Lunching on Olympus

My meals with W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson

By Steven L. Isenberg

The British writers W. H. Auden,E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson paid respectfulattention to each other: Larkin wrote “English Auden was a superb andmagnetic wide-angled poet, but the poetry was in the blaming and thewarning.” Empson thought Auden a “wonderful poet” and put Larkin amongthe “very good poets.” Auden wrote a sonnet for Forster, and Empsonwrote a poem called “Just a Smack at Auden.” Forster’s novels weretouchstones for Auden, who cabled “Morgan” Forster on his 80th birthdaythese good wishes: “May you long continue what you already are stop oldfamous loved yet not yet a sacred cow.” Empson thought Forster’s Aspectsof the Novel—lectures he had heard as a student at Cambridge—“a model.”

For me the four have another thing incommon, the unlikely and unexpected occasions of my having met each ofthem for lunch. Those visits are always with me, and while I kept nodiary and so remember fewer of their words than I wish, the memories Ido have are testimony to their humanity and kindness.

W. H. Auden:
“Oh, don’t bother much about that.”

It all began with Auden in New York in 1962. I had recently graduatedfrom Berkeley and started to work at McGraw-Hill as a reader ofmanuscripts that senior editors wanted cleared out. Unauthorized andunanticipated by my boss, I looked Auden up in the phone book and calledhim at home. I said I was in McGraw-Hill’s trade editorial departmentand had recently been a student of and reader for Mark Schorer, the headof the English Department at Berkeley. I wondered if we could meet todiscuss whether he might write a biography. I’d come up with thisbecause Auden was not our author, and I had been told that exclusivityclauses in publishing contracts sometimes omit a genre in which theauthor had never written.

Auden said he didn’t write biographies, but was curious about whom Ihad in mind as a potential subject. E. M. Forster, I said, or ThomasMann, or—the third is fuzzy in my memory, but it was either Carl Jung orHermann Hesse. “Forster is alive,” he said. “Well, perhaps, that onemight wait,” I replied, and somehow I got from there to setting a datefor lunch. I chose the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel because I had lookedin there once and it seemed old-world, serious, and comfortable.

A few days later my boss, Ed Kuhn, the head of the trade editorialdepartment, summoned me to his office. “I have just had a call,” hesaid, “from Bennett Cerf [I knew who he was from the television panelshow What’s My Line?], the head of Random House, asking who thehell you were. I couldn’t imagine why he had heard of you and why hesounded so damn put out. Cerf asked, ‘What does he do for you? He ispoaching on one of our authors.’ I asked Cerf who that was. ‘W. H.Auden. He is trying to get him to write a biography.’ I told Cerf youwere just a kid out of college, and I had no idea about this, and Cerfsaid, ‘Well, Auden is having lunch with him.’”

For McGraw-Hill to publish W. H. Auden was virtually unthinkable. Wehad brought out Schorer’s biography of Sinclair Lewis, but ourbiggest-selling authors were Eugene Burdick with Fail Safe and Robert Ruark with Uhuru.So it was on a few counts that Kuhn was astonished. I could tell Cerfand Kuhn had enjoyed a laugh at my expense. Nevertheless, the wholematter pricked Kuhn’s pride. Why shouldn’t his house be a place for thelikes of Auden?

Kuhn asked what biographies I had suggested. I told him. He was evenmore stunned after I got out one name. “How much Auden have you read?”he asked. “Not much,” I admitted. He told me to take afternoons off forthe next several days to read Auden so the lunch would have less dangerof being embarrassing. I asked him if he would like to come with us.“No,” he said, “that wasn’t what Auden had in mind”—and if he went, Cerfwould be on the phone again, and this time it wouldn’t be so amusing.

The day before the lunch, though, Kuhn appeared in my office andsuggested I include John Starr, a senior editor who had taken a shine tome. Starr was a friend and editor of Richard Condon, the author of The Manchurian Candidate,and that was as much as I knew about his literary taste. He was aseasoned hand at picking up a check on the lunch circuit and had beenespecially kind to me, so I was happy to ask him. It wouldn’t hurt tobring along someone with the bona fides of adulthood and the publishingbusiness.

We waited for Auden in the leathery den of the Oak Room. Neither ofus had ever seen him in person. He came in carrying a pile ofnewspapers, which seemed to include lots of cut-out crossword-puzzlepages from the Times of London. He wore a tweedy sports coatand pants, his shirt and tie were dominated by academic brown and alliedshades. His face was like a plowed field.

