Gorden Mursell's Tribute at Funeral

+Address at Funeral Service
St Mary’s Washington, Sussex
Friday 5: vi: 08


In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is trying to help his disciples to distinguish between true and false prophets; and he says “ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt.7:16 AV). It’s worth noticing what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say you will know them by their beliefs: he says you will know them by their fruits - by how they live, by who or what they bring to birth, and by what they leave behind. I’ve no idea whether Jesus was a fruit farmer - I rather suspect he wouldn’t have known the difference between his Braeburn and his Cox’s Orange Pippin. But I think what he says is true. In a world like ours, so full of different kinds of exclusive fundamentalists, what matters in distinguishing the good from the bad is not what someone says, or even what they believe, but how they live, who or what they bring to birth (the fruits they bear), and what they leave behind. When I was thinking of becoming a priest, I wrote to Peter to ask his advice; and what he said was along the lines of: if the churches could only stop wrangling with each other about their (remarkably unimportant) differences and could work with others for the well-being of all, they could still be a powerful force for good. In other words: by their fruits you will know them.
Peter was born in 1913, in Kettering, where his father, Tom Mursell, was manager and director of a large shoe-making factory owned by William Timpson. Peter, together with his two younger siblings Margaret and Philip (or Peg and Pip, as we knew them), lived at Crossways in Kettering with their parents, until their father Tom became ill with lung cancer, and died in his forties on 27th November 1923. Peter was 10 by then, and at a boarding school called Dunhurst in Hampshire. We can only imagine what it must have been like for him to lose his dad at that age, and suddenly to find himself the oldest male in the family. But his mother Grace (known to all of us as Gaggie) was a remarkable woman, and all three children completed their education at Bedales School, which was an important place for Peter: he was head boy; he excelled at sport; he was taught the cello by the great Arnold Dolmetsch (entirely by ear - he never learned to read music); and it was at Bedales that he met Charles Gardner, who together with his future wife Nora were to become among Peter’s closest friends.

Bedales encouraged an all-round education, and Peter didn’t shine there at exams. On leaving school, he had thought of following his father and joining Timpsons; but (not, I suspect, for the only time in his life) his mother had other ideas. She suggested (perhaps not a strong enough word) that what he might like to do was to go to university and read agriculture, after which he could come and help her and his Uncle Tim (Wyldbore) to run a fruit-growing business on a farm they had bought called Dounhurst, near Wisborough Green. This would not be the last time Peter put the wider needs of family before his own. He went to Downing College Cambridge and worked so hard that he got a first in agriculture. He paid a price for this: it meant he was so busy studying that he had little time to make friends. It was so characteristic of him to learn from the negative as well as positive experiences in his life: I can’t have been the only relative to have been grateful for his wise advice to me, on going to university myself: don’t forget (he said) that the friends you make at university will be friends for life. It was, and is, excellent advice. What I didn’t know (because he never told me) was that he’d never had the chance to do that himself.

So Peter left Cambridge with a first and came to work at Dounhurst (virtually the same name as the school he attended). It was utterly typical of Peter that he never assumed that just having a good degree would equip you to work on a farm: instead he went to learn from Bert, a local man who probably left school at 15 and who was to be one of Dounhurst’s most dedicated and committed farm workers (throughout his life Peter was to stress the vital importance of co-operation, working together for the common good). Working on a farm in the 1930s must have been unremitting hard work. But it didn’t stop Peter taking time for other things. Through his mother he’d got to know the new arrivals at Loxwood Hall (the North family). Peter was playing tennis with Mr North when up swept this dazzling daughter in a motor car swinging tennis rackets. Peter said (to himself?) “I’m going to marry that woman.” Their courtship was hair-raising. Peter had by then inherited from his friend Charles Gardner a love of flying, and Dil’s first date with Peter involved flying upside-down in a small private (and presumably horrifyingly primitive) plane. Dil got her own back by taking Peter for a drive in Herbert, her Austin 7 (still alive and working today), and hurtling over speedbumps at over 60 miles an hour. One other anecdote from that period is worth telling: Peter was asked by his future father-in-law, a member of the North family (who were serious Nonconformists and even more serious teetotallers) which church he worshipped in. “Under the apple trees,” Peter replied.

Those stories tell us a great deal about who Peter was: someone who put family before self; someone capable of very hard work, but for whom there was always more to life than work; someone with a tremendous sense of fun; and someone with a mind of his own, not overwhelmed by the need to conform to others’ expectations. “By their fruits you will know them.” Peter and Dil were married on the 1st January 1938 in Alfold Parish Church, and this year they celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary; during the celebrations, Dil, briefly confused, said to Peter “will you marry me, Peter?” Peter said: “I did that 70 years ago, dear.” To which Dil replied: “And you’re tired of me already!” As we all know, Peter never tired of her, nor she of him; and the love and tireless care and devotion he showed her thereafter, and above all in the last years of his life, are and remain an inspirational example that surely deserves a knighthood even more than anything else Peter did.

