NO.122
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
A week before he died, he was
lying on his bed upstairs at Vine
Cottage. I was sitting with him and
thought he was asleep. Weakly in a
sort of hoarse whisper, he said to
me, “If this is dying, it’s not too bad
I suppose…”
was a map that traced a walk he’d
devised near to our house, along
which he had laid a treasure hunt.
Our family jumped into the car and
went off to walk the walk and look
for treasure. I remember small piles
of white stones hidden along the
route with franc coins buried
underneath each. This was not
only great fun and a kind gesture
but a wonderful Galwsorthyesque
piece of performance sculpture.”
Anguish and self-doubt were
very much at the heart of Adam.
The sheer number of his
friendships, and the intensity and
quality of these relationships bear
witness to his ability to turn his
own self-doubt into an intelligent
empathy with everyone he loved.
A lifelong diabetic, the ups and
downs of his endocrine system
could lead to, let me say, some
volatility in his moods. There is no
coffee pot in Vine Cottage: it
spurted out the freshly brewed coffee as he
lowered the plunger just once too often.
He was on his third computer keyboard:
the previous two were knifed to death,
literally, when they ceased sending
instructions to his Apple Mac in the way
he expected. The keyboard was, of course,
actually blameless. The problem lay in the
computer itself, but understanding or
indeed tolerating technology was not his
strong point. The Audi garage, he once
told me sheepishly, had retrieved from the
inside of the single CD player in his car, no
less than seven compact discs forced by
him through its open but reluctant mouth
as Adam vented his frustration at its lack of
co-operation.
Adam wrote and taught with
erudition and inspired pupils at
Tonbridge, Sherborne and Winchester.
For more than 20 years, he had been
keeping himself sane by writing poetry.
He had a lifelong love of literature, fed at
Winchester and Oxford, with a deep
knowledge of writers from Donne and
Herbert through Thomas de Quincey to
Hardy and Joyce. His poetry, sent
individually and piecemeal by post to a
few friends, was often poignant and
frequently amusing. He used an
That wholly decent New Zealander
Jarrod who cuts his lawn put it best:
“You were a rare coat cut from a
very limited silk…”’
A fragment ‘discovered’ among the
Aubrey MSS in the Bodleian by Rob
Wyke (Co Ro, 85-15) reads:
astonishing variety of metric forms and
voices within to articulate his feelings.
A handsome anthology of Adam’s
poetry, Bound in a Nutshell, is being
published today. In a way that a short talk
like this never could, this volume, complete
with a unique set of photographs of Adam
and what I might call Adamobelia at the
back, will mean that his voice and his
highly original personality will live on. And
I am particularly pleased to hear that it is to
be studied in divs at Winchester.
Adam was an actor. In his many roles
with the Winchester College Players, he
never found it hard to play a part; in a
way, he always played himself. He was
supremely generous, to friend and
stranger. I know, they know. He helped
many people in so many ways.
I want to end by reading a short
extract written by OW Patrick Williams,
who on hearing of his death wrote thus:
“When I was a small boy Adam
walked the pilgrimage route to Santiago
which took him past our family home in
France. He stayed with us en route and a
couple of weeks later a ‘thank you for
having me’ letter arrived, containing a
separate postcard addressed to me. On it
3
This Crick was a great Leaver of
Schooles: the Acta of St Maries Coll of
Winton shew that he left that Schoole
three or foure times. But in the
remarkable Passages of his life as a
Schoolemaster, he did cause the young
Impes of Fame (for so he calld those
that were his Pupills) to love their
Literature, to lie down as if dead in the
Court when it was the Royall Season of
Recitation (as the phrase goes there)
and to don the tires and mantles of
Wommen in order to entertain cruell
Pedants in the House-Playes of that
godless Place (so some did calle it). He
often stood astonied by the Follies of
his Fellow-ushers there and would for
6d flie to his retreat in Dorsetshire to
recover his Wittes that he might come
back againe to share his Sweet-temper
and Good-nature (a dark eie and a
cheerful Nostrill) with those ungratefull
Fooles. Mr Wood, in his Athenae, doth
take to taske the Fellows of Winton for
giving this Crick license to lease his
Talents all abroad: for, says he, this
Crick was a Rarity, a Wonder, and the
Fellows but Crinkum-crankum,
magotie-headed, and sometimes little
better than crased…
■