We never spoke of biographies at all. Or of his writing anything forus. Auden and Starr began talking about good food and wine. Thesubstance of it was beyond me, but they were at ease and familiar withone another’s distinctions and discriminations. They didn’t show off;they were just appreciative critics. They then spoke of World War II.Starr had served as an Army officer in Europe, while Auden had famouslyemigrated from England to New York in 1939. In 1940 he wrote “In Memoryof W. B. Yeats,” set amidst the backdrop of war:
    

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate

Again, I was separated from the talk by age and experience, havingbeen born in 1940, but they made me feel included. I had a front-rowseat; I had made the lunch happen, and they were both happy to betogether talking.

Then Auden asked me about Berkeley. I had just done my senior paperon Yeats and said something about his mysticism. “Oh,” he said, “don’tbother much about that. Just a contrivance, a device, a stage, more thananything else.” I gathered from the familiar tone that he knew Yeats,about whom “In Memory” says:

You were silly like us: your gift survived it all;
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

As the lunch drew to its close, we asked Auden what he liked bestabout New York, and he said Jewish jokes. He asked if we knew any. Isaid I was from Los Angeles and couldn’t really do a good accent, but myaunt from Brooklyn and my father told some good jokes. He laughed atthe couple I told him, and then he told one of his favorites. A man fromthe Upper West Side goes to his psychiatrist. The doctor listens andtells him he is depressed and hostile. The doctor suggests a hobby or apet, something to bring him out of it. The man says he lives in a smallapartment; it would be difficult. The doctor says even a small pet woulddo. After several weeks, the doctor noted improvement, and asked if theman had bought a pet. “Yes,” the man said. “What kind?” “Bees,” hereplied. “Bees?” the doctor said, puzzled. “I thought you said you had asmall apartment. Where do you keep them?” “In a cigar box,” said thepatient. “But how do they breathe?” the doctor asked.

“How do they breathe?” said the patient. “Fuck ’em.”

E. M. Forster:
“I will tell you when it’s time to go.”

In 1965, while I was a student at Oxford, nbc was trying to make atelevision show about the Genizah Scrolls from Cairo (an archaeologicalfind second only to the Dead Sea Scrolls). But nbc wasn’t having any luck in getting access to the Genizah archives in the CambridgeUniversity library. Fortunately for me, someone at a dinner party in NewYork said he knew a student at Oxford who might help. So, I got the jobof producing the show.

In the course of visiting Cambridge, I arranged an introduction tothe professor of Near Eastern languages and literature, and through himto the curator of the scrolls. Once the curator had gotten used to boththe astounding news that television existed and the bemusing fact that Iwas American, he granted me some kind of honorary Oxbridge status andso the scrolls—actually scraps of parchment journals—were seen ontelevision for the first time.

Because the show’s sponsor was the Jewish Theological Seminary, theprofessor asked me if I was religious. I said I’d had a bar mitzvah andbeen confirmed, but after that I had gone to services rarely—so, no, Iwasn’t religious. He probed a bit further, laughed, and said, “You are apagan. Would you like to meet another one?” I had no idea whom he hadin mind, but said “Yes.” He knew I was reading English at Oxford andperhaps that explained his next words: “Write me when you have read allof E. M. Forster, and I will ask him to see you.”

Some months later I did, and I received a short note from Forsterproposing a day and time when I might visit him and saying he hoped Ihad other business as it seemed a long trip to make only to see him. Onegray, chilly March day in 1966, I planned to take the train down toLondon and then up to Cambridge. As I was leaving the college, I raninto my tutor, Christopher Ricks. “Remember you are meeting an old man,”he said, “so you should leave after about 20 minutes.”

At 10 the next morning, I walked into King’s College, one of thegrandest Oxbridge colleges, whose cathedral-sized chapel is one of themost famous buildings in Europe. The porter gave me the staircase androom numbers and directions. I walked up the wooden stairs—five flights(a lot, I thought for an old man—Forster was then 86)—and knocked on thedoor.

It opened to reveal a small, slightly stooped, demure man, smartlybut modestly dressed, who welcomed me in and offered me a chair. It feltstraight away as if I were a visitor, rather than a student having comefor a tutorial. He asked my plans for the day, as once again he said itwas an awfully long way to come just to see him. I said I had no otherplans and that compared to my travel from California, this trip wasshort. The visit with him more than justified it.

