The Knox Brothers

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  Once again, it was a task in which Newman had been frustrated, and one which, ever since his conversion, had been particularly close to Ronnie. The Authorized Version had been his birthright, although he had lost it. Couldn’t one—in his own words—“produce something decent” which Catholics might love and remember in something of the same way? Generous always, he hoped to give part at least of the inheritance of his childhood to the Church of his adoption.

  The official Roman Catholic text was the Vulgate; in 1526 the Council of Trent specified that it must be used for all public readings. There followed nearly seventy years of frenzied editing by the Vatican—at one point Cardinal Sixtus was reduced to sending out correction slips to be pasted over earlier mistakes—to establish the Sixto-Clementine version, without variant readings. The Catholic English translation was the Douai, made in exile by William Allen, an Oxford scholar who could not accept the Elizabethan Settlement. Allen’s work had much of the beauty of the King James version and was closely related to it, but because he “presumed not to mollify the hard words, for fear of missing the sense of the Holy Ghost” (the Lord’s Prayer, for instance, appears as Give us this day our supersubstantial bread), there was need of revision; this was undertaken in 1750 by the saintly Bishop Challoner. To replace Douai-Challoner, or even to suggest replacing it, seemed a bold step, with its long ancestry and touching association with the Catholic exiles—the last annotation on Come Lord Jesus is a prayer for their return to England—it was dear to the hearts of millions. Or was it, Ronnie wondered, only the thought of it that was dear? Did anyone read it much, in private, at all? He had noticed that when, as a visiting preacher, he asked the Parish Priest for a Bible to verify his text, “there was generally an ominous pause of twenty minutes or so before he returned, banging the leaves of the sacred volume and visibly blowing on the top.” If that was so, might it not be replaced by a version that brought out the meaning—which Douai, particularly in the Epistles of St Paul, notoriously didn’t—which would be in “timeless English”, and, though he would never have claimed this himself, equally beautiful?

  But, if the scheme was accepted, why not bypass the Vulgate and translate directly from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts? St Jerome had access to some sources which are now lost, but we possess many others which he knew nothing about. These texts are a matter for international scholars, who have divided the manuscript copies of the New Testament alone into five “families”, on which forty years’ work is but a day; every word, for example, must be checked against its use in the Greek papyri as they come to hand—Professor Lobel’s “laundry lists”; it was in fact in these lists that the word was found in an ordinary household account-book and finally established as meaning “daily” and not “supersubstantial” bread. From other translators the reader asks for illusion, but from the Bible-translator he wants truth. He must know “what the Bible really says”. The Vatican had acknowledged this, and while Ronnie was at the Old Palace, the English Westminster Version, taken directly from the manuscripts, was being prepared under the editorship of a Jesuit, Father Cuthbert Lattey. This was for scholars, and was not authorized for public use, but the way was open for a clean start, a twentieth-century popular Catholic Bible which would challenge the newest and most accurate Protestant versions.

  But Ronnie stuck to the Vulgate. Any new suggestions, after a close study of the originals, would have to go into footnotes. His own need was not for freedom, but for authority, and, as a convert, he felt he should never presume too far. Undoubtedly his diffidence over the matter lost him a great opportunity.

  His brothers were somewhat surprised to hear of Ronnie’s new venture. “A bad text,” Dilly remarked, “and he doesn’t know very much Greek.” “Or theology,” Wilfred added, “except what I’ve taught him.” And indeed, from their point of view, he did not. Their criticisms were in no way unkindly meant. They were proud of Ronnie, but they did not really consider him a scholar.

  By 1938, however, the project was accepted in principle by the Hierarchy, though they felt he should have the help of a committee. Their next and most unwelcome proposal, that he should return to St Edmund’s as President, was easily circumvented. He would need seclusion, protection and peace, and Lady Acton, catching enthusiastically at the idea, offered all these. Ronnie could come to Aldenham, the family seat in Shropshire, as chaplain. Outside his duties, and his preaching engagements, his whole time could be given to what Cardinal Hinsley (who had succeeded in 1935) called “the great work of the pen-apostolate”. In arranging matters, Lady Acton, like Lady Lovat, showed herself a true descendant of the Souls. She was confident of finding a cottage and a housekeeper for him—Ronnie, as Eddie pointed out, was the only member of the family, apart from Ethel, who never in his whole life had to wash up a teaspoon for himself—and he would be free from the tedious routine of everyday.

