
One of the UK’s highest judges, Sir Nicholas Pumfrey, LJ, died of a stroke earlier this week, having been appointed to the Court of Appeal only two months ago. My husband came across him often, both before him when Sir Nicholas was sitting as a judge, but also sometimes early in the mornings in a coffee shop near the Royal Courts of Justice. In his obituary in The Guardian, two of the writers refer to the distance at which he kept people notwithstanding the huge amount of affection he inspired. First this,
“Nicholas had many friends within the law and outside but he kept his relationships in distinct compartments. The consensus was that despite his enormous warmth, humour and generosity, he was afflicted by a deep-rooted and wholly unjustified lack of self-confidence. He was simply shy.”
And then this, by a second writer who knew him well at from days at university,
“He was what used to be aptly termed a confirmed bachelor, eschewing intimate relationships. The last time I saw him, he surprised me by declaring wistfully that there were times when he wished he had given his feelings free rein, before adding, typically: “But then again, remembering you at Oxford… maybe not!”
It struck me as very sad that a man who was so obviously highly esteemed and liked, thought so little of himself that he could not let people get very close to him.
Intimacy, allowing people to see us as we really are, being authentic, are all themes that interest me greatly, not least because I see how difficult it is for people to feel able to achieve intimacy, how they run away from it, how it scares them, and how difficult it is to define it, but how you know it when you find it. I have been reading a book which has two words running through it like seaside rock: “Only connect”. The book is written by a woman who strikes me as wise beyond her years. She is a minister in the Anglican church.
The phrase “Only connect” is taken from E M Forster’s novel Howard’s End. The passionately bohemiam Schlegels and the cooly aristocratic Wilcoxes have been united by the marriage between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox but their irreconciable temperaments tear the marriage apart. If only they could connect.
“Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the gray, sober against the fire …
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
Intimacy is not only reserved for romantic relationships. It is as necessary in friendship as it is in marriage and as often absent. This third passage from Howard’s End expresses a frustration that I have often felt:
“Was Mrs Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people — there are many of them — who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling round them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour — flirting — and if carried far enough it is punishable by law. But no law — not public opinion even — punishes those who coquette with friendship, thought the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?”
I used to have a habit which I have almost overcome of finding the Mrs Wilcoxes and the Mr Wilcoxes of this world endlessly addictive. If only I could make them connect. But the more I pursued the faster they ran and the more upset and bewildered I became. Titbits dropped like crumbs were never followed up, but the intermittent re-inforcement kept me hooked in. Probably a pattern I was familiar with from childhood, and one that I can readily identify now and know to leave well alone.
Intimacy is a gift from one person to another: it can never be dragged out of someone and some people, for many and various reasons, are unwilling or unable to offer it. That is their enormous loss for it is impossible for a romantic relationship or a friendship to thrive with intimacy on only one side, and not to know intimacy must be one of the loneliest states known to man. A friendship where there is no reciprocal intimacy may quickly becomes lop-sided, for all that one person tries to support the other. Or, if intimacy is lacking on both sides, there may be a “friendship” that runs like a train, regular as clockwork, along parallel tracks but with a huge gap between.
I am convinced that love, whether between friends or between romantic partners, is impossible without intimacy, that the two probably amount to the same thing. I am also convinced that intimacy is impossible without allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is a risk. It is tied up with trust. No wonder it is so frightening: there are so many elements that have to collide before intimacy is possible. Trust precedes vulnerability which precedes intimacy. So much to give up, but so much to gain. So much to lose.
There seems, in this country, to often be an inverse relationship between the level of social class and intimacy. Are the rungs of the social class ladder so slippery that you can never risk the vulnerability necessary for intimacy to happen, least of all with those below you?
I hope Sir Nicholas knew how much he was esteemed ,and like to imagine that he had a secret intimate relationship somewhere that met his needs and that he was known by someone other than his mother. His funeral is today: the church will be full.
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January 14, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Steeldust
It was! 600 people (on a conservative, lawyerly estimate), four wonderful tributes and a good deal of silent tearfulness and dabbing at eyes in the restrained English manner. We said goodbye to a witty, gregarious and very human man who touched many, many lives for the good. In the simple words of the Prayer Book “We give thanks for all that he has been to us, and for all, in our love and memory, that he is still.”