He seemed to want me to ask questions, but first he talked aboutliving in college and how generous King’s had been to him and how muchenjoyment he reaped from it and how convenient it was. He asked after mycollege at Oxford, Worcester—where were my rooms and did I enjoy it?

He asked what I had been reading lately. I said Dickens and GeorgeEliot and that I was going to do the special paper on the novel in myexams. This to the man who wrote Aspects of the Novel. I askedForster if we could talk about Lawrence and he responded “David or T.E.?” He told me that in his bedroom he had several letters from D. H.Law­rence. I told him my mother had picked Lawrence as my middle nameafter Lawrence of Arabia, and he laughed happily at that. But I foundthat I didn’t have much more to ask him. It was one of those moments, asin all these meetings, when my self-doubt was playing as hard inside meas my excitement.

I was hoping he would get out the D. H. Lawrence letters, butsuddenly it occurred to me that it was getting to be around the20-minute marker. I said he had been kind to see me and I ought to begoing and leave him to his work and reading.

“Someone told you that you are going to see an old man and you oughtto leave after a short time,” he said, and my expression told him thatthat was just what had happened.

“Anyone who says that should also remember when you go to see someoneold, it may be the last time. Please stay, if you can, and I will tellyou when it’s time to go.”

That exchange stays with me because of its simple kindness. Iremember the moment better than anything else that was said, other thanhis asking me “Did you ever know Gide?”

“I know who he was,” I replied.

“No,” Forster said, “did you ever have lunch with him?”

I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity, but I just said “No,” and no more was said of André Gide.

Forster asked me to open the mail piled on a nearby table and to gothrough it, setting aside anything personal or seemingly important forhim to look at. And then, as it was nearing 11, he suggested that we goto the Senior Combination Room for coffee. He put on his overcoat, as Idid mine, and slowly but surely he descended the staircase. We walkedthrough the college—it was out of term, so not many students werearound—and went into the SCR lounge. It was populated only by a fewextraordinary-looking old men, bent under the weight of age and theburdens of study. No one spoke, and everyone sat so as to have no needto converse.

We were served our coffee and biscuits, and after a short time,Forster got up and led me outside. It was cold and clear. He suggested awalk along the River Cam. “Would that suit you?” he asked. “Of course,”I said. As we began to walk, he laced his arm through mine. Can youimagine how I felt—a boy from my circumstances, so American, sounfinished—walking along the backs of the Cambridge colleges with theman who wrote A Passage to India and Howards End on my arm as a silent companion?

At some point Forster began to remark on things he loved aboutparticular colleges—their gardens and parts of the river. I followed hislead, and we wound up walking down the main street of the town; soon wewere in front of Heffer’s, the university’s bookstore. Only then did Irealize I hadn’t brought a book for him to sign. I asked him if I couldrun in and buy one. He said, “Yes,” and that he would wait outside.

I ran in, totally unfamiliar with the store and suddenly worriedabout leaving Forster in the street alone. I don’t know what I thoughtwould happen, but I imagined headlines reporting an accident: “ForsterAccompanied and Then Abandoned by a Visiting American Student.” Icouldn’t find the novels section, but I caught sight of a hardboundedition of Lionel Trilling’s book on Forster and bought it in adesperate rush.

We then walked back to King’s and up to his room. “Now it is time forme to go,” I said, and I told him how grateful I was for his kindness.He asked where I would go, and I said back to Oxford. He said, “Let mesign your book,” and without explanation, I showed him the Trilling. Hesmiled and drew a line through the title—his name—and signed his name.

Philip Larkin:
“I never like to be more than five miles from home.”

