Read A Very Private Celebrity Online
Authors: Hugh Purcell
A Very Private Celebrity (3 page)
To brawn may be added a big head, according to the Busby House ledger of 1931: ‘JF has plenty of brains and common sense but is inclined to that opinion himself, which alienates his elders.’ His classroom achievements were high though not uniform. Records show that his mathematics results were truly abysmal in his early years, for he obtained nought out of 100 in two exams – a fact he was inclined to boast about later on. Perhaps he made up for this by reading
extensively. He said in later years that Edward Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
and George Bernard Shaw’s plays had helped form his political views – a tribute to Westminster’s encouragement of self-education.
It was Dr Costley-White who revived rowing (‘water’ in the school slang) and this is how the young Freeman got to know him. His obituary in
The Times
centred on his Christian faith: ‘Costley-White was a man of deep religious convictions, which permeated all his work. He was a forceful and fluent preacher; he had a keen and active mind and was a lover of music, a subject he did much to encourage at Westminster.’ He left the school to become a distinguished Church of England clergyman. Since Freeman later acknowledged his debt to his former headmaster, the question arises as to whether this influence extended to Freeman’s faith too.
The answer must be ‘no’. The Christian religion (Church of England) was routine at Westminster, and the fifteen-year-old Freeman submitted to Confirmation as a
rite de passage
, administered to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He recalled feeling the weight of the ‘apostolic hands’ on his head and noted that they trembled. Instead of accepting this as a transmission of the Holy Spirit, he remembered thinking: ‘The old boy’s not long for this world.’ Nor was he: the Archbishop died a few months later in 1930.
Although Freeman felt no confirmation of faith as a result of this experience, nor did he feel indifference. Years later, he told his High Anglican friend Tom Driberg that although he lacked ‘the gift of faith’, he ‘had no difficulty in doing anything officially expected in this field’. Perhaps sympathetic agnosticism summed up his attitude, or was it just the relaxed tolerance that stemmed from Westminster? Incidentally, his mother was a regular churchgoer, though his father was ‘a total agnostic’. Additionally, Freeman’s third wife was
a Catholic, so all three of their children were baptised as Catholics, with his approval.
In later years he showed respect towards other people’s Christian beliefs. He wrote in the
New Statesman
in 1963:
I’ve always been intrigued by (and respectful of) the views of Christian socialists. Their essential belief, after all, receives much countenance from the Gospels – though precious little from the churches – and the notion of the equality of men before God is profoundly attractive and the very foundation of the respect for individuals which should be the purpose of socialist morality.
The Gospels appealed to him much more than the conservatism of the Church of England:
Tranquilla Non Movere
should be its motto, he wrote on another occasion.
3
It was a feature of public schools at this time, and for at least thirty years afterwards, that the school prefects had more authority and status than the assistant masters. For example, at many schools the prefects could administer corporal punishment, while the teachers could not. This odd inversion went back to Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby 100 years before, whose ‘praeposter’ system (literally ‘placed before’) installed the senior boys as the custodians of discipline, subject only to his control. The tradition was tellingly satirised by Lindsay Anderson’s film
If
… (1968), in which it led to a violent school insurrection that must appeal to the fantasies of public school boys whenever they watch it. It was also common practice for the head of house to write a confidential ledger about his term of office, open only to his successors. The Busby House ledger of Westminster School for 1932–33 (now open to researchers) gave me the first insight into the private world of John Freeman.
What is more personal and unique than handwriting? Freeman’s
changed little over seventy years and it is instantly distinctive. It is firm, fluent, but notably unformed, as though he was not interested in what it looked like, only in what he wrote. It is self-confident and regular, more administrative than creative. Seeking to open up this most private of individuals, I sent samples of his handwriting from different eras to a professional graphologist for her interpretation. She knew nothing about John Freeman, other than his autograph, so her analysis was perceptive. In summary:
A love of adventure, particularly in the sphere of competitive achievement. His constant need to be active, though, could cause him to feel restless. Kind and friendly with family and close friends, but with acquaintances and business colleagues unlikely to reveal feelings. Sensitive to criticism but unlikely to express emotion.
