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8.1: Identity: first blooms in creativity

It is time for me to stand back a pace in an attempt to perceive the type of individual that was emerging in me. And as a preface to this attempt, I shall quote from some of my school reports that had been sent to my parents during the past year - starting with some excerpts from what Jaques had to say.

...........In addition to his work, at which he is always conscientious, he has had a number of activities, all of which have made testing calls on his nervous energy..... All this made considerable demands upon a boy who is growing fast, and who is rather highly strung. I think he has survived it all very well, and with much credit to himself..... I have no complaints at all of his good will, or of his very well-mannered behaviour..... He is very conscientious over the smallest detail.

Now I turn to a report from Mr Nickson, who was preparing me in Classics for my School Certificate, over two separate halves.

Weymouth seems full of vital energy, which should be turned to good account when he stops growing and settles down into a stride. At present he is slightly unsure of himself in school, being jumpy - like a nervous thoroughbred - and just a trifle uncertain both in work and behaviour. But apart from occasional feints at the daïs and displays of shadow boxing, he was amenable and showed goodwill and interest. I am satisfied that he tried quite hard; and although I would not call him by any means scholarly nor, at present, at all literary, he is able in a general way, and decidedly intelligent. He may be hurt when I say that he is not literary, for he obviously enjoys writing and has a wealth of vocabulary and metaphor at his command. But much of what he writes is turgid rubbish, and full of the oddest solecisms of grammar and spelling. He must prune his writings severely, and be critical of them when they are done. At present they just tumble out higgledy-piggledy in riotous disorder. But they have possibilities. On the whole I was very pleased with him, and thought him an interesting and lively boy.

He is unsteady, excitable, and almost nervy. He is also rather lacking in judgement. He needs to pause, take a deep breath, and think hard before he acts or speaks or writes. Somehow I felt that I ought to have a dose of bromide to administer to him at appropriate intervals, to steady him down. But I can't help liking him.

And now another Classics report, but this time from Mr Cruso.

A thoughtful, steady, thoroughly nice boy..... I particularly like his Sunday Questions, [essays on the subject of religion] which showed a very lively imagination and a real ability to write good English. Just occasionally I felt that a little compression would have improved them, but I was grateful for so much sincerity so well expressed.....

Graham-Campbell's History report.

He confirmed my last half's impression that he was an able boy, with a genuine interest in the literary side of this subject. At present he is a little longwinded, but what he has to say is always worth reading, and is always written in a telling and rather different way.

It helps to understand some aspects of these reports if I stress that I was someone who had been slow to develop physically. Even where stature was concerned, I had only been slightly above average height when I first arrived at Eton, but I was shooting up now: even catching up on those who had surpassed me. The advent of puberty had certainly been retarded, and it was only now that I might dare to suggest that my voice was really breaking; and none too noticeably at that. In fact I have always remained with the capacity to sing falsetto - as a party trick. And the unintended wobbles in voice pitch were to become an embarrassing reminder of my bodily immaturity for several years to come.

I was in fact quite notable for my baby-faced complexion, almost completely devoid of shag-spots - as the pimples of acne were called at Eton. (Shagging being one of their colloquial terms for masturbation.) Some of my peer group had been shaving regularly for quite some time, but my own first signs of any proper hair on my chin had been proudly proclaimed in a letter home during the previous summer - when I was just seventeen that is to say.

I was feeling my chin during a division and suddenly discovered that I was stroking a beard. After div I investigated and found that on separate places, there were four large beard hairs. I have cut them off and I am sticking them at the top right hand corner of this sheet. A great treasure indeed, and they deserve to be stored away in one of those priceless snuff-boxes at Longleat.

Notwithstanding all the knocks that I had received over the recent years, it is still probably true to say that I maintained an unwilting good opinion of myself. My self-esteem was unbroken, without me feeling it necessary to justify such inner regard in any detail. It was Iain Graham-Wigan who once tried to goad me into defining what he took to be my innate sense of superiority, pointing out (quite accurately) that I couldn't very well make claim to being more intelligent than he. So what could there be which might justify my notions?

