Against the Law

by Peter Wildeblood; Max Lerner

  One day I was sent to cover the British Medical Association’s annual conference at Harrogate, an unpromising assignment which I faithfully translated into terms of ‘a tiny grey-haired woman doctor who, etc.’ As the lady had been making some criticism of the National Health Scheme, to which the Daily Mail was opposed, the story achieved the distinction of appearing on the front page as the main news item in all editions, under a seven-column headline: ‘BMA IN NEW REVOLT.’ I took the first morning train to London, ran the Editor to earth in a pub, and persuaded him that it was time for me to deploy my talents in Fleet Street.

  During the next five years I was successively general reporter, gossip columnist, Festival of Britain correspondent, assistant dramatic critic, Buckingham Palace reporter, Coronation columnist and Diplomatic correspondent. I attended the fabulous fancy-dress ball given by Charles de Beistegui in Venice and covered the Craig and Bentley shooting at Croydon; I dug up the facts of Haigh’s early life and reported the progress of King Farouk’s honeymoon tour; I interviewed Tallulah Bankhead and the Crown Prince of Tonga and the mother of Mate Dancy of the Flying Enterprise; I went to Royal garden-parties and waded through the East Coast floods; I chased the Missing Diplomats as far as the South of France, and saw Queen Mary’s funeral, and nearly got the sack for being disrespectful about Gilbert and Sullivan; I spent 14 hours in a small French fishing-boat off the Cherbourg coast looking for a sunken submarine and returned to Southampton, black with diesel-oil and smelling strongly of fish, in a first-class cabin on the Queen Mary.

  Fleet Street men are always amused when people come up to them at parties and gush: ‘What a wonderful time you reporters must have, going to all those places and meeting such interesting people!’ The truth is that a reporter’s life is about as satisfactory as a film-programme would be if it were made up entirely of ‘trailers’. Eventually, he despairs of ever finding out the truth about anything, because he never has time. There is always an edition to catch. Everything, on a national morning newspaper, has to be written from a frenzied ‘last night angle’; it is apparently of no interest to the waiting millions to learn that a little grey-haired mother sat weeping last Tuesday; it is necessary that she should weep last night. Furthermore, the things that she is permitted to weep about are clearly defined. People sometimes complain about the hackneyed phrases in which newspaper stories are written, but nobody ever seems to notice the hackneyed laws of What Is News which inexorably govern them. Anything fresh, strange or unexpected is rigidly excluded, in spite of Lord Northcliffe’s memorable dictum about ‘man bites dog’. If this story ever appears on the front page, it will probably be in terms of a film-star’s ex-husband taking a bite out of a lovable, shaggy-haired Scottie.

  If reporters are over-conventional in their writing, they are no less so in their way of life. Fleet Street, in spite of one or two flamboyant and rather self-conscious exceptions, is not in the smallest degree Bohemian. It is a hardworking, nervous community with shabby suits and nicotine-stained fingers, living on beer and sandwiches and catching the last train home to the suburbs. Its contacts with the great, wide, lurid world about which it writes are usually brief, disenchanting and fraught with suspicion on both sides. At one moment a reporter may be trying to gate-dash an Earl’s wedding in a hired morning-coat; an hour later he is in Stepney, persuading a group of stevedores that, at heart, he is one of them. Both worlds are equally hostile and he is at home in neither, but he returns to the office, lights another cigarette and, like a quick-change artist, obediently assumes the respective points of view which are expected of him: ‘Detectives yesterday mingled with the guests at the fabulous, £20,000 reception after the St Margaret’s, Westminster, S.W., wedding of the popular Earl of ...’ and, a few minutes later: ‘Everybody in Cable-street, E., knows Charlie, the veteran organiser of the Amalgamated Society of Pushers and Heavers....’

