The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (28 page)

Oxford in those days was still looked on by some as a playground, a finishing school for the rich and privileged, but this attitude was generally held by those who, like me, had not been in the War. I, of course, had neither the money nor the inclination to waste my time on riotous living, but there were some—usually men from the ‘better’ public schools—who made a career out of drinking too much, breaking glass, painting the Founder’s statue green and generally disturbing the peace. This activity did not bother me as I kept out of its way, but, in addition to troubling the authorities, it annoyed quite a few of the former servicemen who no doubt had had their fill of noise and chaos. These men also felt, with some justification I suppose, that the younger sparks were not giving them the respect that they deserved. It was in this climate that some of the war veterans decided to stage what they thought would be a dignified protest. They would go into Hall for dinner one evening wearing their old officer’s uniforms. The idea, I imagine, was to impress the frivolous-minded with the sacrifice that they had made for them.

Seddon was no part of the demonstration, but he had got wind of it and he also appeared in hall in uniform: the uniform of an artillery sergeant. It turned out that, of the St Matthew’s veterans who were undergraduates, he had been the only ‘ranker’. There was no reason why he should not have been an officer—his father, a wealthy industrialist, had sent him to a good school—but whether he had refused a commission because of some principled objection, or had been denied it or, as was inevitably rumoured, had been reduced to the ranks, he did not say.

Neither did he reveal why he had made his particular demonstration: had he been protesting with the officers, or against them? My own conjecture was that he had done neither, but that he was simply asserting his individuality. If his intention had been to establish himself as a presence in our College, he certainly succeeded. All of us, I think, felt thereafter that here was a formidable personality who would ‘stand no nonsense’. The very idea of throwing him into the college fountain, debagging, or subjecting him to any form of undergraduate ragging would have been seen as anathema, even by the rowing club after a Bump supper.

Occasionally I would meet Seddon of an evening in Panter Ray’s rooms. I do not quite know how he came to them because Panter taught Ancient History and Seddon was a Modern Greats man. I expect it was Panter’s kind heart which brought him there, because he was always on the lookout for the misfit and the lonely, anxious that they should not feel utterly displaced.

On these occasions Seddon was perfectly agreeable and did not push himself forward in any way. He was, nevertheless, a distinctive presence who gave his opinions, when asked, not tentatively, as most of us did, but with authority. His views were on the whole modernist and radical: he spoke with some approval of the Bolshevik Revolution, and it was from Seddon in Panter’s rooms that I first heard the name of Sigmund Freud.

I doubt very much whether Panter agreed with or even understood much of what Seddon said, but he was one of those passive conservatives who tolerate the expression of any point of view, provided that blasphemy or obscenity is not involved. Panter was far from being a brilliant conversationalist, but he was adept at gently enabling others to talk. In his fifty-fifth year, he had boyish features, bright blue eyes and his sandy hair, still thick and curly, was just tinged with grey. Despite his rather youthful appearance it was hard for us to think of him as anything other than middle-aged, perhaps because he was so set in his habits. His way of speaking was old fashioned, part pedantic (‘mobile vulgus’ for ‘mob’), part Edwardian upper class vernacular, many of his remarks being tagged by that archetypically 1890s expression ‘dont’cher know’. Rumours of an adventurous youth in which he had shown literary promise and had been invited to take tea with Swinburne and Watts-Dunton at The Pines were dismissed as legend, but were later found to be true. Panter’s charm and his great virtue lay in the fact that he accepted us as we were, and as equals.

That summer, the summer of 1920, I was invited by Panter to join the reading party at his Chalet in the Savoyard Alps. To arrive at this destination I spent a gruelling twenty-four hours or so travelling across France by train, standing mostly in third-class corridors, changing several times, until at last I arrived one fresh July morning at the little station of Saint Genièvre les Eaux in the foothills of Mont Blanc. I had sent a telegram ahead from Paris to say when I was to arrive so that the comforting figure of Panter in a linen jacket and a disgraceful pair of old grey flannels was waiting for me on the platform. Standing beside him was a tall, willowy and outstandingly good looking young man whom I recognised as Lord Felbrigg.

