Chapter 1
I was born in Oxford at 11.30 pm on 10th May
1953, and lived there for seventeen years. I have two brothers, and a sister
from my father’s first marriage. My childhood was shot through with glorious
experiences, though these were set in a matrix of maternal oppression that has
left me with an abiding hatred of bullying in any form, whether military,
economic, political, personal or spiritual. My father was weak, and could not
stand up to my mother. He tried sometimes, but we knew he was doomed. We
realised the cause only much later. He had participated in an accident that had
caused the death of his first wife, and he was crushed by this. He never
forgave himself. He did not think he deserved anything. My sister grew up in
Sweden with her aunt and grandmother because my mother would not let my father
keep her with us. What made my mother like she was remains a mystery though she
did lose her father at an early age due to after effects of the first world war.
There was not much money, but there would have been enough. Real privation was
caused by her meanness.
These hurts have long since been healed, but I mention them here because they have a bearing on the story at large. So do the glorious experiences, so I will tell of them now. In Oxford and the surrounding area are many magnificent churches, such as St Mary the Virgin, St Mary’s Iffley, Christ Church Cathedral and Dorchester Abbey, also the wool churches in Witney, Burford, Northleach, Cirencester, Fairford, Lechlade and Chipping Campden. My parents took us to these, and to Cathedrals and churches further afield. This has been of permanent benefit. Also in Oxford are many other things of interest, such as gargoyles, college chapels, museums and parks, also the Divinity Schools with their pendant vault. My mother enrolled us in Queen’s College Choir, and then in Worcester College Choir when Queen’s stopped using boys’ voices. This was also of permanent benefit. I liked some of the music more than others. I was devastated when I had a streaming cold and could not sing Parry’s “I Was Glad”. I have sung it many times since, and so the loss has been recovered, as is the way of things. The music I liked most was Purcell’s, and the Tudor and Jacobean Church Music. When we sang Byrd’s “Bow Thine Ear” I felt the power of the emotion in it, and realised that this music is not only good, it is among the best.
There were college concerts including performances of Beethoven’s F minor quartet Opus 95 and First Symphony, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet, Scarlatti sonatas, Tallis’ Lamentations, and much else, also school concerts including performances of Schutz’ Christmas Story and Vivaldi’s Gloria, both of which moved me greatly. The school organised a visit to a concert of Bach’s B Minor Mass. There was also the gramophone. Many collections of 78 rpm records were being replaced by LPs at this time, and could be obtained cheaply. Of course it was a further delight later to hear Beethoven symphonies as a unity. I revelled in three of the late Beethoven quartets, opp 130, 132 and 135, and unknowingly stored up a future delight which was eventually to hear the Grosse Fuge in its place as the finale of the quartet Opus 130. I heard the Opus 127 and Opus 131 quartets later when I was at University in Bangor. We also had records of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Franck, and a little Tchaikovsky. There was the radio too, which enabled musical exploration.
I also tried to learn the violin, but I was hampered because I thought I knew so much about music due to my experience in the College Choirs that I was unknowingly resistant to learning the new skills required. At secondary school I transferred to the cello, and much later achieved success at Parish Church level as an organist.
We were not short of books. Like all boys I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle. I read the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, Buchan’s “The Thirty-nine Steps”, and many others. Once I was reading a story set in Derbyshire, where it was raining, and water was flooding the caves. The writing was so skilful that the grey clouds and the falling rain pervaded my consciousness, accompanying the events of the story. When I left off for a while and went out, I was astonished to find that it was a summer day, and the sun was shining brightly.
I want to tell now of some very special youthful experiences. My mother was an agnostic, and very dogmatic as such. Nevertheless, she got us into the college choirs, she took us to churches and cathedrals, and later she obtained a place for me in Church Hostel, Bangor, where the ordinands live. I spoke once about singing Friday Evensong in a college chapel, when there might be one or two undergraduates in attendance, and questioning whether it was worth while. She said we were singing to God. This remark has stayed with me always. We attended regularly at the Friend’s Meeting House (Quakers). They have no creeds to which she was required to assent. She was contemptuous of anybody who displayed symptoms of what I later came to recognise as standard Christian doctrine, including belief in God. How do I interpret these facts? Possibly she was projecting onto us the religious impulse which she was stifling in herself. At other times she encouraged us to go to Iffley Church along the river. I loved this church for its age, its Norman windows, doors, vault and tower, and the purity of the Early English east window.
Once we were in the University Parks while our parents were at a conference or some such activity. A young man or late teenager came and asked if he could play with us. He was good to look at and seemed trustworthy, so we were pleased for him to play with us. There were bales of hay, and some of them had been left incomplete and loose by the baling machine. We undid these and distributed the hay on the ground. Next day we were in the Parks again, and we thought we would do the same, but the magic had gone out of it, and there were no more loose bales, so we loosened the good ones. Eventually an angry man came and stopped us. We thought he had a point. I should not be surprised if it were an angel, the young one that is. What human teenager would have been aware of our great need, let alone want to spend time with us?