  Unquestionably Ronnie became somewhat obsessed at this time with the details of the household at Aldenham. The younger generation of Knoxes could not quite reconcile his spiritual force with the continual discussion of “carriage folk”. They felt he was in danger of getting a little like one of the recurrent characters in the glossy period films of those days, a clerical figure shyly entering the salon—“Why, Abbé Liszt, have you been writing anything new?” All this was quite unfair. They did not understand the priestly life, and underestimated the amount of happiness necessary to someone of fifty. As usual, Winnie understood him best. “I wish I could make this clear,” she wrote after his death; to her he was still “the hopeless romantic”, even the small boy who had played at Caves in Arabia, and now needed, above all things, rescue and retreat.

  Whatever misgivings his family might have, they could not fail to recognize the unique quality of the book which Lady Acton inspired him to write, and which he finished in 1938—his last Oxford book, his farewell, indeed, to Oxford—Let Dons Delight. It is dedicated to her, as the friend who gave him heart to begin again.

  Of everything he wrote—and he lost count himself of the titles—this was Ronnie’s favourite book. Its framework is a dream, taking us back through time in the Senior Common Room of Simon Magus, a college ironically named after the magician who tried to bribe St Peter. The changing styles of English conversational prose have surely never been better imitated than here, as the centuries pass, and the generations of dons discuss and comfortably disagree. But the true spirit of Oxford is seen to rest with the Catholic recusants, who leave her to go into exile. From 1588 to 1838, from the days of Tudor persecution to the days of Newman, these exiles go reluctantly. “You have reproached me, Mr Provost,” says Mr Lee, a martyr of 1588, “for that I go lightly overseas; do you think that I have not understood what thing it is that I leave behind?” Three centuries later Newman’s converts remember the walks and gardens of Oxford “only as better things—no, not better things, though more companionable things.” It was time, also, for Ronnie to go. He had resigned the chaplaincy, and only Nuffield, he thought, could be happy in Oxford without a job connected with the University. But one could not take leave without a long look backward.

  In Let Dons Delight, the college Fellows, over their port, always predict wrongly. “You will not teach the potato to grow in Ireland,” and, in 1788, “The Frenchman will not revolt.” But in 1938 the scientists and materialists left in the Common Room are saying: “The next world war is scheduled to break out next July, isn’t it?” Ronnie, presumably, trusted that they would be wrong once again.

  In the autumn of 1938 he was ready to transfer himself to Aldenham. “I am leaving Oxford,” he told the new generation of undergraduates, “because the conditions of life give me no time to do the job the Hierarchy, in their great kindness, have entrusted to me.” “Whoever comes after me,” he adjured them, “don’t let him feel as lonely as at times you have made me feel.”

  After the Munich Conference and the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, Eddie wrote, for the Christmas of 1938, with a sense of bitter humiliation, a “Hymn
to the Dictators”:

  O well beloved leaders

  And potentates sublime,

  We come to you as pleaders

  Because it’s Christmas time.

  Illustrious banditti,

  Contemptuous of our codes,

  Look down to-day in pity

  On democratic toads.

  All the systems evolved by human beings for living on this earth were now shown to be either delusory, destructive, sadly outdated, or at risk. Wilfred, realizing that when war broke out Oratory House would probably have to shut down, wondered where his duty would lie. Dilly was not well. Cancer was suspected, and he had already had a preliminary operation. Without much comment on this, he returned to his office, and to Enigma. He had the advantage of knowing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. But so far he was getting nowhere.