Fifteen years later, when my family paid a summer visit toChristopher Ricks in England, Ricks had the idea that I ought to try tosee Philip Larkin and offered to write Larkin and ask if he would seeme. The year before in New York I had set up a lecture that Ricks hadgiven about the poet. I asked Ricks if he would come with me. Absolutelynot, he said. He wanted to ask for me—that would make him happy.
I do not have a copy of Ricks’s letter to Larkin, but I do have a copy of Larkin’s answer:

28 June 1982

Dear Christopher,
Thanks for your letter—this is the fourth week of having the painters in, which is why I haven’t replied.
It’s true I generally decline, with such gentleness as I can muster,self-proposed visits by chaps like yours, but I suppose I can break myown rules. On condition that
i. You name your man, & he isn’t someone I detest;
ii. It’s understood that this isn’t a precedent but a single exception;
iii. This is a private meeting and not an interview—very important this—
iv. He realizes I am seriously deaf & hard to talk to;
v. The meeting doesn’t last more than an hour or two; then I should be willing to oblige you.
Venue doubtful: I shall be in London in July. Here less trouble, but makes [rule] v. harder to observe. However, I leave this rather doubtful ball in your court.
Your life sounds exciting. If it isn’t the Faculty, it’s the College! Must be wearing.
Kind regards,
Yours, Philip

A day was set, and with every Larkin rule in mind, I drove to Hull,where Larkin was university librarian. On campus, I was directed to thelibrary and asked for the librarian’s office. Larkin’s secretarypromptly announced my arrival, and I was summoned into a large office.From behind his desk, a taller, balder, more affable Larkin than I hadimagined came to shake my hand.

“Good morning, Professor Isenberg.”

“Good morning. Thank you for letting me come to see you. But first, I am not a professor.”

“Well, I see you are young, but surely you must be at least an associate professor.”

“No, I’m not an academic.”

Larkin’s smile widened with open delight. “Good. But somehow I got the impression of Ricks giving a lecture you helped arrange.”

“I will tell you about the setting—I think you would like it.”

“Please do. But what is your job now?”

“I have just begun working in newspapers.”

His face showed less of a smile.

“What do you do?”

“I’m assistant to the publisher of Newsday, a large newspaper in Long Island, New York, where I’m learning the business and hope one day to run one.”

“Good,” he said, his face brightening again. “You’re neither areporter nor an academic.” “Come,” he said, “I propose we go for a publunch in the country. I will be happy to drive.”

We walked out to his car, which was some sort of mini–station wagon.Larkin had large thick glasses, and I was apprehensive about his drivingskills, but he wouldn’t hear of me driving. “That would make me anawful host, and anyway I would have to keep giving you directions, andas a publisher, you are a direction giver.”

His tone and manner were anything but that of the Larkin of despairand loneliness; he was fast, funny, and friendly. I laughed often  andwas struck by the precise and fresh turns of phrase in his conversation.

At the pub, we had beer. I am a slight drinker; Larkin went at aseasoned Englishman’s lunchtime pace. I told him about the evening ofthe Ricks lecture and he was pleased.

He was, by his own admission, wary of Americans; they wanted eitherto ask academic questions about his poems or to try to get him to visitAmerica. He said he was the sort of Englishman who did not want to goanywhere else. He told me of going to Germany to get an award. When hewent to the hotel’s front desk in the morning to ask for a newspaper, hediscovered that “although they tell you the people in those placesspeak English, they don’t.”

At some point, I asked him about contemporary poets. He was jokey anddismissive, refusing to be caught up in “Ted Hughes worship” as he putit, “or anything like that.”

He told me he had a friend who visited New York and was muggedoutside the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. I told him that whenhe came, I would get my younger brother, who was a strong guy, acriminologist, and knew a lot of policemen, to see that he wasprotected. “You see,” he laughed, “you are working on trying to get methere.”

He seemed in no rush to begin lunch, and I started to fear the ruleabout an hour or two. I didn’t want to drink too much without eating,but I had another beer with him.

When we did sit down, I remember two things I said. I misquoted aword in a snatch of a John Betjeman poem, and he corrected me, gently.(At the end of our visit, he gave me an edition of Betjeman’s poems andsigned it: “For Stephen (or even Steven), commemorating a delightfulday, Kindest regards, Philip.” Second, I said that the way he wroteabout death and growing old, staring them in the face, summoningunshopworn, unexhausted everyday words, all newly woven and unflinching,ironically, gave me a certain comfort against my own fears. He listenedquietly.

He then raised the matter of going to see well-known people and asked had I done it before. I told him of going to see Forster.

He told me that when he was young he had gone to see Forster, too.Forster had entertained a circle—literally—of young men. Every 10minutes or so, he made them change chairs so someone new sat on hisright. Larkin said he had taken the manuscript of his first novel, Jill,and tried to press it on Forster to read, but he wouldn’t take it.Larkin laughed at himself. It was an embarrassing and amusing memory—notpainful, though I got the clear impression he would have been happierif Forster had taken and read his manuscript. I think he told me thisstory to put me at greater ease—we both knew it takes nerve to arrangeone of these meetings, and there is a certain nervousness once you arethere.

