John Martin

Post date: 13-Jun-2020 07:47:56

John Martin attended William Ellis school, and was also a denizen of the Witches. He also studied at Sussex University. He is the son of the well known constructivist artists Mary Martin and Kenneth Martin (especially celebrated for his mobiles and sculptures). He is the brother of Paul Martin and was brought up in Eton Avenue, not far from the Witches.

John is a poet, and has an amazing memory of the Witches days and indeed school days at Woilliam Ellis. With his permission here are excerpts of his marvellously detailed and wide reaching and panoptic memories and reflections.

There are fascinating excursions into philosophy, values, art, literature and human nature in his messages, but I have edited them out to focus on the Witches and William Ellis. Gaps are indicated by the ellipsis ...

John Martin - from his Facebook page

John's first message is a reply after looking over a draft of my List of People at the Witches Cauldron

1 March 2020

Hi Paul,

it was Frank Maplestone. And Julius Holley. I could never stand Paul Rock or Joe X. Paul Rock more than Joe X. Sean Sayers and I once got talking together on our way to school. About Charlie Parker, of all things. I liked him: a nice and sensitive and quietly spoken and thoughtful person. Though I know one should never reject any of one's past nevertheless I feel happier distancing myself from that particular part. For me it was very much out of the frying pan and into the fire. Or one bastard driving you into the arms of another bastard. By the time I got to Sussex University I felt in need of a long rest. Which art school despite my hatred of it per se finally provided.

Now I need to give my reply a rest, and go back to your e-mail for another run-through...

It's Penny Blackman (just remember the stamp). You've left out Johnnie Grafton who was a joyrider. Joe also stole from Dillons. Is 'Sally' Sally Wells (now Gilles)? Do you remember Cordelia Reif? She became a probation officer and probably still lives in Howitt Road. The last time I met her in the early eighties she was married. Wasn't it Maddox rather than Maddix? I was very fond of him. He had the best of the cockney temperament. Is Louie on your list? I shall look again. A very dark attractive lively girl. I think she had a bit of a fling with Mike Bishop. We were all very much playing parts in a novel by Jack Kerouac. A case of life imitating art. And showing how much more powerful art is than life. So if you want to exert power be an artist. And if you don't want to exert power be an artist. Schopenhauer always had it right.

I tend to mix up Alan Pulverness and Alan Shoobridge. One of them became heavily addicted to heroin and turned up at 'The Moon & Sixpence' one night looking like a skeleton. To my horror. [That was Alan Shoobridge - PE]

No, Louie isn't on your list. Surely you must remember Louie? I had an exchange with Rob Andrew's sister on Facebook the other day. If I remember rightly she said he was dead. [No, very much alive - PE] Why isn't Gabbie Weissman on your list? [See Gabi Weissman - PE] What happened to his brother, by the way? He once turned up at the Slade, on a visit, complaining about all the homosexuality at Oxbridge.

Now I've forgotten what I was going to say... Ah yes. I put "the Witches'" into my epic but called it "Hell's Gateway" instead. With a motto. 'Abandon hope all you who hopefully enter.' Prior to that it is called the Kosy Korner Kafe (KKK for short). I have situated it in the Sodom Precinct of a provincial English Town called Muckheap. Its proprietors are called Conrad and Aileen Bleech. I can't remember whether the proprietors change. I think some strange things go on in the basement under the ceremonial jurisdiction of a Mr. Mephistopheles. It is from there that my protagonist enters Hell. Before proceeding on his way to Purgatory and Heaven. In Purgatory he meets Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway, who are both doing penance for the sin of their very American machisissimo. (If I may be allowed to mix my Italian with my Spanish in a sort of bastard amalgam of the Latin and Romance languages.) In Heaven there is only one inhabitant, William Burroughs. God has confined himself to Hell as a penance for the holocaust. But he returns to Heaven in time to read my protagonist the riot act in a passage which sounds strangely like something out of Job. Hell is strangely like Hampstead was. Only more so. There is a circus ground at some point.

Was it "The Witches' Cauldron" or "The Witch's Cauldron"?

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. As you see I am very ambivalent about all that. I hope I have been a help. If I remember any more I will let you know. Somebody should really write a book about all that. I cannot think of a better title than the "The Witches' Cauldron". Can you?

All the best, John.

