The evening at the Slipper House had already been mercifully worked upon by the chemistry of memory, and even his defeat at the hands of the singers appeared with a difference. He retained most vividly an impression of Hattie, her breathing closeness to him, her fragile crushability, her crunchability. He recalled too with appreciation her large gesture at the window. And he remembered the running, the escaping pursued by a crowd. This image was now not displeasing. To hear the vulgar outcry and outrun it and then to be alone: that was a picture of life. The histrionics beside the canal made no sense and had dropped into oblivion. The recent past appeared as a kind of show, an interlude, unconnected with the pressing duties which now composed the significance of his life.
So it was that on Monday afternoon George sat down at the polished but dusty table in the sparsely elegant dining-room in Druidsdale, ‘he was still living downstairs, he had not gone upstairs since his excursion to find the netsuke) and wrote as follows:
My dear John Robert,
I have been thinking about you. I feel I have been ungracious and unfair and I want to apologize. I know you care little about apologies and other such ‘posturing’, a word which you used, years ago, to describe a similar demarche on my part. I know too that you understand the strategic psychological purpose of an apology, which is to put the apologizer once more upon a level with his adversary, the offended person! My aim, as it has always been, is clarification, one which you surely share. We have known each other a long time and have been more than once in the place we are in now; a consideration which makes me the more confident in addressing you. There are various ways in which our relationship might be pictured, but fundamentally it is that of teacher and pupil, a relation which, prima facie at any rate, imposes a lasting obligation upon the teacher. You must know from experience how lively and how durable such a connection can be, and it is not your ‘fault’ any more than it is mine that we are in this way eternally connected. It is because you are a great man and a great teacher that this is so. These are facts in the light of which my being ‘a nuisance’ or ‘impolite’ must show as superficial. You know that my ‘tiresomeness’ is an expression of love, and one which perhaps at a deep level you would be sorry to be without. You know also, and I need not stress it, how I crave for your kindness. This may sound servile, but I offer it as another fact, and in no spirit of servility. You know me well enough to know how little I am given over, even where you are concerned, to any form of slavery.
I have been reflecting about philosophy of late, in a somewhat ‘existential’ mood (sorry, I know you loathe that word, but it has its place), and it has occurred to me (not actually for the first time) that you and I are alike. How is that? you will ask. I will tell you. We are both free men. I remember you said once (my God, how many sayings of yours are stored up in my head!) that the idea of being ‘beyond good and evil’ was and could only be a vulgar illusion. I think we had been discussing Dostoevsky. All right. Those who claim to be ‘beyond’ this familiar dualism are lying cynics or irresponsible victims of semi-conscious will, or eccentric or perverted enthusiasts who elevate some virtue (courage, for instance) so far above the other virtues as to make these invisible. Or if one attempts to draw a more spiritual picture, is not this simply morality itself at a more intense level? The adept who ‘prefers knowledge to virtue’ is either a vulgar magician or else a kind of ‘scholar’, whose selfless application we may admire, while we deplore his neglect of simpler duties! I seem to hear the echo of your voice here! (Did you not also speak later on, I seem to recall the phrase of a possible ‘conceptual dissolution of morals’? Perhaps that is part of the secret doctrine!) But, John Robert, is there not a much less arcane sense of this ‘freedom’, closer to home, closer anyway to our home? Do we, you and I, fall into any of the categories I have enumerated? I think not! We have simply ‘cut free’, and what we have done is not really so mysterious (or so grand) after all. There are many aspects to our freedom. One is certainly an absence of vanity (I speak of course in a neutral sense, and not as claiming a merit) which expresses itself as a complete indifference to ‘what people say’. We are outside the power of censure, as I believe very few people are. Schopenhauer says somewhere that virtue is simply an amalgam of prudence, fear of punishment, fear of censure, apathy and a desire to be liked! Can we not simply proceed by eliminating these one by one? And when they are all gone, have we not reached a place which some deny exists? Not by a dramatic leap, or by the development of some narrow specialized super-virtue, but by a simple movement of escape, like an eel slipping out of a trap. We are outside, you and I, and are we not, in this unpopulated open space, to shake each other’s hands? I think you understand me.
I would like to talk to you about these and other matters. I won’t try to see you just yet. Indeed, I don’t mind whether we talk here or in California. But we will talk. I feel, I cannot express to you how I know it, sure of that. We are bound together. I have sometimes behaved to you like a vulgar fool and I am sorry for it. But I know that you know that I am not a vulgar fool. Between now and the end, I am to be reckoned with.
I want in this letter to make peace with you. The sense of our being ‘at odds’ has troubled me. Let there be peace, John Robert, for both our sakes. Don’t trouble to answer this, but receive it, think about it please, let it be in your mind. I will communicate with you again. Ever, indeed forever, your devoted pupil,
George McC
George wrote the letter rapidly, straight out, in a state of excitement as if inspired. When he sat back and read it through he felt relieved, almost happy. It was wise not to suggest a meeting, better to indicate a vague future which, being peaceful, would in its due time bring forth a meeting. George felt sure that this letter would charm the philosopher. At worst it would amuse him. But George meant every word of the letter and hoped that its seriousness would impress. The sending of it would be a magic act which would restore to its tormented writer peace, and time.
It was Wednesday morning. Tom, who had of course not returned to London, was ringing the bell at number sixteen Hare Lane. He had received by the first post a letter which read:
Dear Mr McCaffrey,
I shall expect you to call on me at Hare Lane at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
J. R. Rozanov
John Robert opened the door and made a gesture toward the back room. Tom entered past him. The day was cloudy and overcast and the room was dark, but Tom saw a copy of the Ennistone Gazette open on the table.
Rozanov came in and shut the door. He said in a husky voice, clearing his throat, ‘Have you seen this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you explain it? There’s a report here too.’ He slapped a copy of The Swimmer down on the table with a violence which made Tom shudder.
Tom had already thought out his speech which would consist simply of telling the truth. He said, ‘It’s horrible, I felt sick when I read it. But you know what gossip columns are. It’s all lies — ’
‘Oh, is it?’
Tom was standing with his back to the window, Rozanov against the closed door. Tom realized that the philosopher was actually trembling and that there were frothy bubbles on his lips. Tom drew a deep breath. He was beginning to tremble too. He said, ‘Wait, listen, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, it was all perfectly innocent, not like that - I was at those rehearsals at the Hall, then we all went to the pub, to the Green Man, and then when it closed I went to Belmont and they all followed me, I didn’t want them to, I didn’t invite them — ’