by Joseph Hone
All good wishes to you and Mrs Hone and David.
Yours,
George White.
Jump on boys all the time? Indeed. Repressed and frustrated sex was rife at the school, but some boys, at least, were successful with it up the gorsey hills on Sundays before evensong. However, there were some disastrous consequences of these affairs. One of the senior boys shot and killed himself at home over a thwarted relationship with a junior. I’ve sometimes thought that, since mild ale is provided for sixth formers in some British public schools as an introduction to the real world, discreet (feminine) brothels should have been laid on for the senior boys as well. Less trouble and tragedy, and fewer lives subsequently maimed, would surely have resulted from such an admirable provision. Certainly my own taste was very much for girls, but apart from the skivvies (and I’d seen what could happen there on my first day if you meddled with them) there weren’t any at the school. And as G.K. White says, my other tastes were for working in pictures or journalism, or making a career as a professional cricketer. It’s clear that Mr Lyon and White held out no hope for me in any of these three occupations, judging my capabilities suitable only for a commercial career – one up from carpentry and bicycle mending at least.
Of the rest, how did my year at St Columba’s affect me? Not very much and not very well, apart from increasing my cricket and athletic skills, and giving me the camaraderie of some senior boys in the athletic field such as the Irish schools mile record-breaker Dessie Watt; and David Neligan, famous in his time for the hop, skip and jump, later Irish Ambassador in Paris. Of course, had I gone to the school a few years earlier as I should have done, I might have taken more benefit, academically and otherwise. Or I might simply have suffered many more beatings, and learnt even less.
G.K. White in his housemaster’s report after my first term says: ‘I am not wholly satisfied with his attitude to the rules, nor do I think he has yet learnt what real work is.’ The other masters confirm a poor pupil: ‘Weak’ in Irish. In Maths: ‘Low standard. He does not impress me as someone who is trying very hard.’ In George Large’s form report: ‘I have had to speak to him almost every week for unsatisfactory work.’ In History and Geography: ‘His standard is not generally high.’ Argyle, who taught us Latin, says: ‘His standard was, and still is, very low; he has obviously never known how to work at the subject, being rather inclined to go his own way.’
Of course Argyle couldn’t have known how I’d achieved Latin honours in the previous Intermediate standard exams at Sandford Park, by courtesy of little Mr Carpenter. Sandford Park was that sort of school; St Columba’s maintained loftier standards. But clearly I wasn’t up to them. I suppose I was marked indelibly by my Sandford Park years – years of cold and hurt with the only real learning that of deceit and subterfuge, years that marked me out as a sink-or-swim boy.
As I left St Columba’s that summer I could see that it was going to be the same again, sink or swim. Well I wanted to swim and, as G.K. White writes to Old Joe, I hoped to swim into the film business. Anyway, I wanted to get away from all the dull twaddle of scholastic learning, away from the beatings and all the footling and pain that had been part of my life in Ireland. I wanted some happy fantasy-reality now, to go to England and rise up into the glamorous firmament of movies, the world of the silver screen and the stars.
But my minders had other less romantic hopes for me as I see in a letter from Hubert to Argyle in the summer of 1953, in the light of this last school report:
Dear Mr Argyle,
We only today got Joe’s report, a very bad one, from his grandparents, but Joe has already left to stay with friends in Dublin, so I am afraid the suggestion that he should take some thought about the contents of the report was completely ignored. We had no idea that all had not gone well. Without wanting to be disloyal to our old friends Joe and Vera Hone, I ought to explain that we have this difficulty about his report and anything confidential that is said about Joe every single term. We are not told until we pester to have the report sent to us. This time we were told that a confidential letter from his housemaster was also sent and the Hones told us that this would be enclosed with the report, but it did not come.
Joe Hone senior, when scolded about all this, says he is old and ill and occupied with his literary work and I know this is all true and he means no harm. But the result is that any information that might be applied to Joe’s upbringing never reaches those who are more than anyone else in charge of him in the holidays.
I explained to Joe’s parents that we should either have to be formal guardians in charge of the child or else simply lodging-house keepers in receipt of a proper fee of 15/- a week as it then was. The signed document agreeing to pay a proper fee was never implemented at all, though Joe senior some time ago raised it to 30/-. I mention all this not to complain, but to explain that while we have very little authority we have a great deal of responsibility for Joe which we don’t want to shirk at all. A couple of years ago when Joe’s parents asked him over to England at no notice when my wife had arranged all sorts of other things for him in the holidays, I began to think it was all too much of a strain for my wife and that some other arrangement must be made. But no other arrangement is possible; his relations are old or indifferent or, like his parents, very irresponsible. So as we are very fond of him and he of us and considers this place his home, it seems to me that, unsatisfactory as it is, the present arrangement is the best one. But it is very harrowing for my wife as she does not believe that his holidays in England are sufficiently supervised, yet she has no right to complain, and we hear nothing. We have only had about three letters from his parents in fourteen years.