He had another tale of meeting the famous. When he was librarian ofBelfast University, the Queen visited, and he was introduced to her. Hetold her an Irish joke, which he said was sort of a triple fauxpas—telling the Queen a joke, an Irish one, and doing it in NorthernIreland.

At some point, the chemistry felt right, and so I did take up thequestion of a visit to America. What stops you? I asked. He said, “Idon’t like to be in hotels, and I really don’t know anyone.” I said,“Here’s a proposition. You know Ricks—he always stays at my home. Gethim to vouch for us. Why don’t you stay with us at our apartment? Itoverlooks Central Park. There’s my wife and our son, who’s nine. Youdon’t have to talk to us. You can come and go as you please, inviteanyone over you like.”

He said, “The idea sounds appealing,” and I thought that if I couldget him on a plane that day, he would do it. Then he said, “I never liketo be more than five miles from home.”

Well, here’s another idea, I said. Why don’t you fly to New York?We’ll get a helicopter to take you to Manhattan, take you to seewhatever you want, and then take you back to the airport, and you canfly home.

“Oh,” he said, “I like that very much. But you can’t do that.”

“Oh yes I can,” I said. I told him of a friend who was the head ofthe Port Authority. “They run the airports, and my newspaper will find away to get it done.”

He roared. “That’s the best offer I have ever had.” Years later Iread that Larkin said he would like to go to China—if he could come backthe same day.

It is faces we remember, and his was big, enlarged by his baldnessand the glasses and the animated intensity of his speech. For all hispoems, which often showed a glum, lonely, and struggling self, the man Imet was strong, confident, terrifically alive, welcoming, relaxed,engaged, engaging. He had another beer, finished his lunch, and insistedwe have something sweet. I tried to pay; he wouldn’t allow it.

As he drove back, I was thinking how much he had drunk and how narrowthe country roads were. I must have given off some whiff ofapprehension, because he turned to me and said, “I hope we don’t have anaccident or the headline in your paper will be ‘Our Beloved AssistantPublisher Dies with Unknown English Poet.’”

William Empson:
“My boy, it is just like a symphony.”

A year later, Ricks asked me if I would like to join him on a visitto William Empson in London. I was staying with a friend in HampsteadHeath, quite near Empson’s home, so Ricks and I met late on a Saturdaymorning, planning to take Empson out to lunch, somewhere close by andinformal.

The eccentricity of Empson’s genius was almost as well known as his important critical works: Seven Types of Ambiguity, Some Versions of Pastoral, and Milton’s God.Robert Lowell, then the American poet of highest standing, had oncewritten to Empson that he was “the most intelligent poet writing in ourlanguage and perhaps the best. I put you with Hardy and Graves and Audenand Philip Larkin.” A prized possession of mine is a recording ofEmpson reading his poems in a tone of voice that I believe no otherhuman being can match, even if that person also combined Wykehamist,Cantabrigian, and Chinese accents.

Ricks is said by Empson’s biographer, John Haffenden, to be Empson’s“greatest fan and friend,” and Empson himself once said gruffly toRicks’s mother, “Your son saved me.” This invitation was a greatprivilege for me.

We were met at the door by Empson himself, unkempt white hair andbeard prominent. His shirt and pants were a faded gray and looked tohave been worn unwashed for several days. The sitting room itself wasstrewn with newspapers and was visibly dusty; it looked as unkempt asEmpson. Almost at once I could tell I was going to have a very hard timeunderstanding him. I had to listen for key words. He said his wife wasaway, so we would have to put up with him.
In honor of “our American guest,” he would make bloody marys. He was askinny man whose clothes hung on him, and as he walked about hecontinually hooked his thumbs in the front of his pants, and stretchedthem forward. Ricks and I had to avoid one another’s eyes.
Empson picked out of the kitchen sink three large glasses that may havebeen washed within the week. On the counter was a large open can oftomato juice with a rusted top. He poured juice into each glass and,after that, generous amounts of something that could have been eithergin or vodka—I couldn’t see. Then he sprinkled on something that mighthave been Worcestershire sauce and from a bin dredged up browned celerystalks. And then he stood back to admire his work and repeatedlystretched and fanned his pants.

