Charles Snow - George Passant

George, of all men, however, could not be seen in half-truths. It was more tolerable to hear him dismissed with enmity and contempt. He could not be generalised into a sample of the self-deluded radicalism of his day. He was George, who contained more living nature than the rest of us; whom to see as he was meant an effort from which I, his oldest friend, had flinched only the day before. For in the dock, as he answered that question of Porson’s, I flinched from the man who was larger than life, and yet capable of any self-deception; who was the most unselfseeking and generous of men, and yet sacrificed everything for his own pleasures; who possessed formidable powers and yet was so far from reality that they were never used; whose aims were noble, and yet whose appetite for degradation was as great as his appetite for life; who, in the depth of his heart, was ill-at-ease, lonely, a diffident stranger in the hostile world of men. How would it seem when George was older, I thought once or twice that night. Was this a time when one didn’t wish to look into the future?

Through that sleepless night, I could not bear to have him explained by Getliffe’s half-truth. And, with a renewed distress, I heard also Getliffe’s excuse — ‘a child of his time’. I knew that excuse was part of Getliffe himself. It was not invented for the occasion. It was the working out of his own salvation. Thus he praised Martineau passionately: in order to feel that, while most aspirations are a hypocrite’s or a sensualist’s excuse, there are still some we can look towards, which some day we — ‘with our feet in the mud’ — may achieve.

But there was more to it. ‘A child of his time.’ It was an excuse for George’s downfall and suffering: as though it reassured us to think that with better luck, with a change in the world, his life would have been different to the root. For Getliffe, it was a comfort to blame George through his time. It may be to most of us, as we talk of generations, or the effects of war, or the decline of a civilisation. If one could accept it, it made his guilt and suffering (not only the crime, but the whole story of his creation and its corruption) as impermanent, as easy to dismiss, as the accident of time in which it took place.

In the future, Getliffe was saying, the gentle, the friendly, the noble part of us will survive alone. Yet at times he knew that it was not true. Sometimes he knew that the depths of harshness and suffering will go along with the gentle, corruption and decadence along with the noble, as long as we are men. They are as innate in the George Passants, in ourselves, as the securities and warmth upon which we build our hopes.

That had always appeared true, to anyone like myself. Tonight, I knew it without any relief, that was all.

PORSON’S closing speech lasted until after twelve on the Monday morning, and the judge’s summing up was not quite finished when the court rose for lunch. The fog still lay over the town, and every light in the room was on all through the morning.

Porson’s tone was angry and aggrieved. He tried to develop the farm business more elaborately now. ‘He ought to know it’s too late’; Getliffe scribbled this note on a piece of paper and passed it to me. The feature that stood out of his speech was, however, his violent attack on Martineau.

‘His character has been described to you as, I think I remember, a saint. So far as I can see, Mr Martineau’s main claim to the title is that he threw up his profession and took an extended holiday — which he has no doubt enjoyed — at someone else’s expense. Mr Martineau told you he wasn’t above deceiving someone who regarded him as a friend. In a way that might damage the friend seriously, just for the sake of flattering Mr Martineau’s own powers as a religious leader. Either that story is true — which I don’t for a moment believe, which you on the weight of all the other evidence can’t believe either — or else he’s perjuring himself in this court. I am not certain which is regarded by my learned friend as the more complete proof of saintliness. From everything Mr Martineau said, from the story of his life both in this town and since he found an easier way of living, it’s incredible that anyone should put any faith in his declaration before this court.’

From his bitterness, one or two spectators guessed that the case was important to him. Towards the end of his speech, which was ill-proportioned, he made an attempt to reply to Getliffe’s excursion over ‘a child of his time’. He returned to the farm evidence before he sat down, and analysed it again.

As we went out to lunch, Getliffe said with a cheerful, slightly shamefaced chuckle: ‘He thought because I could run off the rails, he could too.’

Outside the court, most of those who spoke to me were full of the attack on Martineau. Some laughed, others were resentful. As I listened, one impression strengthened. For several Porson had spoken their minds, and yet, at the same time, distressed them.

The judge’s face was flushed as he began his summing up.

‘A great deal of our time has been spent over this case,’ he said, the words spread out with the trace of sententiousness which made him seem never quite at ease. Despite the slow words, his tone held a smothered impatience, as it had throughout the last days of the trial. ‘Some of you may think rather more time than was necessary; but you must remember that no time is wasted if it has helped you, however slightly, to bring a correct verdict. I propose to make my instructions to you as brief as possible; but I should be remiss if I did not clear up some positions which have arisen during this trial. First of all, the defendants are being tried for conspiracy to defraud and for obtaining money by false pretences—’ he explained, carefully and slowly, the law relating to these crimes. There was a flavour of pleasure in his speech, like a teacher who is confident and precise upon some difficulty his class has raised. ‘That is the law upon which they are being tried. The only task which you are asked to undertake is to decide whether or not they are guilty under that law. The only considerations you are to take into account are those which bear directly on these charges. I will lay the considerations before you—’ At this point he broke off for lunch.

In the afternoon he gave them a competent, tabulated account of the evidence over the business. It was legally fair, it was tidy and compressed. It went definitely in our favour.

He came to Martineau: ‘One witness has attracted more attention than any other. That is Mr Martineau, whom you may consider as the most important witness for the defence and whom the counsel for the prosecution wishes you to neglect as utterly untrustworthy. This is a matter where I cannot give you direct guidance. It is a plain question of whether you believe or disbelieve a witness speaking on oath. There is no possibility, you will have decided for yourselves, that the witness can be mistaken. It is a direct conflict of fact. If you believe Mr Martineau you will naturally see that a considerable portion of the prosecution’s case about the agency is no longer tenable. If you disbelieve him, it will no doubt go a long way in your minds towards making you regard the defendants as guilty on that particular charge. If you believe him, you will also no doubt reflect that the most definite part of the prosecution’s case has been completely disposed of.

‘In such a question, you would naturally be led by your judgment of a witness’ character. Here, if I may say so, you are considering the evidence of a witness of unusual character — against whom the leader for the prosecution was able to bring nothing positive but eccentricity and who has certainly undertaken, we must believe, a life of singular self-abnegation. I must ask you to consider his evidence in the light of all the connected evidence. But in the end you must settle whether you accept it by asking yourselves two questions: first, whether such a man would not estimate the truth above all other claims; second, whether even a good man — whom you may think eccentric and unbalanced — might not consider himself justified in breaking an oath to save a friend from disgrace.