Buch lesen: «Ocean Devil: The life and legend of George Hogg»

ONE The Road to China

‘He seemed to have some inner vision of his own.’

George Hogg was born on 26 February 1915 in a large rented house in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, the youngest child of a prosperous middle-class family. His father Robert ran a well-known tailoring business, Hogg & Sons, in Hanover Square in the heart of London’s West End. George was given the middle name of Aylwin, an old family name, by which he was always known at home.

There were six children: the eldest, Gary, Barbara and Daniel, were separated by a gap of several years from Stephen, Rosemary and George – affectionately known as ‘Stake’, ‘Roke’ and ‘Hake’. They all had the advantages bestowed by class and wealth: a nanny and private education first at St George’s School in Harpenden and then, for the boys, Wadham College, Oxford. There were summer holidays in Salcombe, Devon, and winter sports breaks in Switzerland.

The Hoggs lived the life of a conventional middle-class family in the late Edwardian era. In one respect, however, they were very different. The Victorian age had bequeathed English society three overarching institutions: the monarchy, the Anglican Church, and the Empire. In this respect the Hoggs were non-conformists. The family’s political views were shaped by the Quaker pacifist philosophy which George’s mother Kathleen and his unmarried aunt, Muriel Lester, had embraced from an early age. Muriel campaigned on pacifist and anti-empire platforms all her life. She was briefly jailed in Holloway prison in London, and in Trinidad, on charges of sedition. She became a friend of Gandhi, and founded the Kingsley Hall mission which still continues its work as a community centre in East London.

Muriel Lester was very close to her sister Kathleen, and she was to have an early and powerful influence on her youngest nephew. Indeed, George’s first memory was of being taken to a beach by his mother and Aunt Muriel in the summer of 1918, when he was three, and given a sign to hold up which read ‘No More War’, while the ladies tried to impress their pacifist message upon the crowd of holidaymakers. George grew up in a family in which pacifism and international peace, very much the language of the left in the twenties, were advocated by the parents and absorbed by the children. Mealtimes in the Hogg household were serious affairs. There was always time for light-hearted family banter, but Kathleen made sure that the great issues of the day were discussed and debated. This was especially true when Aunt Muriel made one of her regular visits.

Muriel and Kathleen’s politics had been shaped by the poverty they saw in the East End of London in the last decade of Queen Victoria’s rule. They and their sister Doris were born in the 1880s in Loughton, in the Epping Forest area of Essex. Their upbringing was affluent, both their father and their grandfather having prospered from shipbuilding. The family were leading Baptists, and had moved to Loughton because it was a stronghold of Protestant non-conformism, with a Baptist church erected in 1813. The three sisters were baptised into the Church in 1898.

The arrival of the railway saw Loughton become a popular destination for East Enders. It soon became known as ‘Lousy Loughton’, a reference to the lice and fleas the impoverished visitors supposedly brought with them.

In her early teens, Muriel occasionally travelled through the slums by train when returning home from London. From the window of her first-class carriage the sight of shoeless children in ragged clothes playing in front of homes that were little more than hovels (and the unsympathetic comments of her fellow travellers) profoundly influenced her. She decided to become a social worker in the East End. Around this time she read the works of Tolstoy, notably his non-fiction masterpiece The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), which was to become a vital text for Christian pacifists, second only to the Bible. Muriel later wrote, ‘It changed the very quality of life for me. Once your eyes have been opened to pacifism, you can’t shut them again.’

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, established in December 1914, gave Muriel Lester an international platform for her pacifist ideals. The organisation had been formed following a chance meeting at Cologne station in July that year between an English Quaker, Henry Hodgkin, and a German Lutheran, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. The two men talked while waiting for a delayed train, and found common cause in their detestation of the coming war. They parted with the words, ‘We are one in Christ and can never be at war.’ By the end of the war the Fellowship of Reconciliation had become an international body, with the three Lester sisters enthusiastic supporters. The ideals of the Fellowship and the moral imperative of pacifism were drummed into the young George Hogg from an early age.

The Hogg family moved to Harpenden before the First World War, and lived first in the rented house, ‘Red Gables’, where George would be born. Later they would build their own house in the town, ‘Wayfarings’. Harpenden changed little as the Hogg children grew up through the war years and the 1920s. It was a tight-knit commuter community, just thirty-five minutes by rail from central London. George’s father, like many of his friends, took the early train to London every day, leaving Kathleen and the nanny in charge of the children. With a population of only ten thousand, Harpenden still called itself a village at the time when George was growing up. The main street and surrounding residential areas quickly gave way to the green fields of Hertfordshire. Harpenden was well known for its school, St George’s, but was otherwise an unremarkable county town.

A group of families who shared the Hoggs’ Christian outlook formed the social world in which the children grew up. The Hunters, Nelsons and Proctors lived close to the Hogg home, and their children were in and out of each other’s houses at weekends. From an early age George formed close friendships with a group of boys with whom he went through school. David ‘Dippy’ Proctor, Robert ‘Bosh’ Nelson and Roger Hunter were sporty, naughty boys, typical of their generation. The honorary girl of the group, Bosh’s sister Winifred, known as ‘Muff’, was to become George’s first serious girlfriend.

