Tawdry Audrey, Bobo, Maud, Pearl . . . all better men than I

The Daily Telegraph ^ | 17/06/2003 | A N Wilson

[ijcr]

The Bishop Elect of Reading, the Revd Jeffrey John, has attracted a lot of notice, particularly in this newspaper. The reason is that he has been brave enough to admit that he is a homosexual. He lives with his friend, but tells us that he will in future be celibate.

I was asked recently whether I had been at the Oxford theological college St Stephen's House at the same time as he was.

As it happens, I think I'm a bit older than Dr John. In the mists of time, I remember meeting him, and I think he was chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford. He asked me to give a talk to the undergraduates, and I seem to recollect a fairly earnest evening discussing religion and literature. He is certainly not the wild gay revolutionary depicted in the media.

St Stephen's House is a High Church theological college in Oxford. I lasted only a year. At the end of this period, it had become clear to me that, fascinated as I was (and still am) by theology and religion, I did not have sufficient faith to be a priest and I did not have a vocation.

Every now and then, however, I come across one of my fellow-collegians, now a priest.

At Staggers (as St Stephen's was known), they gave most of the students "names in religion". This meant that the young men called one another by girls' names. Young homosexuals of my acquaintance aren't camp in this way any more. That whole Colony Room, Francis Bacon tradition of calling one another a silly bitch has rather gone out, to be replaced by earnestness of one kind or another.

I never found out whether I had a "name in religion". When I went to the college, I was a married man. I was treated with great tolerance, but I think it might have been thought to be bad form to call me Alice Wilson or Anthea Wilson.

I left and, in the subsequent 30 years, I have led what has been in many ways a selfish and silly life. The others - Tawdry Audrey, Bobo, Maud, Pearl - have been devotedly unselfish, good people, who have given their whole lives to Christ and to the service of those less fortunate than themselves.

Not long ago, I went to a town in the North to give a reading in a bookshop. At the end, a priest came up to speak to me. It was Plum Tart. Such a pretty, clever boy 30 years ago. Ever since, he has given his learned, pious good life to the service of the Church.

As often happens when I meet one of my fellow-collegians, I momentarily forget his real name. One finds oneself going into a room and meeting an archdeacon, and becoming completely tongue-tied. One can hardly say: "Hello, Gladys." All one can remember, when seeing the portly, distinguished form of some Anglican cleric, is an evening that began with Solemn Benediction and clouds of incense, followed by a boozy dinner, followed, probably, by disco dancing in a gay club.

St Stephen's House when I was there was a Firbankian madhouse. The principal, a saintly man called Norah, made the fatal mistake of allowing the students to make their confessions to him. If you confess your sins to a priest, he is bound to secrecy. He cannot act upon what he has heard.

Poor Norah, a celibate mystic, was therefore aware of the fact that, among his little flock of 45 young men, there were some very disturbed souls, and a few who needed to kick their heels before settling down to a life of complete self-abnegation.

Norah was sacked - and ended her life as a parish priest in Eastbourne. David Hope, now Archbishop of York, was brought in to sort the place out, and by then I had fled and become a schoolmaster.

Medical students are especially raucous, drunken, randy people because, at a shockingly young age, they are being confronted with life and death. So, too, are trainee priests.

When, last year in the northern bookshop, I had parted from Plum Tart, I went out, and like Peter in the Gospels, I wept bitterly.

My life had been supposedly a success. I had written books, and newspaper articles. I had made, by the standards of an Anglican clergyman, lots of money. As I had grown older, my bisexuality had disappeared and I had become wholly heterosexual and agnostic.

Maybe my friend Colin Haycraft was right to say that religion is for women and for queers. When I look back on my years as a Staggers Bag (a student at St Stephen's) with Bobo, Plum Tart, Tawdry Audrey and the rest, I think of a time that was, first, hilariously funny and second, deeply serious. Apart from the handful of psychopaths, saddoes who kept being arrested in public lavatories, and so on, they were in fact an extraordinarily dedicated group of men.

I have lost my religion - their religion - but I do not feel that this is a good thing. I am aware that the spiritual life of England is most alive in its national church, and that the best priests in that Church are people who, for a few silly but highly amusing years of their youth, were known as Pearl and Gladys and Edna the Cruel (that was the nickname for David Hope).

These are men who have been prepared to devote their whole lives to working in poor parishes, visiting the sick, the housebound, the lonely, the prisoners and the captives. They believe in, and live, the Gospel of Christ. They think that God became a poor man to carry our sins. Many of them, but not all, carry with them the strange burden of being homosexual.

Apparently, we are still not grown-up enough in England to believe that this is rather marvellous. I wept after meeting Plum Tart, because I thought, and think, that his life has been so much more useful, so much better in every way than my own. I am sure the same is true of the Bishop Elect of Reading, and of many of these characters who are so regularly held up for ridicule in this newspaper.

If I were as brave or as unselfish as they are, I should be proud of myself.

[Arthur McGowan]

The "Pink Palace" is Saint Mary's in Baltimore, and the "Theological Closet" is Theological College at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Saint Mary's needs cleaning up. Theological College HAS been cleaned up, a process that started in the mid-80s. Theological College is one of the best two or three seminaries in the U.S.

[Temple Drake]

got it. Thanks.