Hello. Is that Steve?
I have just spent the last hour chatting on the telephone to Richard. What a wonderful man! He phoned me out of the blue this evening. My email must have prompted someone to give him my number. I am pleased to say his health remains excellent and his mind remains sharp, although he is not writing. He has great support and many friends. He has invited me down to see him “for a drink and a nosh” which I intend to do before “our birthday” in November.
Coincidence piles on coincidence. He worked as a metallurgist at Samuel Fox’s steelworks in Stocksbridge, near to where I live. He has walked the same walks, been to the same pubs and enjoyed the same landscape. He loved it here, walking by the reservoirs to the local pubs. He lodged at a farmhouse in Upper MIdhope, which I know well. He then worked in his protected profession through the war in London at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He lived through the Blitz. His account of this in “The Questing Beast” is vivid.
He was a friend of Graham Greene, through his publisher wife Elaine Greene. He describes Greene as “a very nice man, very approachable.” He confirms that he didn’t really mix in literary circles or read much poetry, but he admired Dylan Thomas. His great love was travel. He says his book on Turkey is “O.K. as a guide”, but recommends his “Journey in Lapland” which he says is much more personal, and is also the account of a great love affair with an American woman called Carla, who returned to California. after two months with him. As soon as I finish this post I will be onto Amazon!
I can scarcely describe my feelings as I spoke to him. He was as curious about me as I have been about him. We exchanged cat stories, we discussed psychiatry. I reminded him of his very sceptical take on “trick-cyclists” in “The Questing Beast”. That was just the character, he said; he felt that a psychiatrist he had known had helped him greatly in his younger days. He was pleased that I had “a proper job” as a nurse.
After the war he made a decent living from writing, and gave up working as a metallurgist. He rates the poems he placed in the Boston “Atlantic Monthly “as his best. He thinks “The Idle Demon” is his best collection of verse.
There was so much I wanted to ask! He still loves music. He loves Mozart and Wagner, and Elgar, Britten and Vaughan Williams.
I told him that I had posted poems of his on this site. He was happy and pleased about that, and interested to know that his books were still obtainable on the internet. I got the impression that he knows little about the internet. He is pleased that we are discussing and enjoying his work.
My thanks to all those who have been on this journey with me. To Jerome I pass on the torch as I head off for Corfu this Sunday. To Ann: how’s that for a happy ending? (And I am reading and enjoying your own “Gay Science” at the moment)To Cally: he chuckled with recognition when I talked about his “lack of Circularity.” He lives! To Steph and all others thanks for your praise and encouragement. This is the book to get hold of: LISTER, Richard Percival. A Journey in Lapland. The hard way to Haparanda. [With illustrations by the author.] (pp. 256. Chapman & Hall: London, 1965.)
And thanks Allen. Sublime indeed. I have never seen a “cleavage angle” better described! And it was your "Robespierre" non-thread that set me off on this quest.
I have Richard’s phone number, I have his address. I am honoured and amazed. I will hear his warm chuckling, his descriptions of his “very lucky” life in my head for a long time. At the end I asked the usual, boring question about his longevity. “Oh that, “he said, “walking, lots of walking.” “Come down; come down for a chat and a drink!”
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