I felt disconcerted by his line of questioning, to which I had no adequate answers to offer. I think that what he may have been trying to extract from me was an assertion that I regarded myself as being of the material from which true genius emerges - a piece of conceit which he would then have demolished with derision. But in retrospect, I might indicate an area of personality where I feel that my development may have been in advance of others. And this was in my sense of relationship with the Totality of existence: a religious theme upon which I was to evolve very slowly within my heart. Let it suffice at this juncture to say that I vaguely sensed gaps in the sheer humanity of some others.

But I think what was finally coming into full flower within my personality was a youthful sensitivity and sensibility. I had displayed both talent and potential in life, but I had also experienced a bullying suppression. I was a trifle withdrawn now perhaps, but was gently putting out my feelers as to where I could develop without giving offence.

Within a more traditional conception of religion, I had proven - in the Distinction I had obtained for Divinity in my School Certificate - that I was ahead of my years in comprehending what Christianity was all about. But Henry was always so derogatory on the whole subject of Jesus Christ, (almost as if expurgating some excessive spark of reverence on the subject, from his youth,) that I was now veering towards a position of agnosticism. Even here however, I came up against Henry's dictum that agnostics were despicable - because all it meant was that they didn't know their own minds. Despite his leanings towards Hindu mysticism, he still proclaimed himself to be an atheist, and was apt to tell the recent tale of how Mr Blair, the local vicar whom he had befriended, had brought over some Oxford don to dine with him at Sturford. This was C.S.Lewis, who had launched into their post-prandial conversation by saying: "Now look here Bath, I hear that you're an atheist....." "But I stuck to my guns!" Henry would proudly declare.

Although he didn't believe in the Christian conception of God, Henry remained convinced that life was preordained according to the principles of astrology; and I was doing my best to treat all this as credible. Many of my letters home bear witness to this. But I was also aware how others - like Robin Campbell - dismissed such ideas as mere superstition. So I took mental note how perhaps I should not be following my father blindly up this alley.

Turning to my views upon other matters, there had been some faint trace of the way I thought from my account, in letters, of the house debates. There were not a lot of these at m'tutor's, but all Upper boys had to attend, and sometimes were obliged to speak as well - however briefly. The first one I had attended had been on the motion:

One crowded hour of glorious fame

is worth an age without a name.

I had been fifteen at the time, and I had relied upon hearing what Henry had to say on the subject before deciding that I too supported the motion - which was defeated incidentally. And my subsequent letter home indicates just how inadequate I was at public speaking. "I'm afraid I did um and ah terrifically, as I could not remember what points I had to say next." But I made little progress in this art during my schooldays, which was much in contrast to others - like John Ganzoni, who always displayed an ease in verbal expression.

It was only natural that my political views should be right wing, since liberal ideas were seldom expressed at Sturford. Nor at Eton for that matter, although there were some rare individuals - like John Mander, whose father was a former Liberal M.P. who had switched to Labour. He made me uncomfortably aware, in some of his comments, that I might not have been brought up to comprehend much about underprivileged situations.

Now that I was a History specialist, my studies came under the direction of a tutor in that field; and the one I had chosen was Mr David Graham-Campbell, whose brother Ronald was in fact my doctor at home. He was a dour Scotsman prone to apoplectic silences, but he was attentive to the needs of my personal development, and we got on well with one another throughout this final year of my time at Eton. He was to write thus about me, in his school report at the end of my first half as a History Specialist.

As a boy, I liked all that I saw of him - his politeness, his gaiety, and his general friendliness.

Sharing the sessions of Private Business with me was Dickon Lumley, who was a Viscount like myself; (in his case the son the Earl of Scarborough.) Graham-Campbell decided it was in our interests to pay a visit to the House of Lords, just to acquaint ourselves with what our future duties might be. After viewing from the gallery a session of Question Time in the Commons, we moved over to the Lords - where Dickon and myself indulged ourselves by sitting self-consciously on the steps of the throne: (a privilege to which our rank entitled us.) But all I can truly remember is my embarrassment when I came to suspect that I was seated there on the governmental side of the throne, (which is to say in evident support of the Labour party,) whereas Dickon had firmly implanted himself to the right.

Graham-Campbell had been prompted to take us up to see the workings of Westminster, in part, by the performance I had given within his History class in what was billed as a motion of censor upon Lord Beaconsfield taking place on March 1st 1880. We had all indicated upon which side of the debate we might wish to speak, and I had been designated a role as the Tory minister of Foreign Affairs. I was reading my speech from the script I had prepared, and which I subsequently sent on to Henry - for his commendation. But it stands perhaps (to my current embarrassment) as the closest indication of how my political values then stood. So I shall quote from it at length.

