Among the other masters was Tom Brocklebank whose ‘difficulties’ we attributed to his once having become stuck near the summit of Everest; ‘Leggy’ Lambert, the Lower Master (later Vice Provost), who used his desk as a kennel during thunderstorms; and Babington Smith who marked our papers out of ten thousand instead of ten.
But there was one teacher I admired. Sydney Watson, our precentor and musical director, was afflicted with such an insistent stutter that some people who heard him utter his full name in public believed he had a knighthood. But his passion and zest, his sheer skill as a choral conductor, turned this terrible hesitation into eloquence. He was known to us as ‘Daddy Watson’ and, as he led us through the complexities of Haydn’s Creation, Bach’s St John Passion and Handel’s Messiah, through songs by Brahms and Vaughan Williams, Stanford and Parry, making the rough places plain, it seemed indeed as if he were our father and we, of the Eton College Musical Society, his family. The ECMS was the only society I joined, the one ‘team’ I played for. We sang in the evenings at a schoolroom in the Eton Wick Road. It had steeply-banked rows of desks up which Daddy Watson would leap and round which he strode, encouraging us, correcting us, explaining, expounding, exemplifying, sometimes tapping his baton to prevent us going off the rails, then urging us on again. I did not read music but, holding the sheets in front of me, I could see roughly where the notes went, could pick up a tune, follow a narrative; and so for some four years as treble, alto, tenor, bass, I belted it out, giving my best, feeling my best.
On Sunday afternoons, I used to sneak off to the Music Schools with Michael MacLeod. We weren’t really allowed into this building, not being proper music students, but no one minded us occupying a room with a piano if no one else needed it. Over some weeks, we ‘composed’ a piano duet that, beginning with a pastiche of chopsticks, went on for almost eight minutes. We were proud of this marathon, but having nothing more in our musical vocabulary to add, wisely forgot about it when we returned from our holidays. But my recollection of it now, when so much else is forgotten, marks it as an emergence from my musical beginnings in the garage at Norhurst. Certainly Daddy Watson gave me a wider liking for music, and after fifty years or so I can still summon up a few of the songs we sang, and startle friends with an odd line or two.
I had been at Eton for two or three years when one night, sometime after midnight, Purple Parr opened the door of my room as I lay sleeping and told me to come to his drawing-room. As I put on my slippers and dressing-gown I remember wondering whether one of my parents had died. But when, a few minutes later, I stood before him, Parr began asking me in a solemn voice a series of innocuous, almost meaningless questions. Who were my friends? Did I have friends in other houses? When did they come and see me? Or did I go to their houses? And so on. After half-an-hour of this surreal interrogation, he told me I might return to my room. When I woke next morning, I thought perhaps it had been a dream. But I soon found that a number of other boys had been taken from their beds and similarly questioned. What was happening, we concluded, was a homosexual inquisition or purge.
Was there homosexuality at Eton? Well, of course there was. Romantic passion and amorous speculation hung in the valley atmosphere of the place, and seeped into our imaginations. With almost 1,400 teenage boys closeted together in some twenty-five houses, how could there not have been infatuations and intrigues, spiced with exciting rumours over who was ‘gone on’ whom? Boys exchanged signed photographs of one another as marks of favour, and would send each other complex paper knots containing confidential messages which were delivered from house to house by fags scampering through the streets. These running figures seemed to match the palpitating hearts, the breathless tension and suspense, of the correspondents. Our hours were steeped in vague delicious daydreams and pleasurable scuffles on the floor in the evenings that might turn at night into masturbatory fantasies. To all our emotions there was a rhythm that seemed to change with the changing seasons. In the schoolrooms we read poetry that, though filtered through sanctioned translations from dead languages, told of exquisite friendships and carried erotic signals from the past. But we were very much alive and curious as to how we might translate these sentimental stories into present-day adventures. Surely this, in addition to the taking down of Latin Unseen and the recital of gender rhymes, was part of our education? We wanted to live our literature for, as Cyril Connolly wrote in Enemies of Promise, ‘a schoolboy is a novelist too busy to write’.
In the scandalous twentieth-century novels of public school life, from Alec Waugh’s The Loom of Youth (1917) to Simon Raven’s Fielding Gray (1967), there is a potent homosexual ingredient, sometimes disguised, often unenacted, that is nevertheless sensationalised by athletic brilliance, or exploited by the system of fagging and the habit of boys legitimately beating younger boys (the very rare beatings by housemasters were interestingly called ‘screwings’ at Eton). There were, of course, tides of fashion in homosexuality (we never used the words gay and lesbian then), and to the general reader one period may seem saturated with it, another quite arid. But we rely on accounts which have been written either by some of nature’s celibates or by those who were very sexually aware. In earlier days, when some unmarried housemasters would bestow long kisses on tolerant boys in their rooms after lock-up, a general unawareness of sex may have made emotional life simpler. ‘Women did not play a large part on the Eton scene,’ concedes Tim Card in his survey of Eton from 1860 to 1990.
