Tony Hall
My 'speech' for Eve's 65th party at Matumi - a much shorter version was given extempore, without reading.
Dear friends, dear family...
Thank you all for copming to celebrate with us, with Eve, and with Sherry...
What a lovely turnout, what a fine broth of humanity you are, so many interesting eminent and dear people, making the trek all the way from the wilds of Gauteng, from the metropolis of Nelspruit, from the slopes of Msilezi, from the abundant orchards of the Crocodile, from the middle reaches of the Houtbosloop Valley, from Eden itself...We are honoured and excited to know you, each and every one - let alone plseased and highly entertained to see you here tonight. As I look round I am also tempted to say something about everybody in turn, because your stories are quite wonderful. So I can't mention a single one - just look at each of you in awe and delight.
We are sorry there are friends and family who couldn't make it - but if they had, alongside all of you now, we'd have been spilling over the fence into the wag n beitjie bush by now!
Among the regrets we received was one from an old school chum and fellow Wits student of Eve's - and one of the warmest and most frequesnt of emailers during her cancer treatment period. 'No.' Janet Suzman wrote from London, 'of course I can't come to your bloody wonderful party...you say"It's at home" and you send me a picture of a bush covered himm - honestly...'
In reply, Eve promptly flamed her; 'You've been living so long on the top of Hampstead Heath, you wouldn't know what a decent hill lookes like any more...
I hope Eve and Sherry will both be saying a few words to you after this, and others may like to chime in - but I am grabbing the first spot, to pay my tribute to Eve Steinhardt Hall, just as I grabbed the first spot in her life, before anyone else could. I won't say she is without mystery to me - she's too rich and lively a personality for that - but I claim to be one of the leading authorities on her life and times, having taken up so much of them for myself.
This isn't our wedding anniversary - that was last month - so I don't want to start out a sketch of Eve's life from my vantage point...
...which reminds me of the story about that couple from Ireland, which is that bustling, prosperous country at the heart of Europe, who decided to go on a tour around rural south England, which is that country languishing in the twilight at the edge of Europe, the Anglo-fringe...They were driving around in their BMW and got lost in the back lanes of rural Sussex. They came upon a country character, striding along the road, swinging his walking stick, and called him over.
'Could you tell us hopw to get on the main road to London?' He looked at them wide eyed, his monocle dropping. 'Good Lord,' he said, 'Well...' He looked puzzled for a moment, then he leant over and said; 'If I was your, I wouldn't start from here...'
So let me start from elsewhere, to mention that from her very birth, Eve was always involved in politics - she just couldn't leave it alone. She got herself born on the 20th of March 1937, to a Jewish father from Vienna and a German mother from Frankfurt, Lisa. They had met in Germany but they couldn't have married there, because mixed marriages were illegal by that time. When Eve was a toddler she became a mascot to some of her father's old school friends from Vienna, young Jewish men who camped for a while in their Paris flat, on their way into exile, or new lives elsewhere, to escape the Nazi persecutions.
Later, as a young woman herself, she had people camping in various parts of her Norwood house, taking a break from the pressures of ghetto life, lying about and listening to Ornette Coleman or Thelonious Monk; or as couples, seeking a bit of safe revely, in refuge from the immorality laws of that time.
When the Germans left Paris at the end of the war, Eve was glad to see the liberators arriving. But her first reaction as a 9 year old to the British Tommy was hatred because her French education had taught her that it was the British soldiery who had killed Joan of Arc!
As she sailed with her mother to South Africa to join her father, who had got stuck there when the war broke out, she asked: 'What does Daddy look like?" Well, said her mother, he's about average height and, and dark...
When their ship docked at Lourenco Marques, Eve looked down and picked out one of the dark ment standing below. 'Is that Daddy?' She called out...
Always getting into trouble she was.
She was known to be troublesome in Politics tutorials at Wits University, smoking in the back row, and leaning forward to plop ash on the unseuspecting head of the intense classmate below her. That was in 1955, the year before I met her, when we locked gazes on the Great Hall steps one morning, while each of us was bunking a lecture. And we seized the day - and lots and lots of days after that. God she was lovely, like a little Audry Hepburn, a Gold Flake girl, but with a wicked sense of humour. Sopmehow my influence never had a sobering affect on her.
But she eventually did pass Politics I, a few years later, married and with three sons, still ridiculously young, her Professor, Le May, was kind enough to give her a good mark when she rewrote the subject, the last course she needed to cpomplkete the degree. She felt closely enough acquainted with the subject by then. She was on a political charge at the timem, and a few months later failed to turn up at the degree ceremony because she was in jail.
This sort of thing had come about because the morning after Sharpville - that's forty two years ago this week, she telephoned Ben Turok and demanded to join the Congress of Democrats. When I came back from my work in the Star newsroom that afternoon, I found we were both members. We jumped in with all four feet
To be continued...
