A Very Private Celebrity

by Hugh Purcell

  He did, however, bear emotional scars. His father Horace had a cold, analytical mind and discouraged closeness, at least until his last years. Apparently, he and his sons had dinner together once a week, otherwise by appointment. He did not leave either of them money in his will. John once said that from the age of six he disliked his father and despised his mother – ‘a pretty but silly woman’ he called her. He must have had a loveless and lonely childhood, but he was extraordinarily self-sufficient. He first smoked when he was four and soon after devised an electric alarm system in his bedroom that warned if his parents were around. He rode the trains to school on his own, climbing from carriage to carriage. He roamed around London. He used to recount the story of taking himself off to the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square and asking at the box office: ‘Is this a suitable play for a boy of seven?’ Theatre was to be an abiding interest throughout his life.

  His relations with his brother James, two years his junior, were also cool. He seldom chose to see him when they were adults, saying, ‘I’ve never liked James ever since I saw him deliberately destroying my copy of Alice in Wonderland in his cot.’ There was more to it than that, for John was convinced that his father preferred James to him – another clue for psychologists.

  That was probably true because, while John was an unruly child, James was a well-behaved and academically inclined boy who did everything that was expected of him. After the war, during which he fought in Burma and won the Military Cross, James followed his father to the chancery bar and specialised in industrial relations. He was also a practising Anglican. At his funeral, where there were many prayers, a eulogy and Pie Jesu from Faure’s ‘Requiem’, sung by his daughter, John was heard muttering: ‘I don’t want any of this sort of thing when it’s my turn.’ In the event, he was to get his wish.

  Anthony Clare was not the only psychiatrist to refer to the significance of Freeman’s childhood. He had submitted to a polite mauling in that Face to Face interview, so perhaps he was licking his wounds when he considered that Freeman had the characteristics of a social psychopath. He referred me to the Psychiatric Dictionary (published by the OUP), which defines a social psychopath as having ‘a poorly developed sense of empathy leading to unfeeling and insensitive behaviour but disguised as a superficial charm and absence of “nervousness”, an egocentricity and incapacity for love’. This, continues the Psychiatric Dictionary, has as its aetiology ‘emotional deprivation early in life’. Social psychopathy is more characteristic of leaders than of the rest of us, according to a study at Surrey University:

  Surveys of high achievers like prime ministers, US presidents and leading entrepreneurs have shown that nearly one-third lost a parent before the age of fourteen (compared with 8 per cent of the general population). Left high and dry at a young age they have resolved to snatch hold of their destiny; adversity is the key to exceptional achievement.1

  Be that as it may, when John was thirteen he won an exhibition, later a scholarship, to Westminster School and began five very happy years there. When he left in 1933, he wrote: ‘I only hope that my successors have as calm a voyage [as I had] and will look back on their life at Westminster with as much pleasure as I do.’ In old age, he reminisced with Nigel Lawson about the good times at their alma mater, relating with relish how he had lost his virginity to an under-matron at the age of fifteen. In middle age, he described to his drinking companion Tom Driberg how his favourite Westminster watering holes had been the Two Chairmen pub in Queen Anne’s Gate and, more daringly, the bar of a celebrated Edwardian haunt in Soho called Romano’s. There is no sense here of Freeman as a lonely and loveless teenager; rather it is of a worldly boy enjoying a sophisticated and tolerant school at the heart of the nation’s life.

  Freeman’s years at Westminster were not hedonistic; they were formative. Whereas many public schoolboys left school culture-bound, as Christian officers and gentlemen ready to serve their country as future leaders, only for university to encourage them to work out who they really were and what they wanted from life, for Freeman it was the reverse. Westminster taught him the civilising values of tolerance and courtesy, which never left him, but also awakened a social and political consciousness. When he was seventeen he joined the Labour Party after a shocking experience that led him to write in his house magazine ‘the outstanding fact of the year’ was that the school ‘had heard the voice of England’s forgotten people’. He was referring to the hunger march that massed outside the school gates in Palace Yard on 1 November 1932.

