This is a rough transcript of the words and music that accompanied Dick's cremation on 9 December 2002
Dick Scott-Stewart
Putney Vale 9.12.02 1.40pm
Entry to Mme Butterfly
I would like to welcome you here today. We are here to remember the life of Dick Scott-Stewart. There is very little that anyone can do or say to make the pain of his death better, or to lessen its impact. Today is a profoundly sad day for all of you who knew him. You all have to find a way to live without him, and that may take a little time. Someone said that grief is a bit like having a jagged stone inside yourself. Over time it wears a bit smoother, but the stone is always there. And it will serve to remind you of him for as long as you will live. But one day soon, perhaps, you will be able to celebrate his life – after all you had the privilege of knowing him, and each one of you was enriched by his life. But today we have a ritual to perform, a ceremony, which is to send his body on its last journey with dignity and respect.
Before that, we will listen to some readings and to some music. I’ll start by reminding you of some of the broad features of Dick’s life. He was born in 1948 in the Cotswolds, in the village of Painswick, Gloucestershire, the son of Dr. Colin and Marjorie Scott Stewart – his father Colin was a local GP and had served in the Second World War as a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps – he had been the only Doctor in Gibraltar during the Typhoid epidemic there, and received the Distinguished Service Cross for his work in containing thee epidemic. Marjorie, his mother, had been a Queen Alexandra’s nurse during the war, and after her husband’s death in 1952 worked as a registered Nurse in Cheltenham for many years. Dick, or Donald as he was christened, was four years younger than his brother Iain. Dick was Head Boy at his Prep School in Cheltenham, and went on to Epsom College, Surrey, where he played in the Cricket first XI and excelled at squash, eventually winning the South East England Championships.
He went to the London College of Printing and has always been a photographer, who worked in reportage, his interest being people and places. He mounted a number of exhibitions during the last twenty years. Dick and Mog have been together since 1977, and they married on the hottest day of 2000, many of you will remember the party. They have a daughter Esmé.
Mog describes their family life as a dynamic relationship, which could be creative or at odds, but which always had a thread of real enjoyment running through it even while the family members were struggling with the day to day realities of making a freelance living.
Everyone who knew Dick discovered he had his awkward side. He was always himself, always outspoken and this could often be liberating to others as he challenged them to be like this themselves. He could often lighten situations with a straightforward or witty remark. He loved life unequivocally. He relished the mess and the sordidness of existence as well as enjoying the luxury of good food and lots of wine; so the combination of these - the 'freebie' - was the best posible gift anybody could offer him. He was a man whose kindness people remember. He loved to entertain, to spend time with people; he was good company. He loved the flat and garden at Abbeville Road and would spend many happy hours creating the right ambience there.
He had cancer before, in 1988, and cancer was his cause of death in 2002. Even at his lowest point Dick's unique, wry, iconoclastic view of life would emerge, despite his struggle with this terrible illness. He leaves a large legacy of photographic work; his last project was for a show of portraits of homeless people, which, Mog suggested, illustrated his identification with people on the fringes of life. Many of his pictures show humour and wit in composition, but all show seriousness in execution. As he sometimes said, life is too serious not to be taken lightly.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North my South my East my West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
WH Auden: Funeral Blues
Music – Faure Requiem Sanctus
Committal
And into that gate he shall enter,
And into that house he shall dwell,
Where there shall be no cloud nor sun,
No darkness or dazzling
But one equal light.
No noise nor silence but one equal music,
No fears nor hope, but one equal possession,
No foes nor friends, but one equal communion,
No ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.
John Donne
In sadness at his death but with gratitude for his life we now commit the body of Dick Scott-Stewart to its natural end.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on: and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Tempest act VI)
Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage; hold fast to that which is good; render to no man evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; honour all men.
Exit to Miles Davis Milestones
----------------------------------------------------------