Bloomsbury's Outsider

by Sarah Knights

  I was able to accept acts of murder & violence with sympathy bordering on admiration, since I had all my life been familiar with terrorism in Russia & had in fact known & liked two eminent assassins, who were respected friends of my parents […]. But in any case I should have felt it particularly disgraceful to resent the murder of Englishmen by Indians since I was myself English and to some extent shared the guilt of British Imperialism.20

  Bunny had now found his own cause, a cause neither inherited from his parents nor inculcated in the nursery. ‘I felt exhilarated. I had embarked on an adventure of my own finding.’21 To what extent he found this adventure, and to what extent it found him, is difficult to determine. Certainly, his eagerness for a cause of his own and boyish enthusiasm for other cultures may have obscured his judgement.

  Dhingra was arrested and his request to make a statement at his trial was refused. When Savarkar asked Bunny to get Dhingra’s statement published, Bunny did not hesitate to take it to his parents’ friend, Robert Lynd, a journalist at the Daily News, wherein it appeared the following morning. Dhingra was nevertheless convicted of murder and hanged. At this point Dutt unexpectedly left college. This begs a series of questions: did Dutt leave because he had achieved what he set out to do in befriending Bunny? What was a Law student (turned actor) doing in Bunny’s revision class? Had Bunny been targeted by these Bengali revolutionaries – perhaps because of his parents’ known sympathies with Russian terrorists? It was certainly unusual for the young men of Savarkar’s circle, with their known anti-British sentiments to befriend English boys. Bunny had naively embarked on what he thought a romantic adventure, a potent combination of a Boys’ Own story with real life. What he didn’t understand at this stage, was how dangerous real life could be. For now he had done what he could to help his Bengali friends. But he would be of further use to them in months to come.

  Meanwhile, Bunny was looking to the future as he hoped to go to the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College) to study Botany. (Cambridge was discounted as his parents could not afford to send him there.) Even so, Constance pondered how they would finance Bunny’s studies. At this time she earned about £10 a year from royalties (£575 in today’s terms) and Edward earned a relatively meagre £15 a month from Duckworth, for whom he was now working as a publisher’s reader. With this income, they had to run both The Cearne and the Hampstead flat. A solution seemed to have been found when in January 1910 Constance learned that she had been awarded a Civil List Pension of £70 a year in recognition of her work as a translator. Unfortunately this good news met with outrage from Edward, who not only believed people would think he was living off his wife’s pension, but also found it insulting to be beholden to the establishment. Although Constance countered that the sum was exactly what she calculated Bunny would cost as a student, Edward insisted she decline the pension. It was only after Bunny wrote his father a diplomatic letter, contrasting the Black versus Garnett temperament, that Edward was encouraged to change his mind.

  Bunny wrote disconsolately to Constance in January 1910: ‘It seems quite possible I may never take to science or settle down to a respectable life’, but later that month he learnt that he had finally passed the London Matriculation examination.22 But how should he fill his time until starting university in October? It was decided he should receive further tuition, but Constance did not want Bunny loitering in London. Instead, he would stay with his Aunt Lucy and Uncle Harry Cowlishaw at Letchworth and receive lessons from a local schoolmaster.

  Ostensibly working on his maths and physics, Bunny was reading library books on Indian topics. He considered organising a meeting on the subject of India in Letchworth and hoped to persuade Dutt to join him there. Bunny carried a portrait of Savarkar, and remarked to Constance: ‘All I want now are photographs of Sergey & John Mitchell & Parnell to have a revolutionary gallery of the three countries in which I (& you) are most interested.’23

  Fearing arrest, Savarkar left London for Paris, returning on 13 March 1910 only to be promptly arrested at Victoria Station. Bunny rushed from Letchworth to London, going directly to Bow Street where Savarkar was up before a magistrate. Here he discovered that Savarkar was to be sent to Brixton Gaol. The next morning Bunny proceeded to Brixton, writing afterwards to Edward: ‘You may be surprised to find that I am in London. Savarkar has been arrested […] & I came up to see what I could do.’24