The political views of George’s parents were something of a joke among his friends, and probably an embarrassment to him, since he recalled having to hide the family’s regular newspaper, the left-wing Daily Herald, when they came round.

Kathleen Hogg brought up her family in a strict, almost puritanical regime that would be regarded as repressive today. She is remembered by her nephews and nieces as a difficult, somewhat eccentric woman, who insisted on the observance of strict rules of behaviour, especially on Sundays and religious holidays. The Hogg family attended three services at Harpenden’s Methodist chapel on Sundays, and for the rest of the day were required to read improving books – the Bible, the prayer book or works by well-known missionaries. Any other book they chose to read had to be covered in brown paper and read well out of their mother’s view. As well as religious attendance, Sundays meant homework and piano practice. Kathleen was well remembered by her children and grandchildren seated at the top of the stairs brushing her hair and offering a stream of critical comments while listening to one of the children playing the piano.

This was an obviously loving family, but by all accounts Kathleen showed little emotion towards her children ‘There was no kissing and no hugging of the children,’ George’s great-niece Hilary Jarvis says. ‘It was very much a family of its time; showing emotion was not the done thing at all; manners were important, it was on the surface very stiff.’

George was very much his mother’s boy. He grew up as the adored youngest child, and can be seen in the family album dressed in velvet suits with a shining aureole of golden curls standing in a well-kept garden with various much older brothers and sisters. He soon learnt how to get round his mother’s stricter rules. He had a natural sense of fun, which bubbled through the gloomy Sundays with their required reading and long silences. George and his sister Rosemary, who was three years older, and to whom he would always be closer than to any of his other siblings, would frequently skip the longer Sunday-morning service at the Methodist chapel and go to play with neighbours’ children. Aware of this mischief, Kathleen, who stayed at home to prepare the lunch, would begin the meal by quizzing the children on the nature of the lengthy sermon. Fire-and-brimstone sermons were very much to Kathleen’s taste and she was determined that her children should benefit from them. George and Rosemary persuaded their elder brother Stephen, who had to attend chapel because he was in the choir, to report on the highlights, which were then dutifully repeated at lunch.

For all the strictness of the regime at home, George Hogg had a very happy childhood. He was once overheard saying to Rosemary, ‘If heaven isn’t much nicer than earth I shall ask God to let me come back.’ He was remembered by his nephews and nieces as the ‘the golden boy’ who was marked out by his parents at an early age for success. Given his later achievements this might be attributed to hindsight, but from the observations of his teachers at the time, and later those of the Warden at Wadham College, the great Maurice Bowra, it seems clear that there was something special about the youngest Hogg.

From the age of six George was taught at home by a governess. At ten he was sent to a school at Gland, on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, which had been set up on pacifist principles. Rosemary was returning for her second year, and had begged to be allowed to take her brother with her. The school’s aim was to break down all barriers of age, sex, class and nationality. All the staff shared the housework with the children.

The main effect on George of his Swiss education seems to have been liberation from the strict regime at home. At weekends he would go off hiking, bicycling or skiing with other boys, while Rosemary remained behind to wash and mend his clothes. Once a week there was a school meeting at which the pupils were free to criticise their masters and mistresses, and even the head, and to express their views on anything they thought unfair or wrong. To the young George Hogg this was revolutionary, and he was to introduce exactly the same practice when he became headmaster of his own school in China.

The year of emancipation ended with George’s return to England, where he joined his siblings at the co-educational St George’s school in Harpenden. The headmaster, Cecil Grant, was one of the great educationalists of his time, and his school provided imaginative teaching, designed to bring out and develop talent.

George showed promise as a writer for the school magazine. His parents were already convinced he had a gift for words. When he was ten his father had read him aloud Tennyson’s ‘The Eagle’ and asked him to describe an eagle. After a moment’s thought George replied: ‘A whirring mass of fierce glory.’

All the Hogg children had done well at St George’s, but the youngest child proved the ablest pupil. He was nicknamed ‘Pig’ at school – not because of his surname, but because of a characteristic sinal snort. The other name given him by his rugby-playing friends was self-explanatory: ‘Tuff’. Both on and off the playing field George proved a natural leader. His sixth-form master wrote of him many years later:

I sensed in him great reserves and a high sense of purpose. He was modest to a degree and showed true humility. Quiet and unassuming he nevertheless was a dominant influence in the form. It was a joy to observe in the years after he left a new generation of prefects, showing traits of character which they had unconsciously copied from him, so that his influence lived on. It was equally a feature of his [rugby] football that in the hardest game he always had something in reserve to call on in an emergency.