8 March 2020

Dear Paul,

I would be glad if you added Michael Kaye to the list. I know you didn't know him. But he was a gay activist avant le lettre. And well-liked and admired among his own people. And was extraordinarily brave. Even if that courage was born of desperation. He was Jewish and illegitimate. And his foster parents were hardly more than landlords to him. He probably died of AIDS in the eighties.

I would like to know what became of Johnnie [Jonathon] Steele. I know he went to Keele University. He was another one who was terrified. Come to that I was pretty terrified myself. But always had my poetry to fall back on. Perhaps we were all pretty terrified. But far too macho to admit it.

Dave Stevens was at Birkbeck at the same time as myself. Doing his PH.D. What does 'bro' mean?

After I sent my last email it occurred to me that someone *had* written a novel about it! Myself! In fact four novels. And two volumes of short stories. And a six-volume epic poem. Hence presumably my current interest in your project. Even though it was very much getting rubbish out of my system. The grit in the oyster that occasions the pearls. (Perhaps.)

I last met Richard St.John in the eighties. He was in a very bad way. Did you know Richard Garcia? I didn't then. But he lived across the road when I was in the hostel. (It was through him I met Richard St.John again.) Apparently he was also a habitué of the Witches'. Somebody else with a guitar. A part-time actor.

Your daughter sent me a friendship request both on LinkedIn and Facebook. I acceded to both. Her posts are beginning to appear on my newsfeed. (Which is more than I can say for yours. What has gone wrong?) I made my first rude comment on one of her memes yesterday. (It took some time before your sister and I began to get on.) I have also signed a friendship pact with someone called Anya Ernest. I assumed she was a relative of yours. She looked such a nice person I simply couldn't resist.

There seems to be a Jane Ernest as well. Who is she?

I have been wondering lately about the relationship between facts and values and whether rhetoric isn't to values what logic is to facts. Certainly rhetoric seems to have had a bad press for several decades. (Usually expressed rhetorically.) And has been almost totally abandoned as a respectable academic discipline. But in just the same way as there is good logic and bad logic might there not also be good rhetoric and bad rhetoric? I simply don't know how else we can assert the supremacy of values. And one of the things that has gone wrong with the world is the decline in values over the last few decades. Aristotle wrote his Logic, his Poetics and his Rhetoric. And seemingly regarded all three as equally important. I remember Mr. Harding at WE expressing a regret that Rhetoric was no longer taught at University. Certainly Yeats was an absolute master of the field. And every critic attests to the importance of rhetoric in his work.

At the moment I am looking at the relationship between rhetoric and action. That the true measure of a person's rhetoric is that he practise what he preach. - Greta is a superb rhetorician by the way . Everything she does is rhetoric. Even the logic. One day, once she's sorted out this climate catastrophe, she might make a good poet and philosopher.

...

Sorry for such a long meandering ramble through my current preoccupations. Something just came over me. Something much better than benzedrine used to inflict. (I believe it's called inspiration.) Because more natural and spontaneous. Do you remember those long rambling letters Julius Holley used to send to Gabbie? And how pleased he was to get them? I think it was Jonathan Steele and Rab who shared a room at Gît-le-Coeur. I was staying in the Rue de Seine. They boasted how they could hear William Burroughs up above typing away. Once in Soho a fourteen-year-old gamin almost offered himself to me. But Burroughs snapped him up first. For good solid cash. At least I think it was Burroughs. It certainly looked like him. And he was in London at the time. Once I sat in a room as small as the one I am writing in now and watched an unknown American folksinger with a guitar and a mouth organ attached to the guitar have his hands carefully if reverently placed on the strings, he was so drugged up. My friend Tom Joseph had dragged me there. It was in a room over the King's Head, was it? Tom's sister was called Anthea and she had founded and ran a folksong club called the Troubadour. Which I believe is still extant. Though Tom died a few years back. Having survived much longer than most of his friends would have predicted. (He was an alcoholic. And once spent £80 pounds in a single weekend. The equivalent of ~ £2000 now.) This American folksinger had arrived in London at the behest of the BBC to try him out as an actor. But was found to be inadequate. At least to that particular role. Tom's sister took him under her wing. A few months later he was to become famous. And remains famous to this day. That is the only time I ever saw him. Though very good I still don't think he deserved the Nobel Prize. Not for literature anyway. For medicine perhaps. Or peace. On the whole I find pop music crude compared to classical music. Though I acknowledge and value its roots in the music of the folk.

