The Day Gone By (30 page)

Quasi-ritualistic in form, controlled by accepted conventions and essentially conceived and written as a series of episodes divided by choruses: these characteristics are integral with and follow from the ground plan of the Greek amphitheatre itself -
and surrounding
The whole set-up constitutes a different dramatic world, the product of a different society and having a different purpose from that of Elizabethan, Jacobean or later European theatre. Most people in this country go through life without realizing this at all, or having any notion that ancient Greek drama is a vital part of the European cultural heritage. But Bradfieldians take this in through the pores - they can't help it. In the summer term when a Greek play is on, it dominates and takes priority over everything else. Most people, including those not connected with the play at all, become familiar with it. A lot of people watch it in rehearsal and go to see it twice or even three times.

Yet how authentic is it? The answer must be, only to a limited extent. For a start, we are not ancient Greeks and theirs is neither our society, our religion nor our language. Again, we don't know how spoken ancient Greek sounded, or what their music or choral dancing was like. How much sense of involvement had the audience? I'd say a lot. They clearly had the sense of being reft out of themselves (catharsis), for we are told that the audience were terrified by the Eumenides, that pregnant women miscarried and heaven knows what besides. I have always admired Kenneth Tynan's proposition that drama consists in showing what people do when they become desperate. This certainly applies to ancient Greek drama, but whatever transporting feelings the ancient Greeks had, we can't really share them today. The Bradfield Greek play, however beautifully and sensitively directed and performed, can only take place, as it were, in a glass case.
We
are not worshipping Dionysos.

And yet, to feel oneself part of this singular tradition of Bradfield; to know the great plays themselves -
Agamemnon, Antigone
(as Hiscocks would say, one of the most - er - significant works in western literature),
Philoctetes
(another such),
Alcestis, Oedipus Coloneus,
the
Bacchae, Hippolytus -
to have seen and heard these performed in what must be - the theatre itself included - at least a respectable approximation to the original performances - this can only be counted a tremendous benediction, something always to feel grateful for. A true sense of the form and nature of ancient Greek drama - a visual knowledge - this is the privilege and heritage of Bradfieldians. And it's just about unique to them, too, apart from a few classical masters, dons
et hoc genus.

I was lucky: there were two Greek plays during my time at Bradfield; the
Agamemnon
of 1934 and the
Oedipus Tyrannus
of 1937. Since then I have seen about thirteen Greek play productions -probably in total as many as any Englishman alive. They have had a lot of effect on my own work and on my way of thought as well.

In the bye years there was Shakespeare. Oh, wasn't there just! The Greek theatre, with its fine acoustics and enormous acting area, including the orchestra, the audience and even sometimes behind the audience, is ideal for this sort of drama. I'm sure Shakespeare would have loved it. As I have told, in 1936
Twelfth Night
was produced, and in 1938
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
This was my introduction to the latter play, and since then I have never seen a production informed by more sheer magic. The Oberon (Michael Halstead) was splendidly regal and sinister. The Puck (John Hopewell) seemed not human, a half-malicious gnome-creature of mischief and witchcraft. Peter Quince (Alan Helm) and Bottom (Tony Dallas) were side-splittingly funny. The whole story seemed to unfold under a kind of green, arboreal spell, and to this the music, specially composed by Cecil Woodham, contributed a great deal.

In 1939 the production was
Romeo and Juliet
(there were no girls in those days: all parts were played by boys), and although I had left by this time, I came to see it. I can only say I'm glad I did. My friend Euan Straghan was an outstanding Mercutio. Since then I've seen a lot of Shakespeare at Bradfield. Two particularly memorable productions were Charles Lepper's
Hamlet
and
The Taming of the Shrew.

Without the Greek theatre I could not possibly have received anything like such an education in drama. I can only repeat, I have been more consistently happy in Greeker than anywhere else at all.

Now we have come to the Michaelmas term of 1937. By this time no thinking person over fifteen could fail to be conscious of Hitler. The country was split in two. There were people, even as late as now (and they included the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and quite a lot of his Government and back-benchers) who believed that Hitler could be bought off and war averted. They thought that the major threat was Russia, both on account of its great power and because twenty years before it had had a left-wing, Communist revolution and was committed, by Marxist and Leninist doctrine, to the destruction of capitalism. At all costs, thought the British right-wingers - the appeasers, as they became known - we must avoid a repetition of the horror of 1914—18. Even Hitler couldn't be so crazy as to want that. If we can do a deal with Hitler, there could be a strong Anglo-German alliance (plus France) and Germany will be our bulwark against the ‘Bolshies'.

Up until the Munich crisis of September 1938, this was, as a matter of fact, a tenable view. But the whole argument rested on a false premise - namely, that Hitler could be trusted to keep a promise, that he too didn't want war and knew when to stop.

The left wing were diametrically opposed to all this. They consisted of the thinking working-class and the intellectual left - which of course included Hunt and Hiscocks and all readers of
The New Statesman and Nation
and the
News Chronicle.
On the whole, this lot were in sympathy with the Russian regime of Stalin, upon the true cruelty and horror of which they were completely misinformed. They thought Russia really was a country where there was true class equality and where working-men, through nationalization, had freedom from capitalist exploitation. They wanted us to be allied to Russia and, while we were about it to take a reformist leaf or two (as they supposed) from Russia's book. They saw Hitler, quite correctly, as a cruel tyrant and an untrustworthy international crook, with whom sooner or later accounts would have to be settled.