A compulsive need to achieve but an absence of warmth. Dispassionate, he experiences life as an onlooker. Socially likes to be correct, has charm at his disposal but is not pliable. Thinks for himself and takes a stand on principles. Egotistical, he feels himself to be special – above others. Strong leadership qualities, works well under pressure and appears not to suffer from stress. Works systematically, a good organiser, thrives on difficult assignments and is easily bored. An intelligent person with sharpness and speed of thought, keen perception that enables him to arrive at solutions quickly.
The overall tone of Freeman’s ledger entries is one of authority. Freeman could have been the housemaster of Busby’s – not that he had any time for Busby’s actual housemaster: ‘Hilary is the worst housemaster I ever came across or heard of and his wife in my opinion is an unpleasant, snobbish and silly woman.’ He dismissed the outgoing matron as ‘an inefficient old bitch’, thus showing an earthy expression
that did not desert him with the years. No one could accuse him of misogyny, however: ‘The new woman is a perfect jewel. I hope future generations of Busbyites will value her as highly as we do.’ Bearing in mind his affair with the under-matron, I wonder whether the value he placed was more personal.
Freeman’s intentions as head of house were to implement the philosophy of the headmaster. His approach was almost paternal:
I have done as much as I can to stimulate interest in the debating society and the League of Nations union. Intelligent opinion is more important than achievement at games … I am convinced that the Corps (the OTC) is a bad and unnecessary institution. I have decided to abolish personal fagging, which I consider to be an idiocy. Fags should be treated like decent human beings and if this had happened before then the house would have been much happier.
Reading this, I had to remind myself that Freeman was still a boy at school, very much a teenager. Little wonder his girlfriends at Oxford said he was a grown-up among students, self-possessed and quietly arrogant.
In later years, Freeman said that abolishing personal fagging (the allocation of junior boys as virtual servants to their seniors) was his legacy to Westminster. He wrote the next term (Lent, 1933):
As indicated, I have abolished fagging and no harm has been done. There is no sign of juniors becoming uppish. Whether fagging implants a respect for authority I am doubtful! People in the Under report that life is more peaceful and pleasant and the standard of work and discipline is better than before. Incessant and useless petty punishments are futile for monitors and fags.
Freeman’s most prominent entry in the ledger concerns an event that ‘although it has no direct connection with the history of the house, may be worth recording’. History has proven him right:
On the evening of Tuesday 1 November [1932] a great army of hunger marchers attempted to force an entry into the House of Commons. These marchers had come to London from all parts of England and Scotland some days before and there had already been two demonstrations – one in Hyde Park, where a great deal of damage and injury had been done, and one of a more peaceful nature in Trafalgar Square. Then they requested that a deputation should be allowed to appear before the bar of the House of Commons. This request was foolishly refused with the result that about 10,000 unemployed assembled at Parliament Square. Strict orders were given that nobody from Westminster was to go outside Dean’s Yard. I went out alone to see what could be seen. After one or two truncheon charges the square was empty and the marchers were driven into the mouth of Victoria Street. A police barricade was thrown round with a Police HQ in the middle, from which Lord Trenchard directed operations by flashlight signals. As the crowd became confined between the Abbey railings and the Guildhall, it became rather ill tempered. However, under the control of Wal Harrington more serious rioting was avoided. All this time the crowd was being driven steadily along Victoria Street by mounted police. We heard a great deal of rioting in Great Smith Square, where rioters broke through the police cordon. All evening Dean’s Yard was used as a Police Reserve HQ with mounted police exercising their horses. It was all quite exciting.
At this point I was expecting to read that the school had ‘heard the voice of England’s forgotten people’. In fact, Freeman ends unpredictably:
‘But for the extreme tact and bravery of the police, the results might have been more serious – perhaps it’s a pity they weren’t.’ A successor head of Busby’s annotates in the margin: ‘Either a sadistic, snobbish or blatantly stupid point of view.’
