I recently came across this anecdote about my Uncle Martin, a man I wish I had known better. Attending Cambridge on a music scholarship (his Bach was excellent), he was a protege of J.B.S. Haldane (“The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” ), took a double first in biochemistry, worked closely with Haldane during the war, the two of them using themselves as guinea pigs in experiments to determine effects of submarine oxygen deprivation, and disappeared off to Africa...
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The loyalty which he engendered among both students and colleagues, the alarm which he aroused among more conventional members of the University, and much of his own individual eccentricity, were all revealed after one of the students living at Roebuck House had been charged with dangerous driving. The chief prosecution witness was a night watchman most of whose daytime hours were known to be spent in one particular public house. “If you care to leave this to me,” said Haldane on hearing the details, “I think I see a possible course of action that might just . . .” Nothing more was said.
“My case,” says the student concerned, “was the first to be heard on the afternoon of the momentous day. The customary mumbo-jumbo was enacted and in due course the prosecution called their chief witness. A shambling, bleary scarecrow stumbled into the box, and a kind of frisson that I imagine was experienced by everyone in the court proclaimed that there was some sort of unusual element in this situation.
“With fantastic difficulty he was processed through the routine of the oath, identification and soon. Then, when requested to give his version of the incident under enquiry, he goggled wildly around him, mouthing tremulously and soundlessly. The question was repeated. He made a gigantic effort, clutched the front of the box, and blurted out: ‘Ecumupthcillikefuckinellanwentarscovertip.’ That was the exact word, as it came out, all in one gobbling splurge. It impressed itself indelibly on my memory at the time, and I have never forgotten it.
“An official said sternly: “You cannot say that sort of thing here. Kindly tell us what happened in a way that the Court can accept as evidence.’
“This seemed to incense the witness, in so far as it was possible for anything to make any kind of impression on him. He belched violently, retched, and repeated in precisely the same manner, except that this time it was several times as loud: ‘ Ecumuptheillikefuckinellanwentarseovertip . I’vetoldyeronce-aven’tl? ’
“He then sank to the floor of the witness-box, from which he had to be extricated like a winkle. The remains were shovelled as expeditiously as possible out of the door of the courtroom. Everybody was too incredulous and flabbergasted even to laugh. The case was dismissed, and so was I.
“I didn’t see J.B.S. until that evening at home. He had gone to the lab in the afternoon, had not bothered to attend the judicial proceedings, and was curious to know how they had gone on. After I had finished telling him he looked a trifle dissatisfied, and said in a rather disappointed voice: ‘Oh dear, he managed to get to the court, did he?”
Haldane then haltingly recounted how he had gone at opening time to the public-house, taking the morning off from the lab to do so; had identified that most regular and reliable of the pub’s customers, the night watchman had got into conversation with him, proffered refreshment and been gratefully accepted as god-sent mug and providential perpetual host for the entire bibulous session. He had plied his victim relentlessly with booze for nearly three hours, being (he confessed rather ruefully) “compelled himself to indulge somewhat more profusely than was his wont on an ordinary week day morning,” and had finally quitted the premises about an hour before they were due to shut, leaving behind him in the Public Bar a carcass which he felt would be incapable of performing any act of its own volition for several hours to come.
“I was speechless with admiration and with gratitude,” says Martin Case, the student concerned. “However, Haldane wasn’t Haldane and Scottish for nothing. ‘Don’t be too effusive in your thanks,’ he said, ‘until this little corollary has been adjusted!’ and he produced from his pocket a tattered old envelope on which he had meticulously entered, item by item as they mounted up, every expense incurred on behalf of both parties to the morning’s orgy, “It was a fairly staggering total, but even so not to be compared with the fine that would doubtless have been incurred, to say nothing of the odium attaching to a conviction.”