In the Friend’s Meeting House there is a gallery with a small window overlooking a garden. We were not supposed to go up there, because we might fight for the place next to the window. One Sunday, I must have been about nine years old, I went up there anyway, and of course the disobedience felt delicious. I got the seat by the window, and was looking out over the garden. Only it was like no garden I had ever seen. It had been raining, and there were raindrops on the glass and puddles on the surfaces. The sun was turning them to something rich and strange. A transfigured bird was making a symphony of movement and being. There were wonderful plants to which earthly roses bear a faint resemblance. That is all I can say. It was a peak experience.
At other times I would as it were go to a garden like this. It could happen when I was lying in bed looking out through the window at the sky, or I could simply be looking out of the window standing up. Once I was in this garden, and my mother called me back. I did not want to come back, and I managed to tell her this while still in the garden, but she insisted, so back I came. Her question was altogether trivial. She called me back because she could not bear it that there should be any part of my life over which she had no control.
Similar experiences occurred, if rarely, throughout my youth, except that there was a gap when I went to secondary school. Towards the end of my time there I began to realise that this was not just an experience, but a real place that was being experienced. My younger brother called it “being pensive”. Once when I was seventeen, on a holiday in Sweden, he wanted to take a photograph, and although it felt odd, by forgetting the outward circumstance, I was able to go to this place, and he got his photograph.
For a choirboy, the breaking of the voice is a catastrophe. Being young in no way protects you from major loss. Loss, and the retrieval of loss, is one of the threads running through this story.
My sporting experience is negligible. Two days before I left primary school, I discovered that I could hit a rubber ball in a great curve from one end of the playground to another in a team game. I could feel the approval of my peers. At grammar school I had to play rugby. I did not enjoy this. Once I was in a loose scrum. I wondered whether if I were to contribute something to the game, I would receive more from it. Accordingly I pushed, and the scrum moved a few feet. Then a boy from the other side got the ball and with much less effort ran yards and yards with it in the opposite direction. I saw that this was not a useful field of endeavour for me. Next day, not realising that the argument had already been lost, the games master commended me for my effort. Oh you should have seen the boys setting off on a cross-country run at a pace that I regarded as a sprint! When, much later, I arrived back, they sang “For he’s a jolly good fellow”. I did enjoy cycling, however, and rowing boats, and badminton and table tennis. Once I was supposed to be playing cricket, but I found a place on the other side of the pavilion, lay on the ground, and surrounded by the smell of grass, delicious breezes and all the other subtle experiences of a summer afternoon, went to sleep.
These hurts have long since been healed, but I mention them here because they have a bearing on the story at large. So do the glorious experiences, so I will tell of them now. In Oxford and the surrounding area are many magnificent churches, such as St Mary the Virgin, St Mary’s Iffley, Christ Church Cathedral and Dorchester Abbey, also the wool churches in Witney, Burford, Northleach, Cirencester, Fairford, Lechlade and Chipping Campden. My parents took us to these, and to Cathedrals and churches further afield. This has been of permanent benefit. Also in Oxford are many other things of interest, such as gargoyles, college chapels, museums and parks, also the Divinity Schools with their pendant vault. My mother enrolled us in Queen’s College Choir, and then in Worcester College Choir when Queen’s stopped using boys’ voices. This was also of permanent benefit. I liked some of the music more than others. I was devastated when I had a streaming cold and could not sing Parry’s “I Was Glad”. I have sung it many times since, and so the loss has been recovered, as is the way of things. The music I liked most was Purcell’s, and the Tudor and Jacobean Church Music. When we sang Byrd’s “Bow Thine Ear” I felt the power of the emotion in it, and realised that this music is not only good, it is among the best.
There were college concerts including performances of Beethoven’s F minor quartet Opus 95 and First Symphony, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet, Scarlatti sonatas, Tallis’ Lamentations, and much else, also school concerts including performances of Schutz’ Christmas Story and Vivaldi’s Gloria, both of which moved me greatly. The school organised a visit to a concert of Bach’s B Minor Mass. There was also the gramophone. Many collections of 78 rpm records were being replaced by LPs at this time, and could be obtained cheaply. Of course it was a further delight later to hear Beethoven symphonies as a unity. I revelled in three of the late Beethoven quartets, opp 130, 132 and 135, and unknowingly stored up a future delight which was eventually to hear the Grosse Fuge in its place as the finale of the quartet Opus 130. I heard the Opus 127 and Opus 131 quartets later when I was at University in Bangor. We also had records of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Franck, and a little Tchaikovsky. There was the radio too, which enabled musical exploration.