There are people around, Paul, who think that if they take the side of death they will acquire the power of death. But they can't. They too will die. Just like the rest of us. But how much better to die knowing you have done justice both to yourself and others than to die fully assured of the fact that you have never done justice to anything.

There, that's enough damage done for one session.

All the best to you and yours, John.

Notes:

'Every word should be rooted in justice.' Pound.

'Every word should be rooted truth and justice.' Yeats. (I cannot find the exact quote but this is roughly what he said.)

No. It was The King & Queen, Foley Street.

Sounds as if Gabbie's brother were trying to make up for the ten lost tribes of Israel. As for P.M.Jefferys and all his daughters (did he ever succeed in bringing forth male progeny?) I couldn't count them. There were two rather delightful twins who sat on my knees and played with my glasses.

27 March 2020

Dear Paul,

thank you for your response. I met Mike (Kaye) at the Witches'. So he was at the Witches'. I remember Johnnie Maddox taking a particular dislike to him.

I am not saying Johnnie Steele was gay! I simply don't know. I wouldn't be surprised. I daresay you can be terrified without being gay. Eliot was certainly terrified. And he wasn't gay. But Johnnie was absolutely terrified. I think everybody is at that age. We all have various rather pathetic and in the end rather self-defeating ways of hiding it from ourselves and each other.

Point taken about envy. I am pretty ambivalent about you. As I am about most things. When I first discovered that you had succeeded in the way you have I was overjoyed. And felt very glad for you. Because I knew something of the difficulties you'd been through. But on the other hand I suspect you have some thing about power. As opposed to truth. I mean power as an end in itself. My attitude towards power can best be summed up in this way:

The truth of power is that the power of truth trumps every other form of power; but the moment you start valuing truth for its power rather than its truth you are already starting to go wrong.

...

Some more names to conjure with... There was somebody called Price. I remember the name because I remember Julius making a pun on his name. There was somebody else called Mick Roach. There was a fellow who lived in a house full of little boys. And I once watched him snogging a twelve-year old teeny bopper at a party for what seemed like several hours. While various little boys wandered in and out to see what he was up to. It was all very Dickensian. To me he still represents the last word in depravity and decadence. All that can happen, if you give your lowest urges free rein and allow them to totally dominate you. Do you remember Nick and Helen from the Central School of Dramatic Arts? There was a quiet little guy called Pete who suddenly shot to stardom and fame and celebrity status by acquiring a black girlfriend. Who turned out to be very nice. I can't remember whether you frequented the Moon & Sixpence. Its proprietor was an Indian called Mr. Wise. A typical weekend evening in Hampstead began in the Witches'. Then we would go to a party (or gatecrash one) and then end up at the Moon & Sixpence. Usually there was a certain amount of pub-crawling on the way. The children of very respectable parents doing some very unrespectable things.

Did you ever meet David Nobbs, by the way? He lived in Hampstead. He was the one who achieved later fame by writing the scripts for 'The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin' and 'A Fairly Secret Army'. I had some dealings with him. And I remember him being very kind. Far more kind than I deserved in fact. He really was a gentle man.

I'm glad you got a benzedrine-fuelled night talking with Julius. I was very fond of Julius. (Weren't we all?) And very proud of the fact that when he got back from his six week stint in Spain it was me he came and visited first. He was in a blue funk when I suggested we go to the Witches'. Another one scared stiff of everything. I had to talk him down and remind him how fond everybody was of him and how much we all had been missing him. (Now you'll tell me it was you he visited first. I know you.)

I felt very guilty towards Julius when Mike inveigled me into his nefarious embraces. I felt I'd let him down. And indeed still feel that way.

...

With wisdom you can do without drugs. Because none of these drugs would work if they weren't present in the human body already. Since they are present already they don't need to be introduced. In a purely natural state they are metabolised as a result of virtuous behaviour and its associated wisdom. So when I see that Sartre relied on benzedrine to write his books I say 'Oh yes... ' Heidegger regarded Sartre's work as rubbish. And I certainly prefer Heidegger, despite his pompousity. And his equivocal attitude towards Nazism. Sartre knew what was going on in Stalinist Russia and still gave it his support. And is even more pompous.