He bade us to keep our seats and served his magic drink, which I knewI was meant to praise as thoroughly authentic, if not hygienic. Thereal challenge was to drink some of this warm slop—no ice cube ever wasevident—without spluttering. We toasted Empson and set to work. It hadto be done in slow sips; every chance for him to offer a second one hadto be eliminated.

Ricks and Empson had a few things to talk about, and they laughedtogether. I was concentrating on getting enough of the drink down to beneither insulting nor sick. By now, Ricks and I were having a hardertime with the drinks and pants stretching—it was just so outrageouslyfunny, but we contained ourselves. I tell my classes that I believeAmerica has weird and idiosyncratic people, but only England hasnaturally, fully formed eccentrics. Empson is the paradigm. (RecentlyRicks remarked of Auden, Forster, Empson, and Larkin that because theywere centric in so many ways, their eccentricities were all the moreinteresting.)

I told him about meeting Auden and being astonished by his wrinkledface. “It was all those sailors,” said Empson, who had written of Audenand Dylan Thomas that they were the only contemporaries “you could callpoets of genius.”

After a time, Empson said he wanted to make us lunch, and we wouldeat in the garden as it was such a fine day. Glancing again at thekitchen, I almost pleaded that he let us take him out to the closestplace he enjoyed. Ricks added his solicitation. Empson wouldn’t hear ofit.

He went into the kitchen. I asked if I could help. He said I couldset the table outside. I began a search for silverware, plates, andglasses. We were to switch to beer, warm of course. He provided nodirection, so I had to look in cabinets and drawers. It gave me thechance to rinse and towel everything as unobtrusively as possible. Hesaid we needed soup bowls and spoons and knives for cheese. I foundthree rolls, butter, and cheese. The rolls had seen a better day, but Ihoped they could be buttered into edibility.

Ricks was ordered to stay seated, and then the soup making began.First, Empson produced a large, dirty pot, which I had no chance torinse. He ran water into it and set it to boil. From strange corners hefound an onion, leeks, parsley, and some of the browned celery. He threwin some other things, but by then I couldn’t look. At least it was allfloating in hot water.

After a time Empson told me to bring the bowls to him, and he ladledout full portions for each of us, stopping between scoops to make pantsadjustments. We sat outside in the lovely air and quiet garden, whichdid not have much beyond grass and some shrubbery. We were at a woodentable, with Empson at its head. He was obviously proud of his culinarywork. There was no choice but to get it all down.
I tasted it and was shocked to find it was good. I didn’t know what itwas, but I was so relieved that I would be able to eat it at all that Iblurted out my compliments.

“My boy,” Empson said, “it is just like a symphony. You get the rightinstruments together—here, the ingredients—and the conductor thenblends it all together.” We laughed at his delight.

He told us that when he had taught for a semester in America at asmall college, he was assigned to teach Shakespeare to a class full ofengineers (perhaps because he had taken the first part of his Cambridgedegree in Maths). Without slighting them, he said they knew nothing, noteven what the Avon was. But what he liked best about them was that theywere so well disciplined by their engineering training that they lookedup every word they didn’t know—so they met the first test of closereading.

I left with his voice even clearer in my head than on my old Caedmonrecording of him reading his poems, my favorite being a Gertrude Steinpastiche, “Poem About a Ball in the Nineteenth Century”:

Feather, feather, if it was a feather, feathers for fair,or to be fair, aroused. Round to be airy, feather, if it was airy,very, aviary, fairy, peacock to be well surrounded. Well-aired, amoving,to peacock, cared for, share dancing inner to be among aware.

THERE THEN: VISITS TO FOUR MEN who lived and died by, with, and forthe English language. What most remains for me, beyond their words andgenius, is their generosity. Today Christopher Ricks is the OxfordProfessor of Poetry, just as Auden was over a half century ago,finishing his five-year appointment in 1961, the year before ourluncheon.

As I have grown older, read more, and now teach, becoming what J. D.Salinger called a “lifetime English major,” how many times I’ve wishedfor another meeting with each of them, because I have so much more toask. And to hear again how each was so indelibly himself, to say somethanks to them for their part in making my teaching years full, to showthem how much these meetings meant to me.

Steven L. Isenberg is a visiting professor of humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. He was the publisher of New York Newsday.