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The 19th century slips away with Grace Jones
I was never fortunate enough to meet Grace Jones, the 113-year-old Bermondsey lady who until last week was Britain’s oldest person, yet I still felt a sting of regret at news that she had died. She was the last living Briton born in the 19th century: December 7 1899, to be exact.
There is something about such a human link to history that is almost magical, the mere fact of such a person having been conscious and observant at a time now sunk – for the vast majority of us – in the deep past.
Miss Jones was born when Queen Victoria was still on the throne. Her fiancé, Albert Rees, died in the First World War, and she never found another one because, she said, she never met anyone else as nice as him.
To a lesser extent, I used to contemplate this marvel of longevity with my grandfather, who died, aged 99, in 2006. I would quietly watch him and remember with awe that as an eight-year-old paperboy in Belfast, he had hollered out fresh news of the battles of the First World War to passers-by.
Miss Jones, of course, was already nearly seven when he was born. That’s how history moves beyond our reach: the last small hand, shrunken with age, finally lets go of ours, and a century slips away from us forever.
telegraph.co.uk |