Good poets don't need drugs. Where bad poets need drugs good poets have wisdom. And much the same goes for philosophers. This doesn't mean that I don't feel compassion for those who feel the need to take drugs. I did myself for a short time. Nor does it mean that I don't think that there can be a contribution from those who do take drugs. Certainly Burroughs made a valuable contribution. And so did Kerouac. But Burroughs witnessed against drugs. 'Learn to make it without chemical supports,' was his most important teaching. Auden too managed an amazing amount of wisdom in his work despite the dubious chemistry that lay behind much of it. Philip Larkin was a bit of a lush by all accounts. But remained clear-headed enough to do some of the best work that has been done since the war. I only wish he had been a little less gutless.

Seamus Heaney had a gift for evocative natural description. Which he wasted on peat bogs. But description should only play a subsidiary role in poetry. Which is why he remains a good minor poet rather than a major one.

The poets I have most time for are Brian Patten and Gregory Corso. Their work is very rough and unpolished. But it is full of wisdom. And some of it is quite memorable. If only they had been more disciplined.

It is important to cast a critical eye over one's contemporaries because in that way you see in what way you can make your own contribution.

Encouraged by your example I thought to myself if Paul can get to be a mere professor after all his difficulties then I can get to be a literary classic after mine.

I was sorry to hear about Johnnie Steele's addiction to heroin. Such things are always sad. And so often seem to happen to the best. The worst seem to have a certain rigidity and insensitivity that provides a bulwark against such failings. But in the end leave them less than human. And perhaps incapable of true wisdom. Or genuine virtue.

...

Les was another character around the Witches'. I don't know if you remember him. He had sandy hair.

It is important not to romanticise oneself. This is something the Beats tended to do. With disastrous consequences to themselves and their followers. To a certain extent Yeats did this. But was very aware of it and its dangers. And therefore applied the appropriate corrections. To be aware of a problem is more than halfway to solving it. Especially at the psychological and philosophical level. Byron also romanticised himself. As to a lesser extent did Shelley. Strangely enough Wordsworth was too pompous to romanticise himself. And Coleridge too philosophical. And Keats too much Keats. Blake romanticised himself, but not as a Romantic. He romanticised himself as an Old Testament prophet.

We are not playing games here. We are real actors in a real world with a real and very uncertain future ahead of us. There is no room for acting a part. (Or acting apart.) The world needs a massive injection of truth. Greta is at the very tip of that needle. She it is who is the real 'tipping point'.

The one thing I envy you, Paul, is in having found the the right partner. But then I am a poet. And poets always have put an emphasis on the quality of their private intimate lives rather than their public extimate image. Most of Shakespeare is about the conflict between the two. Especially what I call the binomial plays: T&C, A&C, R&J.

Anything other than purely moral or spiritual power (the power of truth) does arouse strong feelings in people, Paul, both positive and negative. (Indeed far too many people perhaps misguidedly seek out that sort of power in order deliberately to arouse such feelings in the first place.) And the positive feelings can be as bad as the negative. The danger is that people treat you as somebody other than who you really are. And value you for other than purely human reasons. They want to use you. You are seen as an identity rather than as an individual. And this can be bad for one. And that is why I have always avoided it. Poetry is like holding a mirror up to the soul. And is a great help in this respect. If you are unfortunate enough to have acquired power then the secret is I suppose to wear it very very lightly.

There are times I wish I had the power that being a published writer would give me. I could for instance help other young writers whose work I liked on their way up. And make personal contact with people I admire. And know that I would be listened to with respect. Provided of course that they respected my work. But such times never last very long.

It would be nice if somebody wrote a book about those days and that scene. I mean somebody other than me. Have you thought about doing that? It would be a good way into creative writing. It was by writing my autobiography that I got started.

All the best, John.

P.S. I was just glancing at your Witches' Web site. What a good idea! I frequented both the Loft and the Witches'. But the Witches' mainly. Then there was the Prompt Corner in Southend Green. Which for all I know is still going. (Actually it isn't. I just looked.) They offered the necessary facilities for playing chess. I think Dannie Abse was amongst those who habitually availed themselves of this opportunity. And then there was the El Serrano up in Hampstead Village. Just around the corner from the Everyman cinema. All of that life now seems to me intensely false and ridiculous. Jon Silkin used to hawk copies of his magazine around the pubs of Hampstead. Once as I was entering the Witches' somebody said, 'Here comes the angry young man.' I feel a lot less angry now because I've got most of what was bothering me off my chest.

