On the wall of the thatched pavilion was a small brass bell inscribed with
Posted in General on 12. Oct, 2010
On the wall of the thatched pavilion was a small brass bell inscribed with the letters MFWOGP. The bell had been a gift to Getty from an old friend, Brian Johnston, the cricket commentator, who would occasionally interrupt his broadcasts to send his good wishes to My Friend Who Overlooks Green Park.It was on the day before Brian Johnston’s memorial service in the summer of 1994 that Getty’s cricket team, the J. Paul Getty XI, won a match on their home ground for the first time. “Brian will be in heaven pouring himself a great jay of nectar,” Getty laughed as he offered the team his congratulations.For a great deal of his adult life in England, Getty had been known as an unhappy reclusive man who drank a lot and was often cranky. But the end of that happy summer day highlighted many of Getty’s exceptional qualities; his child-like love of jokes, his passion for cricket as the embodiment of fair play, his loyalty, his gift for friendship and his enormous generosity.The same sentiments, on a larger scale, infused his relationship with Britain, where he lived for most of the past 40 years. The quiet billionaire was regarded with great affection by the British public, who sensed just how much he esteemed Britain’s best qualities and how generous he was prepared to be to help people less fortunate than himself.
“Paul is a much-loved figure,” the then Prime Minister, John Major, said of Getty in 1994. “And when I say much-loved, I mean for what he is – not just what he’s been able to give.”Often anonymously, and without seeking anything in return, Getty became Britain’s greatest private philanthropist, giving away well over £200m in the last 20 years. His best-known gift was the £50m he gave the National Gallery in 1985, since when he gave to such causes as the British Film Institute (over £20m), St Paul’s Cathedral (£5m to clean the West Front), the Conservative Party (£5m after it lost the 2001 general election), Canova’s Three Graces (£1m), the Churchill Papers (£1m) and The Oldie (he eventually bought the magazine). But it was his unstinting support for small, often struggling, charities that brought him to the attention of thousands of people around the country.His Cheyne Walk Trust gave according to a set of guidelines Getty had drawn up himself; it favoured the north of England over the south, small projects over big ones and schemes that helped to rehabilitate prison inmates and young offenders, preserve old churches and small village cricket clubs, and help women driven by stress to self-mutilation His J.
Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust advertises itself simply as “Supporting Unpopular Causes”.The Queen bestowed on Getty a knighthood; the public afforded him a measure of privacy few other billionaires could expect in Britain. His wife, the former Victoria Holdsworth, whom he married after a long friendship at the end of 1994, was a guiding hand into the outside world that Getty often found so frightening. In marked contrast to the case of Mohamed al-Fayed, Paul Getty’s successful application in 1997 for a British passport, which enabled him to use his 1986 title, was an occasion for joy.Life, for Getty, had not always been so happy His mother, the fourth Mrs J. Paul Getty Snr, attempted suicide for the first time when she was pregnant in 1932 with her son Eugene Paul, nicknamed “Pabby” and later known as J Paul Getty Jnr (He was born at sea.) The marriage to J.
Paul Getty Snr, the Oklahoma oil baron she had met when she was 14 and he nearly 40, lasted only three years. After the divorce, she lived with her two sons in California. Their father had little to do with their upbringing, though he would correct the boys’ letters for spelling and grammar and send them back. Paul junior studied English at San Francisco State University, but never graduated.