Even in those days some academic prowess was required to gain entry into Oxford, so how Lord Felbrigg managed to obtain a place at St Matthew’s is something of a mystery. He had come from Eton with little to recommend him but his looks and his title (which was a courtesy title, he being the only son of the Marquess of Attleborough), but few resented him, because he was the most amiable and unassuming of beings. Panter had taken him up, some said because of his title, but I suspect because he was so helpless. At any rate, I felt as I saw them, standing side by side on the platform waiting for me, that they looked comfortable together. Panter was no fool, but there was something simple and childlike about him which responded to the same quality in Felbrigg.

Felbrigg had a motor car—a great rarity in those days—which he had bought in Paris and driven all the way to the Haute Savoie himself. It was an open-topped Bugatti, if I remember correctly, and in it we bumped along the sunny cobbled streets of Saint Genièvre, with its tall yellow houses whose every window box seems in my memory to have been bursting with scarlet geraniums. As we made our way to the little station of the ‘Tramway de Mont Blanc’, which was to take us up the mountain to the Chalet, we laughed, as children do, for no good reason but the excellent one of being alive.

The Chalet itself is situated four-and-a-half thousand feet up on the slopes of Mont Saint Genièvre, one of the foothills of the Mont Blanc massif to which it is joined by a neck of land called the Col du Prarion. It was at this Col that the Tramway de Mont Blanc deposited us, and from there that we took the short walk through pine woods to the Chalet des Pines which nestles in a clearing on the eastern slopes of Mont Saint Genièvre. It is a wooden structure on two floors, the upper one consisting of bedrooms, the ground floor being composed of a kitchen, a dining room and a large communal sitting room. The clearing in front of the Chalet is an oval shaped terrace of rough grass lawn which commands an uninterrupted view across a valley to mountains beyond.

Hoveton and three or four others were already there. It was the first week of Panter’s reading party and others were due to arrive later. During that week we were cheerful, earnest, energetic, studious, frivolous and innocently happy. In the mornings we took deck chairs out onto the lawn to read our books. In that high, rare atmosphere even the hardest authors lost their density and became pellucid. Plato’s dialogues sparkled like a drawing room comedy; the weighty paragraphs of Thucydides became as terse and gripping as an American thriller. In the afternoon we took strenuous walks up towards the snow line and beyond.

Our happiness was enhanced by the fact that Panter was in a mood that was sunny and benign even by his standards, and it did not escape our notice that this was due to the presence of Lord Felbrigg. It was not that they were constantly together, but that their acts and moods were always in accord. Their delight in each other’s company was evident and sometimes comical because they were such an incongruous pair, the young lord and the old pedant. Yet they complemented one another: Felbrigg looked to Panter for security and wisdom, Panter to Felbrigg for youth and energy. Though mutually dependent, they wore their dependency lightly, as if it were a kind of joke. So we passed seven days in sunshine, study and dreamless sleep, and on the eighth day Seddon came.

I did not know that Seddon had been invited, but he had. Panter’s kind heart had prevailed over his common sense. Seddon appeared suddenly in the Chalet shortly after seven as supper was being prepared and laid his heavy rucksack down with a bump in the middle of the sitting room. He had missed the last excursion of the Tramway and so had been compelled to make the uphill journey on foot, a good three hours of strenuous walking.

It is probably retrospective imagination which makes me believe that the atmosphere of the Chalet changed abruptly as soon as Seddon walked into it, but that night after supper unquestionably the mood darkened. We had gathered in the sitting room for the usual conversation before bed. Somehow the topic of the Great War was broached and Seddon, the only one of the party who had been a combatant, began to talk about it. For an hour, perhaps two, he told one story after another: stories of maimings, gassings, blindings, disfigurements, of men blown apart or buried alive in saps, or drowned in mud. The rest of us sat there, too stunned to interrupt, but longing for him to stop. Occasionally I glanced over at Panter, in the hope that he would call Seddon to order, but I saw from his glazed expression that he was as mesmerised as the rest of us. As the daylight faded outside, the only illumination came from an oil lamp on the table nearest to Seddon’s chair. The occasion began to take on the atmosphere of a bizarre religious meeting in which all eyes were on the preacher as he ranted about human wickedness and the horrors of life and death. Seddon’s war contained no heroism, no courageous comradely deeds, only degradation and suffering.