  Fortunately for them, most of the reporters I knew were not frustrated writers swimming against the tide; they were workmen who happened to use words instead of nuts and bolts or bricks. I liked them very much. The people whom I did not like were the men at the top, a cold-eyed bunch of businessmen who peddled tragedy, sensation and heartbreak as casually as though they were cartloads of cabbages or bags of cement. The false, over-coloured and sentimental view of life reflected in the newspapers was due to the cynical belief of these men that this was what the public wanted.

  Later, I became a subject for newspaper headlines myself. From the peculiar vantage-point of someone who has been both hunter and hunted, I can look back on Fleet Street with amusement, but without anger. When it was necessary for reporters to interview me, I found nothing to complain of in their individual behaviour. I think the stories which people tell of being ‘harried by the Press’ are probably exaggerated. The reporter always gets the blame, but the real culprits are the proprietors and editors who relentlessly pursue the trivial and the sordid, while protesting that they are shocked by what they have to print.

  I could hardly have chosen a profession in which being a homosexual was more of a handicap than it was in Fleet Street. Its morality was that of the saloon bar: every sexual excess was talked about and tolerated, provided it was ‘normal’. It has always seemed strange to me that a man’s popularity should so often depend on the extent to which he boasts of his seductions and adulteries, as though promiscuity and deceitfulness were the certificates of manhood, and I used to imagine the shocked amazement of all these ‘broad-minded’ people if I were to tell them the truth about myself.

  I was forced to be deceitful, living one life during my working hours and another when I was free. I had two sets of friends; almost, one might say, two faces. At the back of my mind there was always a nagging fear that my two worlds might suddenly collide; that somebody who knew about me would meet somebody who did not know, and that disaster would ensue. I was quite clear about what I meant by ‘disaster’. I did not want to be exposed as a homosexual, not only because exposure might lead to prosecution and imprisonment, but because I knew that it would cause the greatest humiliation to my family.

  I had, on several occasions, discussed the problems of homosexuality, in general terms, with my mother and father, hoping to find some way of telling them about myself. But it was impossible. Their attitude, like that of so many people, was not one of particular condemnation or of particular tolerance; it was simply that they had not given the matter much thought, because they did not believe that they knew any homosexuals.

  The strain of deceiving my family and friends often became intolerable. It was necessary for me to watch every word I spoke, and every gesture that I made, in case I gave myself away. When jokes were made about ‘queers’ I had to laugh with the rest, and when the talk was about women I had to invent conquests of my own. I hated myself at such moments, but there seemed to be nothing else that I could do. My whole life became a lie.

  I thought perhaps that if I tried very hard I could, even now, wipe out the past and begin again, forcing myself to be like everybody else. I fiercely wanted to fall in love, marry and have children, as all my friends did; but this was only an abstract idea which seemed to fade away whenever I tried to think of a particular woman as a lover or a wife. Like most homosexuals, I got on very well with women, particularly in the early stages of an acquaintanceship. I could talk to them and dance with them and admire them; but sooner or later they expected me to take a more serious interest in them, and at that point I became afraid. I wanted comradeship, not possession; trust, not tension; peace and quiet, not the interminable duologue of male and female. There were many women whom I liked, but I could not imagine spending the next fifty years alone with them.

  I went on trying, however. This may sound cold-blooded, but at least, on these occasions, I was not being deceitful. It seemed to me dishonest to pick on some unsuspecting girl, marry her, and run the risk of her finding out, perhaps years later, that I had used her as a kind of cure. I have no doubt that many successful marriages ha
ve begun with such a deception, but I still consider it wrong. Anyone who married me, I decided, must do so with a full knowledge of the facts.

  Even so, it was difficult to avoid hurting anyone. Every relationship into which I entered with a woman was, for me, in the nature of an experiment. For her, however, it was always something deeper. A woman can never quite believe in homosexual desires; or rather, she underestimates them in the light of her own superior attractions. She may accept the fact that a man has succumbed to such temptations in the past, but she cannot believe that he will do so in the future. When a man turns away from other men and seeks her out, she is convinced that the change in him is permanent. In some cases it may be, but not, I felt, in mine.