So both sides were partly right and partly wrong. Chamberlain was tragically wrong in thinking that we could do a deal with Hitler, but right in thinking that the one thing the people he represented wanted to avoid at almost all costs was war. (He also knew we weren't armed and ready.) He was also right that Soviet Russia was a potential danger.

The Left were entirely wrong about Russia but entirely right about Hitler. They were also right in thinking that their own Tory Government was ready to give Hitler a great deal too much (such as Czechoslovakia) in the hope of avoiding war. They thought that if we'd stood up to Hitler and Mussolini earlier, over the Rhineland (1934) and Abyssinia (1935), we'd have stopped later trouble. They were right.

It's no part of the purpose of this autobiography to chronicle the politics of the time: but the point I want to stress is that from now on (about mid-1937) my generation lived in the knowledge of Hitler and the apprehension of war. It was ‘business as usual', but always with that grim thought at the back of everything. My sister, that hard-headed realist, was under no delusions and consequently neither was I.

By autumn of 1937 I had become one of Hiscocks's star pupils. This had really happened because we suited each other. More mature boys, who had already formed ideas about what they intended to do, didn't really care for Hiscocks, and even ridiculed him in a quiet way: though not to his face, of course. They thought he was too imperative and ardent, and expected too much. I was as putty in his hands, but this does not mean that I didn't try to use my own mind. ‘I'm not - er - altogether convinced of that, Adams.' (One of the rare smiles.) ‘Convince me.' And I would proceed to try; sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Certainly Hiscocks could be a gauleiter, and one got to know where his sympathies (what Shakespeare would call his ‘affections') lay. When he spoke of Stein, Hardenburg and Scharnhorst and of Turnvater Jahn, a kind of light would come into his eye and his discourse would wax extra warm, which was more than it did for Mazzini or even Garibaldi.

The information that I was lined up by Hiscocks to sit for the various Oxford and Cambridge scholarship examinations, with the first lot coming up early in December, had no particular effect on me; not of excitement or apprehension or anything else. I didn't even start thinking ‘If I get an award - If I don't get an award -' I didn't think ahead at all. If this was something that Hiscocks wanted done, then I'd better get on and do it. I ought, of course, to have been able to talk it all over with my housemaster, but as for all practical purposes I hadn't got a housemaster, I simply left everything to Hunt and Hiscocks.

As the time drew on, Hiscocks's preparations were meticulous. We did bona fide three-hour papers for real. Since available time for these was a bit limited, we also did ‘mock-ups', in which we were given a sample exam. paper, required to choose four questions and to precis verbally what we would say and how. We did viva voce interviews, with Hiscocks pretending to be three dons. In all this my housemaster played no part whatever, except to be awkward and disobliging about the leave I had to get from him in order to fulfil Hiscocks's programmes.

Meanwhile, my dear father had become very ill. I have never known exactly what his illness was, but it must have been some kind of breakdown consequent upon his drinking. The opinion of my sister and brother, who took over the administration of the family's affairs, was that as I was safely away at Bradfield and in view of the impending exams, and also of my deep attachment to my father, the more ignorance I was left in, the better. I was not told either that he was delirious or that his life was in danger. However, Mr Arnold - though inadvertently — soon dispelled most of this happy ignorance. It so happened that I now had a minor responsibility in the house - that of reporting to him nightly the names of those who had been absent from any meal that day. (They always had leave and good reason: no one would want to cut a meal. But this was the system.) Every evening at this time, when I went into his study to report, he would immediately ask ‘How's your father?' This at first surprised, then disconcerted and finally alarmed and upset me. Well meant, I'm sure. I used to reply ‘All right as far as I know, sir.'

That early December I set out for Oxford in fairly thick snow. The journey involved a ‘bus from Bradfield to Reading, and thence a train. As I came under Tom Tower, clutching my suitcase, and got my first sign of Tom quad., it naturally startled and excited me greatly. Oddly enough, it didn't daunt me. Rather, it had the opposite effect. I thought, I had no idea that Oxford was like this. I know what I want now, all right: I want to come here — not necessarily to Christ Church, but somewhere. (My sister had already warned me ‘Whatever you get, I don't think you'll be able to go up to Christ Church; too expensive.')

Dining that night in Christ Church hall — reached by way of the glorious staircase - reinforced my feelings. If this was what Oxford was like, then I was going to get to it. The sight of so many strangers - the other candidates - didn't unnerve me. I don't know why: it wasn't in character. (Mr Punch.) Apart from natural courtesy, I maintained a certain reserve. One little incident I recall. A fellow opposite me leaned across the table and said ‘Would you moind passing the moist sugar?' Golly, I thought, a rustic! Competition from a rustic! I'll show him! This unworthy thought at least served to raise my morale. (I had never heard the term ‘moist sugar' before: later I told my mother, and after that we always used to talk about ‘the moist' in inverted commas.)