Trails and trials

Peter Levi

AS IT WAS: PLEASURES, LANDSCAPES AND JUSTICE by Sybille Bedford Sinclair-Stevenson, £19.95, pp.260 his is not so much the crown as the foundation of a career of great distinction in literature. It is a collection of writings that appeared here and there in the Sixties and even the Fifties, and it demonstrates that ephemeral excellence is immortal. The only criticism I can make of it is that it is better read back to front, because the travel sketches it begins with are less exciting. Most of the readers of such a book will have been to most of the same places, and time somehow blurs the written record of Yugoslavia, and Switzerland and Venice. Even here there are exceptions. When Martha Gellhorn arrives in Switzer- land the place and the entire way of life come sharply and beautifully into focus. The most ordinary journeys and shopping expeditions suddenly read like a crisp, unforgettable honeymoon. From this I deduce that Sybille Bedford's genius is for writing about people, and that is in fact what she does so well in the second half of the book, which is about law courts and trials. I do not think anyone has ever written about them better. A good deal of this is simply accurate reporting and intelli- gent selection, but there is more. In almost every case there is a small intrusion, like Martha Gellhorn's: in the Lady Chatterley case it is Richard Hoggart's, in the Jack Ruby trial it is the Rabbi's and in the trial of 22 members of the Auschwitz staff it is the curious case of Mr Broad.

In the ragbag of English cases it is sometimes the criminal but more often the judge who compels attention. Lord Scar- man, for instance, is extremely young in 1965.

And in ambles the lanky — gracefully lanky — figure of a youthful judge . . . It is a most unusual face: enormous eyes, deep-set be- tween high cheek-bones and a jutting skull . . . an ascetic's face lit by charm, given the lie by a cherub's smile.

One has known some of these judges, and it is only fair to notice that, although Sybille Bedford catches them all justly and accurately as they appeared on the Bench, she might have drawn them differently had she known them in those days as they were in shirt-sleeves. Melford Stevenson was a famous example of this apparent Jekyll- and-Hyde syndrome. Out of court he was the sweetest and mildest of men, but on the Bench he was ferocious. She catches that streak of iron, though not at its worst, but it may have got worse as life went on. When he retired he built himself a house called Truncheons, I believe.

The trial of Penguin for Lady Chatter- ley's Lover is more famous as a liberal cause than it is as a piece of legal history. Mr Justice Byrne had the reputation of one of the best criminal judges in England, but the generation gap undid him: his summing-up is quoted, and there seems no doubt that he expected the verdict to be guilty, nor that he wildly overestimated the innocence of British youth in 1960. The contributions of the prosecution under Mervyn Griffith-Jones were both repulsive and farcical: it is extraordinary to read them now, but then so it was at the time; at least no one in the liberal circles I fre- quented had ever thought him anything but an ass. Yet our views of the case were an amazing tangle. Warden Sparrow's article, showing that D. H. Lawrence idealised buggery surprised me greatly. When the case itself was decided, I remember liberal intellectuals beside themselves with excite- ment, saying now we have it established that obscene books are acceptable as high art we must go on to justify obscenity itself, art or not. I found that view shocking at the time, though today I have more sympathy with it. Over all these confused memories, Sybille Bedford's account throws a useful bucket of cold water.

'Does this adulterous intercourse show a regard for marriage as it is generally under- stood by the average reader?' What average reader?' asked Mrs Bennet . . .

. . . 'You have no objection to your children reading this book?' Only one of them has, to

'It's a sign of the times'.

my knowledge', said the clergyman, 'and he found it rather dull.'

Griffith-Jones forebore to cross-examine E. M. Forster, hoping, I suppose, to leave intact the impression of an elderly lunatic meandering among his memories. It may be that snobbery prevented his attacking a Fellow of King's; he certainly sneered and snarled at lesser institutions. But his worst mistake was to underrate Richard Hog- gart, then at Leicester, who made mince- meat of him. As Miss Bedford puts it, 'he underestimated Mr Hoggart's effect- iveness, virtue and strength'.

'Reverence for what?' screamed Griffith- Jones. 'The balls?'

'Indeed, yes', said Mr Hoggart, gently.

The Jack Ruby case is the most enter- taining of the three. If the Lawrence case had happened in Italian or Greek one would not bother to read about it 30 years later. But Ruby killing Oswald is the most puzzling mystery, With just enough clues, as the reader begins to pick up the Dallas ethos. One would be gripped by Ruby's story in any language. The Rabbi enters with the effect of sudden sobriety just as the trial is in danger of becoming merely exotic. Ruby probably was what the law should have considered insane, but his screaming liberal defence made a hash of that plea, and so he was condemned to death. At the time I remember a conspira- cy theory that the same mysterious forces who had murdered President Kennedy had then murdered Oswald to cover up the phoneyness of their prosecution of him.

That does not hold water. These assassina- tions were the expression of a wild fringe of American society which existed and exists; New York and Washington are a long way from Dallas, thank God. It was brave of the President to go to Dallas, and bad luck to get shot there. This is just my own conclusion; Sybille Bedford concentrates neatly on the evidence.

The most terrible essay is about Au- schwitz. Her account is harrowing but it is fascinated by the ordinariness of the char- acters and their attitudes. Outside the Israeli courtroom, where Eichmann was tried, sat hardened journalists with tears streaming down their faces. In this German case, she keeps her coolness perfectly, with a kind of unsleeping curiosity like that of a judge.

During the last minutes of the trial, Dr Hofmeyer, the judge who had done so much to let the atmosphere cool, who had steered the court through so many clashes of temper and had never lost his own, allowed himself to break down.

How can Sybille Bedford appropriately end her report of such a subject when life, as she has said, is not long enough for ex- piation? The moral she draws is an un- expected one, yet very revealing about her.

She says we should beware of abrogating mercy or setting aside the law. Let us hope someone will soon reprint her Faces of Jus- tice, which covers nearly 100 cases all over Europe.