I am sure you will forgive this outburst. Joe has many good qualities and it will be very sad if they are allowed to go to waste. His irresponsibility is very likely hereditary, but I am sure susceptible to some sort of discipline, and influence. He now has, which he hadn’t a year ago, companions of his own age, very nice boys in the neighbourhood, and while he is here he never gets into any mischief. But in the ordinary course of events he is very careless and destructive.
He spent a large part of the holidays making an adaptation of a Balzac story on my typewriter for a film script. He was secretive about it, but when he left, characteristically he left it all on the drawing-room floor, and my typewriter was not improved. Yet it struck me that what he had written was very good for his age, very well written and far better typed than this letter is.
I think he has a great capacity for doing, and persevering in doing, anything that interests him personally, but that all his interests lie outside what is usual for his age, I mean his ‘intellectual’ interests. He is oddly adult, by which I don’t mean precocious, but he will talk confidently and not always stupidly about subjects that most children find very boring.
We are all worried about his future. But my view is that he will have no difficulty, too little difficulty, in getting a job, possibly quite well paid, on the strength of his charm, personality and superficial accomplishment, and great assurance. I mean film work or in journalism, as he has a great gift of being liked. He’ll get such a job and probably knows instinctively he’ll get it whether he passes exams or not, and that very likely is why he isn’t bothering about his work or our gloomy predictions about his future if he doesn’t work harder. But of course unless he learns self-discipline and consideration for others, journalism and films will be very bad for him, though I think very likely his ultimate goal will lie in that direction. He will want to and be able to express himself more than there is scope for in any usual profession. But I wish before he embarks on journalism or anything of the kind he could take a few years in the merchant service or something of the kind, where he would have to obey orders and stick to a timetable and at the same time see a bit of the world under a certain amount of strict control. I don’t think though that the army would be a good idea, though his family might look in that direction because it is cheap and easy to arrange. He did
a trial trip on the sea with the Drogheda service to Dieppe (horses) but it was under the wrong conditions and I don’t think his dislike of it should be taken as conclusive.
As I have said, anything we advise or work for is liable to be reversed by his parents, but we can’t on that account dissociate ourselves from all these plans, and we are very glad in any case that we urged successfully that he should be moved from Sandford Park as he is certainly making more friends at St Columba’s and as a boarder at Sandford Park he was too big a fish in too small a pond and apparently did what he liked.
Forgive this very long letter, but we want you to know something of Joe’s background. I don’t think he has any psychological complications except the obvious ones, that his parents can’t bring him up and that he must be embarrassed about this. I have made him understand clearly that this place will always be his home and I am sure he doesn’t feel ‘unwanted’ here, because we do in fact find him a real addition to our household and everybody here is fond of him.
Don’t trouble to answer this letter but, if any difficulty should arise, please remember that, though we are not his guardians we will, in point of fact, have to take responsibility for him, if his grandparents die. There seems to be no one else.
Yours sincerely,
Hubert Butler.
Well, a real handful of a letter, interesting in that Hubert has changed his mind about me in several crucial ways, as we shall see. But I must record at once the Reverend F. Martin Argyle’s reply:
Dear Mr Butler
Although you told me not to trouble to answer your letter I feel I must thank you on my own account and on that of his Housemaster, Mr G K White, because your letter has been most helpful to us in helping to fill in Joe minor’s background. White, of course, knows the family well and knows how difficult, for various reasons, and yet how attractive they are. The trouble is that Joe has come to us very late indeed, and he is here for such a short time. I hope we shall be able to do something for him, though as you say I am afraid we won’t make much headway in a direct appeal to him to work at his ordinary school studies for the sake of examination achievement. He is also quite determined not to go into anything like Irish shipping even if he could get in. We both agree with you that he needs something that will continue to provide him with a framework of order and discipline for his life as he is obviously capable of charming his way into something like journalism or films, which would probably be bad for one of his temperament and character. There is no questioning his intelligence. The Balzac incident you quote from the holidays is just the sort of thing I would have expected when his interest is caught and he obviously has a flair for English. Probably the circumstances in his life force him into an independent attitude. He is determined to depend on his own resources and rely on his own judgement, which is understandable in his case. I can only try to be patient while he is here and hope that some of the friends he makes, both amongst the boys and on the staff, will continue the good work you have done for him.
Many thanks for writing so fully,
Yours sincerely,
F Martin Argyle. Warden.
This letter puts a different complexion on Columba’s insofar as Argyle seems to have a good judgement of my character, a humane grasp of my problems, ambitions and abilities; and he certainly hits the mark by saying that, given my disrupted family background, I was determined to rely on my own resources and judgment.
What is curious is that Argyle never showed me these qualities directly. He could only address his understanding to Hubert, and beat me unnecessarily on my last day at the school, which was hardly a humane goodbye. Perhaps it was his British reserve? – and also a sort of academic elitism, so that Argyle could only speak freely and truly of me to Hubert, both of them Oxford classical scholars, but could not speak the same human messages to me. I don’t suggest by this that Argyle’s and Hubert’s harping on discipline, order, exams, concern for others and so on are not important considerations in the running of young lives. They are. What I question is the moral ambivalence in their approach to me, that on the one hand both of them praise my good characteristics but on the other Hubert wants to export me to England and Argyle beats the hell out of me.