  VIII

  1939–1945

  The Uses of Intelligence

  AT THE BEGINNING OF 1939 Dilly was still working in the Broadway. His health was not much better, if at all, since his operation, and he appeared to live entirely on black coffee and chocolate. To the casual visitor the office would have appeared disorderly, even though it was tidied by a girl assistant, but the chaos was restored at the end of every day by Dilly, like Daedalus in his own labyrinth. A brilliant young Oxford mathematician, Peter Twinn, who was recruited to the Department in February, found to his dismay that Dilly was not prepared to offer any explanation at all of the working system. Worse still, it turned out that the girl assistant, who went about her routine so calmly, did not understand anything either; she had given up, she said, but thought it best not to say so. The trouble, of course, was not that Dilly would not explain, but that he thought he had. “Mightn’t it be a good idea …” and “Why do you say that?” were, surely, enough to cover everything? At four o’clock every afternoon Dilly suddenly left the office to drive himself perilously home to Courn’s Wood. The regulations of the Foreign Office had to give way to him. In contrast to Ronnie’s deep need for authority, Dilly recognized the need for rules only in ritual (poetry, cricket, emendation of texts), not in what he thought of as the rational conduct of his own existence. To Newman’s, and Ronnie’s, question, “Can a kingdom have two governments?” Dilly would have replied that it could have as many as it had individuals. He reappeared at any time he liked in the very early morning, made coffee, and resumed his work where he had left it.

  His section was at present concentrated full time on the solution to Enigma, the enciphering system which had been selected by the Nazi Government in the 1930s and now distributed as standard issue to the German forces. The Enigma machine was a harmless-looking object, not much larger than an office typewriter, which was offered, not very successfully at first, on the open market by its German promoter. It was one of a number of similar machines which had been patented between the wars.

  Enigma enciphered by means of three turning discs, or rotors, made of rubber, and about four inches across. Round the rim of each of these were twenty-six brass contacts, which corresponded to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, but were usually given their numerical values. Each of them was wired, through the thickness of the rotor, to a contact on the opposite face, which in turn passed the current through the crossing and re-crossing wires in the other two rotors. At each contact, the original letter which was being transmitted changed into another one. In addition, after each encipherment the rotor turned one notch, bringing a completely new arrangement into play. After it had turned twenty-six times, the second rotor began to turn—one notch for every twenty-six notches of the first one, giving 676 possible positions. Enigma also came supplied with two spare rotors which could be substituted for any two in the machine, so that if all five were used in every possible order they could produce eleven million different arrangements of the alphabet before returning to their original positions.

  To send a message the operator simply typed it on the keyboard, and it eventually emerged as a series of numbers, which were lit up by a row of small lamps at the output. At the other end, the receiver could put his machine into reverse, so as to read the message en clair.

  ABOVE IS A LATE-MODEL Enigma with a QWERTY “typewriter” keyboard (described on page 247). Though the order of letters on the keyboard changed during the war, the basic look and mechanism of Enigma did not. In the photograph, the three turning discs, or rotors, are clearly visible. Not visible is the internal mechanism of the larger message-scrambling unit. On the left-hand side of the rotors is a stationary entry wheel (Eintrittwalze), which received the keyboarded message and sent an electrical current through the variously wired rotors (described on page 222); on the right-hand side is a stationary “reflecting” wheel (Umkehrwalze), which, once the current had passed through the rotors, scrambled the current and advanced the rotors. The optional plugboard allowed for further levels of encipherment. The standard-issue Enigma was housed in a wooden carrying-case, rather like a 26-pound portable typewriter. It ran on an internal battery, but could be connected to an outside power supply.

  If the message had always begun at the first position of the first rotor, the decipherers might not have found their task too difficult; but it might start anywhere. Every Enigma operator had in his secret drawer a selection of red, green and blue spools and an instruction book. Every twenty-four hours he was given a new “key of the day”, expressed in colours and numbers, telling him how to set his machine to the Grundstellung, or starting position. There was a separate indicator which registered the day’s setting in three small windows, to avoid any possible discrepancies.