Once more I say farewell and hope that you and yours are bearing up under the present crisis. I keep seeing Nuala's posts on my newsfeed. I haven't seen anything from Anya for a while. Sainsburys is getting more and more fascist. That what I most dislike about situations like the current one: it brings the latent authoritarian bullies out of their closet and gives them wonderful opportunities for ordering people around.

11 June 2020

Dear Paul,

Brancusi once said, 'Making art is easy, what is difficult is creating the right conditions in which it will arise.' This has been the story of my life. First of all trying to find those conditions. And then finally in despair deliberately creating them for myself. And that included the right philosophical framework as well. And having finally done that I now am very unwilling to jeopardise them. Now the poetry pours out of me. Back then I didn't even know if I could ever manage one poem.

Among documents pertaining to Jules Holley, which I have preserved since the 60s and, found a letter I suspected might have come from John

Yes. That letter is definitely mine. And I thank you very much for preserving it and letting me see it again. I didn't realise that even then I was uncertain about university. And striving to find the right conditions for my art. One thing is certain: I couldn't have done what Thomas Merton did. Some sort of community might have been right. But not one where I had to accede to a particular dogma. And also since I value the friendship of women very highly no single-sex arrangement would ever have been of the slightest interest. Hadn't I already been damaged enough by single-sex 'arrangements'?

Mike superimposed his own agenda on my much more delicate and fragile one. (Though in the end more valuable. - As delicate and fragile things tend to be.) And subverted me to his own purposes. He introduced a lot of noise into my system. And my system was already cacophonous enough as a result of that awful school. I have written a long poem about the whole episode, written in octosyllabics I think, and called 'For The Love Of Mike'. But I could never wholeheartedly endorse his program. And I am still very dubious about it. My own feeling is that homosexuality is an artifact of a faulty education system. And in default of anything better that's the story I prefer to stick to. I am not so much in favour of homosexuality as against homophobia and machismo and the patriarchal dominance hierarchy and androcentrism. And my own feeling is that homosexuality is caused by these things. I feel I am being coerced into fulfilling the stereotype of the queer simply because I lack that sort of brutal animal coordination necessary for competitive team sports. Indeed even if I didn't I would dislike them. And dislike myself for possessing them. It is my duty as a poet and a philosopher to disavow all stereotypes. Certainly insofar as people attempt to apply them to me. Where disavowal tends to become outright defiance.

When Mike took me over I felt very guilty about Julius and felt I had let him down. (It was in fact a quasi-capitalist takeover following a dawn raid.) (Even to the point that my stocks tumbled and a Great Depression ensued.) And I still feel like that. I was fond of Julius. That's the worst thing about homosexuality: the way it gets in the way of normal close friendship. I have been watching a lot of Russell Brand recently. And I find myself liking him more and more as he reminds me of friends like Julius and some of my rough-and-tough cockney friends I had at primary school. Watching an interview between him and Candace Owens was a bit of an eye opener. Head versus heart. And I found myself agreeing with both. The one thing I find all these successful people have in common is that they seem to have had unhappy childhoods. So if parents want their children to be successful the best thing they can do is give them a bad time. My own parents weren't that sensible and gave me a very happy, very secure childhood which ill prepared me for the 'real' world outside. My only attitude to politics is that most politicians are in it for themselves. And because they value personal power. And that naturally emergent order is vastly superior to artificially imposed order. For this reason I am in favour of Karl Popper's approach. Which can be described as meliorative or mitigated capitalism. I don't think you can just trash everything and start again. You have to build on the foundations that are already there. And respect what's best in tradition. Most capitalists I suspect would favour some form of social security. And they know they need some form of infrastructure for which taxes need to be raised.

It's just that as a poet I do not value money or property or status or power very greatly. My own ambition is to write good poems. And everything that doesn't help me do that is a distraction.

The other day I found myself grateful for the extreme difficulty of poetry. Because I thrive on difficulty. And there is nothing more difficult than poetry. The only thing that is more difficult or just as difficult is virtue. And they are very much interwoven with each other. Every poem is a crucifixion and a resurrection. And every poem is an adventure. And every poem is not just a re-creation but a creation. You actually create a new experience. In which you are fully aware. And where other people can follow in your footsteps. So Dante as he wrote the Commedia actually went on that dangerous and difficult journey. And took us with him. I have just been writing a poem about that. (And one day if you're a good boy and do your homework I might show it to you.) Eliot begins his Collected Poems, 'Let us go then you and I... ' and ends it, 'But these are private words said to you in public.' And Eliot believed that any poet's work should constitute a unified whole. So this would have been done consciously.

