4.4: Sex: further homosexual development

Before turning my attention to my homosexual development over this period, I'll take a look at my emergent (if suppressed) heterosexual tendencies. For in retrospect, I am inclined to judge that I had been truly smitten with a love for my cousin Sally-Anne Vivian. I shall try to analyse this in greater depth.

The opportunities for developing my relationship with Sal had largely been lacking. But I remembered with emotion the way she had once meaningfully told me that I was her favourite cousin, and it seemed to me that, in all probability, this stated affinity between the two of us would inevitably flower into something more colourful yet - without even excluding the possibility of marriage. It was several years since we had expressed a particular liking for one another, and there was no real way of knowing if she still felt the same way towards myself, as I felt towards her.

I had taken the unwise step of confiding some element of my sentimental feelings towards Sal, to my friend Wiggy, during that term. I had said that I regarded this cousin to be my girl-friend, and had described what she was like to him. Perhaps one should never trust any emotional confidence to a `chief chum' in schooldays, but I had done so on this occasion, and I lived to regret it in that he slipped the information to those in the school who relished the opportunity of poking fun at such an idea. And it might be said that there was considerable entertainment in the observation of me blushing to a deep beetroot colour whenever the name of Sally-Anne was maliciously thrown in my direction.

In one way or another, (and I suspect Caroline on this occasion,) the information that I regarded myself as enamoured with Sal then reached my parents. In Henry's eyes this was a huge joke. The very idea that I might have tender feelings for his niece was in some way regarded as a precocious absurdity. But there was an element of sadism too in his mirth. An idea that he was surrounded, in his pre-eminence, with lesser individuals who squirmed uncomfortably as he manipulated the manner in which values should be read from above their heads. It was not a question of whether he was right, or wrong, in such manipulation. It was an expression of his established superiority, which permitted him to praise or ridicule as he saw fit.

The setting was usually the dining-room at Sturford. The teasing about Sal would have begun, and then Daphne would cry out: "Oh the poor darling, he's blushing again!" And there was Henry roaring with laughter, and my siblings smirking in deference to my father's mirth. No one seemed to appreciate that my feelings were precarious in this direction. I felt the need to cover them up, if not to obliterate them completely.

So I shall now turn to my less inhibited development within the homosexual arena. Not that such practices were ever encouraged by Ali Barber, but during this period of the war years, when the communal morale had been severely shaken by the enlistment of so many teachers upon whom the school ethos had formerly depended, it could be said that a spirit of degeneracy had arisen. Ali had called the school together on more than one occasion to lecture us, awkwardly, upon "these lamentable games where one boy attempts to seize another boy by his private parts." We were told that all such miscreants were "loony fellows", but he never took the criticism much further than that.

We had all indulged in these games only marginally less than the generation a year or two older than ourselves and, under the tuition of [A], I had indulged in homosexual play in an ineffectual attempt to achieve orgasm. None of this involved a sentimental relationship, to compare with what I felt for Sal, but it was less inhibited in that the current school ethos permitted such horse play, inasmuch that it involved a healthy degree of disobedience to authority. There was no expression of disapproval for such practices within my immediate peer group, although I had always realised it was best to be discreet in the revelation of this side to my nature.

Let me now add to this a strain in homosexual development which derived specifically from Henry himself. On returning to Britain from Africa, he had been concerned to tidy up my sloppy appearance, and to improve upon the general standard of my cleanliness. (He always did maintain that Nanny Marks, despite all her acknowledged virtues, had permitted a certain working class squalor to reveal itself within the upbringing of his children.) His sons, but not his daughter - because she was the mother's concern - were now required to display to him their hands for inspection before a meal, with particular notice taken of whether we had properly scrubbed the dirt from beneath our fingernails. The hair also had to be well groomed during the holidays, smarmed into place with Brylcream - until one of his friends from Whites' club suggested that this particular brand was only popular with the lower classes: whereupon the prescribed lotion changed to that of Honey and Flowers, as was dispensed by one of the hairdressing saloons able to boast that they functioned by appointment to the royal family.

In his younger days, people might almost have described Henry as being `a very pretty man': a description which had indeed been similarly applied to our ancestor, the 1st Marquess. This might underscore an essential effeminacy of physical appearance, without the accompaniment of feminine mannerisms. But I may have found it difficult as a boy, to read correctly all that was being advocated to me in the expression of an appropriate image. I wished fervently to follow in my father's footsteps, and to become the sort of person who would merit his admiration and praise. But the elements of sartorial vanity which I was now picking up, were not altogether what my parents were intending, being more closely identified with what they scoffed at as `pansy'. I was finding it hard to distinguish where the borderline of such behaviour might be drawn.

For example, I imagined incorrectly that I was assuming something of Henry's inherent elegance when I picked up the mannerism of cocking my little finger upwards, when holding a cup of tea. (The idea had been suggested, humorously, by a conjuror when invited to perform at Ludgrove - poking fun as I now see it, at the elitist cult within his audience.) My concern to participate within the school's extra curriculum dancing classes, with some degree of excellence it might be added, also gave rise to teasing comment from some observers, including Cabbage Reed, and despite the fact that he regarded the spectacle of boys dancing with boys as in the best paedophile tradition of ancient Greece. And now that we stayed quite regularly at Claridges hotel, both at the beginning and the end of our holidays, it was Henry himself who arranged for me to sit beside him in their gentlemen's hairdressing saloon receiving a full-scale manicure of my fingernails.