Freeman probably wrote his ‘forgotten people’ epitaph in the Busby House magazine (as opposed to the ledger), which is missing from the library now, but was possibly available just after the war, when the journalist Anthony Howard, who used the quote in his newspaper profile of Freeman in 1961, was also head of Busby House. The image remains of young Freeman wandering around on his own in the midst of a very large-scale riot and watching the confrontation between desperate marchers and mounted police – a confrontation unequalled until the miners’ strike of the mid-1980s. It must have been a formative experience.
It was Freeman who revived the Busby magazine, writing in the ledger with unintended precocity: ‘I have sacked the old printer, found a new one, organised advertising and asked all old Busbyites to contribute. I am editing it myself as I am the most suitable person.’ He ends: ‘Looking back over the whole year, I can see that I had a very happy year as head of Busby’s. I honestly believe that the other members of the house enjoyed themselves too.’ There can be but few occasions in later years when Freeman wrote so unguardedly, but then he cannot have conceived of a biographer accessing his report seventy-five years later.
There follows a long break in the sequence of the ledger. A subsequent head of Busby’s accounted for it:
This is due entirely to J. H. Freeman, who, in spite of continuous demands from subsequent heads of house, to which he either turned a deaf ear or returned a vague promise, persisted in keeping the ledger. After five years of absence it was in danger of becoming a myth. The
ledger was eventually recovered by Hayward who visited Freeman several times at Oxford.
The missing years of the ledger could be taken as a metaphor for Freeman’s missing years at Oxford University.
John Horace Freeman, says the university register, was in residence as a Commoner at Brasenose College (1933–37), where he was awarded a third-class degree in Classics. To be specific, he was given a pass in Mods and a third in Greats, which was just better than a fail. The college magazine,
The Brazen Nose
, adds that he rowed for the first VIII during his first year. Apart from that entry, he may as well not have existed until he was awarded an honorary fellowship in 1969.
In later years he did nothing to dispel this reputation for undistinguished anonymity. He told Catherine that he went up to Oxford determined not to read another book, and he wasted his time gambling and drinking in order to spend his father’s money accordingly. This confessed dissipation led later friends like Norman MacKenzie (an assistant editor at the
New Statesman
1944–62) to wonder whether Freeman then and later had a wild streak that needed to be rigorously, not to say icily, controlled. ‘Quite possibly,’ said Catherine when I put this to her in 2003. ‘He’s capable of a furnace of feeling, which is why he tamps everything down and is so ultra-controlled.’
On 19 October 1935, the editor of
Cherwell
wrote a leader asking: ‘Is Oxford Degenerate?’ The author obviously thought so, and with good reason – which applied to Freeman as much as anybody else:
Ours is essentially a tragic generation. Born in the turmoil and bloodshed, the suicidal folly and the bestiality of a great war, passing our lives in the midst of the social and economic upheaval that resulted, we are likely to die prematurely in another and yet more violent conflict.
The security, the peace and the wealth, which might have been ours and which other generations before us have known, have been sacrificed on the altars of honour and national pride.
It is small wonder then if we are a degenerate and an embittered generation; small wonder that we at Oxford, more fully alive than most of our contemporaries to our situation, are branded as unmoral and unprincipled by our immediate predecessors.
A report in the
Gloucester Echo
of 9 April 1934 confirmed this image of the well-off, dissolute Freeman, one of the ‘gay young things’ of the era:
The Hon Henry Cecil of Stowlangtoft Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, younger brother of Lord Amherst of Hackney, who was injured in a motor car accident near Thetford, Norfolk, on Saturday, has recovered consciousness, and his condition today was comfortable. Mr Cecil was accompanied by a friend, Mr John Freeman, who was slightly injured.
They were lucky to escape. Their car crashed through a wire fence, turned a somersault, and landed upside down on the railway line 17 ft below. There was very little visibility at the time (early on Sunday morning) due to a mist. They had been returning from a dance at Euston Hall, the seat of the Duke of Grafton.