  If I married, it would be necessary for me to be completely faithful to my wife. The ordinary contract of marriage would be re-inforced by the secret which we shared; having been accepted for what I was, I would owe her more than any other man would owe his wife. To resume, however intermittently, my former way of life would be to abuse the trust which she had placed in me, and to jeopardise the future of our children. I remembered what had happened to the two sons of Oscar Wilde.

  I knew by now that I could not prevent myself from being attracted towards other men, however hard I might try not to be. The temptation would always be present, even if I never gave way to it. Homosexuality is a condition of the mind, and it would continue to colour my whole outlook, so that I could never engage in the distinctive interchange of opposing points of view which makes a successful partnership in marriage. This was cruelly summed-up by the brother-in-law of a girl to whom I was on the point of becoming engaged. When she asked him whether she ought to marry me, he replied: ‘I always advise women to marry men.’

  These love-affairs, into which I entered with such high hopes, always ended in regrets and unhappiness. Perhaps I was too scrupulous, or too much of a coward; in each one, at some point I began to search feverishly for a way out, realising that once again I had made a mistake from which I must extract myself with as little cruelty as possible. It says a great deal for the natural charity of women that those whom I involved in these experiments have remained my friends; they have forgiven, even if they do not understand.

  I was caught up again in the current of my inclinations, of which I had never ceased to be aware. I began to lead my double life again—almost, this time, with a feeling of relief. At least I was not deceiving myself any more, even though I was once more obliged to deceive others.

  The homosexual world, invisible to almost all who do not live in it, was still as extensive as it had been immediately after the war. In London, there were still a great many men, outwardly ‘respectable’, who were in immediate danger of imprisonment because they had chosen to live with another man. They did not seem to care. I used to see them at theatrical first-nights and in the clubs which were patronised by homosexuals, discreetly dressed, careful in their behaviour the last people ever to be suspected by that legendary character, the man-in-the-street. The clubs where they congregated usually consisted of one room, with a bar and a piano. They were extraordinarily quiet and well-behaved. The clubs closed at 11 o’clock, and most of the men did not go there primarily to drink, but to relax in an atmosphere where it was not necessary to keep up any pretences. This did not, however, mean that anything disreputable ever took place there. The proprietors of the clubs were not taking any chances. There was always the possibility of a raid. The police did not interfere very much with the clubs, but on one occasion they did swoop on the best-known of them and, examining the membership book, remarked on the fact that most of the clientele appeared to be male. The proprietor coldly replied: ‘You might say the same of the Athenaeum. Or, for that matter, of the Police Force.’

  The public-houses which had become recognised as meeting-places for homosexuals were less discreet and a good deal more dangerous. With one or two inexplicable exceptions, they were always being raided, and ‘warned’ by the police. The effect of these raids was that the entire clientele would transfer its custom, by some mysterious means of mutual agreement, to another pub, which for several months would be crowded night after night, until it was raided in its turn. This assiduity on the part of the police was presumably intended to break up the homosexual coteries, but it had the opposite effect. It was about as sensible as trying to break up a snowball by pushing it downhill.

  In this world I found much to deplore, but occasionally I saw something to admire. There were many men who, in spite of the legal and social handicaps of their condition, managed to lead lives which were at least as moral as those of most heterosexuals whom I knew. They remained faithful to the partner they had chosen, and although they did not go out of their way to flout convention, they were ready to defy it for the sake of someone whom they loved. When I am embittered or revolted by the conduct of someone like myself, I try to remember two men. One was a young pianist with a brilliant talent, who killed himself for grief after the death of the man he loved. The other was a surgeon, respected and discreet, who threw away his good name in order to remain, night and day, at the bedside of his friend who was dying in hospital. A love which can evoke courage and sacrifice like this cannot, I think, be wholly evil.