The fun and games element in my homosexual development increased apace during my first term as a dormitory monitor, in which capacity the general tone of conduct was set by myself. Having kept those under me on a short leash, restraining their inclinations towards nocturnal games with the promise of full licence during the final week of the term, if only they would behave themselves prior to that, I fulfilled my side of the bargain by orchestrating an orgiastic scenario when their time finally arrived. I proclaimed marriages between different members of the dormitory, and we spent the entire week (or the nights thereof) practising what we assumed might be marital techniques in copulation. To the best of my knowledge, none of us achieved any orgasm, but this release from a former spirit of restraint was enjoyed by most of us, if not by all.

Then during the summer holidays of 1944, I was invited by [G], a boy slightly younger than myself, to come and stay with him to participate within a local cricket match, where one of the teams would include a large contingent of Ludgrovians. I had always liked [G]. We were regarded as the school's best dancers, for which reason if for no other we frequently selected one another as partners: myself as the male, and he as the female. But when it came to the question of sexual initiation, within that bedroom we shared in his house, he was certainly the more experienced of the two of us. I found myself participating in practices which I had never done before, and quite frankly enjoying them.

We experienced the indignity of getting caught in the act - by [F], who was not himself at Ludgrove, but who was to become an acquaintance later at Eton. He entered [G]'s bedroom without warning, and found us curled up in a heap together. His surprise was greater than our own however, and the cultural climate which the house might purvey was something for [G] himself to set. [F] was full of apologies initially, and then doing his utmost to make us believe that things like this happened also at his own school. It might then have appeared that the values which we ourselves held, represented the position of the majority. But I was to become aware later, at Eton, that this episode (amongst others I daresay), served to fuel the conviction, in some quarters, that I was of a predominantly homosexual disposition.

Once I had reached my thirteenth birthday, Henry performed what had probably been a family tradition since the days of the 1st Marquess, in suggesting that we go for a walk in the woods together, ostensibly to shoot rabbits, but in reality to deliver to me his official version of the facts of life. There had been an awkward lull over our conversation while theoretically searching for rabbits, which were reluctant to display themselves, and I had a shrewd idea of the motivation for his invitation long before the lecture was actually delivered. Once we were comfortably seated upon a felled tree up in King's Bottom, (an appropriately named plantation on the Longleat estate,) he imparted to me some of his paternal wisdom.

He discovered in what must have struck him as an anticlimax, that I had heard it all before. Now that he had got this far however, he decided to proceed with his instruction - just in case I had got some of the detail confused. I learnt for example, just how lucky I was that he'd had me circumcised as a baby. I would be protected from syphilis that way. Circumcised cocks were cleaner all round. Germs didn't linger in the foreskin. So I would never have to suffer the indignity of such an operation, as an adult, if I neglected to wash between my legs when out on safari in outlandish regions of the globe. "It happened to a sergeant in the Wiltshire Yeomanry when we were out in the desert, and his old man was in the most awful state by the time we got him into hospital." Henry also expressed his astonishment that the word `fuck' was already used in our smut talk at Ludgrove. "Nobody would have known that word in my schooldays."

Apparently his mother had taken upon herself the task of instructing him about what one should, and should not do in sexual behaviour. "She'd got it all wrong, you know. They thought in those days that masturbation would drive you insane. She told me that people who abused themselves ended up in a lunatic asylum. And she had me scared stiff that this was going to happen to me. But you needn't worry. I can assure you that it does nothing of the kind.... I don't care what else you do, but I expressly forbid you to bugger anyone. Buggery is disgusting. A filthy habit. It was something we picked up from the Bulgarians, I'm told - during one of the wars in that part of the world."

When I got back to Ludgrove for my final Summer term, I discovered that my sex talk with Henry stimulated much interest within the conversations which took place in the monitors' bathroom - a select and relatively private room for our privileged ablutions. We had known already about commonplace copulation, but the information on buggery was new to us. And the very fact of knowing about it tickled our curiosity. A particular friend and myself during these final terms were perhaps more adventurous than the others in experimenting to see if such indecency was in fact physically possible. But we didn't take it any further than that.

In contrast to the sex instruction which I had received from Henry, Ali Barber had his own contribution to make. His confidential chats with those boys who were on the brink of departure from the school were invariably anticipated with a fair amount of juvenile mirth. When my own turn came, he warned me that I might find myself, quite soon, with a painful feeling in my private parts. "Painful?" I queried. He gave me one of his long and languid looks. "Has it already happened to you?" he eventually enquired. "I think so, sir," I replied in all solemnity, without wishing to reveal that any actual orgasm was still unattainable, as far as I was concerned. Long and languidly, he gave the matter some further thought before finally stating: "When you feel like that, it's probably best if you leave your private parts alone." He didn't take the subject any further than that.

I indulged in one final homosexual week-end fling while I was at Ludgrove, and this was during the scouts' camp at Barewood. [D], whom I had previously instructed how to masturbate, was now in my Badgers' patrol, and at his suggestion, I invited him to share my tent with me. It could be that he felt quite sentimentally about his former sexual initiation, but in any case I enjoyed it too. We had quite a romp together, under the averted supervision of our homosexual scoutmaster.

Reverting to the subject of my heterosexual development, it should perhaps be noted that there had been far more freedom to develop in that other field. The very mention of Sally-Anne was enough to stir me into agonies of blushing, whereas the fun and games in homosexual intercourse went unchallenged - except in as much that there was a recognised risk attached to the commendable activity of flouting the dictates of those in authority. I accepted that women were to be regarded as a species apart, and that the true gentleman does nothing to upset their psychology. But it was my uncertainty as to what this psychology entailed which rendered me so vulnerable. I knew my mother and my sister very well of course. Even so the idea had been instilled in my brain that I should defer to their wishes, notwithstanding my own. And how should I know what other women might want? I had no confidence on how I should approach them. But I was relatively at ease with this my peer group of pubescent males.

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