The Liberal motion before the house was that: "We have no confidence in an administration which has a record of blundering advance, and timid withdrawal alike, in domestic, imperial and foreign affairs. We call upon Lord Beaconsfield to resign, that a new administration may be formed, pledged to a policy of peace, retrenchment and reform: or in short - to Liberalism." And when it came to the turn of the Tory Foreign Minister to answer such charges, I delivered the following speech.

Mr Speaker, Gentlemen - and Liberals,

In the past England was the leading figure in Europe, and the most respected nation in the world. Why? Because of her strong foreign policy. France became subservient to her. And for what reason? When Napoleon tried to intimidate her, he met an iron wall. But gentlemen, what would have happened if the cabinet had consisted of a swarm of pacifist puff-adders - like those which are now hissing for the appeasement of the minor powers? Napoleon would have mounted the ladder to world domination before a single finger had been raised to squash him down.

Do you think that Great Britain can continue to reign supreme in the world, if every paltry princeling has to be approached on all fours, in quest for an amicable agreement? Do you think she can be great when she ranks herself upon the level of her subordinates?

Mr Gladstone and his associates are whimpering for the dis-annexation of the Transvaal. And for the sole reason that the Transvaal doesn't like to be annexed! Gentlemen, I ask you to look at it in an unbiased light. Who will be worse off with the annexation? The Boers? On the contrary, they will find themselves protected by an iron will. Moreover they will be governed by British justice - which is universally acknowledged as being unsurpassed within the history of the universe.

Then perhaps you might argue that it is the British who are the worse off from this act of annexation? No gentlemen! Quite apart from the fact that it will open up new fields for our colonization, it will draw the attention of our most ambitious speculators and pioneers. Make no mistake gentlemen! Already the town of Kimberly, which lies near the border, has learnt that there is wealth to be found. Within ten years we will sneer at mere gold, when our eyes have feasted upon all the diamonds to be mined within the Transvaal - unless of course you allow Mr Gladstone to take office.

I can prophesy gentlemen, with reasonable certainty, that if our foreign policy is to fall into the hands of some bickering baboon like Mr Gladstone, then Britain will sink: slowly at first, but eventually with speed. Another star will rise to take our place. Perhaps it will be Prussia, perhaps America, perhaps Japan; but the identity of the successor is immaterial. Wherever justice lies with us, we must be firm. That way, and by that way alone, we can cement the foundations of our past glory. But discard at once the idea that Mr Gladstone can be firm. He does not possess an ounce of steel within his whole body.

He quibbles about what he calls the miserable failure of our foreign policy - overlooking of course our brilliant purchase of the Suez canal shares. He harps on the trouble in the Balkans. But in doing so, he turns mud-clogged eyes to the fact that, everywhere Lord Beaconsfield tries to act, an objection in the House, or a change of government reduces it all into a stalemate. We desired to set up a British military attachment to Turkey - so as to supervise its interior reformation. But Mr Gladstone's bunglers had to dissolve the military significance of this attachment, so that it was turned into a tit's nest of dumb diplomatic officials. The chance was gone. Mr Gladstone had ruined it. Yet ever after, he has been trying to throw the blame on Lord Beaconsfield.

Mr Gladstone simpers that he wants peace. What pray, would he have done with the Andrassy note? What with the Berlin Memorandum? He would have held his tongue. But what did Lord Beaconsfield do? Did he make "blundering advances"? No gentlemen, the tables are turned on you! He brought you out of the crisis without bloodshed. He achieved what you have always longed to achieve - in that he brought you back peace. No, he did more than that. He brought you back peace with honour. It is high time that you recede into your shells: you who only two years after the great event are accusing him of "timid withdrawal"!

I come now to the main question of the debate. How can we guarantee the continuity of this supremacy which has so far marked our history, and which is vital to the survival of this island throne for our children and grandchildren? You say gentlemen, that we must give place to Mr Gladstone and his performing apes. I disagree! Let Mr Gladstone and experience some of his own medicine. Let him and his obstructive minions be turned out of Parliament - bag and baggage!

