At the time of this story not much was known about George’s relations with John Robert Rozanov, so those relations did not figure in the ‘George theories’ or the ‘George legend’. George became John Robert’s pupil when he was studying philosophy in London. George was twenty, John Robert in his fifties. The Rozanovs were, as has been related, a poor family living in Burkestown. The grandfather, a Marxian socialist, had fled from Czarist Russia. (He was related, it was said, to the painter of the same name.) He came to England, freedom, poverty, obscurity and disappointment. His son, John Robert’s father, married a local girl, a Methodist, became a Christian and lost, indeed had never shown much, interest in politics. He was an electrician, sometimes unemployed. The grandfather lived long enough to be consoled by realizing that his grandson at least was some sort of remarkable creature. John Robert, an only child, proceeded to Ennistone Grammar School (now alas defunct) and then to Oxford. After graduating, he went to study in America, where he taught in California, then in New York. He returned to teach in London, then went back to America, thereafter making regular, sometimes prolonged, visits to the English philosophical scene. As he retained a tender relation with his parents, his face was occasionally, until his mother’s death, to be seen in Ennistone, and his fame was kept green among us. He had few friends here, however, and was generally said to be no maker of friends. He kept up with William Eastcote and with an eccentric old watchmaker with whom he had philosophical conversations.
George McCaffrey was deeply affected by his teacher. He ‘fell in love’ with Rozanov, with philosophy, with Rozanov’s philosophy. However, his soul was so shaken that (and this too was no doubt due to Rozanov’s influence) he never told his love; and although he spoke admiringly of Rozanov when he went home he never revealed how absolutely this man had taken possession of his soul. Whether George was ever a ‘favourite pupil’ is open to question. What is certain is that Rozanov advised George to give up philosophy and George took the advice. A brief word is necessary here about Rozanov’s philosophical views. (I should mention that I am not a philosopher and cannot offer any commentary or detail.) As a ‘brilliant’ young man, John Robert was a sceptic, a reductionist, a linguistic analyst, what is (incorrectly I am told in this context) popularly called a ‘logical positivist’, of the most austerely anti-metaphysical school. His Methodist upbringing had it seemed slipped from him painlessly or been with a certain naturalness transformed into a methodical sort of atheism. He was and remained deeply puritanical. In America he became interested in philosophy of science (he had a considerable knowledge of mathematics) and spent a lot of time arguing with physicists and attempting to clear up their philosophical mistakes. He had already published his two youthful books; one, Logic and Consciousness, a demolition of the views of Husserl, the other about Kant’s view of time. He now added a long book called Kant and the Kantians which established his reputation as something considerably more than a ‘clever boy’. His well-known studies of Descartes and Leibniz followed, then Against the Theory of Games, and the seminal work, Nostalgia for the Particular. He then became, by way of Kant, interested for the first time in moral philosophy, which he had dismissed when young; became for a while an obsessive student of Plato and wrote a book called Being and Beyond, considered marvellous but eccentric, about Plato’s Theory of Ideas. (He also wrote a short book, difficult to find now, on Plato’s Mathematical Objects.)
It was at this rather chaotic and eclectic stage of his development that George encountered him, when he was (as William Eastcote later put it) ‘letting off fireworks in all directions’. The next news about John Robert was that declaring (as he did from time to time) that philosophy was ‘impossible’, ‘too hard for human beings’, and that his own mind had ‘gone to pot’, he had decided to become a historian. He had been interested in Greek history since his Oxford days, and during a sabbatical year he composed and published a study of the causes of the Peloponnesian War. He also wrote a short book, considered a classic, about Greek ships and sea warfare. (There was arguably an engineer as well as a mathematician hidden inside John Robert.) He then further amazed everyone by writing a book about Luther. After that he went back to philosophy. There is some dispute about this later phase. Some said that he had become a neo-Platonist. He certainly published some fragmentary stuff about Plotinus. Others said he had ‘taken up religion’. There was said to be a ‘secret doctrine’ and a ‘great book’.
Some pupil-teacher relationships last a lifetime. George maintained his side of the relationship, though it is doubtful whether Rozanov animated his. George later regretted having taken his master’s advice and given up philosophy. As a graduate student he still haunted John Robert’s lectures and classes. He tried to ‘keep up’ and ‘keep in touch’. He even submitted to a semi-learned journal an article which purported to ‘explain’ John Robert’s philosophical position. The editor informed the philosopher, who sent George a curt note, and the article was promptly withdrawn. George made no further attempt to ‘popularize’ Rozanov’s work, but he continued to regard him as his teacher and on one occasion followed him to America.
George had kept the tally against fate. He knew what he was owed: something great, little less than salvation. Why was John Robert coming back to Ennistone? Was it for him, the lost sheep, the one just man, the justified sinner? He had always believed in magic, and he knew that John Robert Rozanov was a magician.
‘What’s on telly, Di? Roll on the San Francisco earthquake. That’s what I want to see pictures of.’
‘I left my evening bag behind at the Blacketts’,’ said Gabriel.
‘You’re always doing that!’ said Brian.
Jeremy Blackett was a master at the Comprehensive School. He and his wife Sylvia were dedicated bridge players. Gabriel did not play bridge, but Jeremy’s sister Sarah and his brother Andrew made up the foursome when Brian and Gabriel went to the Blacketts’. (Gabriel always took a novel.) It was to the powerful widowed mother of these Blacketts, May Blackett, that Alex had so disgracefully sold Maryville, the seaside house.
‘Jeremy will be here,’ said Gabriel, ‘or Sylvia or Sarah.’
‘Why can’t you bloody remember your stuff?’
‘Sorry — ’
It was Saturday morning. Everybody went to the Baths on Saturday. (I was there myself on that particular Saturday.) It was a frosty morning and the Outdoor Bath was covered by a thick blanket of steam. The life guard upon his ladder could only glimpse a swimmer here and there as the white cloud rolled about in the brisk easterly breeze.
Brian and Gabriel and Adam were in the Promenade, looking out through the window. They had just arrived. The window was misted, but they had rubbed three round holes at different levels through which they looked at the steamy scene outside. Behind them a few people were sitting at the tables drinking coffee.
Gabriel never failed to feel a curious visceral excitement when she came to the Institute, even though she did so nearly every day. ‘It’s like a Time Machine,’ she said to Brian, and then could not explain what she meant. From behind the studded bronze door which concealed the spring there was often the sound of a beating pulse, and the whole building seemed to tremble. Gabriel had learnt to swim in these waters. Yet it was as if some kind of not unpleasant guilty or expectant emotion attached to them. There was a delicious faint thrilling feeling as one slipped into these warm pools, especially in winter time when the hot spring seemed such a miracle and bathing in it such an exotic rite.