National treasure

Aug 18 2008 by David Whetstone, The Journal

He was a comic genius who was cut off in his prime. David Whetstone learns about life with Gerard Hoffnung.

THERE aren’t many people left who remember meeting Gerard Hoffnung, says his devoted widow, Annetta. Sadly, the name might not mean a great deal to anyone under the age of 30.

But Hoffnung – the surname alone became his signature and a marque of humour and erudition – was famous and hugely popular after the war, and for long after his tragically premature death in September 1959, aged just 34.

If he had lived, he might have become a very grand old man. More likely, he would now be regarded as a national treasure.

Actually, he had already attained that status when he suffered a brain haemorrhage and collapsed suddenly in his study, dying two hours later without regaining consciousness.

He is best remembered now for his wonderful cartoons which gently and affectionately send up the classical music world. Back then, of course, it was much starchier, with bow tie and tails de rigueur on stage. Hoffnung introduced levity and wit.

He did many things. As you will find on the website musicweb-international.com/hoffnung, he was artist, teacher, cartoonist, caricaturist, musician and tuba player, broadcaster and raconteur, sought after speaker at the Oxford and Cambridge unions, prison visitor and Quaker.

Not only did he imagine comedy in classical music and envisage it in drawings; he actually made it real, commissioning composers and musicians to let their hair down in concert.

A Hoffnung offering at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1956 is remembered as “a concert of hilarious symphonic caricature”.

Annetta Hoffnung, who is now 84, remembers the concert-going etiquette of the 1950s which provided her husband with ample material. “I think women were still wearing gloves then,” she says.

She recalls meeting Gerard Hoffnung at the beginning of 1950. He was born in Berlin in 1925 and came to London as a schoolboy refugee in 1939. His artistic talent was evident at an early age and by the early 1950s he had established himself as a leading cartoonist and popular broadcaster.

Annetta was born in Folkestone and evacuated to Merthyr Tydfil during the war, where she remembers being very happy. She left school at 16, became a secretary and then joined the Wrens.

After the war she trained as a Norland nurse, which is to say a nanny. “The training was positively Victorian but once you were out, you could get a job anywhere.

“Because I wanted to travel, I did. I went across the Atlantic three times, always first class. It was post-war England and rationing was still in place so it was a real eye-opener. I also went to Paris and Switzerland. I was just 23 and it was very exciting.”

For a time she looked after the daughter of Roland and Mary Emmet. Roland Emmet was a well-known creator of kinetic sculptures and an illustrator for Punch magazine.

Annetta remembers that, after leaving the post, she was invited to a dinner party at the Emmets’ home in London. Gerard Hoffnung, also a contributor to Punch, was the only other guest.

She recalls a young man whose looks and demeanour belied his age. “Somehow, although Gerard was never old, he was never what you would call a young man.

“He was only 25 when I first met him, and only nine months older than me, but he was already losing his hair. People always thought he was much older than he was. Once or twice people took him for my father.

“But he had an enormous sense of humour and it touched on everything. You can see it in his drawings and in his music. He was just such a funny person, but I don’t mean that he wasn’t a serious person. We would go out and he would have everyone absolutely in hysterics. He used to make me laugh when we were swimming, coming up from the water and pulling some droll face. He was an artist and a fine musician. I remember when he bought a tuba and learnt to play it and was good enough to perform Vaughan Williams’ tuba concerto at the Royal Festival Hall.”

On a serious note, Hoffnung was an early anti-apartheid campaigner alongside his friend Michael Foot, sometime leader of the Labour Party, who lived down the road. And inspired by Gerald Priestland, BBC foreign and then religious affairs correspondent, he became a Quaker and visited prisoners in Pentonville.

Annetta believes her husband might have moved into films. He could have done anything.

“He was such an extraordinary person and a very much loved person. It was terrible when he died. It was such a loss to the world.”

Annetta brought up their two children, a boy and a girl who are a musician and a singer respectively, and has spent the past half a century preserving both her husband’s memory and his legacy of exquisite cartoons. They have been exhibited far and wide and she would like to find a permanent home for them, where they could be enjoyed by future generations.

Annetta Hoffnung will talk on The Humour of Hoffnung at St Lawrence Church, Warkworth, on September 27, at 7.30pm.

The Norman church is on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk register and villagers need to raise £70,000 to make it safe. The talk and sales of Hoffnung merchandise on the night are in aid of the fund.

It has been organised by Warkworth resident Alex Melville-Mason who used to work for Annetta Hoffnung until she moved to Northumberland.

Tickets for the talk, with audio-visual accompaniment, are £8. Tel: (01665) 711950 or (01665) 713439.