  The Foreign Office had supplied its department with an old commercial Enigma, costing about £2,500, from which they could study the general mechanism, but no more than that. Further progress was almost impossible without enormous quantities of material in cipher, a reasonable amount in clear (not forthcoming), and an example of the current German setting instructions (also not forthcoming). With these it might be feasible to start the laborious mathematical task (they had no computers of any kind) of marking in at least a few of the connections between the maze of wires.

  Enigma could never be “solved” in the ordinary sense, but the millions of alphabets could be reduced to the few possible ones for each day, and these could be solved by trial and error. However, even to begin work it would be necessary (1) to read the setting instructions, which were given, as has been said, in letters, figures and colours; (2) to wait until the setting indicated that only the first rotor would be turning; this meant that though every letter enciphered had to pass through rotors two and three, these last two rotors at least would be standing still; (3) to get hold of messages sent while only the first rotor was turning, and their complete equivalent in clear; and (4) to wait again until the same letter occurred twice in the first twenty-six letters of the cipher text. For example, if the clear text message started with the word AACHEN, the first A might register as Z, and C might also appear as Z, although the first rotor would have turned two spaces, producing a completely different alphabet.

  This lucky find could be expressed as two equations by letting numbers stand for letters (A=1, B=2, C = 3, etc.,) letting h(n) be the unknown displacement of the nth letter on the first rotor (the displacement is the number of places in the alphabet which the letter gains or loses as it passes from one contact to another), and letting k be the displacement on the last two rotors (which must be the same in each case since these rotors have not moved and the output was in both cases):

  1 + h(1) + k = 26

  3 + h(5) + k = 26

  Here, h(5) occurs instead of h(3) in the second equation because the rotor has moved on two places between the encipherment of A and C, and for convenience it has been assumed that the first rotor starts at setting A. Subtracting one equation from the other, this gives

  h(1)−h(5)=2.

  Information of this kind will help the cryptographer to work out, in time, all the contacts on the first rotor. But even this first step
towards recovering the arrangement of even one rotor is impossible unless he knows the order of the letters on the keyboard. The order makes no difference at all to the operator, but considerable difference to the solver. A random keyboard (on which, for instance, A might be not the first but the twentieth letter) would mean adding another factor into the equation so that it would take very much longer to get a simple result like h(1) – h(5) = 2. Once, however, he knows the order of the keyboard he can make allowance for it, and proceed as before.

  The Enigma keyboard which the Germans were using was, Dilly thought, certain to be random, as this would make for much greater security. But the different ways of arranging twenty-six letters come to 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000.

  The Foreign Office Communications Department were not the only, or even the first people in Europe who were trying to solve Enigma. The Germans had been manufacturing their version (called the glühende Chiffriermaschine because of its glowing lamps) since 1926, and they had tried it out on manoeuvres on the Polish border. Some of the early models proved unreliable. Polish interceptor groups frequently recorded Maschine defekt and even Maschine kaput. Others, particularly Mark 2, were too heavy for rapid transport. Eventually the Germans reverted to Mark 1, combined with an automatic device which printed the signal either in clear or in code.

  The liaison between the Poles and the French Deuxième Bureau in the years before the war was excellent. Here the key figure was General Gustave Bertrand, then a major with the Services de Renseignement, who was particularly well able to get on with these brilliant, suffering and heroic people. For their sake, he admitted, he readily sacrificed his health, drinking away long evenings with them, bottle for bottle, when vodka was the only remedy for despair. London was not in the confidence of the Poles, but Bertrand, who had a delicate sense of honour, was prepared to share any results they might give him with his British allies. He had, also, the advantage of a defector from the Chistelle (the cipher room at the German Defence Ministry), whose motive was very simple—money—and who was able to supply a number of valuable documents; among them were the servicing instructions and manuals for the machines, and tables showing the changes of key, which at that time operated monthly. When, in 1934, this useful agent lost his job, Bertrand knew a good deal about Enigma, but not the ventre de machine, its exact internal construction. His next idea was to obtain a list of all the workers in the German firms manufacturing Enigma, in the hope of finding a contact, but this proved impossible. The machines were assembled in special workshops under the direct supervision of the Abwehr. Furthermore, in September 1938 the Nazis modified the system by introducing interchangeable rotors.