Graham-Campbell commented upon this performance in his report at the end of the half, to say: "It was an excellent piece of debating, and he spoke it as though he meant it." And no doubt I did at the time - in eagerness for my father's approval. But when reading my speech in retrospect, I can only reflect that it stands in evidence of just how much my political values have since changed.

Graham-Campbell was quite influential on my development over this period, largely in his selection of the subjects that we were to study in Private with him. He was soon to revive my interest in writing, for example. But his comments on my literary style in this first half when I had him both as my Classical tutor, and as the beak I was up to in History, are worth quoting.

Weymouth writes fluently and often picturesquely. In due course this will stand him in very good stead, but at the moment his facility is apt to distract him from the proper business of a historian - the discovery of facts - and thinking about them.

My faith in the idea that I might have literary talent had been somewhat shaken of late, for my efforts had been surpassed by those of friends - namely John Mander and Adam Fergusson, who had received honourable mentions over successive years, for their entries in the Eton poetry competition. My own entry had received no such praise, and I do not possess a copy now for me to comment upon its merits.

Then more recently, John and Adam had written a comedy on the subject of the ghosts in some Scottish baronial castle, assisting the resident family to throw it open to the public. I felt ashamed that I hadn't felt inspired to write such a story myself. And it put my nose out of joint to witness the praise with which their production was acclaimed - notwithstanding the fact that I was allotted a reasonably good part to play in it; (that of the ghost ancestor who had formerly been a Norman baron.) We all enjoyed the rehearsals and the ultimate applause; but I knew only too well that I had no real share in that glory.

While John and Adam had been writing their play, I too had been penning one of my own. I can recollect that it had few merits, being a murder story following far too closely on the theme of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers. When I gave it to Caroline to read, she remarked wryly that it was better than she had been expecting. All that Henry could find to say was that he admired my ability to think up different names for such a multitude of characters - when in point of fact I had picked them randomly from a telephone directory.

Despite the fact that I was lapsing behind them in creativity, I still thought of myself as a potential author, and I was soon trying my hand at short story writing. I shall only quote from one of the two I wrote during these Christmas holidays. It was entitled Blood. I do this because it reveals both the over-dramatisation which I then regarded as an essential part of literature, and for the naivety of my thoughts on love. It may also be trying to say something about my unrequited feelings for Nell Dunn, for we still paid the occasional visit to the Campbells' farm in Wiltshire; and the jealousy of course must have been inspired by Christopher.

It would seem that the hero is endeavouring to tell himself that the girl he loves isn't worthy of his passion. The story opens with him sitting despondently in the death cell, awaiting execution, while an exceedingly tactless warder sits talking to him. But when the subject of love is mentioned, the prisoner suddenly comes to life, declaiming on the experience which brought him to his present plight.

"I have experienced love. I experienced love when it was all one sea of blissful happiness, and when the infatuation gripped me so firmly that I thought I should die if I was torn for a second from the object of my affections. I experienced love when I lay for countless sleepless nights, brooding over the full horror of blood, and the realisation that the object of my love was merely a bright star which I could never reach...." He had risen to his feet in the height of his emotion, but now he sank back into his chair. "....And yet I am still in love. She was the most beautiful creature that nature could fashion. She wasn't mortal; she couldn't have been; she seemed to have all the pleasures and joys of nature wrapped up in her tender frame. And yet she was black to the very heart.

"For three years I worshipped her. I was prepared to kiss the very ground she walked on - if only it would bring for one moment a smile to her lips. For three years I was the happiest man alive, and would have laughed in the face of all life's troubles. But then I found out...." His voice trailed away in a tremor. "I found out that she was married!" he shouted.

This most dastardly deception almost brings on a nervous breakdown, for he has quite evidently - if marginally before his destiny - reached the end of his tether.

"For a week the seeds of jealousy, anguish and hate mingled in my heart and, by the end of that time, they erupted forth in full strength. I was powerless to resist. An inner spirit goaded me, and I obeyed. It wasn't me. I know it wasn't me. It was something far superior to me; something that knew my inner needs; something that realised that I just couldn't live without her."