The recital was brought to a sudden end by a strange happening. Something was heard moving about above us, pattering along the wooden floorboards of the Chalet. Lord Felbrigg sprang from his seat and immediately ran upstairs to investigate. The rest of us stayed where we were in a state of shock. I looked across at Seddon. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, apprehensive, perhaps troubled, but not, I thought, surprised. Presently Felbrigg came down, announcing that he had searched the place thoroughly, but there was nothing to be found. ‘It must have been a rat, or something,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘Whatever it is, it’s gone.’

‘Time we were in bed,’ said Panter rising, and we all obeyed gratefully.

It should have been a rat, it could only have been a rat, but it was not. In the first place the footfalls were too heavy; secondly they had the unmistakable rhythm of a biped, rather than a four-legged creature. Yet they were not quite human either. A flightless bird? No. They sounded most of all like the headlong, stuttering steps of a child that has just learned to walk.

The following morning was a fine one, so that some of our former cheerfulness was restored, but I noticed from the first a subtle alteration in the regime of the place. Before Seddon’s arrival Panter had conducted the reading party with Lord Felbrigg as his lieutenant, allowing him on occasion to take command as leader of our afternoon expeditions into the mountains. Seddon was now a third factor in the partnership. He did not exactly usurp Lord Felbrigg’s position: it was as if he stood behind Panter and Felbrigg, directing them both.

Felbrigg was aware of this shift in the social balance, and did not like it. He took a strong dislike to Seddon, but was unable to express it clearly. The nearest he came to an analysis was when he said to me once that he thought that Seddon was ‘the sort of chap who pulls the wings off flies’.

Panter was also uneasy about the situation and seemed equally incapable of doing anything about it. I often saw him engaged in long intense conversations with Seddon. The rest of us, not in Felbrigg’s presence, would speculate on the nature of their discussions. I only heard what was said once, and that was only a fragment.

One afternoon, a few days after Seddon’s arrival, we had decided not to go on a walk as a party, but to split up into singles and pairs for our constitutionals. This had not happened before and was a sign of the dissolution which Seddon’s arrival had caused. I had gone off by myself to explore the wooded slopes of Mont Saint Genièvre, had lost myself a couple of times and was returning to the Chalet rather later than I would have wished. It was a hot day and the sun had filled the forest with a heavy, pine-scented air. I was scrambling down a slope towards a path when I heard the voice of two walkers coming along it, Seddon and Panter. I squatted down behind a bush to listen. At first I could not hear what they were saying, but I could tell that Seddon was doing most of the talking and that what he said was sharply authoritative. Then, as they came close to where I was hidden, I managed to make out a few sentences. Seddon spoke first.

‘You must stop hiding from yourself, Panter. Look your desires in the face. Act upon them if necessary.’

‘Oh, I say, but look here, Seddon, I’m quite happy as I am, dont’cher know.’

‘What’s happiness got to do with it? It’s being alive that matters.’

Then they passed ahead of where I was concealed, so that they had their backs to me and I could no longer hear them. This was how I realised, before all the others, that whatever else Seddon intended, he did not mean to alienate Lord Felbrigg from Panter’s affections: quite the reverse, in fact.

I could, I suppose, explain in detail how the situation at the Chalet became daily more intense, more fraught with unspoken emotions, but I have no stomach for it. I can only say that with each day Seddon’s influence grew, even as it became less and less obviously manifested. As for the strange noise, it was heard a few more times, always on the upper floor while one or other of us was on the ground floor, but we never heard it again as a group.

About a week after I had overheard the conversation between Panter and Seddon there came a day which changed everything. The morning passed as usual, then, in the afternoon, most people dispersed as usual for their walk. I remained behind because I had a slight stomach upset. I noticed that the last pair to leave the Chalet were Panter and Lord Felbrigg. They seemed deep in conversation, Felbrigg laughing a good deal, in a forced, nervous way which was unlike him.