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As long as I can remember I was plagued by a speech defect. Whereas my twin brother had no difficulty in expressing himself I found myself wholly inhibited. He seemed to be a born conversationalist while I was not. I greatly envied his facility and determined to emulate him. But this was my undoing. The more effort I put into the act of speech the more impossible it became. I found myself wholly unable to control my tongue. It was always doing the opposite of what I wanted to do. At that time I had no awareness of what was happening, but I was acutely and painfully aware of an inability to speak. I cannot imagine that anyone who has never experienced the tensing up of the speech muscles and the tightening of the throat and the stiffening of the lips will have the slightest idea of the sheer misery of such a state. It is naturally to imagine that those muscles must differ from those of normal people. A child with such problems instinctively takes refuge in withdrawing as far as possible from situations where communication was needed. This was of course no solution, but it was a palliative. The problem was that it was an impossible quest. There was no safe haven where speech could be discarded. It was very much later, far into adulthood before it dawned on me that my attempts to emulate my twin brother were disastrous because of our very different personalities. I was trying to make myself as assertive and confident as he was, quite against my true nature. Much of my future misery would have been avoided had I been content to be myself. But I must relate the tortuous steps by which that self-knowledge came to me.
My childhood memories were clouded with a sense of frustration. I became more and more convinced that my speech impediment was incurable. I was destined to remain a prisoner within my own world. The more I strove to overcome it the worse it became. I found some comfort in the company of my sister who although she could do nothing to help the problem accepted me as I was. I never remember her becoming impatient. Nor for that matter did my parents, although I was clearly an enigma and a considerable anxiety to them. I had no interest in the boisterous activities of my twin brother and we played very little together. I was much more drawn to the company of my sister in spite of the fact that she was three years younger than I. She wanted to play with dolls and all the other paraphernalia of a normal girl and I went along with her. It never occurred to me that it was inappropriate for a boy to play with dolls. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed doing so. I have often wondered since if there is not too definite a line drawn between the role play of boys and girls. In those days there was a stronger separation perhaps than now, but many child advisers seem to think that the whole idea of boys playing with dolls makes them effeminate. Such a thought never bothered me. I was not particularly interested in normal boyish pursuits and found my sister’s feminine interests much more to my liking.
When it was time for schooling I had no alternative to trying to relate more specifically to boys for my father sent me and my twin brother to an all boys school. We joined the preparatory department of the Ipswich Municipal School. This was a grammar school and had developed a name for high academic standards. I have already noted that my brother Malcolm had been a pupil there, and in many ways I was proud to be there. But my school days were not particularly happy. I was too deeply aware that I was different and this caused me deep distress. It was as difficult to communicate to the teachers as to the other boys. I lived on a kind of desert island surrounded by an immense amount of activities in which I found myself either incapable or disinclined to participate. I had little part in the rough and tumble of the playground. My contemporaries must have regarded me as a bit of a pansy. I never engaged in the normal boyish scuffles and was totally bereft of any vestige of aggressiveness. But there was one sphere in which I could outshine most of the other boys and that was in academic pursuits. I soon established myself as a front-runner in academic achievement and found that this invested me with a certain aura of respect. I may have been useless in manly physical activity, but few could dislodge me from a position near or at the top of the class, a position I held throughout my school career. The motive power provided by my speech disability was extraordinarily strong.
Most of the masters avoided the embarrassment of my inability to answer by the simple expedient of never addressing any questions to me. When a new master who was unaware of the problem posed a question, my mind was gripped with an incredible fear that I was being exposed to a quite unnecessary embarrassment. This kind of fear dominated me most of the time during my school career. Yet there were some compensations. I remember vividly the time when my English teacher, a Quaker named Samuel Hutley, decided to hold a reading exam as part of his English assessment. The very idea terrified me but there was no way out. Each boy chose his own passage and I proceeded to prepare mine. I had no idea how I was going to get to the end of the first sentence, let alone the whole passage. Samuel Hutley was a kindly man and when he called on me he encouraged me to have a go. I instinctively felt that he would understand if I could not make it. It gave me an unexpected confidence and I managed to struggle on until I reached the end. It was a most halting performance but Samuel Hutley gave me a good mark. When the other boys reacted adversely to his generosity, the good Quaker gave the whole class a challenging lesson in appreciation of the efforts of others having to overcome disabilities which they themselves did not possess. Indeed, he pointed out that any of them in similar circumstances would probably not do as well. He reduced the whole class to silence and I felt that afterwards many showed more appreciation of my difficulties than they had done before. I always had a warm regard for that teacher. I can still visualise his well dressed and dignified figure, with white receding hair and a well trimmed and pointed white beard.
Another of my masters whom I felt did his best to understand me was my French teacher. His name was Dr. Kirby, but everyone called him Kron. He was a brilliant man, a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and of a French University, and he held both an English and a French doctorate. He could have held a University post, but chose to teach boys the French language. He realised I would have difficulty with the oral French examination, but he did his best to lessen the problem, and largely owing to his action the visiting examiner dealt with me with much kindness and understanding. Nevertheless, I was always acutely conscious of the fact that I would much rather not be in such a position that I was so disadvantaged compared with others.