In the meantime I slowly rehabilitate myself. At the present moment I am being very productive. I have just completed a sequence of poems about Greta. And today I wrote twenty four lines of a sonnet sequence.

Back then Julius and I were very much aficionados of the Donald M. Allen anthology of contemporary American poetry. And in particular of Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. But now I find their work interesting but rather pretentious. They went on about the breath and the heartbeat. While discounting their role in a way that more traditional metrics doesn't. The useful thing was that they drew attention to the dependence of traditional metres on inborn physiological factors. And hence discouraged a merely mechanical approach. The practice of freedom lends freedom even to those who freely choose not to exercise that freedom. And therefore I am not totally against free verse. In the same way that I am not totally against uniform. I am just against the enforcement of uniform codes. Duncan wrote a sequence of prose poems called 'The Structure Of Rhyme'. And yet they lacked both structure and rhyme. So that the irony of Duncan's position is palpable. My own sympathies are more in alignment with the interiority of Duncan. But I always felt that what Duncan would have really liked to do was write like Shakespeare. And so that is what I do. Many poets have attempted to imitate him. Including Eliot and Wallcott. And it was a red-letter day when Neil Astley in a very unsympathetic letter accused me of writing like WS! - Poor fool, couldn't he see that that was precisely the point? Or what a significant achievement that was. And all this even without trying to write like WS, where so many had tried and failed. And these not amongst the least. The fact of the matter is that in order to write the sort of thing I want to write about I have to write in that way. And also if I am to be the sort of person I actually am. Everything else twists my own values out of true. And this I am no longer prepared to put up with. You do not achieve originality by striving for it but by attempting to fulfill tradition and be yourself. And by relaxing into what is most comfortable for you. Shoes that are on the point of disintegrating are highly original whereas new shoes never can be.

One of the reasons I don't publish is because I don't feel I deserve to publish, simply because I didn't write at all for so many years. I feel I betrayed my muse. And that as a result I am less than a 'professional'. I have reduced myself to 'amateur' status. I don't know how many years it will take - if ever - to make up for that. A poet's only capital consists of his emotions and feelings. And the more subtle they are the more important they are. That is why a poet can never go against his feelings. Or be argued out of them. They must remain sacrosanct. Indeed bad poets or immature poets often need to be argued into them! I certainly did. I didn't trust my feelings and instincts because of a basic lack of self-confidence. And also because of education. I had been educated out of them! And taught that my own feelings were unimportant. And probably wrong.

Meditation changed all that.

The trouble is that that lack of self-confidence is actually a good quality. How I hate pushy-shovey self-assertive self-confident aggressive people! Especially those who speak with an American accent. As they all seem to these days. I like shy diffident sensitive thoughtful people. These are the people who given the right conditions are the most likely to flower and bear the most valuable fruit. Whereas the former sort will only ever trample over the latter sort in muddy fields in the middle of winter. And wherever they are it is always winter. Needless to say Greta belongs to the latter class. As for the steamrollers... Let them crush the life out of each other. If they ever had any life in the first place. Preferably on some other planet. Failing that let them attend classes in lack-of-self-assertiveness training. Let them be disempowered. Let them be taught the discreet charms of lack-of-self-confidence. Let them learn the art of private speaking. Or even better of not speaking at all. Let them learn unleadership skills. Let them learn the art of being utterly crushed. Let them learn how to be successful failures. Let them learn how to bear a bad name with good grace. And then talk to me of justice.

I am slowly working through the file of Witch's Cauldron anecdotes you have amassed. It was nice to read about Julius. I knew that when he went out to Spain something bad had happened but I didn't know it was that. I can't remember him telling me much about it anyway. I suspected that his friend had made a pass at him. Or something of that nature. He was I suspect very attractive to both sexes. I'm glad he had prospered so well since then. I did hear whispers of him being hospitalised following an episode of amphetamine-psychosis. And feared that benzedrine might prove the end of him. Apparently I was wrong. And I'm glad of that. Sometimes it's nicer to be proved wrong than proved right. I remember him coming to visit me at Westminster College. And talking to him under the ever watchful gaze of N. F. Simpson.

