More than the sum of his Rumpole parts

Mortimer (left) and McKern as Horace Rumpole

What must it be like for an author to create a character that is bigger than himself? I’ll likely never find out, but it was something that struck me as odd as the phenomenon did the creator of the character.

Noted writer John Mortimer was walking down a London street one day in 2002 when his eye was struck by a headline at a newsstand. “Rumpole dead” read the banner head.

Mortimer’s first thought was, how could Rumpole be dead? I created him. I’ve never killed him off.

The reference, however, was to the demise of delicious Australian-born actor, Leo McKern, the man who personified Horace R. as nobody else could, and did so on countless Rumpole television series.

Mortimer wasn’t offended by the headline, bought mused at how a created character could assume such a larger-than-life persona and be more directly associated in public consciousness with the actor who portrayed him, in all his “Chateau Thames Embankment” swilling glory, than with the man who truly gave him life.

Fortunately, in all of this, Mortimer is not a ‘small’ man, and I admire any successful creative person who has life entirely in perspective and is not all about ego.

I’ve admired Mortimer for years, even before the Rumpole series, which I both viewed and read in book form. I like his novels, and I especially like his autobiographical work, A Voyage Around My Father’, which is a series of anecdotes revolving around the young John Mortimer and his relationship with his marvellous barrister father. His father was marvellous at many levels, but the most amazing one was that he worked at the law throughout his career and yet was totally blind.

I saw the play in London in the 1970s with the inimitable Alec Guinness playing paterfamilias (that was rush enough in itself). It was later filmed with Olivier in the same role, and to equal effect. I preferred Guinness, however, because I got to see him live.

Anyway, this all comes about because I am currently reading a thought-invoking and delightful series of literary essays by Mortimer called Where There’s A Will. You know what a literary essay is. That’s what Dave Barry wishes he could write. but which Mike Royko and Russell Baker succeeded in writing. Essays are just high-falutin’ columns, in my esteem. But, as a consummate column-buff (and sometime columnist meself), it works for me.

It’s a relatively brief book (only 238 pages), but it covers a great deal of turf from Shakespeare’s Favourites, to Living With Children, to Outdoor Sex (and its joys, and there are many), to Believing in Something, to Getting Drunk, and the Companionship of Women.

It’s the perfect bedtime read. Thought provoking, yet not excessively challenging. Just what you’d expect from the guy who created the Rumpole of the Bailey series and who is still going well into his 80s.