As for whether Sir Hildreth’s bullying tendency was immobilized once he had been bound by the spider-thread of godparenthood, I don’t know. Dad would take him occasionally to Twickenham to see the rugby, and may have thought that Sir Hildreth was eating out of his hand. But, according to what Dad said late in life, the habit of courtroom barracking was too strong for my godfather to break. Sir Hildreth admired Dad’s advocacy but couldn’t resist squashing him. And when he’d gone too far and had dragged Dad slowly over live coals, there was a ready-made way of making amends without needing to apologize. Almost a trick out of Dad’s book. He could drop a note by my school and take me out to tea. He had realized that the relationship designed to tame him could be used for his own purposes. Tea for two at Fortnum’s with a five-pound note thrown in came much cheaper than humble pie for one, eaten under the eyes of a junior colleague.
Sir Hildreth was near the end of his time on the bench by then, and it seems to be true that he wasn’t popular within his profession. There’s a tradition that at the end of the last day of a judge’s working life, the advocate appearing for the Crown refers to this milestone and wishes him well in his retirement. On Sir Hildreth’s last day the barrister who would ultimately speak those words, if in fact they were to be said, still hadn’t decided what to do. It was only a custom, after all, not a requirement, and there would be no repercussions if it was omitted. He had a choice between seeming to truckle to power even while it was in the process of disappearing, or to expose a man to humiliation at the first moment when he could do so without fearing the consequences. Sir Hildreth’s career as a judge of first instance was over, and he would never tear the wings off a barrister again.
Oh dear, I’m certainly ramping up the pathos, conjuring up a scenario perilously close to The Browning Version. My mistake. Sir Hildreth Glyn-Jones wasn’t like the classics master Crocker-Harris in Rattigan’s play, unaware of his unpopularity, mortified to learn he’s known as ‘the Himmler of the lower fifth’. Sir Hildreth made no attempt to soften his manner in court as his reign came to an end. It was almost a point of pride for him to play the tyrant and make things difficult. He must have considered the possibility that he would forfeit the gracious ritual of farewell on his last day, so that his career would go to its grave (so to speak) without a kind word to help the cortège bear up.
Finally counsel for the Crown stood up and spoke. He said, ‘My Lord, I believe this is your last day as one of Her Majesty’s Justices, and I would not wish to let the occasion go by without passing on the congratulations of this court …’
I have this from Esyr Lewis, Gray’s Inn resident and family friend, the barrister who had to make his choice on the day. It wasn’t that he felt an overwhelming urge to produce the proper gesture; he just found when the moment came that he couldn’t not. And against expectation it wasn’t a formality, but a moment of high stifled emotion. That Browning Version note again — not that it’s a bad theme, the defencelessness of the well-defended. Sir Hildreth, having steeled himself against the likelihood of rejection, found himself still counted within the fold of civility. And when the Dark Lord of courtroom torture, Queen’s Bench Division, went to hang up his full-bottomed wig for the last time, there were plausibly tears in his eyes.
There was never a real risk that Dad would be deprived of the customary send-off, when his turn came. He may not have been loved by those who appeared before him, but he was certainly respected, regarded as formidable rather than actively oppressive. No barrister ever steered a case inattentively while Dad was in charge of proceedings.
He had a heedlessness, even when not wearing the scarlet, which could sometimes seem heroic. Dad had his teeth looked after, for instance, by Sir Paul Beresford, an MP who set aside a portion of each week for his dental practice, or alternatively, as some of his constituents complained, a dentist who represented their interests in his spare time. By either account he was clearly not someone to be trifled with, but then nor was Dad, who might say, ‘I don’t think much of that bridge you gave me last time,’ his delivery muffled by reason of the fact that Sir Paul was scraping and probing away inside his mouth at the time.
Brecht’s Galileo admits that he didn’t need to be tortured to be pressured into recantation — all it took was for him to be shown the instruments. That’s how most people feel in dentists’ waiting rooms, as they leaf miserably through Vogue and Country Life (or Prima and Empire if your dentist is less grand), on the brink of a general recantation. But it wouldn’t have occurred to Dad to soften his criticism, or to delay the vote of no confidence until he and his tender gums were out of harm’s way.
In his prime Dad’s forthrightness was held in check by a certain self-censorship. (It made sense that if he approved of external censorship, of limits on what could be expressed and circulated, he should also be in favour of the internal Lord Chamberlain.) There were certain things he never discussed, even with drink taken. After he retired he made less of an effort to project a consistent persona. In conversation he let slip the news that the absolute wrongness on pre-marital sex that he preached to us in our adolescence was not something he had paid much attention to during his own. ‘Let slip’ gives the wrong impression, as if a guilty secret had escaped him. He seemed very matter-of-fact about it, and quite fond of his bad old ways.
I was hearing a new story and an unfamiliar sexual philosophy. In the days of trains without corridors, their compartments opening directly onto the platform, an enterprising man and woman taking refuge in an empty compartment could manage a ‘quick poke’ in perfect safety, as long as they remained aware on some subliminal level of the minutes remaining before the next station.
Perhaps this was how he spoke as an adult to adults, yet he had never enjoyed ‘off-colour’ conversations. He never swore, though that may have something to do with growing up with Welsh as a first language. It’s a myth that there are no swear words in Welsh, but Dad would hardly have been exposed to any in a Congregationalist household in the 1920s and ’30s. In fact, thanks to the consonantal impact of the language, almost any syllable can aspire to expletive force in Welsh. ‘Pobl Bach!’ for instance means no more than ‘little people’ (presumably along the lines of leprechauns), but can be given any amount of plosive attack.
Dad was a Welsh speaker and proud of it, though uneasily aware that there were rust spots on his mother tongue from not using it on anything like a daily basis. Nevertheless he had been that rare thing, a judge who could conduct court proceedings in Welsh, and he was instrumental in setting up summer schools for magistrates in Wales, to help them get acquainted with the new technical vocabulary in the minority language thrown up by new legislation.
Soon after his appointment as a judge he was made a member of the Gorsedd at the National Eisteddfod for his contribution to Welsh culture. Dad’s sense of the honour being done him wasn’t shaken by the discovery that the singer Mary Hopkin was one of his fellow cultural contributors. I remember the assembled Druids wearing wet-weather gear in the form of short white Wellington boots. Dad was very tickled by the headline in a local newspaper — ‘LOCAL BOY MAKES BARD’.
He had spent a lot of time choosing his bardic name. This wasn’t the down-to-earth sort of Welsh coinage associated with the need to differentiate between the many bearers of a single name, like Dai Central Eating for a man with only a single tooth remaining or Dai Quiet Wedding for someone who turned up to tie the knot wearing carpet slippers, to quote two of Dad’s favourite examples. This was a serious and ceremonial business. He settled on Gwilym Aled, Gwilym being the formal Welsh equivalent of William, Aled being the name of the river near his birthplace of Llansannan, really more of a stream running across fields.