The war followed soon after their marriage; and by then Peter had become an accomplished pilot: he’d flown to India in 1936 to sell planes to maharajahs, and he had numerous terrifying adventures in his friend Charles’ flying boat. When war broke out Peter joined the ATA and worked his way up through the organisation, training innumerable other pilots (women among them). When the war ended, he was offered the job of running BEA (as it was then called) - a major national post; but once again he decided to put family first, and returned to Sussex, where he and Dil settled at Farthings in Kirdford and he resumed his work on the farm, eventually swapping houses with Gaggie after Uncle Tim’s death and settling at Dounhurst where he and Dil remained until moving here in 1987. By then they had started their family: first Jill, then Ann, then Tom and then James, a family that was also to include their nephew Adam - and in a sense all of us too.
Those forty-plus years working flat out as a fruit grower were desperately hard work. A single late frost could wipe out a year’s crop and a year’s income. The only way to avert the threat was to install a frost alarm and heating lamps, which was expensive and meant you had to get out of bed in the middle of the night when the temperature dropped. Peter wrote a poem about it based on Hamlet. It began:

To heat or not to heat. That is the question.
Whether tis nobler on the farm to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to put lamps against a sea of coldness
And by their kindling end it....To freeze, to sleep; -
To sleep, the alarm to fail: ay, there’s the rub.
For in that fearful sleep what harm may come
While we are tucked up cosily in bed,
Must give us pause.

Peter got up - again and again and again. And the farm prospered: the story of Kirdford Growers, and Peter’s involvement in fruit-growing nationally, tirelessly promoting home-grown fruit, tirelessly warning of the dangers of over-dependence on food from overseas, is outstandingly distinguished, even if too long to tell here. Nor was the farm his only workplace: he was drawn into local government, eventually becoming Chairman of West Sussex County Council, a key member of the Royal Commission on Local Government, a Deputy Lieutenant, a knight of the realm, and eventually Vice-Lieutenant of the county: one Lord Lieutenant, Lavinia Duchess of Norfolk, described him as “the nicest man in Sussex.” Peter’s own values shone through everything he did: getting people to work together (just as he had done with Bert and others); trying to get decision-making brought down to local level and getting local people involved; and (as someone else once said of him) knowing the vital difference between rigidity of mind and fixity of purpose.

But work was by no means the only thing in Peter’s life. He and Dil built up a vast circle of friends, which underlines another of his core values: people always come first. And Peter never lost a gift for learning new skills: in 1971 they had acquired the canal boat Fanny Grace (named after Gaggie), and travelled all over the country in it, both on their own, with family and with friends. When he and Dil retired to Taints Orchard in 1987, they both threw themselves into local life; Peter became a school governor here and took a huge interest in the life and well-being of the school. He became very active in the garden, developing squirrel-proof bird-feeders and growing his first vegetable garden (some of it in old tyres). When his heart began to cause problems and the GP forbade him to use a strimmer, he went straight out and bought a lightweight model and carried on. He loved projects, loved gadgets, loved organizing and planning and managing things. But most of all he loved people: he was (though it will embarrass them) hugely proud of his family, his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and all their varied achievements; he loved them all, undemonstratively but unconditionally; and they loved him back. He had to learn from scratch how to care for Dil during the past few years, and he brought to that care all he had to give. And I know he and Dil, as well as their children, would want to express their deep gratitude for the wonderful care they themselves received from the different carers who lived with them and supported them.

Peter died suddenly in hospital in the late evening of Saturday 23rd August; and our hearts as well as our love goes out to Jill, Ann, Tom and James, but most of all to Dil, in their sudden and unexpected loss. How best to remember him? In addition to the qualities already mentioned, Peter was someone who always remembered the positives (and sometimes completely forgot the difficulties); someone who always looked forward: Peter was a hopeful person because he was also a grateful person (even very late in life he would often say “we’re so lucky”). I wonder whether it would be right to say that all three of Gaggie’s children - Peter, Peg and Pip - reflected the same childlike enthusiasm for life, a kind of restless creativity and infectious sense of fun, and a fascination in every aspect of people and things. Especially people: hours before he died, Peter was trying to get Jill to buy one of the nurses caring for him a bottle of champagne because he thought she was working too hard. Peter made other people feel they mattered - because to him they did. He went on bearing fruit in abundance right through his long and full life; and we, inspired by his character, his company, and his courage, are also inspired by his example to do the same.
Thanks be to God.