Highly susceptible Chancellor

Antony Lambton

A SPARROW'S FLIGHT by Lord Hailsham

Collins, £17.50, pp.463

Lord Hailsham has written a fascinat- ing account of his long and distinguished life. Rousseau stated at the beginning of his Confessions that he would tell the truth about himself. He did not do so; neither have many of his would-be followers. Lord Hailsham, on the other hand, is as truthful as can be, and describes events which lesser writers would have omitted. He was put in a ridiculous position in the last war by his first wife. When he returned after two years in the Middle East he found her in the arms of a Frenchman. She then left him. He makes no attempt to gloss over the event because he has no pride or conceit; his feelings, not what people thought or said, alone mattered to him. We read of his tears, his grief, his dismay, when he learned that while, in all his married years he had been faithful to her, she had never been faithful to him. But his forgiving nature does not blame her and he argues unconvincingly he was partly to blame for this disastrous marriage.

After reading the first few pages I paused and decided that Hai!sham's ex- traordinary frankness must have meant that he had sprung from good Quaker stock. A few pages later, to my delight, I read how his first traceable ancestor — a Quaker — emigrated to Ireland. I have already written that he always tells the truth, and he does, but as he sees it, for, without doubt, some Celtic blood runs through his veins, giving him the Irish- man's habit of believing what he wants to hear.

So passionate is his loyalty to those he likes that he seldom blames those who have ill-treated him and would even be- lieve excuses to retain his affection for his enemies.

His career is so well known that it is not worth analysing. His character is. Again and again I realised I was reading the recollections of a man motivated by sincere beliefs — without an ounce of malice in his body — even if his idiosyncrasies some- times make him appear excitable and eccentric. The only cruel sentences in the book are levelled at the late Colonel Wigg, an evil hypocrite who was finally caught out practising minor misdemeanours not dissimilar to those he had mercilessly hunted political opponents for committing, before openly and intentionally breaking their careers. For once the gods were just.

The strength which enabled Lord Hail- sham to recover from his first wife's heartless treatment, his adored father's decline and his second wife's death in front of his eyes, a tragedy which he admits made him cry for weeks, derived from his religious beliefs. They are somewhat cur- ious, for while he respects the Anglican church, he was half seduced by Roman Catholicism and profoundly mistrusts mys- ticism. I remember in one of his earlier books, he describes, in politer language, the religions and philosophy of the East as corrupting rot. But the narrowness which enables Quakers to walk down that straight road to heaven, heads erect, was sure to come out somewhere in his character.

I have often wondered if he would have been a good Prime Minister. Macmillan, on his sick bed, sent for him and told him he was to be his successor. Macmillan then betrayed him, aided by one of the worst Lord Chancellors in the history of Eng- land, Lord Dilhorne, a man so stupid he had to learn from his officials the questions he was to be asked the next day in the House of Lords. Macmillan's treatment of Hailsham was dishonest and brutal and cut him to the quick. The intensity of his disappointments was an unconscious reason for his recovery from griefs; they were too intense to remain in his con- sciousness. After a time they shot out of his mind like a cork out of a fermenting bottle, leaving him bloody but unbowed.

I disagree with some of his interpreta- tions. He argues that Macmillan lost his head after Suez and insisted that the country was going bankrupt. This stopped the British and French armies from con- cluding their task in Egypt. My under-

'standing of his sudden volte face was that Macmillan knew that if the military opera-

tion was not completed Eden would not

survive and he would become Prime Minis- ter. He was too clever a man to believe the

Bank of England would have gone broke in the one day it would have taken to conquer the canal zone. Hailsham gives a generous interpretation. Mine is cynical.

I hope that a great many people will read the autobiography of this excitable but noble man, stuffed with Victorian virtues, who had a rare gift from the gods, a brilliant, enthusiastic, enquiring intellect which made him half a man when he was a boy and half a boy when he was a man.

In the later years of his public life, his integrity and good intentions won him friends in both parties and he was admired by those he surpassed. I only hope that his

.1 strong religious beliefs are fulfilled and that when the last trumpet sounds for him, he will be wafted up to the gates of heaven where the crowds waiting vainly at the great door will respectfully make way and allow him to enter. When the door clangs shut behind him I hope angels will fly him away, his kind, wrinkled face seraphic, to the law courts of paradise where he can judge the other inhabitants of heaven, who will have to have sinned a little if they are not to be immensely bored. It is a matter of opinion as to whether his soul will live or die but one thing is certain: he has devoted

his life to honesty, kindness, justice and helping his fellow men and is one of the

Ki772ei, few who deserves the sad epitaph of Marty LZA.44-01/"." South to her dead beloved, 'You was a good man who did good things'.