One of the “quiet heroes”
George Penaluna shares some personal reflections on working with David Firth, and his early days at the Friend.
Many Friends will have their own memories of David; previous contributors, former trustees, other colleagues and obviously members of Friends House Meeting. I can’t imagine anyone not liking and respecting him.
I remember David fondly from my early days at the Friend. My job interview in 1989 was held in his room, but with David more host than interviewer. In Drayton House, the offices had been likened to a ‘private detective’s office in a 1930s B-movie’. The telephone dials still carried the number EUSton 7549, a format superseded in 1958!
David exuded an air of calm competence and had a quiet, sensitive spirituality. He had come to the Friend. in 1974 after working with George Gorman in the Outreach section of Quaker Home Service. The previous editor was wanting to retire and the trustees of the Friend. ‘arm-twisted’ David (if Quakers ever do such a thing) into taking the helm. Before QHS he had been a copywriter at an advertising agency, where he met his wife Jill.
My first eight months at the Friend were David’s last, but I benefitted greatly from his experience and wisdom. He had perfected the art of declining unsuitable manuscripts, still typed double-spaced in those days, by returning them to the author with a headed postcard on which he’d write simply, “Not one for the Friend I’m afraid. Love David”. This is a tactic I’ve adopted whenever I’ve had to decline an advertisement, luckily this is a very rare event.
In 1989 the advertisement pages were already done on a desktop computer with an early version of Pagemaker, but the editorial pages were still typeset by the printer, Headley Brothers in Ashford.
As editor, David would travel to Ashford by train every Tuesday morning to layout the galley proofs and proofread the final artwork. Headley’s provided a small ‘cubby-hole’ office for the Friend, a tiny
oasis of calm in the busy printworks. After David’s final sign-off, the Friend went to print on Tuesday night to be mailed to subscribers and distributed to wholesalers on Wednesday morning.
Another routine was David’s monthly trip to the hairdresser, I believe at Horne Brothers menswear on Regent Street. David seemed to like a regulated life, or maybe he just accepted the yoke; his daily lunch at The Penn Club, the weekly routine of the Friend, the monthly round of Meeting for Sufferings (and his barber), and the annual event of Yearly Meeting.
He was a gentle man with a wide range of knowledge and a sense of whimsy. I was surprised by the colourful clothes he was wearing at his retirement tea party at Friends House, his office attire having been almost always a uniform beige. Obviously he didn’t just get his hair cut on his trips to Horne Bros!
In retirement he was looking forward to indulging his passion for languages by studying Russian.
Our paths didn’t cross much after he retired, but whenever we bumped into each other at Friends House it was always a delight. He and Jill always placed a Christmas greeting in the Friend, which gave us the chance to share notes and greetings. Despite our short overlap, my eight months working with David set the tone for all my time at the Friend ever since.
God bless David, and his wife Jill.