Led on by his adulterous passion, he decides to visit her in the cottage where she and her husband dwell. But on arriving there, he finds evidence that there has been a fight. He assumes that the husband has been maltreating her, so in the role of Sir Galahad, he charges to the rescue.

"My hand went unconsciously to the steel knife lying concealed in my pocket. My fingers grasped convulsively round its hilt. I leapt to the stairs and sprang up them four at a time. I turned the knob of the bedroom door and flung it open. That was my first sight of blood. Blood was everywhere: on the bed, on the floor, on the walls. Blood was still flowing from his shattered skull. Blood was on her hands."

The story ends a bit lamely with my hero being marched off to join the ranks of those who have been wrongly hanged for a murder which they didn't commit. But in any case I put this story in an envelope and addressed it to the Strand Magazine. And a week or so later, I received my first ever rejection slip, which made me feel thoroughly dispirited.

If my literary talent was in the doldrums, I was encountering a greater appreciation for my endeavours in art. Daphne was at this time dabbling in paint, especially when we were down in Cornwall: still lifes, landscapes or portraits, but all of an amateurish quality which was not greatly admired, even by her friends. It was Caroline however, who had given me as a birthday present my first tubes of oil paint, along with a small painting palette. And this had prompted me, the previous summer, to complete a couple of fantasy paintings: one of a merman pursuing two mermaids, and the other of a crusader charging into battle with a group of Saracens.

But it was in the syllabus for my studies as a History specialist that I was now entitled to take a Special Subject; and in my case, I chose Art. I found quite rapidly that I was earning the commendation of my teachers, who were Wilfrid Blunt and Oliver Thomas. By the end of my very first half doing oil painting, I had produced amongst other things a self-portrait which is still given pride of place at Longleat, and I was just embarking upon a series of paintings where the influence of Renoir and Bonnard were to be discerned.

More than anyone else, it was the encouragement from Wilfrid Blunt which set me thinking more seriously about the possibility of painting as a profession. And he himself was prompted in such encouragement - as he informed me - by the praise bestowed upon my paintings when he saw them in the school's art exhibition, by no lesser an authority than Sir Kenneth Clark, whose son Colin was just a little younger than myself at Jaques's.

And it was Blunt who arranged for a group of us to go up to London, to be shown round the exhibition of French Impressionist paintings that was currently on display at Burlington House by his brother, Sir Anthony Blunt - who must at that time have been at the summit of his secret career in all the treachery of espionage. But of course, there was no suspicion of that with any of us at the time. I merely enjoyed the attention that he was giving me in my role, (which I believe Wilfrid had assigned to me,) as being Eton's most promising young artist. And I did come away from that exhibition with my appreciation of the Impressionists greatly enhanced.

Graham-Campbell too taking note of my potential development in one or other of the art domains. During Private, he was concerned to instruct me in architecture. But when it came to designing a house for him, I think he was surprised by the imprecision of my drawings and the general eccentricity of the outlay to each plan. So he switched me to another field of artistic interest, which was to test my potential as an art critic. And here I did far better. He had set me a thesis to write upon The Dutch painters: Rembrandt and Frans Hals. And I enjoyed doing this greatly. Graham-Campbell made these written comments at the end of it.

On the essay as a whole, I am very pleased indeed with it. You have given just enough biography to make it intelligible, but have not taken the easy course of copying out pages of it, which is of no interest. What you have done - and it is very rarely done - is to take the pictures and analyse them for yourself. You are of course, helped by the fact that you yourself paint; but even so, I consider this an exceptionally good piece of criticism for your first effort.

It is probably true to say that my sense of potential identity was just coming together at this time. Much of my life thereafter was a question of letting it take firmer shape. But in one particular sphere, I still had a long way to develop before my sense of identity was to be ready for definition. And I am here speaking about my political values.

There was a general election during the course of this half and, like the vast majority of Etonians, I was passionately espoused to the Conservative cause. The Labour landslide which had brought Atlee to power in 1945 was now reversed - although not quite sufficiently to put the Tories back in power. Labour was returned with a small majority, which we regarded as a sufficiently close finish to accredit the upper classes with a sense of moral victory. I remember the excitement while the situation still seemed to be in the balance, with all members of the Library cheering each Conservative gain. And we were encouraged to think that there was bound to be a second general election very shortly, when Britain's natural rulers would be restored to governmental office.