  The worldliness of Westminster was partly due to its location right next to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. It was also due to the headmaster, Dr Harold Costley-White – later a Canon of Westminster Abbey and then Dean of Gloucester Cathedral. He was quietly determined to teach a strong sense of public responsibility and a code of courtesy, as well as the importance of intellectual self-confidence. To this end, he revived the debating society in Freeman’s last year. The opening proposition was: ‘This house would welcome the establishment of a dictator.’ Freeman spoke against, proposing Lloyd George as an evil dictator in a mocking speech that contrasted him with the Roman consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who displayed all the civic virtues before resigning his office and returning home to plough his fields.

  Westminster School made every use of its proximity to Parliament. In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi – in London for the Round Table Conference on Indian independence (this is when Churchill called him ‘a half-naked fakir’) – spoke to the school’s political and literary society on ‘Indian Self-Government’. A sketch of the event by John Bowle hangs in the school library. Freeman was listening, and the desirability of Indian independence became one of his consistent beliefs. Soon after, he met Krishna Menon, who was campaigning aggressively in the United Kingdom for the cause, and Freeman is also on record as saying that the first political speaker to make an impact on him was Stafford Cripps, who was committed to ending British rule in India. Finally, Freeman provided his own postscript. When he was High Commissioner to India in the 1960s, he looked back upon that schoolboy meeting with Gandhi: ‘I remember the sense of surprise, awe – and perhaps “melting” is the word – which his visit evoked.’

  Other speakers to the political and literary society also showed a distinct left-wing bias. In 1933, the communist journalist Claud Cockburn gave a talk entitled ‘A Journalist in Germany’ and the headmaster described ‘My Visit to Russia’. In 1934, the year after Freeman left, Professor Harold Laski spoke on ‘Liberty’ and Professor Julian Huxley on ‘Science and Society’. Such talks must have been heady stuff for an impressionable teenager.

  The climax of Costley-White’s liberal intentions was the formation of the United Front of Progressive Forces (UFPF), based at Westminster School. John had left by then, but his brother James was on the executive committee. In common with other leading public schools such as Wellington, where Freeman’s contemporary Esmond Romilly had started a widely publicised pacifist journal (Out of Bounds: Public Schools’ Journal Against Fascism, Militarism and Reaction), Westminster made up for the establishment’s seeming indifference to fascism by actively campaigning against it. Esmond Romilly was by now working in a communist bookshop in London and starting a society for ‘escaped’ public schoolboys. He was shortly to cycle off to Spain and join what became the International Brigades. It would have been typical of Westminster’s encouragement of public debate to invite the Romilly brothers, Esmond and Giles, to speak at the school. In any event, the manifesto of the Westminster UFPF was announced in February 1936 amid ‘scenes of enthusiasm unparalleled at Westminster’. It committed its members to:

  Uncompromising resistance to fascism, conservatism and war…

  Vigorous efforts to secure international disarmament…

  The nationalisation of armaments and the coal industry…

  The abolition of the Means Test, slum clearance…

  The drastic reform of the House of Lords…

  The aud
ience of fifty to sixty boys and staff then rose to its feet and gave the first rendering of the ‘United Front Song’:

  Lift up your voices now. Singing for freedom,

  Peace and fraternity, more for the poor;

  Work for the workless and justice for all men,

  Progress in unity! No more war!

  Over the next five weeks, UFPF (nicknamed not unfairly as ‘ufpuff’) held three public demonstrations and two more meetings, and thus ‘ended a term of remarkable vitality and enthusiasm’.2

  Compared to this ecstatic report, the school magazine, The Elizabethan, makes dull reading. It is the predictable digest of sport, chapel and Officers’ Training Corps (OTC). The July 1932 edition includes a rowing profile of the seventeen-year-old John Horace Freeman (‘Red’ to his friends because of his hair, not yet his politics), who was in the first VIII and continued to be the following year: ‘A delightful man to have in the crew. A tremendously hard worker and very keen. At present he rows like the village blacksmith. Next year his aim must be “maximum power with maximum at ease”.’

  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.