Trevor Huddleston: A Life

Anglican Theological Review, Winter 2001 by Worsnip, Michael

Trevor Huddleston: A Life. By Robin Denniston. London: Macmillan, 1999/New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. xxiii + 295 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

Let me say at the outset that Trevor Huddleston has been my hero for many, many years. And he continues to be. I believe that I am not alone in this. It was he who inspired millions of people throughout the world, first as a handsome young priest in Sophiatown and then as mobilizer of the world in the anti-apartheid struggle through his writing, his sermons, his speeches and his presence. During his long life, he achieved more than most. And the glory of it all was that he lived to see the country he loved to the depths of his being, finally free!

A biography was not only necessary, it was positively required. A biography which, he had steadfastly insisted throughout his life, could only be published when he was dead. What we have here is a biography, of sorts. But it cannot possibly be described as definitive, despite the fact that Denniston appears to have used all of the material collected so meticulously by Canon Eric James, who was originally commissioned by Huddleston himself to write his life story.

I raise this issue, because I was myself interviewed by Eric James about Huddleston and he asked me a question I simply could not answer, because I had no reason to consider it before. He asked me what I thought about Huddleston's sexual proclivities. Although I had never considered it before, I have often considered it since.

James said that Huddleston would break off any conversation and stop any train of thought to speak to, or to touch, a child. The pictures of the South African period certainly bear testimony to this. The cover picture chosen for the biography is, indeed, one of them. Stories of his care for children and his attention to them are legion. Desmond Tutu, as a child, was visited by Huddleston for months on end, on a weekly basis, while sick in hospital.

Eric James described Huddleston to me as a "paedophile" (his choice of word as opposed to a "pederast"), in the sense that the focus of his sexual/ emotional being was towards children. James was quick to say, however, that he was not in any way imputing anything illegal or untoward in Huddleston's behaviour, but that it was a significant and salient feature of his personality.

Huddleston, of course, readily admitted it. But there is, nonetheless, a darker side to this all as well. The biography touches on it now and again, but it is all rather coy and somewhat in passing. The author says, early on in the book, that his love of young boys was to bring Huddleston" . . . to the brink of collapse and beyond" (p. 18). While he was Suffragan Bishop of Stepney, two letters of complaint were written against him by the mother of two schoolboys who used to "play regularly upstairs" at his house (p. 130). And there the matter is left! Denniston admits that sex was involved in the complaint. Nevertheless, he makes no attempt to investigate further either the veracity of the charge or the import of it. And import there certainly is and it is simply not good enough to then hastily focus, as he does, on Huddleston's state of collapse" (p. 131).

While Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, Huddleston adopted a boy called Gilles, whom he "cared for and later saw through school and university. Gilles would be seen sitting on his knee... with his brother Nino near by" (p. 146). And that is where we are left! Now, given even the hints of what has gone before (unresearched, apparently, and unexposed as they are), this is simply inadequate. If Huddleston was homosexual, as he apparently was, a biography should at least start to explore some of the issues which that rather fundamental feature of his personality brings up. Similarly, if he was a paedophile, we need a more salient investigation than the shy allusions and curt nods in that direction which we are given. And if he was more than simply "someone who loved children," if he was a pederast, we should surely need to know that as well. And what it means. And how it was dealt with. And what damage it caused, for instance.

I once asked Huddleston whether there was anything in his life he would do differently, if he had the chance. He gave the matter some considerable thought and then said, very surprisingly, "I think I would want to be a Buddhist." Now you won't find that kind of contradiction in this biography, because it is contradiction which Denniston appears to want to avoid at all costs. You get a little of it, but not from the author. Rather, the most penetrating observations are left to Father Nicholas Stebbing, who nursed Huddleston at his death.

It is these contradictions which I find most appealing, most fascinating and most alluring in Huddleston's character. It is these strange and curious features which make him not a plastic saint, but a strange and compelling hero of flesh and blood. Denniston does no service to the man when he fails to confront issues such as these for the sake of propriety.