John Rush was given special coaching to enable him to pass his 'A' levels and go to Oxbridge. This was at the same time as I was being continually attacked for being in tears. So the whole thing is very painful for me. Especially as most of my peer group went to Oxbridge. And I fully expected to go there as well. It's just that I had higher moral standards than they did. And accordingly less capacity for compromising with evil. As far as I could see John Rush's ability was in rugby. And I'm afraid that's an ability I rather despise. I have been on the receiving end of that too often in my life. So I tend not to think of him as a 'good bloke'. None of this is his fault. But I dislike the attitude that many people display to someone just because they're physically strong. This seems to me to be deeply unjust. The physically strong can look after themselves. And in any case it is moral strength that is most important. That he ended up as a literary agent is also deeply ironic. In fact words fail me.

No they don't, after all.

There are limits to one's altruism. And I don't see why my life should be sacrificed to the John Rushes of this world in some Ayn Randyish way. And while his parents celebrate his going to Oxbridge mine are condemned to the misery of seeing their own son reduced to the status of a disgrace all because of a prejudice against the supposed 'effeminate' and in favour of the supposed hypermasculine. This isn't a joke, Paul. It stinks. And you know it does. This isn't what education is about: the promulgation of prejudice. And the despoliation of otherwise happy families. Nor the perpetuation of injustice. This is precisely what any education worthy of the name should be against. And that's that! Education should be leading-out not a taking-in. Certainly it never took me in - or at least not for very long - but it didn't exactly lead me out either. Not at least to anywhere I particularly wanted to go. And it seems to have taken in a lot of other people.

Sid terrified me too. And this is not good. He wasn't a bad man. But he was very very limited. And very unperspicaceous. He saw only the outside of things. And a good teacher should not be like that. Or indeed a good human being. These memories are deeply traumatic for me. But you cannot disown your own past. And I have to embrace it and learn from it.

Julius's prose poems are not too bad. It isn't the sort of writing I favour now. And probably never did. We both tended to follow American poets then rather than English. Americans have a big thing about machismo. And so do adolescents. As do effeminate poets who lack the confidence to be themselves. Duncan's 'Structure Of Rhyme' sequence it strikes me now might have been called that for oxymoronic effect. And almost certainly the irony was intended. At least I hope it was.

The name of the teacher in the photo with Spike Armitt was Mr Sharpe. He was a homophobic bully. And I still detest the nauseating little creep to this day. (One of the few good things about being figured for a queer is that it gives you a really good insight into the moral stature of various people.) I always took good care to avoid Spike Armitt's set, which was the top set. And was happy to be in Taffy Thomas's. The second. The third was under the aegis of Mr Goodger whom I also detested. He used to fall asleep during the lessons. Taffy Thomas was a quietly spoken Welshman who looked as if he actually liked children.

I also detested Mr Nelkon. He was one of the teachers who sat there writing notes while I was forced to hit another child. In fact I detested most of the teachers. And in retrospect I should really have detested them all. To my mind no good teacher would teach at a school like that. I certainly wouldn't. I daresay Nelkon made a lot of money from his boring textbooks. He was a very boring little man. I wonder how many future atom bombs sprang fully armed out of his anus. What it is to be a responsible member of society! With 'humans' like that we'd be so much better off with robots.

I hated Whorwell as well. These people still give me nightmares.

Mr Harding was one of the few teachers I actually liked. He was sensitive and kind and conscientious. And really cared for his pupils as well as his subject.

I never studied with Herrick. But I didn't like the look of him. And am glad I didn't.

Maths doesn't get interesting until at least 'A' level.

God, that awful Bellamy!

The Biology teachers were Mr Huxley, Ron Ferdinand and Aggie Clough. I don't remember any Pond. Except of course on the Heath. I daresay his first name was Des. And if it wasn't should have been. The whole school was a bit of a Slough. With whom poor Aggie didn't exactly chime. Even if she almost rhymed.

Mr Browne not 'Brawne'. Though in fact 'brawn' might have been more appropriate. Another rugby-playing homophobic nasty man. Though not quite as sharply so as Sharpe. You should have seen the look he didn't give me when I had the temerity to suggest that Yeats might conceivably have been influenced by Nietzsche.