…It would seem that sex may have caused increased problems between the Wars… Most Housemasters were constantly on guard against any physical sexual activity… Boys were left in little doubt that they would be sacked… The adult world was still officially very hostile to homosexuality, but among the boys it was recognised that romantic friendships were natural.
Purple Parr sent my father a letter warning him that I should be careful of the company I kept. He must have written to a number of parents about this lurking peril of ‘keeping company’. Evidently something dramatic had happened and a hunt was on – I think one boy may have been sacked. This was something that must have taken place every few years. But my father was astonished. He braced himself to do his duty and informed me that homosexuality was ‘worse than...’ Here he paused, trying to be fair, yet still dramatic. ‘…Worse than burglary.’ I would like to think that he coined the phrase ‘buggery is worse than burglary’, but I cannot honestly say he did. It was all made more difficult for him by having to voice his dismay down the telephone while I was staying with my mother in London. I remember him whispering that during his time there had been ‘only one queer at Eton’ and he was pretty odd – no one had liked him. My father was whispering because he did not want my stepfather to hear of this scandal, and his whisper made everything sound additionally dark and dreadful. In Norhurst style, he continued lowering his voice on the telephone until it grew hard to pick up his plunging syllables. What he had to say, as it became more buried, also became more infernal. He had instructed my mother not to breathe a word of this affair to her husband, but in order to bring home to me the gravity of it all, he also instructed her not to take me to the cinema while I was in London. My mother, however, was unable to take Parr’s letter quite so seriously. For about thirty seconds or so she attempted to show concern, then we went off to see a film together (with me swearing never to breathe a word of this to my father).
We were all in a muddle because no one had decided how much sex-life should be allowed between boys of fourteen to eighteen (many of whom without sisters knew no girls at all). In fact nothing had really changed at Eton in the thirty years since Cyril Connolly was there. In 1920 he had found himself among those boys who were floundering through on ‘surreptitious experiments’ that were suspected by the masters and would have led to his expulsion if they had been actually discovered. Eton, he came to believe, encouraged ‘continence officially and homosexuality by implication’. This tantalising suspension of the emotions, with all its intensity and irresoluti
on, fixed many public schoolboys in perpetual adolescence.
Nothing had changed: but much was about to change. Things simply could not go on like this. Those of us who left Eton in or around 1953 were impatient for the better life that was to begin ten years later ‘between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first L.P.’. Though this change came a bit late for us, our impatience was, I like to think, a necessary preparation for this change, a hammering at the door.
Though midnight interrogations and solemn letters were high points of anxiety, my main anxiety over the first three years at Eton was figuring out how the place worked. The streets were busy with boys hurrying from one place to another as if they instinctively understood the choreography of the system. Perhaps I too looked like this as I walked along. But I had great difficulty finding out, keeping up, arriving at; and for years afterwards I was afflicted with exhausting nightmares of following people and losing them, of failing to reach some destination and never discovering what it had been. When Purple Parr, making his amphibious progress through the damp corridors, glided into my room one evening to describe his shame at having a Captain of Games who apparently played no games, I was sympathetic but could not bring myself to explain that I did not quite know how these games were arranged, or even sometimes where they were played. No wonder, as Griffy Philipps observed, I looked haggard.
But in my last year I found there were some blissful advantages to this ignorance. For if I was not quite all there, as it were, perhaps I would not be noticed; and if no one noticed me, then I was free to do as I liked; and if I did what I liked surely my anxieties would evaporate. And they did. There were penalties to be paid for this style. If you affected a forgetful air, you soon found yourself forgetting things you would have preferred to remember. But as a way of avoiding trouble it seemed to suit me well enough, though it meant I avoided other things too.
At the beginning of one half in my last year a boy I had known at Scaitcliffe, Nicky Winter, came to see me. He told me that he had suggested my name for ‘Pop’, the élite Eton society to which my Uncle Kenneth had belonged. No one, he was able to report, had a word to say against me. In fact, no one had anything to say at all. Between legendary appearances on the squash court, I seemed to disappear and was unknown. However, if I would put myself about a bit, Nicky Winter said, and make some effort, he might perhaps get me in at the next election. It was a kind gesture and I was tempted to do something about it. But I found that I was unable to do anything. It was as if I were already programmed for invisibility and could not reverse the process.
There were to be other symptoms of this process, such as the vanishing of blatant facts and events. I have no idea where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated or Queen Elizabeth crowned; I do not remember my army number; I do not know what examinations I passed or failed at school. Of course I could find out about the exams, but perhaps the truth is better conveyed by not doing so. For I have never been questioned about my qualifications and nothing in my career has depended on them. I do remember that I had the choice of going up to either Oxford or Cambridge (though I cannot recall to which colleges), and that this was partly based on interviews.
My one anxiety during this last year at Eton was how to escape my father’s generous plans for me. I simply did not want to be a plasma-physicist. During the holidays, I had continued my intermittent and alternative education at Maidenhead Public Library and become convinced that I was more at home in the arts. One evening at Norhurst I tackled my father, blurting out that I could not go up to university and read science – I really had no talent for it. He gave a long sigh and entered the battle. We argued quite violently into the early morning, and my father, by brute force of speech, appeared to demolish my carefully-prepared position – though I continued to defend it with desperate obstinacy.