I also tried to learn the violin, but I was hampered because I thought I knew so much about music due to my experience in the College Choirs that I was unknowingly resistant to learning the new skills required. At secondary school I transferred to the cello, and much later achieved success at Parish Church level as an organist.
We were not short of books. Like all boys I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle. I read the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, Buchan’s “The Thirty-nine Steps”, and many others. Once I was reading a story set in Derbyshire, where it was raining, and water was flooding the caves. The writing was so skilful that the grey clouds and the falling rain pervaded my consciousness, accompanying the events of the story. When I left off for a while and went out, I was astonished to find that it was a summer day, and the sun was shining brightly.
I want to tell now of some very special youthful experiences. My mother was an agnostic, and very dogmatic as such. Nevertheless, she got us into the college choirs, she took us to churches and cathedrals, and later she obtained a place for me in Church Hostel, Bangor, where the ordinands live. I spoke once about singing Friday Evensong in a college chapel, when there might be one or two undergraduates in attendance, and questioning whether it was worth while. She said we were singing to God. This remark has stayed with me always. We attended regularly at the Friend’s Meeting House (Quakers). They have no creeds to which she was required to assent. She was contemptuous of anybody who displayed symptoms of what I later came to recognise as standard Christian doctrine, including belief in God. How do I interpret these facts? Possibly she was projecting onto us the religious impulse which she was stifling in herself. At other times she encouraged us to go to Iffley Church along the river. I loved this church for its age, its Norman windows, doors, vault and tower, and the purity of the Early English east window.
Once we were in the University Parks while our parents were at a conference or some such activity. A young man or late teenager came and asked if he could play with us. He was good to look at and seemed trustworthy, so we were pleased for him to play with us. There were bales of hay, and some of them had been left incomplete and loose by the baling machine. We undid these and distributed the hay on the ground. Next day we were in the Parks again, and we thought we would do the same, but the magic had gone out of it, and there were no more loose bales, so we loosened the good ones. Eventually an angry man came and stopped us. We thought he had a point. I should not be surprised if it were an angel, the young one that is. What human teenager would have been aware of our great need, let alone want to spend time with us?
In the Friend’s Meeting House there is a gallery with a small window overlooking a garden. We were not supposed to go up there, because we might fight for the place next to the window. One Sunday, I must have been about nine years old, I went up there anyway, and of course the disobedience felt delicious. I got the seat by the window, and was looking out over the garden. Only it was like no garden I had ever seen. It had been raining, and there were raindrops on the glass and puddles on the surfaces. The sun was turning them to something rich and strange. A transfigured bird was making a symphony of movement and being. There were wonderful plants to which earthly roses bear a faint resemblance. That is all I can say. It was a peak experience.
At other times I would as it were go to a garden like this. It could happen when I was lying in bed looking out through the window at the sky, or I could simply be looking out of the window standing up. Once I was in this garden, and my mother called me back. I did not want to come back, and I managed to tell her this while still in the garden, but she insisted, so back I came. Her question was altogether trivial. She called me back because she could not bear it that there should be any part of my life over which she had no control.
Similar experiences occurred, if rarely, throughout my youth, except that there was a gap when I went to secondary school. Towards the end of my time there I began to realise that this was not just an experience, but a real place that was being experienced. My younger brother called it “being pensive”. Once when I was seventeen, on a holiday in Sweden, he wanted to take a photograph, and although it felt odd, by forgetting the outward circumstance, I was able to go to this place, and he got his photograph.
For a choirboy, the breaking of the voice is a catastrophe. Being young in no way protects you from major loss. Loss, and the retrieval of loss, is one of the threads running through this story.
My sporting experience is negligible. Two days before I left primary school, I discovered that I could hit a rubber ball in a great curve from one end of the playground to another in a team game. I could feel the approval of my peers. At grammar school I had to play rugby. I did not enjoy this. Once I was in a loose scrum. I wondered whether if I were to contribute something to the game, I would receive more from it. Accordingly I pushed, and the scrum moved a few feet. Then a boy from the other side got the ball and with much less effort ran yards and yards with it in the opposite direction. I saw that this was not a useful field of endeavour for me. Next day, not realising that the argument had already been lost, the games master commended me for my effort. Oh you should have seen the boys setting off on a cross-country run at a pace that I regarded as a sprint! When, much later, I arrived back, they sang “For he’s a jolly good fellow”. I did enjoy cycling, however, and rowing boats, and badminton and table tennis. Once I was supposed to be playing cricket, but I found a place on the other side of the pavilion, lay on the ground, and surrounded by the smell of grass, delicious breezes and all the other subtle experiences of a summer afternoon, went to sleep.