  The British authorities did not want to charge Savarkar for in Britain he would receive a relatively lenient sentence. Instead, they hoped he could be charged with offences in India, to where he would be extradited and thus subjected to a heavier penalty. Eventually the Indian authorities applied for extradition on the basis of speeches which Savarkar was alleged to have made some years previously. Bunny was incensed at the iniquity of this situation, writing to the Editor of the Daily News a letter published under the strap-line ‘Past Offences’, enquiring why Savarkar had not previously been prosecuted for these speeches. ‘By thus holding back a charge’, Bunny maintained, ‘the police have a powerful threat, tantamount to blackmail. They might threaten a man with prosecution in order to guarantee his behaviour in the future. Is this in the public interest? I think not.’25

  Visiting Savarkar in Brixton Gaol Bunny found him calm and unruffled. The prisoner requested only that Bunny should bring him some clean collars, size 13½. But Bunny wanted to do more, and with his mother’s support decided to raise funds for Savarkar’s defence. Edward was concerned about his son’s involvement with Savarkar but Constance observed astutely: ‘The fact is he loves him with that first rush of romantic devotion and adoration – it is the first time he has felt this.’ ‘Remember how you felt’, she urged Edward, ‘and what it would have meant to you at 18, if this awful thing had happened to the person you adored.’26

  On 31 May Savarkar wrote to Bunny to thank him, in a roundabout way, for raising funds to pay for his defence. Savarkar said he hoped his appeal would succeed, but stressed that if it did not, it was the effort which mattered. He would sacrifice everything for the cause. He ended by stating that he would be serving the Motherland and God even if destined for the Andaman Islands.27

  As Constance so touchingly perceived, Bunny’s interest had shifted from the political onto Savarkar as an individual. It was now Savarkar the romantic hero who mattered and for this reason, Bunny decided to become a romantic hero too. He informed Savarkar he had devised a plan to spring him from gaol and Savarkar agreed to go along with it.

  The plan centred on Brixton Gaol’s system of double-gates. Bunny had noted a perceptible weakness in the time-lag between opening one set of gates and closing the other. Every week Savarkar was remanded at Bow Street, to where he was conveyed not by Black Maria, but in a taxi. Bunny proposed that someone would watch the gates to observe at which point the outside set opened whilst the vehicle remained stationary inside before leaving with the prisoner. At that moment, a car would drive in containing supposed visitors, who, armed with bags of pepper and truncheons, would leap out and overpower the detectives guarding Savarkar. (Bunny had contacted Constance’s friend, Florence Dryhurst, the mother-in-law of Robert Lynd, to ask whether she thought any of her Sinn Fein contacts would be willing to create a diversion at the prison, but he later abandoned this idea.)

  The visitors or rescuers, two men willing to sacrifice their freedom for Savarkar, would be supplied by Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, otherwise known as ‘Chatto’, a prominent Indian nationalist who had recently moved to Paris having been expelled from the Bar in London as a result of his support of Savarkar. The rescuers would arrive from France by boat, be driven to Brixton, rescue Savarkar, drive him back to the boat, and then sail with him to France, Chatto providing the car for the round-trip. The boat was to be obtained in France by V.V.S. Aiyar, a prominent Indian nationalist and loyal supporter of Savarkar, who had also studied for the Bar in London, and fled to France following a British warrant for his arrest.

  Not content with masterminding this expl
oit, Bunny was also to take an active role as he would go to Paris to collect the rescuers, remain in the car while the rescue took place, and then act as their guide for the return journey to the coast. In preparation, and as though from a scene in The Great Escape, Bunny spent days at a time bicycling here and there to identify the safest route, avoiding level crossings and towns. Like a character in a Le Carré novel, Bunny rendezvoused with Chatto ‘on the Kensington end of the Serpentine’, where they came alongside each other in hired boats.28 He purchased a woman’s motoring hat and veil, which, together with a cloak, the fugitive would don the moment he entered the get-away car, and speed off resembling Toad in The Wind in the Willows.