Much of what my father said was true. Many people had made sacrifices to send me to Eton, he reminded me, and now I was proposing to throw it all away. Very well. He could not stop me. But perhaps I would be kind enough to inform him what I was going to do – other than live off other people all my life. There was, of course, one practical alternative open to me, and it was an index of my thoughtlessness that I had not mentioned it. He was referring to the Rajmai Tea Company. This was a fine business, he would not deny that. But if I wanted to go in that direction it would mean my travelling out to Assam and starting at the foot of the ladder. Did I have the guts for this? Did I have any guts at all? If I had he would do everything in his power to help me. He would have a word with my grandfather in the morning and set the wheels in motion. I was lucky. Not every boy had a second chance like this. I had only to say the word. When I mentioned that I had been tentatively thinking of taking up writing, my father sat back and laughed. It was not a happy sound. No one, he assured me, would prevent me writing. How could they? My evenings and weekends on the tea plantations of Assam would be my own, just as my school holidays had been. Perhaps I already had some masterpiece in my pocket. He would very much like to read it. He really would. Meanwhile we had better come down from ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’.
I hardly slept that night and felt wretched in the morning. But my father, who had been so triumphant in the night, also looked drained. His tone was now altogether different. He told me that he had hit on a solution to the problem. If I could argue so persistently why shouldn’t I take up a profession that paid me to argue? He meant the law. Many of the Holroyds had been lawyers, so perhaps their genes were shaping my destiny. I had probably left it too late to read law at university, but I could become articled to a firm of solicitors. He knew some solicitors in Windsor and would make inquiries if that was what I wanted. The relief between us was palpable, and I welcomed his suggestion gratefully. It would mean postponement of my National Service, but that was no disincentive. I had little desire to go to university because I had little notion of what life there might be like. In any event, it seemed beyond my range. What would I do there? I was not attracted to the idea of reading Classics; I had never heard of the humanities; and besides my father would certainly not have paid anything to see me waste my time on such subjects. Later, it seemed to me, I had been shut out of Eden and that everyone at university was clever and in love, and the sun always shone there. Later still, I reacted from this sentiment and congratulated myself on the advantages of having so little to unlearn. Now, I see the advantages and disadvantages as more evenly spread.
There was a strange postscript to our night of argument and morning of reconciliation. For, although my father had dominated the agenda, one of its eventual consequences was to be our collaboration on a history of the world in verse – which really was entering ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’.
For the last few months of my time at Eton I left my dead frog in its formaldehyde haze and the bunsen burners with their orange and blue flames, left my logarithmic tables and blackboard algebra. But what was to replace them? I asked Purple Parr whether I could study English Literature. There were not many boys who did this at Eton and Parr, not liking to take the risk, shook his head. It would hardly be appropriate, he thought. I had heard there was a subject called Psychology and I asked him about my chances there, which gave him the opportunity of explaining that I didn’t have the brain for it. Eventually it was decided that I should start Spanish (and resume French) in my last half. From this new language I retain just one phrase, ‘Que lástima!’, which sums it up.
But it was during this last half that I came across a genuine intuitive teacher among the masters. This was Peter Spanoghe, a name that does not appear in the volumes I have read about Eton. He was not one of those caricatures, like ‘Bloody Bill’ and ‘Hojo’, garnished with stale school jokes. There is no obituary of him in the Eton Chronicle, and none of the Head Master’s files of that time survive. Nothing exists about him beyond a note that he arrived in 1934 and taught German and French. Yet he was a remarkable man. He lived in Willowbrook, was married to a beautiful woman in a wheelchair, was himself pa
rtly disabled and walked with a pronounced limp. He was nevertheless one of the most active people in the school. He taught me French – and suddenly I was top of the form. Spanoghe knew no boundaries and we moved easily between French and English literature, from the past into the present and back again. Before this, French had been taught to me as a dead language; English was presented as a set of grammatical rules and obstacles; history a procession of dates and battles, kings and treatises. Spanoghe changed all that. He was quick-witted and made it all fun, made it easy. Somehow he engaged me in the subject so that my feelings were involved, I came alive and no longer felt slow. This was the magic of teaching, and no sooner had I glimpsed it than it was time for me to leave.
I left Eton at the end of 1953, and Peter Spanoghe himself was to leave a year later. I heard a rumour that he was involved in an affair with some girl and I was told that Pamela Spanoghe was divorcing him. Eton was still ludicrously sensitive about such matters (only ten years before, the Provost had informed a housemaster who married the innocent party in a divorce case, and whom he had met only after the divorce, that he was a habitual adulterer). I caught sight of Spanoghe one more time, at a delicatessen in Chelsea during the mid-fifties, but was stupidly too shy to go up and thank him. He must be long dead now. Looking through the telephone book, however, I see there is a P. Spanoghe listed as living in Chelsea still, and suddenly it becomes a matter of urgency to contact him. I telephone: but there is no answer. Then I write. But I am too late. He died a few months earlier, his widow tells me, and so I have missed him again.
Basil Street Blues Page 19