January 14, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Theophilos Xenos
After reading your post, I went and read the obituaries. I am sorry that such a brilliant, human man left so soon. “The Good Die Young.” He will be missed.
As for intimacy, this is a complex subject indeed. Intimacy is a double-edged sword. You’re not careful, you’re going to get cut — most of the time quite badly. I’ve seen friends sink because they took the big step. I cannot remember one person I know who has transitioned to intimacy without trouble. Most of these cases failed too.
“Trust.” “Risk.” “Love.” Great foundations of a happy (?) full life. Any takers, please?
January 14, 2008 at 9:36 pm
adifferentvoice
Steeldust and TX – see how you both chose the same adjective, “human”, to describe him. Glad you could be there, Steeldust. Did you shed a tear?
I don’t know anyone who has risked intimacy and who doesn’t bear scars to prove it either, TX. But I also know a lot of people who will testify that the pain of being denied it is exquisite too. I’m not sure if it’s a choice, un defi, or, for some, an impossibility. At my age I’m surrounded by casualties, and the collateral damage to the children is hard to watch too. I wish more people would take the risk or, like Sir Nicholas, keep themselves to themselves. It’s the sitting on the fence, neither one thing nor the other, that does the damage, I think. You sound as if you’ve abjured it forever. Have you?
January 14, 2008 at 9:50 pm
ismini
In life we make choices, then we live with the consequences. Like others I made my choices and I keep on making them. Some we regret, others we are glad we made them. But we never know before we choose a path where it is going to lead us. We follow or avoid choices that other people in our immediate surroundings have made before us and try to convince ourselves that we have made the right one.
Like you, I am witnessing a lot of casualties and I am left powerless without being able to help.
Sir Nicholas must have made his choices, maybe he thought that he could revise later in life, like most of us think…but sometimes time runs out before we get the chance to alter our choices.
January 14, 2008 at 10:25 pm
adifferentvoice
Ismini,
I’m sure we could write a book on this between us!
Decisions (choices) exclude alternatives. Horrible, but true. That’s why they are so difficult. As for intimacy, I am not sure it is always a choice exactly. I think there are those who fear it and so stay away from it. There are also those who’ve experienced it and choose to turn their back on it. And there are those who just have no need of it, not from choice, but from inclination. The last group couldn’t choose intimacy if they wanted to.
I’ve always wanted to know how you can tell someone who is withholding intimacy, from someone who has no ability for intimacy. In the end, I decided that the difference was immaterial. Both were always going to frustrate me and both were ultimately uninteresting. Oooh, do I really mean that last sentence?
January 15, 2008 at 4:29 am
Theophilos Xenos
Hmmm… abjuring intimacy could be a fatal life decision, especially if you are the “sentimental,” emotional type like I am (sigh). No, I haven’t rejected intimacy outright; in fact, I must confess I’ve been relatively lucky in this department, although, recently, I’ve experienced a major “incident” that I won’t wish others to experience. Intimacy is a “live” thing — it has got to be nurtured with the truest of feelings thrown in and it’s not always easy calibrating the other person’s reaction. If of course there is “true love” things can be different … All in all, there’s much confusion and groping in the dark and hope that all will be well and “happiness” will ensue. Yes, happiness! (What’s that?)
January 15, 2008 at 9:11 am
adifferentvoice
TX
“there’s much confusion and groping in the dark and hope that all will be well and “happiness” will ensue”
You express it so well. Hope. Perhaps that is at the root of it all? Without hope, you don’t dare to trust. Without trust you cannot be vulnerable. Without vulnerability there is no intimacy.
Where does the hope come from?
I read the early posts on your blog. I’m sorry that you’ve had such a difficult time, and am glad that you are back.
Margaret
January 15, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Theophilos Xenos
Margaret,
“Hope dies last,” right? In my experience, it usually dies first … and then you carry on under the power of habit (?) — “Don’t sell the bike shop yet, Orville” — and the belief that, somehow, things will work out (most of the time, they don’t).
As for where hopes come from, I’d say it is one function peculiar to individual brain chemistry. Like depression, some people have it, some don’t.
Thanks for visiting the blog. Right now, it is largely a medicinal activity… And… I’m glad to be back…