  For the first time Bunny deceived his parents, informing them that he was leaving London for Letchworth. Instead he crossed to Dieppe, reaching Paris the following morning after a sleepless night. There he met Aiyar as arranged. Although the rescuers were at the ready, Aiyar had taken no steps to hire a boat. Too exhausted to register the implication of this omission, Bunny took a train to Le Havre where he eventually found someone willing to charter a smack. In Paris, Bunny returned to Aiyar’s hotel where he was handed a note and informed that Edward had turned up looking for him and was going to the French police. The note, which Bunny later discovered had been penned by the Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, conveyed a message from Mrs Dryhurst: ‘Don’t let the ship sink for a ha’porth of tar.’29

  Constance and Edward had learnt of Bunny’s plans from the Hobsons, who had been informed of the matter by their daughter Mabel, who had been told of Bunny’s intentions by Mrs Dryhurst. Before leaving for France, Edward wrote a note to Nellie: ‘I am on my way to Paris. D is there, engaged in a wild romantic scheme – which may have most serious consequences.’ ‘The poor boy is living in pure romantic cloudland: swept off his feet by his affection for S., and perhaps the tool of others.’30

  Bunny returned to England with Edward. After sleeping for hours he sent a message to Chatto saying the rescue was off. Then he went to Brixton to apprise Savarkar of the situation. Bunny believed he had been betrayed by Aiyar though he did not understand why. Had the escape plan been taken seriously, it is unlikely that Aiyar would thus betray Savarkar (and Chatto), especially as Aiyar headed a committee to secure Savarkar’s release. Perhaps there was no intention of adopting Bunny’s plan: Savarkar had earlier hinted to Aiyar that Marseilles (rather than Dieppe) might be significant in an attempted escape.31 Had Bunny been duped? Was he, as Edward feared, a tool of others, a pawn in a more elaborate scheme? Or were these young revolutionaries merely content to string him along as he had been of use, and might yet be so? For all Bunny’s talk of Russian terrorists, he was still a wide-eyed innocent, unaware of the scale of the drama in which he played a minor role.

  Savarkar was put on a ship to India where he was to stand trial. At Marseilles he jumped ship, slipping, slight of figure, through a porthole; he was immediately recaptured. Although there was an outcry at his being returned to the British while on French soil, he was taken back to India, where he received a fifty years’ sentence, and, according to his prediction, was sent to the Andaman Islands. In 1921 he was removed to mainland prison, released in 1924 and then re-interned until 1937. On his eventual release he entered politics. Despite his long years in prison, Savarkar was and remains an extremely important figure in the movement for Hindu nationalism; his portrait now hangs (not without controversy) in the Indian Parliament alongside the great men of the country. Chatto was shot in Moscow in 1937 on Stalin’s orders; Aiyar drowned in 1925 in circumstances which remain contentious.

  What would have happened to Bunny if he had carried through his plan or had been caught in the process of his aborted endeavours? If the offence had been regarded as high treason Bunny would have received the death sentence. If it had not been regarded as such, it would have fallen within the scope of the Treason Felony Act (1848), a provision designed specifically to prevent conspiracy with overseas agents or governments from overthrowing the state. For this, the sentence was life imprisonment or transportation. Perhaps, given Constance and Edward’s class position and influential friends, Bunny would have received some leniency with regard to his youth, but he had, unwittingly, been involved in committing what would have been considered a most heinous crime.32

  Reflecting on the episode, Bunny penned a poem to ‘V.D.S’:

  I feel no passion now, nor pain, nor grief.

  What is there left? The flame of joy has gone.

  It burnt me quickly like an autumn leaf

  That gives one curl of flame and then is done

  Leaving no sparks to slowly linger on.

  Only the cold philosophies now hold

  What has been beaten fire and brilliant joy.

  What little ash there is, is icy cold,

  It is the ultimate. You cannot change it, or destroy

  The lasting image of a fiery boy.

  I gave my heart to free a man in chains,

  Alas it proved a very sorry file [sic].

  It spilt itself, and left some sanguine stains

  Which now are rusting in an Indian isle.

