“Then he sang us some Passover ditties in Hebrew or Yiddish or Rubbish, I’m not sure which, and something else in Chinese. Chinese? Yes. For that was the night Sir Hyman settled a mystery darker than a nigger’s arsehole for us. He wasn’t, as the Telegraph diarist had speculated, of Hungarian extraction. He had been born in Petrograd, as it then was, but had been raised in Shanghai, where his dad had fled to after the revolution had spread through old Mother Russia like wildfire.
“It was a night to remember! Eventually we rolled up the carpet and, to coin a phrase, danced in the dawn as if there was no tomorrow. If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that that was the night the sly old nancyboy actually dipped his wick into Mary, the naughtiest lady’s maid ever to come out of County Clare, as keen for a taste of roger any time as a Chinaman is for chop suey. (See Chapter Seven: ‘Eat Your Heart Out, Fanny Hill!!’) Certainly we didn’t see hide nor hair of them for a couple of hours and when they rejoined us he was as quiet as a burglar and she looked as innocent as the cat who had just swallowed the canary, but it was his spunk more likely!”
It was generally assumed that Sir Hyman was a homosexual, but one of the most celebrated beauties of the era, Lady Margaret Thomas, didn’t agree. Her biographer reproduced the following diary entry in full.
April 8, 1947
Dinner with the Kerr-Greenwoods in Lowndes Square. Everybody most simpatico when I tell them what an awkward customer Jawaharlal had turned out to be and that poor Harold is having a devil of a time trying to help Dickie sort things out and that he won’t be back from India for at least another fortnight. Hymie Kaplansky, who is also there alone, is full of jeu d’esprit, very droll, enchanting us with tales of his South African boyhood. He was educated at their pathetic notion of Eton. The headmaster had the boys in several weeks before they were confirmed to tell them about sex. They were warned that masturbation would destroy the body and drive the sinner into the madhouse. For all that, he said, the most observant of the boys might have noticed the little tube dangling between their legs with the jaunty little cap at the tip. It was very flexible. In the bath, for instance, it was inclined to shrivel or retract. But, depending on a boy’s proclivities, it would harden and elongate in response to certain stimuli, proving something of a nuisance.
After his father died in the siege of Mafeking, the family was left destitute. Hymie was obliged to leave school and his mother had to take in boarders until Hymie restored the family fortunes and then some, I daresay. Everybody joined in when Hymie sat down to the piano and played and sang, “We are Marching to Pretoria.” Then Hymie offered to escort me home, pointing out that I would be safe with him and he owed it to dear Harold to protect me.
I invited him in for a nightcap. We gossiped shamelessly about the affaire Delaney and he speculated about Lady ______ and Lord ______, which I assured him was all rot. Then he told me in detail about an awful evening he had spent with the wicked Duchess of ______, who behaved so badly that night at ______’s birthday party. This, in turn, got us started on the disgusting ______ and ______ . We were well into our second bottle of champagne when Hymie actually burst into tears and confessed how wretched he felt about the nature of his private life. Reminiscing about his school days again, he recalled, with particular pain, being “bum-shaved” by his prefect, who was eventually sent down for buggery and for producing a bastard with a servant girl. “He was rather a lusty fellow,” Hymie said.
For bum-shaving, he explained, two boys were set back to back, bare bottoms touching, and then the prefect began to make cuts with a cane.
Hymie wished he were capable of loving a woman as ravishing and remarkably intelligent as I was, he said, but unfortunately he was unable to achieve tumescence with a member of the opposite sex. Hormone injections taken in a Zurich clinic hadn’t helped and neither had his analyst in Hampstead. Poor, dear boy. I always thought he was awfully plucky for a pansy, but now he was desolate. There was nothing for it but to take him in my arms, my intention being to console. Soon we had arrived at a state of deshabillé and his hitherto perfunctory kisses and caresses took on a certain clumsy urgency. Unfortunately he was unfamiliar with the terrain, as it were. I was obliged to guide and instruct. And then, eureka! To his astonishment, we stumbled on indisputable physical evidence of his ardour.
“Whatever are we going to do?” Hymie asked.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“You are a miracle-worker,” Hymie said later, overcome with gratitude. “My saviour.”
But the next morning he professed to be troubled by doubts. “What,” he asked, “if it was only a one-time thing?”
We laid that ghost to rest most satisfactorily more than once, but then we had to cope with the inconvenience of dear Harold’s return from India. Happily it turned out that Hymie kept a darling little bijou flat in Shepherd’s Market. Strictly for business affairs, he said.
One afternoon I discovered an antique gold brooch, inlaid with pearls, staring at me from a glass shelf in the bathroom. I knew it well. I had been with Peter when he had bought it at Asprey’s for Di.
“Hymie, my sweet, I thought your people had but one saviour.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
I held out the brooch.
“Oh that,” he said, “thank God you found it. Di is in such a state. She must have left it here when she came to tea with Peter yesterday.”
“Peter just happens to be at Cowes now.”
Sir Hyman was mentioned again in the salacious diaries of Dorothy Ogilvie-Hunt, which were introduced as evidence in the notorious man-in-the-black-apron trial. It seems that the lovely but promiscuous Dorothy not only accommodated many lovers, but graded their performance from delta-minus to alpha-plus, the latter accolade seldom awarded. The events leading up to her initial tryst with Sir Hyman were described in some detail.
March 2, 1944
Dreary day wasted in the records office at Wormwood Scrubs. What we’re doing here is supposed to be terribly hush-hush, but on my way out the bus conductor on the no. 72 clearly said, “All change for MI5.”
Then drinks at the Gargoyle with Brian Howard and Goronwy. Guy is there, reeking of garlic as usual, and so are Davenport, McLaren-Ross, and that young Welsh poet cadging drinks again. Everybody blotto. Some of us move on to the Mandrake, and then I leave them, hurrying home to change, bound for dinner at the Fitzhenry’s, which promised to be a frightful bore. As might be expected, given Topsy’s proclivities, two of the Apostles were there as well as one of the Queen’s “knitting brigade”. The evening was saved by Hymie Kaplansky, of all unlikely people. His tales of his formative years in Australia were absolutely enchanting. His grandfather, it seems, had been an early settler. Hymie’s father died at Gallipoli, leaving the family without a penny. Hymie’s mother, once a principal dancer at the Bolshoi, had to work as a seamstress until her resourceful son went to Bombay, where he made his fortune. We all joined in when Hymie sat down at the piano and sang “Waltzing Matilda” and other songs of the outback, some of them very salty. When the party finally broke up at two A.M. it was too late for me to return to the country. I decided to check into the Ritz. But the gallant Hymie offered me the use of his flat in Shepherd’s Market instead. “You’ll be perfectly safe with me, my dear.”