I made a wrong choice when I selected my options for the General Schools Certificate, for although I chose sciences I had no real interest in pursuing that line as a career. I matriculated but wanted to study Arts subjects in the sixth form, but the school authorities were not willing to allow me to transfer. I deeply regretted this and decided after a time to leave school without completing my studies. It was a bad move because it plunged me into a far worse situation from which there seemed to be no escape. For a time I helped with my parents’ business, but this was neither demanding nor satisfying. I tried applying for jobs, but I never survived the interview because I was incapable of any reasonable conversation through the sheer stress and tension of the situation. My spirits sank to the lowest possible level. In spite of my earlier commitment of my life to God, I was had put to it to understand why I was in the grip of seemingly impossible circumstances. I felt a certain injustice that God had imposed on me so heavy a burden. I was like a person in a tunnel with hardly a speck of light to beckon me on. My faith was being sorely tried. I was among the unemployed and I thought I was likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
When at last a secured a clerical job with an electricity supply undertaking, the pay was so poor and the office where I was working so far from home that my income after travelling expenses were paid was virtually nil. I would have been better off not working at all, but I took the job because it was like clutching at any straw. I continued with this for about a year when I secured a job nearer home, but it was a totally unsatisfying job. Soon after my original employer invited me back with increased pay, and although the work was dull and the prospects poor, it nevertheless offered me some sense of security. The best thing about it was that it required little verbal communication and I did not feel threatened. Looking back I can say that what I learned most during that period was about the extraordinarily varied lifestyles of those with whom I worked. I suppose I had been somewhat shielded from the ways of the world, but I was confronted with them most forcefully during those years. If ever I am tempted to think of that period as a wasted period of my life, I remind myself of what I learned then about human relations and I can see that the experience was all part of the experience which would enrich my future work for God.
I am concerned at the moment to relate some of the many attempts that were made to find some solution to my speech problem. My father tried various avenues. Some form of speech training seemed the most natural proposition to explore, for so many would regard stammering as incorrect use of the vocal muscles. My father heard of a former teacher who had been a brilliant voice trainer and conductor of choirs and decided to seek his advice. He had been forced to quit teaching many years before because of an addiction to drink. He was in fact destitute and lived in a workhouse, where he was prevented from gaining access to any alcoholic liquor. Such seemed an unlikely person to provide a solution to my problem, but my father somehow managed to arrange to take me to the workhouse to see him. I was frankly not looking forward to this visit. I had heard of workhouses and regarded them as forbidding institutions. I did not receive with any enthusiasm my father’s announcement of his plan. We arrived at the austere building and were ushered into a sparsely furnished room where we waited to meet Samuel Hockey. When he entered I found myself looking at a small man of wizened appearance dressed in a suit which seemed a couple of sizes too big for him. He sat down one side of the table and my father and I sat on the other. I was disquieted by his face for clearly the passage of time and the ravages of alcohol had played havoc with him. But those beady eyes which stared at me disturbed me most. When he began to speak, however, I realised that there was a certain softness and melodic tone about his voice which helped to temper my first impressions. I remember very little about that conversation except for one startling question which he put to my father. Had I ever been circumcised? Neither my father nor I had the slightest idea what this had got to do with my speech difficulties. When it was clear that Samuel Hockey was insisting that circumcision would alleviate my problem, my father decided to terminate the interview. I have never been able to decide whether that conversation about circumcision was a seriously proposed solution or whether the good man’s mind had become distorted through his earlier excessive drinking.
Another unlikely suggestion was that osteopathy might help. I remember my father driving me to a country vicarage to see the incumbent who among other things practised the art of manipulation. I think the theory was that some bone irregularities might be causing tension which in turn was inhibiting speech. After being pulled about, no doubt in a scientific manner, I found I was still as tense as ever. It was clear that whatever help osteopathy might be for some conditions, it was no help to me. The fact was that no real attempt had been made to find out the cause of the difficulty. Much later I realised it was not physical and so I am not surprised no relief could be offered through physical means.
I had seen an advertisement in which a voice trainer claimed to be able to bring immediate relief of stammerers. I am not readily taken in by claims of this sort, but my confidence was strengthened by the fact that the claim was made by a professor of singing at the Wigmore Studios in London. This Professor Reid was prepared to take a certain number of private stammerers for a week’s course at his home near Croydon. I decided with considerable apprehension to try. When I arrived at his home I was shown into a room in which the professor was poking the fire. He greeted me without looking up from the fire and this struck me as a strange procedure, especially as he carried on a conversation for some minutes still staring into the fire and never once looking at me. There was method in his apparent discourtesy. He knew I would be less embarrassed if he did not look at me. He was trying to diagnose my trouble and certainly thought he had done so within the first hour. He decided on developing a singing voice, not surprising since he was a teacher of singing. He soon proved to me that I could sing without stammering. That was a momentous revelation. It meant I could look at the problem apart from myself. There was nothing physical about it. It must be something to do with my attitude towards it. I remember singing for him and discovering not only a richness of tone which I did not know I possessed, but also a range of notes which my teacher called remarkable in an untrained voice. I learn how better to control my breath and to introduce considerable modulation into my voice, but although the technique was valuable it did not enable me to escape from my own inhibitions.
I have already mentioned the first sallies into preaching which my twin brother and I took, but these experiences highlighted a most remarkable fact. I had somehow achieved some success in preaching which bore no relation to my stumbling efforts at ordinary conversation. I still marvel that I ever had the courage to stand up in front of a congregation and speak continuously for twenty to thirty minutes. I would not say that I was always successful. There were times when words came the hard way and I was conscious that I was making demands on the patience of the hearers. There were times when I vowed I would never again stand up to preach, but there was an inner conviction that God had called me to do this which put in the shade any fears that I had. I believe that it was this overriding conviction which caused me relentlessly to pursue some solution, but when at last I ventured into theological training my problems were to increase rather than diminish, until fresh light enabled me to face the issue and largely overcome it. I will return to this issue after explaining how I came to take up theological studies.
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