  I was quite blind with anger all the while.33

  Chapter Four

  ‘The companionship of flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes and lovely, rippling tresses of dark hair […] was happiness’.1

  In June 1910 Bunny submitted his application to study for an Associateship (the equivalent of a BSc) in Botany at the Royal College of Science, one of three constituent colleges of Imperial College, London.2 Bunny’s form reads as if he was applying to study the humanities rather than science. Outlining relevant experience per scientific topic, he wrote variously, ‘very little’; ‘six weeks’, and ‘none’. The form took on a more optimistic tone under ‘Any Additional Information’, where Bunny asserted his knowledge of English Literature was ‘above average’ and of ‘Standard & Modern Authors’ ‘fairly wide’. He added that he had lived in Russia and planned to spend the summer in Germany.3

  If his application was successful, Bunny would be expected to attend college every weekday, to work long hours in the laboratory, go to lectures, work in a team and to maintain a disciplined schedule. Would this romantic revolutionary be able to adapt to a highly regimented life, to institutionalisation and to no longer being sole master of his destiny? Surprisingly, the answer to this question was ‘yes’, for Bunny was able to apply himself to something if he was interested in it and if there was sufficient diversion, variety and stimulation in other areas of his life. Indeed, while experiencing the excitement and emotional tension of his involvement with Savarkar, Bunny was also periodically living a contemplative Neo-Pagan existence. Henceforward, he would be able to divide his life into entirely separate compartments, and like someone changing uniform, adapt his persona to the particular moment.

  And so, throughout the Savarkar affair and between bouts of industry at Letchworth, Bunny led a carefree existence, roaming the countryside in the company of his Neo-Pagan comrades. The late spring of 1910 saw the first of a series of organised camps, usually including one or more of the Olivier sisters but now with a progressively expansive and shifting cast.

  This first camp, on the Norfolk Broads, arose through Bunny’s friendship with Rupert Brooke, whom he came to know via Noel Olivier, with whom, despite the six-year age difference and Noel’s then schoolgirl status, Rupert was infatuated. In May 1910 Brooke wrote to Bunny inviting him to Grantchester, near Cambridge, promising swimming and bucolic fun. Noel warned Rupert not to make his guest ‘angery [sic] about anything’ adding that ‘he is very dangerous when enraged and more than once has nearly Killed people who have agravated [sic] him’.4 Bunny bicycled from Letchworth to the Old Vicarage, where he found Rupert welcoming and delightful. Together they read Rupert’s poems and at midnight bathed naked in Byron’s pool. Bunny considered Rupert beautiful, ‘tall and well built, loosely put together, with a careless animal grace and a face made for smiling’.5 But Bunny also found him st
rangely inscrutable. That weekend he was introduced to some of Rupert’s Cambridge friends, including Geoffrey Keynes, who had known Rupert since their schooldays at Rugby, and with whom Bunny would enjoy a lifelong friendship.

  Rupert wrote to Noel to say how much he liked Bunny, and to reassure her that his new friend had not become ‘angery’. They had gone on from Grantchester to the Norfolk Broads where they were joined for a week aboard a wherry by Brynhild, Godwin and Rosalind Thornycroft (now Godwin’s girlfriend). Bunny felt particularly close to Rupert at this time, the two young men sharing a cabin and what Bunny called ‘a certain lazy warmth.’6 But this closeness remained chastely Neo-Pagan, even though Rupert’s first consummated sexual encounter had taken place only months before, with a young man whom, he acknowledged, closely resembled Bunny.7

  Later that summer, Bunny attended a camp at Penshurst, in Kent, which included the Olivier sisters, Harold Hobson, Godwin Baynes, Rupert Brooke and his friend Dudley Ward. They went bathing in the dark, placing a bicycle-lamp on the riverside to illuminate the water.

  Then one after another, we took running dives into the unseen river. It was exciting – the moment of doubt before one struck the water, and then swimming rapidly out of the next diver’s way. The smell of new-mown hay, of the river and weeds, the curious polished smoothness that fresh river-water leaves on the skin […]. Soon we were sitting round the blazing fire, Noel’s eyes shining in welcome for the new arrivals and the soft river-water trickling from her hair down her bare shoulders.8

  Harold and Bunny bathed naked in the moonlight, leaping from a springboard into the river, afterwards racing each other along the banks to get warm and dry. Bunny said that what he loved best at this time was ‘to fall asleep within a yard or two of a lovely girl without a thought of trying to make love to her’. ‘It was simply part of the social climate in which I was brought up and had nothing to do with innocence or its reverse, not a matter of morality but of manners.’9 But neither sleeping in a barn with a pretty woman, nor lying beneath the stars with a handsome man, was an entirely innocent pastime, as part of the enjoyment was the sublimated sexual frisson engendered by such intimacy, reflected in Bunny’s lingering descriptions of bare shoulders and smooth skin.