The golden boy had his mischievous side. One night he and his friends Roger Hunter and David Proctor stole a car belonging to Miss Terry, the French teacher. George, who had learnt to drive his father’s car at the age of sixteen, drove them to a scout troop camp, where they let the tents down and fled. George was demoted as a prefect for a fortnight, and caned by the headmaster.

At St George’s the youngest Hogg grew into a tall, goodlooking young man who delighted in singing and showing off his skills at the monthly Saturday-night dances. He was head boy at the age of seventeen, and almost naturally began a relationship with the head girl, Winifred ‘Muff’ Nelson.

The Nelsons provided a second home for the Hogg children in Harpenden. Although practising Christians, they were more relaxed in their observance of the faith, and their cheerful and fun-loving family life – a considerable contrast to the strict regime of his own home – made a big impression on George. So did another family in Harpenden, the Hunters, who also provided a home from home.

Muff Nelson, who had gained her nickname through her childhood affection for the nursery rhyme ‘Little Miss Muffet’, was a good-looking redhead with a great sense of fun. A year older than George, she had been drawn to him from the time they had played together as young children. She shared his passion for sport, and his love of dancing and singing. As an old woman looking back over her life Muff wrote to a friend: ‘I adored the boy and always hoped we would grow up together and get married.’ After his death she wrote rather more formally in the school magazine: ‘There were nothing but words of admiration and affection for George both while he was at the school and after he left it. We all associate George with the headmaster’s well remembered cough followed by the quiet words, “Well done, boy.” ’

Although he and Muff were very much regarded as a couple at school, that did not prevent George from casting his eye over some of his friends’ girlfriends. St George’s golden boy, head of school, captain of the rugby XV, a dazzler on the dance floor and with a fine singing voice, knew he was attractive to women.

On his last night in England before leaving for China, George, Muff and other friends held a farewell at the Silver Cup pub in Harpenden. He promised her he would return within a year. She was devastated when he did not come back, and more so when it became clear that he had found a new and exciting life in China, and had no intention of returning to resume their relationship. Nothing survives of their correspondence while he was in China, but George’s letters home reveal that two years after he left he became aware that Muff had developed a relationship with his good friend Roger Hunter.

Muff’s sadness at the long separation from George had been compounded by the death of her elder brother Robert, a marine commando who was killed at Deal in Kent in 1940 as a result of one of the very few Italian air raids of the war. In the summer of that year the invasion scare was at its height, and the Battle of Britain had yet to be won. In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Muff reached for the security of marriage, even if it was to the best friend of the man she really loved. Almost from the beginning the marriage was a disaster, and Muff soon moved back from married quarters at a coastal command base to her parents’ home in Harpenden.

Understandably, it was the more thoughtful side of George’s character that his contemporaries remembered when they paid tribute to him in the school magazine after his death. His close friend David Proctor said: ‘My impression of him was of a thinker. He strove for perfection. He was a man of few words but those words always made sense.’ Maurice Bowra wrote to Kathleen: ‘He had great reserves of character and seemed to have some inner vision of his own which showed him where to go and what to do.’ This was a remarkable tribute, given that Bowra had many letters of condolence to write to parents of his former students who died in the war.

In September 1934, at the age of nineteen, George Hogg arrived at Wadham College to read ‘modern greats’, as it was then called (it evolved into what is now known as PPE – politics, philosophy and economics). He was by now an assured young man, over six feet tall. He had fair hair which had never quite shaken off its childish waves. It was no surprise that he walked into the college rugby first XV, and went on to captain the team in his last year. Had he been more heavily built he would certainly have got his ‘blue’. As it was he played regularly for the university’s second team, ‘The Greyhounds’.

Wadham, one of the smallest of the Oxford colleges, was an eccentric place in the 1930s, with an admissions policy that depended on the whim of the examiner rather than academic ability. Michael Mann, a contemporary of Hogg’s, recalls going up to Wadham on the recommendation of an old waiter in the King’s Arms pub, where most Wadhamites did their drinking. Mann had taken a room at the pub while trying various colleges for a scholarship in Spanish. The waiter told him Wadham had the best course, and Mann found himself sitting the exam with two other candidates, without any sign of an invigilator. One candidate seized the entire supply of writing paper and refused to surrender so much as a page. Mann tracked down the senior tutor and complained. He was sent to a stationer’s in town with half a crown to buy paper, and given an extra fifteen minutes to complete the exam. He got the scholarship, which was not surprising: of the other two candidates, one thought he was sitting for a Hebrew scholarship, and the other left the exam early.

Hogg’s time at Wadham was dominated by one of the great Oxford figures of the twentieth century, Maurice Bowra. Bowra did not become Warden of the college until 1938, a year after Hogg had left Oxford, but in a sense he had already fulfilled the role for years. Even as a Fellow he cast a long and lively shadow over college activities, influencing most aspects of undergraduate life. His riotous parties for students and distinguished guests were famous for his practical jokes. Among other things Bowra would make up fictitious careers and achievements for his guests, and then introduce them to each other, enjoying the subsequent confusion.