  I acquired an extraordinarily large circle of acquaintances, but not many friends. Most of the people whom I met were connected in some way with my job. One of these was Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He was a few years younger than I was and we had been at Oxford at the same time, but had not known each other there. We were introduced by another member of a firm of publicity agents with whom Lord Montagu was working; his job was to get paragraphs about various products and places into the Press, and as I was writing a gossip column at the time each of us was a useful ‘contact’ for the other. Furthermore, I liked him. He was one of the most completely unsnobbish people I had ever met, and I thought this a remarkable quality in an Old Etonian who had been a peer from the age of three. Although he almost certainly did not subscribe to my own somewhat anarchic social views, he was equally at home amongst all kinds of people.

  The worst snobs, I have found, are those men and women who are unsure of their own social position, but the disease is by no means confined to them. Broadly speaking, there are three main kinds of British snob. There is the titled or wealthy snob, who despises everyone who does not share these advantages. There is the middle-class snob who has attained a certain place on the social ladder, from which he pours scorn on the occupants of the lower rungs and criticises those on the higher for being no better than they should be. And there is the upside-down snob or Plain Working Man who accuses everyone, indiscriminately, of putting on airs and looking down their noses at him. The last is slightly less common than the others, but even more tedious.

  I do not suppose it ever occurred to Edward Montagu that there were certain dangers in rejecting the class-system which so many of his friends and neighbours held sacred. He did it quite unconsciously. His guests, both at Beaulieu and in his London flat, formed an extraordinary assortment of conflicting types: business men and writers, Duchesses and model-girls, restaurateurs and politicians and musical comedy actresses and Guards officers and Americans wearing hand-painted ties. He was always intensely busy and often merely used to introduce his guests to each other and then disappear; a most disconcerting habit. I remember him doing this once in the middle of luncheon, leaving two big businessmen and a Canadian ice-hockey player staring at each other and wondering what on earth to talk about. Trivial though it may seem, this kind of behaviour enraged some people who took themselves extremely seriously and expected Lord Montagu to do the same. He made enemies, as well as friends.

  At this time I was living in a small flat in Roland Gardens, South Kensington. It consisted of a sitting-room, bedroom, and combined kitchen-bathroom. The electric stove was in the entrance hall and the same sink did duty for both ablutions and washing up. I mentioned these facts because of the tendency of the prosecution at my trial to invest my living cond
itions with an air of sinful luxury. As a matter of fact, they were rather primitive, considering the rent that I was paying.

  I met Eddie McNally on a rainy night in Piccadilly Circus. He was carrying a cardboard suitcase and wearing civilian clothes; during all the time that I knew him, I never saw him in uniform. He was 23 years old and had a broad Scottish accent. He was a corporal in the RAF and worked in a hospital at Ely.

  I have already described the beginnings of the quest which I had carried on, almost from childhood, for an ideal companion; someone strong, courageous and reliable, who could supply all the deficiencies of my own character. I had met many who appeared, for a time at least, to fit the description—but Eddie McNally was not one of them. Perhaps the most ironical aspect of all that followed lies in the fact that my downfall was caused by someone so far removed from all that I admired.

  Eddie McNally was weak, he was effeminate and—worst of all—he was one of those people whom I have described as an upside-down snob. He would hold forth for hours on the shortcomings of the ‘ruling classes’ who apparently existed only for the purpose of coming between Eddie McNally and his rightful deserts. But everything would be all right if only he could get some education. Education was a kind of fairy gold which lucky rich people like me received, whether they deserved it or not, while it was for ever denied to people like himself. Every discussion ended with the monotonous refrain: ‘Of course, I’ve got no education.’

  He annoyed me intensely, but at the same time I felt sorry for him. I knew, after all, plenty of people who had received Education without being sufficiently intelligent to benefit from it, and it might be perfectly true that he would have deserved it more than they. However, it was not my mission in life to go around educating people whom I did not particularly like. The whole point about Pygmalion was that he was in love with his dumb statue.