean the Department of the End of the
Rainbow, but a school of positive thinking, optimism, cheerfulness and humour.
Universities are the great access gates, pearly or not, to the life of the
mind. At university we learn to appreciate, and to judge, other
people's minds. That is the point, at least it is to me, of living for
three years or more, on and off, in very close contact with similarly educated
and intelligent people.
The philosophers here will probably groan at being reminded once again of the
great Dr Johnson's friend Oliver Edwards, the one who said "I too have
tried in my time to be a philosopher; but I don't know how, cheerfulness was
always breaking in." Cheerfulness, it seems to me, should be the whole end
and aim of philosophy - and for that matter, all other disciplines too.
All of us remember the teachers who made most impact on us and helped us to
shape our views and attitudes. One who left a deep mark on me was a
literary critic who breathed bigotry, whose tutorials were filled with rancour
and hatred. He helped me to see that to be happy you have to accept, to
include, and to realise that everyone is right in their way.
That is my philosophy as a writer. I chose from the start to indulge myself
in things that give pleasure; in wine, in travel, in trees and in gardens.
I set out to bring readers into closer contact with the natural joys of the
world around them and the ways that humanity has adapted, exploited and even
improved on them.
I'm afraid I leave to others the day's agenda of problems. Those who
see the beauty of nature as a catalogue of potentially threatened species have
all my sympathy - but I'm not joining them. Is it glib to accentuate the
positive? I think not. I think it is a writer's, and up to a point a
university's, most valuable role. If everybody plays it, in his or her own
way, a Chair of Happiness will never be needed. We will all be too busy and too
interested to worry about it. Thank you for the great honour and
distinction of an Essex degree.