The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [156]
ments in his dirty mackintosh.” A poor joke, I know. But all this is not very real.
‘I am turning out a drawer full of old mementoes and notes to-day in order to think about him a bit on paper; it is a holiday and the clinic is closed. It is risky work, I know, but perhaps I can answer a question which you must have put to yourself when you read the opening pages of the Interlinear: “How could Purse-warden and Justine…?” I know.
‘He had been in Alexandria before twice, before he met us all, and had once spent a winter at Mazarita working on a book: but this time he came back to do a short course of lectures at the Atelier, and as Nessim and I and Clea were on the committee, he could not avoid the side of Alexandrian life which most delighted and depressed him.
‘Physical features, as best I remember them. He was fair, a good average height and strongly built though not stout. Brown hair and moustache — very small this. Extremely well-kept hands. A good smile though when not smiling his face wore a somewhat quizzical almost impertinent air. His eyes were hazel and the best feature of him — they looked into other eyes, into other ideas, with a real candour, rather a terrifying sort of lucidity. He was some-what untidy in dress but always spotlessly clean of person and abhorred dirty nails and collars. Yes, but his clothes were some-times stained with spots of the red ink in which he wrote. There!
‘Really, I think his sense of humour had separated him from the world, into a privacy of his own, or else he had discovered for him-self the uselessness of having opinions and in consequence made a habit of usually saying the opposite of what he thought in a joking way. He was an ironist, hence he appeared often to violate good sense: hence too his equivocal air, the apparent frivolity with which he addressed himself to large subjects. This sort of serious clown-ing leaves footmarks in conversation of a peculiar kind. His little sayings stayed like the pawmarks of a cat in a pat of butter. To stupidities he would respond only with the word “kwatz” .
‘He believed, I think, that success was inherent in greatness. His own lack of financial success (he made very little money from his work, contrary to what you thought, and it all went to his wife and two children who lived in England) was inclined to make him
doubt his powers. Perhaps he should have been born an American?
I don’t know.
‘I remember going down to the dock to meet his boat with the panting Keats — who proposed to interview him. We were late and only caught up with him as he was filling in an immigration form. Against the column marked “religion” he had written
“Protestant — purely in the sense that I protest. ”
‘We took him for a drink so that Keats could interview him at leisure. The poor boy was absolutely nonplussed. Pursewarden had a particular smile for the Press. I still have the picture Keats took that morning. The sort of smile which might have hardened on the face of a dead baby. Later I got to know this smile and learned that it meant he was about to commit an outrage on ac-cepted good sense with an irony. He was trying to amuse no-one but himself, mind you. Keats panted and puffed, looked “sincere”
and probed, but all in vain. Later I asked him for a carbon copy of his interview which he typed out and gave me with his puzzled air, explaining that there was no “news” in the man. Pursewarden had said things like “It is the duty of every patriot to hate his country creatively” and “England cries out for brothels”; this last somewhat shocked poor Keats who asked him if he felt that “un-bridled licence” would be a good thing in England. Did Purse-warden want to undermine religion?
‘I can see as I write the wicked air with which my friend replied in shocked tones: “Good Lord, no! I would simply like to put an end to the cruelty to children which is such a distressing feature of English life — as well as the slavish devotion to pets which borders on