I remember Kelly as well. He was a sort of energetic non-person. Yet another android.

I liked Sean Sayers. But I didn't like Joe Whittaker.

The photo of the ~ 1960 AA demonstration has Ron Ferdinand next to John Rush.

I was interested to read what you had to say about Sid. And have now revised my assessment of his character. I realise now that I was far too charitable in my previous remarks. I didn't know then that he had been in the army for twenty years and had achieved the rank of major. In other words his previous life had been devoted to killing people. And he had proved so good at that that he had been promoted to a position where he might be responsible for even more murders. I daresay such people might be necessary somewhere. But certainly not anywhere near children. From mangling adults' bodies he had graduated to murdering children's souls. He hired a gang of thugs and ruffians to be his henchmen. And promoted the worst of the children in his charge to aid him in that sick enterprise. He was an utterly despicable man. He instituted a reign of terror in that place which still leaves this alumnus at least shaking in his bootsoles. And by his utter hypocrisy served only to bring Christianity into disrepute. He looked like Hitler. And took after him in almost every respect.

I say he had a career of mangling adults' bodies. But I daresay he was at one with those who were dropping bombs all round me the night that I was born. Or shooting at my ex-wife while she was still in the womb. How many children had he been responsible for murdering before he became a teacher? I remember Alan Shoobridge turning up at 'The Moon & Sixpence' one night. He had been on heroin and looked like a skeleton. Meanwhile along the opposite side of the road sauntered David Burt with one of his Oxbridge pals looking very healthy and well-fed and 'well-adjusted' and no doubt discussing the finer niceties of atom bomb manufacture or the microminiaturisation of electronic aiming systems. One of Sid's successes. Whereas the skeleton only had himself to blame. They always do. How many children was he indirectly responsible for murdering while running that school? And there are worse things than the mere murder of the body. Or the murder of the soul. There is recruiting others to the cause of death. There is defiling the good name of an otherwise life-supporting religion. So that even that support is deprived those who are driven to the wall. And all they are left with is heroin, perhaps, in default of some greater Heroine or Hero. We each of us have a responsibility to fill that void.

Nor shall my pen rest in my hand until we have built Jerusalem...

Everywhere!

But most of all in the hearts and minds of children. And all those adults who are content to learn from children. And content to learn the hardest lesson of all: how to be kind. (Especially to me.)

Interestingly enough the headmaster immediately prior to Sid was a very different kettle of fish and apparently quite a character. He lived in Highgate and used to come to school riding a donkey and accompanied by a dog. Having dismounted he handed the reins to the dog who then led the donkey back to their home in Highgate. Presumably in the evening an appropriately similar ritual was repeated. I like eccentricity in anybody because it renders them more human. (So long as it isn't too ostentatious.)

I don't know what you make of this new Facebook gimmick. When I do 'hang out' I tend to hang out with as disparate a bunch of people as I can accumulate. So it's probably not a good idea for them to mix. It's just another aspect of my 'contrast of opposites, balance and variety' 'philosophy'. I liked your sister's friends. But I wonder how well I'd get on with yours.

(David Burt by the way wasn't as bad as I've depicted him. It's just that he wasn't very socially aware. None of my peer group were. There were very naive politically. And hence did far better for themselves than I did. At least outwardly. I call David 'well-adjusted' but in fact he was only well-adjusted to a very narrow very maladjusted social environment consisting only of white professional middle-class males in a career-advancement scheme suited only to themselves.)

Best regards to you and yours, John.

By the way I could never understand why we went on demonstrations against the atom bomb while failing to demonstrate against the presence of the CCF at school. Or why we went on demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa while failing to demonstrate against apartheid as it was practised at school. (My own tears constituted a one-man demonstration against that whole horrible regime. And as far as I am concerned provided a far more eloquent testimony to my inward protest than any amount of shouting and screaming and marching.)

----

As a writer I had to show people what I could have done with an education more suited to my less rugged sensibility. I couldn't waste all my life and all my talents in a satirical - or even satyrical - protest against that miserable excuse for a miserable excuse.

11 June 2020

Dear John

What a marvellous letter - you recall the William Ellis days so well - and the brilliance of Jules. Can I have your permission please to include your message and earlier ones on the Witches website - you add so much to my own and other's more feeble accounts

Paul