There are several other contradictory points in Hubert’s letter to Argyle. Hubert, who less than two years before had written to Old Joe that he and Peggy couldn’t have me any more at Maidenhall, is now saying that I’m a real addition to the household and that Maidenhall, as he has now told me clearly, is my home. And then he says that he doesn’t think I have any ‘psychological complications’ whereas in the previous letter to Old Joe he says I’m a ‘psychological mess’ and a few years before he’s been agitating with Freudian Dr Eustace about my being in just the same mess, indeed that I may have been born ‘morally blind’. Something of a turnabout.
Perhaps, getting older, I was behaving better. Or perhaps Hubert realized that however I was behaving he and Peggy were now finally committed to me, and I to them, for better or worse, and all three of us had better get on and make the best of it.
All the same, despite Hubert’s hopes in his letter to Argyle that I find some regular discipline in the services after I left St Columba’s, I certainly wasn’t going to join the British merchant or any other sort of navy. I’d left St Columba’s with only four ‘O’ levels, English Language and Literature, History and Geography, which weren’t going to get me into Balliol. If I’d had any money that summer of 1953 I might well have started dawdling about the Dublin bars, following my father downhill.
Now my aunt Sally and her husband Stanley Cooke-Smith came to the rescue, suggesting that I come to London that autumn of 1953, and stay with them in Hampstead in their attractive Victorian house in Oakhill Park, a woody cul-de-sac off Frognal. Stanley ran an antiquarian and second-hand bookshop, the Beauchamp Bookshop, in South Kensington. He was a charming bespectacled balding man with an untidy moustache: tall, stooped, cadaverous, every inch the Heath Robinson antiquarian, glasses perched on his forehead, studying rare first editions and precious bindings close to his nose. ‘Suu-perb!’ he would say, contemplating some rare folio.
The idea may have been that I would work in the bookshop, but initially there was no suggestion of this. I was to start at the bottom. So Stanley took me to the Labour Exchange in Westminster on my first day in London and, looking down the Sits. Vac. notices on a big board, he pushed me into a job as a city messenger and post boy at Leon Bros., Stockbrokers, of 4 and 5 Copthall Court, at three pounds a week. It wasn’t much like working in the movies. There was the great London fog that winter – you couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead – and after the Stock Exchange closed at half past three I groped my way about the city delivering settlement cheques to various other stockbrokers and banks, and then came back, licked the stamps on scores of letters and got the post out.
The office where I worked was literally Dickensian – flaring gas lights, high stools ranged against a long double-sided desk with the other half-dozen clerks perched on either side, the head clerk at the top. It was a silent, fusty place where the only sound was the sudden clicking of the ticker tape or the loud, commanding or sometimes panicky voice of one of the young partners in the next room, often on the telephone to their agent in South Africa where the firm handled mining and diamond shares. ‘Buy at the seventeen rands premium offer! Sell at two-and-a-half percent plus on the profit margin!’ and so on. Old Joe would have been terrified in the place. It was the sort of office where his São Paulo Tramway shares had gone down the tubes. For lunch, aping a Pooterish city clerk, I had a sandwich and a half of mild ale at a pub round the corner. I can’t remember much else, except that I must have acquitted myself well enough with the stockbrokers and with Stanley, who, after my three months in the city, gave me a job in his South Kensington bookshop. I owe him much for that. He put London at my feet.
It was the start of my independence, of another and better education than I’d had at any of my schools: a little more
money at the bookshop, three pounds ten shillings a week now, with thirty shillings a week for my keep in Hampstead, and eventually an ex-army BSA 250 motorbike for which I saved up twenty-five pounds. I also decided that living in artistic Hampstead I should be a painter. So I went into the art shop next to the Everyman Cinema and bought shiny tubes of oil paint, camelhair brushes, an easel and several primed canvases – and painted some dreadful pictures. Luckily I didn’t waste any more money on a beret and smock, which I would have bought in the art shop if they’d had such.
Still, as well as painters, Hampstead was for poets. So I took to poetry. And wrote a good deal of romantic stuff with an antique ivory dip pen and silver inkpot, closeted, Chatterton-like, in my heavily curtained bedroom. Some not too bad, I thought, one particularly about a girl I’d met, loved and lost back in Dublin. The last verse was suitably mournful:
Now all the years in the air
Are hers for the asking.
Free as a rumour she may run
All the lyrical land round in its colour:
Through twelve shifts of the weather
Til she come to that place with another,
Where hills glide and great winds gather,
There to enchant him with her laughter.
I hadn’t forgotten movies. During the next eighteen months I watched nearly everything there was to see at the Everyman, then the best art cinema in London, with two changes of classic films every week (and no Pathé newsreels or Rank travelogues about the Three Counties Fair in Malvern): Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Battleship Potemkin, and particularly the French classics, Clair’s Sous les Toits de Paris and Italian Straw Hat, Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, René Clement’s Les Jeux Interdits and Jacques Becker’s Casque d’Or with the beautiful Simone Signoret; Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, Une Partie de Campagne and The River; Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles and his Orphée – all of which made me fall in love even more with movies.
