De Nieuwe Gids. Jaargang 54

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To Lodewijk van Deyssel on his seventy-fifth birthday a memory

Waarde Heer en Vriend,

(So you always begin your letters to me).

This will be a rambling sort of letter, but you are accustomed to such epistolary ramblings from my hand.

I remember, of many days, one more clearly than the rest, one of those glorious afternoons in early September when Nature lavishes her beauty upon us in such plenty as though to remind us, with winter not far off, that there is such a thing as summer. We were sitting on a terrace overlooking the sea, our northern sea, but transformed into the tranquil blue and silver of more southern waters beneath the full blaze of a sun that was almost white, not a blinding white, but broken) and mellowed into a kindly light by the pale blue of the surrounding sky, made slightly hazy by a gossamer-like moisture floating in the calm air. There was a pleasant taste of salt upon the lips. You felt it did you good to breathe deep. It was one of those rare days on the North Sea coast when there is no wind, and the sea was clean and clear. You knew that I had always loved the sea, and in deference to my emotional state of mind on that point, you told me, then, that you too, for once, found it beautiful, though it had never won your love or even evoked any feeling akin to a passing affection. It was thus that you artfully insinuated your desire into my own. We knew that we had both decided to stay there for the rest of the day. There was a difference of thirty years between us but we agreed passing well together. I have never for a moment felt the difference in years as a disparity. Of course, I felt you were so much wiser than I, but is was a wisdom that never weighed heavy upon me. You used to give it to me like chocolates, all wrapped up in siver and gold

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and gorgeous colours; when the outer covering was removed, simple sweetness and suave delight remained. I had just come back from a vigorous swim, refreshed in mind and body by the bracing salt and the moistened sunshine. We had spoken before of the softening yet strengthening influences of sun and sea upon the senses and the soul, possessing, as they do, in unison a virtue which neither of them has in the same degree apart. We were drinking that delightfut tonic of the French Riviera, delicious to taste and smell, iced Vermouth-Cassis, with that full rich ruby colour in it that gives added pleasure to the drinking as coloured gems in the wearing are wont to give greater pleasure to the eye than pearls or diamonds. I think we agreed that red wine has a red teste, as in music too the tones have their colours. We drank freely. I have always seen something Gargantuan about you, not so much in size of body (and you will admit that that is not inconsiderable) as in the bigness of your heart and its desires for the best of bodily things. You loved the body as we all should do. Of those three enemies that since our childhood we have been taught to be on our guard against, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, you must have found the Flesh the least hostile, nay, your best friend, and the Devil, I am sure, you considered a gentleman for putting pleasure so unstintingly your way (how often I have heard you say with warm and honest conviction: I've had a tremendous lot of pleasure out of life!); as for the World and you knew it in its light and serious moods better than most men I have met, it was your playground and your study. I said you had something Gargantuan about you; and, indeed, more than once after one of our famous late nights, famous at least, among ourselves, I have seen you make a veritable Gargantuan breakfast. Do you remember how we sometimes used to sit up all night, talking and drinking Claret, perhaps ‘not wisely but too well’, until the cock crowed, and far on into the new day; indeed, that cock might have crowed himself hoarse for all the notice we ever took of him; but there was something pleasant in listening to his strident call, and so we drank to the old bird's health and continued drinking to our own. After that we went out into the early morning for a couple of hours walk. The world never looked more beautiful than it did then. Those early morning

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walks were revelations, after which followed those other revelations, your breakfasts. What could I do but sit and wonder and feel perfectly happy in the friendship of such a second kind and jovial Samuel Johnson. Life was worth living in those days. Your philosophy told you that these things were good, and, being good, were right, and your Biblical three score years and ten - with another five thrown in to accentuate their fullness - have gone far to prove the sanity of this surely not purely physical side of your genial philosophy.