My 'speech' for Eve's 65th party at Matumi - a much shorter version was given extempore, without reading.
Dear friends, dear family...
Thank you all for copming to celebrate with us, with Eve, and with Sherry...
What a lovely turnout, what a fine broth of humanity you are, so many interesting eminent and dear people, making the trek all the way from the wilds of Gauteng, from the metropolis of Nelspruit, from the slopes of Msilezi, from the abundant orchards of the Crocodile, from the middle reaches of the Houtbosloop Valley, from Eden itself...We are honoured and excited to know you, each and every one - let alone plseased and highly entertained to see you here tonight. As I look round I am also tempted to say something about everybody in turn, because your stories are quite wonderful. So I can't mention a single one - just look at each of you in awe and delight.
We are sorry there are friends and family who couldn't make it - but if they had, alongside all of you now, we'd have been spilling over the fence into the wag n beitjie bush by now!
Among the regrets we received was one from an old school chum and fellow Wits student of Eve's - and one of the warmest and most frequesnt of emailers during her cancer treatment period. 'No.' Janet Suzman wrote from London, 'of course I can't come to your bloody wonderful party...you say"It's at home" and you send me a picture of a bush covered himm - honestly...'
In reply, Eve promptly flamed her; 'You've been living so long on the top of Hampstead Heath, you wouldn't know what a decent hill lookes like any more...
I hope Eve and Sherry will both be saying a few words to you after this, and others may like to chime in - but I am grabbing the first spot, to pay my tribute to Eve Steinhardt Hall, just as I grabbed the first spot in her life, before anyone else could. I won't say she is without mystery to me - she's too rich and lively a personality for that - but I claim to be one of the leading authorities on her life and times, having taken up so much of them for myself.
This isn't our wedding anniversary - that was last month - so I don't want to start out a sketch of Eve's life from my vantage point...
...which reminds me of the story about that couple from Ireland, which is that bustling, prosperous country at the heart of Europe, who decided to go on a tour around rural south England, which is that country languishing in the twilight at the edge of Europe, the Anglo-fringe...They were driving around in their BMW and got lost in the back lanes of rural Sussex. They came upon a country character, striding along the road, swinging his walking stick, and called him over.
'Could you tell us hopw to get on the main road to London?' He looked at them wide eyed, his monocle dropping. 'Good Lord,' he said, 'Well...' He looked puzzled for a moment, then he leant over and said; 'If I was your, I wouldn't start from here...'
So let me start from elsewhere, to mention that from her very birth, Eve was always involved in politics - she just couldn't leave it alone. She got herself born on the 20th of March 1937, to a Jewish father from Vienna and a German mother from Frankfurt, Lisa. They had met in Germany but they couldn't have married there, because mixed marriages were illegal by that time. When Eve was a toddler she became a mascot to some of her father's old school friends from Vienna, young Jewish men who camped for a while in their Paris flat, on their way into exile, or new lives elsewhere, to escape the Nazi persecutions.
Later, as a young woman herself, she had people camping in various parts of her Norwood house, taking a break from the pressures of ghetto life, lying about and listening to Ornette Coleman or Thelonious Monk; or as couples, seeking a bit of safe revely, in refuge from the immorality laws of that time.
When the Germans left Paris at the end of the war, Eve was glad to see the liberators arriving. But her first reaction as a 9 year old to the British Tommy was hatred because her French education had taught her that it was the British soldiery who had killed Joan of Arc!
As she sailed with her mother to South Africa to join her father, who had got stuck there when the war broke out, she asked: 'What does Daddy look like?" Well, said her mother, he's about average height and, and dark...
When their ship docked at Lourenco Marques, Eve looked down and picked out one of the dark ment standing below. 'Is that Daddy?' She called out...
Always getting into trouble she was.
She was known to be troublesome in Politics tutorials at Wits University, smoking in the back row, and leaning forward to plop ash on the unseuspecting head of the intense classmate below her. That was in 1955, the year before I met her, when we locked gazes on the Great Hall steps one morning, while each of us was bunking a lecture. And we seized the day - and lots and lots of days after that. God she was lovely, like a little Audry Hepburn, a Gold Flake girl, but with a wicked sense of humour. Sopmehow my influence never had a sobering affect on her.
But she eventually did pass Politics I, a few years later, married and with three sons, still ridiculously young, her Professor, Le May, was kind enough to give her a good mark when she rewrote the subject, the last course she needed to cpomplkete the degree. She felt closely enough acquainted with the subject by then. She was on a political charge at the timem, and a few months later failed to turn up at the degree ceremony because she was in jail.
This sort of thing had come about because the morning after Sharpville - that's forty two years ago this week, she telephoned Ben Turok and demanded to join the Congress of Democrats. When I came back from my work in the Star newsroom that afternoon, I found we were both members. We jumped in with all four feet
To be continued...
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