As we sat talking (the sun, by now, had dropped down the crystal wall of the west and was resting momentarily, a heavy purple ball, upon the sea's edge) our conversation took a lightly philosophical turn. Even the primitive savage talks philosophy, as you know. We, though, seldom talked philosophy as such, even supposing I had been able to; but you, when you wished, could discourse on Hegel or Kant with consummate ease. Your Gargantuan breakfasts were not more easily disposed of than were these abstruse and indigestible Germans. It will interest you to hear that a famous Scotch philosopher spoke of the Logic and the Phenomenology of the Spirit as masterpieces of obscurity and pure nonsense such as had previously been known only in madhouses. So much for Hegel who described his work as ‘an attempt to teach philosophy to speak in German’. And, as you know, he succceeded. You loved Wisdom more than Philosophy as you loved Life more than Art. There is a splendid harmony of mind and body in you; they are both big with potential energy. Your unerring judgement discovered a star of the first magnitude in that very great poet and your friend, P.C. Boutens. You corresponded with the late Prof. Lorentz on Einstein's Theory of Relativity, stating as your conviction that the whole thing was pure metaphysics. And you may very well be right! When you were confined for many weeks to your bed with a sprained ankle (resulting upon your brave attempts to dance the hornpipe upon a Christmas Eve - how many years ago was it?) you read Shakespeare through from beginning to end, a feat of uncommon mental energy, for it was your habit to mark, learn and inwardly digest and not merely to read. Our conversation, then, took a lightly philosophical turn, that is,

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we began to talk of life in terms of that most primitive of all philosophies, the sheer love of living; perhaps we philosophized about life only to live it the more unphilosophically, for yours was no cut-and-dried system of living. Your philosophy was that of the alchemist's stone that turns all the heard metallic substances of this too neutral of worlds into the molten gold that was now overspreading the wide expanse of ocean before us from that plethoric ball of the sun that had split its sides with laughter and was now flooding the world with all the fullness of its fiery life. Can burning fire be likened to laughter? I believe it can, to the most uproarious of laughter. There, then, was something real to tack our philosophizing tendencies on to. So we launched forth into that sea and anchored there, casting our philosophical ballast overboard. That must have been somewhere about our tenth glass! But this sweet sort of stuff that the ice diluted the richness of was like the honeyed and snow-cooled wine of Shiraz that the Persian poet of the Rubaiyat lived to be ninety on, a sort of nursery beverage among the intoxicants, leaving the feet light and ready to dance, yet firmly planted upon the reassuring earth, and making the head only slightly drowsy; but it was the drowsiness of repressed vigour.

We had now arrived at the stage when it was sufficiently easy, without any undue metaphysical acrobatics, to come to a mutual understanding as to what life really was. The sun and the wine had solved that knotty problem for us during the time we had been talking trivialities. In short, life was simply the joy of living with just enough thinking to prolong and intensify the sweetness of it; life was essentially the sense-life and its sensual enjoyment. What remained was a second sort of life that had the unpleasant habit of interrupting the pleasures of the first. Having arrived at this point, upon which again there was complete understanding between us, your evil genius prompted you to seek to satisfy the cravings of your animal nature by surrendering yourself to the pleasures of the table. I say ‘evil’ genius, because we were quite happy as we were. But did you ever resist that call? Were not your sirens cooks? The wisdom of many years had taught you that there was no such thing as happiness on an empty stomach. And you are right, for nature abhors a vacuum!

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So off we went to dinner. Then your soul expanded and a beatific light lit up that kindly face. Here were all the good things of the earth in one, gay company, friendship, music, laughter, wine and exquisite foods - to which you. for one, would do justice - and that subtle sense of supreme satisfaction which makes one happy hour worth more than a thousand dreams. That happy hour passed on into others no less happy, and over our coffee and liqueur I became immersed in that delightful flow of easy table-talk which is your own peculiar gift, and which gives a zest to the appetite and a piquancy to the dishes they would certainly not possess in the same degree without it. Here was the jovial, the genial, the incomparable Thijm, dearest and best of friends, most generous and most solicitous of hosts.

We returned home, wiser and better men... It was a night of stars, and a silver crescent lay low on the shadowy dunes...

Your fame is assured (though you may love it but little); your place upon your country's roll of honour most exalted; your kindness and tenderness to such as call you friend unforgettable. And one there is who will hold you fast in loving memory until the only ground he has to stand upon, this world of love and joy and beauty that you have given your life to, shall have slipped for ever from under his feet. It does the heart good to remember the goodness of a friend. Most kind and most forbearing of friends, may many a full year of health and happiness be yours!

Ever yours affectionately,

H. R. Wildermuth.

P.S. To end on a note of mild censure. I read in Vol. 7 of your Collected Papers (Heroiesch-individualistische Dagboekbladen): ‘Van een museum-bezoek vind ik het belang-rijkste het tweede-ontbijt dat er op volgt...’

Damned by your own pen, Sir! This is rank heresy... unless the world become as Rabelaisian as Rabelais saw it ‘...vind ik het belang-rijkste het tweede-ontbijt...!’ Here all argument is still, all language impotent... Thy philosophy, Petronius, doth commend itself...